Papireto (Dec 2023)
La contemporaneidad de lo diferente. Riflessioni sull’architettura della Corona d’Aragona tra Gotico e Rinascimento e sulla sua diffusione nel Regno di Napoli
Abstract
The aim of this research is to trace the evolutionary convergence of sacred and civil architectural language between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age in the Kingdom of Naples, with reference to Catalonia. After a careful analysis of historiography, we observe the characteristics of the Catalan building tradition, which shows a strong attachment to the medie-val tradition even in the modern age, as it happens in the Kingdom of Na-ples. The architecture that some historians refer to as Catalan Gothic is far removed from French Gothic, both in constructive logic and meaning: in sacred architecture, a unique spatiality prevails, a legacy of the Roman con-structive tradition, filtered through Cistercian and Mendicant architecture. The complex and cultured language of southern architecture of the 15th century also inherits and reworks constructive elements of Frederician ar-chitecture, with the geometric simplicity of the building layout, the strong weight of the wall mass with flat surfaces in which decorative elements are inserted to emphasize the architectural design. In some cases, medieval tradition and the new language of the Renaissance coexist. In Naples, the most important commissioner was Sancha of Majorca, who married Robert the Wise in her second marriage in 1309 and who built the monastery and church of Santa Chiara. Angevin culture prevailed in the years between 1400 and 1442, albeit in the particular durazzesque sense, as evidenced by the church of S. Marta erected in 1400 by Charles III's widow, Margaret of Anjou Durazzo to celebrate her son Ladislaus' reconquest of the Kingdom. The chronological scope has been defined by adopting as a post quem term the 1400s, the year in which Ladislaus of Durazzo ascended the throne of Naples, and as ante quem the 1503s, the year in which the Spanish general Consalvo de Cordova defeated the French and the Kingdom of Naples became part of the Viceroyalty of Spain. Catalan architecture is not consi-dered as the last expression of Gothic culture, but as a peculiar anticlassical form of the Mediterranean Renaissance, due to its programmatic rejection of architectural order and the creation of a clearly recognizable code-style, adopted by the local barons as an expression of belonging to the ruling class and loyalty to the established power.
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