Applied Arts in Naples: Materials and Artistic Techniques from Micro- to MacrocosmosAuthor(s): Sabina de CaviReviewed work(s):Source: West 86th, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Fall-Winter 2012), pp. 196-230Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Bard Graduate CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668061 .Accessed: 07/11/2012 09:55

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This essay offers an overview of the applied arts in Naples in the high baroque, concentrating on artistic forms that could span from minimal to maximal size and dividing the subject by media (marbles, wood, and silk and silver). It focuses on the relation between architecture and sculptural ornament and revetment, stressing the important role played by the minor arts in the construction of the Neapolitan cantiere. Revisiting available literature on the field, it also casts light on the professional forms of association and partnerships within the architectural workshops and on the artistic interactions at play in the manufacture of the surfaces of buildings.

“The roofs and façades of the churches of Naples are but ill contrived, and the monu-

ments within them, in size and grandeur, are vastly inferior to those at Rome; but in the

beauty and richness of other ornaments, scarce any country can equal them: so that the

jewels and altar-plate in many of the churches in Naples would be a work of time, there

being no less than three hundred and four in all, conventual and parochial.”1

Introduction

The baroque was the golden age of Neapolitan arts and crafts, but it remains outside the mainstream surveys of the decorative arts. Although Neapolitan art and architecture of the baroque period have enjoyed widespread appeal among English-language scholars, the decorative arts of that city and region remain relatively neglected. This state of affairs has tended to distort the overall understanding of the visual arts because so many of the major paintings, sculptures, and interiors were conceived as, or became, complex assemblages of different materials, techniques, and finishes. To isolate the pictorial, sculptural,

Applied Arts in Naples: Materials and Artistic Techniques from Micro- to MacrocosmosSabina de CaviUniversidad de Córdoba

Applied Arts in Naples 197

or architectural element from the extensive related decorative forms that were intended to be part of the ensemble is to simplify and mislead the spectator. What is more, the various craft guilds in Naples ensured both a high standard in all aspects of their work and a constant collaboration between different masters and trades in the realization of major commissions. In addition, the cultural links with Spain and the preference for certain materials and decora-tive forms allowed traditions in the decorative arts to develop in Naples and the south of Italy that were quite different from the traditions in other Italian cities. It is the aim of this article, therefore, to explain the structure and work-ing methods of the major decorative-arts trades in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and to provide an overview of the research undertaken by historians in Naples, as a starting point for further research.

In Italy, the baroque period was characterized by Spain’s political and eco-nomic influence and by the intertwining of countless cultural and commercial ties between Rome, Naples, Palermo, and Madrid. In his seminal 1984 essay, Alvar González-Palacios singled out the importance of Spanish vice-regal patronage to the flowering of the applied arts in baroque Naples (in particular painting, furniture, and luxury items).2 In the recent past, the late Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, Jonathan Brown, and a number of younger scholars, including myself, have further explored the viceroys’ role as art and architectural patrons, with a particular focus on ephemera, painting, and drawing collections—thus on impermanent or movable objects. This tendency to read Neapolitan baroque fine and decorative art as part of a cultural circuit encompassing Italy and Spain reflects the recent endeavors of a new historiography on the Habsburg monarchy of Spain and the early modern Iberian world, currently well established across the humanities.3

Unfolding from the same political and cultural premises, this article will instead focus on fixed or nonportable objects, as well as highly decorated spaces and settings, suggesting a parallel context for the production of ornament and the applied arts: the world of ecclesiastic architectural patronage, seen as a prism to study the intricacy and the interdependence of the decorative arts in baroque Naples (fig. 1).4 This theme is related to my ongoing study of the synaesthetic and synergetic interplay of the high and popular arts in southern Italian baroque architecture and its impact on society. This research is based on a detailed analysis of artistic materials and workshop practices, focusing on tradition, in its classic sense, and the sharing of artistic knowledge within the guild system of early modern southern Italy.5 Indeed, the applied arts formed a compound of multifaceted artisanal skills and techniques, which produced an artistic phenomenon of longue durée that would characterize indoor and outdoor Neapolitan spaces well into the eighteenth century. This dynamic and sophisticated interaction of different craft skills and artistic impulses is what should be borne in mind when entering any Neapolitan church interior or when evaluating the artistic layering of southern Italian “surfaces.”

The core of this article has three sections. The first outlines the state of schol-arship on Neapolitan applied arts from 1984 to the present. Following this I briefly explain the structure of production, addressing a few specific themes

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and problems that characterize the topic. Finally, I propose a reading of the qualitative results and long-term influence of the Neapolitan applied arts focus-ing on three different materials or media: marble, wood, and silk and silver. It is intended that these sections introduce each medium of artistic production in turn, thus familiarizing the reader with the specialized literature, workshop practices, and history of each material in situ. Throughout the article I aim to demonstrate how each technique, although not always devised for this task—marble inlays are exceptional in this regard—was suited to, and was actually exploited by, the artists in order to expand production from single objects to groups or collections of objects and to the crafting, layering, and encrusting of space in the broadest sense.

Since the architectural design of spaces “overgrown” by the applied arts were often of indifferent quality, and since many of the applied arts obtained the desired emotional response in the absence of Old Master paintings, this article sets out to indicate the intrinsic quality of the decorative arts and to explain the determining role they played in the making of a pervasive and persuasive baroque aesthetic, beyond painting, meaning, and iconography. As a conse-quence, the narrative tends to emphasize the inner qualities and “materiality” of artistic media, as well as the function of collaboration in artistic practice and entrepreneurial strategies. Finally, in order to reassess the value of craftsman-ship in overlooked and sometimes unrelated fields, I consider the production and techniques related to theater staging and urban scenography, specialist activities that are frequently excluded from scholarly literature on the applied arts.6 My reading of this field does not set out to cover all the applied arts. I focus only on those techniques and media that were capable of expanding from the smallest individual object to the greater urban macrocosmos of baroque Naples, in the shape of large-format artistic revetments or surfaces which tended to overcome design. The reader will thus not find extensive discussion of luxury goods produced for the market and elite collectors. Instead, I have

Fig. 1Certosa di San Martino (detail), Naples, 16th and 17th centuries. Photo © Archivio dell’Arte / Luciano Pedicini, Naples.

Applied Arts in Naples 199

chosen to focus on lesser known, local, yet equally important circuits of artistic production. Likewise, I am more concerned here with the flowering of some artistic techniques in the seventeenth century than with their later develop-ment. The flowering of the decorative arts in the second half of the eighteenth century, through the Bourbon era, is yet another topic that will not be included in my narrative, because it is already fairly well studied and covered in English- language publications.7

The primary aim of this article, therefore, is to explore the role of the applied arts as both ornament and applied sculpture in architecture. Indeed, large- format arts and crafts became a stylistic hallmark of southern Italian art, and several Neapolitan baroque artists practiced many arts at once. For instance, the decorator Giovan Domenico Vinaccia (active in Naples, 1661–95) worked as silversmith, sculptor, intagliatore, architect, and apparatore, while Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (1678–1745)—like Gianlorenzo Bernini in Rome—was sculp-tor, painter, and architect.8 By drawing attention to the artistic techniques employed at their finest in masterpieces of Gesamtkunstwerk, such as the church of the Certosa di San Martino (fig. 2) or the chapel of the Tesoro di San Gennaro (Treasury of St. Januarius) (fig. 3), this text integrates the reading of historical exhibition catalogues,9 making up for the usual absence of “things” and context and offering the reader the possibility of evaluating the stylistic impact of the “allied arts” in Neapolitan architecture.10 At the same time, under-lining the monumental, sculptural, and painterly qualities of the applied arts, this reading reveals the rationale for the shifts and exchanges of role between

Fig. 2 (left)Certosa di San Martino,

Naples, 16th and 17th centuries. Photo © Archivio dell’Arte / Luciano Pedicini,

Naples.

Fig. 3 (right)Chapel of the Tesoro di San

Gennaro (Treasury of St. Januarius), Naples, 1601–46.

Photo © Archivio dell’Arte / Luciano Pedicini, Naples.

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the high and popular arts that characterized baroque Naples to the point of blurring or even dissolving the principles of the humanistic theory of the hier-archy of the arts.11 As already suggested by Roberto Pane in his response to the 1984 exhibition Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, this was a distinct characteristic of Neapolitan (and, I may add, of southern Italian) baroque architecture.12

State of the Art

Interest and scholarship in the Neapolitan applied arts has developed over the past forty years thanks largely to the tenure of the late Raffaello Causa (1923–84) as soprintendente (supervisor to the artistic patrimony) of Naples from 1965 to his premature death in 1984.13 An expert on Caravaggio as well as Renais-sance and baroque painting, Causa was close to Roberto Longhi (1890–1970) and Ferdinando Bologna (1925–). He was on the editorial team of the art journal Paragone Arte, and his overall research helped to establish the field of scholarship on Neapolitan baroque painting. Yet he also paid close attention to wooden sculpture and to the applied arts.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Causa assembled a group of scholars and curators to research and bring to light entirely neglected fields of Neapolitan art history, among which was the applied or decorative arts. It is these scholars who still largely define the field: Alvar González-Palacios for attributions and connois-seurship on most of the main art forms; Guido Donatone, Gennaro Borrelli, and Vega de Martini for maiolica and porcelain; Gennaro Borrelli, Elio Catello, Angela Catello, Marisa Catello, and the late Corrado Catello for silver work; Vincenzo Rizzo and Renato Ruotolo for wood carving, marble inlays, and liturgical furniture; Gina Carla Ascione for coral carving; Paola Giusti for metalwork; and Rubina Cariello, Aurora Spinosa, and Margherita Siniscalco for textiles and tapestries.14 The main challenge in those early years was to cata-logue, date, and attribute a mass of existing but anonymous pieces, as well as to identify objects mentioned in documents. Those years constituted the archaeol-ogy of Neapolitan art historical scholarship, when the main goal was to match documents with existing objects. As a result, a wealth of written sources and reliable preliminary chronologies are now available to scholars, allowing the field to generate new approaches and interpretations.15

Such intense research activity led to the great monographic exhibitions of 1979–80 (on the Neapolitan settecento) and 1984–85 (on the Neapolitan seicento).16 In the former exhibition, which extended through six museum locations, the applied arts were showcased at Capodimonte together with painting and sculpture.17 The latter exhibition opened instead at Capodimonte as a single and homogeneous spectacle.18 In both cases, the section on the applied arts was curated by González-Palacios. The important role of the applied arts in Neapoli-tan baroque architecture (somehow overlooked in both exhibitions yet empha-sized by Pane in 1984) re-emerged as the main theme of two later venues, where a special focus on festive apparati (ephemeral constructions) and on the concept of urban “dressing” and ornament emphasized the urban character of the Nea-politan applied arts.19 In 2009 the last grand Neapolitan exhibition, organized

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in memory of Causa by Nicola Spinosa at the end of his own tenure as soprin-tendente, reviewed over thirty years of scholarship on the Neapolitan baroque.20 Once again, the decorative arts provided only a context to painting, yet this time the section on the decorative arts was curated by another major expert in the field, Renato Ruotolo, who wrote an excellent essay on the state of the art.21 The Neapolitan decorative arts as an artistic ensemble have thus rarely been given an autonomous space in exhibition programming. Precious silverware, jewels, wood carving, and presepe sculpture have been extensively studied yet rarely exhibited, because of the high costs of insurance and the privacy of collections, and hardly ever in the English-speaking world.22 Nevertheless, the recent re-installation of two major collections of applied arts as permanent public museums in Naples points to a new awareness of the role played by the applied arts in Neapolitan art history.23

Despite numerous studies on the Neapolitan decorative arts that have appeared in Italian journals,24 in general books on seventeenth-century Naples,25 and in collected essays dedicated to prominent local scholars,26 no organic and inter-pretive profile of the history of the applied arts in baroque Naples has yet been attempted. This state of affairs has been remarked on by scholars and recog-nized as a distinct gap in the specialist and mainstream literature. It is hoped that the present article will offer at least an introduction to the work of major scholars who are not always cited in English-language bibliographies, as well as proposing an individual overview of the subject.

Decorative as Corporative Arts

Art production is intimately connected to media and artistic practice, as the practical techniques usually evolve in order to maximize qualities and effects of specific raw materials: translucency in alabaster and pario marble; fine grain in ivory; shine in silver cladding and gold leaf; natural shapes in corals, pearls, and marbles; and color in lapis lazuli and other mineral powders.27 Virtuosity has been described as the drive that pushes an artist-craftsperson to excel and refine his or her technique to unexpected and previously unreached mastery, in order to express beauty through handmade objects.28 The values placed on materiality are most true for the applied arts and artisanship. The applied arts in baroque Naples were tightly connected to the provisioning of materials and to the production system of guilds that received a strong impulse from the architectural boom of the early seventeenth century. Until King Charles IV of Bourbon in the late 1730s established a number of royal manufactories to pro-mote the production of luxury goods for the court and the international mar-ket, apprenticeship in family workshops constituted the most common training for Neapolitan artists and artisans. The training and production system of the Neapolitan artistic guilds (arti meccaniche) functioned throughout the period of Bourbon and Napoleonic rule.29 It was only challenged in 1820 by groups of Neapolitan liberals during the riots (moti carbonari) of that year, and finally collapsed in 1825 when the artistic guilds were officially suppressed by royal decree, four years after the professional guilds (arti annonarie).30

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In the late sixteenth century, Naples attracted a large number of immigrant marble- and stone-related craftsmen from Tuscany and Lombardy, of whom some subsequently acquired Neapolitan citizenship and established their households in the city. A guild of pipernieri, stuccatori, and marmorari (stone, stucco, and marble workers) was founded in 1618. Their workshops were located along the current via Foria in a number of grottos and deposits under the hill of Capodimonte. Their corporate chapel had been in S. Pietro dei Ferrari in Largo Avellino on via Anticaglia already since 1611.31 Craftsman-ship in wood was more layered and complicated, as it pertained to both the mastri d’ascia (including both carpenters and decorators, or apparatori) as well as intagliatori (carvers). Their training was intimately tied to the mathematics and geometry applied to the practice of architecture and military engineer-ing, while sculptors’ training was essentially related to marble carving. These artisans also specialized in the making of furniture, frames, finials, cabinets (stipettari), and musical instruments (liutari), drawing from the different skills of either assembling or modeling in wood.

