The Funerary Monument of Bona Sforza in the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari: History and Background of a Royal Mausoleum of Polish Patronage

The History of the Monument through the Documents (1557–1650)

In her second testament of 18 November 1557, which largely rectified the will that she had dictated a day before, Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland and Duchess of Bari, ordered that “her body should be brought to the venerable church of the Annuntiata in Naples”, and that her “funerals would be celebrated there at the discretion of her son and heir the king [Sigismund II Augustus]”. The queen also instructed that “a royal and sumptuous chapel under the title of Saint Stanislaw should be built in that church at His Most Serene King’s discretion”, and ordered the payment of “300 ducats a year, to be taken from the Customs of Bari […] for the service of that chapel and for the prayers that will be continuously made”.^[8] Due to a legal controversy over the validity of her will between her son Sigismund Augustus, appointed as universal heir of the Polish domains, and the King of Spain Philip II, to whom Bona herself had previously returned the Duchy of Bari and other territories, the queen’s last wishes were not fulfilled. When Sigismund died unexpectedly on 7 July 1572, his mother’s tomb was still to be erected.^[9]

Bona’s body was laid in a coffin and temporarily kept in the sacristy of the Cathedral Church of Bari.^[10] On the way back from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land on 10 March 1584, Prince Mikołaj Krzysztof Radziwiłł, Duke of Olyka and Palatine of Vilna, saw it wrapped in black velvet: “It is still intact, except for the upper part of her lips slightly dropping”, Radziwiłł noted in his travel diary, published a few years later.^[11]

That left Anna Jagiellon, consort of King Stefan Báthory and third-to-last daughter of Bona, to take charge of the sepulchre. An unpublished letter from the Archbishop of Naples Annibale di Capua, who served as an Apostolic legate to the royal court of Poland, to his friend Archbishop of Bari Antonio Puteo, reveals Anna’s intention in summer 1587 to have the queen’s body removed from the Cathedral Church of Bari and “have it buried in another place […] because of the quarrels in Naples on the validity of Queen Bona’s testament”. Di Capua reassured Puteo that he would discuss with Anna her mother’s burial and would dissuade her from moving Bona’s body out of the Cathedral, “as per His Lordship’s [the Archbishop of Bari] requests”.^[12]

The intervention of the Archbishop of Naples, however, did not return the expected results. On 17 May 1588, Anna obtained permission of Pope Sixtus V, “rationibus omnibus intellectis”, to transfer the queen’s body from the Cathedral of Bari to the Basilica of San Nicola, “along with the funeral pallium, the precious stones and other relevant jewellery for the grave to be adorned”.^[13] In a letter dated 28 May 1588, the Jagiellon ruler requested the Pope’s protection over the “transfer of the body of holy Queen Bona, my very beloved mother”, and communicated that she had recently arranged funds for “a monument of not modest expense” in her memory.^[14] The papal brief confirming the body’s transport was issued on 29 December 1588, accompanied by an exequatur [i.e., the command] of the Viceroy of Naples Juan de Zuñiga, count of Miranda.^[15] An unpublished document records the commission of the monument to the sculptors Sarti and Zaccarella on 16 January 1589. The contract was signed by a queen’s internuncio, Filip Owadowski, who also was a resident in Naples.^[16]

It took some time before work began. The Cathedral Chapter of Bari initially resisted the Pope’s and the viceroy’s commands, which they claimed would undermine the church’s royal dignity and the financial privileges stemming from the queen’s burial. When procurator Scipione Pulpo turned up on 11 May 1589 to receive the Bona’s remains, the canons denied him the pallium, the precious stones and other ornaments which were part of the royal funerary dowry. Nevertheless, the body was transferred to the Basilica of San Nicola, where on 9 June 1589, Queen Anna finally obtained the concession for a chapel. This was located by the high altar, the most important area in the church topography, namely “in the place inside the choir where the divine offitii are continuously celebrated […], and precisely in the place called the ‘cocchiara’ […] under the expressed agreement that the reverend chapter or others may never remove [the royal chapel] from there”.^[17] On 7 July 1589, Anna and her descendants were granted all rights in perpetuity over the chapel.^[18]

