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Definition: Robert of Anjou King of Sicily (1309-1343). Robert of Anjou was the third king of the Angevin dynasty on the throne of Sicily. He ruled from 1309 to 1343, but, in these years, Sicily was under the domain of the Aragonese dynasty and, hence, his authority was limited to the continental land of the Kingdom and his court was mainly focused in the city of Naples. From an iconographic point of view, he is particularly interesting because, between his official representations (namely, commissioned directly by him or his entourage), he was the first king of Sicily who made use not only of stereotyped images of himself, but also of physiognomic portraits. In particular, this entry focuses on these latter items, comprising the following four artworks: Simone Martini's altarpiece, the Master of Giovanni Barrile's panel, the Master of the Franciscan tempera's canvas, and the so-called Lello da Orvieto's fresco. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article talks about the book "Riflessioni politiche sopra alcuni punti della scienza della moneta" published anonymously by Trojano Spinelli, that depicts the issues discussed by the monetary committee of the Neapolitan government which inquired into monetary disorders created by the War of Austrian Succession and introduced measures of monetary stabilization.

The purpose of this article is to explore the political importance of Neapolitan Carnival and the government's involvement in steering and controlling the celebrations at various historical junctions during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is particularly important to note in this context the ritual pillages of cuccagne staged by the rulers. The sponsorship of such Carnivalesque entertainments quelled the rulers' fears from popular rebellion and disorder as much as they fed popular needs for bread and circuses; and it is in this context of maintaining intact the city's fragile social balances that we should interpret the ubiquity of these violent spectacles in early modern Naples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay explores the history of the church and shrine of the Madonna dell’Arco located in town of ,Sant’Anastasia, part of Naples, Italy, focusing especially on the material culture of the ex-votos, devotional gifts given in response to prayers answered, located within the church and its surrounds. Topics include the variety of gifts which include painted wooden tablets, anatomical models, and precious jewels.

The article focuses on various issues related to the modern history of Naples, Italy, including literature, music and art. Topics discussed include interdisciplinary research in the field of Italian art, literature and music; cultural history and historiography related to Naples; and collections of libraries and private collections of the Neapolitan art of the 17th century, and music collections of Naples in the 18th and 19th century.

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Naples in the last thirty years of the eighteenth-century was characterized by a fervent climate of theatrical experimentation. Although too often viewed as the last stronghold of Metastasian dramatic principles and traditions, the city was deeply influenced by the "reform culture" of Northern Europe. These exterior influences were bolstered by the contributions of local practitioners, whether composers, performers, and theorists. This essay is a brief consideration of how the ideas of "reform culture" affected contemporary Neapolitan theatrical practices and the emergence of new works in the city. A critical source for "reformed" theatrical philosophy was the work of Antonio Planelli (1747-1803), whose treatise Dell'opera in musica (1772) is a significant exploration and commentary on the dramatic stage of the Bourbon capital. Progressing from theatrical philosophy to existing practice, I will consider how the prevailing conditions animated the creation of the largely unknown cantata/ pastorale/opera, La pietà d'amore (1782) by the singer, composer, and Calzabigi protégé Vito Giuseppe Millico (1737-1802), created expressly for Naples under the sway of reform principles and his direct collaborations with the poet of Orfeo, Alceste, and Paride ed Elena. My study concludes with an examination of the emergence of the so-called "Lenten tragedy" or azione sacra per musica, a theatrical form created in the exclusive environs of the Teatro di San Carlo, the royal theater of the Bourbon capital, yet imparting a new theatrical aesthetic and modes of representation for contemporary sacred genres consistent to select ideals of reform culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Historia Moderna is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Mediterranea - Ricerche Storiche is the property of Mediterranea-Ricerche Storiche and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the coverage of Naples since 2000 in the Guardian and the Independent, paying particular attention to their portrayal of the Camorra and the refuse crisis. It argues that this coverage was not simply riddled with stereotypes but was also characterised by significant inaccuracies and omissions. Analysts in Italy have detailed how the trash emergency in 2008 was the outcome of corporate malpractice and institutional complicity and that organised crime, although intent on exploiting the situation, was not a determining factor. The British press, instead, tended to conflate the breakdown of the urban waste cycle with the dumping of toxic waste and, by inverting cause and effect, to point the blame at the Camorra. These accounts, it is argued, are partially explained by the very nature of foreign news that seeks out dramatic and clear-cut stories for an otherwise disinterested audience. They also reflect the heightened interest in the Camorra following the Secondigliano War and the English translation of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah. However, the article suggests that it is the press's assumption that Naples is already an ‘out of the ordinary’ urban setting that ultimately precludes the possibility of an informed coverage of the city and its predicaments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the history of ice cream selling and consumption in 18th-century Naples, Italy, with a particular focus on ice cream sold by street vendors. According to the author, ice cream was eaten by a larger and more diverse population than was portrayed in the Northern European sources used by many scholars. It is suggested that the consumption of ice cream was a mode of sociability which could be experienced outdoors as well as indoors by members of varying social classes. Details on the relationship between ice cream, coffee, and chocolate are also presented. Other topics include the process of making ice cream, the trade in snow in early modern Europe, and images produced by 18th-century travelers to Naples.

