Refining a vernacular idiom and the endless “questione meridionale”. A focus on Francesco Negri Arnoldi’s critical approach to Southern Italian Cinquecento Sculpture

Francesco Negri Arnoldi’s position undoubtedly played a fundamental role in combating a hierarchical approach both to works of art and to Art History. Not only by redeeming some categories of works of art from an ancillary or secondary dimension for the major arts such as within the vast range of possibilities offered by sculpture, but, above all by re-tracing a geography of the development of artistic craftsmanship, in Southern areas of the Italian peninsula. In his book Scultura del Cinquecento in Italia meridionale (Sixteenth-century Sculpture in Southern Italy), (Napoli, 1996), Francesco Negri Arnoldi directed his gaze towards phenomena interpreted as being vernacular translations of more noble languages, claiming, a unique identity for the former. He did this not necessarily in conflict with, but rather as a reaction to a cultural approach that was heavily influenced by the ‘stigma’ of the ‘Vasarian’ geographical division of the peninsula into ‘centers and peripheries’ (as well as a biographical approach to central and peripheral artists).