By Coral Gables Gazette staff

When a queen’s legitimacy, a painter’s brush, and a pair of donor portraits intertwine, art history becomes something far more human — and political. The Lowe Art Museum presents Old Masters in Context: Naples, Sacred and Profane, an immersive evening of scholarship and sound that places visitors amid the power struggles of 14th-century Naples.

The program on Thursday, November 6 (6:30–9 p.m.) combines a curatorial talk by Dr. John Witty, the museum’s assistant curator and an expert on Italian art of the Trecento, with a live performance of medieval. Together, they promise a night that blends royal intrigue, sacred devotion and art-historical detective work — all within the Lowe’s storied Kress Collection galleries.

A queen’s claim and an artist’s code

The evening’s focus is a remarkable altarpiece from the museum’s Samuel H. Kress Collection — a set of panels whose donor portraits may, according to Witty, depict rival claimants to the throne of Queen Johanna I of Naples.

Johanna’s ascent to power in the mid-14th century was extraordinary: a woman ruling one of Europe’s most influential kingdoms during a time of dynastic upheaval, political assassination, and papal interference. Her reign was both celebrated and contested, and art became one of its most revealing battlegrounds.

In his illustrated lecture, Witty will trace how these donor figures — long considered anonymous — can be re-identified through iconography, heraldry, and historical record as two individuals who vied for Johanna’s crown. The result is part art history, part historical whodunit, showing how devotional imagery often doubled as political propaganda.

Music to match the moment

The lecture will be complemented by Ampersand, a South Florida-based ensemble known for its historically informed performances of early choral music. Their repertoire — drawn from medieval Naples and the surrounding courts of southern Italy — will echo through the museum’s vaulted space, immersing guests in the soundscape that Queen Johanna and her courtiers might have known.

The performance underscores the Lowe’s ongoing efforts to pair visual art with live interpretation. “Bringing music into the museum transforms a static exhibition into a living one,” Witty said in a previous lecture series introduction. The idea: to make audiences not just view history, but inhabit it.

The Kress legacy and a living tradition

The Lowe’s Kress Collection, assembled through a national program by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in the mid-20th century, is among the most distinguished holdings of Renaissance and Baroque art in the southeastern United States. Its Italian paintings and sculptures, once the cornerstone of art-historical education at the University of Miami, continue to anchor the museum’s teaching mission today.

By situating these works within a specific historical drama, Old Masters in Context reinvigorates their relevance. It’s not simply about admiring craftsmanship — it’s about understanding how art reflected power, gender, and belief in medieval Europe. The event also signals the museum’s commitment to presenting its permanent collection through contemporary curatorial voices, rather than relying solely on traveling exhibitions.

From sacred to profane — and back again

The title of the program hints at its dual nature: Sacred and Profane. The distinction mattered deeply in medieval Naples, where altarpieces like the one under discussion blended religious devotion with worldly ambition. Witty’s interpretation — framed by the haunting harmonies of Ampersand — invites the audience to consider how easily sacred art could be shaped by human agendas.

The evening’s blend of scholarship and performance suits the Lowe’s expanding role as both cultural anchor and laboratory for the arts in Coral Gables. The museum’s ability to stage such historically grounded, sensorially rich programming broadens the definition of what it means to engage with “old masters.”

Event Details

Old Masters in Context: Naples, Sacred and Profane
Thursday, November 6 | 6:30 – 9:00 p.m.
Lowe Art Museum, 1301 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables
Tickets $15 | Available via events.miami.edu