Silversmiths and jewelers had been active in Naples since the Middle Ages, espe-cially for the Angevin and Durazzo kings (1266–1443). However, casting and embossing in silver became a prime specialization for Neapolitan baroque sculp-tors, who trained for the most part in masters’ workshops from the late 1660s, until Charles IV of Bourbon established the first formal academy for the high arts in 1738.32 Jewelers in particular were located near the church of St. Eligio degli Orefici (their patron saint), an Angevin foundation near the medieval port and the market square (the Piazza del Carmine).33 Their shops opened onto the street of the same name as the church. Jewelers and apparatori were in charge of the ephemeral apparati (triumphal arches, altars, etc.) for the annual feast of St. John the Baptist, an important public venue for the non-noble elements of Nea-politan society, which was also held in the seggio di Porto. Their day-to-day income was often provided by appraisals, bankruptcies, inventories, and street sales.34

Silk also constituted a major sector of Neapolitan commerce through the early modern era. The arte della seta, or silk guild, was the richest of all Neapolitan guilds.35 Silk production involved different disciplines and several categories of professionals: silk providers (local as well as international), resellers, renters, tailors, apparatori, and embroiderers. The last of those, organized in a guild since the fifteenth century, played a substantial role in bridging the art of silk with the art of silver, through the rich encrusting, embroidering, and layering of baroque silk revetments used in palaces as well as churches.36

All these arts, drawing from the same patronage pool, shared a similar profes-sional structure. A common feature among them was the passage of knowledge through family lines, with affiliations usually cemented by parental or intimate relations. Style was thus a family trademark, as in fourteenth-century painting. Famous father-son relations in the Neapolitan applied arts included Jacopo and Dionisio Lazzari, Domenico and Giulio Cesare Fontana, Bartolomeo and Fran-cesco Antonio Picchiatti, Cosimo and Carlo Fanzago, Pietro and Gianlorenzo Bernini, and Lorenzo and Domenico Antonio Vaccaro.

Applied Arts in Naples 203

Given the absence of a formal academy in Naples until 1738, it is understand-able that artistic roles were blurred more easily there than in other centers, while workshop practice, polyvalence, and the sharing of technical knowledge were pervasive in artistic training. In fact, many artists were trained in art practices markedly different from their later specialization. To give just one example, Cosimo Fanzago arrived from Lombardy in 1608 in order to learn the art of apparatore and indoratore di legni (wood gilder) from his uncle Pompeo, a training that heavily influenced his later aesthetics and practices as sculptor, architect, and entrepreneur.37

Painters in particular dealt extensively with the decorative arts: Luca Giordano designed furniture pieces and Francesco Solimena drew silver busts, much as Gianlorenzo Bernini, Ciro Ferri, and Giovan Battista Foggini had done in Rome and Florence.38 In addition, many talented artists facilitated the art mar-ket by also working as intermediaries, resellers, agents, leasers, and providers of art objects as well as antiquities.39 The rental economy thrived in both palace and city furnishings because of the impermanent character of the vice-regal court, which was supposed to change every three years, and the vogue for ephemera in civic and religious festivals.40 As regards the market for antiquities, Neapolitan dealers as well as engineers and historians had been notifying and selling Roman originals, casts, and molds for some considerable time before 1649, when Velázquez arrived in the city as an artistic agent for Philip IV.41

Some craftsmen—in particular stone carvers and stonemasons—were invited to Naples and absorbed into workshops organized by religious orders pro-moting the construction of a church. In these circumstances they often lived and worked under the direction of a priest or religious father who served as architect and engineer in charge. Between 1618 and 1625, in order to provide their churches with elaborate inlaid marble ciboria (architectural canopies above the main altar) in a speedy and effective manner, the Theatines created a full atelier in their monastery of the SS. Apostles, buying marbles, importing craftsmen, and selling any product in excess of their requirements.42 In 1623 Cosimo Fanzago established his workshop at the Certosa di San Martino. When in 1656 both architect and order came to a nasty lawsuit, Fanzago was replaced by the priest Bonaventura Presti, who already worked for the order as engineer and surveyor (tavolaro).43 We also know that a baroque workshop was installed in S. Maria della Sanità: its high altar and pulpit were decorated by impressive crystal sculptures carved from a single crystal block by a monk who lived and worked in the nearby convent.44 However, the general practice among crafts-men consisted of setting up business societies cemented by familial relations. This was the case with Fanzago, who entered architect Angelo Landi’s workshop and married his daughter Felicia in 1612. Later, Fanzago planned for his own daughter Vittoria to wed sculptor Giuliano Finelli in order to ensure the latter’s collaboration with his firm.45

In most cases these societies allowed the entrepreneur (or master) to take up many commissions at once, to divide or subcontract work, and to hire collabo-rators only when needed, thus reducing structural costs.46 These professional

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agreements often endured beyond the death of the original patrons and found-ers. This system applied to royal as well as local commissions, both lay and religious. Constituted in front of a public notary, these societies are well docu-mented in notarial archives and offer insights into both the artist-craftsmen and their works.47 But above all they prove that most of these artifacts (from silver monstrances and reliquaries to inlaid marble chapels) were the result of a collaborative effort by several categories of craftsmen, under the direction and the design of an engineer/architect or a painter.

This factor brings up the problem of authorship in the Neapolitan baroque. Unlike Rome or Florence, Naples rarely witnessed coherence in programming and realization of single projects. Indeed, only a few Neapolitan churches can claim the unity of Roman baroque planning, and often they date to the eighteenth century.48 Rather, most architectural and decorative enterprises were planned and realized by several architects over a painfully long period of time and constantly refined, modified, and restored after natural damage occurred (earthquakes, eruptions, pestilences).49 For instance, at least three architects worked on the beautiful architectural ornament in the Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore (the guglia) (fig. 4): Cosimo Fanzago (in 1656–58), Francesco Antonio Picchiatti (in 1658–70), and Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (in 1737), all adding their own contributions to the original project and thus radically trans-forming this urban sculpture. Similarly, craftsmanship was rarely ensured by a single master. While Borromini in Rome designed and followed with great care the detailing of his architectural moldings, most work in Naples was executed by craftsmen. As archival research proves, most attributions to workshop lead-ers in southern Italy should be downscaled to groups including sons, followers, and collaborators. (The cases of Fanzago in Naples and Giacomo Serpotta in Palermo are particularly revealing.) Although typical of architectural practice throughout Italy, this problem is omnipresent in the Neapolitan decorative

Fig. 4Guglia of the Piazza S. Domenico Maggiore, Naples, by Cosimo Fanzago (in 1656–58), Francesco Antonio Picchiatti (in 1658–70), and Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (in 1737). Photo © Fulvio Lenzo.

Applied Arts in Naples 205

arts. In this sort of corporate production, silver busts as well as marble ciboria and encrustations were put together by argentieri and marmorari on the general design and following the clay or stucco models of painters and sculptors.50 Major apparati were erected in streets and churches by dozens of mastri d’ascia and other craftsmen based on drawings provided by either architect-decorators or architect-painters, who rarely followed the material assembling of minute pieces to the end.

Very little is left of the drawing process of the Neapolitan baroque in the fields of the decorative arts, especially when applied to architecture. Not much is known either about transfer practices from drawing to finished work of art. Nevertheless, documents record that everybody drew: in pen and brown or gray wash, in color, and even on life scale.51 Both Domenico Fontana and Cosimo Fanzago reportedly had the habit of drawing the design of their marble inlays on real walls to be exported to Amalfi and Salamanca, thus directly inscrib-ing ornamental design onto architecture.52 In 1616 a volume of architectural drawings by Fontana was sent to Spain, documenting all his projects to King Philip III and the Council of Italy.53 The book is now lost, probably burned in the fire of the royal palace of Madrid in 1734. Similarly, the corpus of Fan-zago’s drawings for San Martino was apparently already lost by 1683 and is now documented by only a few copies in brown ink by G. B. Manni and a few color drawings that recently emerged in the literature.54 To these colored drawings I would like to add a new one preserved in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, representing the frontal elevation of a funerary monument of a captain in Roman armor with two allegorical figures, possibly dating to 1590–1630 (fig. 5).55 The precise and fine coloring of the different marbles to be used in the monument is reminiscent of the detailed rendering of materials in a draw-ing representing the frontal elevation for a chapel, recently published with an attribution to Fanzago.

Although documents constantly refer to the use of drawings in almost every applied art, beyond these rare discoveries Neapolitan and southern Italian architectural and ornamental drawings remain scarce. Finally, even when consistent, drawing corpora such as those of Ferdinando Sanfelice (1675–1748) and Giacomo Amato (1642–1732) have rarely been at the center of specialized scholarship on southern Italian baroque architecture.56

Revetment in Marbles and Precious Stones

Scholarship on Neapolitan marble inlays has essentially shaped the field of studies on architectural ornament in the baroque South from the 1980s to today.57 The connection between marble inlays and architecture is character-istic of many Italian baroque capitals. In Naples local craftsmen involved with construction materials (stone and marble) were gathered under the names of pipernieri, stuccatori, and marmorari, “the three basic specializations of architec-ture, both religious and secular, in seventeenth-century Naples.”58 As Franco Strazzullo has explained, the creation of their guild in 1618 was tightly related to the boom of Counter-Reformation architecture starting in the late 1580s and

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1590s, and in particular to new or reformed orders.59 Restoring and building anew according to the precepts of the Council of Trent and the Instructiones fabricae et suppellectilis ecclesiasticae (1577) of S. Carlo Borromeo, architects thought about canons of magnificence, virtue, and composition, as well as function.60

The first wave of these architects came from Florence, Rome, and Lombardy, like their fellow stonemasons and marble carvers. It is important to note the influence of the Florentine Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Precious and Hard Stone Workshop) and of its naturalistic marble inlays for tables and chapel revetments, especially because the Bourbon manufactory was later opened by Florentine masters once the Opificio closed in 1737 with the death of the last Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone de’ Medici (1671–1737). Another element contributing to the arrival of Tuscans in town was the unfavorable reor-ganization of Carrara’s marble market, which led many craftsmen to migrate south at the end of the sixteenth century.61 Many stayed on in Naples, acquiring citizenship, raising children as workshop assistants, and thus creating a first generation of Neapolitan marmorari active at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Research on inlaid Neapolitan marble essentially corresponds to research on Neapolitan architecture and its logistics. Those who shaped noted church inte-riors included Dionisio Nencioni di Bartolomeo (1559–1638), Giovan Francesco

Fig. 5 (left)Funerary monument of a captain in Roman armor with two allegorical figures, ca. 1590–1630. Museum purchase, 1901-39-2448. Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution /Art Resource, NY. Photo: Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution.

Fig. 6 (right)Carved and inlaid rosoni by Cosimo Fanzago, in the San Gennaro chapel, Certosa di San Martino, Naples. Courtesy of the Ministry of Heritage and Cultural Activities, special superintendent for the museum area of the city of Naples. Photo © John Nicholas Napoli.

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Grimaldi (1606–80), Giovanni Antonio Dosio (1533–ca. 1609), Domenico Fontana (1543–1607), Cosimo Fanzago (1593–1678), Dionisio Lazzari (1617–90), Francesco Antonio Picchiatti (1619–94), Giovan Domenico Vinaccia, and Arcangelo Guglielmelli. For the eighteenth century, the main names were Nicola Tagliacozzi Canale, Giambattista Nauclerio (1705–37), Domenico Anto-nio Vaccaro, and Ferdinando Sanfelice.

In Naples many architects trained as sculptors with expertise in marble, and some of those were able to lead excavations and survey antiquities as practicing archaeologists.62 Ancient and modern marbles were the central source of archi-tectural ornamentation, thus the ability to find and transform marbles into ornament was the prerequisite of the perfect supervisor and engineer in charge of architectural workshops. The main character of Neapolitan marble inlay work consists in the commixing of ornament and sculpture, and in the promi-nent role played by volumetric sculptural decoration in two-dimensional orna-mental surfaces. The combination of tarsie, intaglio, and relief was common in Naples and a trademark of Fanzago, who combined colorful shine and robust relief throughout his career, as evident in the juxtaposition of carved and inlaid rosoni (floral décor) at San Martino (fig. 6). The presence of sculpture and the thickness of projection in Neapolitan liturgical furniture increased through the eighteenth century, a process evident in the evolution of Neapolitan altar design from the baroque through the rococo style.63

Thus, while in Rome and Florence polished wall surfaces essentially remained as such merely to frame with color the powerful moments of baroque sculptural narrative in travertine, bronze, or gold (like the crossing of St. Peter and the Cathedra Petri, or the sculpted altarpieces of Sant’Agnese in Agone), from the 1620s Neapolitan inlaid revetments abandoned their two-dimensional quality to metamorphose into intricate showpieces of colored, layered, and interwoven flat-tened sculpture. Another major feature of Neapolitan inlaid marbles can be seen in the evolution of the floral design from a composition of highly stylized geo-metrical patterns (mostly influenced by Florentine motifs) into organic waves of plantlike, phytomorphic shapes. Both styles equally thrived on symmetry (in the carving and assembling of pieces), for ease and speed of workshop production.

Although the naturalness and lushness of many Neapolitan inlaid altar fronts has been explained as a direct transposition of pictorial models (in particular of Neapolitan and Flemish still life), in reality this effect was due to the combina-tion of naturalistic coloring with effective modeling.64 For this reason, contracts always recommended that marble joints should be perfectly sealed and invisible and that the most evident sculptural elements (like fruit baskets, garlands, finials, cherubs, and angels) should be personally executed by the workshop master.65 Illusionism and quality in carving and in color selection depended on the training and material experience of craftsmen, rather than the detailing of preparatory drawings.66 Concerning the pictorial quality of these inlays, I would like to propose here that the Neapolitan technique of painting the rear of fine polished slabs of transparent rock crystal developed to mimic the veining and coloring of precious marbles that were not available on-site.67

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The use of marble inlays in Neapolitan churches was essentially continuous from Angevin times through the seventeenth century, although limited in the number of available colors and in the zones reserved for revetment.68 While most late Angevin monumental sculpture was painted and gilded, during the Renaissance white marble traditionally dominated Neapolitan church cross-ings and interiors through the fine carving of liturgical furnishings such as seats (sediali), altar fronts, grades, balustrades, pilasters, and niches, as can be appreciated from the side chapels of the church of Monteoliveto (now S. Anna dei Lombardi), the sepulchral furnishings of S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli, the cathedral’s crypt (the “Succorpo”), and the main altarpiece of S. Lorenzo.69 Despite recent debate on the role played by polychrome wooden sculpture and retablo design, I think that a specific taste for purely white decoration informed Neapolitan church interiors throughout the Renaissance, surviving through the baroque era in the Sansevero chapel, the Caracciolo del Sole chapel at San Giovanni a Carbonara, and the Filomarino chapel at Santi Apostoli, a mono-chrome masterpiece shipped from Rome by Francesco Borromini.

