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Value and Symbolic Practices: Objects, Exchanges, and Associations in the Italian Courts (1450-1500)

Leah Ruth Clark Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montreal

February 2009

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Copyright 2009 by Clark, Leah Ruth

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Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract English 4 French 7

Acknowledgements 10

List of Figures 14

Introduction 23 I. The Court: The Prince, Communities, and Associations 27 II. Materiality: Subjects, Objects, Exchange, and Consumerism 51

Chapter 1. Carafa’s testa di cavallo: The Life of a Bronze Gifthorse 64 I. Introduction 64 II. The Literary Life of a Horse’s Head 68 Later Histories of the Horse’s Head 83 III. Lorenzo and Diomede: Arbitrators Between Florence 87 and Naples IV. The Significance of the Equine: Palii, Barberi, and Gift horses 105 V. The Horse’s Head and the Culture of Collecting 116 VI. The Agency of the Thing Given: Conclusion 121

Chapter 2. Bankers, Merchants, and Pawning: Practices 125 and Circulation I. Introduction 125 II. Circuits and Networks: Merchants, Clients, and the Courts 130 Banchieri a Napoli: The Florentine Firms of the Strozzi, 132 the Medici, and the Gondi Clients and Consumers: The Neapolitan Court and Nobility 146 III. Material Things and Their Histories: Beds, Gems, and Books 149 The Florentine Lettuccio in Naples 150 Gems, Medallions, and Books: Circulation, Replication, 169 and Transmission IV. The Practices of Pawning: Objects and Contenders 178 V. Between Naples and Ferrara: The Bejewelled “Crocetta” 199 VI. Conclusion 207

Chapter 3. “An altarpiece that closes like a book”: Collection and 211 Intertextuality at the Court of Ferrara I. Introduction 211 II. Folding Images: A Genealogy of the Diptych Form 216 Engaging with the Diptych Form: Obverse, Reverse, 221 Frames, and Images Other Diptychs in Eleonora’s Collections 226

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 3

III. The Painting and Scriptura Debate: Paragone, 229 Social Positioning, and the Status of Art in Ferrara IV. Word and Flesh: Caterina Vegri and the Corpo di Christo 238 V. Eleonora’s Collections 244 Fabula and Forms of Assembly 248 Paragone and the Intertext 251 VI. Other Forms of Citation in Eleonora’s Collections 265 VII. Conclusion 272

Chapter 4. The Order of the Ermine: Collars, Clothing, and 276 Representation I. Introduction 276 II. Della Giarreta e dell’Armellino: The History of the Order of 283 the Jar and the Order of the Ermine III. The Statutes of the Order of the Ermine 291 IV. Members and International Association 298 V. Representations of the Ermine: Architecture, Manuscripts, 307 and Painting VI. Ceremonial: Mantles, Collars, and Bodily Inscription 329 VII. Allegorical Representation of the Order of the Ermine: 348 Roberti’s Three Famous Women Panels VIII. Conclusion 357

Conclusion 360

Primary Archival Sources 368 Archives Consulted and Abbreviations 368 Libraries Abbreviations 369

Appendix I. Genealogies of the Aragonese, Sforza, and Este 370

Figures 376

Works Cited 434

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 4

Abstract

Arguing for a reconsideration of the object’s function in court life, this thesis investigates how the value of an object is tied to the role it plays in symbolic activities, which formed the basis of court relations at the end of the fifteenth century. This study thus examines the courts of Italy (particularly Ferrara and Naples) through the myriad of objects—statues, paintings, jewellery, furniture, and heraldry—that were valued for their subject matter, material forms, histories, and social functions. Such objects are considered not only as components of court life, but also as agents which activated the symbolic practices that became integral to relations within and between courts. These activities—the exchange of diplomatic gifts, the consumption of precious objects, the displaying of collectibles, and the bestowing of knightly orders—were all ways that objects acted as points of contact between individuals, giving rise to new associations and new interests.

The end of the fifteenth century was a pivotal moment in the courts of Italy, fraught with alliances and counter-alliances involving not only the courts on the

Italian peninsula but also abroad. The court was an important space where individuals sought to assert and legitimise their power, and this was often done through material and visual means. The court is thus examined from diverse angles, taking the object as a starting point, and tracing relationships and networks through visual, textual, material, and literary sources. Shifting the focus away from artistic intentions and patronage, this study examines how objects constitute relations, often in unpredictable ways, not only forging connections but also revealing instabilities and latent hostilities. The constant circulation of precious

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 5 objects in the late fifteenth century reveals a system of value which placed importance not only on ownership, but also on the replication, copying, and translation of those objects in an array of media. The quotation of both objects and texts in contemporary works of art, I argue, gave rise to new modes of viewing visual imagery that are most apparent in studiolo culture. This form of viewing requires decipherment; it asks viewers to piece together disparate parts and fragments thereby constructing meanings across space and media.

Diverse material forms are thus brought together. A bronze fragmented horse’s head is examined as a gift that forged connections between two diplomats.

Its fragmented equestrian form gives rise to narratives and discussion about its provenance and the object is connected to the lending, gifting, and racing of real horses. The circulation of jewels and gems between courts was facilitated by the practices of merchant-bankers through pawning and credit. Circulation gave these objects histories but also imbricated a wide range of individuals into complex webs of association, obligation, and dependencies. A small devotional diptych belonging to a larger collection is examined in relation to humanist, social, and religious debates at the court of Ferrara, revealing how its particular form is closely tied to how one engages with, and interprets, the object. The diptych referenced other texts and objects and was also the model for numerous copies, encouraging the viewer to piece together the visual and textual quotations to produce meaning. The Neapolitan Order of the Ermine is examined through the mantle, gold collar, representations of the emblem, and statutes of the Order to demonstrate how these material aspects constituted the rites of the Order. These material objects became crucial components of membership by linking members

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 6 across Italy and Europe into forms of obligation and indebtedness. The court at the end of the fifteenth century in Italy, I argue, can thus be found not only in the body of the prince, but also in the objects that constituted symbolic practices, initiated political dialogues, created memories, and formed associations.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 7

En considérant la fonction de l’objet dans la vie à la cour princière, cette thèse examine comment la valeur d’un objet est liée au rôle qu’il joue dans les pratiques symboliques qui, à la fin du quinzième siècle, est à la base même des relations à la cour. Ce projet examine les cours d’Italie (en particulier celles de

Ferrare et de Naples) à travers une multitude d’objet (statues, peintures, bijoux, meubles, et emblèmes héraldiques) qui étaient évalués pour leurs matériaux, leur forme, leur historique, et leurs fonctions sociales. Ces objets sont ici étudiés non seulement comme représentatifs de la vie à la cour, mais aussi comme des agents actifs des pratiques symboliques importantes aux relations entre les différents cours. Ces pratiques – l’échange de cadeaux diplomatiques, la consommation d’objets précieux, étalage d’objets de collection, et investitures dans des ordres chevaleresques – sont autant de manières par lesquelles les objets servent de point d’attache entre individus et génèrent, de la sorte, de nouvelles associations et de nouveaux intérêts.

La fin du quinzième siècle était un moment clé pour les cours d’Italie, chargé des alliances et contre-alliances entre non seulement les cours de la péninsule italienne mais aussi celles de l’étranger. La cour est alors un espace important où les individus cherchent à revendiquer et à légitimer leur pouvoir par des moyens matériels et visuels. Ainsi, mon investigation, qui a pour point de départ l’objet, retrace les associations entre individus et entre cours à travers les sources visuelles, textuelles, matérielles, et littéraires. En plaçant l’objet au centre de l’investigation, ce projet, plutôt que de se préoccuper des intentions artistiques ou mécénales, redirige l’attention sur la fonction certaine, mais combien variable, des objets dans la formation de relations sociales et démontre comment elle peut

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 8 révéler l’existence de tensions et d’hostilités latentes. La circulation continue d’objets précieux met en relief un système de valeurs qui est à l’œuvre à la fin du quinzième siècle et qui met l’accent sur la possession d’objets mais aussi sur leur réplication, leur reproduction et leur traduction vers d’autres médias. Je soutiens que la citation d’objets et de textes dans des œuvres d’art qui leur sont contemporaines a donné lieu à une nouvelle manière d’observer les images et qui est apparente, notamment, dans la tradition du studiolo. Cette nouvelle façon d’observer exigeait de l’observateur qu’il la déchiffre et qu’il en rapièce certains

éléments disparates et autres fragments afin de donner un sens aux objets et d’ainsi établir des rapports sans bornes géographiques.

Les divers supports sont ainsi étudiés ensembles. Un fragment de tête de cheval en bronze est étudié en tant que cadeau diplomatique démontrant les relations entre deux diplomates. Sa forme équestre, mais fragmentaire, donne lieu

à des narrations et discussions variées à propos de sa provenance et est raccordée aux activités d’échanges, de dons, et des courses des chevaux. Des bijoux et des pierres précieuses de la cour étaient constamment en gage et circulaient fréquemment grâce aux activités des marchands-banquiers. Une telle circulation a donné des réseaux complexes d’associations, d’obligations et de dépendances. Un petit diptyque de piété appartenant à une grande collection est étudié par rapport aux débats humanistes, sociaux, et religieux à la cour de Ferrare en révélant comment sa forme particulière est étroitement attachée à la manière dont on s’engage et interprète l’objet. Le diptyque fait allusion à d’autres textes et objets, et, à la fois, est la source de nombreuses copies. Ces références à d’autres œuvres encouragent l’observateur à faire des liens entre les citations littéraires et visuelles

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 9 qui peuvent révéler le sens de l’objet. L’Ordre napolitain de l’Hermine est examiné par la cape, le collier d’or, les représentations d’emblèmes, et les statuts de l’ordre pour démontrer comment ces attributs matériaux deviennent des parties intégrantes des rites de l’Ordre. Ces objets matériels forment des composantes critiques pour l’Ordre grâce à leur capacité d’associer différents membres italiens

à d’autres membres européens dans des rapports d’obligations et de dettes. Je soutiens donc qu’à la fin du quinzième siècle, la cour peut être localisée non seulement dans le corps du prince, mais aussi dans ces objets qui constituent des activités symboliques, qui initient des dialogues politiques, qui créent des souvenirs, et façonnent des associations.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 10

Acknowledgements

Throughout the course of this project I have become indebted to numerous individuals who have helped me in diverse ways, and I would like to attempt to thank them here.

My engagement with art history has been influenced by various individuals at numerous institutions along the way. I especially thank the faculty at the

University of British Columbia who provided me with encouragement in the early stages: Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe, Maureen Ryan, Katherine Hacker, and Rose

Marie San Juan (now at UCL). I thank Patricia Rubin, Caroline Elam, and Joseph

Koerner for their insight and support at the Courtauld, providing an environment in which I was able to grow and learn at an unprecedented rate. I thank the faculty in the department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill

University who have been beneficial throughout the various stages of this dissertation, especially Angela Vanhaelen, who has co-supervised this project, and my supervisor Bronwen Wilson (currently at UBC). I want to acknowledge here the remarkable amount of time Bronwen spends on all of her students, which does not go unnoticed. I am also indebted to those involved in the Making Publics project, as I have benefited from the diverse discussions, conferences, and workshops initiated by this project. I want to thank all members of the early modern reading group, both in Montreal and in Vancouver, always so generously hosted by Bronwen. I thank you all for providing a stimulating environment in which to discuss theory over glasses of wine. I would also like to acknowledge all of the participants and moderators at the Getty Dissertation Workshop 2008, who

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 11 provided me with some extremely useful advice when I was in the middle of writing the thesis.

I cannot express sufficiently my gratitude to the institutions that have funded this project. I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which has provided the largest contribution. I want to acknowledge the Italian government for the nine-month stipend, which enabled me to conduct archival research in Italy. I am also indebted to the various scholarships and grants offered by McGill, including recruitment scholarships, travel grants, and the Bram Garber Fellowship. As I have always funded my own education, these scholarships have not only been welcomed but also have made this project possible.

Through the course of my research, I have consulted materials in a variety of different libraries, archives, and institutions. Without access to these institutions and the help of the staff, this thesis would never have been completed.

I thank the staff at the British Library and the Warburg Institute in London. I would like to thank all the staff at the Archivio di Stato di Modena, who were so helpful and friendly, making my six months of research there enjoyable. I would also like to express my gratitude towards the other archives and libraries consulted in Italy and in Europe: the Archivio di Stato in Mantua, Milan,

Florence, Ferrara, and Naples, the Biblioteca Universitaria and Biblioteca

Comunale dell'Archiginnasio in Bologna, the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria and the Biblioteca Civica d'Arte L.Poletti in Modena, the Biblioteca Vaticano in

Rome, the Biblioteca Ariostea in Ferrara, the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples

(especially the librarians in the Sezione Napoletana), and the Bibliothèque

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 12

National in Paris. I want to thank all the various individuals with whom I came in contact during my nine months conducting research in Italy, who not only made this project possible but also enjoyable and memorable.

