MATERIAL CULTURE OF THE ITALIAN SIGNORI Introduction: Lordship Reified Areli Marina, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign THE M OST F AMOUS R EPRESENTA TION of an Italian Renaissance court may be the Camera Picta, or painted chamber, in the northwestern tower of Mantua’s Castello di San Giorgio (fig. 1). At the behest of Ludovico III Gonzaga, second Marquess of Mantua (r. 1445–78), Andrea Mantegna created the illusionistic mu- rals that transform the small, square room into an opulent pavilion between 1465 and 1474. A fictive all’antica architectural frame that supports rods hung with simulated gold brocade curtains divides each wall into three arched bays. On the room’s west wall, the curtains are drawn back to show two groups of life-sized figures before a deep landscape. Four retainers attend to the marquess’s sumptu- ously caparisoned horse and several hunting dogs to the left and center. To the right, Marquess Ludovico, his son Cardinal Francesco, and other male members of the Gonzaga dynasty stand in the foreground alongside their suzerain, Holy Ro- man Emperor Frederick III, and King Christian I of Denmark.1 Contact Areli Marina at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Art History Program, School of Art and Design, 143 Art and Design Building, MC-590, 408 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL 61820 (amarina@illinois.edu). Together with my fellow contributors to this cluster of essays, I extend warm thanks to I Tatti Studies editor Jane Tylus, managing editor Jessica Goethals, and the anonymous reviewers for their attentive readings and fruitful guidance during its long gestation. I am grateful to Lino Pertile, Jonathan Nelson, and the 2010–11 staff, fellows, and larger scholarly community at Villa I Tatti for their advice and encouragement as the project evolved from an informal discussion group, to the eponymous June 2011 symposium and, eventually, to this publication. I am especially grateful to the symposium’s speakers and moderators, Eva Helfenstein, Guido Guerzoni, Timothy McCall, Maureen C. Miller, and Peta Motture, and to its many helpful interlocutors, for their stimulating insights. Finally, I am indebted to Timothy McCall and Robert G. La France for their valuable counsel on this introductory essay. 1. The bibliography on the Camera Picta, also known as the Camera degli Sposi, is lengthy. For an insightful overview, see Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, CA, 1992), 82–184; for a short précis with up-to-date bibliography, see Anne Dunlop, Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy (University Park, PA, 2009), 211–17, 285–86. Some refer to Ludovico III Gonzaga as Ludovico II because he was the second marquess of Mantua, but he is in fact the third Gonzaga signore of that name; Isabella Lazzarini, s.v. “Ludovico III Gonzaga,” in Dizionario biografico degli italiani 66 (Rome, 2007). I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, volume 16, number 1/2. © 2013 by Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. All rights reserved. 0393-5949/2013/1612-0011$10.00 363 364 | I TAT TI STUDIE S I N T HE IT ALIAN R ENAISSANCE FALL 2013 Figure 1. Andrea Mantegna, Camera Picta, 1465–74. Fresco, secco, and some oil. Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. (Photo: Scala/Art Resource, New York) Color version available as an online enhancement. I draw your attention not to the ceiling’s acclaimed trompe l’oeil oculus but to the physical interactions and material signs of power displayed in the enigmatic life-sized parade of signori, relatives, attendants, and courtiers on the northern wall (fig. 2). Here, the central arch’s red-lined curtain wraps around its left pier to reveal Ludovico and his wife, Barbara Hohenzollern of Brandenburg, seated in an enclosed garden with their children and closest familiars arranged about them. The marquess’s gilded chair faces toward the right arch, where another member of the household manages the approach of an assortment of young men in Gonzaga livery. However, Ludovico turns away from these youths to confer instead with an older courtier who has just emerged from behind the curtain hanging to the left. Seduced by the physiognomic specificity of the figures’ depictions, modern inter- preters have labored to pinpoint the event memorialized by the mural and identify each portrait, assisted by documents from the Mantua archives. While such specu- lation is worthwhile, it is more likely that the ensemble presents the workings of an idealized Gonzaga court, rather than its configuration or undertakings at any spe- cific moment.2 2. Starn and Partridge, Arts of Power, 93–96; Rodolfo Signorini, Opus hoc tenue: La “archetipata” Camera dipinta detta “degli sposi” di Andrea Mantegna, rev. ed. (Mantua, 2007).  