Giovanni da Nola and the Monument of Pedro de Toledo: A Study in Neapolitan Sixteenth-Century Sculpture

The conversion of Giovanni da Nola from wood to marble sculpture in the 1520s and the organization of his workshop ended the years in which artistic achievement in Naples was a matter of Florentine (or occasionally Lombard) import. His career coincided with--or helped to create--a historical moment in which sculpture in marble became the most important expression of Neapolitan culture. Giovanni da Nola's extraordinarily varied and prolific production, in which an ideal of classicism is ever present and ever tested, has its quintessential achievement in the funerary monument of Pedro Alvarez de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples from 1532-1553. The monument is at once a synthesis of and a personal response to the rich complexity of artistic influences available in Naples, which are examined here in terms of its relation to Spanish, French and central Italian models. The monument's appearance and condition are examined in order to determine the basic and disputed facts of its dates of conception and execution, and its intended placement. A series of documents revealing the financial disputes of the Viceroy's heirs over his bequest to the church provide the key to the long delay in the tomb's erection there (1570). A context for the monument is sought in an exploration of the sculptor's oeuvre, including the major works in wood and marble from the late 'teens through the 'fifties. Many are of controversial attribution, and one is previously unpublished. An attempt is made to separate the master's hand and style from those of his assistants. Giovanni da Nola's position amounted to being state sculptor of the Kingdom of Naples, and Pedro de Toledo was for twenty-one years the state itself. The final chapter of this thesis is a biographical study of Don Pedro, the most powerful guardian of imperial rule on Italian soil. The varied aspects of his position--enemy general, Christian soldier, aspirant to a humanist ideal and servant to its destruction--are a study in microcosm of the Naples of the period, in all its contradictions.