Featured Graduate Student Research: Graylin Harrison

Those who visit Naples will quickly observe it is a city obsessed with death. Images of purgatory abound in its churches and museums, and skeletal remains of its past citizens are piled in catacombs, caves, and crypts everywhere. This preoccupation with death has enticed me since my very first moments in Naples, and even more so when I began to realize it is the product of a centuries’ old belief system regarding death and the afterlife. While this image of a death-obsessed Naples is well known to scholars, they repeatedly present it as a matter of fact rather than an area for inquiry. My dissertation (tentatively titled City of Skulls: Art, Ritual, and Afterlife in Early Modern Naples) will explore what so many have merely observed – the network of images, objects, beliefs, and behaviors that has subtended Neapolitan funerary culture for centuries.

This study will begin with a survey of tombs and funerary ephemera. Following, I will explore the art and architecture of the cult of the souls in purgatory, and the art objects involved in private meditations on death. An epilogue will consider the twentieth-century cult of the dead in Naples, prospecting the continuities between early modern and contemporary. Because of the dearth of literature on these topics, there are few existing secondary sources whose footnotes might serve to orient my archival research.

During my stay in Naples, I was able to begin this process of discovery on my own. The most exciting development was the opportunity to visit the archives of the Church of the Souls in Purgatory, a collection referenced chiefly in Italian-language scholarship on twentieth-century Naples. Constructed in the seventeenth century, this church was among the very first institutions in Naples dedicated to purgatory and home to a confraternity of nobles whose mission was to administer death, dying, and the afterlife. The Church of the Souls in Purgatory will feature as a case study in at least one chapter of my dissertation. During my time in the city, I visited this collection several times and got to know the head archivist, Giulio Raimondi. He was able to answer my questions about the archive’s holdings and finding tools, which would have proven very difficult on my own.

In addition to the Church of the Souls in Purgatory archive, I spent several days at the Archivio di Stato. While there I identified several key fondi that will be useful for my dissertation. Though I did not have time to consult these materials in depth, I consider my discovery of them a massive success. The Europe Center’s funding allowed me to take several important steps in the direction of my dissertation, which will streamline all research I undertake in the future.

Graylin Harrison is a PhD candidate in Art & Art History.