Introduction | 365 Figure 2. Court scene with the Marquess Ludovico Gonzaga and his family, north wall. Andrea Mantegna, Camera Picta, 1465–74. Fresco, secco, and some oil. Palazzo Ducale, Mantua. (Photo: Scala/ Art Resource, New York) Analyses of the role played by monumental fresco cycles such as this one in conveying the character and consequence of a ruler’s court and, by extension, cementing his political authority and social standing have been within the pur- view of art historical inquiry at least since Jacob Burckhardt’s day.3 In the inter- vening century and a half, generations of art historians have often focused on the significance of large-scale painting, sculpture, and architectural commissions in proclaiming and sustaining the signore’s authority. During the same interval and especially after Philip Jones’s influential 1965 critique of the Burckhardtian Ital- ian “Renaissance state,” historians have developed a more nuanced interpretation of the relationship of Italy’s communal and signorial regimes, examining the complex processes that made signorial rule possible.4 Concurrently, historical 3. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore (London, 1878), original German ed. 1860. 4. Philip Jones, “Communes and Despots: The City State in Late-Medieval Italy,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 15 (1965): 71–95, and, more extensively, The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria (Oxford, 1997). For historiographic analysis of the principal questions, see Trevor Dean, “The Rise of the Signori,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History 5, c. 1198– c. 1300, ed. David Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999), 458–78; John E. Law and Bernadette Paton, “Introduc- tion,” in Communes and Despots in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, ed. John E. Law and Bernadette 366 | I T A T T I ST U D I E S I N TH E I T A L I A N RE N A I S S A N C E FALL 2013 scholarship’s turn from a focus on great men to “history from below” made itself felt among specialists in Renaissance visual culture. Inspired by tools crafted in the sister disciplines of anthropology, archeology, and museology, art historians began exploiting a broader range of material evidence to illuminate subjects who were obscure in the textual record, such as women, ethnic and religious minori- ties, servants, and rural residents.5 Eventually, similar methods were applied to study the self-fashioning through consumption of Italy’s Renaissance elites, par- ticularly in the domestic sphere.6 Richard Goldthwaite’s reconsideration of the relationship between art produc- tion and consumer demand in Renaissance Italy, published in 1993, broke new conceptual ground and stimulated a spate of studies of the economic and anthro- pological aspects of art consumption, production, and exchange.7 A highly pro- ductive international research group led by Evelyn Welch and Michelle O’Malley between 2000 and 2006 not only generated an edited volume on various aspects of the “Material Renaissance” but also inspired further publications and new re- search projects on subjects as varied as artists’ contracts, shopping, and religious artifacts.8 At about the same time, groundbreaking exhibitions, museum reinstal- Paton (Farnham, 2010), xv–xviii; and Robert Black, “Communes and Despots: Some Italian and Transalpine Political Thinkers,” ibid., 49–60. For the reasons to reject the terms “tyrant” and “despot” to characterize signori, see Benjamin G. Kohl, “The Myth of the Renaissance Despot,” ibid., 61–74. 5. For a foundational essay on material culture studies, see Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method,” Winterthur Portfolio 17, no. 1 (1982): 1–19. For the relationship of material culture studies to art history, see Dan Hicks, “The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect,” in The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, ed. Dan Hicks and Mary Carolyn Beaudry (Oxford, 2010), 25–98; and Michael Yonan, “Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies,” West 86th 18, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2011): 232–48. For up-to-date summaries of the state of material culture studies in relation to various academic disciplines and subjects, with extensive bibliography, see Hicks and Beaudry, Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. For material studies relation to Renaissance culture, see Curtis Perry, ed., Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renais- sance (Turnhout, 2001). 