The building works took place between August 1589 and December 1590. Receipts from the Bank of Naples note the lead sculptors Andrea Sarti and Francesco Zaccarella, who had been in partnership since 1586,^[19] and master Ceccardo Bernucci, who participated as a subordinate marble worker.^[20] Stylistic analysis, supported by a new array of close-up photographs, identifies two homogeneous groups across the work allocation. The Carrarese Sarti was most likely responsible for the effigy of Queen Bona (fig. 4),^[21] the statue of St. Stanislaw (fig. 5), and the personification of the Duchy of Bari on the right side of the monument (fig. 7). Zaccarella from Terni carried out the personification of the Kingdom of Poland (fig. 6) and the statue of St. Nicholas in the left section (fig. 8),^[22] along with the marble relief of the Resurrection on the lintel (figs. 3, 9). This panel, dismantled in 1939 and later moved to the south transept, was aligned in axis with the queen’s portrait below. Bernucci, whose documented catalogue does not include any figurative work, was probably in charge of the squares and the barren parts of the tomb.^[23] Other payments record the participation of the Carrarese marble-carver Clemente Ciottoli between September and December 1589,^[24] and of the axe master Dionisio di Bartolomeo Nencioni, to whom Sarti likely delegated the wooden model.^[25] By the end of 1590, Sarti and Zaccarella were paid the enormous sum of 1840 ducats for the delivery of the tomb.^[26]

4

Andrea Sarti (attr.), Bona Sforza, 1589 –1593, detail of the funerary monument of Bona Sforza. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

5

Andrea Sarti (attr.), St. Stanislaw, 1589 –1593, detail of the funerary monument of Bona Sforza. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

6

Francesco Zaccarella (attr.), The Kingdom of Poland, 1589 –1593, detail of the funerary monument of Bona Sforza. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

7

Andrea Sarti (attr.), The Duchy of Bari, 1589 –1593, detail of the funerary monument of Bona Sforza. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

8

Francesco Zaccarella (attr.), St. Nicholas, 1589 – 1593, detail of the funerary monument of Bona Sforza. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

9

Francesco Zaccarella (attr.), Risen Christ, 1589 –1593, detail of fig. 3, Bari, Basilica of San Nicola, southern transept

In spring 1591, the internuncio Jan Zołczyński (Italianised in the documents as Giovanni Solcinio) engaged the two lead masters again for some adjuncts. They were commissioned to create the dark slate base and its funerary inscription in gilded letters, and “le banche seu sedie”, i.e., the pendant of marble seats located at the ends of the mausoleum. Additionally, they were ordered to create a set of balustrades (the “imbalagustate”),^[27] and two large marble coats of arms of the Jagiellon house, which are still embedded at the top of the apsidal wall.^[28] The balustrades and the marble seats were lost during the restoration campaign of the 1930s, which swept away the Baroque design of the monument and rendered the Romanesque facies of the Nicolian apse.^[29] The funerary inscription commemorates the tomb setup in 1593. Between 1594 and 1595, the niche, in which the mausoleum sits, was adorned with “stucco, painting and gilding works” by Orazio Vannucci from Lucca, an obscure decorator who is documented in Naples in the early 1590s.^[30]

In 1637, two Carrara marble workers, Jacopo Lazzari and Francesco Valentino, were paid to make new balustrades that would enclose the choir area behind the iconostasis.^[31] This work, documented by a church plan of 1647 (fig. 10) and by a few photos of the beginning of the last century (fig. 11), was removed around the 1930s. Finally, the apsidal wall was thoroughly painted up to the conch with portraits of the ruling family and their tutelary saints during the reign of Jan II Kazimierz (1649–1668), the last descendant of the Jagiellon-Vasa house. At this stage, the iconographic program of the monument was redefined and the theme of glorification of the Jagiellon-Vasa house replaced the memory of Queen Bona alone.