I am particularly grateful to my family around the world, for their advice, support, and example. I thank my parents who have taught me that life is about learning, and that we are only capable of fully growing when we are prepared to set sail, whole-heartedly, for the adventure ahead. I thank my four sisters who have, each in their unique way, provided support and constant inspiration from their distant places across the globe: to Julia in Vancouver for her steady encouragement and advice; to Rachel in Mexico for her enthusiasm and sympathetic ear; to Christina for offering academic and personal advice when sought, whether she was in Africa, the UK, or Canada, as well as reading sections of the thesis; to Esther in Ecuador for always believing in me. I also thank my nieces and nephews for providing me with the necessary reminders about the joys and realities of life. I thank my grandparents who encouraged my determination and sense of adventure. I thank my family in the UK, especially Charley and Liz for providing me with a ‘home away from home’ and the necessary refuge and encouragement when needed, and to Pete and Sheena who traipsed around Ferrara with me, as I showed them numerous churches.

I am indebted to Kathryn Baldwin Kirtley, fellow art historian and travel companion, for her unfailing encouragement, faith, and support both in life and academics. Her academic and general life advice has proven to be invaluable. I am also extremely grateful to my colleagues and fellow students at various institutions for their support and encouragement, especially Sylvie Simonds,

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 13

Sonia del Re, Anuradha Gobin, Krystel Chehab, Maja Dujakovic, Amanda Herrin,

Stephanie Chan, and Aurore Bouvier Rault.

Most importantly, this thesis is indebted to the invaluable supervision of

Bronwen Wilson and Angela Vanhaelen. I thank Angela for the crucial editorial remarks during the last phases of writing and her constant enthusiasm in the project. Many many thanks are owed to Bronwen—her patience, insight, enthusiasm, and academic vigour have proved to be the backbone of this thesis.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 14

List of Figures

Figure 1. Map of Italy in 1494. From Martines, Lauro. Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979: Map 2.

Figure 2. Castel Nuovo façade and the arch depicting Alfonso I d’Aragona’s triumphal entry. Photo by author.

Figure 3. Unknown artist, Tavola Strozzi, 1465? Tempera on panel. Museo di San Martino, Naples. From Cole, Alison. Virtue and Magnificence. Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts. New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 1995: 32-3, Figure 24.

Figure 4. Map of Ferrara, late fifteenth century. Woodcut. BE Ms It. 429 Alpha H.5.3. Photograph by author, with permission from Biblioteca Estense.

Figure 5. Diomede Carafa’s Palace in July 2008 with terracotta copy of horse’s head. Photograph by author, with permission from porter.

Figure 6. Donatello or antique artist, Carafa’s horse’s head, fifteenth century or antiquity. Bronze, height 175cm, maximum width 181cm. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. From Borrelli, Licia Vlad. "Considerazioni su tre problematiche teste di cavallo." Bollettino d’Arte 71 (1992): 73, Figure 13.

Figure 7. Title page with the two insignie of the Seggi di Capuana and Nido on top left corner. Parrino, Domenico Antonio. Nuova guida de’ forestieri. BNN. SEZ NAP VII.C.200. Naples: Il Parrino, 1725. Photograph by author, with permission from Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

Figure 8. Antonio Bulifon, “Palazzo del cavallo di bronzo,” 1697. Engraving. From Sarnelli, Pompeo. Guidi dei forestieri. BL: 574.a.22. Naples: Antonio Bulifon, 1697. Reprinted in de Divitiis, Bianca. Architettura e committenza nella Napoli del Quattrocento. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007: Figure 49.

Figure 9. Comparison between the Medici and Carafa horses’ heads. From Borrelli, Licia Vlad. "Considerazioni su tre problematiche teste di cavallo." Bollettino d’Arte 71 (1992): 68, Figures 1 and 2.

Figure 10. Unknown artist, Medici horse’s head, antiquity. Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence. From Borrelli, Licia Vlad. "Considerazioni su tre problematiche teste di cavallo." Bollettino d’Arte 71 (1992): 71, Tav III.

Figure 11. Horse’s head ROMANO issue, reverse. Didrachmn of Rome. BM 1956-1-1-33. From Crawford, Michael H. Coinage and Money Under the Roman Republic. Italy and the Mediterranean Economy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985: 28, Figure 5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 15

Figure 12. Cavalli coin issued under Ferrante. Copper. From Jessop Price, Martin. Coins, An Illustrated Survey. 650 BC to the Present Day. New York and London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd, 1980: Figure 822B.

Figure 13. King Solomon giving audience from his lettuccio. From the Malermi Bible, printed in Venice, c 1493. BL IB 23096. From Thornton, Peter. The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400-1600. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991: 152, Figure 167.

Figure 14. Example of a lettuccio. Detail from Life of St. Nicholas by Francesco Pessellino, c 1443. Galleria Buonarotti, Florence. From Thornton, Peter. The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400-1600. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991: 151, Figure 166.

Figure 15. Surviving lettuccio from the late fifteenth century, formerly in the Demidoff collection in Florence. From Trionfi Honorati, Maddalena. "A proposito del ‘lettuccio’." Antichità Viva 20, no. 3 (1981): 43, Figure 7.

Figure 16. Print from Girolamo Savonarola’s Predica dell’arte del Bene morire, Florence, 1496. BL: I.A. 27321. From Thornton, Peter. The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400-1600. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991: 148, Figure 162.

Figure 17. Surviving lettuccio from the fifteenth century, Museo Horne, Florence. From Trionfi Honorati, Maddalena. "A proposito del ‘lettuccio’." Antichità Viva 20, no. 3 (1981): 40, Figure 1.

Figure 18. Diomedes and the Palladium. Carved chalcedony, 4.5 x 3.3 cm. Cades Collection III, E, 283. From Dacos, Nicole, Antonio Giuliano, and Ulrico Pannuti, eds. Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Le gemme. Catalogo della Mostra Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Vol. I. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1973: Figure 19.

Figure 19. Replication of Diomedes and the Palladium in Alfonso d’Este’s Breviary. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994: 14, Figure 4.

Figure 20. Detail of Figure 19.

Figure 21. Workshop of Donatello, Diomedes and the Palladium. Medallion in the Medici courtyard, Palazzo Medici, Florence. From From Dacos, Nicole, Antonio Giuliano, and Ulrico Pannuti, eds. Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Le gemme. Catalogo della Mostra Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Vol. I. Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1973: Figure 83.

Figure 22. Alexandrian, Sostratos, Dionysus on a Chariot Led by Psychai, onyx- sardonyx/agate-sardonyx cameo, 40-31 or 34 BC. Museo Nazionale, Naples.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 16

From Fusco, Lauri, and Gino Corti. Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006: 125, Figure 127.

Figure 23. Replication of antique gems, including Dionysus on a Chariot Led by Psychai, Illumination attributed to Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato, Florence, 1479-83. Filippo Pliny’s Natural History, Venice: Nicolaus Jenson, 1476. Bodleian Library, Arch. G.b.6. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994: Cat. 85.

Figure 24. Replication of antique gems, including Dionysus on a Chariot Led by Psychai, Illumination attributed to Gherardo di Giovanni di Miniato, Florence, c. 1470s. Alfonso’s copy of Livy’s Roman History. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994: 160, Cat. 76.

Figure 25. Replication of antique gems, including Dionysus on a Chariot Led by Psychai, Illumination attributed to Attavante degli Attavanti. Thomas Dol’s Missal, 1483. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994: 54, Cat. 3a.

Figure 26. Pendant reliquary cross. German c. 1450-75. Silver-gilt, ruby, sapphire, garnets, pearls. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. From Lightbown, Ronald. Mediaeval European Jewellery. London: The Victoria & Alberto Museum, 1992: 474, Plate 134.

Figure 27. Aragonese copy of Horace’s Odes (perhaps owned by Alfonso II), with depictions of jewels. Illumination attributed to Giovanni Todeschino. Written in Naples c. 1490-5, probably by Gianrinaldo Mennio of Sorrento. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 D 14. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994: 112, cat 45.

Figure 28a-b. Ercole de’ Roberti, diptych. Left panel, Nativity Right panel, Christ supported by Angels, with St. Jerome and St. Francis, c. 1490-3 or 1486. Tempera on panel, 17.8 by 13.5 cm. National Gallery, London. From Molteni, M. Ercole de’ Roberti. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1995: Cat 29.

Figure 29. Jean le Tavernier, Philip the Good at Mass, c. 1460. Manuscript illumination from Traité sur l’Oraison Dominicale, MS 9092, fol 9r, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier. From: Belozerskaya, Marina. Luxury Arts of the Renaissance. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005:191, Fig. v-4.

Figure 30a-d. Piero della Francesca, Portrait diptych of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, with reverse Triumphs, c. 1472-4. Panel, 47 x 33 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. From Paoletti, John T., and Gary M. Radke.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 17

Art In Renaissance Italy. Second ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002: 288, Figures 6.13 and 6.14.

Figure 31a-b. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de’ Benci (obverse and reverse), c. 1474-8. Oil on panel, 38.1 x 37cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alisa Mellon Bruce Fund. From Brown, David Alan, Elizabeth Cropper, Mary Westerman Bulgarella, Dale Kent, Victoria Kirkham, Roberta Orsi Landini, Eleonora Luciano, and Joanna Woods-Marsden. Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Edited by Susan Higman. Washington: The National Gallery of Art and Princeton University Press, 2001: 142-4, Cat. 16.

Figure 32a-b. Ercole de’ Roberti, Giovanni II Bentivoglio and Ginevra Sforza Bentivoglio, c. 1475. Oil on panel, 53.7 x 38.1 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection. From Warnke, Martin. "Individuality as Argument: Piero della Francesca’s Portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino." From Brown, David Alan, Elizabeth Cropper, Mary Westerman Bulgarella, Dale Kent, Victoria Kirkham, Roberta Orsi Landini, Eleonora Luciano, and Joanna Woods-Marsden. Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo’s Ginevra de’ Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women. Edited by Susan Higman. Washington: The National Gallery of Art and Princeton University Press, 2001:103-5, Cat. 2.

Figure 33. Andrea Mantegna, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1450-1. Tempera on canvas, transferred from panel, 40 x 55.6 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. From Martineau, Jane, ed. Andrea Mantegna, Exhibition Catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Royal Academy of Arts, London. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992: 126-9, Cat. 8.

Figure 34. (Copy 1A): Attributed to Gian Francesco Maineri, Nativity. Late 15th- early 16th c? 30.5 x 24 cm. Private Collection. Sold at Christie’s December 1969, Lot 140. From Christie’s Catalogue, 93.

Figure 35. (Copy 2A): Attributed to Gian Francesco Mainieri, Nativity. Panel, 24 x 18.5cm. Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. Kleeman, Eva C. Italiaanse schilderijen, 1300-1500: eigen collectie / Italian paintings, 1300-1500: Own Collection. Rotterdam: Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, 1993: Cat. 19.

Figure 36. (Copy 2B): Christ dead, previously in Cook Collection. From Catalogue of San Marco Casa d’Aste Spa, Venice 9 July 2006: 284, Cat. 93.

Figure 37. Ercole de’ Roberti, Saint Jerome, c. 1474. Tempera and oil emulsion on panel, 34 x 22 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. From Molteni, M. Ercole de’ Roberti. Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1995: Cat. 14.

Figure 38. Circle of Gian Francesco Maineri, Madonna and Child, with a Penitent Saint Jerome. Late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. New York, Private

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 18

Collection. From Manca, Joseph. The Art of Ercole de’ Roberti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: Figure 63.

Figure 39. Unknown North Italian artist, Pietà with the Penitent Saint Jerome, c. 1500-05. Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. From Barstow, Kurt. The Gualenghi-d’Este Hours. Art and Devotion in Renaissance Ferrara. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000: 184, Fig 92.

Figure 40. Unknown North Italian artist, Orpheus Playing to the Animals, late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Drawing. Galleria degli Uffizi, Gabinetto disegno e stampe. From Manca, Joseph. The Art of Ercole de’ Roberti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992: Figure 89.

Figure 41. Justus of Ghent, probably reworked by Pedro Berruguete. Federigo da Montefeltro and His Son, Guidobaldo, about 1476. Oil on wood. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. From Raggio, Olga. The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Federico da Montefeltro’s Palace at Gubbio and its Studiolo. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, 39, Figure 3-18.