6. For example, among many, Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experi- ence in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT, 1998); Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (London, 2001); Evelyn Welch, “The Art of Expenditure: The Court of Paola Malatesta Gonzaga in Fifteenth-Century Mantua,” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 306–17; Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, CT, 2004); Marina Belozerskaya, Luxury Arts of the Renaissance (Los Angeles, 2005); Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis, eds., At Home in Renaissance Italy (London, 2006); Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Fam- ily in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven, CT, 2008.) 7. Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1993). 8. Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn S. Welch, eds., The Material Renaissance (Manchester, 2007); Michelle O’Malley, The Business of Art: Contracts and the Commissioning Process in Renaissance Italy (New Haven, CT, 2005); Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400–1600 (New Haven, CT, 2005); Mary Laven’s ongoing Leverhulme Trust–funded project, “Objects of Devotion: The Material Culture of Italian Renaissance Piety, 1400–1600.”  Introduction | 367 lation projects, and related publications catalyzed a new generation of scholars to look anew at the vast stores of medieval and Renaissance objects in a heady variety of media that historically had taken second place to painting and sculp- ture. For example, Objects of Virtue in 2001 and At Home in Renaissance Italy in 2006 did much to bring back to life aspects of the material environment of the Renaissance that had been overshadowed by the previous scholarly focus on monumental art in the public sphere.9 Concepts such as magnificence and splen- dor, which had been thoroughly investigated in relationship to large-scale artistic patronage, were shown to be equally relevant to intimately scaled objects and art for domestic settings.10 Invigorated by the material turn in other periods and places, new studies of subjects such as Renaissance clothing and medicine have contributed much to our knowledge of early modern Italy.11 9. In particular, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the sensational reinstallation of the medieval and Renaissance galleries from 2006 to 2009 under the leadership of Peta Motture, and the exhibition At Home in Renaissance Italy from 2006 to 2007, stimulated significant new scholar- ship during the planning stages and after their opening. Of particular impact in the United States: The Triumph of Marriage: Renaissance Painted Wedding Chests at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, in 2008 and the John and Mable Ringling Museum, Sarasota, in 2009. Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 2001; Ajmar-Wollheim and Dennis, At Home in Renaissance Italy; Cristelle Bas- kins, Adrian W. B. Randolph, Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, and Alan Chong, eds., The Triumph of Marriage: Renaissance Painted Wedding Chests (Boston, 2008); Peta Motture and Michelle O’Malley, eds., Re-thinking Renaissance Objects: Design, Function and Meaning (Chichester, 2011). 10. The literature examining magnificence and splendor in late medieval and Renaissance Italy is now extensive. For its first explicit articulation in relation to signorial authority in trecento Italy, see Gualvanei de la Flamma [Galvano Fiamma], “Opusculum de rebus gestis ab Azone, Luchino et Johane Vicecomitibus ab anno MCCCXXVIII usque ad annum MCCCXLII,” in Rerum italicarum scriptores, ed. Carlo Castiglioni, 2nd ed., vol. 12, pt. 4 (Bologna, 1938), 35–36. Two important early studies are A. D. Fraser Jenkins, “Cosimo de’ Medici’s Patronage of Architecture and the Theory of Magnificence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1971): 162–70; and Louis Green, “Galvano Fiamma, Azzone Visconti and the Revival of the Classical Theory of Magnificence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990): 98–113. See also R. A. Gauthier, Magnanimité: l’ideal de la grandeur dans la philosophie païenne et dans la théologie chrétienne (Paris, 1951), 250–81; Richard Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore, 1980), 85–90; Paula Spilner, “Giovanni di Lapo Ghini and a Magnificent New Addition to the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52, no. 4 (1993): 453–65; Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art, 208, 220–21, 248–49; Guido Guerzoni, “Liberalitas, Magnificentia, Splendor: The Classic Origins of Italian Renaissance Lifestyles,” in Economic Engagements with Art, ed. Neil De Marchi and Crawford D. W. Goodwin (Durham, NC, 1999), 332–78; Trevor Dean, The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 2000), 235–36; Evelyn Welch, “Public Magnificence and Private Display: Giovanni Pontano’s De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts,” Journal of Design History 15 (2002): 211–27; John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke, Art in Renaissance Italy (London, 2005), 176–80; James Lindow, The Renaissance Palace in Florence: Magnificence and Splendour in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Aldershot, 2007); F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence (Baltimore, 2007), 46 and 176 n. 9; and Areli Marina, “Magnificent Architecture in Late Medieval Italy,” in Magnificence and the Sublime in Medieval Aesthetics: Art, Architecture, Literature, and Music, ed. C. Stephen Jaeger (New York, 2010), 193–214. 