Parole di pietra : epigrafia, studio dell’antico e nuove architetture nel Rinascimento meridionale

This article presents the first results of an ongoing research on inscriptions in southern Italy between the Middle Ages and the Early modern period. After considering monumental ancient epigraphic texts which acted as models, the article analyses three different ways in which inscriptions were used to make a facade “speak”. In first instance, the article analyses the Palace of Diomede Carafa and the Pontano chapel in Naples as significant examples of “written” buildings, on account of the considerable number of inscriptions they displayed and central role epigraphic text played in the overall all’antica design of the facade. A further aspect of the architectural use of inscriptions is represented by those cases in which a monumental and long inscription crossed the entire facade. The article finally focuses on the inscriptions connected to city gates and palace portals, and moreover on those cases in which it is the door itself to speak in first person. Within the considerable number of examples across which can be found across the entire territory of southern Italy, particular attention is devoted to a group of medieval and modern inscriptions connected to the memory of the Swabian emperor Frederick II.
Altogether the cases presented allow us to recognize the “speaking facades” created in the Kingdom of Naples as a self-aware phenomenon which relied on a consolidated tradition of study of local antiquities and on a sense of continuity with both the classical and medieval past, which further adds to the new balanced picture of Renaissance in southern Italy recently outlined in historical studies.