| This dissertation examines the monuments associated with the Rufolos, a family which flourished as merchants and bankers to King Charles I Anjou. From the 1260s through 1283, they constructed a palace and commissioned several liturgical furnishings for the Cathedral of Ravello. These works include the Pulpit of the Gospels by Nicola di Bartolomeo di Foggia (1272) and the Ciborium by Matteo da Narnia (1279). Although a corruption scandal sealed the family's demise in 1283, they continued to back artistic initiatives well into the fourteenth century, including the stucco baldachin tomb of Marinella Rufolo in Scala (1330s).;Utilizing extant and excavated monuments, inventories, charters, early histories, and scientific and popular texts, this study reconstructs the region's interweaving of royal, monastic, local, and "imported" artistic and cultural traditions. It addresses such topics as the composite nature of medieval palace architecture; baths and bathing in the Middle Ages; episcopal and lay strategies of church decoration; the migration of artists from royal to merchant circles, and the implications for the concept of "court" art; the use of ancient and medieval spoils in the high Middle Ages; and genealogy, portraiture, and heraldry as emerging modes of self-representation.;The stylistic, material, and iconographic heterogeneity of the Rufolo monuments indicates that many aesthetic idioms were accessible to the well-travelled Ravellese. The monuments also express subtle shifts in the family's ambitions and taste, and illuminate broader social and political issues in medieval southern Italy. The sophistication and eclecticism of the works demonstrate that southern Italy produced a viable indigenous culture during the war-torn Middle Ages, a culture that was both indebted to royal art in the Kingdom of Sicily, and also remarkably autonomous. |
