Per la giovinezza di Giovanni da Gaeta Emanuele Zappasodi A decisive role in the formation of the prolific artist Giovanni da Gaeta, active in Lazio and Campania as well as in Sardinia and Majorca, has long been recognized in the work of Perinetto da Benevento and Leonardo da Besozzo in the Caracciolo chapel in the…
Virginia Caramico
La Madonna del Cucito: un affresco nel contesto del presbiterio di Santa Chiara a Napoli Virginia Caramico The focus of this article is a fifteenth-century fresco of the Madonna del Cucito (the Virgin Mary Sewing) in the Neapolitan basilica of Santa Chiara, a work of the prolific local painter also responsible for the polyptych of…
Leah R. Clark
Objects of Exchange: Diplomatic Entanglements in Fifteenth-century Naples Leah R. Clark By focussing on objects of exchange in Quattrocento Naples, this study argues that the city played a key role in shaping both a diplomatic culture as well as new approaches to the material world that emerged in fifteenth-century Italy. These developments were intrinsically linked…
Sarah K. Kozlowski
Jan van Eyck’s Saint George and the Dragon between Bruges and Naples Sarah K. Kozlowski This essay traces the story of a panel painting of Saint George and the Dragon made by Jan van Eyck that traveled overland and by sea from Bruges, to Valencia, to Barcelona, and on to Naples, where it arrived at…
Chiara Frugoni
Novità sui Volti Santi di Lucca e Bocca di Magra Chiara Frugoni Chiara Frugoni, one of the most eminent living medievalists, offers an introduction to this section of three essays dedicated to the cult of the famous Volto Santo of Lucca, its origin, prototypes and fortune.
Piero Donati
Sul Volto Santo di Bocca di Magra Piero Donati The imposing wooden Volto Santo, which has been kept near the mouth of the river Magra since the mid-XVII century, does not originate from the one venerated in Lucca, as it is more ancient. Instead, by rereading Boncompagno da Signa’s Rhetorica Antiqua and thanks to numismatics,…
Monica Baldassarri
Il Volto Santo e la monetazione lucchese nel XIII secolo Monica Baldassarri The mint of Lucca, which had the longest production history in the region, was one of the first mints in the central-northern Italy to introduce an iconographic type on its silver coins (the “grossi”) at the beginning of the thirteenth century. It was…
Clario Di Fabio
La Santa Croce dei Lucchesi a Genova: l’immagine di un Volto Santo perduto Clario Di Fabio This paper deals with the spread of the cult of the Volto Santo in Genoa, within the community of Lucchese silk weavers, which from the 13th century had Santa Croce di Sarzano as its own “national church”. In particular,…
Barbara Baert
Pygmalion and creative enthusiasm* Barbara Baert In this article I examine the concept of enthusiasm through the lens of Publius Ovidius’ (43 BC-17 AD) myth of Pygmalion, where ‘inspiration’ and the ‘god within’ are fundamentally thematised1. Humanism and the Enlightenment see the connection between Pygmalion and enthusiasm as a captivating aesthetic paradigm. During the Renaissance,…
Gemma Zaganelli
Hildebrand critico della scultura cubista. Il caso degli Amanti di Raymond Duchamp-Villon Gemma Zaganelli At the dawn of the twentieth century, the point of view becomes a central issue in the artistic production of painters and sculptors. In particular, the principles of sculpture seem to reflect Adolf von Hildebrand’s theories. In his Das Problem der…