What characterized Neapolitan inlays in the baroque era was the multiplication of color and coloring effects (due to the refinement of marble supply) and the spread of inlaid revetments from simple objects to wall surfaces, chapels, and full church interiors. This sort of decoration, begun in the 1620s, allowed arti-sans to overcome the intrinsic character of marble-inlay technique (conceived to create two-dimensional surfaces like altar fronts) and go three-dimensional. As baroque portraiture became increasingly disconnected from its architectural frame, the ornamental patterning and layering of the walls also loosened up into a more naturalistic and vibrant decoration. One good example is offered

Fig. 7Marble inlays by Cosimo Fanzago (dis.) and Salomone Rapi (exc.), 1652–54, in the Cacace chapel in San Lorenzo Maggiore, Naples, 1653–55. Photo © Luciano Romano, Naples.

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by the Cacace chapel in San Lorenzo Maggiore (fig. 7). From the 1630s the impression that overgrown colored inlays were filling in every open corner with phytomorphic decoration was widespread in Naples. A comparison between the marble of the Firrao chapel in S. Paolo and that of the Cacace chapel in San Lorenzo illustrates the difference between earlier and later decorative modes.70

This “Neapolitan” style, especially in vogue in the 1630s and 1640s, was strongly informed by the models, the decorative solutions, and the assembling tech-niques of Fanzago. In fact, in comparison to Roman or Florentine baroque marble inlays, this phytomorphic and organic style was decorative and not fully planned out; it largely depended on the supply and the skillfulness of the work-shop rather than on finished presentation drawings. Recent scholarship has shown that Fanzago seldom drew, and almost never drew in great detail. The shuffling, combining, and remounting of series of decorative pieces produced in excess by his workshop allowed him to take many commissions at once, be economically successful, and make his style homogeneous and highly recogniz-able, even though it was essentially routine in the making.

Fanzago’s decorative style and preindustrial system of provisioning endured through the rococo period both in Naples and across southern Italy, thanks to the flowering of a successful export market to Campania, Apulia, Abruzzi, and Sicily.71 Vice-regal patronage even allowed Neapolitan marbles to cross the Mediterranean and reach the dry plains of Castile, an important factor to take into account when we consider the long-term impact of the Neapolitan applied arts in the Iberian world.72

Revetment in Wood

The history of the applied arts with respect to the processing of wood is equally related to sculpture and architecture.73 Modern scholarship in this field started with the great exhibition on Neapolitan wooden sculpture organized by Ferdinando Bologna and Raffaello Causa in 1950.74 This substantial begin-ning was later developed by Gennaro and Giangiotto Borrelli, Renato Ruotolo, and a number of younger scholars, with an increasing emphasis on sculpture.75 Recent exhibitions and conferences have successfully proved the existence and importance of a lively market for Neapolitan wooden sculpture in the provinces (Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, and Sardinia), through the Renaissance and baroque period.76 The current vogue is to focus on retablistica, on material and stylistic analysis of wooden estofado sculpture, and on transfers of artists and workshops between Italy and southern Spain (in particular Murcia and Andalusia).

A live, soft, and warm construction material, wood was used in Naples in miniature as well as urban scale through the baroque era. In fact, the same intagliatori who carved small statuettes for the flourishing market of Neapoli-tan nativity scenes also devised large pieces of wood carving to be mounted as applied sculpture in secular and religious architecture: catafalques, appa-rati, altar panels, libraries, sacristies, domes, and so on.77 Moreover, in the

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seventeenth century the furnishing of palaces with expensive or gilded woods, a luxury once reserved for the aristocracy, became a common practice for rich merchants, collectors, city and royal officers, and notaries—that is, across the Neapolitan bourgeoisie. From home interiors these elaborate wood furnish-ings spread through the city, in the shape of carriages, gondolas, galleons, and triumphal chariots during carnival festivals. In these movable or semiperma-nent structures, wood was preferred because it was recyclable, lighter, cheaper, and easier to work with, compared to metals and stone. Quite often wood was combined with other perishable materials, such as stucco, papier-mâché, wax, silk, and other textiles. These complex art objects were produced by a highly organized professional collaboration among different arts, and different ranks of artisans within the same art.

Craftsmanship in wood was divided between intagliatori and mastri d’ascia, who formed a single guild; as was true in many cities, their patron saint was St. Joseph.78 Their collaborations were generally described in detailed contracts. Mastri d’ascia were at once carpenters and skillful engineers experienced in mas-sive wood construction. They were able to read architectural drawings, win pub-lic tenders, and direct large work teams by subcontracting to various specialists, including wood carvers.79 The intagliatori were wood carvers, essentially trained in wooden sculpture, who applied their mastery to furniture and liturgical furnishings.

Scholars have remarked on the stylistic continuity between marble and wood carving in the art of Neapolitan intaglio. The best evidence for this can be seen in the carvers’ shared habit and skill in the preparation of models in raw clay as well as in the production of drawings at different stages of production.80 Moreover, as in Rome, intagliatori were often required to “try out” their applied sculptures and architectural furnishings on-site, and in full scale, in order to test the final visual effect and make adjustments before mounting the final piece in situ. A document from 1736 describing the preparatory modeling process for a nun’s screen in the church of San Gaudioso, carved by Francesco Serta after drawings by sculptor Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, demonstrates the manner in which artworks were verified in their full decorative context before final installation: “Francesco, as soon as he has roughed out the screen, will set it in place to see if anything needs to be added or removed in the carving or relief.”81

However, intagliatori never belonged to the sculptors’ guild; rather, they part-nered with mastri d’ascia, carpenters, and cabinetmakers through the early mod-ern era. They were located in the vicolo dell’Annunziata, near Forcella, while the mastri d’ascia stayed along via Anticaglia, where they stored their tools and construction materials. In addition, intagliatori were further divided into maestri dell’arte bianca (who specialized in carving and preparing furniture pieces with stucco and white chalk for final gilding) and maestri dell’arte nera (who worked in harder and finer wood, such as pear, walnut, rosewood, and ebony). The former worked in collaboration with indoratori (gilders) and battitori d’oro, who were in charge of preparing books of extra fine sheets of silver or gold for the gilders.82 The maestri dell’arte nera instead continued the Renaissance tradition

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of carving choir stalls and paneling ceilings, sacristies, and libraries, thus essen-tially acting as cabinetmakers.

The Neapolitan baroque provides magnificent examples of these wood revet-ments, often based on the drawings of architect-decorators, like the library of the Gerolamini; the sacristy of San Domenico Maggiore, based on drawings by Francesco Antonio Picchiatti; the sacristy of Santa Teresa a Chiaia by Giuseppe Lubrano; and the sacristy of the Treasury of St. Januarius, also by Lubrano, from Dionisio Lazzari’s drawings. Although based on preparatory drawings or sketches, design was frequently altered during the assembling process.

There was also a rich production of Neapolitan furniture, again the work of multiple craftsmen.83 Objects marketed by mobilieri (furniture sellers) were made by many different hands: carpenters provided the structural frames, scrittoriari applied inlays in fine woods, and others worked on the ornamenta-tion (such as painters who decorated the glass and founders who applied brass accents). The guild of mobilieri, established in 1621, consisted of artisans who also acted as merchants and entrepreneurs.84 In their shops they gathered and sold antique as well as new furniture, receiving preparatory drawings from famous decorators, most of which are now lost.85 The mobilieri promoted customized furniture as well as pieces for serial production, hiring artisans exclusively or collaborating with foreign masters living in Naples, especially the German and Flemish.

These shops were for the most part located around Piazza Carità and at the crossing of via Toledo and via S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli. They displayed many sorts of baroque furniture mentioned in inventories, including sideboards, desks, chests, and formal beds (boffette, scrittoi, stipi, monetieri, trabacche). The most impressive essays in wood carving appeared in the design of carriages and formal beds, two fields influenced by the late Roman baroque style because of the presence in Naples of brothers Philipp and Christopher Schor in the 1680s and 1690s.86 Carriages, in particular, were made by two categories of artisans: ferracocchi and guarnamentari. The former, located in Piazza del Gesù in the storage spaces of the church of Santa Chiara, provided the vehicle’s engineer-ing. The latter performed as apparatori in luxurious formats by coordinating all classes of craftsmen necessary to assemble a carriage (carvers, painters, silver-smiths, brass and silk workers, etc.). In the baroque era patrons commissioned their carriages either from guarnamentari or from their favorite architects, and throughout the eighteenth century many famous painters launched new vogues and lively colors in carriage decoration.87

The design of formal beds also called into play many categories of craftsmen, involving famous intagliatori such as the Schisano and Rinaldo families and high-quality sculptors like Nicola Fumo. This craft also involved extensive deal-ing with silks, embroideries, and textile revetments. As a consequence, intaglio pieces for beds and curtains often reveal analogies with textile design,88 or even imitate in wood certain decorative elements usually formed in silk and leather. The pulpit of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli in Naples and the wooden canopy towering over the sacristy revetment of Santa Maria di Pugliano (in Ercolano)

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by Dionisio Lazzari offer excellent examples of this production.89 It is in fact in liturgical furnishings that Neapolitan (as well as Sicilian) wooden intaglio really thrived in the baroque era, expanding as an intricate golden lace on vast surfaces, as much as marble inlays and stuccos. Two outstanding pieces, discovered and discussed by Giangiotto Borrelli and attributed to Giacomo Colombo, are the organ case in the Santissima Annunziata in Aversa and the Episcopal throne of the cathedral of Muro Lucano (near Potenza) in Basilicata. Thus, once again the provinces of Naples can be considered artistic repositories of masterpieces brought from the capital and still preserved on-site.90 Typical products of this art were organ cases, wooden stalls, and wooden parapets (gel-osie) erected in churches and open-air theaters around the streets and squares of Naples, in order to shelter and hide noblewomen and nuns from public view. The development of “west upper choirs” in seicento Neapolitan churches, required by Council of Trent rules on conventual conduct, created new sur-faces for baroque ornament.91 From 1665 to 1672 marble carver and decorator Dionisio Lazzari provided drawings for the new choirs and organs of Santis-sima Annunziata, carved in wood by Nicolò Schisano, Giovanni Schibuono, and Domenico Vivaldo.92 In 1688 the organ maker Cesare Catarinozzi and the inta-gliatore Giacomo Colombo collaborated on an organ, departing from a drawing by painter Giacomo del Po.93 Some of the most beautiful examples of this sort of deep wooden carving, evolving from the intense baroque effects of chiaroscuro to the lighter refinements of rococo arabesque, can be found in the woodwork in the churches of Santa Maria Donnalbina (1699), San Gregorio Armeno, S. Maria Donnaregina Nuova, and Suor Orsola Benincasa (1732).94

The Tridentine mandates on relics and the Spanish influence in liturgy and cult inspired the parallel development of reliquary walls and processional sculpture in southern Italy. One perfect example of the first typology is the huge lipsanoteca (reliquary casket) occupying the walls of the chapel of St. Anne in the Gesù Nuovo (fig. 8). This masterpiece of gilded carpentry was realized in 1677 by Gerolamo Manfredi, Carlo Manfredi, and Tommaso Velasco under the supervision of Giovan Domenico Vinaccia, in order to accommodate a group of earlier reliquary busts carved from 1617 onward by various artists.95 It consists of two wall pieces composed of five rows of superimposed niches sheltering reli-quary busts: a shining Neapolitan attempt at retablo -design (the art of framing main altars in Iberia and Iberoamerica).

It is important to stress that such a large wooden wall piece was not an exception in Neapolitan baroque church decoration. The habit of installing preliminary full-scale wooden models of main altars in churches and oratories was wide-spread in southern Italy. However, while in Iberia retablos provided structural and essentially permanent decorations to the main crossing and side chapels, contrasting the bareness of the walls with gold and paint, in Naples these fur-nishings were mostly used to try out new altar models before building them in marble. These liturgical structures functioned in a number of ways: as adjust-ments to pre-existing buildings, structural solutions for damage due to earth-quakes (Naples experienced eight earthquakes between 1680 and 1695), stylistic trials, light ornaments applied to permanent structures in stucco or marble, and even cheaper trial pieces crafted to seek patrons’ approval. Sometimes a

Fig. 8Gilded-wood lipsanoteca by Gerolamo Manfredi, Carlo Manfredi, and Tommaso Velasco, under the supervision of Giovan Domenico Vinaccia, 1677. Photo © Archivio dell’Arte / Luciano Pedicini, Naples.

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celebratory apparato built for a specific festival was not removed and remained on-site. Therefore, although conceived as merely temporary, these structures often ended up occupying central zones of a church for a longer period than originally scheduled, impacting the general impression of the interior. Examples include a baroque structure built in Sant’Agostino alla Zecca in 1691; the main wooden altar of the church of Santi Filippo e Giacomo (including illusory mirrors), now moved to a side chapel; and the new structure built in the Gesù in 1673 by carpenters Antonio Caputo and Tommaso Velasco to cover the apse, replacing an older one.96

The same mastri d’ascia who erected these wall structures could also work for civic authorities as apparatori under the supervision of architects. Their con-structions in perishable materials, installed in churches, as in the streets and squares of Naples, included catafalques, theaters, altars, stairs, processional car-riages, and cockaignes, all crafted around a wooden skeleton. Interacting with painters, sculptors, silk and wax providers, and other artisans, these special-ists in baroque festivals orchestrated and produced the luminous spectacle of indoor and outdoor baroque ephemeral architecture.

