Naples Photo Galleries

We’ve been happy to discover that our open-access Image Galleries on Flickr have been a popular addition to our Medieval Naples project. Thus far all images in our Naples gallery have had 47,000 views.

That encourages us to keep adding photos and other images to our galleries and to continue to link them to our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples.

Our two book-length publications, Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History, 400-1400 by Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo and Medieval Naples: A Documentary History History, 400-1400 by Ronald G. Musto have been selling well in their hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions.

Interactive Map updates

Our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples has now logged over 59,000 views; and we continue to update and revise it. Our latest update includes new information on the late ancient and medieval port, the Byzantine baths at Sta. Chiara, revisions to the ancient and early medieval shoreline, and a few new images for our linked Naples image galleries.

Several of these changes are in response to Paul Arthur's positive and thoughtful review of Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo's Medieval Naples: An Architectural and Urban History in Speculum 88.1 (January 2013) and to update information just published in Ronald G. Musto's Medieval Naples: A Documentary History 400-1400.

New Image Galleries

Technology is a good thing for publishers, scholars, and readers. But the pace of technological change can sometimes be so fast that it leaves us all bewildered at times. So it was lately when Apple announced that it was rolling out its new iCloud computing technology. Lots to like, along with a new operating system: automatic synching between devices for images, music, text, spreadsheets, etc. But there was a catch: the “old” iDisk technology, along with other Apple remote server tools, was ending on June 30, 2012.

That meant that the hosting platform for all of Italica Press’s Naples image galleries, linked to our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples, would disappear in two weeks, along with all that online content, unless we moved as quickly as the rate of technology change. Well, there’s good news: we have.

Beginning today, all Italica Press Naples image galleries — and all hyperlinks from the Interactive Map — will now be using the Flickr platform. While this has taken some work to migrate all those hundreds of images, Flickr itself has many benefits, including advantages over the old iMac Gallery technology: images are more easily uploaded, sorted, tagged, sized, viewed, and glossed. They are also more discoverable by Internet search engines. Online images galleries is also Flickr’s business. All-in-all a change for the better.

Some things still need to be updated: the hyperlinks for the Kindle editions of our Medieval Naples series will have to be redirected; and the list of URLs in the appendix to the print edition of Caroline Bruzelius and William Tronzo’s  Medieval Naples: An Architectural & Urban History, 400–1400 (p. 125) will need revision. We’ll provide an online, downloadable concordance to those links; but most will be straightforward and transparent by simply using the now updated Interactive Map.

S. Giovanni Maggiore

We have just returned from a brief trip to Naples where we obtained permission from the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici to view and photograph the church and the scavi of S. Giovanni Maggiore, one of the most important early-Christian buildings of Naples, constructed under Bishop Vincenzo c. 550-60.

The church was meticulously and beautifully restored by the Soprintendenza under the supervision of Arch. Orsola Foglia and team but has been closed since its completion in 2003/4. Thanks to Arch. Foglia and the Soprintendenza, we have now expanded out its entry in our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples and have posted a complete series of images in our web gallery.

Most notable among these for medievalists are the two spoliated capitals surmounted by Vincenzo’s monograph, and the remains of the early-Christian ambulatory, incorporating spoliated columns and pilasters from Leptis Magna dating from the second century CE. Both the scavi and the restoration of the dazzling 17th-century basilica (by Dionisio Lazzari) are important cultural sites in Naples, and we urge readers to make inquiries to the Soprintendenza per i Beni Architettonici (Palazzo Reale, Piazza del Plebiscito, Napoli) both to view the site and to urge its reopening and the complete publication of its restoration and excavations.

The Anjou Bible

Long known to scholars of Naples for its frontispieces of Robert of Anjou and the royal Angevin genealogy, the Malines (Mechelen) Bible is one of the most magnificent manuscripts of the Angevin period — and one of the most important visual sources for the reigns of Robert of Anjou and Giovanna I. A new edition has just been published in print facsimile and online. The print volume, The Anjou Bible: Naples 1340. A Royal Manuscript Revealed, edited by Lieve Watteeuw and Jan Van der Stock (Paris, Leuven & Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010), offers a collection of twelve essays by such noted experts as John Lowden, Frans Gistelinck, Cathleen A. Fleck, Alessandro Tomei and Stefania Paone, Michelle Duran, Nicolas Bock, Alessandra Perriccioli (Saggese), Luc Dequeker, Pierre Delsaerdt, Marina Van Bos, Roberto Padoan, Marvin E. Klein, Gerrit de Bruin, Barnard J. Aalderink, and Ted A.G. Steemers.

The new book covers the provenance, codicology, conservation and restoration of the manuscript, its creation and artists and its cultural and political contexts. The print volume is accompanied by extensive annotations, an excellent bibliography, and full-color reproductions of every illustrated folio in the manuscript.

In November 2010 the Anjou Bible Research Project (Illuminare, K.U. Leuven) mounted a far-ranging exhibition and series of panels around the restoration. Even more important, the complete series of illustrated folios is now available online, free and open access, with an excellent high-resolution image viewer at: http://www.anjoubible.be/thebibleonline .

