Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2011 - 20162

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Author: search.filters.author.Riesenberger, Nicole JoySubject: search.filters.subject.Naples

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    King of the Renaissance: Art and Politics at the Neapolitan Court of Ferrante I, 1458-1494
    (2016) Riesenberger, Nicole Joy; Gill, Meredith J.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the second half of the fifteenth century, King Ferrante I of Naples (r. 1458-1494) dominated the political and cultural life of the Mediterranean world. His court was home to artists, writers, musicians, and ambassadors from England to Egypt and everywhere in between. Yet, despite its historical importance, Ferrante’s court has been neglected in the scholarship. This dissertation provides a long-overdue analysis of Ferrante’s artistic patronage and attempts to explicate the king’s specific role in the process of art production at the Neapolitan court, as well as the experiences of artists employed therein. By situating Ferrante and the material culture of his court within the broader discourse of Early Modern art history for the first time, my project broadens our understanding of the function of art in Early Modern Europe. I demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, King Ferrante was a sophisticated patron of the visual arts whose political circumstances and shifting alliances were the most influential factors contributing to his artistic patronage. Unlike his father, Alfonso the Magnanimous, whose court was dominated by artists and courtiers from Spain, France, and elsewhere, Ferrante differentiated himself as a truly Neapolitan king. Yet Ferrante’s court was by no means provincial. His residence, the Castel Nuovo in Naples, became the physical embodiment of his commercial and political network, revealing the accretion of local and foreign visual vocabularies that characterizes Neapolitan visual culture.
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    Lying with the Saints: Heavenly Bodies and Earthly Bodies in the Succorpo of San Gennaro
    (2011) Riesenberger, Nicole Joy; Gill, Meredith J; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In January 1497, when the powerful Carafa family translated the relics of San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples, to the city's cathedral, a devastating plague that had ravished the region is said to have immediately ceased. The presence and miraculous power of the saint's relics give meaning to the Succorpo, Cardinal Oliviero Carafa's funerary chapel in the cathedral. This magnificent foundation serves two functions: first, it is the private funerary chapel of Carafa and select members of his family; second, it is the locus of the cult of San Gennaro himself. My thesis examines the chapel's dual functions and explores the iconography of its decoration. I present new propositions regarding the architectural plan and artistic attributions of the chapel, and I provide a close reading of the portrait sculpture of Cardinal Carafa in the Succorpo, considering how its strategic placement informs our understanding of the program and its meaning.