11. For example, Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing (Baltimore, 2002); Evelyn Welch and James Shaw, eds., Making and Marketing Medicine in 368 | I TAT TI ST UDIES I N T HE IT ALIAN R ENAIS SANCE FALL 2013 Despite this effervescent scholarship, surprisingly few studies have specifically addressed how signori in particular defined, defended, or mediated their lordly identity through their use of objects within and beyond the media of painting, sculpture, and architecture.12 Given that the signore’s sovereignty was under con- stant negotiation, the acquisition and exhibition of splendid clothing, armor, relics, precious vessels, and even people legitimated his rule by demonstrating his lordly virtues. The four essays gathered here take inspiration from the exemplary work that has preceded them to offer fresh perspectives on what Curtis Perry has called “the materiality of identity—the way a lived sense of identity is materialized and what it means,” especially as it relates to the attainment and maintenance of lordly status during this tumultuous period in Italian history.13 Although their subjects span the fourteenth to the sixteenth century and range from the Lombard courts to the kingdom of Naples, their authors concentrate on the cultural practices of signori and aspirants to signorial rank, rather than those of cortigiani seeking advancement at an established court. While they are but a small sample of the possibilities for study, they nonetheless reveal the great diversity of instruments an ambitious man could use to reify his lordship. *** Although it is an archetypal example of grand patronage by an established lord, the Camera Picta’s construction of Marquess Ludovico’s signorial identity nonetheless prompts some of the same questions explored by the articles that follow. Certainly, the allusions to Roman imperial grandeur made by the room’s simulated plaster reliefs and the sumptuousness of its golden and polychrome surfaces endow the fictive architectural setting with the magnificence appropriate to a prince. Unlike the protagonists of the first two essays in this collection, Matteo Visconti, Lord of Milan (1250–1322, r. 1287–1302, 1311–22), and Lo- renzo de’ Medici (1449–92), Ludovico inherited his noble title and lordship of Mantua from his father, Gianfrancesco. In fact, the Gonzaga were—by Upper Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam, 2011). Although focused primarily on northern Europe, Ulinka Rublack, Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford, 2010) occasionally addresses Italy as well. 12. The few notable exceptions include Mary Hollingsworth, The Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambi- tion, and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince (London, 2004); Carolyn Springer, Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance (Toronto, 2010); Roberta Orsi-Landini, Moda a Firenze, 1540–1580: Cosimo I de Medici’s Style, Lo stile di Cosimo I de’ Medici (Florence, 2011); and Barbara Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and His Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, 1541– 1585 (Turnhout, 2012). 13. Curtis Perry, “Introduction,” in Material Culture, xii.  Introduction | 369 Italy’s standards—a long-lasting dynasty. By the time the Camera Picta’s decora- tion was completed, they had controlled Mantua for nearly 150 years, since Ludovico III’s great-great-grandfather and namesake seized control of the city from the Bonacolsi. Ludovico I ruled first as Capitano of the city and later also as imperial vicar to Emperor Ludwig IV, the Bavarian. The signoria of Mantua— established in 1328, a marquisate by 1433, and a duchy by 1530—remained in Gonzaga hands until 1707. Such stability was unusual. