Photos: Claudio Metallo

Gateways to Medieval Naples

In recent years, the art and architecture of medieval Naples has been the subject of renewed scholarly activity that is generating important research on understudied monuments and exploring fresh approaches to the history of the city’s material culture. A next generation of scholars is reassessing Neapolitan studies, and three institutions in particular—the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II – Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici in Naples, and the Centro per la Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali “La Capraia”—are advancing research programs with greater interdisciplinary breadth and expanded geographic scope. Given the vitality of ongoing scholarship, it is an ideal moment to address the city’s monuments as gateways to understanding medieval Naples as a conceptual whole, comprising diverse artistic and cultural practices, shifting topographies, and complex urban networks.

To this end, the above-mentioned institutions, in collaboration with colleagues at Texas Tech University and Saint Louis University, joined to organize Gateways to Medieval Naples, a field seminar held in Naples in June 2022. As the title Gateways to Medieval Naples suggests, the seminar foregrounded the city’s material heritage and invited passages across times and places. Grounded in collaborative on-site study of monuments and animated by collegial exchange of ideas, the seminar convened thirty-five established and emerging scholars from Europe and North America to share the very latest research on Naples, to develop this research through on-site conversation, and to chart new methodological approaches to this complex nexus of the medieval Mediterranean world.

Gateways to Medieval Naples was organized by Janis Elliott (Texas Tech University); Cathleen A. Fleck (Saint Louis University); Tanja Michalsky, Adrian Bremenkamp, Elisabetta Scirocco, and Antonino Tranchina (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte); Stefano D’Ovidio and Vinni Lucherini (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II – Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici); and Sarah Kozlowski and Francesca Santamaria (Centro per la Storia dell’Arte e dell’Architettura delle Città Portuali “La Capraia”), with the generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Download the flyer, short-form program, and long-form program