Figure 42. Albrecht Dürer and workshop, representation of the gold collar of the Order of the Jar from Maximillian’s Arch, 1512. From Chmelarz, Eduard. Maximilian’s Triumphal Arch. Woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer and Others. New York: Dover Publications, 1972, Plate 14.

Figure 43. Impresa of the Ermine from Paolo Giovio’s Dialogo dell’imprese militari et amarose. From Kau, Joseph. "Daniel’s Delia and the Imprese of Bishop Paolo Giovio: Some Iconological Influences." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970): 328, Plate a.

Figure 44. Ermine emblem from the statutes belonging to Virgino Ursino, 1486. BL MS. Add. 28,628. From de Marinis, Tommaro. La biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona. Vol. 1. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1952: 135.

Figure 45. Pisanello, medal of Bellotto Cumano, depicting Ermine (reverse), 1447. From Wittkower, Rudolf. "Hieroglyphics I. The Conceptual Impact of Egypt from the Fifteenth Century Onward." In Selected Lectures of Rudolf Wittkower. The Impact of Non-European Civilizations on the Art of the West, edited by Donald Martin Reynolds, 94-112, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 102, Figure 6-8.

Figure 46. Unknown medallist, medal of Federigo da Montefeltro, obverse and reverse. Sixteenth century copy? From Hill, George Francis. A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance Before Cellini. London: British Museum, 1930, Plate 50, Cat. 317.

Figure 47. Armellino, coin issued under Ferrante I d’Aragona, obverse and reverse. Museo Nazionale, Naples. From Filangieri, Museo Gaetano, ed. Un

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 19 secolo di grande arte nella monetazione di Napoli (1442-1556). Vol. I. Naples: Museo Filangieri, 1973, 78, Cat. 67.

Figure 48. Armellino coin issued under Alfonso II d’Aragona, obverse and reverse. Museo Nazionale, Naples. From Filangieri, Museo Gaetano, ed. Un secolo di grande arte nella monetazione di Napoli (1442-1556). Vol. I. Naples: Museo Filangieri, 1973, 96, Cat. 104.

Figure 49. Detail of ermine medallion, Castel Nuovo doors (copies in situ), Naples. Bronze. Originals, c. 1474-75 by Guglielmo lo Monaco. Photograph by author.

Figure 50. Guglielmo lo Monaco, Castel Nuovo doors, c. 1474-5. Bronze. Museo Civico del Castel Nuovo, Naples. From Hersey, George L. The Aragonese Arch at Naples. 1443-1475. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973, Plate 57.

Figure 51. Guglielmo lo Monaco, detail of the central right panel, Castel Nuovo doors, c. 1474-5. Bronze. Museo Civico del Castel Nuovo, Naples. From Hersey, George L. The Aragonese Arch at Naples. 1443-1475. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973, Plate 62.

Figure 52. Aragonese Arch. Engraving in Pompeo Sarnelli’s Guida dei forestieri, Naples: Antonio Bulifon, 1685, 34. From Hersey, George L. The Aragonese Arch at Naples. 1443-1475. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973, Plate 2.

Figure 53. Aragonese arch, with view of main portal (where bronze doors, when closed, are visible). Castel Nuovo, Naples. Marble, 1442-75. From Hersey, George L. The Aragonese Arch at Naples. 1443-1475. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973, Plate 27.

Figure 54. Giuliano da Maiano? Detail of coffered ceiling, with ermine, completed by 1475. Urbino studiolo. From Raggio, Olga. The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Federico da Montefeltro’s Palace at Gubbio and its Studiolo. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, 108, Figure 5-49.

Figure 55. Illuminations by Cola Rapicano, Andrea Contrario’s Reprehensio sive objurgatio in calumniatorem divini Platonis, folio 3r, 1471. BNP, Paris, latin 12947. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994, 65, Cat. 10.

Figure 56. Illuminations by Cola Rapicano, Duns Scotus’ Quaestiones on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book IV: Distinctiones, 1-16, folio 8r, c. 1480-5. BL, London, Additional MS. 15273. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 20

Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994, 64, cat. 9.

Figure 57. Frontispiece to Diomede Carafa’s De istitutione vivendi, c. 1476. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, cod. 1654. Script by Giovan Marco Cinico. From de Divitiis, Bianca. Architettura e committenza nella Napoli del Quattrocento. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007, 13, Figure 4.

Figure 58. Guido Mazzoni, bust of Ferrante d’Aragona (or Alfonso II?), c. 1489- 92. Bronze. Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples. From Hersey, George L. Alfonso II and the Artistic Renewal of Naples 1485-1495. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969, Plate 36.

Figure 59. Portrait of Ferrante from Scipione Mazzella’s Le vite dei re di Napoli. BNN. SEZ NAP II.C.74. Naples: Gioseppe Bonfadino, 1594, 318. Photograph by author, with permission from BNN.

Figure 60. Studiolo of Urbino with coffered ceiling, Famous Men, and intarsia, with detail of ermine collar. View of the west and north walls, c. 1470s. From Cheles, Luciano. The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986: 118, Pl II.

Figure 61. Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano or Francione and Pontelli? Portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro. Intarsia, north wall. Urbino studiolo. From Cheles, Luciano. The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986: Figure 105.

Figure 62. Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, ermine detail, 1480s. Intarsia. Gubbio studiolo. From Raggio, Olga. The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Federico da Montefeltro’s Palace at Gubbio and its Studiolo. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, 118, Figure 5-66.

Figure 63. Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, collar of the Order of the Ermine detail, 1480s. Intarsia. Gubbio studiolo. From Raggio, Olga. The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Federico da Montefeltro’s Palace at Gubbio and its Studiolo. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, 121, Figure 5-76.

Figure 64a-b. Illuminations by Guglielmo Giraldi, Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, Purgatorio, folio 97r, 1478-82. BAVat, Urb. Lat. 375. Federigo da Montefeltro’s copy. From Raggio, Olga. The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Federico da Montefeltro’s Palace at Gubbio and its Studiolo. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999, 123, Figure 5-78.

Figure 65a-b. Illumination attributed to Francesco Rosselli, Leonardo Bruni’s Historia florentini populi, folio 2r, c. 1440-50, with first page rewritten, c. 1475- 82. BAVat, Urb. Lat. 464. From Alexander, Jonathan J. G., ed. The Painted Page:

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 21

Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994, 141, Cat. 64.

Figure 66. Vittorio Carpaccio, Portrait of a Knight (?Francesco Maria delle Rovere), 1510? or early sixteenth century. Oil on canvas. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid. From Sgarbi, Vittorio. Carpaccio. Translated by Jay Hyams. New York and London: Abbeville Press, 1994, 155, Cat. 34.

Figure 67. Leonardo da Vinci, The Ermine as Symbol of Purity, c. 1494. Pen and brown ink over slight traces of black chalk, on paper. Reference Number, 7503, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. From the Fitzwilliam Museum’s website: http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Figure 68. Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an Ermine (Cecilia Gallerani). Oil on panel, 53.4 x 39.3 cm. Czartoryski Museum, Cracow. From Cole, Alison. Virtue and Magnificence. Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts. New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 1995: 99, figure 72.

Figure 69a. Detail of Ferrante bestowing the Order of the Ermine on Federigo da Montefeltro, folio 2R, 1474. Illumination from the oration on the occasion of Federigo’s investiture, written by Joan Marco Cinico. Biblioteca Marciana, codice lat xi, 53 (4009). From de Marinis, Tommaro. La biblioteca napoletana dei Re d’Aragona. Vol. IV. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1947: Tavola 301. (Photo of the reproduction, granted by UBC Library, Rare Books and Special Collections).

Figure 69b. Frontispiece and script from the oration on the occasion of Federigo’s investiture, signed by Joan Marco Cinico, 1474. Biblioteca Marciana, codice lat xi, 53 (4009). From de Marinis, Tommaro. La biblioteca napoletana dei Re d’Aragona. Vol. IV. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1947: Tavola 301. (Photo of the reproduction, granted by UBC Library, Rare Books and Special Collections).

Figure 70a. Ercole de’ Roberti, Portia and Brutus, c. 1486-90. Tempera on panel, 48.7 x 34.3 cm. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. From Allen, Denise, Luke Syson, Jennifer Helvey, and David Jaffé. "Catalogue: Ercole de’ Roberti: The Renaissance in Ferrara. Special Supplement." Burlington Magazine CXLI, no. 1153 (1999): xxxv, Cat. VIII.

Figure 70b. Ercole de’ Roberti, The Wife of Hasdrubal and Her Children, c. 1486- 90. ?Tempera on panel, 47.1 x 30.6cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington. From Allen, Denise, Luke Syson, Jennifer Helvey, and David Jaffé. "Catalogue: Ercole de’ Roberti: The Renaissance in Ferrara. Special Supplement." Burlington Magazine CXLI, no. 1153 (1999): xxxiv, Cat. VI.

Figure 70c. Ercole de’ Roberti with Giovan Francesco di Maineri or workshop, Lucrezia, Brutus and Collatinus, c.1486-90. ?Tempera on panel, 48.7 x 35.5cm. Galleria Estense, Modena. From Allen, Denise, Luke Syson, Jennifer Helvey, and

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 22

David Jaffé. "Catalogue: Ercole de’ Roberti: The Renaissance in Ferrara. Special Supplement." Burlington Magazine CXLI, no. 1153 (1999): xxxiii, Cat. VII.

Figure 71. Entry from ASMO, Amministrazione dei Principe 638, 7R. Photography by author with permission from ASMO.

Figure 72. Parchment cover from ASMO, Amministrazione dei Principe 638. Photograph by author with permission from ASMO.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 23

Introduction

In September 1479 Paulo Antonio Trotti, the Ferrarese ambassador, wrote to Eleonora d’Aragona Duchess of Ferrara about his visit with Duke

Giangaleazzo Maria Sforza of Milan.1 Trotti reported that the Duke of Milan had shown him a number of his possessions and Trotti took note of the duke’s necklace, describing it as “a ruby attached to a gold chain, extremely big and large, which was the [jewel] called il spigo once belonging to Re Alfonso [I d’Aragona], which is the most beautiful thing I have seen.”2 Trotti continues to describe his visit:

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 ducati and today he let me see the medals containing his portrait and [that of] Duke Galeazzo, which are each ten thousand ducati […] Then we saw 12 large silver candlesticks which were bigger than two men and very large and after [that] eight really large silver saints and a cross and other candlesticks which were on the altar. I’ve never seen such fine and honourable things and these were in the cappella where sung mass is heard every day.3

Trotti’s report of his visit to the Duke of Milan’s collections is a common enough example among fifteenth-century ambassador reports, but it highlights some

1 ASMO AMB MIL 3. 241-2. The letter is dated 22 September 1479. For all archival abbreviations please refer to the section labelled “Primary Archival Sources” at the end of this thesis. All translations by author unless otherwise noted. 2 “epso duca haeva al collo uno balasso atachato in una cadenella de oro, grosissimo e grande ch[e] fu quello ch[e] fu del Re alfonso chiamato il spigo ch[e] no[n] vidi mai la piu bella cosse” ASMO AMB MIL 3. 242. 3 “Heri la mo[n]strete tute le zoglie ch[e] la al s. ch[e] certame[nte] sono cosse extupende e qui la ne feri mostrari cosse assai come fu molti sancti de oro massizo no[n] p[er]o tropo grandi e altri animali tuti doro ch[e] valeno assai meglione de ducati et hozi la ne dele fare vedre le medaie ch[e] e la figura sua e del duca galeazo ch[e] li son antro p[e] cadauna dici milia ducati e dice ch[e] la ne ha dicti de queste si ch[e] queste sono cosse grande e da gran signori se vedesti xij ca[n]deleri de argento grandi piu ch[e] no[n] sono quasi dui homini e grosissimj e da poi octo sancti di argento assai grande e una croze e altri candelerei ch[e] seno suso lo altaro no[n] vedesti nimi la piu digna e honorevole cosse e questi co[n]tinuame[n]te sono stati in la capella dove olde il. S messe cantata ogni die.” ASMO AMB MIL 3. 242.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 24 important aspects of objects in relation to court culture. Attention to jewellery and clothing is a remarkably standard feature in ambassadorial correspondence.

Narratives of gems and jewels circulated in a variety of forms, exemplified here by Trotti’s letter, but we also find the histories of such objects circulating in print, often found in texts written on histories of artists, people, or cities.4 The jewel, as was common in the late fifteenth century, is given a name: “il spigo.” Il spigo is also described as once belonging to King Alfonso I of Naples. These two aspects are significant: first, the naming of jewels individualises them, making them precious rarities, with histories, which were crucial to their value. Second, owning an item once owned by an illustrious individual—in this case, the former King of

Naples—became an essential part of the prestige of ownership, all concerns that are addressed in chapter two. These jewels circulated frequently, since they were often used as pawns, serving as liquid capital or a form of currency. In addition, knowledge about these gems or jewels was of central importance, allowing not only owners, but also viewers and visitors to display their knowledge when discussing the objects. Images crafted in these jewels and gems were also copied in a variety of media, from manuscript illumination to seals to architectural medallions. These replications ask us to consider the different ways these visual forms were circulated and also prompt us to investigate why these objects were copied in the first place.