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, for- eign powers, communal associations, landed aristocrats, and new men who owed their ascent to trading or military genius jockeyed for control of cities, castles, and countryside across Upper Italy. In that fractious political climate, lords—and aspirants to lordship—exploited all the means at their disposal to establish their authority. There were three paths of choice on the road to signorial status: the achievement of high ecclesiastical office, election or appointment to high commu- nal office, and military conquest.14 Men in those positions could consolidate their power and give their dominion added sanction by proving imperial support of their claims through the office of imperial vicar. In some cases, humble birth pre- sented an obstacle to legitimation. The expression of nobility through the prac- tice of courtliness constituted one means of ascent. In this context, it is impor- tant to clarify that courtliness is neither the signal quality of the good courtier nor the equivalent of courtesy. Rather, “courtliness is in a sense the whole en- semble of virtues, since almost every virtue must accompany the nobility of mores,” as the philosopher Giles of Rome specified in the late thirteenth century.15 It encompassed an array of Christian, Aristotelian, and knightly virtues, includ- ing prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, clemency, liberality, strength, skill in war, and magnificence, which were the very qualities expected of good rulers. As- piring signori who lacked noble blood justified their sovereignty by demonstrat- ing their nobility by other means. The first of the following essays, “The Langobard Revival of Matteo il Magno Visconti, Lord of Milan,” demonstrates how Matteo Visconti launched a cultural program that exploited Italy’s Langobard past in order to cement the lordship of Milan transferred to him by Archbishop Ottone Visconti. The program’s hall- 14. Guido Cariboni, “Comunicazione simbolica e identità cittadina a Milano presso i primi Visconti, 1277–1354,” Reti Medievali Rivista 9, no. 1 (2008): 1–50. 15. Giles of Rome’s disquisition on courtliness was written for the future King Phillip IV of France and widely translated and distributed; Egidio Romano [Giles of Rome], De regimine principum (Ven- ice, 1498), 2.3.18 (unnumbered pages). For analysis of Giles of Rome’s text and the question of courtliness as a sovereign’s virtue, see Aldo Scaglione, Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance (Berkeley, CA, 1991), 83–87. 370 | I TAT TI STUDIE S I N T HE IT ALIAN R ENAISSANCE FALL 2013 mark consisted in seizing preexisting objects and monuments, inventing or em- broidering their historical associations, and then recasting these artifacts in new terms that asserted the nobility of the Visconti house and promoted its sover- eignty. This essay examines that practice, through analysis of the artifacts that most vividly embody this neglected aspect of Matteo’s cultural program: a trove of precious objects from the treasury of San Giovanni in Monza—the palatine church founded in the seventh century by the Langobard Queen Theodelinda— and the enigmatic sculpted lunette above the main portal of the church, whose reconstruction Matteo sponsored beginning in 1300. After retrieving the treasure from pawn, where it had been placed by his po- litical rivals, Matteo conceived a strategy to reconstitute the meaning of the trea- sury’s religious objects. When depicted on the new lunette alongside Queen Theo- delinda and her royal descendants, the objects became simultaneously devout offerings to San Giovanni, Theodelindan relics, and Langobard regalia. By emulat- ing the queen’s veneration of Langobard patron saint John, building in the saint’s name, and enriching his church, Matteo transformed San Giovanni’s treasures into a vehicle for the aggrandizement of his lineage and positioned himself and his sons not only as worthy lords of Milan but as the Lombard crown’s sole legitimate claimants. Just as Matteo Visconti intended to transform the temporary authority over Milan first vested in him by the offices of Capitano del Popolo and Podestà in the 1280s and the imperial vicarage from 1294 into a lifelong, heritable lordship, the leading character of the collection’s second essay, Lorenzo de’ Medici, sought to consolidate his family’s control over the republic of Florence. Despite his de facto lordship of Florence, Lorenzo’s grandfather Cosimo il Vecchio repeatedly reiter- ated his deference to the republic, never neglected the bank that made his family rich, and undertook artistic and architectural commissions that enhanced the glory of the church and city no less than they did his own. By contrast, Lorenzo and his father, Piero, practiced a different mode of magnificence, one that emu- lated northern European and Italian princes. Although Lorenzo was nominally a private citizen, from youth he fulfilled the role of a princely heir apparent in official and private ceremonies in the Medici-controlled city-state. On Febru- ary 7, 1469, the twenty-year-old sponsored a tournament in Florence’s Piazza Santa Croce to celebrate the end of the Colleonic War. That morning, Lorenzo paraded into the piazza wearing a blue half-surcoat embroidered with silver and gold fleurs-de-lys, a blue breastplate, and a jousting helmet crested with blue feathers, and accompanied by a splendid cortege. Staging the show cost the Medici 10,000 ducats, not including Lorenzo’s five horses, some of which were  Introduction | 371 gifts from