Abstract
Collecting became an important practice for Italian élites, resulting in the emergence of novel cultural and political spaces, particularly in the fifteenth-century courts, amongst which may be numbered the studiolo. The literature on collecting has often focused on one specific patron and on his or her particular sensibilities and personality in relation to the materials collected. Rather than viewing collectable items as static objects, or simply as the reflection of a patron’s tastes, this study investigates the ways in which artefacts circulated, connecting diverse individuals across space and time. Material possessions are examined not only as repositories of monetary value, but as objects which could be imbued with political meanings, memories, and obligations. This study reveals that both men and women participated in collecting, their respective political roles often being manifested in the things they collected and exchanged.
I remember that in the dwelling of Leonello [d’Este] at Ferrara, where he used to spend the winter, separate from his father but in the same palace, I often saw images of Scipio Africanus and Hannibal painted on the wall, addressing one another, as it were, with shared admiration, as in Livy.
-Angelo Decembrio, De politia litteraria.1
In Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria, the study of Marquis Leonello d’Este of Ferrara (ruled 1441–50) is described as a space decorated with famous men from antiquity in conversation with one another. This description hints at the ways in which the spaces of collection in the quattrocento operated on two levels: as private and contemplative places as well as sociable and conversational spaces. That is, the objects collected and the pictorial programmes decorating such studies, functioned as the visual, material, and tangible forms of the activities that took place within the studiolo: reading, writing, deciphering, quoting, debating, discussing, and the seeking of knowledge.
Leonello d’Este was well known as a learned ruler. Educated by the famous humanist Guarino of Verona, Leonello presided over a literary and erudite court.2 Decembrio’s De politia litteraria (On Literary Refinement) assumes the form of dialogues between learned courtiers, humanists, and Leonello himself, which take place at the Este palaces of Belriguardo and Belfiore and in Leonello’s private studiolo.3 The text raises a number of issues in relation to sociability and the forms of knowledge associated with the culture of collecting, and specifically to the spaces of collection. It also illuminates what was at stake in collecting, not only for the prince or owner of the collection, but also for the visitors to the space, and the humanists and artists who contributed to the intellectual culture that the study embodied, through their texts and art objects collected there. The literature on collecting has very often tended to focus on one specific patron and his or her particular sensibilities and personality in relation to the objects collected – a tendency we find, for example, in the literature on Isabella d’Este.4 By focusing on the sociability of collecting and its spaces, closely connected with the exchange of objects, this study traces the different relations formed between individuals through the processes of collecting – whether the object was bought, given, pawned, or inherited.
Two contradictory notions have been attached to the studiolo, ever since its conception: that of the study as a space for private devotion or contemplation, and that of the study as a social space, in which intellectual ideas are engaged with and exchanged.5 These two notions, as Stephen Campbell has argued, are also brought out in the literature on collecting: the tendency to view the studiolo as humanistic and attached to ideas, reading, and intellect, or that of the studiolo as a place for social exchange and sumptuous display.6 Both trajectories risk losing sight of the objects, locating the studiolo and its practices in the history of ideas on the one hand, and on the other, finding the birth of the self, the modern individual, and the roots of capitalism and materialism, in the consumption practices of acquisition.7 Visual imagery from the period often stresses the contemplative and religious aspect, reflected in depictions of the Evangelists and St Jerome, where the study is seen as a means of retreating from the public and political aspects of life, and as a place for contemplation and religious devotion. Written records, particularly ambassadorial reports and letters, however, tend to stress the more public dimensions of the study, as a space for social and intellectual exchange and as an extension of the self; a space in which one displays intellectual capacities, artistic knowledge, and erudition. It is also portrayed as a space, not only for the display of humanistic pursuits, but also one in which there is a political dimension, exemplified through portraits representing political acquaintances and networks, through the display of diplomatic gifts, or through the accumulation of items once owned by famous individuals.
The concept of the studiolo can be traced back to a number of texts from the fifteenth century that discuss the space and the phenomenon directly, such as Decembrio’s treatise, already mentioned, and the often-quoted Leon Battista Alberti. Giannozzo, one of the speakers in Alberti’s Della famiglia, notes that he ensured that his ‘books and records and those of [his] ancestors’ were kept ‘well sealed’ so that his wife ‘not only could not read, she could not even lay hands on them’. These documents were always ‘locked up and arranged in order in [his] study, almost like sacred and religious objects’. Such a veneration of the objects in the study is a common theme in descriptions of studioli. Giannozzo’s wife was not permitted to enter the study nor was she to have access to the things associated with the study: ‘I also ordered her, if she ever came across any writing of mine, to give it over to my keeping at once’.8 These primary sources have often led scholars to underline the study as a male space, where the boundaries of the studiolo were constructed along social boundaries: access and ownership were closely associated with gender, education, and social status.9
We need to be reminded that Alberti’s text is situated within republican Florence where oligarchic rule was restricted to male citizens. In the courts, however, rulership and political positions could be granted to women, and many daughters of noblemen and kings, received a humanist education along with their brothers in order to prepare them for regency. Court consorts, such as Eleonora d’Aragona, Ippolita Sforza, and Isabella d’Este, collected precious objects and maintained studioli, which suggests that we need to reconsider the notion that the studiolo was strictly a male space and to re-evaluate it with both genders in mind. Many of the written sources also indicate that the studiolo itself is an ideological construct: much like the court, it should be seen as an ideal rather than reality.10 That is to say, there is a difference between the imagined ideal space of the studiolo on the one hand, often characterized in literary texts as both male and erudite, where knowledge is sought through contemplation, and on the other hand, the real space, that is occupied by living bodies, touching, perusing, and engaging with objects on display, connected to social interaction.
The connection between the studiolo and court culture is evident in one of the first princely studios, that of the studiolo at Belfiore, a pleasure palace at the court of Ferrara built for Leonello d’Este in the 1440s. The pictorial programme for the studiolo, discussed and celebrated by humanists, was a series of paintings depicting the Nine Muses executed by Cosmè (or Cosimo) Tura and other artists (Fig. 1). As Stephen Campbell has argued, the Muses can be considered as a metaphor for the cultural practices connected with the studiolo: the celebration and study of antiquity, humanist pedagogy, the relationship between painting and poetry, the viewing and contemplation of images, and princely self-cultivation.11 The studiolo thus represents not just literary activity, but a material and visual relationship with antiquity and knowledge, emphasizing the need for pictures in such places. The objects on display, some only temporarily forming part of the collection, and the pictorial programmes such as the Muses, also hint at the ambivalences of the activities associated with the studiolo. The anxieties around display, ornament, and the seductiveness of the arts, not to mention the complicated gendered readings implicit in the Muses, point towards a need to pay particular attention to the social aspects of these spaces.
Cosimo Tura, A Muse (Calliope?), oil with egg on poplar, probably 1455–60, Layard Bequest, 1916, © National Gallery, London, ng3070.
