By political iconography we mean the infinitely varied universe of images through which power and the powerful are represented. It is a language made up of symbols, allegories, and histories, suitable and modified to define the precise concepts whose understanding is available to a defined social circle. It matters little that it is explicated in dynastic portraiture, monumental sculpture, medals, or cycles of frescos and tapestries, in the open or inside the palatine spaces. It was a language that was set out on various semantic levels and whose alphabet developed in time. The triumph of ancient gods in Renaissance Italy and then in Europe occupies an immense place ‘in the art and literature of the sixteenth century.’ It is a ‘veritable invasion.’ Italy is not merely the place where ancient gods first reappear, it is where they were first returned to their pristina forma (‘original form’). They were restored in their authentic aspects and attributes and from this profound discontinuity vis-à-vis the Middle Ages starts a new era of their parallel life with Christian symbolism. Reinvigorated by their new traits, they undertake a long journey – of over three centuries – in European political iconography, in poetry and in the imagination. It is ‘thus frequently by way of Italy that sixteenth-century Europe gains its knowledge of antiquity’; it is Italy that sends out the ancient gods ‘to the conquest of other peoples.’

We can take the equestrian statue as an example. The genre was already widespread in the Italy of the Communes and signorie in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it was not till the following century that it crossed all boundaries. In any case, from the effigy of Niccolò III facing the cathedral of Ferrara (1431) to that of Peter the Great looking toward the Neva in St Petersburg (1782), the equestrian statue was ‘une pièce fondamentale dans les stratégies de représentation et de communication de la monarchie en Europe occidentale aux temps modernes.’ The continental monarchies were inspired by the Italian model.

Every piece in the mosaic is part of the overall forma del vivere (‘way of life’). Dance and equestrianism, clothes and table manners, conversation, and everything that comes under the heading of ‘politesse’ and ‘civility’ belongs to the same general phenomenology. Leaving more general considerations for later, here we shall deal only with the practices and the rich, varied literature that deals with the specific forms of this subject. We have countless manuals, treatises, and instructions which the whole of Europe drew on, and on which it achieved its institutio, in the irreversible process of civilization through the adoption of practices of self-refinement and the creation of common ground for civilized coexistence. But that is not enough. Missing are the texts on the architectural orders, the descriptions of galleries, the numismatic catalogs and texts on poetics, the dictionaries, emblem books, and collections of imprese. Everything, in short, that contributes to defining the material dimension, the forms of performance, decorum, the suitability of spaces, as well as consumption and customs. It was mainly in sixteenthcentury Italy – a land of conquest for foreign powers – that this literature was produced and that set out a style of life that was admired and copied everywhere. The poet Girolamo Baruffaldi was still boasting of this primacy in 1745, writing that the ‘Italians have usually served those, who beyond the mountains have worked for their nations, adopting these good rules that were born and developed in Italy.’ The ‘cultural models that spread throughout Europe and imposed the “best form” of the Italians’ were ‘developed just at the moment of maximum crisis in the system of the peninsula's regional states.’ The historiography that, in these circumstances, saw the beginning of the ‘dominion of the great foreign powers’ is the same as that which has been silent on this fundamental aspect.

The years that passed between the edition of the Cortegiano (1528) and the Civil conversazione (1574) were ‘a frenetic phase of production that in the space of one hundred years helped modify European culture.’

The Arts Market

I say ‘arts’ because of the variety of goods circulating; proof of the desire to appropriate – through them – the beautiful, the antique, the customs, and the ways of being that might give a sovereign legitimacy and regulate his distinction. A stimulus for the art market was the feverish need to furnish new buildings. Given this circumstance, and the consequential demand for a large variety of objects, it would be misleading to conventionally distinguish between fine arts, applied arts, and luxury goods. Although the art market was linked to architecture, what was happening is also explainable in cultural terms. In fact, the mass of goods acquired was also aimed at creating canonical spaces and settings with a specific political symbolism. Furthermore, purchases also abided by the Aristotelian canon of magnificentia, as it had been revived by Galvano Fiamma in Visconti Milan and by Giovanni Pontano in Aragon Naples. It essentially consisted of spending generously in art and architecture as a fitting occupation of the monarchs. The Italian rebirth of this ancient virtue inflamed the patronage competition throughout Europe as a form of political legitimation. The kings promoted the arts and the arts glorified the kings.

