Domenico Antonio Vaccaro e l’architettura sacra a Castel di Sangro

The most authoritative studies on the eighteenth-century reconstruction of the church of S. Maria Assunta in Castel di Sangro, first of all that of Damiano Venanzio Fucinese, assigned the architectural aspects of the work to the lombardo Francesco Ferradini,
limiting the intervention of Domenico Antonio Vaccaro to the execution of the paintings. Based on the analogies
of other churches in which Vaccaro is
the protagonist as an architect, as in
the case of the SS. Annunziata in Sessa
Aurunca, it is possible to hypothesize
that the new architecture of the church
of Castel di Sangro could also be
attributed to the same Vaccaro. In this
way his architectural thought would
extend from Naples to the Altopiani
Maggiori d’Abruzzo. The story of the
baroque reconstruction of the collegiata
in Castel di Sangro is therefore a
further fundamental testimony of
the transition of architectural ideas
between the center and the periphery
of the Neapolitan state, which so far had been limited to the figure of
Cosimo Fanzago and which here,
instead, involves Domenico Antonio
Vaccaro, a leading artist in the capital’s
cultural environment, shedding light on
a particular aspect of his activity as an
architect which has so far remained in
the shadows.