The presence of apparati in Naples is documented at least from the early Renaissance. Although we know about the erection of funerary catafalques in S. Domenico Maggiore during the Aragonese dynasty, further research is needed on their preferred typologies and on the relation between ephemeral and permanent architecture.97 One important apparato was the so-called Catafalco del Pendino, consisting of a processional monstrance produced and paraded by the third state of Naples (Il Popolo) from 1507, for the annual feast of the Corpus Domini. This apparato later became an annual appointment for the mastri d’ascia and apparatori.98 Another professional competition was offered by the September feast of the Lights of San Gennaro (lasting three nights). This apparato consisted of an open-air music theater provided with boxes, stage, and enclosed galleries, mounted on the rear of the cathedral (in the square surrounding the guglia of San Gennaro and in a section of via dei Tribunali). Wrapping the city in red and yellow silks and creating an open stage in wood, silk, candles, and painted canvases, the apparatori rivaled court theaters in offering a most complex application of their proficiency in the art of theater staging and scenography. Further occasions for this type of work were drawn from the liturgical calendar (Corpus Domini, Immaculate Conception, Four Altars, St. John the Baptist), as well as from official celebrations of the rul-ing dynasty (births, deaths, weddings, battles, and anniversaries of all kinds). Ephemeral architecture was thus closely linked to the development of theater staging, scenography, and urban planning in baroque Naples, as it was in baroque Rome and Palermo.

Most of these massive wooden surfaces were colored and gilded through applied canvases, washes, papers, silks, and papier-mâché. Scholars tend to overlook the role and relevance of color because baroque ephemeral architecture is essen-tially documented by black-and-white engravings or monochrome drawings in gray or brown wash. Yet the role of color, as well as silver and gold, again reveals the close link between the Neapolitan decorative arts in wood and the Spanish

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arts of wooden engineering and retablo design, which produced many altar-pieces and reliquary cabinets in baroque Iberia and Latin America.

Revetment in Silver and Silk

Scholarship in this field in Naples has been shaped over a long period by dif-ferent branches of the Catello family, and in particular by Elio and Corrado Catello, who catalogued the chapel of the Treasury of St. Januarius in the 1970s.99 An important family of collectors, the Catellos have also been dealers, restorers, and connoisseurs of the Neapolitan applied arts. As a result of their work, silversmithing and jewelry became frequent additions to exhibitions on the Neapolitan baroque, from the 1984 exhibition to the recent display of the Treasury of St. Januarius in 2011.100

Silver work flourished in southern Italy over the second half of the seventeenth century because of the flow of Spanish American silver, vice-regal patronage, and the increasing demand for expensive goods coming from the Neapolitan and Spanish aristocracies.101 Cladding wooden and copper surfaces in silver (or gold) was a common practice in religious as well as lay patronage. In addition, the stacking and the exhibition of silver cast vessels and luxury items renewed the shine of Renaissance triumphs and festivals in private palaces and public aristocratic performances. Silver was thus a prime and common luxury, and its consumption was widespread in private and ecclesiastic collections. However, it could be claimed that the art of Neapolitan silver expressed first and foremost the emotional language of hope and devotion, at all social levels.

In this section I will outline the ways in which silver was used in the Neapolitan applied arts, and especially the connections of silver with architecture, sculp-ture, and textiles, thus underscoring its role as a revetment material. I will cover a range of variable techniques and specialists who used poured silver and embossed silver leaf to create different kinds of objects and spaces, from minimal to maximal size. Our evidence comes from archival documents and major church collections (such as the chapel of the Treasury of St. Januarius; see fig. 3), which managed to survive the Bourbon (1798) and French (1815) war requisitions that destroyed other great southern Italian treasuries, such as those of the Certosa di Montecassino, the Certosa di Padula and the Abbey of Cava de’ Tirreni.

One of the oldest corporations in Naples, the guild of silver- and goldsmiths, was founded under Charles II of Anjou (1254–1309), though its first regula-tions date from 1380.102 There was a district of the goldsmiths, where they estab-lished their first chapel in the church of Sant’Agata al Castello d’Oro in 1582.103 The corporation was powerful through the Renaissance and the seventeenth century and founded two shelters for female orphans in 1620 and in 1644. The great plague of 1656 hit the city very hard, affecting their congregation and the applied arts industry. However, despite the huge loss of so many great masters, the second half of the seventeenth century witnessed a revival and improve-ment of silver techniques, models, and typologies (especially encouraged by

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Viceroys Carpio and Santisteban), which led to a new professional figure—the silversmith-sculptor—and to the great eighteenth-century development of silver cast sculpture. This technique was employed to create major freestanding mas-terpieces, such as the Archangel St. Michael by Lorenzo Vaccaro, cast by Giovan Domenico Vinaccia in 1691, as well as glittering surfaces and spaces, in combi-nation with other forms of silver and gold layering.104 Indeed, the silver guild included several different specializations: founders (fonditori), silversmiths, and engravers (cesellatori), who specialized in chiseling silver surfaces (creating embossed designs). The master silversmith, generally in charge of the commis-sion, guaranteed the product’s weight and intrinsic value with his family stamp and the civic cameral die. Some workshops remained famous for generations, such as those of the Guariniello, De Blasio, Lofrano, Giudice, Pérez, Starace, Palmentieri, del Giudice, and Treglia families.

As in the arts of marble and wood, silver work was also based on workshop col-laboration, hierarchy, and labor division. Elio Catello has emphasized the paint-erly quality of modeling in Neapolitan cast silver, pointing to the role played by painters in the elaboration of these sculptures.105 Yet occasionally, some silversmiths prepared their own drawings and models. For instance, Giacomo Colombo (1663–1731) drew his own compositions, as he was at once silversmith, sculptor, and painter.106 Other silversmiths assembled drawing collections to create model books for silversmiths. Orazio Scoppa (active 1620–47) printed his volume in 1642–43, while the model book by Giacomo (or Jacopo) Lauren-tiani (Opere per argentieri et altri [Rome, 1633]) remained unpublished.107 A beau-tiful and very rare example of a presentation drawing for liturgical objects, in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, might have belonged to such a collection (fig. 9).108 This Project for a Reliquary is notable in particu-lar for the presence of a light-blue wash, intended to re-create the effects of silver shine, and for the detailing of flower decoration. Currently attributed to Francesco Solimena because of a later inscription at the center of the reliquary box, it should rather be associated with a Sicilian silversmith active in the 1580s–1640s and dated to 1630–40.

For the most part silversmiths specialized in casting, embossing, and assem-bling silver parts they had made on the basis of sketches provided by painters, such as Luca Giordano, Francesco Solimena, Giacomo del Po, and Paolo De Matteis. Very often, clay or red wax models, generally lost in the firing process, were provided by sculptors, among whom the most famous and specialized were Lorenzo Vaccaro (1665–1706) and Giuseppe Sanmartino (1720–93). A naturalistic drawing, this time rightfully attributed to Francesco Solimena for a silver bust of St. Anthony Abbot (once in the collection of Ralph Holland, in Richmond, Virginia), reveals that much of the looseness and freedom in Nea-politan silver casting reflected the swiftness of baroque Neapolitan fresco and oil techniques (fig. 10).109

Moreover, official commissions were allotted through public competitions, where drawings were compared, judged, and often sent out to experts in Rome for evaluation, as happened with the fourteen drawings for the altar front (paliotto) of the San Gennaro chapel in 1683. In fact, the connection with

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Rome, the Accademia di San Luca (the art academy in Rome), and especially with the art of Gianlorenzo Bernini persisted in Naples throughout the seven-teenth century.110

Beyond sculpture, silver casts were also used in complex multimedia composi-tions made of cast and embossed silver, corals, mother-of-pearl, and precious and semi-precious stones, generally reaching very large formats. These prod-ucts were characteristic of Naples as well as Sicily and were employed in both lay and religious furnishings. Among many luxury objects described in the docu-ments, we can cite three key examples: the Four Continents by Lorenzo Vaccaro (based on preparatory drawings by Solimena), made for King Charles II circa 1691, now in the treasury of the Cathedral of Toledo; the huge set of flower baskets for the altar of the chapel of St. Januarius in Naples by Vinaccia; and the same artist’s great salt cellar, based on a drawing by Luca Giordano now lost but described by the art historian Bernardo De Dominici.111

Silver and other luxury vessels had been coveted since the time of Viceroy Toledo (Pedro Álvarez de Toledo y Zúñiga, 1484–1553), whose large collec-tion of silver is recorded in inventories. In the second half of the seventeenth century, Dionisio Lazzari and Giacomo Amato designed new models of these sorts of vessels as well as cabinets in which to display them.112 Moreover,

Fig. 9 (right)Project for a Reliquary,

by a Sicilian silversmith, ca. 1630–40. Museum

purchase through gift of various donors and Eleanor

G. Hewitt Fund, 1938-88-2571. Cooper-Hewitt,

National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution / Art Resource, NY. Photo:

Matt Flynn © Smithsonian Institution.

Fig. 10 (above)Preparatory drawing for a silver bust of St. Anthony Abbot, by Francesco Solimena, ca. 1700, once in the collection of Ralph Holland, Richmond, VA. From the exhibition catalogue Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1984), vol. 2, p. 131, fig. 3.80.a.

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Neapolitan civic authorities of the day typically offered expensive table pieces (trionfi) to the new viceroys on their arrival to Naples, a habit that continued under Charles of Bourbon.113 However, perhaps the most appealing aspect of Neapolitan silver work was the way silver was intended as a powerful apotropaic or talismanic revetment material symbolizing worship and devotion in liturgi-cal furnishings. For this reason, and because of its intrinsic value, silver soon spread on altars, chapels, and even domes as a shiny, dense, thick, and mal-leable new sacred skin.

The softness of silver, as well as its ability to shelter and protect relics (like those of St. Januarius) and spaces while still telling a story, is best expressed in the so-called panni d’altare in argento, silver altar fronts composed of modeled and embossed bas-reliefs sometimes combined with silver cast ornaments, which could reach considerable sizes. Often reserved for cathedrals or important cult sites and considered an alternative to silk and marble altar fronts, these silver altar revetments were enormously successful in Naples (the Franciscan church of Santa Maria La Nova was full of them), and quickly spread through southern Italy.114 Their use is testified in Sicily and Sardinia, although silver embossing and the application of silver ornamental details on tinged velvet was more common than silver cast.115 They were also popular in Spain, where silversmithing had always been associated with cult and relic performances. The most famous example of these silver revetments is the paliotto of the main altar of the San Gennaro chapel in the cathedral of Naples, started in 1683 by Domenico Marinelli from drawings by Dionisio Lazzari (fig. 11). Interrupted in 1684, the work was finished by Giovan Domenico Vinaccia in 1692/95. In this masterpiece every compositional step taken by the silversmiths was guided by painters. In 1683 Dionisio Lazzari designed a general composition and narra-tive on the basis of drawings selected by Roman and Neapolitan experts, and in 1692 Vinaccia was asked to resume and recycle Marinelli’s wax models under the supervision of Luca Giordano. Since at that time the painter was in Spain, Vinaccia’s final composition for the central scene representing the transport of St. Januarius’s relics from Pozzuoli to Naples (which occurred on Janu-ary 13, 1497) was assessed by the painters Pietro del Po, Andrea Malinconico,

Fig. 11Panno d’altare in the San Gennaro chapel in the cathedral of Naples, started by Domenico Marinelli from drawings by Dionisio Lazzari in 1683–84, finished by Giovan Domenico Vinaccia in 1692/95. Photo © Luciano Romano, Naples.

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Domenico Viola, and Giacomo Francesco Cipper. On their suggestions, Vinac-cia made and cast the final models in clay.116

Giovan Domenico Vinaccia and Domenico Marinelli, as well as the Treglia, D’Aula, De Blasio, Guarinello, and D’Urso families, all specialized in this type of production, which required assembling modeled and embossed bas-reliefs with pedestals, statuettes, or columns cast in silver. Documented and surviving exam-ples in Naples and the provinces span the period from 1657 to 1740.117 These Neapolitan luxury goods were sold also in Spain, and their presence and influ-ence in Ibero-America deserves further research. Sometimes devotional silver was even used to re-enshrine and re-cover important cult sites and beloved cult images, as in the crypt sheltering the relics of St. Nicholas of Bari (1684) and the chapel of the Madonna delle Grazie in S. Maria La Nova in Naples (1676–89).118

In Bari, silver was employed to revet the freestanding and four-sided altar of the cathedral of S. Nicola, as well as the crypt’s vaults. This overall silver incrustation (evoking the glow of the medieval mosaics in the Roman Sancta Sanctorum or in the relic’s chapel of S. Maria in Prassede) was carried out by Domenico Marinelli and Antonio Avitabile, based on models provided by the sculptor Lorenzo Vaccaro. It was a perfect Neapolitan handicraft exported from the capital to the province of Apulia. The new altar, replacing an earlier silver altar dated circa 1319–67, was signed in 1684, while a new set of silver candlesticks (candelabra) by the Neapolitan silversmith Francesco d’Angeli was offered by the marchioness of Trevico in 1689. The altar in Bari was also provided with a silver statue of S. Nicola (probably medieval and substituted in 1792), while the main vault was adorned with embossed silver scales and a high-relief figure of God the Father surrounded by angels and other ornaments. The main paliotto depicted the miracle of the saint’s manna, representing the invention of a perfumed balsam miraculously emerging from the saint’s bones, which was formerly collected on the saint’s festival day. This unusual miracle of oriental origins was characteristic of many cult sites of baroque southern Italy: Amalfi, Salerno, and Bari, to cite just a few.

In S. Maria La Nova in Naples, a church renowned for its treasury as much as was S. Domenico Maggiore, Marinelli worked once again on the drawings and models of sculptor Lorenzo Vaccaro. After his death in 1689 the silver chapel was finished by his brother-in-law Matteo Treglia, with the collaboration of Nicola d’Aula and Francesco d’Angelo. The panno d’altare, personally modeled by Marinelli and still in situ (the statuettes have been recently replaced because of theft), was made of 156 libbre d’argento, including the recycled silver melted down from preexisting furnishings, while the rest of the decoration was made of silver and gilded brass, for a total of 3,000 ducati.

