Artistic exchange between Dubrovnik and Naples in the time of Alfonso d'Aragona

Studies of political and commercial contacts as well as transits between Dubrovnik and Naples in the mid-fifteenth century help explain how the personal contacts of several important artists with the high-ranking persons in Dubrovnik and Naples built careers on both sides of the Adriatic. This paper examines three illustrative cases. In 1436, with the mediation of Giacomo Cotrugli, a merchant and Ragusan consul of Joanna d'Anjou, the engineer Onofrio di Giordano della Cava, arrived from Naples in Dubrovnik. Onofrio worked in Dubrovnik for seven years on water supply, the Rector's palace, and fortifications; in 1443, Alfonso of Aragon summoned him back to Naples to work on the Castelnuovo. Guglielmo Monaco, a renowned clockmaker and bronze founder, is documented in Dubrovnik in 1442–1444 and in Naples from 1451 on. And Pietro di Martino da Milano (in Dubrovnik 1439–1452), a sculptor and a friend of Gugliemo as well as a close associate of Onofrio, was invited to Naples by Alfonso in 1452. What emerges is a trans- Adriatic "community" of artists with entrepreneurial and social support.