10

The high altar and the choir of San Nicola in a plan of 1647. Naples, State Archive

11

View of the high altar of the Basilica of San Nicola from the iconostasis, before 1928

The Tomb Design and the Role of Tomasz Treter

Documents from Neapolitan archives have revealed the identities of the artists who made the marble, the gilded stuccos, and the decorations of the Sforza mausoleum. However, the architect whom Queen Anna ordered to design the tomb remains unknown. Zygmunt Waźbiński, in 1979, attributed the project to Tomasz Treter, a Polish canon of the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, who also served as a painter, an engraver, and an advisor to Anna Jagiellon. According to Waźbiński, Treter provided a drawing from which the sculptor Andrea Sarti made a wooden model of the tomb in August 1589.^[32] This theory is based on a letter dated 26 May 1590.^[33] Queen Anna sent three draft texts for Bona’s funerary inscription to Treter, who was a resident in Rome, and instructed her trustworthy collaborator to hand them over for review to “one, at most two intendants who understand about it”. She requested that “one of those drafts, that one that they [i.e., the experts] will like the most”, would be forwarded “without delay and corrections” to Father Jan Zołczyński, who had been supervising the progress of works in Naples, and asked the canon to let her know “which of the three drafts they have picked”. Finally, the queen encouraged Treter to share his own opinion if he wanted and enclosed in the delivery “a portrait of Bona” to be used as a specimen for the marble effigy in Bari.^[34]

It must be pointed out that the letter of 1590 does not prove Treter’s involvement in the project. In fact, it depicts a middleman role with no decision-making power – the queen explicitly requests the draft chosen by the experts to be sent to Naples “without delay and corrections”. Waźbiński, however, believes that the project should be attributed to the Polish canon, and remarks on some “direct and indirect evidence” which, for the reader’s knowledge, may be worth summarising.

The representation of the queen kneeling in prayer in a niche was probably inspired by the portrait of Pope Sixtus V, set in his funerary monument in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (1586–1591). Anna must have received information about this work, which was publicly unveiled in the presence of the Pope himself on 27 December 1589,^[35] through Father Stanisław Reszka and Tomasz Treter, her two most reliable agents in Rome, who also were familiar with the artistic circle in the service of Pope Sixtus V.

The Sforza’s tomb layout also may have derived from an etching (fig. 12) of the Theatrum virtutum Divi Stanislai Hosii, the biography of Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz published by Treter in 1588.^[36] The incipit of this volume shows a monument which, to some extent, recalls Bona’s sepulchre, i.e., the so-called Civitas Cracoviae or “Patria et Natalis Dies”, the personification of the royal city of Krakow seated on a throne in the midsection of a tripartite mausoleum. This is flanked by a pair of allegorical figures standing in niches; a winged lion and a river deity lie at their feet. Waźbiński argues that such a syntactical array may prove a preliminary version of the Apulian tomb which originally was meant to display the dedicatee seated on a throne. Eventually, the seated effigy was turned into a genuflecting type after the portrait of Pope Sixtus V was unveiled and set up in the Liberian Basilica, in December 1589.

12

Tomasz Treter, Civitas Cracoviae or Patria et Natalis Dies, 1588, incipit of the Theatrum virtutum ac meritorum Divi Stanislai Hosii. Warsaw, Biblioteka Seminarium Metropolitalnego Archidiecezji Warszawskiej

The preliminary project should be dated around 1584–1586. Duke Radziwiłł’s report of 1584 to King Stephen Báthory on the preservation of Bona’s corpse in the Cathedral of Bari, given during a personal meeting at the royal residence of Grodno (in today’s Belarus),^[37] must have impressed the royal family of Poland so much that around that time – almost thirty years after Bona’s death – Queen Anna allowed for the construction of a memorial to her mother. The tomb design was presumably commissioned to Treter, who had recently returned to the royal court together with the king’s nephew, Cardinal Andrea Báthory. The canon had likely attracted the rulers’ attention thanks to the publication of a number of books with illustrations that fully embodied the spirit of Counter-Reformation in Poland.^[38] Also, a recommendation letter from the chapter of Santa Maria in Trastevere could have guided the rulers’ decision in July 1585. In this letter, in fact, the Roman canon praised their Polish confrere for his distinguished service to the basilica, and especially for having “taken care” of the burial of the “Cardinal of Warmia” (i.e., Stanisław Hozjusz).^[39] Such an unexpected eulogy must have persuaded Anna Jagiellon to assign the project for Queen Bona’s monument to Treter.^[40]