The temporary nature of many objects on display alludes to the transient and volatile finances of the ruling élite, and indeed the precariousness of their power. Diplomatic gifts and portrait cycles displayed in the studiolo worked to solidify and promote alliances, as well as to dispel any political anxieties and instabilities. Pawning objects, vying for new specimens on the market, and seeking out agents, became central to collecting pursuits. By examining the circulation of objects and the activities taking place within the studiolo, this study moves beyond the limits of literary sources, and opens up avenues to understand the multiple relationships formed through collecting in the late quattrocento.
Collecting as diplomacy: portrait cycles and visiting circuits
Collecting can be understood as an aspect of diplomacy. Collections were on display and shown to visiting collectors, humanists, ambassadors, rulers, and other diplomatic figures who then recorded their visits in correspondence, spreading word of the things that they had seen. Items such as antiquities, medals, cameos, and modern works of art formed important diplomatic gifts, sealing alliances or quelling tensions between states. The presence of portraits in the form of medals or on panel alludes to friendships, alliances, or sought-after acquaintances of the owner and became the visible manifestation of those networks.12
The acquisition of collectable items through gift-giving demonstrates the social and political nature of collecting but also of display. Diomede Carafa, Count of Maddaloni and counsellor to the King of Naples, proudly displayed in the courtyard of his palace in the neighbourhood of the Seggio di Nido in Naples the bronze horse’s head that he had received from Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1471 (Fig. 2).13 The horse’s head was presented at a time when political negotiations between Florence and Naples were particularly fraught, and it demonstrates that such a diplomatic gift does not necessarily represent peaceful times, but rather might be used as a political pawn. Lorenzo was a well-known collector, as was Diomede. The horse’s head was a colossal work, skilfully executed and in the expensive medium of bronze. The dating of the statue has been the subject of much debate from the Renaissance to the present, discussed by scholars from Giorgio Vasari to Johann Winckelmann. Some suggest it was executed by Donatello or his workshop, while others contend it is a classical antiquity.14 Both Lorenzo and Diomede were prominent diplomats in Italian peninsular politics, and such a gift might not only act as a material signifier of diplomatic relations, but could also mark both collectors’ erudition, taste, and prestige.
Antonio Bulifon, Palazzo del cavallo di bronzo, engraving. From Pompeo Sarnelli, Guida de’ forestieri (Naples, 1697), p. 44. © British Library Board, 574.a.22. The head itself is now in the Museo Archeologico di Napoli.
Diomede Carafa’s palace contained a studiolo, but his courtyard was also a place of collection. Busts of antique emperors, lapidary inscriptions, modern statues, and fragmented antiquities could be viewed by visitors to the palace and the collection was also visible to anonymous viewers from the street when the courtyard doors were open, as is evident from a 1697 print, published in Pompeo Sarnelli’s guide to Naples (see Fig. 2).15 This print, and its accompanying text, point to the more public nature of collections and to the ways in which knowledge of such objects was circulated outside the intimate circles of those who collected. After sending the horse’s head in late spring or early summer of 1471 to Diomede, Lorenzo must have felt the need to ingratiate himself further with the primary counsellor to King Ferrante. In March 1472, the Venetian ambassador Barbaro reported that Diomede had received some ‘cameini’ from Lorenzo.16 Barbaro was visiting Carafa who was sick in bed with a fever when Diomede showed him the ‘cameini belissimi’ that had belonged to Pope Paul II, noting that these gems had arrived in the last few days via the Medici.17 In the autumn of that year, Barbaro reported having been at the Palazzo Carafa, and having seen the ‘statue de bronzo’ that Diomede had received from Lorenzo.18 Whether these were actual gifts or items purchased through Lorenzo it is unclear, but many rulers across Italy were seeking to obtain antiquities from Paul II. The fact that Diomede got his hands on a few items through Lorenzo demonstrates that Lorenzo had accorded him a privileged position. Barbaro’s reports also indicate the more ‘public’ nature of these collections, since they were discussed not only in Naples but also in diplomatic correspondence.
Diomede was the recipient of numerous other diplomatic gifts. In 1473 he received presents of silver from the Este during his participation in marriage negotiations between his former student and the daughter of King Ferrante, Eleonora d’Aragona and Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara.19 Diomede was also the recipient of silver items from the Venetian ambassador in 1471.20 In 1473, he received from the Florentine merchant-banker Filippo Strozzi two ‘marble heads’ (presumably antiquities), two painted Flemish cloths, as well as a painting of St Francis by ‘Rugiero’, generally accepted to be by Rogier van der Weyden.21 Such gifts then are not merely acquired through diplomacy and then disregarded, but rather they are put on display, shown to ambassadors and visitors, and then recorded and discussed in diplomatic correspondence.
Inventories of other collections also demonstrate the political and diplomatic nature of such objects. Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara (ruled 1473–93), had a significantly large collection of contemporary paintings, statues, tapestries, medals, cameos, and decorative objects made in some of the most expensive and sought-after materials, such as porcelain and alabaster. Many of these decorative items are listed as displaying the arms of political figures or of the commune of republican cities. For instance, Eleonora had two large silver vases showing the arms of Siena,22 gilded silver cups with the arms of the Duke of Calabria,23 and a mirror with the arms of the Count of Maddaloni, Diomede Carafa.24 Her guardaroba accounts detail two large silver vases alla venetiana incorporating the arms of the ‘Signore Re’, most likely Eleonora’s father, King Ferrante. 25 These silver vases are recorded as being given to Eleonora by the prefect of Rome and her inventories list many other similar items containing the arms of the cities of Siena, Florence, and Bologna, underlining her political role and her diplomatic connections across Italy.
These vases and decorative items are often highlighted in ambassadorial reports and could signify a ruler’s prestige, since good governance was closely linked to the possession and display of culture.26 It was important to be well informed of other rulers’ collections, and at the same time, to have worthy collections to show off to visiting dignitaries. For instance, in September 1479 Paulo Antonio Trotti, the Ferrarese ambassador, wrote to Eleonora d’Aragona about his visit to Duke Giangaleazzo Maria Sforza of Milan. He noted that ‘yesterday [the Duke] showed me all of his jewels which are all things certainly stupendous, and he also showed me many gold saints … and other animals all in gold which are worth many millions of ducats and today he let me see the medals containing his portrait and [that of] Duke Galeazzo, which are each [worth] ten thousand ducats.’ 27 We have similar reports from another Ferrarese ambassador, Antonio Montecatini, who visited the Medici collections with Giovanni d’Aragona in 1480 and reported his visit to Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (Eleonora’s husband):28
[Giovanni d’Aragona] then went to see the room where Cosimo [de’ Medici] lived … where there were books and precious gems … Then he went into the sala, where the deeds of Hercules could be seen … He then was shown his [Piero’s] cappella and then entered the studio, the chamber that had belonged to Piero, and there he was first shown the said studio with copious quantities of books, which was a stupendous thing, all worthy, written with a pen. Then we returned to the little loggia opening off the study. And there on a table, he [Lorenzo] had brought his jewels … vases, cups, hardstone coffers mounted with gold, of various stones, jasper and others. There was there a crystal beaker mounted with a lid and a silver foot, which was studded with pearls, rubies, diamonds and other stones. A dish carved inside with diverse figures, which was a worthy thing, reputed to be worth four thousand ducats. Then he brought two large bowls full of ancient medals one of gold medals and the other full of silver medals, then a little case with many jewels, rings and engraved stones.
