The article discusses a 14th-century narrative cycle painted in tempera on a marble portal situated in the chapel of San Paolo in Naples cathedral. It depicts four successive scenes of small format with 'Stories of the Passion' and an 'Annunciation', along with the patron, a member of the clergy. Described the first time in 1986 as one of the highest expressions of Neapolitan painting of the Trecento and subsequently forgotten by the historiography, in 2019 the cycle was the object of a lengthy yet superfluous article. In both studies the work was related to the Avignonese phase of Simone Martini, and was consequently dated to the middle of the century.
A more careful stylistic reading of the cycle has prompted the author to propose an earlier dating to the beginning of the 1330s, as well as retracing the artistic background of the anonymous painter back to Giotto, who was active in Naples from 1328 to 1332, despite quotations from Simone Martini's 'Saint Louis of Toulouse' altarpiece, in the Neapolitan basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore since 1317. Various features have also led the author to propose a different contextualization of the portal and its iconographical programme. In all probability, the marble portal originally framed the passage connecting the apse in cornu Evangelii – where the Sacred Species have always been kept – with the main chapel. Lastly, an unnoticed detail of the costume of the patron, who is represented by the side of the Virgin, while confirming the early dating of the work, has also provided a lead towards his identification.
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Italiano
pp. 13-22
Francesco Aceto
Between Giotto and Simone Martini. A rare painted portal with 'Stories of the Passion' in Naples cathedral and its topographical and liturgical context
read abstract » pp. 13-22
Victor M. Schmidt
A proposal for Ambrogio Lorenzetti's panel paintings from the church of San Procolo in Florence
read abstract » pp. 23-30
Keith Christiansen
The architecture in a Bohemian panel of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Gabriele Fattorini
On the 'Annunciation' of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum by Jacopo della Quercia
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Francesco Caglioti
Desiderio da Settignano the portraitist: “una testa del Chardinale di Portoghallo”, or the 'Saint Lawrence' in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence
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Alessandro Angelini
Francesco di Giorgio in Urbino and the iconography of the 'Flagellation'
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Gianluca Amato
Benedetto da Maiano: two proposals for the catalogue of terracottas
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Antonio Mazzotta
Evidence pointing to the identity of the 'Master of the Sforza Altarpiece'
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Roberto Bartalini
Raphael and Sodoma in the Stanza della Segnatura. New findings
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Rosanna De Gennaro
About the little-known opisthographic marble altarpiece of the abbey of Montevergine
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Elisabetta Cioni
Notes on the 17th-century reliquary of the right arm of Saint John the Baptist of Siena cathedral
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Tomaso Montanari
Bernini's caricatures: spirit without corpus?
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Gennaro Toscano
The popularity of Dante in France in the early 19th century. Aubin-Louis Millin and ms. XIII.C.4 of the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples
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Federica Testa
Paolo Lombardi, photographer: portrait of an art dealer
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Laura Cavazzini
Alceo Dossena and the forgery of Gothic sculpture between Lombardy and Tuscany
read abstract » pp. 168-176
Luca Quattrocchi
Italian art for National Socialism. Antonio Maraini and the Ausstellung Italienischer Kunst von 1800 bis zur Gegenwart exhibition in Berlin in 1937
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Marco M. Mascolo
Wilhelm R. Valentiner, Renaissance sculpture and the problems of connoisseurship
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