The use of silver and gold shine as a revetment for architecture—and in par-ticular, shrines—was possibly one of the most successful baroque revivals of medieval aesthetics. At yet another level, I would add here that the extensive presence of ex votos (votive offerings) in churches and the reflected glow silver provides when lit with candles forms another important decorative mode of baroque surface decoration.

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Renato Ruotolo has remarked on the presence of 10,000 ex votos offered to St. Gaetano of Thiene (beatified in 1629), glittering throughout the vestibule and the pilasters of the lower church of San Paolo (Santa Maria Vertecoeli), where the saint’s remains were buried, until 1798 (his remains are still buried there).119 A similar devotional treasure probably surrounded the statue of Santa Maria del Carmine in Naples, in the eponymous church, to whom Viceroy Arcos offered a lost silver statue to celebrate Masaniello’s death in 1647.120 Although all these ex votos are now displayed in large wall frames in a neigh-boring room, we can imagine how they previously encrusted the apse, glittering around the cult statue.

Similar episodes of massive use of votive silvers (ex votos, devotional objects, etc.) and jeweled offerings were common in baroque southern Italy. I only need to mention here the pervasive devotional habit of “dressing” cult stat-ues with jewels and precious gifts, like the Virgin of Trapani or processional reliquary busts such as those of St. Agata in Catania and St. Venera in Acireale, or even renowned icons like the Virgin of the Victory in Piazza Armerina or the Virgin of the Letter in Messina, for whom elegant embossed and low-relief mantles (mante) were newly produced in gold or silver in the baroque era. Two perfect examples are provided by the jewels covering the bust of St. Venera, cast by Mario D’Angelo in 1651, and the manta of the Virgin of the Letter, cast by Innocenzo Mangani in 1668, in substitution of an earlier one documented by 1657 (figs. 12–13).121 If we think about the spread of chryselephantine statuary in the Roman Mediterranean, the use of gold leaf as a revetment for cult statues and icons in the baroque Italian south should not surprise us, as it may simply reflect the survival of the ancient practices of cult and devotion in popular culture.122

The presence of these bejeweled statues, in combination with candles, chande-liers, and lamps of almost infinite variety, deserves to be further emphasized in art historical literature.123 In fact, these pieces of silver work and jewelry could extend from the miniature to the huge, from small pendants to chains of lus-ters, from thin sheets to thick slabs, and from single items to hundreds of little shining pieces. Scholars have noted the baroque vogue of offering great sets of chandeliers to major cathedrals and patrons.124 Sculptors, founders, and silk embroiderers all used the same precious materials: silk and gold, which battitori and tiratori d’oro e d’argento prepared for them in fine sheets or threads.125 Thus light reflected onto precious objects and embroideries picked out the designs of roses, leaves, angels, and saints on different surfaces.

The best demonstration of the impact of portable silver in a theatrical context of light, silk, and devotion is provided by the annual feast of the Lights of San Gennaro, described above. This festival has been studied in depth by Rosa Franzese, who has nevertheless overlooked the role of silver, silks, and light in favor of architectural design.126 It is noticeable that on the occasion of the three nights’ concert, the silver Treasury of St. Januarius was exhibited within the apparato itself, as the documents mention payments to guards in charge of protecting and returning the silver busts to the chapel at the end of the perfor-mance. Similar payments emerge in regard to silver furnishings borrowed from

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the Treasury of San Domenico Maggiore, on the occasion of the annual May procession of St. Januarius, when his golden bust was carried through the city and exposed in the main squares of Naples, at the top of an ephemeral altar decorated with silver and embroidered silks. It was by this altar that the bishop and the viceroy met, sat, and prayed in front of the large civic audience. For the civic celebrations honoring the many patron saints of Naples, silver busts of the saints were thus taken out of their chapel and paraded through the city as ele-ments of urban performances.

A key design element of the September night festivals of St. Januarius was the luminescent glow that filled the square (Piazza Riario Sforza) from dusk to dawn. In other words, perfumes and light (from candles of different sizes and from oil lamps) constituted a major part of the decoration assembled around the statue of St. Januarius and were often the greatest expense in the budget. Besides hanging in lines from the architectural frames of the theater, lamps were also used to design paths of lights crossing the square (as they still do in Christmas decorations) or employed with painted slabs of wood to create a luminous crowning of stars and clouds around the statue of St. Januarius, located on top of the guglia.127 Drawing and writing with light (and reflected shine) was not uncommon in baroque Naples; documents prove that in two apparati erected in 1617 and 1622 at the Gesù Nuovo in honor of the Immacu-late Conception, lights were used to compose inscriptions, pyramids, columns, and triangles on the main facade as well as on the church interior.128

In conclusion, it is difficult today to detect, among the daily miseries of this major capital of the Italian baroque, the emotional impact caused by the flow of silver running through the urban grid, or the lure that lavish treasuries and extraordinary relics (like the dried blood of St. Januarius in the cathedral or the milk of the Virgin Mary once in the church of St. Francis of Paula), could exert on educated and foreign travelers, especially Protestants from northern

Fig. 12Reliquary bust of St. Venera

in Acireale, cast by Mario D’Angelo, 1651. Photo © Enzo

Brai, Palermo.

Fig. 13Manta of the Virgin of the

Letter in Messina, cast by Innocenzo Mangani, 1668.

Photo © Enzo Brai, Palermo.

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Europe.129 In the narratives of the Grand Tour, church sacristies were often seen as sacred wunderkammers, and church treasures as the gold mines of those same orders accused by Pietro Giannone and most recent historians of delay-ing the Enlightenment.130 True or not, those 304 lavish churches certainly managed to shape and define a preindustrial production system of ready-made and bespoke luxury goods intended to be experienced and “consumed” first and foremost in situ, before being exported to faraway lands. Cult spectacle in baroque Naples thus surely depended on the educated hands and minds of painters, craftsmen, and architects to provide the overall design of scenes and architecture. But it equally depended on the insatiable need for devotion and protection, and on an infinite number of apotropaic acts. In this context of fear, luster, and devotion, this article can describe only some of the ways in which artistic materials offered a positive and collaborative space for thousands of art-ists, artisans, and craftsmen in early modern southern Italy.

Sabina de Cavi

Sabina de Cavi received her PhD from Columbia University in 2007 and is Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Universidad de Córdoba, Spain, as well as a postdoctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She is a specialist in Renaissance and baroque art and architecture in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Her first book, Architecture and Royal Presence: Domenico and Giulio Cesare Fontana in Habsburg Naples, 1592–1627, was pub-lished in 2009 by Cambridge Scholars Press.

I dedicate this essay to Maria Concetta Di Natale and her lifetime of research on the applied arts of southern Italy. I am most thankful to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where I benefited from the context and facilities while preparing this piece during a residency as postdoctoral fellow in 2011–12. I would also like to thank all those colleagues and anonymous reviewers who improved it with their suggestions and criticisms, in particular Paul Karon, Paul Stirton, and Daniel Lee for seeing the essay through to the end.

1 John George Keysler, Letter IX (“Churches, and Other Religious Edifices at Naples”), in Travels through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Lorrain: Giving a True and Just Description of the Present State of Those Countries . . . (London: A. Linde, 1756–57), 378–431, esp. 380 (emphasis mine).2 Alvar González-Palacios, “Un adornamento vicereale per Napoli,” in Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, exh. cat. [Naples, Oct. 24, 1984–April 14, 1985] (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1984), vol. 2, 241–302. See also Donald Garstang, Giacomo Serpotta and the Stuccatori of Palermo (London: A. Zwemmer, 1984), and Garstang, “Cosimo Fanzago e la maestranze palermitane,” in Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1984), 387–93.3 On Spain and Naples, see Livio Pestilli, Ingrid D. Rowland, and S. Schütze, eds., “Napoli è tutto il mondo”: Neapolitan Art and Culture from Humanism to the Englightenment, conf. papers [Rome, 2003] (Pisa: Serra, 2008); José Luis Colomer, ed., España y Nápoles: Coleccionísmo y mecenazgo virreinales en el siglo XVII (Madrid: CEEH, 2009); Gabriel Guarino, “The Reception of Spain and Its Values in Habsburg Naples,” in Exploring Cultural History: Essays in Honour of Peter Burke (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010); T. J. Dandelet and J. A. Marino, eds., Spain in Italy: Politics, Society, and Religion, 1500–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); and Tommaso Astarita, ed., A Companion to Early Modern Naples (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).4 Nicola Spinosa, ed., Ritorno al Barocco: Da Caravaggio a Vanvitelli, exh. cat. [Dec. 12, 2009–April 11, 2010] (Naples: Arte’m SRL, 2009), vol. 2, 329.5 See my recent paper “Artistic Practices and Raw Materials for the Collaborative Art Form of the Festino in Baroque Palermo, 1685–1700,” presented at “Art and Architecture in Europe, 1600–1750,” College Art Association, Los Angeles, Feb. 25, 2012.6 Except from Giovan Battista Fidanza, ed., Scultura lignea: Per una storia dei sistema costruttivi e decorativi, atti del I convegno internazionale della Società Italiana di Storia delle Arti del Legno, conf. papers [Serra San Quirico–Pergola, 2007] (in press, 2009), and general scholarship on retablos and retablistica in Iberia and Ibero-America.

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7 The implementation of preindustrial production from the late 1730s aimed at providing art objects for the local and international elites relates to the foundation of specialized royal manufactories in Naples under King Charles IV of Bourbon (1734–59). The Real Fabbrica di Arazzi e Pietre Dure was established in 1737 in S. Carlo alle Mortelle, profiting from the closure of the Opificio in Florence and the diasporas of its best masters. The Real Fabbrica della Porcellana opened in Capodimonte in 1742, while the Real Fabbrica delle Armi (founded ca. 1757–59 and the Manifatture of S. Leucio (founded 1775/1789) for precious silk production were located just outside of Naples, in Torre Annunziata and S. Leucio, respectively. Angela Caròla-Perrotti, Le Reali Manifatture Borboniche (Naples: Edizione del Sole, 1993); Paola Giusti, “Le manifatture reali,” in I Borbone di Napoli, ed. Nicola Spinosa (Sorrento: F. Di Mauro, 2009), 403–7; Gabriella Tassinari, “Antonio Pichler e gli incisorid I pietre dure a Napoli: Ipotesi e suggestioni,” Napoli Nobilissima, 6 ser., I, 1–2 (2010): 23–52; The Golden Age of Naples: Art and Civilization under the Bourbons, 1734–1805, exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts/The Art Institute of Chicago, 1981–82 (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1981), vol. 2, 325–429.8 On the “unity of the arts” in Naples (a theme originally addressed by Irving Lavin for Bernini in Rome) and for a periodization of the Neapolitan baroque, see Riccardo Lattuada, Alle radici dell’estetica barocca: Proposte di periodizzazione delle prime esperienze di unificazione delle arti (1570–1600), in Estetica Barocca, conf. papers, ed. S. Schütze (Rome: Campisano, 2004), 157–82; and Lattuada,

“Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, pittore, scultore, e decoratore ‘ornamento’ della sua patria,” in Domenico Antonio Vaccaro, sintesi delle arti, ed. Benedetto Gravagnuolo and Fiammetta Adriani (Naples: Guida, 2005), 21–61. On the unity of applied arts in Sicily, see Maria Concetta Di Natale, ed., Splendori di Sicilia: Arti decorative dal Rinascimento al Barocco, exh. cat. [Palermo, 2000–2001] (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2001); and Vincenzo Abbate, ed., Wunderkammer siciliana: Alle origini del museo perduto, exh. cat. [Palermo, 2001–2] (Naples: Electa Napoli, 2001).9 Exhibition catalogues devoted to Neapolitan baroque in the United States are almost exclusively devoted to paintings. For an exception and a bibliography in English on eighteenth-century Neapolitan applied arts, see Detroit Institute of Arts, The Golden Age of Naples, 325–429.10 I am referring to the poignant terminology used to define artistic production and the applied arts in George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962), 1–5, 12–16.11 For an anthology of readings on the status of the applied arts in Italian art criticism and a compelling essay on the subject, see Ferdinando Bologna, Dalle arti minori all’industrial design: Storia di una ideologia (Bari: Laterza, 1972), discussed in Stefano Causa and Pierluigi Leone de Castris, eds., I libri di Ferdinando Bologna: Percorsi di ricerca e strumenti di didattica, conf. papers [Naples, 2005] (Salerno: Paparo Edizioni, 2007), 112–21.12 See Roberto Pane, ed., Seicento napoletano: Arte, costume e ambiente (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1984).13 For his biography and a presentation of his scholarship, see http://www.dictionaryofarthistorians .org/causar.htm. See also F. Bologna, ed., Scritti in memoria di Raffaello Causa: Saggi e documenti per la storia dell’arte, 1994–1995 (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1996); Pierluigi Leone de Castris, ed., Scritti di storia dell’arte in onore di Raffaello Causa (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1988).14 Younger scholars include Giangiotto Borrelli, Riccardo Lattuada, and Paola D’Agostino (on sculpture); Nicoletta D’Arbitrio, Maria Rosaria Mancino, and Silvana Musella Guida (on textiles and fashion); Roberta Catello (on Neapolitan presepi [nativity scenes]); Pierluigi Leone de Castris (on goldsmiths and ivory carvers); and Luisa Ambrosio (on porcelains).15 For their endless efforts and constant research in difficult archives, I must acknowledge the late Monsignor Franco Strazzullo, Giovan Battista D’Addosio, Vincenzo Rizzo, Antonio Nappi, Elio Catello, Antonio Delfino, and Renato Ruotolo. I should also mention here that during the period of the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), the publishing and editing of sources was a classic form of scholarship in Neapolitan historiography. On the applied arts, see, e.g., Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia delle arti e le industria delle province Napoletane (Naples: Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1883–91).16 Civiltà del ’700 a Napoli, exh. cat. [Dec. 1979–Oct. 1980] (Naples: Centro Di, 1979); Civiltà del Seicento a Napoli, exh. cat. [Oct. 24, 1984–April 14, 1985] (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1984).17 The applied arts were published in the second volume of the exhibition catalogue (together with sculpture, cartography, scenography, and theater): Civiltà del ’700, vol. 2, 76–300.18 The exception was maiolica, exhibited in the Museo Pignatelli. The applied arts were published in the second volume of the exhibition catalogue (together with drawing, sculpture, and book publishing): Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 241–454.19 Pane, Seicento napoletano ; F. Strazzullo, ed., Settecento napoletano, Documenti I (Naples, 1982); G. Zampino, Capolavori in festa: Effimero barocco a largo di Palazzo, 1683–1759, exh. cat. [Dec. 20, 1997–March 15, 1998] (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1997), especially the essay by curator Riccardo Lattuada, “La stagione del Barocco a Napoli, 1683–1759,” 22–53.20 Ritorno al Barocco: Da Caravaggio a Vanvitelli: Restauri Duemilanove (Naples: Arte’m SRL, 2009), reviewed in Fulvio Lenzo, “Ritorno al Barocco: Da Caravaggio a Vanvitelli,” Annali di Architettura 22 (2010).21 Renato Ruotolo, “Per un profilo della storiografia delle arti decorative a Napoli in età barocca,” in Spinosa, Ritorno al Barocco, 108–15.

