City of Skulls: Art, Ritual, and the Afterlife in Early Modern Naples 

Graylin Harrison (Kress Foundation Fellow)

City of Skulls examines funerary art, devotional texts, and ritual objects to reconstruct what anthropologists and social geographers call a “deathscape.” It focuses on one city and one epoch (1550–1700), but incorporates diverse geographical comparanda and a diachronic narrative to contextualize the research culturally and chronologically. This project contributes to the burgeoning field of Neapolitan studies by reconstructing its death culture, the study of which mobilizes discussions of art and architecture, environmental history, religiosity, gender politics, and medical culture. City of Skulls comprises four chapters rooted in the early modern period. They examine local iterations of the ars moriendi, the cult of souls in purgatory, family burial chapels, and the rediscovery of the Paleochristian catacombs. The epilogue explores the modern cult of “abandoned souls”, revealing how Naples’s premodern death culture has persisted in unexpected ways.