Such accounts reveal the importance of a multiplicity of objects, ranging from jewels, cameos, and medals, to vases, cups, and books. Those collections which included vases or objects with the arms of political figures and communes, provided means to signal diplomatic alliances and affiliations; the presence of medals and the exchanging of one’s effigy as a token of friendship also alludes to other forms of sociability linked to the culture of collecting. The study was a space where keeping up on correspondence in the form of letter-writing alternated with socializing, where one might receive visitors and continue humanist discussions in person, as is exemplified by literary and visual descriptions of the study of the fifteenth-century female humanist Isotta Nogarola.
Isotta is depicted in Jacopo Foresti’s De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus of 1497 in her study surrounded by books (Fig. 3).29 Her delicate hand grazes the book she is reading, her clothing is religious in nature and she wears a headdress. Letters to Isotta from visiting humanists depict, in textual form, the study in which she worked. The churchman Matteo Bosso wrote to her noting, ‘I would sit also in your book-lined cell, where I joyfully heard you delightfully singing sweet hymns.’ Isotta’s correspondent, Ludovico Foscarini, recalled: 30
Isotta Nogarola. From Jacopo Foresti, De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus (Ferrara, 1497), fol. cli © British Library Board, 167.h.17.
In my memory I survey your little cell, which from every corner breathes forth sanctity … I put before my eyes the pictures portraying the saints, the robes embroidered with designs of crosses and the images of the blessed, in which you bless yourself with holy water, all the many other things which should be told, which brought me a kind of foretaste of paradise.
Isotta received numerous visitors in this space, including ecclesiastics such as Bosso, Paolo Maffei, and Ermolao Barbaro the Elder; her physician; and Foscarini.31 Isotta, who grew up in Verona, studied along with her sister, Ginevra, under the tutelage of the humanist Martin Rizzoni.32 Isotta’s major contribution to literature is her dialogue with the Venetian nobleman, Ludovico Foscarini, on the sin of Adam and Eve.33 Written in the 1450s, this Latin text circulated among scholars, but was not published until a revised version was printed in Venice in 1563.34 The dialogue was most likely composed in Isotta’s ‘book-lined cell,’ as Margaret King has termed it, with negative connotations. That is, this little library has been seen as an enforced enclosure for a female humanist, whose foray into the male culture of humanist learning led to slanderous remarks, such as ‘an eloquent woman is never chaste’.35 Although Isotta had to face such adverse comments, she was also able to take part in textual communities by corresponding with humanist scholars and by composing orations to famous individuals such as Pope Pius II and the Bishop of Verona. This book-lined cell, which can be understood to be a form of studiolo, was one that gave rise to a variety of activities: singing of hymns, letter-writing and corresponding with humanists, composing of literary works, and a place of devotion. The objects on display, as mentioned by visitors, included devotional items, holy objects, crosses, books, portraits of saints and ‘images of the blessed’.36 The objects and the activities that took place within her studiolo indicate that such a ‘private’ space indeed maintained a more ‘public’ dimension, and points toward forms of sociability that were closely associated with these spaces, even for women.
The presence of portrait medals, as in the case of the Medici and Sforza collections, or saintly effigies, as in the description of Isotta’s study, further indicates the social nature of such spaces. The giving or trading of one’s effigy formed part of a culture that placed importance on initiating and maintaining amicizie through letter-writing and gifting. It is no coincidence that the studiolo itself was often the space in which one would write letters or read them – on occasion letters that might contain information on another’s collections. Such letter-writing in the fifteenth century was part of humanistic practice, and became a form of a rhetorical exercise, cultivating friends and reputation simultaneously, as is evident in Nogarola’s case. Like the studiolo, these letters were ‘private in purpose but public in address.’37
The studiolo was a space where conversation became crucial, through letter-writing, through discussions with visitors to the space, or in absentia, that is, through conversation with classical authors by reading their texts or by gazing at their portraits decorating the space.38 In a well known letter, Niccolò Machiavelli noted that before he entered his study he changed his clothes in preparation for conversation with the ancients:39
[I] put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born. There I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives for their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me.
This interest in conversing with the ancients was already evident with Petrarch, who held to the practice of writing letters to Cicero as if he were still alive.40Studioli were thus thought of as spaces to reunite the owner with the great minds of the past. The act of copying, editing, and transcribing classical texts, was a form of possession. Petrarch noted that he had finally been ‘allowed to possess’ Cicero upon his completion of a copy of one of his works, as he described it to Jacopo Fiorentino.41 In a visit to the library of the Ferrarese Giovanni Gualengo, discussed in Decembrio’s De politia litteraria, the owner, Giovanni, remarks on his collection of books. He comments: ‘when I look at and study the ranks of my books – for I have put the name of each author on the bindings – I feel as if I am looking at the holy graves of those who wrote them’, thus underlining the presence – whether physical or phantom – of these individuals in the space.42 A parallel can thus be drawn between the portrait collections held within the studiolo and the books and letters found there. In the sixteenth century, Antonio Giganti, secretary to the Bolognese cleric Ludovico Beccadelli, decorated his study with portraits of Michelangelo, Pico della Mirandola, Petrarch and his Laura. Beneath these portraits in a small box, Giganti had placed a ‘letter in Petrarch’s hand to Signora Tomasina da Corregio consoling her on the death of her husband’, a situation that alludes to the connections between letter-writing, conversation, and portrait collections.43
The well-known portrait cycle of famous men in Federigo da Montefeltro’s studiolo at Urbino has been said to have a correlation with the organization of knowledge, and thus the organization of his books held within the library.44 Such a cycle falls within the tradition of uomini famosi, series of supposed portraits in which heroes from the past are gathered to form paradigms of exemplary behaviour. Possession of portraits of illustrious individuals and literary texts was closely associated with the possession of virtue and intellect that those individuals encompassed. The biographer of King Alfonso d’Aragona of Naples remarked that the coin of Julius Caesar that Alfonso carried around with him ‘did marvellously delight him and in a manner inflame him with a passion for virtue and glory.’45 This portrait was in some ways an aid to mimicry, as Alfonso imagined himself as a second Caesar.