These arts completed the creation of new royal residences, and heads of state everywhere aligned with the codes of Italian courts. Whether these new spaces were a gallery, a bedchamber, a garden, a library, an audience, or a banqueting hall, each of them required decorations, furnishings, and fresco cycles whose subjects and allegorical meanings were also the fruit of emulating similar ambiences and motifs in the courts of the peninsula. Imports of Italian art by the European courts remained high from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The courts of ‘London, Paris, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, Lisbon, St. Petersburg seemed insatiable in their demand’ for Italian painting. This was ‘of incalculable importance to European culture as a whole.’ It is ‘scarcely an exaggeration to claim that between the last decades of the seventeenth century and the end of the eighteenth nearly every first-rate Italian artist provided a significant portion […] of his output to foreign customers.’

To gain perspective, let us first get the historiography in focus. To understand the courts, paradoxically, we must start from the republican theory through which Italian history, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, has long been read. We know that Italian Renaissance republicanism was ‘de-masked’ decades ago. No further proof is needed. There is an abundance of literature on the subject, from how the myth originated in the writings of the Florentine humanists to how recent scholarship appropriated it.

Though this is not the purpose of this book, before we venture to explore new territories and formulate new theories, we must re-assess the political scenario of Early Modern Italy. The two endeavors are inseparable: it is illogical to think of hypothesizing a new cultural role for Italian courts if we do not first establish that they were, in fact, central to the Italian political context. This also entails retracing the process that gave birth to a certain idea of Italian courts. In doing so, we must also re-evaluate the traditional ingredients of the court saga, by examining the correlation of republican theoretical thought with actual government practice, and by gauging the consequences this had on the representation of the Italian Renaissance in its entirety. In particular, the Manichean picture of a peninsula divided into republics and principalities does not do justice to the wealth of its political geography. Underneath the surface of the supposed polarization, between the two opposing conceptions of politics and forms of rule, lies a much more nuanced and fluid archipelago of city and regional states that were dialectally interacting and constantly evolving.

Comparing republics and principalities also involves considering similarities along with differences and acknowledging that both were multifaceted universes, not immune from hybrid forms. In addition, the contrast between the two constitutional systems was probably less definite in the eyes of contemporaries than it is to us. In the early 1950s, the British scholar Nicolai Rubinstein was among the first to point out how historians themselves were victims of humanistic rhetoric, in which ‘Florentine liberty is praised over and over again.

The Terms of the Question

Having set out the general framework, we must now understand what all this meant for the circulation of cultural models. What would happen if we re-introduced these courts into the equation? Would courts give us a better idea of how the Italian Renaissance evolved into the European Renaissance? What would be the Italian Renaissance's legacy to modernity? Many of these questions have already been answered using the republican paradigm. It actually constituted the most widespread interpretation of the genesis of Western civilization. The periodization, the forces, and the essential codes of the modern world derive precisely from this reconstruction that selected the threads of affinity and followed them throughout the centuries down to the present. This ‘comfortable history’ reassures the contemporaries about the roots of their identity. What if, on the contrary, we found that we owe courts more than we would like to admit? If their civilization were one of the main sources of present-day cultural traits? Which, by default, would also make us realize that there is more affinity where we posited diversity. In other words, I am suggesting that the categories that outlived the Renaissance and became founding elements for European civilization are more rooted in the court than in the republican genetic patrimony. This presupposes imagining alternative routes and forms of cultural circulation, identifying different actors, and re-evaluating traditional interpretations. It also entails overturning some of the most tenacious historical stereotypes.

Accounting for the influence of Italian courts on European culture and identity is undoubtedly an ambitious project. And this applies both for exemplifying the case and for formulating new theories. Yet, we must start somewhere. To adopt a metaphor: we are faced with a leopard-skin picture, with many specialist studies on specific aspects and figures of this phenomenon, but nothing – yet – systematic that might explain organically the how and the why of the process. We know Sebastiano Serlio stayed at the court of Francis I of France, we know of the wanderings of actors and architects, of the success of Castiglione's Cortegiano, the effect created by the festivities of Italian courts, and we have a fairly clear idea of how the art market worked and how large it was. The list could continue. But, like a leopard-skin, these are disconnected dots.