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22 See Nicola Spinosa and Fausta Navarro, eds., The Treasure of San Gennaro: Baroque Silvers from Naples, exh. cat. [New York, Oct. 28, 1987–Jan. 18, 1988] (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1987); Paolo Jorio, ed., Le meraviglie del Tesoro di San Gennaro: Le pietre della devozione, exh. cat. [Naples, April 9–June 12, 2011] (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2011).23 The Museo del Tesoro di S. Gennaro, located in the cellars of the cathedral of Naples, opened in 2003 (http://www.museosangennaro.com), while the Museo Diocesano di Napoli opened in 2007 in the restored convent of S. Maria Donnaregina Nuova (http://www.museodiocesanonapoli.com).24 See the local journals Napoli Nobilissima (especially series 4 and 5), Studi sul Seicento Napoletano (founded in and published since 1984 with the goal of creating a forum for scholarship on the applied arts), Antologia di Belle Arti, and Campania Sacra.25 Pane, Seicento napoletano, gathering group research undertaken in 1982–83; Strazzullo, Settecento napoletano, Documenti I; Gaetana Cantone, Centri e periferie del Barocco, vol. 2, Barocco napoletano, conf. papers [Rome, 1987] (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1992).26 Leone de Castris, Scritti di storia dell’arte ; Francesco Abbate, ed., Ottant’anni di un maestro: Omaggio a Ferdinando Bologna (Pozzuoli: Paparo Edizioni, 2006).27 Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982); Malcolm Baker, “Limewood, Chiromancy and Narratives of Making,” Art History 21, no. 4 (Dec. 1998): 498–530; Nicholas Penny, The Materials of Sculpture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).28 For a clear distinction between utensil and work of art, and on the persistent objectivity of artworks as “things,” see Kubler, The Shape of Time.29 Charles IV of Naples until 1759, then Charles VII of Spain.30 For Naples, see Luigi Mascilli Migliorini, Il sistema delle arti (Naples: A. Guida, 1992), 9–39, 131–68; Franca Assante, “Il bisogno, l’utile e il conveniente: I corpi d’arte a Napoli in età moderna,” in Corporazioni, gremi e artigianato tra Sardegna, Spagna e Italia nel Medioevo e nell’età moderna (XIV–XIX secolo) (Cagliari: AM&D, 2000), 278–88; P. Massa and A. Moioli, eds., Dalla corporazione al mutuo soccorso: Organizzazione e tutela del lavoro tra XVI e XX secolo (Rome: Franco Angeli Edizioni, 2004) (for contextual Italy). On the parallel (yet earlier, Napoleonic) suppression of the religious orders and their archives, see La memoria silenziosa: Formazione, tutela e status giuridico degli archivi monastici nei monumenti nazionali, conf. papers [Veroli and Ferentino, 1998] (Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 2000).31 See Franco Strazzullo, “La Corporazione Napoletana dei Fabbricatori” (Naples: G. D’Agostino, 1962), 30–34, who specifies that their workshops were located between the Fosse del Grano and the city doors of S. Maria Costantinopoli and St. Januarius.32 An academy of the nude was added to the academy of drawing in 1752. Costanza Lorenzetti, L’Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli, 1752–1952 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1953).33 On Angevin and medieval architecture in Naples, see Caroline A. Bruzelius, The Stones of Naples: Church Building in Angevin Italy, 1266–1343 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Caroline A. Bruzelius and William Tronzo, Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History, 400–1400 (New York: Italica Press, 2011).34 These side activities, better studied in architecture and collecting, deserve further research. See John Nicholas Napoli, “The Art of the Appraisal: Measuring, Evaluating and Valuing Architecture in Early Modern Europe,” in V. H. Minor and B. Curran, eds., Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, vol. 54 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 2010), 201–41; Christopher Marshall, “‘Senza il minimo scrupolo’: Artists as Dealers in Seventeenth-Century Naples,” Journal of the History of Collections 12, no. 1 (2000): 15–34.35 For the silk art and its ordonnances, preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, see Raffaele Pescione, Gli statuti dell’arte della seta in Napoli (Naples: Pierro, 1920); G. Consiglio, “Il fondo dell’arte della Seta nell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli,” RAS 8 (1948): 170–82; Nicoletta D’Arbitrio, I borghi e le strade delle arti di Napoli: I gioielli e i tessuti d’oro e d’argento dei maestri dell’arte (Naples, 2009); and especially Rosalba Ragosta, Napoli, città della seta: Produzione e mercato in età moderna (Rome: Donzelli, 2009).36 Elio Catello, “L’arte del ricamo a Napoli dal XVI al XIX secolo,” Campania Sacra 6 (1975): 101–41, discusses the parallel (yet not professional, as female recamatrici were not allowed in the guild) role of women in Neapolitan embroidery.37 Fred Brauen, “Cosimo Fanzago and Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Marble Decoration” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1973); John Nicholas Napoli, “Pianificare o indulgere nel capriccio? Cosimo Fanzago e la causa ‘ad exuberantiam’ alla Certosa di San Martino,” Napoli Nobilissima 4, nos. 5–6 (2003): 209–18; Gaetana Cantone, “Guglie e fontane di Cosimo Fanzago (I),” Napoli Nobilissima 13, no. 2 (1974): 41–58, esp. 42, based on F. M. Tassi, Le vite dei pittori, scultori et architetti bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1793), 3–20.38 Elio Catello, “Francesco Solimena: Disegni e invenzioni per argentieri,” Napoli Nobilissima 24, nos. 3–4 (1985); Alvar González-Palacios, “Bernini as a Furniture Designer,” Burlington Magazine 112, no. 812 (Nov. 1970): 719–23; Alvar González Palacios, “Fogginerie,” Arte Illustrata 7 (Oct. 1974): 321–30; Renato Ruotolo, “Mobili,” in Civiltà del Seicento, 363–85, esp. 382.

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39 Christopher R. Marshall, “‘Senza il minimo scrupolo’: Artists as Dealers in Seventeenth-Century Naples,” Journal of the History of Collections 12, no. 1 (2000): 15–34; Richard Spear and Philip Sohm, Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 16–18.40 Sabina de Cavi, “1718–19: Interventi inediti di Cristoforo Schor a Napoli durante il viceregno austriaco,” in Un regista del gran teatro del barocco: Ein Regisseur des barocken Welttheaters Johann Paul Schor und die internationale Sprache des Barock, symposium papers [Rome, 2003], ed. Cristina Strunck (Munich: Hirmer, 2008), 259–76; de Cavi, “Corpus Christi in Spanish Palermo: Two Baroque Apparati by Giacomo Amato for the Duke of Uceda (Viceroy of Sicily, 1687–1696),” in Recreating Renaissance and Baroque Spectacle: The Hispanic Habsburg Dynasty in Context, conf. papers, ed. Fernando Checa Cremades and Laura Fernández González (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming); de Cavi, “Ephemera del viceré conte di Lemos, 1599–1601,” in Colomer, España y Nápoles, 1–25.41 José María Luzón Nogué, ed., Velázquez: Esculturas para el Alcázar, exh. cat. [Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, 2008] (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 2008). The journey to Italy was undertaken in 1649–51.42 Renato Ruotolo, “Alle origini della lavorazione delle pietre dure a Napoli, i cibori teatini,” in Ricerche sul Seicento napoletano, saggi in memoria di Oreste Ferrari 2007 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 2008), 105–13. 43 Raffaello Causa, “A proposito della Certosa di S. Martino (I): Nascita di un Museo, Omaggio a G. Fiorelli,” Napoli Nobilissima 6 (1967): 5–13; Causa, “A proposito della Certosa di San Martino (II): La cassa armonica del coro, il pavimento della chiesa: Come Presti e Fanzago si suddivisero il lavoro, il restauro delle famose tarsie e la sua storia troppo lunga,” in Napoli Nobilissima 6, nos. 3–4 (1967): 89–107.44 Keysler, Letter LIX, in Travels, vol. 2, 416: “The eight pillars of the tabernacle on the high altar are of rock crystal, each a foot high, yet cut out of a single piece. It is also enriched with a great number of sapphires, and other precious stones. The pulpit is an exquisite inlaid work of marble and mother-of-pearl. In the vestry are twelve crystal candlesticks, made by Marino Converso, a monk of the convent, who began [working the] rock crystal, which was to fill the whole front of the great altar, but was, a few years ago, prevented by death.” 45 It is known that this pattern was also common among painters. For example, both Ribera and Velázquez married the daughters of their first employers, Giovan Bernardino Azzolino and Francisco Pacheco, respectively.46 Fanzago’s workshop was organized to produce series of interchangeable architectural pieces that could serve different locations: Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Monasteri Soppressi, fasc. 2158: “che in quel tempo il Cav[alie]ro in d[ett]a sua casa lavorava per il Giesù, per la Cappella di S. Antonio e per la c[appella] Cacace, e per una Cappella del Conte di Monterè, che andò in Spagna, per la fontana che stà alla Strada di S. Lucia, per il Giesù Vecchio, per S. Chiara, per S. Severino, per l’Annunziata, per il Tesoro, per S. Martino, per le Monache della Trinità, per le monache di S. Gaudioso, e per mille altri luochi, che per brevità si tralasciano. . . .” Cited by Gaetana Cantone, “La controversia tra Cosimo Fanzago e i Certosini (II): Il cappellone di S. Antonio e la Cappella Cacace in San Lorenzo Maggiore,” Napoli Nobilissima 8, no. 5 (1969): 227–35, esp. 234n1.47 On notaries in early modern Naples, see Gennaro Borrelli, Notai napoletani tra Seicento e Settecento (Naples: Arte Tipografica, 1995).48 For instance, S. Maria della Concezione a Montecalvario by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (1721–25) or the church of the Nunziatella by Ferdinando Sanfelice (1736).49 On the importance of time and considering time in building practice and theory, see Marvin Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 1–19.50 Renato Ruotolo, “Momenti dell’arte del marmo napoletana: Opere e artefici degli anni novanta del Seicento,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti per la storia dell’arte (Milan: Edizioni L&T, 1990), 207–16, esp. 210. Marble carvers worked progressively from preliminary generic drawings (submitted when the contract was issued in front of a notary) to more detailed drawings and life-size models in stucco or clay (modelli in grande), which were placed on-site to verify the final result. Marbles were finally carved after a number of adjustments and changes. We must also remember that Neapolitan altars or ciboria were often moved, transformed, adjusted, and embellished with new additions or changes. Only connoisseurship or archival documentation allows for a dependable evaluation of the different hands at work in a single monument.51 See, for a general overview, Spinosa, Ritorno al Barocco, vol. 2, 250, 286–304.52 Giambattista D’Addosio, “Illustrazioni e documenti sulle cripte di S. Andrea in Amalfi e S. Matteo in Salerno,” Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 34 (1909): 19–48; González-Palacios, “Un adornamento.” This drawing habit obviously has some connections with the technique of Renaissance sgraffiato or graffiato in palace decoration. For parallel cases of architectural drawings on walls and floors of Roman architecture and their definition as “blueprints,” see Lothar Haselberger, “The Construction Plans for the Temple of Apollo at Didyma,” Scientific American 253, no. 6 (1985): 126–32.53 Sabina de Cavi, Architecture and Royal Presence: Domenico and Giulio Cesare Fontana in Spanish Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), 178, 421–26 (doc. 71).