The list of suggestive arguments fielded by Waźbiński in support of his attribution of the Sforza’s tomb design to Treter does not appear to be fully convincing. One would notice, in the first instance, that the funerary monuments of Sixtus V and Bona Sforza share nothing but the two sitters genuflecting in prayer (figs. 13–14). The Liberian sepulchre is an imposing square made of marble, split into two registers entirely nestled with ancient-coloured spolia. This work is also articulated by telamons on the upper architrave and is surrounded by five large narrative panel reliefs around the central niche from which the pontiff’s statue protrudes (fig. 15). By way of contrast, the Apulian mausoleum is a mighty concave wall conceived ab imis to be placed in the hollow of the basilica’s apse, and it is embedded with two-tone dark and white marbles. Moreover, a 1909 watercolour painting by Mario Prayer (fig. 16) and early 1930s photographs show that the original design was pyramidal (fig. 17). It included a three-niche architraved register which sustained the Resurrection aedicule in the middle; two pilasters ending in large spiral volutes on the sides linked this aedicule to the lower cornice. Between 1595 and 1650, the tomb’s pyramidal concept was radically altered by wall paintings, which covered the apsidal wall up to the conch and denied the plastic autonomy of the monument (fig. 1).

13

Andrea Sarti (attr.), Bona Sforza, 1589 –1593, detail of the funerary monument of Bona Sforza. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

14

Giovan Antonio Paracca, called Valsoldo, Pope Sixtus V, 1587 –1589, detail of the funerary monument of Sixtus V. Rome, Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore

15

Giovan Antonio Paracca called Valsoldo, Nicolas Piper, known as Niccolò Pippi, Gillis van den Vliete, known as Egidio della Riviera (attr.), and Matteo Castello (attr.), Funerary monument of Pope Sixtus V, 1587 –1589. Rome, Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore

16

Mario Prayer, View of the High Altar of the Basilica of San Nicola, 1909, watercolour. Bari, Palazzo del Priore of San Nicola

17

The funerary monument of Bona Sforza after the removal of the wall paintings, 1930. Bari, Basilica of San Nicola

It is not sufficiently clear what may have prompted Treter, a loyal advisor of the Polish crown who was resident in Rome and almost certainly was well acquainted with the circle of artists in the Pope’s service, to appoint a team of barely known sculptors in Naples. Since the commission of Bona’s tomb was worthy of royal dignity and enormous value (i.e., about 1840 ducats), there were more suitable workshops that could have taken this job in Rome. By way of illustration, Giovanni Antonio Paracca, called Valsoldo, and Leonardo Sormani stood out among the most prominent artists who gravitated around Domenico Fontana, the Pope’s architect who designed the Sistine Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. For this worksite, Valsoldo and Sormani were ordered to make the two tomb effigies of Popes Sixtus V and Pius V, respectively.^[41] If Bona’s tomb had been designed in Rome after the mausoleum of Sixtus V, therefore, one would expect that any of these quite renowned workshops would be engaged. This, however, was not the case because the elaboration of the Sforza’s monument design did not transit through the Papal city.

