I Feneziani e il “caso” Pratola Peligna

In Abruzzo, Liberty style was always considered a prevalently coastal phenomenon, or one belonging to the major inland urban centres. In the Region’s internal areas we find known examples of this artistic/architectural current in L’Aquila in the single-family cottage type; in Avezzano where it spread during the reconstruction period after the 1915 earthquake; and in the city of Sulmona. In spite of this prevailing “geographical distribution,” the small town of Pratola Peligna is home to a major presence of the stile floreale with references to the Abruzzese coast, but also to national and international currents. The “case” of this flourishing activity is due to two “underrated” figures on the regional artistic landscape in the late nineteenth century: the brothers Giovanni and Bernardino Feneziani. Natives of San Pio delle Camere in the province of L’Aquila, they were well-known sculptors and decorators active in the L’Aquila area of Abruzzo between the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. Trained at the regional capital’s school of arts and trades as pupils of Teofilo Patini, they began their long career as church decorators by adopting a neoclassical/ neo-Baroque language mixed with floral decorative elements. Examples in the vicinity of the city of L’Aquila include the façade of the church of San Pietro Celestino in San Pio delle Camere or the interior decoration works for the small church of Sant’Antonio Abate in Calascio, where the master was active at the same time. After their experience in these churches, the two artists turned their efforts to other towns in the province of L’Aquila at the turn of the new century. In the Marsica area, we may mention the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Cerchio and, in Valle Peligna, the churches of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Pacentro and of San Nicola in Cansano. But the Feneziani brothers also distinguished themselves in works involving civil buildings: in the Sala Baiocco room in L’Aquila where they worked alongside other pupils from the school of arts and trades in one of that city’s high-society Liberty-style salons. Multifaceted artists, they were able to vary their repertoire and absorb the artistic influences of their time. As the 1920s drew to a close, Giovanni Feneziani had relocated to Chieti to devote his efforts to the decorations on the façade of the Chamber of Commerce building on Corso Marrucino, using Stile Littorio. Around 1910, Giovanni and Bernardino Feneziani were summoned to Pratola Peligna to complete the interior decoration of the newly created Sanctuary of Maria Santissima della Libera, where Patini, joined by such pupils as Carlo Patrignani and Amedeo Tedeschi, had already worked. This brilliant stroke of intuition was the work of the company run by the Di Loreto brothers, well-known local builders who were able to establish a close working relationship – but also a personal one – with the two gifted artists from L’Aquila. The latter were employed initially in the Sanctuary and other religious buildings, before devoting their efforts to the new Liberty façades for the palazzetti of Pratola’s petite bourgeoisie. This collaboration was made possible by a fervid local entrepreneurial activity that was to characterize that town at the turn of the new century, once it had been freed from the feudal oppression exercised for years by the Santo Spirito al Morrone abbey. New façades adorned the main streets, giving the town a new Liberty-style guise that presents an interesting regional-level case study of the stile floreale.