Visual Resources
an international journal on images and their uses
ISSN: 0197-3762 (Print) 1477-2809 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gvir20
The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database
Caroline Bruzelius & Paola Vitolo
To cite this article: Caroline Bruzelius & Paola Vitolo (2019): The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily
Image Database, Visual Resources, DOI: 10.1080/01973762.2019.1558994
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2019.1558994
Published online: 18 Feb 2019.
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The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database
Caroline Bruzelius and Paola Vitolo
The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database documents historic buildings, monuments,
and their decoration in South Italy, a geographic area ravaged by war, earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, as well as the depredations of modern restoration and rampant urban growth.
Our website and app are intended to help scholars, travelers, and local populations
understand the appearance of historic monuments prior to modern change: their position
in the landscape, their rich furnishings (tombs, altars, pulpits, painted ceilings, mosaics,
altarpieces), and their role as statements of dynastic authority.
Keywords: Romanesque Architecture; Gothic Architecture; Mediterranean Architecture;
Database Design; Website Design; Italian Medieval Art
Project Overview: The Significance of the Database and the Historical
Material it Covers
What do we see when we look at a medieval monument? Because most buildings from
the Middle Ages have at one time or another been redecorated, remodeled, restored, or
reconstructed, often with an ideological or aesthetic agenda, whose Middle Ages do we
experience when we visit a building described as “medieval”? Are there ways to come
closer to the appearance of a monument prior to the filters of repairs and restorations?
(Figure 1). Although the challenge of understanding what is medieval applies to historical sites in many countries (consider the work of Eugène Emanuel Viollet-le-Duc
[1814–1879] at Pierrefonds, Vézelay, Notre Dame in Paris, and the city of Carcassonne
in France), it is a particular challenge for the churches, castles, and palaces of the historic Kingdom of Sicily, which have been repaired and reconstructed after earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions, and the aerial bombardments of the Second World War (Figure 2).
In addition, South Italian churches were often remodeled during the Baroque period,
and restoration after the unification of Italy often entailed an inventive and exotic
“remedievalization” of a site.
As a response to this challenge, the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database
(http://kos.aahvs.duke.edu/) (Figure 3) was created as a collection of images (drawings,
paintings, photographs, and plans) that document the appearance of, and changes to,
the castles, monasteries, and cathedrals of the Norman, Hohenstaufen, and Angevin
dynasties of South Italy (circa 1000–1400).1 The database is a compendium – a
virtual museum – of thousands of images produced by the hundreds of artists, travelers,
Visual Resources, 2019
ISSN 0197-3762 © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2019.1558994
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Bruzelius and Vitolo
Figure 1. Sequence of changes to the west façade of the Cathedral of Sant’Andrea at Amalfi (from the Kingdom
of Sicily Image Database, http://kos.aahvs.duke.edu/siteimagesslides.php). Left: Martinus Rorbye, 1835, from
M. Ricciardi, La Costa d’Amalfi nella pittura dell’Ottocento (Salerno, 1998), plate 358; center: Robert Wimmer,
1851, Berlin, Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; right: Karl August Wrede, 1859, Hannover, Niedersächsische Landesmuseum, Hannover.
and even soldiers who traveled through South Italy in different epochs.2 Our visual
documentation begins in the late fifteenth century with some sketches by Francesco
di Giorgio Martini (1439–1502), and continues through the middle of the twentieth
century with rich documentation from military archives of war damage and restoration
after the Second World War. The images are dispersed in museums, archives, and libraries throughout Europe and the United Kingdom, as well as the United States;
the military archives of Australia, New Zealand, France, and Canada have also provided
significant amounts of material.
The medieval structures of South Italy range in style from the Byzantine and
Islamic features adopted by the Normans, to Frederick II’s Roman city gate in
Capua, to the austere Gothic of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. As monumental symbols of each political regime, they were early examples of representational
Figure 2. Sequence of changes to the Church of Santa Chiara, Naples. Left: the Baroque interior prior to the war,
with kind permission of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali e Architettonici di Napoli e Provincia; center:
the interior during post-war restoration, with kind permission of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali e
Architettonici di Napoli e Provincia; right: the interior at present (photo: Massimo Velo).