Furthermore, Treter’s sojourn in Poland between 1584 and 1586 does not match the timing for the tomb’s commission. A letter from Queen Anna to Pope Sixtus V on 28 May 1588 suggests that the allocation of funds for the erection of the funerary monument had been arranged lately.^[42] On the other hand, there is little reason for backdating the plan to the time of the encounter between Báthory and Radziwiłł in Grodno in 1584 at which Anna, the patron who personally ordered the tomb, was not present. The commission of a marble sepulchre for the Duchess of Bari, to be built in the heart of the former dominions of the Polish crown in the South of Italy, entailed much more practical and cynical meaning than the filial pietas envisioned by the Duke of Olyka. It aimed to remark on the inalienable rights of the Jagiellonian house over those domains in a delicate period of political and financial instability that had followed the death of King Báthory (†1586) and the war for the succession to the throne of Krakow between the Vasa and Habsburg houses (1587–1589). The Jagiellon prerogatives in Italy included the reinstatement of a censo, the imposition of a yearly fee upon the ducal lands inherited by Bona (unpaid since the death of Sigismund II in 1572), and the return of the so-called ‘Neapolitan sums’, the exorbitant loan of 430,000 ducats that Bona herself had lent to King Philip II of Spain shortly before she passed away in 1557.^[43]

Nothing is known of Treter’s activity in Naples or Bari, and it is unlikely that he attended any stage of the monument’s construction. This is a flagrant silence for an architect who presumably designed such a work.^[44] The lack of documented connections between the Polish canon and the Neapolitan background also appears to be in contradiction with the cultural policy of the Jagiellonian house, which between the summer of 1589 and the winter of 1595 ‘settled’ in the Kingdom of Naples thanks to a host of resident agents and intermediaries. Archival documents indicate the internuncio Filip Owadowski, who signed the primary contract with the sculptors Sarti and Zaccarella (January 1589); Scipione Pulpo, the procurator to whom Queen Anna entrusted the transfer of Bona’s body from the Cathedral Church to the Basilica of San Nicola (May 1589); Jan Zołczyński, who was tasked with the work’s supervision (1590) and later ordered a few adjuncts to Sarti and Zaccarella (1591); and the abbot Stanisław Reszka, who commissioned the stuccos and the gold decorations over the apsidal wall (1594).^[45] The presence of these agents in Naples and a certain level of familiarity with its cultural environment played a crucial role in the progress of the work. Zołczyński, for example, had lived in the city since 1572. Here, he carried out diplomatic activity for Viceroy Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle and devoted himself to literature.^[46] After a short sojourn in Płock (1585) and Włocławek (1586), he returned to Naples, where he died in 1591.^[47] Likewise, Stanisław Reszka, who moved to Naples in 1592 at the behest of Anna Jagiellon and King Sigismund III Vasa,^[48] became so intrinsic to its artistic milieu that the Sorrento poet Torquato Tasso dedicated an octave of his Gerusalemme Conquistata to him in 1598,^[49] and the erudite writer Giulio Cesare Capaccio described him as one of the most eminent personalities of the Neapolitan culture of the time.^[50] When Reszka died in 1600, the Bishop of Troia Jacopo Aldobrandini ordered a tomb in his honour, today lost; this was set in the church cloister of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Caponapoli, where the abbot had requested to be buried.^[51]

Finally, Treter’s skills as an architect cannot be demonstrated. To date, it is held that the canon designed the funerary monument of Cardinal Stanisław Hozjusz in Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome (1580–1581) and that he authored the iconographic program of the Altemps chapel in that church (1586–1590) before focusing on the tomb of the Queen of Poland. This assumption is based on a few documents which mention the canon’s presence on both the Roman worksites.^[52] However, no record explicitly refers to Treter as an “architetto”, a title which is solely assigned to the basilica’s official architect Martino Longhi the Elder. Treter’s tasks, instead, sound closer to a site supervisor and payment administrator on behalf of the basilica’s chapter, an interpretation which is supported by the account book of the Altemps chapel. This sheds light on a delegation practice to other canons of Santa Maria in Trastevere who, just like Treter, had some knowledge of art and were involved in supervision roles. One of these was “master Diego d’Avila, canon and head of fabrication”, who assisted “master Martino our architect” and estimated the work by “Melchiorre scarpellino [stonemason] for carving our chapel and high altar, the door and counter-door with the arms, and other work that he has done in our chapel”;^[53] another was “Hercule Foldi, canon of Santa Maria di Trastevere”, who supervised the works by “Giovanni Antonio da Varese, painter and gilder” in December 1590”.^[54]

In summary, evidence challenges Treter’s alleged authorship of Bona Sforza’s funerary monument and raises questions about his architectural skills.^[55] Assumptions about the involvement of the Polish canon in the tomb’s design ought to be discarded.