While these portrait collections, whether medals, coins, or large-scale panel paintings, allude to the virtues and deeds of famous individuals, they also served much more pragmatic functions. Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria, wrote to her mother in Milan in January 1466, shortly after her arrival in Naples, detailing her plans for her studiolo:46
I have finished my studiolo for reading and writing and as I have written Your Illustrious Ladyship [Bianca Maria Sforza] previously it would please me to have portraits of the Excellency of His Lordship, my father [Francesco I Sforza] and Your Ladyship and all of my Illustrious brothers and sisters because … it would give me continuous consolation and pleasure.
Ippolita’s secretary had also written to Bianca Maria, notifying her that Ippolita ‘is finishing a beautiful studiolo’ and ‘begs Your Illustrious ladyship to aid her in adorning it and to send her portraits painted on panels.’47 Ippolita’s secretary made it clear that although he ‘too delight[s] in medals and pictures’, it was not done by his suggestion. He informed Bianca Maria that ‘already [Ippolita] has announced her intention to ask for these portraits to her husband the Duke [Alfonso d’Aragona] and to all the gentlemen and to the count of Maddaloni [Diomede Carafa]’ and he encouraged Bianca Maria to reply ‘with good effect’. Since Ippolita Sforza’s marriage to Alfonso d’Aragona was negotiated to solidify a political alliance between Milan and Naples, her portrait cycle should be seen as having a political component to it. Indeed, Ippolita played a crucial role in Italian politics, as she occupied a fraught place as daughter of the Duke of Milan and daughter-in-law of the King of Naples, two individuals who were constantly in uneasy relations. This was a role that Ippolita often used to her advantage in various ways. Surrounding herself with portraits of her natal family as well as those of her marital family, Ippolita’s studiolo would have alluded to her political connections across Italy. As Judith Bryce has noted, her interest in building a studiolo can be seen as a reflection of her intentions to create a ‘public persona in alien territory’ and operates as a form of ‘image-management’.48 Ippolita’s extensive collection of books, for Bryce, has a public dimension and should be considered within the notion of reading as a form of journey in space and time, as a way of accessing the great minds of the past. In this way, maintaining a studiolo with a collection of books would be a mark of Ippolita’s membership of ‘textual communities, both sacred and secular.’49 I believe the portraits would also underline that membership – one might say friendship – not only with ancient authors but with important political figures. It comes as no surprise, then, that Ippolita’s correspondence (and friendship) with Lorenzo de’ Medici, led her to be his signatory on the Peace Treaty in 1480, following the Pazzi Conspiracy.50
The studiolo was thus a space associated with the presence – actual or symbolic – of important political figures, philosophers, humanists and authors, both ancient and modern. It also was understood as a place for the Muses to dwell, alluding to the inspirational nature of the space. This is evident in the pictorial programmes associated with studioli, such as the Muses and their various transformations in Ferrara, and later their appearance in Mantegna’s Parnassus, painted for the studiolo of Isabella d’Este in Mantua. The spaces of collection were thus social and diplomatic in nature, as evidenced by visitors who recorded the objects seen there, by the presence of diplomatic gifts, and by the forms of conversation held there: through letter-writing, through the discussion of the objects and paintings collected, or through a dialogue with the ancients who resided in portrait cycles or books.
Collecting practices: transient objects, circulation, and association
Collecting opened up avenues for association through the acquisition of goods, which involved negotiating with agents and expanding mercantile networks. Certain economic practices such as pawning and credit facilitated the circulation of objects, with the result that an object could change hands and come into contact with a wide range of individuals. These practices demonstrate that many objects in a collection came and went; some of them remained, but many also circulated in a variety of different forms, through gift-giving, pawning, lending, and replication. This circulation gave rise to narratives and interests in the provenance and detailed histories of collectable items.
The acquisition of precious items often involved a variety of individuals, particularly when the objects were antiquities or when they were sold second-hand. For instance, in February 1500, Isabella d’Este received a letter from her agent Lorenzo da Pavia, informing her that Michele Vianello would be arriving with a loan of some paternoster beads. Lorenzo notes that he had had great difficulty in procuring the beads, as the German to whom they belonged was very unwilling to part with them. At the same time, he also sent her ‘a string of amber [beads] with some animals inside which I know your Ladyship will like, but it is not for sale. It belongs to someone who values it greatly because they appreciate rare things, but I had them lend it to me so you could see it.’51 Such an example demonstrates the ways objects might be viewed without being purchased. This amber strand would be admired by Isabella, and perhaps by her friends and by Mantuan courtiers, but would then be returned to its owner. This object exemplifies the numerous individuals who would have come into contact with it: the anonymous owner; Lorenzo, the agent; Vianello, the carrier of the amber; Isabella, the admirer and collector; and any visitors to her studiolo while she was in possession of the object. Isabella probably delighted in viewing the amber string, even if she could not possess it, but Lorenzo may have sent it to her as a form of advertisement, in the event that a similar object came up for sale. There is evidence that paternosters were used in combination with other art objects to decorate collecting spaces. The inventory from 1489 of Frate Franceschino da Cesena, second librarian of the Malatesta Library in Cesena, describes strings of paternosters threaded with casts of coins or medals, which were looped around the room atop wall panels.52 Such objects thus served multiple functions as decorations for the studiolo and collector’s items, as well as devotional tools.
