The Literary «Ekphrasis» of Castel Nuovo: A Contribution to Value the Cultural Identity of the Ideal City Government, Promoted by Aristocratic Courts and Civil Administrations in the XIV Century

Sara Cipolla

doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/aef.11.483

Abstract

The research work concerns the development in the Italian literature of the French theme of Neuf Preux, and Particularly Took into account a crown of sonnets of nine famous men linked to an alleged cycle of paintings attributed to Giotto's in the palace of Castel Nuovo in Naples. The survey highlighted how in medieval Italian literature, beyond the more or less explicit recovery of the French literary tradition, occupies a prominent place the function that these poems take in the view of the literature of the time. The survey actually shows the two faces of the series of famous heroes, which on one hand is the mouthpiece of the political ideals and civil inspired by the courteous and Roman antiquities, on the other hand appears to be ripe fruit of a didactic poem in which the adherence to the motto of "ut pictura poesis" become as a kind of surface projection of images.

Highlights

An interesting perspective is offered by numerous studies on the presumed influence of the lost fresco of Worldly Glory of Giotto, painted according to the sources by the illustrious Florentine in the hall of Azzone Visconti’s Palace in Milan (1335), in the allegorical structure of the procession of heroes described by Boccaccio in Amorosa Visione
Unlike him Ciccuto [14] speculates that Boccaccio was inspired by the frescoes of Giotto in Castel Nuovo, imagining that the iconographic structure of Neapolitan hall presented itself, not so much as a parade of ancient heroes, but rather as a Worldly Glory in triumph with a procession of famous men, exactly like that of Milan: commensurate, with the testimony of the Amorosa Visione
The previous literary text represented by Amorosa Visione lead us to believe that, following the example of Boccaccio, even the crown of Castel Nuovo could constitute an autonomous textual ekphrasis, not an illustrative corpus and less than ever tied to an epigrammatic description, as well as happens in the figurative cycles of illustrious men [32], but we have to think about it as effigies loquitur, reliable evidence of «un parlare che non si percepisce con l’udito, ma con la vista» [33]

Summary

Introduction

It is well known that both the De viris and the Triumphus Fame have enjoyed, during the Renaissance, a remarkable iconographic fortune, and it seems that in the encounter between the triumphal subject and the parade of heroes, at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth century, are frequently situated various iconographic projects: this might be the case, as argued Marcello Ciccuto [14], of the alleged cycle of famous Men of Castel Nuovo, painted by Giotto (according to the tradition), and described in the nine sonnets attributed to the Florentine Malizia Barattone, that, in parallel to the Worldly Glory, painted by the Florentine painter in the palace of Azzone Visconti in Milan ( this fresco, like the aforementioned cycle of Castel Nuovo, has never been found, there are several literary and figurative testimonies – except for the supposed allusion of Boccaccio in Amorosa Visione (B) IV 10-21 – which would ensure the execution.

Results

Conclusion