Bona’s Tomb in the Context of Sixteenth-century Neapolitan Sculpture

A shortage of comparable models seems to also have inhibited a thorough understanding of the Apulian monument culture. The mausoleum of the queen of Poland, in fact, constitutes a hapax in the context of sixteenth-century Neapolitan sculpture, though this work was unquestionably made in the Kingdom of Naples. Take for instance the original mid-height Doric triglyphs entablature, which until 1939 split the monument into two equal registers. The tomb’s concave layout is also unprecedented. And no other examples of half-naked female personifications are attested in Southern Italian funerary sculpture; these recall the pair of Roman Virtues designed for the papal sepulchres of Paul III in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, by Guglielmo Della Porta,^[56] and of Paul IV in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, by Giacomo da Cassignola and Tommaso Della Porta.^[57]

In addition, the Sforza monument diverges from the Neapolitan tradition of royal wall tombs for major church areas (i.e., high altars or choirs). Since the Angevin age, dynastic legitimization and royal power had been entrusted to the iconography of the sitter on the throne and also to the presence of Cardinal Virtues, which were tasked with conveying the ruler’s moral qualities. The tombs of Robert of Anjou in Santa Chiara (ca. 1343–1346)^[58] and of Ladislaus and Joanna II of Anjou-Durazzo in San Giovanni a Carbonara (ca. 1428–1432) are to be accounted amongst the oldest and most pertinent examples in Naples.^[59] The sepulchre of viceroy Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo and María Osorio de Pimentel in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli (1541–1550) also shows the royal couple kneeling in the middle of a quadrangular plinth, surrounded by four standing Virtues in the corners and a set of bas-relief plaques (fig. 18).^[60] This legacy was challenged by the queen of Poland’s funerary monument. The ruler’s dominating pose on the throne, in fact, was turned into a genuflected effigy in prayer, elevated as an exemplum of religious pietas. Yet, no Virtues were displayed, and the theme of royal-sacred dignity was delegated to a couple of patron saints in charge of physically guarding the dead queen, namely Sts. Nicholas and Stanislaw. Two semi-nude personifications – for the first time set by the high altar of a Counter-Reformation Dominican church in the South of Italy – replaced the Virtues. They no longer alluded to the queen’s moral qualities but to her dominions, i.e., the Kingdom of Poland and the Duchy of Bari.

18

Giovanni da Nola, Annibale Caccavello, and Giovan Domenico D’Auria, Funerary monument of Don Pedro Álvarez de Toledo and María Osorio de Pimentel, ca. 1541–1550. Naples, Basilica of San Giacomo degli Spagnoli

The anomalies which prevent the Apulian mausoleum from thoroughly fitting within the Neapolitan sepulchral tradition have been clear to most scholars who have dealt with its attribution. It is no coincidence that until the uncovering of payments that assign the statues to Sarti and Zaccarella, two sculptors of Tuscan and Umbrian-Roman background working in the Kingdom of Naples, Bona’s tomb used to be attributed to Venetian masters based on a longstanding tradition of commercial and artistic relationships between Venice and Bari dating back to the fifteenth century.^[61] As late as the 1940s, when documented evidence left little doubt about the marble’s authorship and provenance, Leo Bruhns still attributed the tomb design to “a skilled architect, probably Venetian of the school of Jacopo Sansovino”, as he observed, certainly with a degree of embarrassment, that this monument had “little to do with the Neapolitan school”.^[62]