Trotti’s report also emphasises Duchess Eleonora’s need to be informed on the objects owned by the Duke of Milan. This is significant for a number of reasons. Objects were markers of social status and it was important for rulers to

4 See chapter two for examples of such stories and narratives about gems and jewels.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 25 ensure that their right to rule was reflected and legitimated in the magnificence of the objects he or she collected and displayed. The Duke of Milan, like many rulers, sought to show off his collections to visitors, and undoubtedly hoped that an ambassador like Trotti would report back to Ferrara on the glory of his treasures. Knowledge of objects, especially for a collector like Eleonora, was also extremely important. Since precious objects circulated frequently through the economy of pawning, credit, and gifting, it was necessary to know who owned what, where that object was currently located, and how it might be procured in the future. After all, Alfonso I was Eleonora’s grandfather and such a jewel was thereby charged with memories of lineage. Purchasing an object once owned by another ruler could prove contentious, and acquisition was often political. But knowledge of where objects were located, the relationships between objects, their stories, and their provenances also proved to be a crucial aspect of connoisseurship, related to the practices of collecting and humanist culture.

Tracing the circulation of objects through gift exchange, pawning, and collecting, reveals connections between individuals across the courts, and also underlines the relationship between people and things, that is, between the social and the material.

Copying and quoting artistic forms—whether gems, jewels, paintings, antique fragments, or architecture—became an essential component of visual imagery and representation in the late fifteenth century. The replication, invention, and translation of artistic forms brings forward new ways of understanding not only ownership of these objects, but also the importance of copies and how this establishes relationships between objects. The quotation of

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 26 both objects and texts in contemporary works of art, I argue, gave rise to new modes of viewing visual imagery that are brought forward by studiolo culture.

This form of viewing requires decipherment; it asks viewers to piece together disparate parts and fragments thereby constructing meanings across space and media.

Giovanni Pontano, the famous Neapolitan humanist, court secretary, and counsellor, also details the prominence of objects at court in his De splendore.5

He states:

On some occasions rarity can also determine value. It is said that [King] Alfonso [I d’Aragona of Naples] jumped for joy when Ciriaco d’Ancona gave him a metal plaquette (elettro)6, which contained a fly with its wings spread: a very small thing, but its rarity made it great in the eyes of the prince, who was measuring not its price, but its rarity. Sometimes art makes an acceptable gift. What did the same Alfonso keep with such pleasure but a picture by the painter Giovanni [Jan van Eyck]? There are some that prefer the tiniest little vase of that material which they call porcelain to vases of silver and of gold even though the latter are of higher cost. It does happen occasionally that the excellence of the gift is not judged so much by its cost, as by its beauty, its rarity, and its elegance. -Giovanni Pontano, De splendore, 14987

Pontano brings to the fore many of the issues that this thesis addresses: the importance of objects in the Italian courts in the late fifteenth century, the

5 Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1999). For a discussion on De splendore see Evelyn S. Welch, "Public Magnificence and Private Display. Giovanni Pontano's De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts," Journal of Design History 15, no. 4 (2002). For an overview of Pontano see Jerry H. Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 127-34. 6 “elettro” refers to a silver-gold alloy, a material used in Greek coinage. Presumably, Pontano is referring to a sort of coin-shaped plaquette, with a carved or imprinted fly depicted on it. See entry for elettro in Alcide Giallonardi, ed., Dizionario Larousse dell'antiquariato. Maggiore e minore (Rome: Gremese Editore, 1991). 7 Pontano, Virtù sociali, 213. Also partially quoted in English in Welch, "Public Magnificence," 212.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 27 different means by which objects accrue value, the various social exchanges established through the circulation of objects, and the ways in which the value of an object is intrinsically tied to the role it plays in ritual or symbolic activities.

Pontano illuminates the significance of social interactions attached to objects through the notion of the gift. Here, he celebrates the rarity of a small plaquette and notes the importance of artistic style in a northern painting by van Eyck.

Pontano thus stresses the varied values of objects at court, not only monetary, but the diverse qualities—rarity, elegance, style, and materials—that imbue objects with meaning and value.

This thesis examines the courts of Italy through the myriad of objects— statues, paintings, jewellery, furniture, and heraldry—that were valued for their particular material forms, histories, and social functions. Such objects are examined not only as components of court life, but agents which activated the symbolic and ritual practices that constituted relations within and between courts.

These activities—the exchange of diplomatic gifts, the consumption of precious objects, the displaying of collectibles, and the bestowing of knightly orders— were all ways that objects acted as points of contact between individuals, giving rise to new associations and new interests. It was through these very practices that objects partook in social life, accruing histories that contributed to their cultural, economic, and material values.

I. The Court: The Prince, Communities, and Associations

A focus on objects moves us away from traditional approaches to court society, which have tended to concentrate on the prince. This project thus opens up avenues to examine the interrelationships and interconnections between courts,

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 28 suggesting how political relations could often be found in the objects themselves.

Numerous studies have placed emphasis on the prince, which will be addressed below, but I would like to start with Lauro Martines’ 1979 study of Italian

Renaissance city-states to underline why we need to question such assumptions.

The “prince” functions in Martines’ and others’ studies as a title for anyone who holds power over a court, which could include a marquis, count, duke, or king.

Martines states:

Everything went to serve him [the prince]. This meant not only the physical fact that he was flanked by teams of servitors and servants, but also that consciousness itself was turned his way. Men were there to carry out his wishes: they had no social identity apart from the one profiled in the fundamental relation at court, that between service and lordship.8

For Martines, social identities of members of the court are determined by the prince alone, which leaves little room to analyse the more complicated associations, social groups, identities, and relations that were formed between courts and within courts that may not necessarily have had a direct correlation with the ruler. Moreover, the different artefacts I examine throughout this thesis also bring forward the importance of regents and consorts at court. The prince, for

Martines, constitutes the “centerpoint of the courtly order of consciousness,” it is

“around that point (lordship) [that] all life revolved (service), all the dominant forms of thought, passion, and entertainment.”9

While Martines constantly reiterates the central power of the prince, there appears a tension in his analysis between the prince/court and the communal

8 Lauro Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), 227. 9 Martines, Power and Imagination, 229.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 29 government or other communal groups, which he does not fully address. He notes, for instance, that the signorial lord took interest in whom was appointed on communal councils, “which implies that the council had more value than historians have often supposed and that even rubber-stamping was an important operation in the conduct of signorial government.”10 This suggests, contrary to

Martines’ main argument, that the prince was not the only power, and that court life was often about a negotiation between the interests of the prince (or those in power) and those of other groups.

However, while Martines argues for a conception of the court as strictly revolving around the prince, his study does suggest the importance of representation, and hints at the ways in which the idea/ideal of the court is not the same as the actual court. He notes that the courts were inclined to promote self- imagery, whether it was expressed in portraits found on medals, in frescoes, or in the singular painted portrait, or “to be found in the objects around: in court tapestries, playing cards, decorated earthenware, embroidered silks, wedding chests, engraved arms and armor plate, and even a variety of sugar confections for special banquets.”11 These forms of self-imagery are the modes of representation through which the prince attempted to promote the hegemony of the ruling dynasty, and to legitimate his rule. As I will argue, it was not only the prince, but also the different actors at court who required these forms of representation to legitimate their position, and it was through the myriad of objects, often used in ritual, that individuals made claims for power.

10 Martines, Power and Imagination, 104. 11 Martines, Power and Imagination, 230.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 30

The courts of Ferrara and Naples are central to this thesis, but their interrelationships with other Italian centres such as Milan, Urbino, and Florence are also essential (Figure 1). By taking various objects as starting points for examining these relationships, this project moves away from the study of one patron or prince or one court, and instead, examines the various actors involved in the courts, which I argue consisted of both objects and subjects. The objects chosen are varied, allowing for a variety of perspectives and materials to be studied: a colossal bronze fragmented statue; small jewels, cameos, and hardstone vases, and their replication in a variety of media; the lettuccio or daybed; a devotional diptych; and the impresa of the Order of the Ermine and its dissemination across media. The vast array of material objects and visual imagery studied is not meant to be comprehensive but rather serves to underline the very diversity of objects within the court context, and the ways in which those objects interacted or entered into dialogue with each other across media. Studying the trajectories of these varied objects—through their movement and circulation— provides an intriguing way to understand how they acted as points of contact between individuals. This circulation may be fairly restricted in some cases, such as a portable diptych in a collection, examined in chapter three, which was taken out and used in one’s apartments or taken along in travel. But circulation could also be quite wide, as the example of small gems that were pawned and frequently changed hands within Italy and even across Europe, demonstrated in chapter two.

The objects that constitute the focus of this thesis are ones that repeatedly resurface in the textual and visual sources. These sources include paintings, sculpture, furniture, jewellery, manuscript illuminations, and architecture, as well

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 31 as official and unofficial documents, such as ambassadorial reports, chronicles, personal letters, diplomatic correspondence, account books, inventories, manuscripts, printed books, statutes, anecdotes, and local narratives. The objects, then, were chosen because they have something polemical or controversial about them; they initiated discussion or prompted interest.12

Numerous individuals—dukes, duchesses, kings, counts, artists, ambassadors, and merchants—resurface throughout this thesis: King Alfonso I d’Aragona, King Ferrante d’Aragona, 13 Count Diomede Carafa of Maddaloni,

Duchess Ippolita Sforza and Duke Alfonso II d’Aragona of Calabria, at the court of Naples; Duke Ercole d’Este, Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona, and the artist

Ercole de’ Roberti of Ferrara; Duke Galeazzo Sforza and Ambassador Francesco

Maleta of Milan; and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Filippo Strozzi, and Giuliano Gondi of

Florence, among many others. The relationships between these individuals are drawn out further by examining the objects exchanged between them, whether through gift exchange, mercantile networks, credit, or pawning.

Ferrara and Naples were intertwined through marriage and political ties, as well as through cultural exchange, and thus serve as important courts to focus on.

These social, political, and cultural networks also provide intriguing examples of interrelations between courts. Both courts at the end of the fifteenth century were fervent humanist centres: Ferrara had a very distinct artistic style exemplified in works by Cosmè Tura and Ercole de’ Roberti, while Naples was a mix of a

12 For some important thoughts on ‘polemical objects’ see the issue of Res devoted to the subject: Philip Armstrong, Stephen Melville, and Erika Naginski, "Polemical Objects," Res 46 (2004). 13 It should be noted that King Ferrante of Aragon, son of Alfonso I d’Aragona, is referenced as both Ferrante and Ferdinando in the literature. I use the name Ferrante unless quoted as Ferdinando by another author.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 32 variety of styles, including French, Catalan, and Italian. Ferrara, one of the smaller northern courts—a dukedom—provides a useful contrast to the larger southern Kingdom of Naples. Ferrara’s court records, now in Modena, are some of the best preserved administrative court documents to survive from the fifteenth century, thus providing a wealth of archival sources, especially in terms of account books and inventories. Fifteenth-century Neapolitan court archives, unfortunately, were destroyed during World War II, and as a result, fifteenth- century Naples has often been neglected in the English literature.14 However,

Milanese ambassador reports to Naples still survive in extremely good condition in Milan and detailed nineteenth-century transcriptions of Neapolitan account books also prove to be very useful. By focussing on Ferrara and Naples, I have been able to study closely two very different, yet interconnecting courts, while also engaging with their interrelations with other courts and centres across Italy.

An emphasis on the circulation of objects reveals that political relations could be frequently manifested in the objects themselves, rather than the assumed locations of power, such as the body of the prince, and allows us to question some of the previously conceived notions of the court. By investigating the different materials and forms of each object, we can understand how objects operate within ritual and social practices in dramatically diverse and intriguing ways. Chapter one examines the gift of a bronze colossal horse’s head, sent from Lorenzo de’

Medici to Diomede Carafa, Count of Maddaloni, and political advisor to the King of Naples. The sculpture is a fragment, an object whose provenance and date is up

14 For a recent reassessment of Naples, see the introduction and other essays in the special volume of Art History: Cordelia Warr and Janis Elliott, "Introduction: Reassessing Naples 1266-1713," Art History 31, no. 4 (2008).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 33 for debate, and it thus serves as the source for numerous narratives. The horse’s head is described both as an antiquity—the vestiges of an equestrian statue that was synonymous with Neapolitan identity and history—and a Renaissance creation—the remains of an unfinished project by Donatello planned for the triumphal Arch at the Castel Nuovo to honour King Alfonso I. The value of the object, I argue, is located both in its material form—that of the bronze fragment and its unknown provenance and equestrian iconography—as well as in its role as a diplomatic gift between two political figures who were active collectors.

