Naples and Beyond: World-Wide Cultural Networks Sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 9 – 14, 2022

The city and the kingdom of Naples in the late medieval period have attracted much exciting scholarly attention in the last two decades. No longer swayed by Vasari’s bitter commentary on Naples, recent research has been applying new methods and new digital technology to understand the city and its environs. This double session on Naples seeks to build on this recent scholarship by considering Naples as a world city and center of cultural production whose art, artists, and architecture were not only distinct but also influential beyond the boundaries of the kingdom of Naples to the wider Mediterranean, Europe, and other continents between c.1250 and c.1435.

Session 1: Within Naples: The City and the Regno c. 1250-1435

The only monarchy in Italy, Naples had a unique position in contrast to the many city-states of northern Italy. A powerful fiefdom of the papacy with a firm military and political grip over the entire peninsula during the fourteenth century, how did that powerful position manifest itself in art, architecture, and material culture? If Naples should be considered not on the periphery of mainstream Italian art but a center of it, then what aspects allow us to consider it as such?

Please submit proposals that consider, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• ● Representations of kingship/queenship and themes of personal and dynastic glorification
• ● Patronage of religious orders
• ● Medieval topography of Naples, including digital mapping or reconstruction/ maps as palimpsests
• ● Local saints and pilgrimage; nuns, religious leaders/preachers in Angevin Naples Francesco Rosselli, Tavola Strozzi, 1472-1473, tempera on panel, 82 x 245 cm, Naples, Museo Nazionale di San Martino
• ● Importation of artists (painters, architects)

Session 2: Beyond Naples: Angevin Naples and its Reach beyond the Regno c. 1250-1435

A port city, Naples was a complex site of artistic mobility and exchange during the medieval period. What impact did the art and artists of late medieval Naples have on the global stage? And equally, what impact did the wider connected world have on Naples?

Please submit proposals that consider, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• ● The movement of art, other objects of material culture, and artistic materials between Naples and the wider Mediterranean and beyond
• ● Trade, especially maritime trade, as a trigger of cultural and artistic innovation
• ● Royal, diplomatic, cultural, commercial, and artistic relationships between Naples and other Italian city states, the wider Mediterranean, Europe, Africa, and Asia

Please submit abstracts no later than 15 September through the ICMS Confex site at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi. We will send out notifications in the latter half of September. Please direct all questions or concerns to janis.elliott@ttu.edu and dgallant@udel.edu.

Since the International Congress on Medieval Studies will be run virtually in 2022, the ICMA (via a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant) will cover the conference fees of those participating in the ICMA-sponsored session(s).

The ICMA Student Committee is also organizing a session on Naples, New Approaches to the Art and Architecture of Angevin and Aragonese Naples (1265-1458). To promote stronger networks between ICMA student and senior scholars, Janis Elliott and Denva Gallant will moderate the Student Committee session.