Objects of this type were sometimes given to collectors by merchants or agents at no charge, as advertisements or with the understanding that the donor would be repaid in another manner. In 1534 Scipione de Licio in Venice wrote to Isabella d’Este about ‘a most beautiful piece of coral that was being bid for by many buyers, and almost everyone said that it was one of the most beautiful pieces of coral that had been seen in over one hundred years and that the jewel should land in the hands of every great master.’53 Scipione purchased the coral and sent it on to Isabella at no charge. As Evelyn Welch suggests, Isabella understood such an exchange and would have known to offer a gift in return, or to hire Scipione to set the coral appropriately.54 Objects thus became sites where bonds, connections and layers of exchange were forged between individuals.55
In a similar manner, in 1473, the merchant-banker Filippo Strozzi purchased numerous high-quality gifts to be given to the Neapolitan court; recipients included King Ferrante and his children, but also merchants and courtiers.56 These gifts were a way for Strozzi to thank the Neapolitan court for its business, but they also served to facilitate future purchases. Filippo gave Eleonora d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante (soon to be the Duchess of Ferrara), a mirror, with the reflecting plate made of polished steel in a wooden frame with her arms represented in intarsia.57 The gift of the mirror would have given Eleonora something to take with her to Ferrara, and may have been strategic on Filippo’s part, providing a means to form relations with the court of Ferrara. Indeed, two years later, on 25 February 1475, Eleonora d’Aragona now in Ferrara, wrote to Filippo Strozzi in Florence, requesting information on the ‘Maestro’ of the mirror he had given her, so that she could commission a similar one.58 Mirrors were sought-after collector’s items often found in studioli, holding economic value and symbolic of the activities taking place within collecting spaces. Mirrors have often been interpreted as referring to the self-knowledge and identity that was sought through collecting; they were also thought to refresh the eyesight and hence were closely linked to the activities of reading and writing.59
Networks for acquiring goods were also linked to marital alliances, especially in the courts. Eleonora d’Aragona’s guardarobiere, Gironimo Zigliolo, the compiler of many of Eleonora’s account books, was not merely a servant who tracked goods or recorded accounts, but was rather, an important figure at the court of Ferrara. In 1489, Eleonora had Gironimo scout out precious objects for her when he travelled to France. He returned to Ferrara with a number of treasures from Lyons, including a variety of ancone (small altarpieces), amber pater nostri, and sculptures made out of precious materials such as ivory and gold.60 Welch has noted that in April 1491, Isabella d’Este (Eleonora’s daughter) wrote from Mantua to Gironimo requesting him to buy ‘anything that is new and elegant’ in France for her, such as ‘engraved amethysts, rosaries of black, amber and gold.’61 A series of letters from 1491 in the Modena archives, record Isabella d’Aragona, Duchess of Milan (daughter of Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso d’Aragona, and wife of Giangaleazzo Maria Sforza), asking Gironimo for expensive cloth.62 In addition, Beatrice d’Este (daughter of Eleonora d’Aragona and Ercole d’Este, and wife of Ludovico Sforza) also wrote to Gironimo in 1491, requesting that he procure a variety of different items.63 A guardarobiere such as Gironimo, then, not only received, consigned, and recorded goods; he also had access to mercantile networks, and even travelled to acquire items. He not only did this for the court of Ferrara, for which he worked, but also for other ruling houses in Italy, especially those that had marital and political ties with Ferrara – Mantua and Milan. Women in a republic might also be in charge of overseeing the account-books of their families, as is evident in examples from Florence such as Lucrezia Tornabuoni (Lorenzo de’ Medici’s mother) and Alessandra Strozzi (Filippo Strozzi’s mother), especially when they became widows. Their correspondence reveals a close attention to the purchasing and exchanging of their family’s possessions.64 Such activities illustrate the ways in which women participated in the circulation of goods, and how these activities opened up avenues for association.
Possession of objects came to concern not only physical ownership but also the acquisition of qualities believed to be inherent in the objects themselves. The increasing demand for antiquities or all’antica objects was linked to the ‘intellectual ownership of the concepts’ that such antiquities transmitted.65 Objects previously owned by illustrious owners were sought after, as the new owner hoped to inherit some of the status associated with those possessions. The sale of Medici goods in 1495 following their exile from Florence brought many interested buyers to the auction. Individuals who bought the Medici objects sought not only to acquire collectable objects, but also to appropriate the prestige of the family.66
The instability of political regimes and the precarious economic status of many ruling families resulted in the pawning, selling, and circulation of their possessions. The value of collectable items was thus closely tied not only to their material worth, but also to their biographies and provenances.67 Many merchant-banking families acquired their collections from business activities. Several of the Medici gems, for example, were obtained through mercantile endeavours. In the 1470s, the Medici bank in Rome cancelled the past papal debts accrued by Paul II, and made Sixtus new loans, through which they acquired many sought-after gems.68 Many of these antique gems and hardstone vases, including the famous Tazza Farnese, had been acquired by Pope Paul II in 1465, when he oversaw the estate of Ludovico Trevisan, the Chamberlain of the Apostolic Camera, who died in that year.69 These antiquities had thus changed hands at least three times within a matter of ten years. Their value increased greatly over the fifteenth century, demonstrating that rise in value was closely linked to changing ownership and increasing fame.
Objects that had been collected and discussed in collecting circles were thus highly sought after. In 1502 Isabella d’Este was eager to appropriate a Cupid and an antique marble Venus in the ducal palace of Urbino that had been owned by Guidobaldo da Montefeltro but was now in the hands of Cesare Borgia.70 Isabella’s interests in collecting and love of antique and contemporary artworks gave her reason to believe that she had a right to possess and acquire such objects. She had a sense of proprietary ownership over the classical past, as she stated ‘I, who have invested great efforts in the collection of antiquities to honour my studio greatly desire to have them, and it does not appear to me inappropriate to think of this, since I hear that His Excellency [Borgia] does not care for antiquities.’71 This was not uncommon. Ambassadors were often sent to see what items they might purchase for their respective state or ruler, when precious objects were on sale due to political or financial difficulties. During the sale of the Medici goods following their expulsion, Ludovico Sforza wrote to his ambassador to see what objects he could acquire.72 The Medici sale included not only famous antiquities, but also more personal items, such as Lorenzo de’ Medici’s birth salver, that no doubt, held familial memory and symbolic value.73 The sale was mentioned three times in the pharmacist Luca Landucci’s Zibaldone, leading him to comment on the transient nature of life on earth, the limits of worldly power, and the extent of God’s wrath.74 Francesco Sforza asked to purchase jewels that had been pawned by Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino for 4,000 gold ducats, because Federigo could not repay the loan and Francesco wanted to avoid the jewels going on the open market.75 The purchasing of another’s possessions points towards the political nature of acquisition, that at times could burden already strained political relations. Such acquisition also becomes the means by which stories and narratives of these objects circulate in collecting circles: through word of mouth, through letter-writing, and through texts and diaries. Works such as Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Commentaries and Vespasiano da Bisticci’s Vite describe in anecdotal detail the provenances of antique gems and hardstone vases, leading to the formation of knowledge and interest around specific objects.76
The constant circulation also gave rise to an emphasis on recording and describing objects, evident in ambassadorial reports, but also in account books, inventories, and administrative documents. The careful following of precious collectable items resulted in close inspection of objects, precise descriptions, and thus, I would argue, an increasing interest in close engagement and new ways of looking at objects. This close descriptive tendency is exemplified in the court accounts of the Aragonese of Naples, detailing a jasper salt cellar encrusted with jewels depicting a figure and an elephant, pawned to Giovanni Carlo Tramontao, Count of Matera, in 1497.77 The attention to detail is exemplified by the precision with which the quantity of jewels and their arrangement are described, as well as in the length of the description. In all, the cellar incorporated eighteen rubies, eighteen diamonds, and 113 pearls.78 This account hints at the ways viewing such objects in collections was closely connected to the practices of recording, documenting, and describing. Individuals learned the use of particular tools to assess these objects, along monetary – but also cultural – lines, giving rise to new modes of seeing.
Since ownership was often temporary, individuals sought to associate their names permanently with these famous pieces. The Este of Ferrara, for instance, marked their ancient coins with the family eagle and Lorenzo de’ Medici was in the habit of engraving his gems with ‘lav.r.med’.79 Such practices allude to the ways in which links became established between possession of these gems and personal identity. Some jewels were given names, clearly personalizing the objects through this naming process, but the convention also demonstrates how collectors were becoming increasingly interested in acquiring particular gems and jewels, rather than just any gem they could get their hands on.