The horse’s head is also examined in relation to the tradition of the equine in Italy at this time, which included the gifting, lending, racing, and collecting of real horses. The fragmentary nature of the bronze horse’s head proves crucial in understanding the sculpture as a part of a whole, or I should say, a part of various wholes: it is part of a larger destroyed or unfinished statue, part of the history and foundation of Naples, part of the diplomatic negotiations between Naples and

Florence, part of the insignia of the Seggio (quarter) of the Nido, part of the rituals of lending, racing and owning horses, part of the collection of Diomede Carafa, and consequently part of the Carafa Palace.

Moving from the colossal fragment, we turn to smaller and more intimate objects that circulated much more easily, as a form of currency in chapter two.

The narratives told about the horse’s head can be related to the significance of stories for the value of antique gems, jewellery, and hardstone vases, that moved through mercantile networks in the late Quattrocento. The copying and replication of such gems in a variety of media, from manuscript illumination to architectural medallions, acted as a means to manage or stabilise these objects, which were

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 34 somehow loose when used as currency. The possession of such objects, then, is linked to temporality, since this was often for a limited time. Value, however, also migrates through replication and representation, and knowledge is disseminated through this process.

The lettuccio was another luxury good that brought merchant-bankers together with the courts, through the shipment of the daybed from Florence to

Naples. The practice of pawning is examined to demonstrate how objects could also cause conflicts between courts when one ruler purchases the pawned possession of another. Chapter two, then, deals with a diversity of objects and materials examining how they served as points of contact between individuals from artisans, servants, and customs agents, to merchant-bankers, counts, duchesses, and kings.

The replication and copying of gems is also linked to what Leonard Barkan has called “an alternative system of value” whereby many collectors owned contemporary copies of an antiquity, as well as the original.15 Works of art, whether an antique gem or a contemporary painting, are thus seen within a tradition of artistic invention and inspiration, giving rise to copies and new ways of exploring subject matter or form. Chapter three examines a diptych painted by

Ercole de’ Roberti, belonging to the collections of Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona of Ferrara, that copied elements of a painting by Andrea Mantegna, and that gave rise to a series of copies and imitations by other artists. In this chapter, I pay attention to the diptych form, and examine the ways the multiple images on the

15 Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 260.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 35 diptych, and their reference to other objects and texts in Eleonora’s collections, encouraged a particular mode of viewing, asking the viewer to piece together the various textual and visual sources in an intertextual manner. I argue that this intertextual reading can be linked to new modes of viewing exemplified in the tradition of fabula and myth, which became a crucial aspect of studiolo culture and collecting.

Paying close attention to the book-like form of the diptych, and the emphasis on the body and the senses in the images depicted, I examine the ways the diptych spoke to humanist debates and religious practices in Ferrara. These debates held a deeper resonance, engaging not only in cultural questions, but alluding to social controversies around the rise of a new nobility, initiated under the rule of Borso d’Este, and continued under Ercole d’Este.16 Visual images in

Ferrara are thus not only a reflection of these debates, but active agents, which engage with, and contribute to, these controversies.

In my final chapter I turn to the impresa—the Order of the Ermine—to examine how a repeatable sign is employed across media to link a specific body of individuals across time and space, and how the material components of the

Order—the mantle with ermine fur and the gold collar with the pendant ermine— are crucial to the rites of that Order. The Order was inaugurated by King Ferrante in 1465 after his successful victory over the rebellious barons, and it was thus closely associated to his rule and Aragonese hegemony. In contrast to the replication of gems in a multiplicity of forms, examined in chapter two, the

16 Much of my thinking on this subject has been greatly influenced by Campbell. See Stephen Campbell, "Pictura and Scriptura: Cosmè Tura and Style as Courtly Performance," Art History 19, no. 2 (1996): 267-95.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 36 emblem of the ermine always remains the same, even when translated in different media such as coins, medals, architectural medallions, portraiture, sculpture, and manuscript illumination. The emblem’s fixed repeatable sign becomes crucial in its ability to reference a constellation of symbolic associations and claims within an image. The impresa asks the viewer to piece together the visual sign of the ermine, the written mottoes, and the symbolic references associated with the

Order, which operates in a similar way to emblematic or fabulesque modes of reading/viewing. The chapter concludes with three panels by Roberti belonging to

Eleonora d’Aragona (Ferrante’s daughter), which depict the mottoes of the Order of the Ermine in allegorical form.17 Here, three different stories of antique heroines are woven together from a series of sources, which read together, lead the viewer to decipher the main motto of the Order of the Ermine, malo mori quam feodari (death rather than dishonour).

In attempts to elucidate some of the social and political relationships within and between courts, I will provide here an outline of the political history of the

Italian courts, with a focus on Ferrara and Naples. In its brevity, the complexity of such relations is only touched upon. It is meant to demonstrate why we need to re- examine Martines’ and others’ theories of the prince as the central focus of the court, and to insist that there were a variety of communities and social groups, that interacted within and across courts.

In 1443, Alfonso I d’Aragona entered Naples in triumphal entry, an event depicted in marble relief on the façade of the triumphal arch at the Castel Nuovo

17 Wilkins-Sullivan was the first to correlate the paintings with the Order’s motto, Ruth Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels on the Theme of "Death rather than Dishonour" and the Neapolitan Connection," Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte 57, no. 4 (1994): 610-25.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 37 in Naples (Figure 2).18 Alfonso had been granted the rights to the kingdom by

Giovanna II, the last Angevin monarch, who adopted Alfonso and made him her successor.19 Alfonso faced opposition by a number of barons as well as by René d’Anjou, who also laid claim to the kingdom. Alfonso won the kingdom through a fierce military campaign and attempted to consolidate his position through political and diplomatic support within the kingdom and across Italy. To counter the influential Neapolitan barons, Alfonso encouraged the development of a class of educated and talented bureaucrats, who were dependent on him for honours and benefices. The Kingdom of Naples, however, was itself a dependency of the

Holy See, so that upon Alfonso’s death in 1458, Alfonso’s illegitimate son,

Ferrante d’Aragona (Duke of Calabria), had to seek papal approval for his election.20 This was not granted by Calixtus, but with the election of Pius II,

Ferrante was established as ruler of the Kingdom of Naples. Contestations to

Ferrante’s rule from many Neapolitan barons and the Angevins resulted in

18 For the arch see George L. Hersey, The Aragonese Arch at Naples. 1443-1475 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973). 19 While there is much written on the political history of Naples, I have found the following sources extremely useful for this particular time period. Bentley, Politics and Culture, 7-21; David Abulafia, "Introduction: From Ferrante I to Charles VIII," in The French Descent Into Renaissance Italy 1494-95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Hampshire and Vermont: Variorum Ashgate Publishing Company, 1995), 1-25; Vincent Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia d'Italia: Ferrante and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Friendly Enemies and Hostile Allies," in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494-95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Hampshire and Vermont: Variorum Ashgate Publishing Company, 1995), 91-122. For other studies on Naples see Ferdinando Bologna, Napoli e le rotte mediterranee della pittura. Da Alfonso il Magnanimo a Ferdinando il Cattolico (Napoli: Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, 1977); Vittorio Gleijeses, La Storia di Napoli dalle origini ai giorni nostri, vol. 2 (Naples: Edizioni Alfonso d'Aragona da Legma, 1996); George L. Hersey, Alfonso II and the Artistic Renewal of Naples 1485-1495 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969); Atanasio Mozzilo and Giuseppe Galasso, eds., Storia di Napoli. Napoli Aragonese, vol. IV tomo I (Torino e Firenze: Arti Grafiche, 1974); Ernesto Pontieri, Per la storia del regno di Ferrante I D'Aragona re di Napoli. Studi e ricerche (Naples: A. Morano Editore, 1969); Francesco Sabatini and Mario Santoro, eds., Storia di Napoli. Napoli Aragonese, vol. IV tomo II (Torino e Firenze: Arti Grafiche, 1974). 20 Abulafia, "Introduction," 4.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 38 warfare until 1465 (Figure 3 depicts the triumphal flotilla of the Aragonese entering victoriously into Naples’ harbour). Alfonso I allowed for increased authority of the barons over feudal communes, while ensuring central control by appointing officials as representatives in the feudal towns. Ferrante altered these policies slightly, by attempting to assert new members into the baronage and renewing the administrative systems in the provinces, thus creating a relative mobility in the ranks of the feudal nobility.21 Furthermore, this social mobility ensured that an overlap occurred in the administration of the noble seggi (quarters or neighbourhoods) in Naples, whereby the old urban nobility could be countered by new Aragonese supporters.22

While a Neapolitan noble such as Diomede Carafa entered into service for the Aragonese, and in general, can be seen as supportive of Aragonese rule, he also had his own political and social interests apart from the Aragonese. A prominent humanist, collector, count, and an important figure in his neighbourhood, the Seggio di Nido, Carafa was also political advisor, diplomat, secretary, and guardarobiere for the Aragonese. An individual like Diomede, as discussed in chapter one, thus had a variety of loyalties, and required representation to legitimise his own eminence in political, social, and cultural spheres. It was through the receiving and giving of gifts—such as the colossal horse’s head displayed in Diomede’s courtyard and given to him by Lorenzo de’

Medici—that served to solidify political relations and to secure individuals with

21 Eleni Sakellariou, "Institutional and Social Continuities in the Kingdom of Naples Between 1443 and 1528," in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494-95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Hampshire and Vermont: Variorum Ashgate Publishing Company, 1995). 22 Sakellariou, "Institutional and Social Continuities," 339-40. Also see Abulafia, "Introduction," 8-11.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 39 powerful positions at court. While Diomede was very loyal to the Aragonese, the

Neapolitan crown’s relations with other local barons were constantly unstable. It has been noted that it was the expansionist policies of Alfonso II, Duke of

Calabria, which caused the second Baron’s Revolt in 1485-6, although Ferrante’s

“anti-feudal policy” no doubt played a role as well.23 In attempts to secure fidelity among individuals across Italy and Europe, Ferrante instituted the Order of the

Ermine in 1465, as examined in chapter four. The gold collar, the mantle, the statutes, and the repeated sign of the emblem of the ermine, served as material memories of investiture, binding members into obligation.

The Lega or Italian League instituted in 1455 saw the Aragonese enter into a formal alliance with Florence and Milan. The treaty was to secure a “diplomatic hegemony” between Milan, Florence, and Naples, and was bolstered by the dual marriage alliances of Ippolita Sforza and Sforza Maria, two children belonging to

Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, with Ferrante’s children, Alfonso II d’Aragona and Eleonora d’Aragona respectively.24 Gift-giving between these individuals became a crucial rite in these negotiations, which sometimes resulted in unexpected obligations. The Sforza, Aragonese, Medici, and Este were also frequently in competition with each other over the procurement of antiquities and precious objects, which often complicated relations. Peace was hardly realised as

23 Abulafia, "Introduction," 11. 24 For these political negotiations see Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia." Also see below, chapter one for an expanded analysis.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 40 alliances and counter-alliances between other states hindered any secure coalition, and deteriorated to the extent that a new Lega had to be re-established in 1470.25

The Aragonese’s rise to power in Naples was quite different from other families who gained prominence and power in the courts, although the instability of rule and the need for legitimisation was common among the leading political figures in Italy. As Jacob Burckhardt remarked in his famous text, The

Civilization of the Renaissance, a striking feature of this period was the rise to power, and the institution of, independent dynasties by condottieri, who were most often illegitimate.26 Federigo da Montefeltro is often cited as the quintessential example of how an illegitimate son of a count could rise to the status of duke through his military prowess.27 Federigo, from 1460 until his death in 1482, was the general not only of the King of Naples, but also the league of

Italian states, while at the same time serving the papacy, and he was thus caught in conflicting loyalties.28 Federigo’s studiolo, as examined in chapter four, contained numerous representations of the ermine, emblematising Federigo’s membership in the prestigious Order of the Ermine and his loyalty to the

Neapolitan crown.