It seems worth reconsidering the background of the Sforza monument, which ultimately is of Neapolitan inspiration. By the time that Sarti modelled Bona’s effigy, in fact, Neapolitan sculpture accounted for a vast assortment of life-size funeral portraits of noblemen praying on their knees, some of them deferentially depicted with one hand on their chest, others with their hands together in a prayer like the Sforza duchess. Among the former group, one might mention the sculptures of Riccardo Rota from the Basilica of San Pietro a Majella, at present in a private collection (ca. 1540–1550);^[63] the consorts don Pedro de Toledo and María Osorio Pimentel in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli (ca. 1541–1550) by Giovanni da Nola and his workshop; the marble effigy of Fabrizio Brancaccio in Santa Maria delle Grazie a Caponapoli (1577–1583) by Geronimo D’Auria;^[64] the bronze statue of Fabrizio Pignatelli in Santa Maria Materdomini (1590–1611) by the Florentine Michelangelo Naccherino;^[65] and the late marble portrait of Vincenzo Carafa, part of a grandiose mixed-coloured marble tomb by D’Auria and Silvestro Ferrucci in the Basilica of Santi Severino e Sossio in Naples (1603–1611).^[66] On the other hand, the list of kneeling effigies with hands together in prayer includes the statues of Oliviero Carafa in the Cathedral of Naples (1511–1512; fig. 19) by Matteo Lombardo,^[67] the Michele D’Afflitto Count of Trivento in Santa Maria la Nova (1580–1586; fig. 20) by Francesco Cassano,^[68] and the Antonio Lauro Bishop of Castellammare by D’Auria in the church of Grazie a Caponapoli (1584–1586; fig. 21) by D’Auria.^[69] This iconographic tradition of kneeling sitters may even have inspired the effigy of Sixtus V in Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. Since the 1550s, in fact, Pope Sixtus V, formerly known as Cardinal Felice Peretti Montalto, had cultivated consistent relationships with Naples, where he had been regent of the Studii (i.e., the old University of Naples) at the Franciscan convent of San Lorenzo Maggiore (1553–1554) and later, general vicar of the friar order (1567–1568). ^[70]

19

Matteo Lombardo, Oliviero Carafa, 1511–1512. Naples, Cathedral

20

Francesco Cassano (attr.), Michele D’Afflitto, 1580 –1586, detail of the funerary monument of Michele, Ferdinando, and Fabio D’Afflitto. Naples, Basilica of Santa Maria la Nova

21

Geronimo D’Auria, Antonio Lauro, 1585 –1586, detail of the funerary monument of Antonio Lauro Bishop of Castellammare. Naples, Basilica of Santa Maria delle Grazie a Caponapoli

Bona’s mausoleum can be reckoned among the latest epilogues of tripartite-section tombs with life-size effigies in niches, a model introduced in Naples by the sepulchres of Galeazzo and Colantonio Caracciolo Marquees of Vico in San Giovanni a Carbonara (ca. 1547–1557).^[71] The queen kneeling between the figures in niches of Sts. Nicholas and Stanislaw serves as a significant variatio to the traditional standing portrait and particularly relates to the most recent tomb types of Fabrizio Brancaccio and Michele D’Afflitto.

Nonetheless, the monument’s concave shape could be compared to a quite rare example, that is the illustrious curved altarpiece of Sts. Francis, Lawrence, and Anthony in the Basilica of San Lorenzo Maggiore (1528–1537) by Giovanni da Nola.^[72] A mid-seventeenth-century engraving by abbot Pompeo Sarnelli shows the superimposition of a marble relief representing the Madonna in Glory with Child on the entablature. Although this panel and its aedicule are not original parts of the Laurentian altarpiece,^[73] their stacking on the cornice – as in the case of the Sforza monument’s Resurrection relief – correlates with the most up-to-date trends of Neapolitan sculpture between the end of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century.

