Writing and Constructing a City’s Art History. Pietro Summonte’s Letter on the Art of Naples (1524)

How can the art history of an entire city be described in just a few pages? Pietro Summonte took up this challenge in his letter to Marcantonio Michiel and sketched a multi-layered picture of the art and architecture of Naples, a good 25 years before the publication of Vasari's Vite. The letter has not yet been systematically studied as an autonomous piece of art literature and is now being given a close reading by a group of scholars from different disciplines.

In 1524, the Neapolitan humanist Pietro Summonte wrote a 20-page letter, preserved in several copies, in which he reports on artworks and monuments in Naples. The addressee of the letter, the Venetian humanist and art collector Marcantonio Michiel, had asked his colleague for information on the history and art of ancient and modern Naples, which he needed for his – never realized – project of a collection of descriptions of the most important cities of the Italian peninsula. Summonte wrote a first brief history of art in Naples, in which historiographical concepts, the establishment of stylistic categories and genre hierarchies, as well as genealogies and artist anecdotes, play an important role. Chronology and genre (painting, sculpture, and architecture) are the organizing principles by which the city’s artworks and monuments deemed worthy of mention are arranged. The author always places his objects in a transcultural framework, with Venice, Florence, Catalonia and Flanders being particularly important points of reference. The text also contains reflections on the urban reorganization of Naples planned by Crown Prince Alfonso of Calabria, the future King Alfonso II, as well as a section on ancient buildings in Naples and the surrounding area, including the ruins of Paestum. As an early example of sixteenth-century art literature, the text, written in the colloquial form of a letter, allows us to examine the development of concepts and categories prior to the publication of Vasari’s Vite (1550).

Apart from a few exceptions, the letter has so far been used by researchers exclusively as a source of information for questions of dating or authorship, without itself becoming the subject of investigation. The text is virtually unknown in German Accademia, not least because it is only available in an edition that is difficult to access and it has never been translated into German. An international and interdisciplinary team of young scholars, whose members come from the disciplines of art history, philology, archaeology, history, philosophy, literary and Italian studies, is addressing this need for a new edition and translation. Methodically, a strictly text-oriented approach is mandatory in order to analyze not only the content but also the structure and form of the text and to identify narrative models as well as topoi of art literature. This is done on the basis of an intensive philological examination, which is complemented by a broad contextualization in the history of ideas. The aim of the project is to give this text, which is fundamental for the art history of Naples, appropriate visibility through a new annotated edition including a translation into German, in order to promote the integration of the text into the canon of early modern art literature.