In contrast to Republican Florence, for instance, those who held power in seigniorial states, whether they were a lord, marquess, duke, count, or king, were not hindered by the same accusations of flaunting too much wealth. Rather, as

25 Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, ed. R. Fubini, vol. I (Florence: Giunti, 1977), 236; Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 104. 26 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance (London and New York: The Phaidon Press and Oxford University Press, 1944), 9-13. 27 Burckhardt singled him out as a “brilliant representative of the princely order.” Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance, 29. 28 Cecil H. Clough, "Federico da Montefeltro and the Kings of Naples: A Study in Fifteenth- Century Survival," Renaissance Studies 6, no. 2 (1992): 118 and 46.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 41

Rupert Shepherd has argued, magnificence was a virtue not only becoming, but expected of a prince.29 Sabadino degli Arienti’s De triumphis religionis celebrates the ten religious virtues embodied by Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara, including that of magnificence:

The lofty virtue of magnificence, which you [Duke Ercole I d’Este of Ferrara] display with singular glory in everything […] Magnificence therefore must be considered as consisting of sumptuous, great, and sublime things. As [does] her name, [so] she proclaims largesse and vastness in spending gold and silver on things eminent, high and divine as befits magnificence, always according to the condition and status of the man. -Sabadino degli Arienti, De triumphis religionis, 149730

Throughout his text, Arienti describes ephemeral celebrations and feasts, lavish banquets, numerous buildings and over twenty fresco cycles (the majority of which have been destroyed), detailing the clothing, jewels, and courtiers depicted.31 The magnificence of the prince and his court is manifested in the various things that make up the court, and which, as Arienti explains, are tied to ritual and festivity: banquets, marriage celebrations, jousts, receptions of foreign dignitaries, and triumphal entries. However, while magnificence served the

29 Rupert Shepherd, "Republic Anxiety and Courtly Confidence: The Politics of Magnificence and Fifteenth-Century Italian Architecture," in The Material Renaissance, ed. Michelle O'Malley and Evelyn S. Welch (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), 47-70. 30 Translation in Rupert Shepherd, "Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Ercole I d'Este and the Decoration of the Italian Renaissance Court," Renaissance Studies 9, no. 1 (1995): 51. “Sequitaremo ala narrata tua liberalitate ducale, religiosissimo Principe, Signor mio charo, l’alta virtù dela magnificentia, la quale in ogni cosa con singulare gloria ostendi, perchè pensi non più ala religione che al preclaro sangue convenirsi. La magnificentia dunque considerare si debbe che in cose sumptuose, grane et sublime consiste. Come il nome de epsa suona largheza et amplitudine in expendere auro et argento in cose eminente, alte e dive ala convenientia del magnifico, secondo sempre la conditione e stato del’huomo.” Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d'Este: The 'De triumphus religionis' of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, ed. Werner L Gundersheimer (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972), 50. Also discussed in Guido Guerzoni, "Liberalitas, Magnificentia, Splendor: The Classic Origins of Italian Renaissance Lifestyles," in Economic Engagements with Art, ed. Neil De Marchi and Craufurd D. W. Goodwin (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 359. 31 For a discussion of the text see Arienti, triumphis religionis; Shepherd, "Sabadino degli Arienti."; Shepherd, "Republic Anxiety," 54-9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 42 prince, it could run counter to local or other factions. Thus the strategy of legitimation through magnificence and splendour could be contentious. It should be stressed too, that many of the prominent Italian courts, while often seen as independent rulers, were actually dependent on a greater overlord. Ferrara and

Urbino, for example, were actually territories of the papacy; Milan and Mantua, were ruled by feudal lords who owed military service to the emperor.32

In the case of Ferrara, the Este ruled as papal vicars, a relationship that dated back to the fourteenth century (Figure 4).33 The three rulers of Ferrara in the fifteenth century, from 1441 to 1505, were all sons of Niccolò III, First Marquis of Ferrara: Leonello (1441-50), Borso, First Duke of Ferrara (1450-71), and

Ercole I (1471-1505). Duke Borso was a respected general and held numerous condotte, and was largely responsible for restructuring the Ferrarese nobility by selling positions every year and creating a circle of individuals dependent on him

32 Martines, Power and Imagination, 222. 33 Werner Gundersheimer, Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 48. Gundersheimer provides a useful background on the rise of the Este. There are numerous studies on the Este and Ferrara, to list just a few see Luciano Chiappini, ed., Gli Estensi a Ferrara e Modena (Rome: Editalia-Edizioni d'Italia, 1994); Edmund Garratt Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara: a Study of the Poetry, Religion and Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (London: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd, 1904); Roberta Iotti, ed., Gli Estensi. La Corte di Ferrara (Modena: Il bulino edizioni d'arte, 1997); Alessandra Molfino Mottola, Mauro Natala, and di Andrea Lorenzo, eds., Le Muse e il principe: Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano., vol. I (Modena: 1991); Alessandra Molfino Mottola, Mauro Natala, and di Andrea Lorenzo, eds., Le Muse e il principe: Arte di corte nel Rinascimento padano., vol. II (Modena: 1991); Charles M. Rosenberg, The Este Monuments and Urban Development in Renaissance Ferrara (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d'Este, 1471-1505, and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Paolo Rossi, ed., Il rinascimento nelle corti padane. Società e cultura (Bari: De Donato Editore, 1977); Jadranka Bentini, ed., Gli Este a Ferrara. Una corte nel rinascimento, Exhibition. Castello di Ferrara 14 March-13 June 2004 (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2004); Richard Michael Tristano, "Ferrara in the Fifteenth Century: Borso d'Este and the Development of a New Nobility (Italy)" (PhD Thesis, New York University, 1983); Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek, eds., Phaethon's Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, vol. 286, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 43 for entitlements and distinction.34 During Borso’s reign, his younger brother,

Ercole, was shipped off to Naples to receive a humanist and military education, and to be protected from any local assassination attempts by contenders to the throne.35 In 1460, Ercole returned to Ferrara and gained a reputation in arms and politics, leading to his appointment as successor. While in the 1460s, Ercole took arms against his childhood companion, Ferrante d’Aragona, by siding with the

French, an alliance was sealed between Ferrara and Naples when the Sforza

Maria-Eleonora d’Aragona marriage was annulled and Eleonora married Ercole in

1473. The Neapolitan-Ferrarese alliance was to be extremely beneficial for

Ferrara, when in 1483-4 Venice entered into war with Ferrara and the Este were assisted by Aragonese troops and their allies. The Venetians were not the only ones to challenge Este rule under Ercole. After Eleonora produced the first male heir in 1476, Niccolò di Leonello (another branch of the Este) attempted a coup, which was, however, unsuccessful. Eleonora played a commanding role in the politics of Ferrara, and often acted as regent when Ercole was away.36 Ercole and

Eleonora continued Borso’s policies of selling court offices, and thus maintained the ‘new nobility’ created under Borso. They were also both avid collectors and many of the objects in their collections spoke to humanist and political debates in

Ferrara. This is exemplified by a diptych in Eleonora’s collections, examined in chapter three, that entered into dialogue with humanist texts as well as other

34 For a more detailed analysis see, Tristano, "Ferrara and New Nobility". As well as below, Chapter 3. 35 Gundersheimer, Ferrara, 175-6. 36 Gundersheimer provides a useful summary of her political activity, Werner Gundersheimer, "Women, Learning, and Power: Eleonora of Aragon and the Court of Ferrara," in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1980), 43-65.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 44 objects in the court collections. It should be noted that there still existed a communal government in Ferrara, and although the Este were involved in the electoral policies of these institutions, the communal groups could act in opposition to court policies.37 Furthermore, it should be remembered that Ferrara was under papal jurisdiction, and ecclesiastical offices thus had their own hierarchical structure and political authority outside of, or at least alongside, Este power.38

Florence played a crucial role in relations among the Italian states. The

Lega involved Florence, most notably for its financial capabilities. Prominent

Florentine banking firms such as the Strozzi, Gondi, and Medici were continually called upon to supply funds for numerous wars and military campaigns, often in exchange for pawned objects belonging to royal collections, as examined in chapter two. Individuals such as Filippo Strozzi and Lorenzo de’ Medici, I will argue, played a crucial role in the activities at the courts of Ferrara and Naples, on cultural, monetary, and political levels, suggesting that merchants from

Republican Florence were also critical actors at court.

Martines’ study follows a tradition of court studies that locates power in the body of the prince, and ultimately leads to the rise of the absolutist state. This approach is most famously exemplified in the work of Norbert Elias. Elias’ The

Court Society, originally published in 1969, saw the court as an instrument to

37 Trevor Dean, "Commune and Despot: The Commune of Ferrara under Este Rule, 1300-1450," in City and Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Essays Presented to Philip Jones, ed. Trevor Dean and Chris Wickham (London and Ronceverte: The Hambledon Press, 1990). 38 Campbell’s examination of religious art in Ferrara brings forward many of these tensions, Stephen Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450-1495 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 45 domesticate the nobility, whereby the prince became increasingly central through his accumulation of power and wealth.39 The need to legitimate one’s position through wealth and expenditure led, it is argued, to a “vicious circle of conspicuous consumption” and made the nobility increasingly dependent on the court and the prince.40 J.H. Shennan, while arguing in The Origins of the Modern

European State that the “people” or prince’s subjects may have had, at times, an indirect influence upon the ruler, states that it would be a mistake to emphasise the role of the community as having any “politically significant elements,” and that in the end, “the prince is the key figure upon whom attention should be focused.”41 Recent scholarship has questioned these notions, stressing the open nature of court society, viewing the court as an open and contingent space, rather than a closed, structured, and unchanging environment.42 Ronald Asch, in his

39 Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publisher, 1983). 40 Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power. Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court, trans. Lorri S. Granger and Gerard T. Moran (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 19. 41 J.H. Shennan, The Origins of the Modern European State. 1450-1725 (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1974), 112. 42 See Ronald Asch’s introduction to a selection of papers on the courts of Europe, which, unfortunately does not include a paper on the Italian courts, Ronald G. Asch, "Introduction. Court and Household from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries," in Princes, Patronage and the Nobility. The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age c. 1450-1650, ed. Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (London and Oxford: The German Historical Institute London and Oxford University Press, 1991). Duindam, Myths of Power. John Larner’s article, although from 1983, still provides a useful review of the state of court literature, John Larner, "Europe of the Courts," The Journal of Modern History 55, no. 4 (1983): 669-81. Chittolini has stressed the importance of “private” groups such as kinship, factions and informal courtly circles in relation to the more “public” role of court politics, Giorgio Chittolini, "The "Private", the "Public", the State," Journal of Modern History 67, no. supplement issue: The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300-1600 (1995): S34-61. Lazzarini has also studied the urban landscape of the court as a “complex tissue of enterprises” consisting of the court and the prince’s institutions of power, as well as the familial and residential habits of the political elites. Isabella Lazzarini, "Sub signo principis. Political Institutions and Urban Configurations in Early Renaissance Mantua," Renaissance Studies 16, no. 3 (2002). Also see Isabella Lazzarini, Fra un principe e altri stati. Relazioni di potere e forme di servizio a Mantova nell'età di Ludovico Gonzaga (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano Per il Medio Evo, 1996). For the court as a site for cultural transfer, see Dorothea Nolde, Elena Svalduz, and María José del Río Barredo, "City Courts as Places of Cultural Transfer," in Cultural Exchange in

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 46 introduction to a volume of papers on the courts of Europe, questions Elias’ view, asking how much this “spatial unity” is more “ideal than real.”43 Similarly, Jeroen

Duindam provides an analysis and critique of both Elias’ Court Society and

Jurgen von Krudener’s The Role of the Court (Rolle des Hofes), suggesting the need for a more nuanced view of relations between the court and the nobility.44

While both Elias and Krudener argue that the nobility was domesticated by the court through the financial strain created by conspicuous consumption and competition, Duindam notes that the court could also be a lucrative place for nobles, and that many costs were indeed paid by the monarch.45 The prince, as

Duindam argues, and my thesis demonstrates, was often not the richest man at court; the court often sought money from a variety of individuals, which formed political and social dependencies on those who lent funds.46 Furthermore,

Duindam notes that the relationship between the prince and nobles was often ambivalent, and that the monarch frequently remained dependent on a number of intermediary groups, such as the nobility, the clergy, and other corporate bodies.47

Central authority was often only exerted with the approval and cooperation of these groups.

Trevor Dean has published numerous articles on the Italian courts, with a focus on Ferrara, noting that scholarship that views the court as a closed system of signs and theatrics misses the historical variables by neglecting the “study of

Early Modern Europe, ed. Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen, Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 254-85. 43 Asch, "Court and Household," 8. 44 Duindam, Myths of Power. 45 Duindam, Myths of Power, 39. 46 Duindam, Myths of Power, 83-6. 47 Duindam, Myths of Power, 49.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 47 relations between court and society (whether the material support of the court or its political support through patronage networks and faction).”48 Dean’s understanding of the court has influenced this project, particularly, his emphasis on the court as an open space with a constant flow of objects and individuals:

To become aware of the temporary nature of presence at court, whether of persons or objects, is also to conceive of the court as an open rather than a closed space, a space open to a vast range of outside influences. Ambassadors were often not courtiers at home. Traders might practice in the court but not be of it. On festal occasions, artists would be fetched from cities outside the state, silver would be borrowed from churchmen, itinerant entertainers and friars would be hired. When visited by dignitaries, princes were often forced to accommodate them or their entourages in borrowed houses.49

This open and transient nature of actors—both objects and people—and the diverse ways these different actors could become involved with the court, is brought forward by my study.

