The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples (review)

Here is a real jewel: an exemplary collaboration that has produced a prolific study of a forgotten Trecento masterpiece. This book on the surprisingly well-preserved Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina contains studies in social and religious history and in royal patronage in Naples during the late Middle Ages. The broad cultural exposition serves as the setting for a marvelous anthology of masterly studies of the artistic expressions of this patronage.

The book is of extreme importance for any lover of art history, for several reasons. First, it is a rare publication in English on fourteenth-century art in Naples. The reserve of foreign scholars of earlier generations toward the Naples of their day created a lacuna that has deprived the southern Italian capital of its rightful place as one of the most important cultural centers of fourteenth-century Europe. This beautiful book is an essential contribution that will certainly help to correct this fault.

A second advantage is the book's stress on the patronage of the Angevin dynasty, which ruled Naples from 1266 to 1435 and left in the city an immense architectural and artistic legacy. The book wonderfully illustrates the uniqueness of their reign, which combined sincere religiosity with acute awareness of the historical importance of magnificent building. This approach resulted in a surprising number of grand churches, many of them still existing.

Another characteristic of the Angevin dynasty in Naples is the prominent role played by its women, either as independent queens or as influential wives and mothers. In this respect the book also makes an essential contribution to the study of feminine patronage in the late Middle Ages in general, and of the iconography of the churches of women's monasteries in particular.

Above all, the book is an exemplary work of gifted and careful editing. Its many contributors notwithstanding, it sustains the same level of erudition and clear literary expression throughout its 201 pages. The reader has a compact and unified work, a brilliantly arranged entity. The discussion is carefully ordered to create a sort of narrative.

Not only does the book elegantly overcome the problem of different studying methods and writing styles; it also takes full advantage of its writers' diverse approaches and combines them in rich harmony. The various chapters of the book, each by a different author, give the impression that each and every writer is entirely familiar with all the other texts and has adjusted his or her topic to the general scheme without conceding his or her singular approach. This diversified unity is so rare in anthologies: this one should be studied as a paradigm of extraordinary editing.

Each chapter can be read as an independent unit, so some unavoidable repetitions occur of small pieces of essential information. Yet this only helps to unite for the reader the various chapters into the whole and to make the book a consolidated study.

An instructive introduction by the two editors, Janis Elliott and Cordelia Warr, is followed by a general report by Rosa Anna Genovese of the history of the building and its restoration. The first two chapters are dedicated to Mary of Hungary, founder of the monastery and builder of its church. Chapter 3, by Matthew J. Clear, illustrates Mary's key role in the story of the Angevin dynasty in Naples and discusses her personality as queen and patroness. Chapter 4, by Tanja Michalsky, is an analysis of the iconography of Mary's tomb, which is interpreted in religious and political terms. An exhaustive discussion of the architecture of the church by Caroline Bruzelius is followed by the first treatment, by Hisashi Yakou, of the church's murals, The Apocalypse Madonna above the Loffredo Chapel. The next four chapters — by Cathlene A. Fleck, Adrian S. Hoch, Cordelia Warr...