One model that was exported was that of the city. It happened at various levels and in many ways. Firstly, it was thanks to the architectural theories circulating: the translations of Alberti’s, Scamozzi’s, Serlio’s, Peruzzi's and Palladio's treatises were universally praised, creating a host of imitators, and were used as reference works for constructing many buildings and cities where a court had its seat. The buildings they created for Italian princes aroused equal admiration. If necessary, their pupils were accepted and their teachings applied anyway. In each case, precise (and, in the long run, shared) codes were disseminated. Royal residences throughout Europe were thus created following the layout of the Italian courts. The sovereigns’ urgency to develop new building policies explains the attractive conditions offered to Italian artists. Their social status was very high, as were their salaries. Many stayed at various courts, while others emigrated and never came back. Almost all of them were able to adapt and were also skilled at finding favor with the aristocracy. They traveled with their families and apprentices, created proselytes, and often had to cope with the hostility of the indigenous architects. All of them realized the importance of adapting the Renaissance style to local tradition, and the sculptures, furnishings, and paintings as well.

The choice fell on Italian architects for their innovative techniques, their careful planning, and their versatility in fields such as topography, military engineering, and monumental sculpture. The primacy of Italian town planning was also partly due to the fact that the lords of the peninsula had settled in cities long before, creating the conditions for building new courts before the European monarchies. But the Italians were admired above all for bringing back and experimenting with the formulas and orders of the ancients. Only they had the know-how and were expert in the classical canons of architecture. It was the rules, the forma urbis (‘urban layout’), the elegance, and proportions of the ancients, and of the moderns who reproduced them, that conquered Europe in a general renewal of the spaces of power.

Spectacle, pageantry, and court entertainment is a much-studied field. And yet, a survey is needed, for at least two reasons. First, to honor our commitment to supply an overall and intelligible picture, and second, because, globally, it formed a substantial element of the diffusion of Italian cultural topoi. To be clear, I am referring to tragedy, Commedia dell’Arte, opera, ballet, and all their phantasmagorical combinations. Individually or integrated in multimedial productions, all these arts – with pyrotechnics, jousting, banquets, and much else – were part of the schedule for the lavish court celebrations of dynastic marriages, triumphs, coronations, or visits of foreign statesmen. They were different ambits, but they fundamentally obeyed the same rules and confirm the same underlying conjectures. They shared the same birthplaces, too: the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Florence, Parma, Rome, and Naples. In this, the Italian princes were unrivaled, and that is why everything that was part of the economy of their magnificence was borrowed by European sovereigns. Theater of politics or politics of theater – whichever you prefer: this was the patrimony they drew on to represent their majesty.

Take the marriage in Mantua, in April 1584, of Vincenzo I Gonzaga to his cousin Eleonora de’ Medici, or Charles V's entrances in the various Italian cities, or even the Este celebrations of 1573 when Tasso's work was staged, or the splendid papal ceremonies in Bernini's Rome, to give a few examples. This category includes all those occasions in which teams of actors, cooks, architects, tailors, painters, musicians, sculptors, and others were called on to give of their best for the thousands of guests who had come to witness their fantastic creations: whether they were temporary triumphal arches, banqueting tables, comedies, choreographies, or whatever. There was particular admiration for the Florentine marriage, in 1589, between Ferdinando I de’ Medici and Christina of Lorraine. The festivities continued for more than a month and included the extraordinary scenic devices of Bernando Buontalenti, fireworks on the Arno, an equestrian ballet in the Boboli Gardens, naumachie (‘naval battles’) fought in the courtyard of the Pitti Palace, and tournaments and ‘hunts’ in Piazza Santa Croce.

Abstract

The circulation of Italian court models is an authentic European phenomenon. Besides the different aspects and cases, it is critical to comprehend the modalities and reasons for this process of acculturation. First, we need to identify who were the sovereigns and what were the political conjunctures that sparked the emulation of Italian courtly models. Another angle considers peoples’ mobility as a vehicle of the circulation of cultural models. We also need to consider those who traveled to Italy in search of antiquity and learning. Finally, we need to cast light on the myriad of ‘objects’ (ancient sculptures, paintings, books, etc.) that were imported by European sovereigns and the ‘immaterial’ – yet, very tangible – elements of culture such as language and aesthetics.

Keywords: cultural models, acculturation, migrations, art objects

Princesses and Princes

The Europe of the ancien régime was divided both politically and – from the early sixteenth century – religiously, too, but it was also closely bound by contacts and shared features of every kind. Many of these were related to courts and were essentially to do with dynastic relations. This quarrelsome Europe found the premises for its present cultural homogeneousness and future identity in the constant cross-pollination between its court centers and aristocratic classes. There were so many marriage ties between Italian princes and European monarchies that we cannot possibly list them all. Bear in mind that, as this was a patrilocal system, it was always the brides who left their countries of origin to become part of the families of their consorts. For that reason, these mobile women were the means of cultural circulation.

