CAPPELLA

CHAPEL. — It is a small sacred building, either standing alone or situated within buildings of different purposes such as public or private palaces, castles, institutes of various kinds of collectivities, hospitals, prisons, etc., or architecturally differentiated yet communicating with the larger space of a church. Its name derives from the chapel in Tours where the cloak of St. Martin was preserved and venerated. Although the name is of Western origin, this arrangement was not unknown in the East. There, such structures were called martyria and were small chapels, similarly differentiated from the church and variously situated, in which the relics of a martyr were preserved. Recent studies have highlighted these chapels from early Christian antiquity in the East, which were true independent dependencies of basilican structures and had either cruciform or rectangular plans. For further details, V. martyrium. In the West too there are examples of this kind: the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna was a dependency of the Basilica of Santa Croce, while San Lorenzo in Milan and the Lateran Baptistery still show examples of chapels connected even with buildings of central plan. However, while in the East the development of the martyrion had significant consequences in the history of architecture, in the West the translation of relics into basilicas, and the consequent fusion of the eucharistic synaxis and the cult of the martyrs, led to the almost total disappearance of these dependencies within the architectural organism of the basilicas.

[Chapels are still built, such as that of St. Venantius in the Lateran Baptistery (mid-7th century) or the sacellum of John VII near St. Peter’s, when there are special reasons for doing so. In the basilica, chapels are found placed midway along the central nave, serving funerary or martyrion purposes, as in Santa Prassede and the Santi Quattro Coronati (9th century) or San Benedetto in Piscinula (11th century), but generally even in the Romanesque period the basilica remained, as a rule, without architecturally differentiated appendages. The multiplication of altars and the greater growth of the cult of the saints, along with the development of the right of patronage by families or collectivities who wished to have a reserved place of worship or burial within the common church, favored in the Gothic age the development of chapels which, especially in buildings beyond the Alps, were arranged in a radiating pattern around the apsidal ambulatory and formed the ultimate buttress of the complex system of equilibrium of the presbyterial zones.

In churches of Cistercian origin with a Latin-cross plan, the high altar took its place in the largest chapel opposite the central nave, and smaller chapels of square plan, covered by vaults, were aligned along the sides. While the type of the cathedrals beyond the Alps was only partially adopted in Italy (Milan Cathedral, San Lorenzo in Naples, etc.), the Cistercian planimetry enjoyed wide success; chapels arranged along the nave began to appear in the lower church of San Francesco and would subsequently undergo a steadily increasing development. Among the independent chapels of this period, a special mention is deserved by the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, founded in the early 13th century, and among those annexed to public buildings, the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. The chapels arranged along the minor naves then assumed a monumental character in San Petronio in Bologna and became a very important feature of the entire composition.

This principle became established everywhere, and with the new architecture of Brunelleschi the chapels in San Lorenzo in Florence responded rhythmically to the arcades dividing the naves. With Alberti in Sant’Andrea in Mantua, they were introduced even into the single-nave church and were differentiated from one another by the alternation of large spaces opening onto the main area and small recesses created within the piers. The most famous chapel, albeit architecturally simple, among those included in palaces at this time is the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, while among those of funerary character, designed as an isolated organism, the typical example for the 15th century is the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo. At the beginning of the following century, the Tempietto of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome reduced a complex architectural organism covered by a dome to the small proportions of a chapel. Also dating to the 16th century is the decoration of the “Santa Casa” in Loreto. The singular chapel, with its splendid architectural and sculptural cladding, offers an example of a building standing alone yet enclosed within a larger one, a pattern repeated later in the same century by the Cappelletta della Porziuncola in Santa Maria degli Angeli near Assisi, which was instead decorated with paintings in the early 19th century. The New Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence is the most distinguished chapel adjacent to a church but spatially independent, and which

Funerary chapel. Instead, the example of Bramante’s chapel at S. Pietro in Montorio had an immediate impact on the Chigi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo in Rome, where Raphael boldly breaks the sequence of 15th-century semi-polygonal chapels opening onto the sides of the church and connects the two spaces, each with its own structural character, through a wide entrance arch. The example would prove susceptible to the most varied developments, for in countless additions to pre-existing buildings each chapel, despite its spatial dependence, would assume an independent structure. During the 16th century, chapels frequently opened onto the sides of churches, whether three-aisled or single-aisled; thus the much-vaunted claim that Vignola first adopted this system in the Gesù in Rome is without foundation.

Indeed, in these chapels a certain spatial autonomy is maintained due to the relatively narrow access arches, an autonomy that the early Baroque would progressively diminish until it was entirely absorbed into the vast rhythm of the nave, already achieved at S. Andrea della Valle. In concentric constructions, chapels assume complex forms from the designs of Michelangelo for S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini and are also found in elliptical buildings, often with a gradation of openings that relates to the desire to emphasize or downplay transverse or diagonal axes. The Sacro Monte of Varallo offers an example of chapels in series, which would be repeated in more modest form along the path leading from Bologna to the Madonna di S. Luca. Chapels with their own spatial character, communicating with churches through simple doors, adopt a rectangular plan and are sometimes covered by an elliptical vault, as in the Caetani Chapel at S. Pudenziana in Rome. One such chapel, also independent, with an octagonal plan and a dome intended for funerary use, is that of the Principi near S. Lorenzo in Florence. The Baroque knew all the different types of chapels; indeed, it accentuated their individuality through particular systems of lighting, as in the Berninian Raimondi Chapel at S. Pietro in Montorio; but the masterpiece of the genre remains, for the singularity of its structure and the lively complexity of its movement, that of the Holy Shroud in Turin; also notable for its monumentality is that of S. Gennaro in Naples. In the 18th century, the Corsini Chapel in S. Giovanni in Laterano returns to an organic clarity of construction that abandons any illusory expansion of space. From then on, the theme has seen no profound innovations and has settled into pre-existing schemes according to individual preferences or the predominant reminiscences of the past in the buildings of which they form part. Notable in the late 19th century are some chapels that repeat basilican schemes on a small scale, such as the Chapel of S. Benedetto in S. Paolo fuori le mura or the other of the Crocifisso in SS. Apostoli in Rome.

For liturgical prescriptions, V. ORATORY.