Summary: Investigating the miracle of the Neapolitan saint San Gennaro>'s liquefying blood in relation to art, architecture and philosophy, this book offers a bracing and thoroughly original rethink of baroque relics, reliquaries, metals and materiality. Focused on the richly adorned baroque Treasury Chapel of San Gennaro, this study embraces sanctity and salvation, and questions the cultural impact and consequences of Spanish colonialism within Europe in the city of Naples. It examines the matter of the baroque miracle through a rigorous engagement with natural history, telluric philosophy, new materialism, theory and philosophy. Bronze and silver architecture and sculpture are subjected to energetic transformational interpretations, which give a vitally new approach to baroque sanctity, in which the city is seen as an event in the history of holiness. Bristling with new archival materials and historical insights, this study lifts the baroque from its previous marginalisation, to engage fiercely with materiality as potentiality and thus with art and architecture as potentially transformative.

Contents: 1. The Matter of Miracles: San Gennaro's Blood and the Treasury Chapel. 2. Blood, Bronze, Vesuvius: Material Transformations. 3. Miraculous Witness: Exclusive affects. 4. The Machinic Chapel and the Production of Protectors. 5. From Prayer to Presence. 6. Niche and Saints: Folding the Wall. 7. Saints on the Move and the Choreography of Sanctity. 8. Holiness and History: Relics and Gender. 9. Heads and Bones: Face to face. 10. Silver Saints: Between Transformation and Transaction. Conclusion: The Miraculous Chance. (Rethinking Art's Histories)

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