The article provides an analysis of the political and cultural differences between Western and Mediterranean Naples. The author also explores the concept of North and South in the Italian culture, with ideas of development, progress, and sophistication in the north as opposed to backwardness, and cultural primitivism in the south.

The article analyzes the historical social and political circumstances that brought about the separation of Italian city of Naples from the Southern region of Mezzogiorno. Topics referring to History, means of transportation and communication, regional modernization, and the Southern Issue are discussed.

This article explores the ways in which the Roman artist Pietro Cavallini and the Florentine artist Giotto were received in Naples and subsequently influenced Neapolitan art. Using documents and monuments, it analyses their contribution to the artistic and political image of the Neapolitan court. A number of scholars have based their assessment of the oeuvres of Cavallini and Giotto on the writings of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Giorgio Vasari, circa one hundred and two hundred and fifty years, respectively, after the artists lived. This article considers the stylistic, aesthetic, technological and political reasons for the appointment of Cavallini and Giotto to the Angevin court, and the subsequent spread of their style in Naples. As Martin Warnke has discussed in The Court Artist (first published in German in 1985), the late medieval court gave dignities to an artist that affected his reputation. The evidence of this article indicates that the court of Naples in the fourteenth century recognized each artist's individual identity and influence, thus affirming his image and thereby promoting its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importation of foreign sculptors to Naples was a common phenomenon which both led to the amalgamation of divergent artistic forms of expression and also paved the way for innovative combinations which fulfilled the desire of the local nobility for hybrid, palimpsest-like tombs. This article examines the broader historical sensorium through which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Neapolitans drew distinctions between local traditions and imported innovations when choosing artists, types and decorative styles for their funerary monuments. It demonstrates that the Neapolitan nobility was able to assimilate new and imported representational styles because it was accustomed to distinguishing between different styles and forms. A network of visually related monuments and surviving contracts testify to the typological rigour of the visual frameworks and to the recognized potentiality inherent in reinterpretations of earlier formulae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers some of the historiographical prejudices which can explain the peripheral status held by quattrocento Neapolitan architecture in both national and international scholarship. It also investigates the misunderstandings of the specific nature of local antiquarian culture. Naples is a paradigmatic and precocious example of a local antiquarian tradition which had no direct link with Florence and Rome, or with the revival of classical orders. Rather, it developed from local sources and remains, still widely visible at the time, both in the city and in its surroundings. Diomede Carafa's palace, built in the mid-fifteenth century in the heart of the historical centre of Naples, exemplifies the specific ways in which buildings in the all’antica style were constructed in Naples. The architecture of the palace reveals not just a full awareness of the ideas and fashions which were then circulating throughout fifteenth-century Italy, but also a striking independence in the choice and use of the available sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the behaviour of a group of foreign entrepreneurs (mainly Swiss and Germans) who settled in southern Italy during the nineteenth century, establishing cotton manufacturing, creating a religious community, importing technologies, machines and patterns of management. These entrepreneurs shared a high level of training and culture and they all belonged to Protestant denominations. In the context of this foreign entrepreneurial community, the article examines the role played by friendship, kinship, origins, education and religion in shaping the network that linked groups of Protestant businessmen across Europe, emphasizing how these manufacturing firms relied on forms of cooperation, solidarity and physical proximity that were consolidated and perpetuated across more than three generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the reliability of evidence to the reported ruins found at different sites across the Spanish empire. It is inferred that the drawings, plans and comments by the military engineers in the discovered ruins in Naples remained unpublished. Details regarding the competition between different individuals and networks for the possession of antiquity and objects of the ruins is presented.

The article discusses the city of Naples, Italy in relation to its cinematographic image. This city is the most represented one in the writings of travelers and in contemporary cinema. Numerous representations of the city in cinematographic domain provide an unusual image of the realities of Naples but which in the same time is the image of the city's actual social and political history.

1999 marks the second centenary of the Neapolitan revolution of 1799. The following three short articles examine the ways in which historical interpretations of the revolution and its place in Italian. history have changed over time and the ways in which the images and memories of the revolution have been used to transmit powerful political and cultural messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores some reasons as to why Florence, Italy was ever able to establish a position of clear primacy in the trade of southern Italy. This exploration has been conducted not by the direct comparison between Florentines and their rivals, but by looking at internal strengths and weaknesses in the link between Florence and Naples, Italy--strengths which reduced southern reliance on Florence's real and potential rivals, weaknesses which created especially close bonds of economic interdependence. Scholars have long been aware that the scale of the relationship between Florence and Naples was unusually great. Some areas of Florentine success have been indicated in banking, in commerce, in office-holding, in land-getting, in culture too. But it is also necessary to present the Florentine balance-sheet keeping alive the question what specific advantage Florence derived from the south. The first point that must be made is that Florence was well suited to pay for the grain, oil, and livestock it bought in the south. It is abundantly clear that the Florentines paid for these goods by exporting finished cloth to southern Italy. A second consideration was the dependence of Florence on outside food supplies.

The article presents abstracts on topics of Italian studies which include the World War I experiences of Italian futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the land reform policies proposed by Italian American scholar Mario Einaudi for post-World War II Italy, and the British press coverage of the city of Naples, Italy between 2000 and 2012 in the newspapers "The Guardian" and "The Independent."