The Church of Santa Maria del Parto, which the historian Gennaro Aspreno Galante called "piece of heaven fallen to earth". In Mergellina, on the sea of the fishermen of Naples, there is one of the most suggestive churches of Naples, is the Church of Santa Maria del Parto. A small sixteenth-century temple, fruit of the friendship between a poet and a king.
It was the year 1497 when the Neapolitan humanist poet Jacopo Sannazaro (1455-1530) received as a gift from King Frederick of Aragon a piece of land on which he built his house, a tower and this church.
The external façade shows two frescoed roundels with portraits of King Frederick of Aragon and Jacopo Sannazzaro. A recent restoration carried out by the University Suor Orsola Benincasa, with the high surveillance of Mibac, has restored the coats of arms on the entrance portal of the church of Santa Maria del Parto a Mergellina to their former glory. Among the paintings that have emerged (five coats of arms) in the center is that of the Order of the Servants of Mary; on the sides are two coats of arms of the cardinals: Fra Stefano Bonucci and probably Dionisio Laurerio. Below, at the sides of the portal, there are the coats of arms of noble Neapolitan families linked to the Aragonese crown.
Actually, the whole sacred building consists of two churches. An inferior one, dedicated to the Nativity, and an upper one, more important and rich of artistic testimonies, dedicated to Saints James (Iacopo) and Nazario. It seems that this splendid church takes its name from the work "De partu virginis" by the humanist poet Jacopo Sannazaro.
The lower church, entirely excavated in tuff, was finished in 1525, with an independent entrance and dedicated to Santa Maria del Parto. It became the place of prayer for all pregnant women or for those who wanted a child. It was customary that on the 25th of each month prayers were recited for these women.
The construction of the upper church, on the other hand, suffered various delays both because of the plague epidemic and because of the war between the French and English that was raging in those years. The interior of the Church of Santa Maria del Parto is small and has a single nave with white and golden stucco decorations. In the chapels (three on each side) and in the apse there are several paintings and frescoes, some dating back to the sixteenth century.
To see are above all the tomb of Sannazzaro (in the apse), the nativity scene of Giovanni da Nola in lime wood of the ‘500 and especially the
Canvas of St. Michael trampling the devil (placed in the first chapel on the right) painted by Leonardo da Pistoia. The painting, also known as "The Devil of Mergellina", depicts a St. Michael the Archangel intent on piercing the throat of a demon, personified by a seductive half-naked woman with a thick coppery hair and typical features of a snake.
From this work and its history, comes the Neapolitan proverb: "Si bella e ‘nfama com
