Mundus Archetypus: Three-Faced Trinity and Heterodoxy in 16th-Century Naples

José Gabriel Alegría

The current project seeks to delve deep into the history of an unorthodox motif which spread between the Early Renaissance until the mid-18th century, from Rome to Lima, Peru: that of the Holy Trinity depicted as a three-faced entity. This image acquired an immense negative polyvalence as it became associated with the devil, was forbidden by two popes, first in 1628 and yet again in 1745, and was subsequently identified with indigenous gods (or the perceived idolatries) of India and the Spanish America. Yet before its prohibition the image was propagated in both worlds, Old and New, through the medium of printed sources due to the initiative of a Renaissance intellectual elite that during the 15th and 16th centuries was open to the assimilation of elements from the classical world as well as the Jewish esoteric tradition, since both were believed to prove the philosophical truth of Christianity. This project focuses on how these affiliations were present among specific theologians, noblemen, poets, and printers active in Rome and Naples in the second half of the 16th century. The current case study centers around a print produced in 1574 by Antoine Lafreri, dedicated to Giangirolamo I Acquaviva d’Aragona, tenth Duke of Atri, and attributed as an invention of the Carmelite Neapolitan theologian Vincenzo Spinola. This inquiry has therefore included research in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, the Biblioteca Vaticana, and the Archivio Apostolico Vaticano.