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Figure 3. The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database homepage
state architecture – think, for example, of the importance of buildings to Louis XIV
(1638–1715) or to Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). In addition, these buildings were generated within and by a uniquely multicultural environment; they often introduced early
experiments with technical, structural, and iconographic innovations, such as the
pointed arch and rib vault, which then migrated north to Europe from the Mediterranean basin. Beginning with the Renaissance, the monuments of South Italy inspired
artists and architects of later periods: stage designers (such as Louis-Jean Desprez,
ca. 1743–1804) searched for gloomy theatrical settings in castles hanging from cliff
sides; lovers of the picturesque were attracted by the dramatic landscapes at Baia and
Cefalù; and Arts and Crafts artists recorded and were inspired by the mosaics and
inlaid pavements of the Norman churches in Palermo and Monreale. Photographs
taken during the Allied campaigns in 1943–1944 have become important documents
for understanding the extent of damage and subsequent restoration of these buildings.
The archives, libraries, and museums of Europe and the United States contain thousands of such images, which, in spite of their importance for the history of art, are
for the most part unknown and unpublished. In our estimation, no single scholar
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could hope to find and retrieve all the images pertinent to a specific site without years of
research; the database was therefore created to expand access and knowledge, not only
for scholars, but also for travelers and members of local populations interested in
history and material culture.
Through the aggregation of large quantities of information, the Medieval Kingdom
of Sicily Image Database, recently described as “an essential resource for scholars of the
Italian South,” allows scholars and travelers to view monuments prior to multiple
changes.3 With the addition of the interactive mapping component, it will also be possible to identify relationships that would not otherwise be evident. With completion of
new features, users will be able to visualize patterns of patronage, locations of religious
orders, itineraries of travelers and artists, and architectural elements in relation to the
networks of ancient and medieval roads and ports, as well as the natural topography.
This will make possible the correlation of data to enable insights not possible through
a simple review of individual monuments. The resource may also become as useful
for studies of the Grand Tour as it is for the Middle Ages, as users will be able to visualize
the sites and the itineraries of travelers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The database was built with FileMaker Pro software using standard relational database techniques. In this way, information that might be the same for multiple images,
such as the site/work depicted, creator(s), repository, etc., are stored in separate, related
tables for consistency and ease of data entry. This general structure is broadly applicable
not only to other areas of art history, but also for image collections in academic departments. For example, our database has been adapted to create a new image database in
the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. For this
project we also developed an algorithm that allowed imprecise date entries to be
stored in the database in easily searchable ways.
Indeed, as a way to remember and record the past, the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily
Image Database is only one example of database systems that record historical monuments. It differs from other kinds of heritage management systems for heritage, such as
ARCHES, however, in that it is not a GIS-based system with the goals of monitoring
and managing world heritage sites, especially those at risk in the Near and Middle
East; instead, it focuses on the history of travel and representations of sites in one geographical area as an aid to travelers, students, and scholars.
A Brief Background History of the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily
Founded in 1130 by the Norman count Roger II of Hauteville, the Kingdom of Sicily
was created from a patchwork of independent duchies and principalities that stretched
from the Abruzzi mountains east of Rome, through the boot of Italy to the island of
Sicily. The Norman conquest began in the middle of the tenth century and culminated
with Roger’s “invention” of the Kingdom and his coronation in 1130. In this new state,
Roger, his heirs, and the subsequent dynasties of Hohenstaufen, Angevin, and Aragonese rulers used art and culture to establish a distinct identity for each regime and to
affirm their authority to many different audiences in Europe and the Mediterranean.
