Il "nostro solito uso". Prassi, modelli e significati nell'architettura teatina

This text deals with the specificities of Theatine architecture. Certainly one cannot speak of a “modo nostro” of the Theatines analogous to that of the Jesuits. However, some features of Theatine’s churches seem to have become characteristic of the order in some periods. Three phases can be differentiated in the architectural history of the order, separated by the work of the two great Theatines architects, Francesco Grimaldi and Guarino Guarini. In the first period, a special role is played by the confessional chambers, which probably influenced the all-Theatine predilection for side entrances to the church at the transept. An important moment of rupture corresponds to the buildings of Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome, a church which once completed would become the prevailing model for most of the later Theatine churches at least until the advent of Guarini.