In 1343, King Robert was buried in a monumental tomb in the church of Corpus Christi (Santa Chiara) in Naples. Placed directly behind the altar, the tomb aligned the body of the king and the Eucharist. The arrangement was radical, with devotees praying concurrently to Christ and the king. And yet, like other characteristics of Angevin patronage, the alignment was soon copied throughout the Regno.  By focusing on Altomonte (Calabria) and Galatina (southern Puglia), this talk explores the centrality of the county seats in the Kingdom’s patronage patterns. In the 1350s, Filippo Sangineto, seneschal of Provence and count of Altomonte, rebuilt the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione with a monumental, multi-person tomb behind the altar, imitating the example of the Neapolitan tomb. A century later, the prince of Taranto and count of Galatina Giovanni Antonio del Balzo Orsini commissioned an octagonal mausoleum behind the apse in Santa Caterina, Galatina. While both projects referenced the court’s artistic developments, Sangineto’s was framed beyond the world of the Angevin hierarchy. The ‘kingmaker’ Giovanni Antonio was attempting something different: by referencing Angevin tradition and Aragonese innovations, and anchoring his project in the county seat, Giovanni Antonio was attempting to become un altro re.

Recent scholarship on the feudal class during the Angevin and Aragonese periods in the Kingdom of Sicily is overturning the long-held interpretation of a monolithic group of barons opposed to monarchical power and incapable of either taking significant political or action or making autonomous cultural interventions. Recent historical research, however, has been questioning this interpretative paradigm, establishing a more balanced evaluation of the political, artistic and urban role of the baronial class in relation to the previous focus on the monarchy and the capital of Naples, moving our understanding of the Kingdom from a centripetal to a centrifugal model.

This paper will highlight the importance of this new trend in scholarship through an examination of the innovative demonstrations of personal and family authority through an examination of two comital families in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Orsini in Nola and the Sangineto in Altomonte. An examination of their patronage highlights the importance of the baronial class in urban planning, religious patronage and ostentatious self-commemoration, innovations that were in turn reflected not only elsewhere in the Kingdom (as at Galatina), but also in the capital city of Naples itself.

In late 15th and early 16th century Sicily, the urban nobility played a leading role in reconfiguring cities and their monuments. Recent research reveals that these eminent citizens, in synergy with the Benedictine, Franciscan and Dominican orders, reshaped large and small centers in ways that reinforced their prestige and authority. An impressive example of this phenomenon can be found in Alvaro Paternò, a prominent member of the Catania élite in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, who was a civic official, occasional ambassador of the viceroy and honorary Senator of Rome. His privileged relations with the Benedictines and Observant Franciscans consolidated his authority in Catania, enabling him to commission major projects in the early 16th century for the Observant Franciscans in Catania and the Benedictines in Agira. At the convent of Santa Maria di Gesù in Catania, Paternò commissioned a dynastic chapel with prestigious works of art by Antonello Gagini and the Messina painter Angelo de Chirico. The mausoleum was particularly important for his lineage and consolidated earlier examples of the family’s seigniorial penetration on the island as early as the mid-14th century. In Catania, Alvaro Paternò’s artistic interventions created a permanent testament to his authority and power.