King Ferrante of Naples and Borso d’Este, then duke of Reggio and Modena. Lorenzo entered the tournament ground flanked not by his brother Giuliano or his Florentine peers but by Giovanni Ubaldini and Carlo de Forme, professional men-at-arms who (unlike Lorenzo) had fought in the recent conflict, under Count Federico da Montefeltro’s command. This was not the coming-of- age ceremony of a prudent and astute financier but of a Florentine dauphin competing with his betters on their terms.16 Lorenzo’s reputation for magnificence is so firmly established that it would seem nearly impossible to see him or his famed collections anew. Nonetheless, this is precisely what Eva Helfenstein achieves when she examines his ensemble of urns, bowls, beakers, and cups made from semiprecious hard stones from the standpoint of a specialist in the sumptuary arts of the northern European courts. Vessels carved from agate, chalcedony, jasper, lapis lazuli, malachite, and rock crystal could be found in princely collections and church treasuries throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world from the early Middle Ages onward. Some were of ancient manufacture; others were made whenever the scarce materials could be obtained. Their appeal resulted in part from their rarity and their in- trinsic beauty: the polished stones’ vivid colors and shining surfaces conformed to aesthetic standards prevalent in the West up to the modern era. Delight in their exquisite craftsmanship and wonder at the magical qualities that a long tra- dition attributed to these unusual stones also contributed to their allure. Because they were continuously prized, they were repeatedly remounted into modern settings to reflect contemporary use and taste, often as beakers or drinking cups. Few people had the economic and social resources required to procure them. In Florence, none but the Medici could have accumulated many pieces. Piero’s inven- tories record twenty-five hard stone vases or cups. Lorenzo continued to build on Piero’s collection; by the end of his life, he owned no fewer than sixty pietra dura vessels and considered them the centerpiece of his collection, along with the exquisitely carved ancient cameos with which they shared the qualities of rarity, luster, and marvel. Through close analysis of the fragmentary textual and physical evidence and the extant bibliography on the collection, and comparison with the ways in which comparable objects functioned in the Franco-Flemish and north Italian courts, 16. From the vast scholarship on Lorenzo de’ Medici, start with Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and its bibliography. The tournament was described by Luigi Pulci in 1468: Cesare Carocci, ed., La giostra di Lorenzo de’ Medici messa in rima da Luigi Pulci (Bologna, 1899). Although he was not the only man of his day to be awarded the epithet, Lorenzo was called “il Magnifico” at least from 1473, as attested by a notarial document witnessed by Bertoldo di Giovanni; cited by Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 47. 372 | I TAT TI ST UDIES I N T HE IT ALIAN R ENAISSANCE FALL 2013 Helfenstein identifies a distinctive—and at first apparently contradictory—fea- ture of Lorenzo’s cultural operations. Like the northern princes whose magnifi- cence he emulated, he showed the most prized vessels to his most valued and important guests within the intimate setting of his scrittoio or study in Florence. Like the northern signori he considered his peers, he also laid them out for view- ing on credenze or tables at public ceremonial occasions, depending on the antic- ipated audience. The preserved remarks of a few elite eyewitnesses privileged to view his treasures confirm that il Magnifico achieved the desired effect of impressing them with his royal splendor. But when traveling on a diplomatic mission to Rome as a representative of Florence, Lorenzo deviated from those princely practices by taking with him for display and use at official receptions, not the best pietra dura objects in his collection, but rather the lavish array of fine silver and silver gilt vessels considered appropriate to a wealthy merchant ambassador of a rich republic. In short, demonstrating his political acumen, Lo- renzo modulated the display of his treasures to create premeditated impressions on their viewers. Although newly crafted objects attract the most scholarly attention, both the signore who wanted to disguise his status as a new man, like Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the one who wanted to foreground the (real or invented) antiquity of his claim to authority, like Matteo Visconti, could profit from canny manipulation of preexisting events, spaces, and artifacts. It is worthwhile to note that the turreted castle inhabited by Ludovico III’s real and painted courts was the product of an earlier