Suchergebnisse

ITALIANO: Nell'articolo si ricostruisce il punto di avvio ottocentesco della storiografia sull'arte medievale dell'Italia meridionale, cioè un vasto territorio, politicamente autonomo rispetto al resto della Penisola, rimasto al margine degli studi specialistici almeno fino agli anni Trenta del XIX secolo. Si prende in esame in particolar modo la figura di Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz (1808-1855), provando a individuare l'originario contesto di formazione intellettuale e storica, e confrontando le sue indagini storico-artistiche, ma prima di tutto storiche in senso lato, con l'interesse che quel territorio suscitò in Italia e in Europa negli anni a cavallo tra Ottocento e Novecento. / ENGLISH: The article deals with the beginning of historiography on medieval art in Southern Italy during the nineteenth century. This vast territory, which was politically independent from the rest of the Peninsula, remained on the sidelines of specialist studies at least until the thirties of the nineteenth century. The figure of Heinrich Wilhelm Schulz (1808-1855) is discussed in particular. His intellectual and historical background is attempted to reconstruct and his art-historical investigations, to be considered historical in a broad sense, are compared to the interest for the South that arose in Italy and Europe between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The "sacred crown" of the kings of Hungary, held in the House of Parliament in Budapest, a golden object believed today to be an assemblage of two distinct pieces – one datable to the second half of the Eleventh century, the other to the second half of the Twelfth –, presents us with a problem of method not rare in the study of medieval art: works made with an artistic know-how of highest level and commissioned by figures at the top of the social ierarchy, that took on, in the course of the Middle ages, a perceived value that went far beyond that of the precious materials. In 1613 Péter Révay published the first modern description of the crown, a remarkable antiquarian text in which for the first time its origins were reconstructed and its royal and symbolic functions were put into light. Révay helped formalize, in a scholarly context, the sacred value of the crown, still an essential part of the identity of the Hungarian nation.

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the journey of Charles I, King of Hungary (1310–1342), from Visegrád to Naples in the year 1333. Through an analysis of documents written in the Angevin Chancellery in Naples from 1331 to 1333 (all physically lost, but accessible through transcripts published during the 1800s both in Naples and in Budapest), papal letters of the same period, and some major medieval and modern narrative sources, I try to understand the reasons that brought Charles I to Naples and to clarify the strong political implications, even long-term ones, that the journey had for the history not only of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Sicily but of the Kingdom of Hungary as well. Looking closely at an Angevin document from 1333, never contextualized in the historical moment it was issued, I will formulate new hypotheses concerning the artistic consequences the journey had on the funerary politics of Robert of Anjou, King of Sicily (1309–1343), and on the commissioning of monumental tombs intended to solemnly guard the remains of prominent members of the Angevin dynasty in the cathedral of Naples.

Durante il governo del vescovo-duca Stefano II (766-794), la città di Napoli assiste ad un forte, deliberato, tangibile riavvicinamento della Chiesa locale al papato di Roma. Tale nuovo corso si esplica visivamente, nella Cattedrale di Napoli, nell'allestimento di un programma architettonico e decorativo esemplato su un modello romano che è plausibile identificare nell'antica basilica di San Pietro. Le pitture raffiguranti i concili ecumenici della Chiesa (soggetto raro e di evidente contenuto simbolico rappresentato solo qualche decennio prima a Roma, nell'atrio di San Pietro), la costruzione di una cappella dedicata a San Pietro nell'area antistante la Cattedrale, l'innalzamento di due torri a coronamento di tale cappella, probabilmente sulla facciata dell'atrio della medesima Cattedrale, inducono a ipotizzare che il vescovo si appropriò di una strategia comunicativa di derivazione romana per affermare pubblicamente, in un manifesto propagandistico di immediata leggibilità, la sua convinta adesione alla politica anti-iconoclasta e anti-bizantina della Chiesa di Roma.