While rulers of the Kingdom of Sicily incorporated familiar imported elements from
northern and central Europe, they also adopted many features of local cultures in
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South Italy and the Mediterranean. It is also important to note that at the same time
that the rulers were crafting the sequential identities of the Kingdom, religious institutions, the nobility, and urban communities were affirming their own presence and
power through the construction of monuments in territories under their control.
Our database is thus also a compendium of the spread of monastic institutions, the importance of noble patronage, and urban development in a pre-modern territory.
The diverse mix of protagonists of varied national and religious origins in southern
Italy produced a rich cultural patrimony that generated a fascinating prototype of multicultural state formation as expressed through monumental architecture. The
Kingdom was an early social experiment in bringing together multicultural, multilingual, and multi-religious populations, and that mixture generated monuments of exceptional originality. As noted above, however, understanding the impact of this
phenomenon has been compromised by the profound transformations that sites
have undergone over the centuries: urban expansion, natural disasters, modern
warfare (bombardment), remodeling, and, finally, modern repurposing. In the aggregate, these events impede our ability to identify and understand the complex cultural
patrimony of South Italian buildings, cities, and their decorative components.
Modern change has transformed the visual and symbolic role of these representational
monuments, their relationship with the urban and natural landscape, and their importance for the visual cultures of the rest of Italy and the Mediterranean.
Our website is an attempt to “peel back time.”
The Database and the Website
The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database has been online since November 2016
(http://kos.aahvs.duke.edu/index.php). The project was initially conceived by Caroline
Bruzelius and William Tronzo in 2008, and was implemented at Duke University starting in 2011 with a Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH) [RZ-51170-10] held from 2011 to 2014.4 The Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft für Kunstgeschichte) in Rome has provided the team
with occasional work areas and meeting spaces, and made available its collection of
rare books and photographs.
The website is intended to function on multiple levels as:
1. an image and text resource for historic monuments, including geo-location;
2. a list of the archives, museums, and libraries with useful collections for research;
3. a searchable tool for the artists who produced the images, with their dates and
nationalities;
4. a searchable tool of collections in which images have been found to date;
5. a searchable tool of patrons and builders, as well as of specific stylistic and architectural features (such as domes and towers).
It is also a resource for teaching and graduate education, especially in Italy,
where the history and art history of medieval South Italy is more likely to be
taught than in other places. In addition, a wide range of disciplines can be informed
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by this collection: medieval, modern, and contemporary history (i.e. the history of
the Second World War), Mediterranean studies, the history of art history, the
history of travel and the Grand Tour, literature, sociology, and cultural history. In
its present form, it can be used as an on-site application (contingent on connectivity)
so that travelers and tourists can compare the current appearance of a site to historical views of the same monument.
Methodology, Database, and Website Structure
The Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies (AAHVS) at Duke University
provides technical infrastructure and scientific expertise through Trinity Technology
Services (TTS), including developing a sustainability plan to allow the website to continue as an open-access online repository that can grow and evolve as new information
is found and becomes accessible.
At the outset of project design in 2011, the team created a master list of roughly 800
geo-referenced sites, developed a database structure, and established the criteria for the
selection and cataloguing of images, including issues of categorization and nomenclature. The project adopted the cataloguing guidelines developed for the SAHARA
project created by the Society of Architectural Historians (http://www.sah.org/
publications-and-research/sahara); Cataloguing Cultural Objects for questions related
to art-historical terminology; and the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus (http://
www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/) was used as the authoritative source
of terminology. The team created a Digital Asset Management Advisory Committee
to develop a data collection template in accordance with VRA Core and Dublin
Core metadata guidelines for each component of the project to ensure the integrity
and usability of the database.5
The database consists of two linked parts: Images (historical images) and Works
(monuments and sites). For each individual image, metadata records include sections
with specific types of information: Overview (description and basic information on
chronology, title, image type, notes, and analysis), Image (reproduction of the image
with information on format and resolution), Creation (dates, technique, measurements, artist’s name and dates), Location (repository and link to online collections),
Research (bibliography and links to Google search and books), and Cross References
to Works entries. In the Works and Sites entries, we provide brief information on chronology, creation, patronage, artistic and architectural features, condition, restorations,
and refurbishment campaigns.