marquess’s magnificent patronage. Architect Luca Fancelli oversaw the fortress’s transformation into a suitably palatial residence.17 Indeed, splendor prevails throughout the painted space inhabited by Lu- dovico’s real and ideal courts. Imported oriental rugs line the terrace floor. Rare porphyry, verde antico, and yellow Numidian marble roundels linked by white marble rings inlay the surface of the garden’s back wall; the same decorative pat- tern makes up the dado that wraps around the Camera Picta. Mantegna arranges the painted composition of the imaginary court on the north wall to communi- cate each person’s status, first, by his or her relative proximity to the marquess and marchioness at left and, second, by his or her relative distance from the viewer. More significantly, details of dress and posture distinguish the signori and their heirs from courtiers and lesser attendants. The signorial couple, who 17. The Castello di San Giorgio was built at the behest of Ludovico III’s grandfather Francesco (r. 1382–1407) between 1395 and 1406. Ludovico III chose to move his household there from the Corte Vecchia in 1459.  Introduction | 373 sits, wears voluminous brocaded garments. Ludovico’s fur-lined, red cut-velvet robe reveals glimpses of his golden doublet at the neck and cuffs. His wife, Barbara, has draped a gold-brocaded blanket across her golden skirt for added warmth. Gold brocade was also chosen for the costumes of an older son—who stands at Ludovico’s shoulder—and older daughter. The youth who stands behind the marchioness—probably a younger son—wears a once bright, now tarnished silver overtunic. Seed-pearl bands ornament the Gonzaga daughters’ headdress, bodice, and sleeves. Fur also trims the other figures’ clothing, even that of the diminutive woman to the marchesa’s proper left. All but four of the twenty-two persons portrayed dress in Gonzaga colors—red plus gold, silver (now blackened), or white according to their station—or wear the red and white hose of the house- hold livery. Even the dog below the marquess’s chair is both red and precious—he is almost certainly Ludovico’s favorite hound, Rubino, whose name means ruby or ruby colored. From antiquity through the Renaissance, radiance was the signal optical qual- ity attributed to virtue and fame. When Stefanardo da Vimercate writes, in Liber de gestis in civitate mediolani, that “virtue is more splendid than gold and brighter than sunshine,” he is only one in a long tradition of authors who visu- alize virtue by means of resplendent metaphors.18 These qualities were extended to signorial raiment, so that, reflexively, the material qualities of a signore’s clothes could permeate the man and vice versa—his body and the material surfaces that envelop it working in concert to proclaim through their shared radiance the legitimacy, nobility, and courtliness of the lord, his lineage, and his representatives. In his article “Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North Italy’s Quattrocento Courts,” Timothy McCall explores and interprets the myriad tangible means employed to ingrain the lord’s garments with the necessary brightness, luster, and splendor. He chooses to focus his attention on male lords and their dress for two reasons. Because early modern male dress has received much less attention than women’s costume and its relation to female bodily identities, the equally culturally constructed and gendered nature of men’s bodies risks being glossed over as neutral or natural, which unbalances the per- ception of both categories. More importantly, nowhere was the materiality of lordly identity manifested more intimately than in male signorial clothing and its 18. “Sola manet Virtus puro rutilantior auro, / Aetheros superat radios, Phoebaeaque vincit / Lumina, tota nitet divis splendoribus orta.” Stefanardo was writing in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. [Fratris] Stephanardi de Vicomercato [Stefanardo da Vimercate], “Liber de gestis in civitate mediolani,” in Rerum italicarum scriptores, ed. Giuseppe Calligaris, rev. ed., vol. 9, pt. 1 (Città di Castello, 1910–12), col. 95. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 374 | I TA T T I STU D I ES I N TH E I T A L I A N R E N A I S SA N C E FALL 2013 ornaments. To return this lost dimension to our understanding of elite early modern fashion, diverse beads, buttons, pins, buckles, ribbons, chains, brocades, velvets, and armor all receive their due, as do Leonardo da Vinci’s startling experiments in jewel counterfeiting. Readers may be surprised to learn, as I was, that concern about his body image may have accelerated the death of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who succumbed to two assassins’ blades in the church of Santo Stefano because he thought a protective cuirass would make him look fat. Through detailed analysis