New Research on Art in Fifteenth-Century Naples / Nuove ricerche sull’arte del Quattrocento a Napoli
Philine HELAS
The Triumph of Alfonso of Aragon in Naples: From Living Images to Pictorial Representations
Alfonso of Aragon’s triumphal entry into Naples on 26 February 1443 marked the end of Angevin rule and the beginning of fifty years of Aragonese dominion in southern Italy. In various ways, Alfonso’s entry was an epoch-making event. A highpoint of the celebratory program was the Florentine merchants’ presentation of tableaux vivants or living images. This article concerns the depiction of Alfonso’s triumph in a Florentine cassone that offers us an extraordinary example of the representational strategies of the city of Florence within the context of the festivities surrounding the triumphal entry and the pictorialization of these events.
Alfonso of Aragon’s classically modeled triumphal procession was itself innovative, and the process of its manifold perpetuation in written and pictorial media endowed the representation of the ruler with unprecedented argumentative force. In its antique formal language, the relief on Alfonso’s triumphal arch at Castel Nuovo is oriented toward both the Neapolitan populace and the Italian elite. This image is doubled in a smaller relief in the sala dei baroni, which draws the triumph into the castle’s interior and serves as a reference to the monumental triumphal arch.