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Politics in the street: the materiality of urban public spaces in Renaissance Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2023

Massimo Rospocher Open the ORCID record for Massimo Rospocher [Opens in a new window]  and
Enrico Valseriati Open the ORCID record for Enrico Valseriati [Opens in a new window]
Massimo Rospocher
Affiliation:
Italian-German Historical Institute, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy
Enrico Valseriati*
Affiliation:
Brescia Musei Foundation, Brescia, Italy
*
Corresponding author: Enrico Valseriati; Email: valseriati@bresciamusei.com
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Abstract

In Renaissance Italy, the political power of authorities found one of its expressions in material symbols of sovereignty. The placing of inscriptions, sculptures and columns and the commissioning of frescoes in streets, piazzas and public spaces, for example, were essential ways of communicating political or spiritual authority to the populace. Sometimes perceived as representations of a top-down form of communication, in the urban context these same material emblems of power became political objects through which to express dissent, as in the case of public loggias, speaking statues or graffiti on walls and civic palaces. Presenting case-studies from various cities in northern Italy, this article investigates the dialectics between the people and the authorities in the urban fabric, especially in everyday life. Combining a spatial and a material approach to politics, this article reveals the dynamic and relational nature of political public spaces.

Type
Research Article
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Urban History , First View , pp. 1 - 24
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© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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38 See P. Cavalieri, ‘Qui sunt guelfi et partiales nostri’: comunità, patriziato e fazioni a Bergamo fra XV e XVI secolo (Milan, 2008), 110. On public dissent in Bergamo, see E. Carminati, ‘Rituali e cerimoniali civici nella Terraferma veneziana. Il caso della città di Bergamo (secc. XVII–XVIII)’, Università di Padova and École Pratique des Hautes Études Ph.D. thesis, 2016, 217–43.

39 Cavalieri, ‘Qui sunt guelfi et partiales nostri’, 110.

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55 Archivio di Stato di Mantova (ASM), Archivio Gonzaga, busta 1242, letter from Bernardino Prosperi to Isabella d’Este, 6 Jan. 1510: ‘el San Marco de marmoro dorato lo quale fo portato da Ravena al pede de la scala del palazo de la ragione incadenato cum una catena al collo et alle 2 la diadema ge le hano levate et postole lì supra nel muro et tutavia ge depingevano certi motti’.

56 See C. Evangelisti, ‘Libelli famosi: processi per scritte infamanti nella Bologna di fine ‘500’, Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 26 (1992), 181–239.

57 See, for example, Biblioteca Civica V. Joppi di Udine, Archivio Comunale Antico, Acta Civitatis Utini, Annales, tomo 44, Udine, 7 Feb. 1523 (‘Item ancora hanno posti alle collonne del pallazo de Comun de la cità nostra de Udene alcuni bollettini cum lettere contrafacte, cum parolle scripte incentive de seditione, rixe et homicidii’).

58 According to the definition of public writings given by Armando Petrucci, as ‘any type of writing conceived for use in outdoor spaces, or even in enclosed spaces, to allow multiple readings (by a group or a crowd) of a written text on an exposed surface at a distance’; A. Petrucci, La scrittura: ideologia e rappresentazione (Turin, 1986), xx.

59 ‘Antonio Grimani, / ruina de’ cristiani / rebello de’ venetiani, / puòstu esser manzà da’ canni, / da’ canni, da’ cagnolli, / ti e toi fiulli!’; DMS, III, col. 5.

60 Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Capi del Consiglio di Dieci, Dispacci (lettere) dei rettori e pubblici rappresentanti, busta 21, Brescia, 9 Aug. 1548. For other examples, see Valseriati, Tra Venezia e l’Impero, 32–48.

61 Thanks to the extensive presence of writings for public display, graffiti and ephemeral printed texts: R. Salzberg, Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice (Manchester, 2014), 61–5; R. Ferguson, Venetian Inscriptions: Vernacular Writing for Public Display in Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Manchester, 2021); and now D. Marangon and A. Toso Fei, I graffiti di Venezia (Venice, 2022).

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70 See L. Patetta, ‘Milano, XV–XVII secolo: la difficoltà di costruire piazze’, in D. Calabi (ed.), Fabbriche, piazze, mercati: la città italiana nel Rinascimento (Rome, 1997), 63; and Nevola, Street Life, 58.

71 S. D’Amico, ‘An ephemeral king: political power and urban space in Spanish Milan’, Cheiron, 6 (2021), 13–38, at 29.

72 Priuli, I diarii, vol. IV, 56–7.

73 T. Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, ed. P. Cherchi and B. Collina (Turin, 1996), vol. II, 809, chapter De gli otiosi in piazza.

74 G. Lantieri da Paratico, Due dialoghi del modo di disegnare le piante delle fortezze secondo Euclide (Venice, 1557), 47.

75 Ibid.

76 Pietro Assonica, Fragmentum chronicae ab anno circiter 1509 ad 1512, ed. G. Finazzi, in Miscellanea di Storia italiana (Turin, 1868), vol. V, 316.

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82 Archivio di Stato di Milano, Cancelleria dello Stato di Milano, Filippo II (1575), busta 295, 20 Jul. 1575. On this case, see also G. Politi, Aristocrazia e potere politico nella Cremona di Filippo II (Milan, 1976), 443.

83 On Venice itself, see de Vivo, Information and Communication in Venice.

84 Giovanni Battista Bianchi, I diari dei Bianchi, in P. Guerrini (ed.), Le cronache bresciane inedite dei secoli XIV–XIX, 5 vols. (Brescia, 1930), vol. IV, 66–8.

85 Ibid., 69.

86 Even if it should be noted that official deliberations are completely silent on this episode of summary justice; see ASB, Archivio Storico Civico, reg. 568, Provvisioni, 1606–07.

87 On the gendering of urban public space in early modern cities, see the NWO-funded project www.freedomofthestreets.org, accessed 28 Oct. 2023.

88 See Cohn, S.K. Jr, ‘Women in revolt in medieval and early modern Europe’, in Firnhaber-Baker, J. and Schoenaers, D. (eds.), The Routledge History Handbook of Medieval Revolt (London, 2017), 208–19Google Scholar.

89 For example, in Augsburg a weaver’s wife, Anna Fassnacht, was banished and tortured in 1524 for a seditious talk in the main church and in 1588 Sabina Preiss was interrogated for singing a banned political song in a hospital. See Tlusty, B.A. (ed.), Augsburg during the Reformation Era: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, 2012), 15–16, 52–3Google Scholar; and Lewis, M., ‘Women, family and sexuality’, in Tlusty, B.A. and Häberlein, M. (eds.), A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg (Leiden and Boston, 2020), 311–12Google Scholar.

90 Research on early modern Rome has shown that two-thirds of violence cases involving women happened in public spaces and a good percentage of them included episodes of house-scorning, writing on doors or affixing of defamatory notes: Cohen, E.S., ‘Honor and gender in the streets of early modern Rome’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 22 (1992), 597–625 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vasta, C., ‘Per una topografia della violenza femminile (Roma, secoli XVI–XVII)’, Genesis, 14 (2015), 59–81 Google Scholar.

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93 DMS, vol. IX, col. 525.

94 For the use of this expression in another context, see Corbellini and Hoogvliet’s article in this special issue.

95 DMS, vol. VIII, col. 527. On this and other similar cases, see Judde de Larivière, The Revolt of Snowballs, 63–4.

96 See Cowan, A., ‘Seeing is believing: urban gossip and the balcony in early modern Venice’, Gender & History, 23 (2011), 721–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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