of seemingly countless techniques and trappings for affixing light to a lord’s clothes, McCall captures the weight, sound, texture, and cost of the contrivances required to make a man appear a signore. The final essay in this collection challenges contemporary readers by extending the definition of material culture beyond (man-made) artifacts to living crea- tures.19 As one fourteenth-century description put it, the Visconti lords of Milan were “magnificent in household, horses, golden horse ornaments, falcons, and hunting dogs, almost regal in the greatest feasts, and great in attendants and familiars.”20 The quality and quantity of a signore’s horses and hounds reflected on his dignity, just as the quantity and quality of his children, his guard, or his household staff did. In Mantegna’s mural, the marquess is attended by twenty-one persons, most of whom express their subordination to him through Gonzaga- themed clothing that they most likely received from their lord. All of them, in a sense, can be construed as constituent parts of the marquess’s material self. At twenty paces, their individual identities are not discernible, but their Gonzaga identity is clear. The one exception, perhaps, may be the unusually small woman standing just behind and to the right of Marchioness Barbara’s full skirts. Her short stature, disproportionately short limbs, and large head suggest that she suffers from a form of dwarfism called achondroplasia. As Touba Ghadessi shows in “Lords and Monsters: Visible Emblems of Rule,” dwarves of all types were esteemed components of a princely Renaissance house- hold. Looking back at accounts of sixteenth-century practices through the mores of the twenty-first, it is difficult not to be shocked at the nonchalant cruelty with which persons with this disorder were treated. Yet despite being classified as “monsters,” valued but depersonalized as marvels of nature, and sometimes 19. For an important analysis of the related but distinct concepts of the signore’s corte and familia, in relation to the Este court, see Guido Guerzoni, “Familia, corte, casa: The Este Case in [the] Fifteenth–Sixteenth Century,” in La cour de Bourgogne et l’Europe: Le rayonnement et les limites d’un modèle culturel, ed. Werner Paravicini, Torsten Hiltmann, and Frank Viltart, Beihefte der Francia 73 (Ostfildern, 2013), 515–41. 20. De la Flamma, “Opusculum de rebus gestis ab Azone,” 35–36.  Introduction | 375 bought, gifted, and bred like enslaved workers, people with dwarfism also suc- ceeded in forging distinct places for themselves within a lord’s court.21 In this article, Ghadessi explores the career and position in Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s court of the man named Braccio di Bartolo of Poggio Fornione (in Romagna), better known by his nickname, Morgante. Although he was only one of several dwarves in Cosimo’s court, Morgante was distinguished by the large number of portraits of him commissioned during his lifetime and his persistent proximity to the duke. Through analysis of the major works, their intended functions, and their relationship to the duke’s concerted campaign to raise the regional and international status of the Medici court, Ghadessi concludes that Morgante may have been more than an interchangeable nano fulfilling the usual functions of counterpointing the duke’s own physical perfection, showcasing his wealth, and providing comic relief for the ducal household. Morgante’s particular personality and physical appearance came to be so closely associated with Cosimo and his court that he became a living Medicean impresa. 21. These differently configured members of the Renaissance court are receiving increasing schol- arly attention, supported by extensive archival research on certain courts (e.g., the Medici, Este) and critical perspectives inspired by recent studies of monstrosity, normativity, disability, and the marvel- ous, including Keala Jane Jewell, ed., Monsters in the Italian Literary Imagination (Detroit, 2001); Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment in the High Middle Ages, c.1100–c.1400 (New York, 2006); Waltraud Ernst, ed., Histories of the Normal and the Abnor- mal: Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity (New York, 2012); Peter G. Platt, ed., Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture (Newark, NJ, 1999). Recent analyses of dwarves in Renaissance courts include Janet Ravenscroft, “Invisible Friends: Questioning the Repre- sentation of the Court Dwarf in Hapsburg Spain,” in Ernst, Histories of the Normal and the Abnor- mal, 26–52; Robin L. O’Bryan, “Virtue, Vice, and Princely Pleasure: Dwarfs in a Sforza Grammatica,” Libri e Documenti 34–35 (2008–9): 7–23; and Touba Ghadessi, “Inventoried Monsters: Dwarves and Hirsutes at Court,” Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 2 (2011): 267–81.