Global Power/Local Memory: Funeral Monuments on the Iberian and Italian Peninsulas during the Spanish-Habsburg Rule

In the 62 years since Erwin Panofsky published his “Four Lectures” on tomb sculpture in 1964, art history has produced a vast and increasingly complex body of research. The workshop seeks to question recent methodological assumptions and to open up new perspectives on the study of funerary monuments by situating them within a broader, culturally and socially heterogeneous context: that of the Mediterranean Spanish Habsburg Empire. While individual studies of funerary monuments exist for the Iberian Peninsula, Naples, Milan, and Portugal, the transnational dimension of memorial practices has received comparatively little attention. By bringing together research on monuments, patrons, artists, materials, and practices across these different territories, the workshop aims to explore the networks, transfers, and processes of exchange that shaped early-modern funerary culture across the Western Mediterranean.

Program

Thursday, 12 November 2026

09:30–10:00
Anna Magnago Lampugnani (Cologne), Ivo Raband (Hamburg) – Introduction

10:00–11:30 Session 1
Chair: Johannes Röll (Rome)
Tanja Michalsky (Rome) – Memory and Representation: New Developments in Research on Tombs?
Marie-Lou Lanier (Tours) – Funeral Monuments of the Spanish-Habsburg Era Through the Prism of Their Architecture: Another Perspective

11:30–12:00 Coffee Break

12:00–13:30 Session 2
Chair: Adrian Bremenkamp (Rome)
Rebecca Teague (Riverside) – An Unlikely Precedent: Isotta degli Atti and the Origins of a Global, Female Self-Fashioning
José-Luis Vega (Rome) – United by Stone Even in Death: The Tombs of the Spouses Between the Iberian Peninsula and Naples

13:30–14:30 Lunch Break

14:30–16:00 Session 3
Chair: Ivo Raband (Hamburg)
Luis Javier Cuesta-Hernández (Madrid) – The Tomb and Funerary Chapel of the Sotelo Cisneros Family in Zamora: Global and Local Renaissance in Sixteenth Century Spain (‘Conversos’ and ‘Indianos’?)
Teresa Soley (Cambridge) – “Si vera est fama”: King Sebastião’s Tomb and the Iberian Union

16:00–16:30 Coffee Break

16:30–18:00 Session 4
Chair: Anna Magnago Lampugnani (Cologne)
Angelo Maria Monaco (Venice) – Rhetorical Burials in Salento During the Habsburg Era: From Macro- to Microhistory
Letizia Gaeta (Lecce) – “Temi umanistici” nella scultura funeraria napoletana: Spiritelli e bambini, dal sepolcro Bonifacio ad altri esempi

Friday, 13 November 2026

9:30–11:00 Session 5
Chair: Tanja Michalsky (Rome)
Giacomo Perrone (Lecce) – Tomb Slabs of the Spanish Community in Early Sixteenth‑Century Naples
Alessandro Grandolfo (Lecce) – Funerary Monuments with Kneeling Effigies in the Kingdom of Naples (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries): Models, Function and Meaning in an International Perspective

11:00–11:30 Coffee Break

11:30–12:15 Session 5 (continued)
Chair: Tanja Michalsky (Rome)
Anna Chiara Giusa (London) – Carving Alliances: Angelo Balsamo's Funerary Monument (1512–1514) in Messina

12:15–12:30
Anna Magnago Lampugnani (Cologne), Ivo Raband (Hamburg) – Closing Remarks

Scientific Organization: Anna Magnago Lampugnani, Tanja Michalsky, Ivo Raband

Image: Giovanni da Nola, Detail Tomb Monument for Jacopo Sanseverino, Cappella Sanseverino, 1538-1553, SS. Severino e Sossio, Naples © Bibliotheca Hertziana - Istituto Max Planck per la storia dell’arte / Archivio dell’Arte - Luciano e Marco Pedicini