PATRONAGE, STANDARDS AND TRANSFERT CULTUREL: NAPLES BETWEEN ART HISTORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE THEORY

Abstract

This article focuses on an evaluation of Naples as an artistic centre in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Art‐historical theories of centre and periphery as proposed by Kenneth Clark (1962), Enrico Castelnuovo and Carlo Ginzburg (1979), and Thomas DaKosta Kaufmann (1995) are based primarily on an assessment of the production and export of art works. They fail to explain the impact of consumer‐orientated court societies on artistic development. Taking Naples as an example, the applicability of more recent sociological models are considered – those by Saskia Sassen (1991) and Ulf Hannerz (1992), both based on Immanuel Wallerstein's ‘World System Theory’ (1974). The criteria Hannerz set forth for a cultural definition of a world city can be applied convincingly to fourteenth‐ and fifteenth‐century Naples. The import of foreign artists and artefacts into Naples was not a one‐sided affair but was counterbalanced by the export of cultural standards to other centres, where they influenced in return the artistic reception and production. This article argues that the complex dynamics of patronage are, therefore, a question of polycentricity, not only geographically but also socially, and that the dynamics of patronage should be studied with more attention to sociological methods.