Many young princesses left Italy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, taking with them the people, customs, tastes, and objects – the contagion – of their courts of origin. We have already met some of them but let us remind ourselves of the main ones. In 1494, Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510), daughter of Galeazzo Maria, became the third wife of Emperor Maximilian I. Bianca Maria would die still young in Innsbruck, after being empress for sixteen years. Beatrice of Aragon (1457–1508), daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples, was second wife of Matthias Corvinus King of Hungary (1476), and their mutual understanding contributed much to spreading the Italian Renaissance. Beatrice would become a queen twice over from her second nuptials (1491) with Vladislaus II, Matthias successor to the throne of Hungary and Bohemia. Bona Sforza (1494–1557), daughter of Gian Galeazzo, was second wife of Sigismund I Jagiellon (1518) Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland. She was Queen Consort of Poland and Grand Duchess for thirty years until Sigismund's death in 1548. She herself was assassinated in Bari in 1557. Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589), daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, was wedded to Henry II of France in 1533, and was Queen for twelve years, experiencing the horrors of the Wars of Religion.

Why write a book on Italian courts? Obviously, I was the first to ask myself this question. What is still left to say that is not already known about courts from the Middle Ages to the Baroque period? I discovered that I had two answers to that question, and – consequently – two reasons for writing this book. The first arose from a realization about what scholarship already existed. Scholars of different nationalities and from various disciplines have used a variety approaches to write about the courts, and their research has grown exponentially in recent decades. Since the mid-1970s, in Italy alone, the study center Europa delle Corti has published more than 150 volumes. There are specialized journals, such as the English-language The Court Historian, and research centers like the Residenzenkommission in Germany or the one hosted by the Chateau de Versailles in France. To which we can add a selection of exhibition catalogues and countless works by art and architecture historians. Literature, too, has been explored in its multiple genres, and so has music and the exuberant universe of pageantry, theater and ceremonial.

Yet, despite this abundance and variety of knowledge, a consolidating theme still seems to be missing – a center of gravity, a unifying theory that could give it all a coherence. In particular, for a long time, the Italian courts were ostracized by historians of the state, who regarded them merely as a hangover from feudalism. This was exacerbated by the tenacious myth of a republicanism that only recognizes the roots of political and cultural modernity in the communal city-states. While those times have more or less passed, it was here that the road came to an end (or led in other directions), which is why, as far as I know, there is currently no alternative reconstruction of the political panorama in Italy between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries – one that could shape new theories about the country's cultural dimension.

The second (principal) question is a rather daunting one: what contribution did the Italian courts make to Europe? If, indeed, it is true that the courts occupied a significant place in Italian history, then it is inevitable that cultural models were exchanged, albeit in very different ways.

Abstract

Until a few decades ago, scholars used to place republics at the center of the political and cultural Italian history between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This interpretation has now been revised. However, we are still missing a reconstruction of the alternative scenario that this would imply. Discussing this historiographical process and reconsidering the Italian geopolitical system under the new perspective of the centrality of the courts is a necessary premise to explain how Italian princely courts became culturally central and capable of exporting to Europe their ‘political language.’ In fact, princely courts carpeted the peninsula from Sicily to the Alps and maintained their cultural supremacy from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century.

Keywords: republics, courts, historiography, political geography

It is time to take stock. Most of the examples cited were widely known, but – as I have said several times – the point was not so much to bring new evidence, as to put together an overall picture that was as coherent as possible. We also knew about the huge sales of the Cortegiano, of the art trade, the circulation of aesthetic and behavioral codes, and the mobility of artists. This is already one first thing to consider: the information was (is) under everyone's eyes. And it is also true that, in certain disciplinary sectors, some scholars had already suggested partial interpretations. But I do not think I was knocking on an open door. First, because there was no overall theory, however sketchy. Second, because it was a matter of outlining a seemingly heterogeneous cosmos of facts that was organic. Finally, because interpretations persist that refuse to take this evidence into account.

Clearly, many different pieces needed to be assembled. To do this, I have combed every text I could get my hands on. And yet, I have barely scratched the surface of an immense, multifaceted universe. The examples I could (or should) have brought go far beyond what a single book can hope to treat. More important than the piles of data, however, was realizing that their importance lay not so much in their mass as in how they combined and interacted. On the same principle, though the various manifestations of culture follow their own courses, what matters is that they are dialectically interrelated, and that they make up as many facets of one single macrophenomenon that is articulated on various planes. Like the many ingredients of a cake, each has its own flavor, but on their own they give no sense of the whole and leaving out even one compromises the overall result. In short, tout se tien.