Another way these objects circulated was through replication: that is to say, images (most often mythological) that were represented on gems, jewels, and antique hardstone vases were copied by artists across media. The Medici gems, for instance, were copied in the Medici courtyard medallions, and they were also replicated in manuscript illuminations, in seals, in rings, in plaquettes, and in other visual forms that were viewed across Italy and even Europe.80 Knowledge was thus disseminated through this process; these replications publicized both the specimens and their owners, and connected them to narratives propagated in collecting circuits. Depicting these items was also a way to stabilize or pin down the loose and circulatory nature of these transient possessions. Goldsmiths made casts of gems for sale as a means of advertising their wares, but such copies also provided a way for individuals to have access to the original through a copy. If one could not own the antiquity or if one had to sell it, a collector could still partake in ownership of that object through its copy.
These copies point towards a new relationship to antiquity, whereby artists translated the past into the present, through replication in diverse media. Quotation, fragmentation, and replication became terms of reference for visual imagery in the fifteenth century.81 While access to the antique past is often thought of as literary – in other words that it was through the ancient texts that humanists acquainted themselves with antiquity – we must keep in mind that it was also largely a material engagement.82 Indeed, many newly rediscovered antiquities often served as sources to complement ancient textual authorities.83 The famous re-discovery of the Laocoön, for instance, is referred to in terms of the sculpture mentioned by Pliny, an art-historical reference, rather than the Trojan described in Virgil’s narrative.84
Copies of antiquities became highly sought after and important collector’s items, revealing ‘an alternative system of value’, as Leonard Barkan has described it, where many collectors owned contemporary copies of an antiquity, as well as the original.85 This is a situation that provoked Vasari to remark that a modern copy of the Laocoön was celebrated and valued just as if it had been an antiquity. Vasari’s comment, for Paula Findlen, demonstrates that the creation of antiquity was no longer imagined ‘as a purely historical achievement’ but something linked to the present.86 Experts in antiquities and ancient art became sought-after to appraise art objects, to discern their date, execution, and worth. Visitors to collections were expected to show their erudition, and to discern all’antica objects from antique originals. Neapolitan court records belonging to the Aragonese show that numerous artists were paid to visit nearby towns, such as Mola and Pozzuoli, to become acquainted with the ‘anticaglie’ (antiquities) found there and on some occasions, to bring them back.87 The artist Andrea Mantegna was highly influential in Isabella d’Este’s procurement of antiquities, proclaiming himself both an expert on, and re-inventor of, antiquity.88 Mantegna’s complex literary programmes, such as those designed for Isabella d’Este’s studiolo, that have left many scholars frustrated in identifying one textual source, and his conscious need to make himself known as an expert on antiquity, are indicative of the artist’s interest in drawing parallels between ancient and contemporary art production. Mantegna’s imitation of antiquity is never a direct imitation but rather a translation, a conscious inventione.89
The quotation, translation, and replication of antique narratives, motifs, styles, and iconographies became crucial to studiolo culture, and indeed constituted new practices and modes of reading visual imagery. Spaces of collection then, were not only about patrons, but about artists’ competition with antiquity, their claims for the state of their art, and a cultural relationship to the past. The circulation of these objects through different means and avenues gave rise to competition between collectors but it also served as a way for individuals to create networks across Italy and even abroad.
Conclusion: spaces, objects, and sociability
Collecting was a pursuit of many élite individuals in Italy in the late fifteenth century, an activity which gave rise to the development of specific spaces tailored for collections, such as the studiolo. Rather than viewing collectable items as static objects or simply as reflecting a patron’s tastes, this study has investigated the ways in which things circulated, and how this circulation forged connections between individuals, giving rise to new forms of associations. Objects such as gems, jewels, and antique hardstones were sought after by the collecting élite – both men and women – and the exchange of objects could serve political ends. Material possessions, then, have been examined not only as repositories of monetary value, but as things which could be imbued with political meanings, memories, and obligations. Much of the literature on collecting has categorized this activity as a male pursuit. By looking closely at the objects and the spaces of collection, we have confirmed that women could be collectors and that their political roles were sometimes manifested in the things they collected. Their access to erudite circles was through the activities that would take place within the studiolo, such as the practices of letter-writing, as well as collecting, reading, and discussion.
Objects and their spaces may also become sites in which to locate associations and political relations. Theoretical approaches to objects from anthropology to literary criticism have underlined the mutual relationships between people and things.90 The spaces of collections were intrinsically linked to the ways in which objects circulated through diverse modes in the late fifteenth century. This circulation could forge bonds, make connections, and even complicate relationships between individuals, underlining the need to pay close attention to the function of objects in social relations. Portrait cycles, mythological literary paintings, and antique or all’antica objects decorating these spaces are emblematic of the formation of a particular culture attached to the studiolo. The fact that many of these collecting spaces were connected to courtly culture points to concerns associated with the court: diplomacy, erudition, and social and political networks. This culture of display, where knowledge of antiquity, assertion of power, and diplomatic manoeuvring was becoming increasingly important, is thus closely tied to the development of the studiolo, its decorative programmes, the objects collected, and the activities taking place there.
Acknowledgements
This article forms part of a larger project for which I have received funding from the Social Science and Research Council of Canada as well as the Italian Government, enabling me to conduct research in Italy. I would like to thank Bronwen Wilson and Angela Vanhaelen for their comments and insight on much of this material. I am also indebted to the Making Publics project at McGill University, which informed and shaped many of my ideas developed here. I would also like to acknowledge the staff at the archives and libraries consulted in Italy, France, and England for their help during the research for this project and to the British Library and the National Gallery, London for their help in procuring the images.
Notes and references
Translation from A. Grafton, Commerce with the Classics. Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor, 1997), p. 32.
For Leonello see W. Gundersheimer, Ferrara. The Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton, 1973).
The Latin text has never been fully translated. For translated sections and commentaries see Grafton, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 11–52, M. Baxandall, ‘A dialogue on art from the court of Leonello d’Este. Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Pars lxviii’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26 no. 3/4 (1963), pp. 304–36; M. Baxandall, ‘Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Part lxviii’, in M. Baxandall (ed.), Words for Pictures. Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism (New Haven and London, 2003), pp. 39–67; J. P. Perry, ‘A fifteenth-century dialogue on literary taste: Angelo Decembrio’s account of playwright Ugolino Pisani at the court of Leonello d’Este’, Renaissance Quarterly 39 no. 4 (1986), pp. 613–35.
For a useful critique of the literature on the ‘insatiable’ collector and the problems of biography, see R. M. San Juan, ‘The court lady’s dilemma: Isabella d’Este and art collection in the Renaissance’, Oxford Art Journal no. 14 (1991), pp. 67–78; S. Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 2–5.