The creation of the database structure and the fine-tuning of cataloguing criteria
are the result of three phases of revision of a preliminary selection of material (approximately 300 entries) from the initial data collection effort starting in 2012. The heterogeneous nature of the documents led us to develop a flexible data process that permits
the inclusion of extensive information for each kind of image. The revised database
concept allows us to enlarge and improve our cataloguing system as new resources
and collections, as well as new types of scholarship, emerge.
Data collection was initially done in the field with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
The original team of four postdoctoral Italian researchers, Gabriella Cianciolo, Alba
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Irollo, Ruggero Longo, and Luciana Mocciola, was trained in the methods of collection
and data entry. We organized their questing work, directing them towards collections
that were rich in relevant resources in Italy, Germany, and France. At the same time, we
began developing the database structure in FileMaker Pro, chosen because of the technical and infrastructure support available at Duke, and because it could accommodate
both internal data collection and editing needs as well as the external web dissemination goals of the project. The advantages of using FileMaker included the fact that it is
easy to customize, flexible, scalable, and has a modest learning curve.
The database was designed using standard relational database techniques. This facilitates creating relationships within the data between Images and Works, and the
standardization of data during data entry. To streamline data entry and avoid duplication, lists of standard entries are maintained for the following data elements:
1. Repositories, including metadata about the city, province, and country where
the repository is located; weblinks are also included
2. Creators and patrons, including metadata about nationality, gender, office and
dates
3. Keywords
4. Bibliographic entries, including metadata dependent on type (book, book
chapter, journal article, etc.) and based on standards used in EndNote®software.
The database is housed on a FileMaker server at Duke. This allows for multiple
simultaneous users of the database, as well as for publishing views of the database
on the web. We used SuperContainer, a plug-in for FileMaker, to facilitate the
storage and retrieval of images.
Starting in 2011, the original research team members used FileMaker Pro software
on individual laptops, as the group was dispersed in many locations in Europe and Italy
with uncertain network connections; they worked remotely and regularly sent new
entries back to the central database. All entries were initially marked in the database
as being “under review” for editing and standardization prior to being designated as
complete. In 2015 we moved the internal access to the database to a protected web interface using the Web Direct technology that had recently been added to FileMaker.
We established a separate communication platform by using a blog program
(WordPress) in order to create a virtual office to track who was doing what, answer
questions about data entry on the catalog, engage the directors in the resolution of possible problems and obstacles, and provide new information or materials that updated
the master lists of sites, monuments, artists, or images. This permitted the dispersed
research team to work in close contact.
The website was designed to make information in the database easily accessible to a
broad online audience on computers or portable devices. Searches can be made in
many ways:
1. Site location by city name and individual monument
2. The names of the patrons or builders when known
3. The names and dates of the artists who produced the images
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4. Locations of collections
5. An advanced search option (through image title, image type, creator nationality,
materials, date, or keywords).
The website was designed with standard web technologies (HTML, PHP, CSS,
Javascript) with FileMaker Server as the backend data source. It only includes Works
entries (monuments and cities) that correspond to images in the database, and therefore cannot be considered a comprehensive list of all medieval sites in South Italy, but
rather a list of those monuments or locations for which we have been able to find historic images. This, it might be noted, leads to an interesting bias in the type of data we
have been able to include. The areas of South Italy that were notorious for brigandage
or malaria, for example, tended not to be visited by travelers. Often journeys were made
by sea to avoid these dangers. This means that for some important monuments, and
particularly in modern-day Campania, Calabria, and Basilicata, we have fewer historic
images.
In the future, the website will include a more developed crowdsourcing component
for involving users in identifying “mysterious” (unidentified) images, adding information or comments about monuments/sites or images, or informing us of collections relevant to the project. We are presently developing a mapping component that will
enable users to search sites and keywords in relation to the ancient roads of the
Kingdom, and, at a later phase, in relation to types of built works (e.g. “castles,”
“bridges”) or types of religious affiliations (“Franciscan,” Benedictine,” etc.).
