**3. During Queenship**

The policy of propaganda through images continued in the years of Joanna's reign, developing two main themes: the claim of dynastic legitimacy (through genealogical representations and images of dynastic kings and family saints) and of the Christological assimilation (with King Louis IX of France as a prestigious political and cultural model).

Robert's death (1343) and Sancia's retreat to the convent (1344) followed the consecration of the church of Santa Chiara (1340). Joanna cared not only for the realization of Robert's burial, but also for the completion of the liturgical furnishing of the church, a building with a highly symbolic value for the court. The tomb of the sovereign, the work of the Florentine brothers Pacio and Giovanni Bertini, represents, with its mighty size and the richness of the figurative program, a very solemn image of authority. The sculptures show the deceased in his human, royal and religious dimensions, his virtues and authority. His wives, children and the queen Joanna—a symbol of continuity of the dynastic line—are portrayed flanking him while sitting in majesty on the frontal slab of the tomb. The profound Eucharistic devotion that Joanna inherited from him and especially from Sancia and that permeates the decorative and liturgical apparatus of the church of Santa Chiara (whose original title is *Corpus Christi*) inspired the continuation of the decoration campaigns inside this building. This devotion, manifested by the queen also

through initiatives of active religious patronage, inspired within this church a complex strategy of representation of power. The decoration of the *tramezzo* is dated to the first years of Joanna's reign. On the external side, facing the lay audience of the faithful, a cycle of the Passion and a martyrial program were probably exhibited. Only a few fragments (showing the martyrs of the Maccabees and St. George and a scene from St. Vitus's life) and two panels (the Capture of Christ and the martyrdom of St. Euphemia) remain, now in the church and in the adjoined Museo dell'Opera [19]. These saints enjoyed a particular veneration in Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages among the main ruling dynasties, especially after the Crusades and the consequent circulation of relics. It is no coincidence that the queen appears in the carved panel kneeling with the crown on the ground, in the presence of the Maccabees, defenders of the faith at the cost of their lives (Figure 4). As such, they were celebrated in numerous illuminated cycles produced for the Angevin court, for example the Holkham Hall Bible (British Library, Add. Ms. 47672), the Vienna Bible (Österreichisches Nationalbibliothek, cod. 1191), the Hamilton Bible (Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett, Ms. 78 E.3) [10] (pp. 294–311).

**Figure 4.** Martyrdom of the Maccabees with queen Joanna of Anjou kneeling in prayer. Santa Chiara, Naples (photo before 1943), sculpture, 1340s. (Archive of the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per l'Area metropolitana di Napoli). Image published in: [19] (Figure 3).

The Eucharistic theme in a more explicit royal allusion (i.e., merged with that of the Throne of Grace) appears in the Statutes of the Order of the Holy Spirit (Bibliothèque National de France, Paris, France, Ms. Fr. 4274), a knightly order founded by the queen and her husband Louis of Taranto in 1352 in imitation of similar initiatives undertaken by the French and English courts around the middle of the fourteenth century. In the sumptuous frontispiece (fol. 2v), the royal couple kneel before the Trinity in a lavishly decorated image [18,20], [10] (pp. 128–144).

Expression of the full maturity of the queen who, after Louis of Taranto's death reigned as sole queen, the church and the adjoining hospital of the Incoronata in Naples (originally *Saint Crown of Thorns*) represent the only monumental enterprise attributable to Joanna, an accomplished expression of her public image and of the symbols of her royalty [14] (pp. 293–305), [21–23]. The church does not show, at the present time, any portrait of the queen or explicit reference to her as a founder, but a rich scholarly tradition and archival documentation attribute the foundation to her patronage. The complexity of the symbols that can be reconstructed from the fragmentary pictorial and sculptural decoration still allows us to identify a complex web of themes expressing the divine

foundation of the queen's earthly royalty, having its fulcrum in the cult for the Passion of Christ. The remaining frescoes in the first bay of the church main nave, painted by the Neapolitan Roberto di Oderisio, show the first known representation of the Seven Sacraments in a monumental context and Old Testament scenes (inspired by the now lost frescoes painted by Giotto in Naples: see [24]) on the lower walls in typological association with the Sacraments. The cycle shows the ways of the personal and collective salvation of the faithful, promoted by the Church through the institution of the seven sacraments (which, according to saint Thomas Aquinas, generate from the wounds of Christ) and the virtuous earthly governmen<sup>t</sup> (for which the examples of Moses, Joseph, Jacob and Sanson are provided).