For the history of the studiolo, see D. Thornton, The Scholar in his Study. Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London, 1997); W. Liebenwein, Studiolo. Storia e tipologia di uno spazio culturale (Modena, 1988); C. De Benedictis, Per la storia del collezionismo italiano (Milan, 1998); C. Franzoni, ‘‘‘Rimembranze d’infinite cose”. Le collezioni rinascimentali di antichità’, in S. Settis (ed.), Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana (Turin, 1984). Studies on collecting, the studiolo, and the museum have also touched upon these notions, see P. Findlen, Possessing Nature. Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1994); K. Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities. Paris and Venice, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1990); L. Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory. Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press (Toronto, 2001). See also Campbell, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 29–57 (chapter 1).
Campbell, op. cit. (note 4), p. 41.
See, for instance, Goldthwaite who understands Renaissance man’s attachment to material possessions as a moment when modern civilization was born: R. A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600 (Baltimore and London, 1993). See also Campbell, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 40–1, for a discussion of these issues.
L. B. Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence/I Libri della Famiglia (Columbia, 1969), p. 209.
Thornton, op. cit. (note 5) p. 90.
R. G. Asch, ‘Introduction. Court and household from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries’, in R. G. Asch and A. M. Birke (eds), Princes, Patronage and the Nobility. The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age c. 1450–1650 (London and Oxford, 1991), pp. 1–38.
S. Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450–1495 (New Haven and London, 1997), p. 30. For the studiolo at Ferrara also see A. M. Mottola, M. Natala and d. A. Lorenzo, Le Muse e il principe. Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano (Modena, 1991).
For portrait collections see L. Klinger Aleci, ‘Images of identity. Italian portrait collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, in L. Syson and N. Mann (eds), The Image of the Individual. Portraits in the Renaissance (London, 1998), pp. 67–79. See also L. S. Klinger, ‘The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio’, Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University (1990).
On the horse’s head see L. R. Clark, ‘Value and Symbolic Practices. Objects, Exchanges, and Associations in the Italian Courts (1450–1500)’, Ph.D. thesis, McGill University (2009), pp. 65–125 (chapter 1), G. Filangieri, ‘La testa di cavallo di bronzo già di casa Maddaloni in via Sedile di Nido’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 7 (1882), pp. 407–20. For Carafa’s collections see B. de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza nella Napoli del Quattrocento (Venice, 2007); B. de Divitiis, ‘New evidence on Diomede Carafa’s collection of antiquities’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70 (2007), pp. 99–117.
For the literature see L. Fusco and G. Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 38–9 and p. 224, n. 26.
P. Sarnelli, Guida dei forestieri (Naples, 1697).
G. Corazzol (ed.), Dispacci di Zaccaria Barbaro (1 novembre 1471–7 settembre 1473), Corrispondenze diplomatiche veneziane da Napoli. Istituto Italiano per gli studi filosofici (Rome, 1994), p. 225, letter 104 from 31 March 1472.
Ibid., p. 225.
Ibid., p. 399, letter 188, 17 October 1472.
All translations by the author unless otherwise noted. Archivio di Stato di Milano, Sforzesco Potere Estere (Napoli) (hereafter asmi spe) 224, 238. Letter from Francesco Maleta to the Duke of Milan, 22 May 1473.
The gift is reported by the Milanese ambassador, Giovanni Andreas in a letter to Galeazzo Maria Sforza in a postscript dated 28 March 1471. See asmi spe 220. 205.
Originals for the Strozzi account books are located in Archivio di Stato di Firenze, cart. strozziane (hereafter asf cs) v 22, 95r. Also see M. del Treppo, ‘Le avventure storiografiche della Tavola Strozzi’, in P. Marcy and A. Massafra, (eds), Fra storia e storiografia. Scritti in onore di pasquale villani (Bologna, 1994), p. 510.
Archivio di Stato di Modena, Amminstrazione Principato (hereafter asmo ap), 640. 3v.
asmo ap 640 14 v.
asmo ap 640 61 v.
asmo ap 638 7 r.
P. Findlen, ‘Possessing the past: the material world of the Italian Renaissance’, American Historical Review 103 no. 1 (1998), p. 99.
asmo, Ambasciatori Milano (hereafter asmo amb mil) 3. 241–2. The letter is dated 22 September 1479.
asmo, Ambasciatori Firenze 2, 21 August 1480. My translation varies slightly from the other published versions, partially quoted in Campbell, op. cit. (note 4), p. 30; Fusco and Corti, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 322-2, Doc 163; L. Syson and D. Thornton, Objects of Virtue. Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles, 2001), pp. 81–2.
There are a number of copies of Foresti’s text in the British Library, all reproduce the same woodcut images. J. P. B. Foresti, De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus, (Ferrara, 1497), British Library 167.h.17; G 1448; 1B.25751. For her portraits see, Leah R. Clark, ‘Libri e Donne: Learned Women and their Portraits’, MA Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London, 2005).
Quoted and translated in M. L. King, ‘The religious retreat of Isotta Nogarola (1418–1466): sexism and its consequences in the fifteenth century’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3 no. 4 (1978), p. 812.
I. Nogarola, Complete Writings. Letterbook, Dialogue on Adam and Eve, Orations (Chicago and London, 2003), p. 7.
For Isotta Nogarola, see L. Jardine, ‘Isotta Nogarola: women humanists - education for what?’, History of Education 12 no. 4 (1983), pp. 231–44; E. Abel, Isotta Nogarolæ veronensis Opera quæ supersunt omnia. Accedunt Angelæ et Zeneveræ Nogarolæ epistolæ et carmina, vol. i (Vienna, 1886). M. L. King, ‘Book-lined cells: women and humanism in the early Italian Renaissance’, in P. H. Labalme (ed.), Beyond their Sex. Learned Women of the European Past (New York and London, 1980), pp. 66–90. M. L. King, ‘Thwarted ambitions: six learned women of the Italian Renaissance’, Soundings 76 (1976), pp. 280–304.
This dialogue is reproduced in the chapter on Nogarola in M. L. King and A. Rabil (eds), Her Immaculate Hand. Selected Works by the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy (Binghamton, 1983), pp. 57–69.
King, op. cit. (note 30) p. 818, n. 51.
In 1438, an anonymous Veronese writer accused Isotta of promiscuity and incest, arguing that her eloquence was only a sign of her promiscuity: King, op. cit. (note 30), p. 809.
Nogarola, op. cit (note 31), p. 7.
This literary genre is discussed in Thornton, op. cit. (note 5), p. 115; P. L. Rubin, Giorgio Vasari. Art and History (New Haven and London, 1995), p. 117.
Findlen, op. cit. (note 5), p. 104.
N. Machiavelli, The Prince (London, 2003), p. xxi. Also quoted in M. Ruvoldt, ‘Sacred to secular, East to West: the Renaissance study and strategies of display’, Renaissance Studies 20 no. 5 (2006), p. 643.