Implications for Scholarship: A Case Study on the Cathedral of
Catania
The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database enables scholars to identify images
that shed light on the location and appearance of individual monuments and sites,
both of which were particularly important for the official monuments of the royal dynasties. A notable example is the Norman cathedral of Catania in Sicily, constructed
immediately after the defeat of the Muslim regime in the late eleventh century. The
massive scale of the new Christian cathedral was intended not only to emphasize the
authority and visibility of the Norman bishop over the local population, but also to
impress travelers and traders who approached the city by sea: this was a structure intended to be seen from afar, and to be intimidating in its scale and monumentality.
Since the coastline has been profoundly modified, and taller, newer buildings now predominate the skyline of Catania, our understanding of the original prominence of the
cathedral is informed by a series of views, one of which is a city view by an anonymous
artist, created for bishop Angelo Rocca (1545–1620) in 1584, and now preserved in the
Biblioteca Angelica in Rome. The view shows the cathedral’s imposing mass over the
coast. Other images attest to the fact that the landscape has continued to change
over the centuries. A print published in 1840 by William Leighton Leitch (1804–
1883) and W.R. Smith (1846–1894), The City of Catania and Mount Etna, Sicily, indicates the incipient modern expansion of the coastal area, with new buildings erected on
the remains of the sixteenth-century city walls (Figure 4). A print published in 1892 by
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Figure 4. View of Catania in the early nineteenth century, by William Leighton Leitch and W.R. Smith, The City
of Catania and Mount Etna, Sicily, in C. Pellé, Les Iles et les bords de la Méditerranée (London. 1840).
Figure 5. Detail, view of Catania and its cathedral, from G. Pagnano, “La costruzione dell’identità di Catania dal
secolo XVI al XX,” in Catania. La città, la sua storia, ed. M. Aymard and G. Giarrizzo (Catania, 2007), 181–237;
entry 15, 228.
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Figure 6. Catania Cathedral. Reconstruction of the original elevation, by Caroline Bruzelius and Todd Berreth.
Gustavo Chierici in La Sicilia illustrata nella storia, nell’arte, nei paesi shows how the
newly constructed railway bridge distanced the cathedral from the sea.
The 1663 eruption of Mount Etna and the subsequent earthquake of 1669 radically
changed the appearance of the cathedral. A painting in a private collection, Catania dal
tremuoto del 1669 al 17086 (Figure 5), shows the collapsed roof and the inner structure
of the cathedral. This evidence is important for research on the Norman building, as
evidenced by my reconstruction of the appearance of the original Norman interior
(Figure 6), because the nave was entirely reconstructed after the earthquake in the eighteenth century. The dimensions of modern buildings have reduced, de facto, the prominence of the Norman cathedral in relation to the rest of the city and the coastline.
The Database as a Teaching Tool
We are convinced that it is important for students and the next generation of art historians to gain experience with the ways in which digital technologies can expand,
enhance, and enrich scholarship in the humanities and perhaps especially in the
history of art. Among other things, digital tools can generate new information
(through ground-penetrating radar and laser scans, for example), establish new
kinds of relationships between objects, and make knowledge about historical materials
accessible to the public through displays, websites, and apps. Participation in a vertically integrated and international research team, and understanding the power of collaborative research initiatives, are valuable skills for graduate and undergraduate students
who may be moving into careers in which research may be an integral component.
Through their participation in the project, students have learned to be punctilious in
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citing sources, attentive to issues of copyright and fair use, and thorough in conducting
online research into collection databases. They have also learned important lessons in
collaboration, working as part of a larger research team.7
We have integrated the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database into student
research on many levels. Both undergraduates and graduate-level students have been
trained in data entry, and, as their skills have developed, they have been included in
various aspects of database and website design. Advanced graduate student participants
have taken on roles as project managers, which provide them with skills in team leadership, data quality management, and long-range planning. Our undergraduate researchers have been particularly effective and resourceful when focused on specific
tasks, such as researching the Second World War images from online military collections (those of Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada, the UK, and the US), or
Grand Tour images in American collections. We are proud to list the student contributors as essential team members in the front matter of the website (http://kos.aahvs.
duke.edu/people.php).
