Robert of Anjou (Italian: Roberto d'Angiò), known as Robert the Wise (Italian: Roberto il Saggio; Santa Maria Capua Vetere 1276 – Naples 20 January 1343), was King of Naples, titular King of Jerusalem and Count of Provence and Forcalquier from 1309 to 1343, the central figure of Italian politics of his time. He was the third son of King Charles II of Naples and Maria of Hungary.

King Robert was nicknamed "the peace-maker of Italy" due to the years of significant changes he made to Naples. The city and nation's economy lay in the hands of Tuscan
merchants, who erected superb buildings, monuments and statues that
drastically changed King Robert's capital from a dirty seaport to a city
of elegance and medieval splendor. Robert commissioned Tino di Camaino to produce a tomb for his son, who should have been his heir, and Giotto painted several works for him. The University of Naples flourished under the patronage of the king dismissed by Dante as a re di sermone, "king of words", attracting students from all parts of Italy.^[2]
There was virtually no middle class in the South to balance the local
interests and centripetal power of the entrenched aristocracy, who
retained the feudal independence that had been their bargain with the
Angevins' Norman predecessors.


He was remembered by Petrarch and Boccaccio
as a cultured man and a generous patron of the arts, "unique among the
kings of our day," Boccaccio claimed after Robert's death, "a friend of
knowledge and virtue." Petrarch asked to be examined by Robert before being crowned as poet in the Campidoglio in Rome (1341); his Latin epic Africa is dedicated to Robert, though it was not made available to readers until 1397, long after both Petrarch and Robert were dead.