Tra Corte e Chiesa: architetture sacre nei luoghi della Corona di delitie. Inediti intorno alla chiesa della Natività di Maria Vergine a Venaria Reale

At the beginning of the Seventeenth century, the word «crown» was usually employed, in the literature useful to celebrate the Savoy’s family, as a symbol of regality, a particular figure of speech, a suitable metaphor of the power of the duchies especially thinking about their politics in the territory around Torino capital-city. Before Amedeo di Castellamonte, who wrote about the Corona di delitie in his Venaria Reale Palazzo di piacere, e di caccia, Francesco Agostino Della Chiesa used the same word «crown» in his works about history of Piedmont, telling about the ducal residences of Savoy and, at the same time, the churches, the parishes and the monasteries sometimes built in the same cities of the maison de plaisance. In the engravings published in the Theatrum sabaudiae, residences and churches write a figurative dialogue, suggesting the ducal willpower and his politics aim at the control the area around Torino by way of the Church and some chosen religious orders too. The building-site of the parish of the Natività di Maria Vergine in Venaria Reale, drawn in Castellamonte’s urban project in piazza dell'Annunziata, becomes a symbol of the new sabaudian politic when, after the collapse in the middle of the Eighteenth century, Benedetto Alfieri and his collaborator Giuseppe Giacinto Baijs re-built the church. Unpublished notes about the presbytery, the choir and some altars, useful to complete the important studies about Alfieri’s building site, underline the role of Venaria’s church, already drawn in the Seventeenth century in an urban plan for controlling the North area of Torino, that becomes, one century after, an example of a technical knowledge, a model and, above all, a church built for a Church, a mediator between the court of Savoy and the citizenry, a tool the celebrate the Savoy’s family through a sacred architecture.