Methodological Challenges
Since the inception of the project in 2011, the creators of the database have become
aware of a number of ongoing challenges. These include the following:
1. Users need to be reminded to approach each image critically, and to cross-reference each view with other written and/or visual sources, as views may not be
reliable documents of the condition of a site or building at a particular moment.
An artist might have simplified, schematized, or improved the state of a monument or site, an architect might invent a hypothetical reconstruction, or a photographer could have used particular lighting effects that might modify the
appearance of objects and spaces. Whenever possible, the cataloguers of the database attempt to note these instances.
2. The cataloguers select images on the basis of what we perceive to be their importance as documents that attest to the condition of monuments at a certain
moment, but we are not in a position to make judgments on the significance
of each image for a user’s individual research projects. The database is therefore
as inclusive as possible, gathering and cataloguing as many images of buildings
and their decorative programs as seem relevant. Since the cataloguers are not
experts on all monuments, it is our expectation that users whose work
focuses on individual sites or topics will verify the reliability of an image.
3. There is no identifiable “end point” to this initiative, and, by extension, no
moment at which this resource can be considered exhaustive or complete.
4. Since the acquisition of images proceeds through repositories, the collection of
material is not necessarily representative of the total oeuvre of an artist or a traveler, or of the places and monuments they depicted. It is not the intention of the
database to collect everything produced by a particular artist, or necessarily to
document every single center or building.
5. We have noted that links to online collections sometimes change, and we are not
always able to update them in a timely manner.
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6. Copyright laws vary from country to country, and are in a constant state of flux.
7. Obtaining ongoing funding for the research team and image questing has been
very difficult. While there are often “start-up” funds, there is very little support
for ongoing and open-ended database initiatives.
Future Development
The project is under development in the following ways:
1. We continue to augment the number of images included in the database, gathering new material in European and American collections. To this end, we will
eventually also incorporate a more substantial crowdsourcing component that
can include private collections, such as the photographs and drawings of
Second World War veterans.
2. We intend to focus more on the geographical areas not yet well represented in
the collection (e.g. Basilicata, Molise, Calabria).
3. We plan to amplify the typology of sources, for example, to include images in
illuminated books.
4. We will expand the mapping component to include certain kinds of institutional
affiliations (such as religious orders).
The development of an interactive map to show locations of sites, roads, ports,
and other modes of travel and access in relation to the geophysical and political features of the region has been a top priority for our project. The new mapping component will be searchable by types of built works (monasteries, churches, castles,
palaces, gates, bridges, towers) as well as artistic styles, or the names of artists or
patrons. We hope to be able to show the itineraries of Grand Tour artists. This
tool will enable scholars to craft a personal approach to their research questions,
identifying, for example, the spread of certain types of strategic buildings (such as
castles or religious groups), or to consider complex issues such as “center” and “periphery,” analyzing the relationships of monuments and territory with regard to symbolic or strategic objectives within different local contexts. Finally, the map will
permit the integration of this type of inquiry with the study of itineraries of
artists, architects, scholars, and travelers of modern periods, so that we may be
able to reflect upon the accumulated knowledge derived from travel and movement
through space and time.
Conclusion
The inspiration for the database was a deep interest in the monuments of South Italy as
part of the transmission of memory and identity. But the database is also useful as documentation of different periods of historic preservation and the monumentalization of
the medieval past of South Italy after the unification of the country in the 1870s.