Findlen, op. cit. (note 5), p. 104. For Petrarch’s letters see, F. Petrarca, Letters on Familiar Matters. Rerum familiarium librixvii-xxiv (Baltimore and London, 1985).
Findlen, op. cit. (note 5), p. 93.
Quoted and translated in Grafton, op. cit. (note 1), p. 33.
Quoted in Findlen, op. cit. (note 26), p. 107.
For the Urbino studiolo see L. Cheles, The Studiolo of Urbino. An Iconographic Investigation (University Park, 1986).; C. H. Clough, ‘Art as power in the decoration of the study of an Italian Renaissance prince: the case of Federico da Montefeltro’, Artibus et Historiae 16 no. 31 (1995), pp. 19–50; R. Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory. The Renaissance Studioli of Federico de Montefeltro (New York, 2008).
Quoted in Syson and Thornton, op. cit. (note 28) p. 86.
asmi spe 215, letter 101, 6 January 1466, Ippolita Maria Sforza to Bianca Maria. For a discussion of her studiolo and some of these letters see E. S. Welch, ‘Between Milan and Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria’, in D. Abulafia (ed.), The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494–95. Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, 1995), pp. 123–36. For her collection of books see J. Bryce, ‘‘‘Fa finire uno bello studio et dice volere studiare”. Ippolita Sforza and her books’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance vol. lxiv, no. 1 (2002), pp. 55–69.
Quoted and translated in Welch, op. cit. (note 46), p. 127. See also de T. de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona (Milan, 1952), p. 109.
Bryce, op. cit. (note 46), p. 58.
Ibid., p. 65.
For a reproduction of the agreement see, ‘Procura di Lorenzo de’ Medici per Ippolita Maria d’Aragona Duchessa di Calabria e Niccolò Michelozzi’ in L. d. Medici, Lettere (Florence, 1977), pp. 373–6, Appendix vii.
Quoted and translated in E. S. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance. Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400–1600 (New Haven and London, 2005), p. 265.
Thornton, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 84–5.
Quoted and translated in Welch, op. cit. (note 51) p. 196.
Ibid, p. 196.
For reciprocity and layers of exchange see A. B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1992).
asf cs v.22. The list of gifts is located on 95r. For a published version of the gift list, see del Treppo, op. cit. (note 21), p. 511.
‘La Ill[ustrissi]ma Madama lionora loro sorella j spechio dacio quadro adornato d[i] no’cie i[n]tarsiato co[n] la sua arma molto bello co’stoni f. 14 l[arghi] … f. 14’ asf cs v, 22. 95r. Also transcribed in J. R. Sale, ‘The Strozzi Chapel By Filippino Lippi in Santa Maria Novella’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1976), p. 515, Appendix a.iv.4.
asf cart stroz iii.133. Also see del Treppo, op. cit. (note 21), p. 505, n. 86.
Findlen, op. cit. (note 5), p. 299; Thornton, op. cit. (note 5), p. 122.
asmo ap 639. 131r-132r.
Welch, op. cit. (note 51), p. 250. He is also recorded buying velvet for Anna Sforza, Alfonso d’Este’s wife in 1496, p. 353, n.19.
asmo cpe 1219.9. Letters dated from November and December 1491.
asmo cpe 1219.9. Letters dated from August and November 1491.
Welch, op. cit. (note 51) p. 223.
Syson and Thornton, op. cit. (note 28) p. 86.
J. M. Musacchio, ‘The Medici sale of 1495 and the second-hand market for domestic doods in late fifteenth-century Florence’, in M. Fantoni, L. C. Matthew and S. F. Matthews-Grieco (eds.), The Art Market In Italy. 15th-17th Centuries/ Il mercato dell’arte in Italia secc.xv-xvii (Ferrara, 2003), p. 314.
A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986).
Fusco and Corti, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 2–6.
L. R. Clark, ‘Transient possessions: circulation, replication, and transmission of gems and jewels in quattrocento Italy’, Journal of Early Modern History 15 no. 3 (2011), pp. 185–221.
Campbell, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 91–2.
Quoted in ibid., p. 92.
Musacchio, op. cit. (note 66), pp. 313–23.
Welch, op. cit. (note 51), p. 195.
Musacchio, op cit. (note 66), pp. 314–15.
Welch, op. cit. (note 51), pp. 197–8.
Clark, op. cit. (note 69). For a selection of primary sources see Fusco and Corti, op. cit. (note 14), pp. 2–6.
N. Barone, ‘Le cedole di Tesoreria dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli dall’anno 1460 al 1504’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 10 (1885), pp. 36–8.
Ibid., pp. 36–7.
As Findlen, op. cit. (note 26), p. 95, puts it, ‘when Lorenzo de’ Medici had his initials carved into his antiquities in the late fifteenth century, he combined a ruler’s right to possess with a humanist love of the past’. For the Este eagle see Syson and Thornton, op. cit. (note 28), p. 86.
Clark, op. cit. (note 69), N. Dacos, ‘La fortuna delle gemme medicee nel Rinascimento’, in N. Dacos, A. Giuliano and U. Pannuti (eds), Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Le gemme. Catalogo della Mostra Palazzo Medici Riccardi. (Florence, 1973), p. 160.
L. Barkan, Unearthing the Past. Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 232.
See Findlen, op. cit. (note 26).
Syson and Thornton, op. cit. (note 28), p. 86.
Barkan, op. cit. (note 81), pp. 3–4.
Ibid., p. 260.
Findlen, op. cit. (note 26), p. 97.
See Barone, op. cit. (note 77), pp. 5–7. For instance, in May 1489 men were paid for removing three pieces of marble and a ‘man’s head’ (most likely a marble bust) from Mola and in October 1489 Fra Giocondo di Verona was reimbursed for expenses for his travels to Mola and Gaeta to view antiquities.
See S. Campbell, ‘Mantegna’s Triumph: the cultural politics of imitation “all’antica” at the court of Mantua, 1490–1530’, in S. Campbell and E. S. Welch (eds), Artists at Court. Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1500 (Boston and Chicago, 2004), pp. 91–105. Campbell, op. cit. (note 4), especially p. 159.
Imitation was understood not only as mimicking nature but also as imitating the ancients: see M. Kemp, ‘From “Mimesis” to “Fantasia”: the quattrocento vocabulary of creation, inspiration and genius in the visual arts’, Viator 8 (1977), p. 347.
Weiner, op cit. (note 55); Appadurai, op. cit. (note 67); B. Brown, ‘Thing theory’, Critical Inquiry 28 no. 1 (2001), pp. 1–22; B. Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik. Or how to make things public’, in B. Latour and P. Weibel (eds), Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy (Cambridge and Karlsruhe, 2005), pp. 14–41, B. Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford and New York, 2005).