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54 See R. P. D. Guaxardo, Neapolitana praetensae Mercedis Pro. Ven. Carthusia Sancti Martini Neapolis: Summarium (Rome, 1683), used in John Nicholas Napoli, “Pianificare o indulgere nel capriccio? Cosimo Fanzago e la causa ‘ad exuberantiam’ alla Certosa di San Martino,” Napoli Nobilissima 4, nos. 5–6 (2003): 209–18. Some drawings by Fanzago have been published in Franco Strazzullo, La Real Cappella del Tesoro di S. Gennaro (Naples: SEN, 1978), fig. 3; Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 328, fig. 5.20; Richard Bösel, Orazio Grassi: Architetto e matematico gesuita (Rome: Argos, 2004), figs. at 83–84; Spinosa, Ritorno al Barocco, vol. 2, 288, 294, cat. 5.26, cat. 5.50. I thank Fulvio Lenzo for pointing out these references to me.55 Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York, inv. no. 1901-39-2448 (ex. coll. Giovanni Piancastelli). Drawing in brown ink on black pencil, colored with yellow, green, red, and blue washes, 403 × 238 mm. I thank Professor Giulio Pane for directing me to this collection and Dr. Gail Davidsong and her assistant Jacquelann Killian for allowing consultation of the drawings and for their kind assistance to my research.56 For the corpus of Ferdinando Sanfelice in the Gabinetto dei Disegni of Capodimonte, see A. Muir Ward, “The Architecture of Ferdinando San-Felice” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1979), and Spinosa, Ritorno al Barocco, vol. 2, 287, 290–91, 294–95. A postdoctoral research fellowship at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, in 2011–12 has allowed me to prepare the full catalogue raisonnée of Giacomo Amato’s drawing corpus in the Gabinetto dei Disegni of the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia in Palermo.57 I will thus refer only to the classical study by Garstang, Giacomo Serpotta, and the innovative work by Stefano Piazza, I colori del Barocco (Palermo: Flaccovio, 2007).58 Vincenzo Rizzo, “Maestri pipernieri, stuccatori e marmorari del seicento napoletano da docu-menti inediti dell’Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi vari in memoria di Raffaello Causa (Milan: Edizioni L&T, 1984), 187–99, esp. 187. 59 Franco Strazzullo, “La corporazione napoletana dei fabbricatori, pipernieri a tagiamonti,” Palladio 14 (1964): 28–58; Strazzullo, “Scultori e marmorari carraresi a Napoli,” Napoli Nobilissima 6 (1967): 25–37; Helen Hills, Invisible City: The Architecture of Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Neapolitan Convents (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).60 Riccardo Lattuada, Alle radici dell’estetica barocca ; John Nicholas Napoli, “From Social Virtue to Revetted Interior: Giovanni Antonio Dosio and Marble Inlay in Rome, Florence, and Naples,” Art History 31, no. 4 (2008): 523–46.61 Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Les maîtres du marbre: Carrare, 1300–1600 (Paris: SEVPEN, 1969), 172–78.62 Domenico Fontana, for instance, surveyed archaeological sites in both Rome and the Naples area.63 See Georg Weise, “Il repertorio ornamentale barocco di Cosimo Fanzago e il suo significato per la genesi del rococò,” (I) Antichità Viva 13, no. 4 (1974): 40–53; (II) Antichità Viva 13, no. 5 (1974): 32–41; (III) Antichità Viva 14, no. 1 (1975): 24–31; (IV)Antichità Viva 14, no. 5 (1975): 27–35. See also Renato Ruotolo, “La decorazione in tarsia,” Antichità Viva 12 (1974): 48–58; Ruotolo, “Alle origini della lavorazione delle pietre dure a Napoli”; Ruotolo, “Momenti”; Antonella Olivieri, “Altari barocchi a Napoli,” Arte Cristiana 62 (1974): 57–78; Elio Catello, “Le sculture degli altari napoletani: Tipologia e considerazioni,” in Cosimo Fanzago ed il marmo commesso tra Abruzzo e Campania nell’eta’ barocca, conf. papers [Pescocostanzo-Sulmona, 1992], ed. V. Casale (L’Aquila: Colacchi, 1999), 25–33; Tiziana Mancini, “La scultura negli altari settecenteschi in commesso marmoreo: Esempi a Salerno en el suo territorio,” in Abbate, Ottant’anni di un maestro, 575–81.64 The analogy between marble inlays and Giuseppe Recco’s still lifes is rejected by Roberto Pane,

“Marmi mischi e aggiunte a Cosimo Fanzago,” in Seicento napoletano, 100–117.65 Cantone, “La controversia,” 229.66 I thank Giulio Pane and Vincenzo Abbate for their insights on this point.67 Ruotolo relates this technique to the Neapolitan art of glass painting; see Renato Ruotolo, “La decorazione in tarsia e commesso marmoreo a Napoli nel periodo tardo manierista,” Antichità Viva 13, no. 1 (1974): 48–58; Renato Ruotolo, “Sul mobile napoletano del secondo Seicento: Rivenditori e scrittoriari, scrittoi con cristalli dipinti e pittori su vetro,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti 1999 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 2000), 111–16; Elio Catello, “Mobili carrozze e argenti profani del tardo Seicento,” in Pane, Seicento napoletano, 432–42, 549–50, esp. 549, doc. 6. In my opinion Neapolitan crystal painting reflects the strong influence of oil painting and Flemish still life.68 Patrizia Di Maggio, “Elementi toscani nella cultura decorativa napoletana del Seicento: Jacopo e Dionisio Lazzari,” Storia dell’Arte 54 (1985): 133–39.69 Tanja Michalsky, “Seggi und sediali: Zur Inszenierungen adeliger Repräsentation in neapoli-tanischen Familienkapellen um 1500,” in Inszenierung und Ritual in Mittelalter und Renaissance, ed. Andrea von Hülsen-Esch (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2005): 175–217; Daniela Del Pesco, “Oliviero Carafa ed il programma iconografico del Succorpo di San Gennaro nel Duomo di Napoli,” in Abbate, Ottant’anni di un maestro, 203–22.70 The comparison should also include the elaborate brass gates of 1640 and 1652–53; Rizzo,

“Maestri pipernieri,” 187–99, 452. On the two chapels and on the Firrao family, see Renato Ruotolo, “Stone Virtue: The Cacace Chapel in Naples,” FMR 77, no. 15 (1995): 81–102; Renato Middione, “Restauro nella cappella Firrao in San Paolo Maggiore,” in Centri e periferie del Barocco, vol. 2, Barocco

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Napoletano, conf. papers [Rome, 1987], ed. Gaetana Cantone (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1992), 611–26; Isabella Di Resta, “L’architettura ‘magnifica’ nella committenza di Cesare Firrao,” Storia Architettura 10 (1987): 109–20. The Firrao chapel in particular deserves further research.71 Casale, Cosimo Fanzago ed il marmo commesso tra Abruzzo e Campania nell’età barocca ; D. Pasculli Ferrara and E. Nappi, eds., Arte napoletana in Puglia dal XVI al XVIII secolo: Pittori, scultori, marmorari, architetti, ingegneri, argentieri, riggiolari, organari, ferrari, ricamatori, banderari, stuccatori: Documenti dell’Archivio Storico del Banco di Napoli (Fasano: Schena, 1983); Ciro D’Arpa, “La committenza dell’arcivescovo Martino de León y Cardenas per la cattedrale di Palermo, 1650–1655: Un intervento inédito dell’architetto Cosimo Fanzago,” Palladio 11, no. 21 (1998): 35–46.72 On Fanzago’s inlaid marbles for the church of the Augustinians in Salamanca, see Fernando Marías, “Bartolomeo y Francesco Antonio Picchiatti, dos arquitectos al servicio de los virreyes de Nápoles: Las Augustinas de Salamanca y la escalera del Palacio Real,” Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte, vols. 9–10 (1997–98): 177–95; Ángela Madruga Real, Arquitectura barroca salmantina: Las Augustinas de Monterrey (Salamanca: Centro de Estudios Salmantinos, 1983). On the Neapolitan or Sicilian origins of the San Fausto chapel in Mejorada del Campo, see Margarita Estella,

“El mecenazgo de los marqueses de Mejorada en la iglesia y capilla de su villa su altar baldauino y sus esculturas documentadas,” Archivo Español de Arte 288 (1999): 469–504.73 On Neapolitan wood carving, see Renato Ruotolo, “Qualche appunto sull’arte del legno a Napoli nel Seicento,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti 1996–1997 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 1998), 79–82; Gennaro Borrelli, L’artigianato napoletano: L’intaglio nel Settecento (Pozzuoli: Arti Grafiche D. Conte, 1964); Borrelli, “L’intaglio ligneo napoletano dal Barocco al Rococò I,” Napoli Nobilissima 25, nos. 5–6 (1986): 165–84; Borrelli, “L’intaglio ligneo napoletano dal Barocco al Rococò II,” Napoli Nobilissima 28 (1991): 16–17. 74 R. Causa and F. Bologna, eds., Sculture lignee nella Campania, exh. cat. [Naples, 1950] (Naples: Stabilimento Tipografico Montanino, 1950).75 On Gennarro Borrelli, see the following paragraphs, and on Giangiotto Borrelli, see his Sculture in legno di età barocca in Basilicata (Naples: Edizioni Paparo, 2005).76 For the exhibitions, see Estofado de oro: La statuaria lignea nella Sardegna spagnola, exh. cat. [Cagliari-Sassari, 2001–2]; Pierluigi Leone de Castris and Paolo Venturoli, eds., Scultura lignea in Basilicata dalla fine del XII alla prima metà del XVI secolo, exh. cat. [Matera, 2004] (Turin: Umberto Allemandi, 2004); Raffaele Casciaro and Antonio Cassiano, eds., Sculture di età barocca tra Terra d’Otranto, Napoli e Spagna, exh. cat. [Lecce, 2007–8] (Rome: De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2007); Pierluigi Leone de Castris, ed., Sculture in legno in Calabria dal Medioevo al Settecento, exh. cat. [Altomonte, 2008–9] (Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 2008). For the conferences, see Giovan Battista Fidanza, ed., L’arte del legno in Italia: Esperienze e indagini a confronto, conf. papers [Pergola, 2002] (Perugia: Quattroemme, 2005); Letizia Gaeta, ed., La scultura meridionale in età moderna nei suoi rapport con la circolazione mediterranea, conf. papers [Lecce, 2004] (Galatina: Mario Congedo, 2007); Raffaele Casciaro, ed., La statua e la sua pelle: Artifici tecnici nella scultura dipinta tra Rinascimento e Barocco, conf. papers [Lecce, 2007] (Galatina: Mario Congedo, 2007); Giovan Battista Fidanza, ed., Scultura lignea: Per una storia dei sistemi costruttivi e decorativi, atti del I convegno internazionale della Società Italiana di Storia delle Arti del Legno, conf. papers [Serra San Quirico–Pergola, 2007] (in press).77 On Neapolitan nativity scenes, see Gennaro Borrelli, Sanmartino: Scultore per il presepe napoletano (Naples: Fiorentino, 1966); Borrelli, Il presepe napoletano (Naples: Pironti, 1990); Elio Catello, “Su alcuni presepi napoletani del Cinque e Seicento,” Arte Cristiana 70, nos. 41–42 (1982): 353–55; Sabina de Cavi and C. D. Dickerson III, eds., A Nativity from Naples: Presepe Sculpture of the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. [Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2008–9] (Fort Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 2008).78 Specialized literature on mastri d’ascia is extremely scarce; see Paul Anderson, “The Arch icon-fraternita di San Giuseppe and the Università dei Falegnami: The Development of Professional Institutions in Early Baroque Rome,” in The Accademia Seminars: The Accademia di San Luca in Rome, c. 1590–1635, conf. papers [Washington, DC, 2004], ed. Peter M. Lukehart (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2009), 289–323; Pierfrancesco Palazzotto, “Per uno studio sulla maestranza dei Falegnami di Palermo,” in Di Natale, Splendori di Sicilia, 678–703; Lucia Siddi, “Il mondo statua di Dio: La scultura devozionale nel Meridione sardo in età moderna,” in Estofado de oro, 57–65.79 Ruotolo, “Qualche appunto sull’arte del legno a Napoli nel Seicento,” 79 (an intagliatore hires a gilder and a painter), 171 (a mastro d’ascia hires an intagliatore).80 Examples in Renato Ruotolo, “Documenti sulle arti applicate napoletane del Seicento,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi vari in memoria di Raffaello Causa (Milan: Edizioni L&T, 1984), 200–216, esp. 203; Borrelli, “L’intaglio ligneo napoletano dal Barocco al Rococò I,” 173, 182–83nn36–37. For preparatory drawings, see ibid., 183.81 Borrelli, “L’intaglio ligneo napoletano dal Barocco al Rococò I,” 182n36; 173–74.82 The first statutes for the indoratori dated to 1521, the battitori’s to 1586. Franco Strazzullo, “Per la storia delle corporazioni degli orafi e delle arti affini a Napoli,” in Studi in onore di Riccardo Filangieri (Naples: L’Arte Tipografica, 1959), vol. 2, 133–55, esp. 144–46, 150–55.83 Ruotolo, “Mobili”; Antonella Putaturo Murano, Il mobile napoletano del Settecento (Naples: Società Editrice Napoletana, 1977).

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84 Elio Catello, “Considerazioni su alcuni documenti relative a manufatti di arte applicata dell’ultimo Seicento,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti 2008 (Naples: Electa Napoli, 2009), 7–13, esp. 7. 85 Pane, “Maestri di trabacche,” in Seicento napoletano, 442–48, esp. 444. Pane publishes a rare drawing for a formal bed, possibly commissioned by the Colonna family. See also Renato Ruotolo,

“Una nota su un mobile di Dionisio Lazzari ed altri documenti sul mobile sacro napoletano del XVII secolo: Con appendice documentaria di Antonio Delfino,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti per la storia dell’arte (Milan: Edizioni L&T, 1993): 171–78 (bozzetto by Dionisio Lazzari); Ruotolo, “Sul mobile napoletano del secondo Seicento.”86 On the export of the late baroque Roman style to Naples, first noticed in Lattuada, “La stagione del Barocco a Napoli, 1683–1759,” see also Alba Cappellieri, “Filippo e Cristoforo Schor, ‘Regi Architetti e Ingegneri’ alla corte di Napoli,” in Zampino, Capolavori in festa, 73–89; Alba Cappellieri,