Interactive Map, Bibliography, Google Translate

We’re happy to report that our Interactive Map and Bibliography are reaching expanding audiences. When we last reported on our Interactive Map back in September 2009 it had seen about 9,700 hits. As of today this number has risen to 25,725, over 16,000 hits in one year. The same holds true of our online Bibliography, which has now seen over 25,000 downloads, up from 10,000 a year ago.

We continue to revise the Interactive Map with newly added sites, revised and updated information, and new bibliography. Our downloadable Bibliography is now been supplemented by dynamically added listings on WorldCat arranged by period. We’re pleased that these resources are finding an audience and hope that they are of value.

You’ll also notice that we’ve added Google Translate to this blog: readers can now view these entries in a fairly accurate translation into their preferred language. Please do not hesitate to contact us here with your comments and suggestions for changes and additions.

Chapters 2 and 3 Now Online

We’re pleased to inform our readers that the first selections in Chapters 2, Late Roman and Byzantine Naples and Chapter 3, Ducal Naples have now been launched online. Texts include the histories of Jordanes, Paul the Deacon, Procopius and the Liber Pontificalis; the Variae of Cassiodorus and Letters of Gregory I and selected archival documents.
Chapter 2 covers the period from 476 to the beginnings of the Duchy in 568. Chapter 3 picks up the narrative from 568 to the end of the Duchy in 1137.
Selections include hyperlinks to online archives and editions, bibliographical references, full-scale views of art, links to our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples and other chapters in the Documentary History.
These offerings are only the beginnings of these chapters. As we go along we’ll be adding further texts drawn from existing editions, and from our own translations of texts and archival documents. Thus far we have posted over 60 texts across all chapters of Medieval Naples, with over 100 illustrations, already making this the most extensive documentary selection in English for the history of medieval Naples.

Early Medieval Naples Now Forthcoming

We’re happy to announce that William Tronzo’s contribution to our Documentary History of Naples: Art History. Naples in the Early Middle Ages is now in final production and will be published soon.

William Tronzo is an internationally known scholar of late ancient and early medieval art history. He brings his expertise and elegant style to bear on the city’s transition from ancient Greco-Roman town to medieval capital, reviewing the development of its urban fabric and chief monuments, including the catacombs, Sta. Restituta, the baptistry of S. Giovanni in Fonte, and the Pietrasanta.
This chapter will soon be available as a cross-searchable, downloadable PDF document, full of color and B&W images, plans and digital reconstructions. It will then join the chapter by Caroline Bruzelius on the High and Late Middle Ages to form a complete print book on the art history of medieval Naples.

Caroline Bruzelius, Naples Art History, Is Published

We’re very pleased to announce the newest addition to our Naples: A Documentary History, 400–1400. Caroline Bruzelius’ Art History: Naples in the High and Late Middle Ages is the first comprehensive review of the city’s architecture, art and urban development in the high and late Middle Ages in English since the author’s The Stones of Naples.

Clearly and concisely written, it is an ideal introductory survey for the scholar, student and general reader. This downloadable, interactive e-book is fully searchable and can be navigated with the standard Adobe Acrobat interface: page by page, through an interactive table of contents or via bookmarks. It offers dozens of illustrations — maps, plans, elevations, drawings, color and black & white photos — that can be viewed at any number of screen resolutions. The work provides hyperlinks to web-based photo galleries of all the major monuments, to many documents cited in the text, and a complete — and free — downloadable Bibliography.

Een passie voor Napels

We’re constantly on the lookout for digital resources to incorporate into, or link out to, our Medieval Naples pages. Recently we came across some wonderful photos of medieval and modern Naples on the site Een passie voor Napels (A Passion for Naples: A Cultural Travel Guide) curated by Henk Woudsma. The site uses a blog format, with a fine index of sites, to offer a detailed look at the city's major monuments, its urban fabric, street life and high culture. The site is written in Dutch and uses Google Translate for an English version.

With Henk’s kind permission we’ll be featuring some of his photos and other resources in our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples and web galleries, linking out to his originals.

We recommend the site to all and invite you to suggest other resources.

(Photo: © Henk Woudsma)

Bibliography and Interactive Map

We’re happy to report that two of our new Medieval Naples pages are being used quite a bit by readers. Our Bibliography has now received almost 1,500 downloads. It is searchable and currently contains nearly 600 items of value to researchers in all periods of medieval Naples. It can be downloaded free of charge.

Our Interactive Map of Medieval Naples has now received nearly 3,900 views. This map uses the online tools available in Google Map. Clicking on the zoom-in or zoom-out buttons on the upper left will magnify views down to the street level. Users can also view this map in “Map” (or street) mode, Satellite (aerial photograph), or Terrain (topographical) views. It uses standard cartographical symbols for abbeys, churches, secular buildings, walls (early medieval and Angevin), gates, and fortifications.

Clicking on any of these symbols will open a window with descriptive texts, images, bibliography and hyperlinks to other texts, sites, and web-image galleries produced by Italica Press.

Clicking “View Larger Map” below will open this map in Google Map and provide a complete index of sites. There you can also open the map in Google Earth (a free, downloadable program) and see the medieval city set against a navigable three-dimensional landscape.

Both the Bibliography and Map are works in progress. We welcome your suggestions for additions and changes.