Naples on Google Books

We've recently experienced some of the benefits and pitfalls of using Google Books as a resource for the study of the Neapolitan past. We report on this experience in the June 12, 2009 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, available today online in an article entitled "Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past"

and accessible free for the next week.

Mutilation — of kingdoms and of scholarship — emerges as a key theme.

Psalter of Cristoforo Orimina

The liturgical psalter illuminated by Cristoforo Orimina is online with E-Codices, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland.  The manuscript is Genève, Bibliothèque de Genève, Comites Latentes 15. Shown here is fol. 29r. Orimina was a court painter during the reigns of Robert of Anjou and Giovanna I and probably completed this manuscript some time between 1335 and 1350 for the house of Agnes de Périgord  (1305–1345), the widow of Robert’s youngest brother, John of Gravina, duke of Durazzo. The arms at the center bottom show those of Talleyrand-Périgord and of Armagnac. The manuscript shows the clear influence of Roberto di Oderisio, responsible for the frescoes in Sta. Maria Incoronata. According to some scholarship it reflects the influence of Franciscan ascetics at the Angevin court. Perhaps, but the manuscript is also replete with delightful marginal images of people at sport and play, making music, dancing, showing off the latest fashions, and in general demonstrating the love of life for which Naples and its court were well known in the mid-fourteenth century.

Baths of Pozzuoli now online

Petrus de Eboli’s De balneis Puteolanis (The Baths of Pozzuoli)  is now online in E-Codices, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland. The manuscript, Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 135, is believed to have been created in Naples during the reign of Giovanna I, some time between 1350 and 1370. It appears to show first-hand knowledge of the Bay of Naples’ and Bay of Pozzuoli’s archaeological remains of Roman baths.

First composed by Petrus, court poet to Henry VI of Sicily, between 1196 and 1220, it is one of the most important sources for medieval Naples’ topography and for the history of science and medicine in medieval Europe.

To access the collection, please see our entry on Petrarch’s visit to the baths in October 1343 and click on the thumbnail.

New Readings on Sex, Style and Spending

We’ve added three new readings to our chapter on Robert of Anjou that sample his legislation on prostitution in central Naples (1314), record his spending on cavalcades and church support (June 1334), and translate his sumptuary edict on youth fashion (1335).

We review Paola Vitolo in RQ

There’s a fine new book on Sta. Maria Incoronata that we've recently reviewed in the Spring 2009 issue of Renaissance Quarterly. It’s Paola Vitolo, La chiesa della Regina: L’Incoronata di Napoli, Giovanna I d’Angiò e Roberto di Oderisio (Rome: Viella, 2008). Readers can access the online review hosted by the University of Chicago Press. We hope in the future that Chicago will keep up the high standards established by RQ.