The coast south of Naples is one of the most beautiful and evocative areas of Europe, a dramatic setting for the works of art produced at the height of Amalfi’s importance as a trading center. Jill Caskey’s Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean focuses on the art produced during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the wealthy communities around Amalfi, and her central premise is that these artistic projects exemplify the art of mercatantia: the private churches palaces, pulpits, and doors that are the material expression of the conspicuous and ambitious “getting and spending” of its merchants. Commerce thus shaped the character of art and patronage in Amalfi and its adjacent cities. Caskey considers both secular and religious projects, ranging from housing and baths to liturgical furnishings. The book ends with a discussion of a few fourteenth-century altars and a tomb as examples of an important shift away from the artistic independence and cultural inclusiveness of the region that resulted from artistic hegemony passing to Naples. She associates this last phase with the new climate of repression and religious intolerance that characterized the reign of Charles II, a theme convincingly demonstrated in her analysis of iconography of the stucco Coppola tomb in the Cathedral of Scala.

Caskey is deeply concerned not only with the concept of mercatantia but also with the historiography of the south as it has framed the discussion of her sites, and she embeds her analysis in these two concepts. In the long discussion of the “southern problem,” it is indeed important to be reminded of the intellectual tradition that started with Schulz and von Quast (1860), Salazaro (1871–77), and Bertaux (1904), and that went through various transmutations driven by ideologies on the issue of southern Italian identity. In her long historiographical introduction, Caskey highlights how her analysis differs or expands on those that preceded her. It is useful for medievalists to be reminded of the powerful role that the private and merchant sector played in the patronage of religious monuments and their decoration, as well as the social and religious anxieties that surrounded making money. As her title suggests, Caskey’s emphasis is also on the uniquely Mediterranean qualities of her subject. As such, Amalfi and Ravello are striking examples of the internationalism of the mercantile cities of the south.

Although Caskey’s two themes, historiography and mercatantia, are useful in providing the intellectual grid for her study, there are some problems. At times they are strangely detached from the works of art under consideration. The author concentrates on the historiographic tradition, yet tends to ignore the “historical life” of the monuments themselves: the history of the restorations and destruction to which they have been subjected, especially over the past fifty years. The stripped and austere tastes of recent decades obliterate the sense of rich color and decoration that once characterized these monuments. Some paragraphs, or even a chapter, would have been welcome on the taste in restoration promoted by the superintendencies of Naples, Avellino, and Salerno, examining the aesthetic that seems to go back to the post-war reconstructions of the cathedrals of Teano and Benevento, or Sta. Chiara in Naples. In Amalfi itself, the decades-long restoration of the Chiesa del Crocifisso is a sad example of this. The whitewashed surfaces do everything to obliterate the textures of the walls, and such restoration continues, as, for instance, in the work recently done in the cloister of San Lorenzo in Naples. What do we have by way of evidence for what existed before these restorations? How did these churches look at the beginning of the twentieth century?

In some respects, Caskey’s emphasis on “Mediterraneanism” may also paint a false impression of the particularities, rather than the commonalities, of the trading cities of the Italian coast. For example, Amalfi’s many private churches are matched by those of other mercantile cities; Venice had some thirty-eight such churches in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and these structures seem to have had a lot in common with the Amalfi type—such as quincunx plans with domes. If I am not mistaken, similar phenomena can be found in Puglia. The common source of inspiration must have been Constantinople. As regards domestic architecture, if we can judge from the meager remains, the character of housing and planning in towns on the east coast of Italy (Bari, especially) seems to have been very similar to that of Amalfi.

The theme of merchant patronage at the core of Caskey’s study thus ties the medieval culture of Campania to examples of merchant commissions in other parts of Italy. On the Amalfi coast, as elsewhere, a large proportion of the art and architecture produced in the thriving commercial and industrial cities was patronized by the private sector, either as individuals or as consortia and associations. Pride in the city, and its sanctification through the creation of lavish and dignified monuments, was normal. Citizenship consisted of a mixture of secular and sacred forces that collaborated in creating an identity for the place and its citizens. Personal and civic pride, as well as deeply felt devotion to the central locus of urban and sacred identity—usually the cathedral—were good enough reasons for the donation of liturgical furniture, or doors, to churches and cathedrals. It is important to be reminded that the south is not always so completely different from the north.