“Filippo Schor e Fischer von Erlach a Napoli: Nuovi contributi per la diffusione del barocco romano nel viceregno del Marchese del Carpio,” in Strunck, Un regista del gran teatro del barocco, 193–219; de Cavi, “1718–19: Interventi inediti di Cristoforo Schor a Napoli durante il viceregno austriaco”; Giulia Fusconi, “Il ‘buen gusto romano’ dei Viceré (I): La ricezione dell’effimero barocco a Napoli negli anni del Marchese del Carpio (1683–1687) e del Conte di Santiesteban (1688–1696),” in Francesco Solinas and Sebastian Schütze, eds., Le dessin napolitain, conf. papers [Paris, 2008] (Rome: De Luca, 2010), 221–38; Jorge Fernández-Santos Ortiz-Iribas, “The ‘buen gusto romano’ of the Viceroys (II): Christoph Schor and Francesco Solimena, Standard-Bearers of Arcadian Taste in the Service of the Duke of Medinaceli,” in Solinas and Schütze, Le dessin napolitain, 209–20.87 The connection between the two arts is underlined in Elio Catello, “La carrozza napoletana nel XVIII secolo,” in Leone de Castris, Scritti di storia dell’arte, 351–58, esp. 354.88 Catello, “Mobili carrozze”; Corrado Catello, “Scultori argentieri a Napoli in età barocca e due inedite statue d’argento,” in Scritti di storia dell’arte, 281–86, 354. In these luxury items, silks were often the most expensive complement to wood carving, together with silverworks.89 Roberto Pane, “Maestri di trabacche,” fig. at 446; Ruotolo, “Una nota su un mobile di Dionisio Lazzari,” 171–78, esp. fig. 74.90 Borrelli, Sculture in legno, figs. 29, 32, 63–64.91 Anthony Blunt, Neapolitan Baroque and Rococo Architecture (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975): 43, recently translated and updated as Architettura barocca e rococò a Napoli, ed. F. Lenzo (Milan: Mondadori, 2006).92 Raffaele Mormone, “Dionisio Lazzari e l’architettura napoletana del tardo Seicento,” Napoli Nobilissima 7, nos. 5–6 (1968): 158–67, esp. 161.93 Giangiotto Borrelli, “Documenti su pittori e marmorari della seconda metà del Seicento,” in Ricerche sul Seicento napoletano: Saggi e documenti 1996–1997 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 1998), 129–44, esp. 129.94 Borrelli, “L’intaglio ligneo napoletano dal Barocco al Rococò I,” 171, 179.95 Ruotolo, “Documenti sulle arti applicate napoletane del Seicento”; Angela Schiattarella, ed., Gesù Nuovo (Castellammare di Stabia: Edizioni Eidos, 1997): 92–94; Roberto Middione, “Seventy Saints,” FMR 96 (1999): 71–84; Patrizia Staffiero, “Da reliquie a busti reliquiario ‘intagliati, coloriti, indorati e sgraffiati,’” in Abbate, Ottant’anni di un maestro, 345–63, esp. 347–48; Borrelli, Sculture in legno, 17, figs. 12–13.96 Borrelli, “Documenti su pittori e marmorari della seconda metà del Seicento,” 129; Pane, “Maestri di trabacche,” 442, 550n3; Giangiotto Borrelli, “Alcune opere di Giovan Domenico Vinaccia per le chiese gesuite di Napoli,” in Cantone, Centri e periferie del Barocco, vol. 2, Barocco napoletano, 671–84, esp. 675.97 Giuliana Vitale, Ritualità monarchica e pratiche devozionali nella Napoli aragonese (Salerno: La Veglia, 2006), passim.98 Eduardo Nappi, “Antiche feste napoletane,” in Ricerche sul Seicento napoletano: Saggi e documenti 2001 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 2001), 76–90, esp. 76; de Cavi, “Corpus Christi in Spanish Palermo.”99 See at least Elio Catello and Corrado Catello, Argenti napoletani dal XVI al XIX secolo (Naples: Giannini, 1973); Catello and Catello, L’oreficeria a Napoli nel XV secolo (Cava dei Tirreni, 1975); Catello and Catello, La cappella del Tesoro di San Gennaro (Naples, 1977); Elio Catello, “L’arte argentaria napoletana nel XVIII secolo,” in Settecento Napoletano-Documenti I, ed. F. Strazzullo (Naples, 1982), 45–63. An important family of collectors, the Catellos have been also dealers, restorers, and important connoisseurs of the applied arts in Naples.100 See Civiltà del Seicento and Jorio, Le meraviglie del Tesoro. Having the most impact on a broader public audience is probably the annual procession of St. Januarius (on the first Sunday of May), when the silver busts of the patron saints of Naples are paraded through the city with that of St. Januarius.101 The situation in Sicily is slightly different, as both Maria Accascina and Maria Concetta Di Natale have been able to establish the field in the University of Palermo, in creating a number of diocesan museums and in founding the new Osservatorio per le Arti Decorative in Italia (OADI, http://www .unipa.it/oadi/).102 Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Ministero dell’Interno, 5198, inc. 33; Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Statuti

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di Corporazioni e Congregazioni, inc. 61, fasc. 2; Franco Strazzullo, “Le corporazioni d’arti e mestieri a Napoli,” Arte Cristiana 43 (1955): 40–44; Strazzullo, “Per la storia delle corporazioni degli orafi e delle arti affini a Napoli.”103 Strazzullo, “Le corporazioni d’arti,” 137.104 Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 316–17, cat. 5.9.105 Elio Catello, “Gian Domenico Vinaccia e il Paliotto di San Gennaro,” Napoli Nobilissima 43, no. 4 (1979): 121–32, esp. 125–26.106 Giangiotto Borrelli, “Una scultura d’argento di Giacomo Colombo in Molise,” in Ricerche sul ’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti 1999 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 2000), 7–10, esp. 10n11.107 Elio Catello, “Modelli per argentieri di Orazio Scoppa,” Arte Cristiana 69, no. 6 (1981): 145–50; Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 310–13. The Laurentiani drawings are now preserved in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe della Galleria Interdisciplinare Regionale della Sicilia di Palazzo Abatellis, in Palermo. Its frontispiece, representing an angel holding a reliquary, should be compared to fig. 9. See Vincenzo Abbate, “Il tesoro perduto: Una traccia per la committenza laica nel Seicento,” in Ori e argenti di Sicilia dal Quattrocento al Settecento, ed. Maria Concetta Di Natale (Milan: Electa, 1989), 51, fig. 7.108 Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York, inv. no. 1938-88-2571 (ex. coll. Giovanni Piancastelli, and subsequently Mr. and Mrs. Edward D. Brandegee). Drawing in pen and bistre ink on black pencil, colored with light-blue watercolor wash, 338 × 166 mm; without watermarks, inscribed at the center of the reliquary (“Solimenus- / feciti”) and in lower-left corner (“D.2”). Previously attributed to Francesco Solimena or Solimena’s workshop because of the presence of the spurious inscription. The Two Sicilies: Drawings from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, exh. cat. (Finch College Museum of Art, 1970), 17, cat. and fig. 29; Richard P. Wunder, “Solimena Drawings in the Cooper Union Museum: A New Discovery and Others,” Art Quarterly 24, no. 2 (1961): 151–64, esp. 159, fig. 7.109 Elio Catello, “Francesco Solimena,” 108–11, esp. 109, fig. 1; Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 131, cat. 3.80a. Solimena also designed a silver lamp for the SS. Apostles valued at 2,000 scudi (Keysler, Travels, 383).110 Riccardo Lattuada, “Napoli e Bernini: Spie di un rapporto ancora inedito,” in Cantone, Centri e periferie del Barocco, vol. 2, Barocco napoletano, 645–70.111 Elena Santiago Paez, “Algunas esculturas napolitanas del siglo XVII en España,” Archivo Español de Arte 158 (1967): 115–32; Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 317–18, cat. 5.10; Catello, “Gian Domenico,” 124 (quoting De Dominici).112 Raffaele Mormone, “Dionisio Lazzari e l’architettura napoletana del tardo Seicento,” Napoli Nobilissima 7, nos. 5–6 (1968): 158–67, esp. 161; Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 323.113 Catello, “Mobili carrozze”; Elio Catello, “Argenti e sculture lignee per i Vicerè di Napoli ed altre aristocratiche committenze spagnole,” Napoli Nobilissima 36, nos. 1–6 (1997): 77–84; Catello,

“Francesco Solimena” (Solimena drew a large trionfo to commemorate the entry of Charles on May 10, 1734).114 On panni d’altare in Naples, see Keysler, Travels, 391–92, 393. Keysler noticed a large sculpture of St. Michael nearly three feet high, glittering with jewels, which is valued at 12,000 scudi (in St. Francis of Paula, p. 393), as well as silver paliotti essentially everywhere: in the Gesù Nuovo (pp. 387–88, one by Gennaro Monte and one worth 14,000 scudi), in S. Maria la Nova (p. 410), in S. Gregorio Armeno (p. 424, designed by Luca Giordano), and in S. Pietro a Majella (p. 426). 115 For Sardinia, see Sardegna (Milan: Electa Editrice, 1969), 356–57 (figs. 339–40, cathedral of Cagliari), 369 (fig. 353, cathedral of Alghero). For Sicily, see Maria Concetta Di Natale, Il Tesoro della matrice nuova di Castelbuono nella contea dei Ventimiglia (Caltanissetta: Salvatore Sciascia Editore, 2005), 35 (fig. 31), 62 (cat. 19).116 Catello and Catello, La cappella ; Catello, “Gian Domenico”; Elio Catello, “A Legion of Patron Saints: Busts-Reliquaries in the Treasury of Saint Januarius,” FMR 107 (2001): 53–76; Catello, “Mobili carrozze,” 346; Lattuada, Napoli e Bernini, 655. Vinaccia, who left his self-portrait on the altar front, received 1,500 ducats but died while working on this piece. His heirs received another 700 ducats.117 All lost and existing silver paliotti are described in Catello, “Gian Domenico”; Elio Catello, “Gli altari d’argento della cattedrale di Acquaviva delle Fonti,” Napoli Nobilissima 20 (1981): 129–34; Catello, “Mobili carrozze”; Catello, “Argenti e sculture”; Elio Catello, “Lorenzo Vaccaro scultore e argentiere,” Napoli Nobilissima 21, nos. 1–2 (1982): 8–16; Catello, “Le sculture degli altari napoletani,” 8. Bas-reliefs were made from wax models, while the parts cast in silver were prepared with chalk models: both usually got lost in the making. Catello, “Scultori argentieri,” 282–83, 286n36.118 On Bari (but now completely dismantled), see Giuseppe Ceci, “Nella chiesa di S. Nicola, II: L’altare d’argento nella cripta,” Japigia: Rivista di Archeologia Storia e Arte (1933): 48–53; Francesco Babudri, La cripta di San Nicola a Bari nei suoi alti valori di storia e d’arte (Ed. “Bollettino di S. Nicola,” 1963); Elio Catello, “Marmi, bronzi, argenti e stucchi,” in Pane, Seicento napoletano, 343–52, 541. On silver decorations in S. Maria La Nova (only the paliotto is preserved), see Rocco Di Napoli, Il coro e la chiesa di S. Maria La Nova di Napoli nella storia e nell’arte (Naples, 1927); Civiltà del Seicento, vol. 2, 315–16, cat. 5.8; Catello, “Gian Domenico,” 125; Vincenzo Rizzo, “Uno sconosciuto paliotto di Lorenzo Vaccaro e altri fatti coevi napoletani,” Storia dell’Arte 49 (1983): 211–33; Catello, “Mobili carrozze,”

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346; Catello, “Scultori argentieri,” 281; Catello, “Le sculture degli altari napoletani,” 7.119 Renato Ruotolo, “Un nuovo progetto per la Guglia di S. Gaetano a Napoli,” Napoli Nobilissima 28 (1989): 229–34, esp. 230–31.120 Catello, “Argenti e sculture,” 81.121 Maria Accascina, Oreficeria di Sicilia dal XII al XIX secolo (Palermo: Flaccovio, 1941), figs. 161, 183, 205; Di Natale, Splendori di Sicilia, 33 (fig. 14), 29 (figs. 10–11), 52 (fig. 53). On the Virgin of the Letter, see Florinda Ciaramitaro, “Messina, 4 giugno 1657: Gli apparati festivi realizzati in onore della Madonna della Lettera,” Lexicon, Storie e Architettura in Sicilia 1 (2005): 20–40, esp. 28.122 Kenneth D. S. Lapatin, Chryselephantine Statuary in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 7, 18–21, figs. 114–15, 130–32.123 Maria Concetta Di Natale and her team in Palermo have been working extensively on the applied arts in the Kingdom of Sicily, offering a model for untapped parallel scholarship on Naples, so far limited to the Catellos’ works on Neapolitan silvers and to Angelo and Lydia Lipinski, Il tesoro sacro della Costiera Amalfitana, ed. Nicola Franciosa (Amalfi: Centro di Cultura e Storia Amalfitana, 1989). See, for instance, Di Natale, Imago Virginis: La madonna in Sicilia: Immagini e devozione (Palermo: Flaccovio, 2003); Di Natale, Il tesoro nascosto: Gioie e argenti per la Madonna di Trapani, exh. cat. [Trapani, Museo Regionale Pepoli, Palermo, 1995] (Palermo: Novecento, 1995); Di Natale, Splendori di Sicilia.124 On various lamps and perfume holders offered by several viceroys to kings and cathedrals, see Elio Catello, “Argenti napoletani del Seicento: Considerazioni su documenti inediti,” in Ricerche sul

’600 napoletano: Saggi e documenti 1998 (Milan: Electa Napoli, 1999), 7–15, esp. 8–10; Catello, “Argenti e sculture,” 81–82.125 The tiratori d’argento e d’oro produced silver threads of different kinds for embroiderers and silk weavers. Strazzullo, “Per la storia delle corporazioni degli orafi e delle arti affini a Napoli,” 146–50. On silk and embroidery in Naples, see Catello, “L’arte del ricamo a Napoli”; Maria Rosaria Mancino,

“Panni ricamati delle storie della vita di S. Tommaso d’Aquino,” Antichità Viva 32, nos. 3–4 (1993): 47–55, and Antichità Viva 34, nos. 1–2 (1995): 52–55.126 Rosa Franzese, “Macchine e apparati luminosi per la festa di San Gennaro,” in Pane, Seicento napoletano, 498–514, 552–54; Franzese, “La festa di settembre in onore di S. Gennaro tra ’600 e ’700: Macchine e apparati luminosi,” Campania Sacra 11–12 (1980–81): 213–304; Franzese, “La macchina delle luminarie per la festa di San Gennaro del settembre 1778,” in Barocco romano e barocco italiano: Il teatro, l’effimero, l’allegoria, ed. Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna (Roma: Gangemi, 1985): 259–65.127 Sabina de Cavi, “City-Draping in Seventeenth-Century Naples: The Role of Cloth and Color in the Luminarie for the Annual Feast of S. Gennaro (1661–1719),” presented at ArchiTextile: The Textile Medium in Architecture, Past to Present, University of Zürich, May 19–20.128. Francesco Divenuto, “Una festa barocca per la Compagnia di Gesù a Napoli,” Napoli Nobilissima 36, 1–6 (1997): 143–48, esp. 144.129 Keysler, Travels, 384 (describing the sacristy of St. Caterina a Formello): “a cabinet of curiosities, with abundance of antique medals, urns, idols, minerals, petrifactions, large pieces of coral. . . .”130 Pietro Giannone (1676–1748), Istoria civile del Regno di Napoli, trans. Captain James Ogilvie (London: W. Innys, 1729–31).