Apart from these conceptual and theoretical perspectives on the court, the historical and art historical literature on the Italian courts tends to be restricted to individual courts or patrons. General studies such as Alison Cole’s Virtue and

48 Trevor Dean, "The Courts," in The Origins of the State in Italy 1300-1600, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 139. See also: Trevor Dean, "Notes on the Ferrarese Court in the Later Middle Ages," Renaissance Studies 3, no. 4 (1989); Dean, "Crown and Economy."; Trevor Dean, "Court and Household in Ferrara, 1494," in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494-95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Hampshire and Vermont: Variorum Ashgate Publishing Company, 1995); Dean, "The Courts."; Trevor Dean, "Ferrarese Chroniclers and the Este State, 1490-1505," in Phaethon's Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, ed. Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005). Dean’s reference to theatrics points at a body of literature that investigated the court in relation to ritual, see for example Roy Strong, Art and Power. Renaissance Festivals 1450-1650. (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1973); Sean Wilentz, ed., Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics Since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds., Rituals of Royalty. Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 49 Dean, "The Courts," 144.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 48

Magnificence provide an overview rather than an in-depth study.50 Focussed studies on individual courts offer an advantage in that they research a particular archive to offer a close examination of not only the prince, but also of court administration and the various artistic projects within the city and court. Every court has a distinctive administrative system and historical constituency, heavily dependent on how the ruling family came into power; therefore a close analysis of these particularities enables a clear understanding of the relationships between administration, court power, and existing social groups. However, the interrelations and interdependencies between courts are often neglected.

Furthermore, in art historical literature, the patronage of the prince or the ruling family often takes precedence over that of other communities or social groups.51

As Evelyn Welch has noted in her study on Milan, the ducal chancellery generated an attempt to centralise authority around the prince, and in starting her project, she believed that visual propaganda in Milan supported ducal hegemony.

It was only by switching archives and looking through the cathedral documents that she realised the story was much more complicated and filled with tensions

50 Alison Cole, Virtue and Magnificence. Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts (New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated, 1995). There are also edited volumes which deal with the larger conception of the court in Europe, A.G. Dickens, ed., The Courts of Europe: Politics, Patronage, and Royalty: 1400-1800 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977). Asch, "Court and Household." 51 Studies on Mantua, for instance, concentrate around the Gonzaga, and in particular, Isabella d’Este. See for example, David Chambers and Jane Martineau, eds., Splendours of the Gonzaga (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1981); Cesare Mozzarelli, Mantova e i Gonzaga dal 1382 al 1707 (Turin: Utet Libreria, 1987); Joanna Woods-Marsden, The Gonzaga of Mantua and Pisanello's Arthurian Frescoes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Molly Bourne, "Renaissance Husbands and Wives as Patrons of Art: The Camerini of Isabella d'Este and Francesco II Gonzaga," in Beyond Isabella : Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001). Rebecchini has studied the collections of a larger range of individuals in Mantua, Guido Rebecchini, Private Collections in Mantua 1500-1630 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002). The Este of Ferrara also take precedence in Ferrarese court studies, Arienti, triumphis religionis; Gundersheimer, Ferrara; Rosenberg, Este Monuments; Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara; Bentini, ed., Gli Este a Ferrara.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 49 and collaborations between ruler and ruled.52 Similarly, Stephen Campbell has shown that the Ferrarese court was composed of a variety of social groups, and too often, many of the existing artworks are attributed to Estense patronage, even though prominent families who held high ecclesiastical offices may have had a hand in art commissions and patronage as well. Ferrarese art works, then, may not always assert ducal hegemony but indeed act as sites of negotiation or mediation between Ferrarese communities, and may speak to particular conflicts or tensions.53

Recent studies on humanism and artistic production at court have also tended to stress the exchanges between cultural groups within and between courts.

Rinaldo Rinaldi has used the term “intellectual mobility” to characterise the phenomenon of humanists who moved between courts, gained prestige, and operated within tightly knit networks, which encouraged exchanges and correspondence.54 The court artist has also been re-examined, moving away from placing emphasis on the autonomous actor, he or she is now considered within systems of patronage and clientage.55 However, Campbell has also stressed the need to be cautious about putting too much weight on either patron or artistic

52 Evelyn S. Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995). 53 Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. We must also remember that many courts were in urban centres, and that like other urban centres, such as Florence, urban life was composed of a complex web of associations and relations, involving kin, neighbours, clients, patrons, business associates, and clients. See Ronald Weissman, "The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence," in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald Weissman (Newark, London and Toronto: University of Delaware Press and Associated University Presses, 1989), 269-80. See as well the other essays in this collection of essays. 54 Rinaldo Rinaldi, "Princes and the Culture in the Fifteenth-Century Italian Po Valley Courts," in Princes and Princely Culture (c. 1450-1650), ed. Martin Gosman, Alasdair Vanderjagt, and Arjo MacDonald (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 23-42. 55 Stephen Campbell, ed., Artists at Court. Image-Making and Identity, 1300-1500 (Boston and Chicago: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 50 intentions, arguing for an understanding of the relationships between artists and patrons, and underlining the necessity in considering what works of art do and how they are received by a varied audience.56 If art became a critical political tool, it is also useful to consider the ways in which artistic exchange and translation played a role in shaping or articulating those politics. Cultural translation for Campbell and Stephen Milner consists not only of cultural exchange—the copying or imitation of styles from one artistic centre to another, for example—but also the ways in which the migration of styles can secure or resist hegemony, acting as a negotiator across borders.57 This proves a very intriguing and fruitful way of thinking about artistic transfers, not only in the situation of an artist who might move from one court to another, but also through the replication and dissemination of forms, motifs, or objects. The replication of images on gems in a variety of media, such as manuscript illumination, architectural medallions, seals, and rings, examined in chapter two, linked not only a plurality of objects but also connected the spaces in which those objects were found. These quotations of visual forms encouraged viewers to create dialogues and forge connections between these objects and their owners, which has led me to investigate what was at stake in copying or owning copies of such objects. This brings us to the focus of this thesis: the material objects and imagery that made up the court and created associations and initiated exchanges between courts.

56 Stephen Campbell, "Mantegna's Triumph: The Cultural Politics of Imitation "all'antica" at the Court of Mantua, 1490-1530," in Artists at Court. Image-Making and Identity, 1300-1500 (Boston and Chicago: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and University of Chicago Press, 2004), 96. 57 Stephen Campbell and Stephen Milner, "Introduction. Art, Identity, and Cultural Translation in Renaissance Italy," in Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City, ed. Stephen Campbell and Stephen Milner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1-13.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 51

II. Materiality: Subjects, Objects, Exchange, and Consumption

[King] Alfonso [I of Naples] ornamented and decorated his most splendid house and court with draperies and hangings of embroidery and silk, and small vases of gold and silver in incredible quantities; vases of gems and precious stones, in which he collected in perfection from all over the world. -Gian Battista Carrafa, Dell’historie del regno di Napoli, 157258

A study that emphasises the role that objects play within and between courts undoubtedly engages with a wide body of literature and debates on materiality, objects, and things. The term “material culture” has been so broadly used within different disciplinary trajectories, that its use, and what is meant by the term, is no longer apparent. In order to steer away from the generality of

“material culture,” this thesis focuses on the distinctiveness of individual objects.

Furthermore, in contrast to economic studies on the flow of goods, this project is an art historical investigation that brings important questions about form, style, iconography, material, and representation, into consideration with specific art objects, and particular social and political contexts.

Studies on materiality can be categorised broadly into disciplinary trajectories—anthropological analysis, socio-historical and socio-economic studies, and theoretical and philosophical enquiries—however, these are not mutually exclusive and indeed, often overlap. The focus on objects has gained currency in anthropology through the analysis of the mutual relations between subjects and objects, and the importance of objects in ritual, exemplified in works

58“Era alfonso nell’apparato & ornamenti di casa & di sua corte splendidissimo, con paramento & cortinaggi di ricami & di seta, & vasellamenti d’oro & d’argento in quantita` incredibile; vago di gemme, & pietre preciose, le quale da tutto il mondo in somma perfettione raccolse.” Gian Batista Carrafa, Dell'historie del regno di Napoli. BNN B. BRANC. 35.C.9 (Naples: Giuseppe Cachij, 1572), 268. All manuscripts and early printed books are provided with the library in which they were consulted with call number.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 52 such as that of Marcel Mauss; in the examination of the history and biography of objects in work by Arjun Appadurai and Igor Kopytoff; and the attention to artefacts and materiality in the edited volumes by Daniel Miller, among others.59

Objects, in terms of commodities and fetishes, have been analysed by anthropologists and socio-economic historians in a tradition inherited from Marx, but re-surfacing in cultural materialism and new materialism.60 Stemming from this, although in quite a different direction, socio-historical studies have also examined the role of consumerism and economic exchange in early modern

Europe.61 This includes a vast body of work, from studies that deal with “material culture” and the general history of domestic objects and furnishings, to projects that focus on consumption practices, collecting, and the emergence of the modern capitalist self.62 Literary theory, sociology, and philosophical studies have

59 Marcel Mauss, The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1967). Kopytoff and Appadurai’s contributions are published in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Other anthropological studies which deal with material culture, for example can be found in the work of Daniel Miller, Daniel Miller, "Why Some Things Matter," in Material Culture: Why Some Things Matter, ed. Daniel Miller (London: UCL Press, 1998); Daniel Miller, "Materiality: An Introduction," in Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005); James Ferguson, "Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities," Cultural Anthropology 3, no. 4 (1988): 488-513; Nadine Pence Frantz, "Material Culture, Understanding and Meaning: Writing and Picturing," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, no. 4 (1998): 791-815. 60 Marx’s fetish comes up repeatedly in the literature across disciplines. For a useful summary of cultural materialism see Curtis Perry, ed., Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, vol. 5, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2001). 61 There is a vast literature on this, to list just a few see Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images. Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Evelyn S. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400-1600 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005); Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (London: Macmillan, 1996). Allerston’s study outlines some of the varied views on consumption, both in modern literature and in the period itself, Patricia Allerston, "Consuming Problems: Worldly Goods in Renaissance Venice," in The Material Renaissance, ed. Michelle O'Malley and Evelyn S. Welch (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), 11-46. 62 Marina Belozerskaya, Luxury Arts of the Renaissance (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005); John Kent Lydecker, "The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence" (PhD

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 53 examined the agency of objects and the role they play in networks and associations.63

In his introduction to a volume on material culture, Daniel Miller asks “why some things matter” to emphasise the importance of examining particular things rather than a general inquiry into materiality.64 This specificity is extremely important, not only because objects often carry ambivalent or conflicting identities, but especially because their meaning and modes of engagement are historically contingent and dependent on their very materiality. Material cultural studies, such as those that examine the domestic sphere, have been useful in a historical sense for revealing the importance of many previously neglected objects in every day life.65 Lacking a theoretical perspective, however, these studies tend to situate objects within social history—as reflections of social relations—without examining the materiality of the objects, or questioning what those objects actually do and how they might produce, initiate, or complicate those social relations. Other studies, while speaking to “materialism,” neglect the actual

Thesis, The John Hopkins University, 1987); Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2001); Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997); Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400- 1600 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991); Richard A. Goldthwaite, "The Empire of Things: Consumer Demand in Renaissance Italy," in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300-1600 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). 63 See for instance, Bill Brown, "Thing Theory," Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001); Bruno Latour, "The Berlin Key or How to Do Words With Things," in Matter, Materiality, and Modern Culture, ed. Paul Graves-Brown (London: Routledge, 2000); Bruno Latour, "From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik. Or How To Make Things Public," in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge and Karlsruhe: The MIT Press and ZKM Center for Art and Media, 2005); Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Also Martin Heidegger, "The Thing," in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1971). 64 Italics my emphasis. Miller, "Things Matter." 65 See for instance, Lydecker, "Domestic Setting".

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 54 materiality of the objects themselves. In an introduction to a series of essays on material meanings, Elizabeth Chilton notes that “the essays that follow do not focus on artefacts themselves,” but instead the emphasis is on the “social and technical contexts” of production and the “interpretation of materials by researchers in the present.”66 While these contexts are crucial for understanding how objects are made and perceived in any particular circumstance, and how their meanings change in different environments, neglecting the specificity of the artefacts overlook the work of materiality: why some things matter more than others.