The church celebrates the queen's dynastic and family dignity recalling the most prestigious model of the French cultural tradition: the Sante-Chapelle of Paris, founded by Louis the Saint as a shrine of the sacred relics of the Passion of Christ. To endow her foundation, established «ad instar venerabilis chapelle regii palatii Parisiensis», Joanna asked her French cousin, King Charles V, to donate her two thorns of the Holy Crown [22] (pp. 23–30, docc. 1–3 pp. 111–114). The Incoronata can be thus inserted in the list of numerous foundations that were established in France and in the allied territories on the same model. A miniature of the queen's Book of Hours (Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Austriams. 1921, dated 1362–1375) recalls this precious gift. On fol. 218r a French king, to be undoubtedly identified with Charles V, is portrayed inside the Grande-Châsse of the relics of the Sanite-Chapelle, probably while extracting the holy thorn to be sent as a gift to Joanna [19].

The foundation also intended to recall the closest Angevin tradition and the queen predecessor's enterprises [22] (*passim*); for example, the queen converted to this project some funds that Robert had allocated in his will to the construction of a hospital for the poorest members of the court; she also entrusted the complex to the care of the Carthusians of San Martino, whose house had been founded by her father Charles of Calabria, an order that which she also encouraged supporting the foundation of a the Charterhouse of San Giacomo in Capri. Here, the queen is depicted in the lunette of the church main portal kneeling in front of the Madonna and Child, together with the noble Giacomo Arcuccio and his family, who had promoted the foundation. Finally, some details of the painted decoration of the Incoronata (in particular the *Ecclesia* in the cycle of the Sacraments) and the probable reference to Avignonese models for the unusual two-nave plan of the church, open the cultural references to the wider political, cultural and diplomatic context of the Kingdom [22] (pp. 42–44) [25] (pp. 43–52, 99–109) [26].

About in the same years, the miniatures of two illuminated manuscripts reinforced the themes of the royal propaganda. The aforementioned Book of Hours [14] (pp. 323–325), [7], [10] (pp. 451–452), [19,27–29] richly illustrated by two different workshops active in Naples in the 1360s, presents a rare combination of psalter and book of hours, probably inspired by the Book of Hours that belonged to Mary of Valois, which may have provided the model for the miniatures of the psalter and the calendar. However, the manuscript was customized to recall the queen's family saints, personal devotions and symbols of her public image. Miniatures show the queen kneeling in front of the Madonna and Child (foll. 185v, 200r, 231v, 234v) and of Christ (fol. 240v) (Figure 5), images of the Trinity (foll. 131r, 207v), of dynastic saints like saint Dionisius (fol. 215r), Louis of France (fol. 219r), saint Louis of Tolouse (fol. 223v), saint Elisabeth of Hungary (fol. 226v), images related to the cult for the relics of the Passion (for example, Saint Helena finding the Cross, on 209r, and the aforementioned miniature on fol. 218r), onomastic saints (foll. 211r, 224v) and Saint Brigid of Sweden (fol. 253v).

**Figure 5.** Book of Hours of queen Joanna I of Anjou (Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, ms. 1921, fol. 240v), illumination, 1362–1375. Image published in: [28], p. 70.

More explicit political themes are depicted in the *Genealogiae deorum* (British Library, London, UK, Add. 57529) dated to the last years of Joanna's reign [30]. It contains a genealogy of gods, demigods and mythological heroes of the Antiquity, and kings of the Jewish, ancient and medieval traditions, with a sequence of popes up to Gregory XI. The sequence of the popes is accompanied by the images of the rulers of the Carolingian, Capetian and Neapolitan Angevin dynasties up to Joanna, who is flanked by her father and her second husband, Louis of Taranto. As Charlemagne and Charles I of Anjou, founders of dynasties, the queen is depicted in a clypeus that is larger than those destined to the other characters, claiming her belonging to an ancient and prestigious dynastic line. Proposing once again the theme of Joanna's legitimate succession, the manuscript makes it clear that even in the last years of her reign, the patron (if the queen herself or a member of her close entourage) conducted an incessant activity of political propaganda to reaffirm the queen's legitimate power.

The troubled events that accompanied the end of Joanna's reign did not lead to the creation of a tomb appropriate to her *status*, as in the Angevin tradition. No material evidence remains of her sepulcher, which the queen probably destined to the church of the Incoronata [23]. Written sources sugges<sup>t</sup> that the queen's corpse was exposed in the church of Santa Chiara and was later buried in a sepulcher that was for some centuries mistakenly identified with the tomb of Joanna's mother, which bears no inscriptions and shows the image of a crowned queen [31].
