Angevin and Aragonese Naples: A Crucible of Cultures

This study day is available as both an in person and a recording only event. The recording will be made available to ALL attendees on the Monday following the event and will be available for 4 weeks.

For this event non members of the society can book either an in person or the post event recording only ticket.

Unjustly overlooked in modern histories of art, Naples was one of Italy’s most vibrant and eclectic artistic centres in the Renaissance. Ruled from the fourteenth century by the French house of Anjou, the Kingdom of Naples was conquered in 1442 by the Spanish King Alfonso of Aragon, only to be wrested back by the French in 1494 and ultimately the Spanish Habsburgs, during the sixteenth-century Italian Wars.

These diverse rulers imported the visual culture of their homelands, melding them with local traditions, making Naples into an artistic crucible. French and Catalan gothic architecture rubbed shoulders with classical style, Netherlandish painting, and the latest Italian art, notably that of Florence. We shall explore the cultural crucible that was Renaissance Naples, focusing first on the Angevin period, and then on the Aragonese. We shall encounter works by familiar figures such as Pisanello, Van Eyck and Donatello, as well as less well known delights such as the colossal tomb of King Ladislaus of Durazzo in San Giovanni a Carbonara (1420s), the remarkable Arch of Alfonso on the Castel Nuovo (1450s), and the exquisite Piccolomini chapel (1470s) by Antonio Rossellino in Sant’Anna dei Lombardi.

Lecture 1 – Geoff Nuttall
The Angevins of France: Art and Authority, 1266-1382

Lecture 2 – Geoff Nuttall
The Angevins of Hungary: Art and Glory, 1382-1435

Lecture 3 – Paula Nuttall
Aragonese Naples: Alfonso and the Neapolitan Renaissance, 1442-58

Lecture 4 – Paula Nuttall
Aragonese Naples: Court, City and Church in the Wake of Alfonso, 1460-94