Yet there are some uncomfortable absentees among the monumental dramatis personae of this volume, and their presence would have enhanced the narrative and revealed the dynamic relationship between ecclesiastical institutions and the private sector. The Chiostro del Paradiso at the Cathedral of Amalfi, constructed in the 1260s by the archbishop, is one such example. Evidence suggests that it was built as an enclosed cemetery for important members of the civic community and patrons of the cathedral. Although little survives of the original decoration, fragments of frescoes in niches date to the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and are interesting examples of wall painting in a long tradition that goes back to Sant’Angelo in Formis. Could it be that this important program does not receive a detailed discussion in this book because it was promoted by the archbishop rather than merchants? Yet it may well be that concerns having to do with merchant patronage were an element here also: Archbishop Filippo Augustariccio probably initiated this project to provide a dignified and graceful place for the burial of the Amalfitan elite, an enterprise that took on special urgency because the Franciscans and Dominicans started burying the dead, especially the wealthy merchant dead, in their churches and cloisters. (After all, when it comes to offering penance to merchants, who was more effective than the friars?) The addition of squeezed in and irregular chapels to the west end of the church of the Crocifisso may be further evidence that by the early fourteenth century the practice of burying wealthy merchants began to encroach on the cathedral itself. Lay support for the Franciscans and Poor Clares, who came on the scene in the mid-thirteenth century, thus changed the dynamics of patronage; all of a sudden, lay patronage became “centripetal” (the new communities founded on the fringes of town) rather than “centrifugal” (the cathedral and the private churches in the center). The secular clergy responded by allowing—perhaps even inviting—the tombs of the wealthy into prominent parts of their churches, such as that of Antonio (not Marinella) Coppola in the crypt of Scala. Merchant patronage thus elicited an ecclesiastical response, but that story seems to be missing here.

Because of their conspicuous donations to the Cathedral of Ravello beginning in 1279, as well as their dreamlike villa on the crest of the cliffs overlooking the sea, the case of the Rufolo family highlights some of the tensions of Caskey’s approach. We do not have much evidence of the Rufolos as merchants. We do, however, know that they were bankers and administrators, and, of course, they were famously implicated in a corruption trial initiated by the Prince of Salerno in 1283. Several family members were executed. Could it be, then, that this is not so much the art of mercatantia as it is of corruption or graft: the art of corruptela fiscalis, if you will? All the Rufolo artistic commissions, and the palace itself, date to the period after key members of the clan became administrators for Charles I of Anjou, whose rule began with the conquest of 1266.

The varieties and types of housing in the region also merit further examination. The evidence is of course extremely fragmentary, but in the context of what remains in the area, the Villa Rufolo could well be a “one-off” enterprise. The other medieval houses of Ravello, such as the Sasso palace (now the Hotel Palumbo), are centralized and vertical, and they cluster side by side on the road that heads from the apse of the cathedral up to San Giovanni del Toro. They are the antithesis of the Villa Rufolo. Housing in Amalfi, on the other hand, is lower and much more compact, with superimposed spaces and irregular plans in large measure determined by the exigencies of the site and previous buildings. The architecture of Amalfi is closer to what is known of Mediterranean housing typologies, such as one still finds in the Aeolian islands. It may be of course that we are simply missing relevant local comparanda for the open spaces of the Villa Rufolo, but one cannot help wondering if the accusations and punishment of the Rufolos did not have something to do with the singular (not collective) character of their lifestyle and patronage. Thus the Rufolo family may not have been part of this phenomenon of the “art of mercatantia” for two reasons: we have no evidence they were merchants, and their conspicuous patronage dates to the time when they were important royal administrators. The Villa Rufolo may have been a unique, even capricious, adventure into a new type of housing that consisted of a horizontal spread of courtyards, loggie, pavilions, and baths, perhaps a deliberately Islamicizing exercise by a family, which, on the other hand, did not hesitate to adopt the French importation of a family coat of arms and apply it to their pulpit. That’s opportunism of the first order.

A shadowy presence that lurks behind much of the narrative is the Muslim population in Italian coastal settlements. Construction techniques indicate a longstanding workshop tradition with a consistent approach using rubble and mortar. This work appears first in eleventh century-monuments, i.e., the Cathedral of the Crocefisso in Amalfi, which is distinguished by a three-story elevation supported by an arcade of pointed arches (this remarkable and unique building is not discussed by Caskey). As the author notes, builders from Amalfi were used by Desiderius at Montecassino. These local builders used the same techniques to build the vaulted spaces of Cava de’ Tirreni and Amalfi, and the palaces of Ravello. If there was a local Muslim labor force, might there not also have been a strong local element in the design of the various vaulted bathing chambers that Caskey has written about so effectively here and elsewhere?

Doubtless the author was on her knees in front of Cambridge Press for color photography. How could the editors not have understood the need for color images of some of the most beautiful sites and artworks in southern Italy? The mosaic panels, the re-used Islamic ceramics, the paintings in Ravello and Amalfi can only be fully appreciated with color illustration. To reduce the illustrations to shades of grey is to have failed to understand the lavish and luxurious display that is at the heart of this book.

Caskey has written a brave work on a difficult subject. But some of us might wonder if the intellectual fashions of our times have not tended to shape her interpretation of the material. For we surely have more than merchants here; there are bishops and bankers as well, all of whom were involved—sometimes in competition—in embellishing their buildings. Yet in the end, of course, Caskey is right—only cold hard cash made all these wonders possible.