Die Kirchen Santa Chiara und Santa Maria di Monteoliveto als Bestattungsorte der Adligen in Neapel

Abstract

The location of burial places within the sepulchral practice of the Neapolitan nobility of the 14th and 15th centuries throw light upon the structuring of the urban space of the city. Besides the big churches of the mendicant orders in the centre of Naples, the churches of Santa Chiara, San Giovanni a Carbonara and Santa Maria di Monteoliveto, which hosted the tombs of the dynasties, were used despite their peripheral location as prestigious burial places. This paper examines exemplarily the involvement of the Neapolitan nobleman in the decoration of the two dynastic sepulchral churches of Santa Chiara (Anjou) and Santa Maria di Monteoliveto (Aragon). Both churches reveal a continuity in the sepulchral practice of the Neapolitan nobility because of their status as “royal churches”. This continuity was maintained through dynastic crises across the 14th and 15th centuries. Nevertheless, there was a formal and stylistic development in the tomb monuments of both churches. Santa Chiara houses the Gothic types that were typical for the 14th and the early 15th century, while in Santa Maria di Monteoliveto a variety of innovative types of the early Renaissance can be found.