Even the two lost marble sediali (seats) on both sides of the duchess’s monument signal a local background. Their structure, recorded in old photographs (fig. 11) as well as in the 1909 watercolour by Mario Prayer (fig. 16),^[74] corresponds to the typical late-fifteenth-century funeral bench, endowed with a tripartite backrest (fig. 22).^[75] The adjunct of a trio of dark marble (or slate) boards in the Sforza’s spalliera anticipates the seventeenth-century sediale designed for the D’Afflitto chapel in the church of Santa Maria la Nova in Naples (fig. 23).^[76]

22

Sediale of the Correale Chapel, 1490. Naples, Sant’Anna dei Lombardi

23

Sediale of the D’Afflitto Chapel, ca. 1630 –1640. Naples, Basilica of Santa Maria la Nova

Lastly, iconographic references to the oeuvre of Geronimo D’Auria, the preferred sculptor of feudal nobility in Naples between the death of Annibale Caccavello (†1570) and Giovan Domenico D’Auria (†1571) and the career exploits of Michelangelo Naccherino and Pietro Bernini (1590–1605), are worthy of mention. Comparisons between the tombs of Bona and D’Afflitto, for instance, involve a set of narrative reliefs displayed above the entablature, commemorative epigraphs carved in gilded letters on dark marble panels, a tripartite layout, and the representation of the dedicatee kneeling between two life-size standing figures. Two ignudi are placed on the sarcophagus, one of whom holds the coat of arms, their gazes converging in the middle (figs. 2, 24). The white Carrara marble panel of the Sforza Resurrection, here attributed to Francesco Zaccarella (figs. 3, 9), also reveals formal analogies with the Mazza altarpiece in Santa Maria Monteoliveto, by Giovan Domenico D’Auria’s workshop (1567; fig. 25). These not only relate to the representation of the Risen Christ, standing in a chiasm-like position on fluffy clouds, his veil fluttering and his flag crumpled by the wind, but also to the soldier in the foreground, almost flattened by the glory of Christ, a bent leg under his fringed skirt and the other leg stretched out.^[77] A ‘twin’ soldier also leads the wooden Resurrection panel in the sacristy of SS. Annunziata by Geronimo D’Auria and Salvatore Caccavello (1578–1580; fig. 26), and a painting by Marco Pino in Santa Trofimena in Minori, near Salerno.^[78]

24

Geronimo D’Auria, Francesco Cassano, and workshop of D’Auria (attr.), Funerary monument of Michele, Ferdinando, and Fabio D’Afflitto, ca. 1580 –1586. Naples, Basilica of Santa Maria la Nova

25

Giovan Domenico D’Auria and workshop (attr.), Resurrection, 1567, detail of the Mazza Altarpiece. Naples, Sant’Anna dei Lombardi

26

Geronimo D’Auria and Salvatore Caccavello, Resurrection, 1578 –1580, detail of the wooden cabinets of the Annunziata sacristy. Naples, Basilica of Ss. Annunziata

* * *

All things considered, one should conclude that the sepulchre of the queen of Poland was made in Naples and was mostly inspired by local art. Nonetheless, some anomalies prevent us from deeming this work a consistent example of Neapolitan sculpture. Wishing to dedicate a mausoleum of highly symbolic and political impact to the ruler who had bequeathed the old dominions of the South of Italy to the royal house of Jagiellon, around 1588–1589 Bona’s heir, Queen Anna, likely entrusted the tomb design to an architect of ‘foreign’ background – i.e., not locally Neapolitan – who may have trained outside the Kingdom of Naples. After moving to its capital city, he must have eventually become intrinsic to its milieu; here he appointed the team of sculptors in charge of making the tomb. It will be up to future research to clarify the identity of this mysterious architect, to whom we owe one of the most elaborate and yet hardly known Late Renaissance monuments in the South of Italy.

I am thankful to Father Gerardo Cioffari, Candida Carrino, Antonella Dentamaro, Letizia Gaeta, Helen Hills, Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, and Patrizia Tosini for the fruitful discussions and their valuable suggestions. Anna Horeczy offered precious support for the translation of documents from old Polish. Father Prior Giovanni Distante and Sacristan Donato Cassano granted special permission for taking close-up photos of the Sforza tomb in the Basilica of San Nicola.