We hope that the Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database will become a fundamental resource for the documentation and study of the rich historic patrimony of
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South Italy. The project is already having a significant impact on research, restoration,
and appreciation of the historic legacy of South Italy, not only for the major urban
centers, but also for smaller but no less important cities (for example Galatina, Nola,
and Nardò), as well as for monuments in isolated locations in the countryside.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
CAROLINE BRUZELIUS, Professor Emerita of Art and Architectural History at Duke University, publishes on medieval buildings in France and Italy. Her recent book, Preaching,
Building and Burying: Friars in the Medieval City (Yale Press, 2014), is on the innovative
religious and social practices of the Franciscan and Dominican orders (outdoor preaching,
visiting laymen in homes, and burying the middle class in churches) that transformed medieval cities. Bruzelius has been a pioneer in exploring digital technologies for art, architecture, and the built environment. She is a founder of the Wired! laboratory at Duke, a group
of faculty and graduate students who integrate visualization technologies into teaching and
multi-year research initiatives. She is also a founder of Visualizing Venice, an international
collaborative that models growth and change in the city of Venice. From 1994 to 1998, Bruzelius was Director of the American Academy in Rome. She is a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Antiquaries in London, and the Medieval
Academy of America. She has received numerous research fellowships and has received
both teaching and leadership awards at Duke.
PAOLA VITOLO (PhD, University “Federico II” in Naples) is Assistant Professor (Ricercatrice e Professore Aggregato) at the University “Federico II” in Naples. Her field is medieval art and patronage in the Angevin and Aragonese Kingdom of Sicily, with special
emphasis on the connections between the late medieval European courts. Her research includes the monuments and symbols of the visual and architectural representation of power;
female patronage; the reuse and reinterpretation of medieval works of art; the social status
of medieval artists; and the organization of medieval workshops. Vitolo focuses on the analysis of textual and figural documentation, including the study of historic images of monuments and cities, and has numerous publications, including on the drawings,
watercolors, and prints of Neapolitan artists and the German artist Johann Anton
Ramboux (see “Il Medioevo napoletano nei taccuini di Johann Anton Ramboux,” Prospettiva 119–120 [2005/2007]: 127–144).
Notes
For reviews of the database, see Lindsey Gum, “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image
Database,” ARLIS/NA, April 2017, https://www.arlisna.org/publications/multimediatechnology-reviews/1155-the-medieval-kingdom-of-sicily-image-database (accessed
December 2018), as well as Marco Rosario Nobile, “Medioevo meridionale interpretato
in un sito della Duke University,” Il disegno di architettura 41 (2017): 6–20, https://
www.academia.edu/33517897/Medioevo_meridionale_reinterpretato_in_un_sito_
della_Duke_University (accessed December 2018).
2 The noted architectural historian James Ackerman (1919–2016), for example, who was
in the US army during the invasion of Italy in 1944–1945, made a notebook of drawings
of South Italian sites.
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3 See Nobile, “Medioevo meridionale,” 17.
4 A complete list of collaborators and consultants is available under the “People” tab of
the website: http://kos.aahvs.duke.edu/people.php (accessed December 2018). It is
presently directed by Caroline Bruzelius and Paola Vitolo (University “Federico II”
of Naples, Italy), with Joseph Williams (University of Maryland) as project manager,
and David Tremmel (Duke University) as data manager and database and web developer, William Broom (Duke University) as project coordinator, and John Taormina
(Duke University) as metadata and image management consultant.
5 These metadata templates were designed to maintain data consistency, guide data collection in the field, and provide a framework for describing and contextualizing the
visual representations of evidence. We thank John Taormina for his assistance in this
process.
6 Catania dal tremuoto del 1693 al 1708 (in a private collection). See Giuseppe Pagnano,
“La costruzione dell’identità di Catania dal secolo XVI al XX,” in Catania. La città, la
sua storia, ed. M. Aymard and G. Giarrizzo (Catania: Sanfilippo, 2007), 181–237,
esp. entry number 15, 228.
7 The Wired! lab at Duke University has had a long-term commitment to the integration
of visualization technologies with traditional teaching in art history; see the website
http://www.dukewired.org/research/ (accessed December 2018).