I pannelli del monumento del duca Carlo Spinelli a Seminara

The Marble Panels of Carlo Spinelli’s Monument at Seminara

The marble panels on the base of the monument to Duke Carlo Spinelli in Seminara tell the story of the victory of Spain, exalting the feud where the decisive battles against the Angevins took place. The first panel shows the banishment of the French from Seminara (1495); the second and the third depict two episodes of 1503: the battle outside Seminara, near a river, where the French were defeated and the Commander D’Aubigny, being put to flight, took refuge with few survivors in Rocca Angitola, where he was then forced to surrender; the fourth reminds of the passage of Charles V (1535). The model of the panels – which celebrate the rise of the Spinellis together with the victory of the Spaniards – is the bronze door of Castelnuovo in Naples. Even if separated by more than a century, the two works are similar in their meaning and composition: in both, a bas-relief represents armed groups seen from above, proceeding into a territory that flattens out in the receding landscape. The monument can be ascribed to the 1560’s, when Carlo Spinelli was building Carlopoli.