LOCUS THEOLOGIAE IN ARCHITECTURE AND SACRED ART – A CASE STUDY

Abstract

The article, in the theological and philosophical key, shows the Christian understanding of beauty and its place in the broadly understood sacred art. The author points to a specific evolution of beauty, which from the Renaissance to modern times lost its original mysticism of beauty in favor of its individualistic interpretations, closing the need to find divine-human unity in sacred art. This is expressed in the liturgy and the eternal connection with it of the arts, both structural and expressive. Looking for patterns reaching the essence of beauty in sacred arts, the author brings out two Italian architects: Ciro Lomonte and Guido Santoro, who in a small parish church in Sancipirello reached for the primal instinct of beauty in sacred art and, through simple forms, made a kind of sacralization of the "naked" church interior.