The question can and should be posed in other terms, then. If we want to grasp the meaning of what happened, we need to take a distant look that can take in the variables without ever losing the common denominators. The many pieces, if put together, give life to a mosaic that can be read only if we stand slightly removed from it.

Before speaking of courts, we must speak of the principalities. In particular, we must consider the transition from republics to signorie. A diachronic mapping of thirteenth–sixteenth century Italy reveals an incessant swinging of urban governments from one type of regime to another. Instead of a crystallized picture, we find a fluid political landscape. Since the Duecento (‘thirteenth century’) we have rarely had diametrically contrary regimes and not even a gradual transition from pure republicanism to complete tyranny, but rather unsteady signorie juxtaposed and alternating with precarious Communes. Signorie were often interludes of Communes, and communal regimes were, in turn, interludes of many signorie. In some cases, it is hard to establish if they were genuine signorie. Also, in many cities, the relations between politics and religion had an incestuous quality and, in most cases, a signoria was established on the basis of a pact between Commune and lord. The titles or offices attributed to the latter were extremely varied, and often the constitutional formulas were (for us) an incongruous mixture of republican statutes and autocratic prerogatives. For these cases historians of the Middle Ages have coined the definitions of princely republics.

Holding absolute authority, all lords were sovereigns in their own territory. Many were subject to vassal limitations and bonds of loyalty toward monarchs more powerful than they were. Many of them were superior to an undergrowth of collateral branches of their families and vassals of various kinds. Many were little more than ephemeral, only some of them managed to make their power hereditary, and very few established lasting dynasties. There is a bit of everything: secular dominions and ecclesiastic powers, and different titles and degrees of sovereignty. The winding trajectories of many major and minor individuals tell us much of the magmatic nature of politics. This, too, should be taken as a sign of the peculiar nature of political categories in the period. Some were mere warlords, some received a humanistic education, others were victims of the political instability in Italy, while still others headed feudal houses. Many did not achieve their ambitions, and many built principalities that evaporated leaving almost no trace of their presence. Only a few impressed their mark on their towns.

What Is the Court?

Which of these lords, tyrants, and princes whom we have encountered, and how many of them, initiated a court? It is hard to be exact, sometimes because of a lack of sources, but, more generally, because of an absence of precise criteria for defining what a court is. Certainly, not everyone had a court, and that, in turn, depended on various factors. In many, cases there were not the structural or circumstantial conditions for it. Sometimes, this depended on political instability. Sometimes, the conditions for constituting a courtier class were lacking, due to incomplete social training or the existence of hostile parties. One frequent cause was a dearth of economic resources. Sometimes, quite simply, the lord did not have the time to create a court, and often this was due to the impossibility of building a residence that was not a superficial restyling of the previous public palaces or clan residences.

This also shows us that size is not a reliable parameter for defining a court. Similarly, there is no direct relation between the greatness of a state and its court, and its territorial extension, which also has little to do with its standing. Despite their highly reduced domains, the Aleramici and Vitelli families undeniably had a court, at Piombino and Città di Castello, respectively. The same goes for the Cybo and Manfredi families at Massa and Faenza, and for the swarm of satellite micro-dynasties of the Gonzaga. And the court of the Marquises of Monferrato was also ‘important’ by virtue of their ties with the Byzantine dynasty of the Paleologo. In any case, almost all the Italian courts were courts of small states: the courts might be large or small, but the states were always small.

Instead of drawing on a prototype, we should proceed empirically. In some cases, there is no doubt: there was a court in Turin from 1563 to 1864, in Rome there had always been one since the popes installed themselves in the Lateran palaces, and the Norman kings certainly held court in Palermo. It is more arduous, however, to establish when the Este and Gonzaga families laid the foundations for a court or claim precisely what kind of court the Scaligeri set up in Verona.

Abstract

European politics refashioned itself ideologically and symbolically by adhering to the Italian courtly models in a vast and consistent range of areas. Italian courts provided new space models revived from antiquity and the know-how of architects that were able to replicate it. The universe of images and the innovative iconographical language is equally important. But there is more, much more, from the performing arts to clothing fashion to the behavioral rules codified by Castiglione, Della Casa, and Guazzo, to the variegated field of aristocratic manners. All these new forms of consumption, social practices, and ethical values compose a mosaic that defines the profile of the European gentleman and that homogenizes its culture on a continental level.

Keywords: political symbolism, antiquity, iconography, manners, social practices