Evelyn Welch’s Shopping in the Renaissance examines the particular social component of shopping and consumption in this period, offering an analysis of the different kinds of objects purchased, from cloth to antiquities. A focus on shopping rather than on the actual objects bought and sold allows us to understand the act of shopping and to examine a particular phase in an object’s life—that of the commodity—but sidesteps the multiple roles these objects often played in the period. My emphasis on the social life of objects is indebted to the work of

Appadurai and Kopytoff, who have examined the ways in which things move in and out of the commodity phase, providing those objects with biographies.67

Their studies are extremely pertinent to the late Quattrocento, when cultural objects were constantly moving in and out of the commodity sphere, whether it

66 Elizabeth S. Chilton, "Material Meanings and Meaningful Materials," in Material Meanings. Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of Material Culture, ed. Elizabeth S. Chilton (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999), 1. 67 Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process," in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64-91; Arjun Appadurai, "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value," in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3-63.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 55 was due to political instabilities, lack of funds, credit, or death. The recent project,

The Material Renaissance, headed by Welch and Michelle O’Malley, has been important in underlining the social relationships involved in the wide range of economic practices during the Renaissance.68 The essays in their edited volume address the socio-economic consequences of “material culture,” which consists of

“food, clothing and everyday furnishings, as well as books, goldsmiths’ work, altarpieces and other luxury goods.”69 My project, while underlining the social relationships formed through economic exchange, is less about the market or even economic value, and more about the different types of symbolic value objects accrue, and how they acquire biographies. In addition, I examine the objects not only during their phase as a commodity, but I also consider what happens to these objects once they enter collections and are put on display. The objects of analysis, then, are things that have a particular cultural or political relevance and salience; things that are symbolically rich in their materiality and have the ability to convey complex social messages within court culture.

This project has drawn from anthropological studies, which stress the importance of objects in social interactions and exchanges and the formation of networks. Appadurai’s study on the social life of things suggests a need for a less rigid distinction between commodity and gift exchange and emphasises the different paths and diversions an object might take throughout its social life.

Kopytoff has raised important issues in relation to the polarity often drawn between individualised persons and commoditised things, running along the same

68 Michelle O'Malley and Evelyn S. Welch, eds., The Material Renaissance (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007). 69 O'Malley and Welch, eds., Material Renaissance, 2.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 56 lines as the confrontation we find in the subject/object binary. While many scholars have recently found reason to locate the beginnings of capitalism in the early modern period, there is also a need here to be historically specific. We need to understand the ways in which exchange and commodities, and the perception of objects at the end of the fifteenth century, while operating within certain forms of capitalist exchange, may be different from our contemporary world. Richard

Goldthwaite has located the rise of the discriminating modern consumer in the mercantile culture of the Italian Renaissance.70 In this view, the Renaissance individual celebrated in the Burckhardtian spirit is the precursor to the modern consumer, surrounding himself with a plethora of goods, and perfectly able to purchase and delight in shopping without moral scruples.71 Lisa Jardine, similarly, has found “the seeds of our own exuberant multiculturalism and bravura consumerism […] planted in the European Renaissance” and its entrepreneurial spirit.72 Robert Weissman has questioned such economic studies that view

Renaissance capitalism as giving rise to liberated individualists, free from communal and familial bonds.73 As my thesis argues, (see especially chapter two), there did exist exchange and mercantile networks, but these existed

70 Goldthwaite, Wealth and Demand. Also discussed in Stephen Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d'Este (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 40. 71 For a criticism of this form of ‘new materialism,’ see Douglas Bruster, "The New Materialism in Renaissance Studies," in Material Culture and Cultural Materialisms in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Curtis Perry, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2001), 233-4. Also see Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 40. Ann Matchette has also drawn attention to the fact that objects were not only hoarded but also sold, exchanged, and pawned, Ann Matchette, "To Have and Have Not: The Disposal of Household Furnishings in Florence," Renaissance Studies 20, no. 5 (2006): 701-16. 72 Jardine, Worldly Goods, 34. For a critique of Goldthwaite and Jardine’s studies see Lauro Martines, "Review Essay: The Renaissance and the Birth of Consumer Society," Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998): 193-203. 73 Weissman, "Importance of Being Ambiguous," 269-71.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 57 alongside other forms of exchange and economic practices such as those of pawning, credit, pledging, and gifting, all of which created social bonds.74 By examining particular objects that circulated through these forms of exchange, I show that objects could be used as capital, but they were also residual. Objects are absorbent and sticky things; with each transaction, something of the social sticks to them. In this sense, Webb Keane’s notion of “bundling” seems appropriate, whereby objects are always bound up with other qualities, associations, and correspondences, and “these qualities together in any object will shift in their relative salience, value, utility, and relevance across contexts.”75 If we understand that many luxury objects in the late fifteenth century circulated as commodities at one point or another in their lifetime, we should, however, not be so quick to assume that these objects were merely neutral monetary commodities.

Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones have argued, in support of

Kopytoff, that the polarity drawn between “individualized persons and commoditized things” is actually recent.76 Indeed, they note Mauss’ claim that

“things-as-gifts are not “indifferent things”; they have “a name, a personality, a past.” Similarly, in the livery economy of Renaissance Europe, things took on a life of their own. That is to say, one was paid not only in the “neutral” currency of money but also in material that was richly absorbent of symbolic meaning and in

74 Matchette has recently argued a similar case, Ann Matchette, "Credit and Credibility: Used Goods and Social Relations in Sixteenth-Century Florence," in The Material Renaissance, ed. Michelle O'Malley and Evelyn S. Welch (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007), 225-41. 75 Webb Keane, "Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things," in Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), 188. 76 Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, ed. Stephen Orgel, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 8.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 58 which memories and social relations were literally embodied.”77 My examination of pawned jewels in chapter two demonstrates that the same objects which were used for pawning and collateral, were also invested with names, histories, and symbolic meaning, and were thus both ‘individualised’ and ‘commoditised.’ Thus as Jones and Stallybrass argue “it is not the capitalist present that has suddenly started to obsess about the value of things. On the contrary, capitalist cultures are often squeamish about value, attempting to separate cultural value from economics, persons from things, subjects from objects, the priceless (us) from the valueless (the detachable world).”78

That is not to say that tensions did not exist in the period, but they are better located by looking at subject-object relations, rather than positing the subject in opposition to the object.79 New wealth and the rise of a new nobility in Ferrara and Naples and in other centres in Italy undoubtedly raised anxieties and tensions around the relation between the acquisition of goods and noble status. This is apparent in Poggio Bracciolini’s On Nobility written in 1440, where characters debate over the qualities of nobility. One character, Niccolò Niccoli notes:

Our host, having read that illustrious men of old used to ornament their homes, villas, gardens, arcades, and gymnasiums with statues, paintings, and busts of their ancestors to glorify their own name and their lineage, wanted to render his own place noble, and himself, too, but having no images of his own ancestors, he acquired these meagre and broken pieces of sculpture and hoped

77 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 8. 78 Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, "Fetishizing the Glove in Renaissance Europe," Critical Inquiry 28 (2001): 116. 79 Studying subject-object relations, rather than positing the object against the subject is examined in Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass, "Introduction," in Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, ed. Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan, and Peter Stallybrass, Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 59

that the novelty of his collection would perpetuate his fame among his own descendants.80

This particular tension between objects, ownership, and nobility, is brought out again when Niccolò notes that “if sculptures and paintings confer nobility, then sculptors and painters must be more noble than other men, since their homes are full of works of art.”81 Such issues were raised in the humanist circles at the court of Ferrara, where the opulence of painting and the beauty of books were criticised as a sign of the decline in humanist rigour, during the rule of the illegitimate

Borso d’Este, discussed in chapter three.82 Collecting thus becomes an important site to examine some of these complicated issues.

The literature on collecting has often focussed on one patron and his or her particular sensibilities and personality in relation to the objects collected, a tendency well-known to those who have written on Isabella d’Este.83 By focussing on the objects themselves, I have been able to trace the different relations formed between individuals through the process of collecting—whether the object was bought, given, inherited, or exchanged. Two contradictory notions have always 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

80 Renée Neu Watkins, "Poggio Bracciolini 1380-1459," in Humanism and Liberty: Writings on Freedom From Fifteenth-Century Florence (South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1978), 122-3. 81 Watkins, "Poggio Bracciolini," 123. 82 This is most apparent in Decembrio’s De politia literaria. For a discussion of these issues, see chapter three below, as well as Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 18. 83 For a useful critique of the literature on the “insatiable” collector, see Rose Marie San Juan, "The Court Lady’s Dilemma: Isabella d’Este and Art Collection in the Renaissance," Oxford Art Journal, no. 14 (1991); Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 2-5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 60 social space, in which intellectual ideas are exchanged and engaged with.84 These two notions, as 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 exchanges and sumptuary display.85 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 and the modern individual in the vast array of objects displayed.86 Paula Findlen’s work has attempted to reconcile some of these tensions or disconnects, although her work focuses mostly on the discipline of natural history from a later period.87 In response to criticism on new trends towards material culture in Renaissance and early modern studies, Findlen suggests “that there is a wide range of interactions with objects during this period, many of which have nothing to do with modernity at all.”88 It is these different interactions with objects and the material forms of those objects in which I am particularly interested. Issues of collecting appear throughout this thesis, as it is at

84 For the history of the studiolo, see Thornton, The Scholar. Studies on collecting, the studiolo, and the museum have also touched upon these notions, see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994); Krzysztof Pomian, Collectionneurs, amateurs, et curieux. Paris, Venise: XVIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1987); Krzysztof Pomian, Collectors and Curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500-1800, trans. Elizabeth Wiles-Portier (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); Cecil 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): 19-50. For the multiplicity of objects and their relationship to the organization of knowledge and memory, see Lina Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory. Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press, trans. Jeremy Parzen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). Also see Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 29-57 (Chapter 1). 85 Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 41. 86 See, for instance, Goldthwaite who understands Renaissance man’s attachment to material possessions as a moment when modern civilization was born: Goldthwaite, Wealth and Demand. Also see Campbell for a discussion of these issues, Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 40-1. 87 Findlen, Possessing Nature. 88 Paula Findlen, "Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance," The American Historical Review 103, no. 1 (1998): 87-8, n. 20.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 61 the end of the fifteenth century that the practices of collecting begin to gain more prominence, and become an essential practice in any court. It is within these particular collecting practices that I see an emerging interest in the ways humanism could take on visual and material form, which gives rise to new forms of interpreting and deciphering visual imagery.89 It is through the assembly of objects in a collection—a circumstance that allows the viewer to draw comparisons between objects, between objects and texts, and between objects and paintings—that encourages the production of new art works through the quotation of texts, objects, or visual forms.

Douglas Bruster has recently criticised the “new materialism” in

Renaissance scholarship for turning away from Marxist theories, which he calls a critical fetishism, a “fetishism that, in replacing large with small and the intangible with what is capable of being touched or held threatens to restrict the new materialism’s usefulness as social and historical explanation.” Bruster suggests turning to the materialist attitudes of the time period itself, by drawing from contemporary texts, whose “authors often display a reflexive materialism.”90

I would agree with Bruster to the extent that we need to be historically specific, but his analysis threatens to give primacy to textual sources, ignoring the ways in which objects and visual imagery might also serve as sources, and might reveal complementary or contradictory ways of seeing things. Indeed, following

Bruster’s insistence on textual sources we might cite a sixteenth-century Ferrarese

89 These issues are also discussed in Stephen Campbell, "Giorgione's Tempest, Studiolo Culture and the Renaissance Lucretius," Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003): 299-332; Maria Ruvoldt, "Sacred to Secular, East to West: The Renaissance Study and Strategies of Display," Renaissance Studies 20, no. 5 (2006): 640-57. 90 Bruster, "New Materialism," 237.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 62 source that highlights the notion that texts do not always do what paintings (or other visual imagery) can do: “letters, they tell us, help us to express the sensations and thoughts of the mind. Yet does not painting perhaps do this better?

Men of letters themselves employ painting when they have to speak about something that is extremely difficult to remember, or something which literary description alone cannot express.”91 Furthermore, it is often the ambivalence or the “openness of things” to use Keane’s phrase, which can highlight interesting and different ways of understanding textual sources, as well as uncovering associations or mediations we might not find in textual references.92 It is why, throughout this thesis, my sources are varied, drawing from both visual and textual sources.

We also need to be wary of applying too hastily the label “fetish.” As Jones and Stallybrass have articulated, “this constant repetition of “fetishism” as a category of abuse repeats rather than illuminates the problem.”93 While the fetish often figures in discussions on materiality, I have not discussed it in my thesis, as

I have found that such a label often makes the assumption that our engagement with objects is always similar, rather than illuminating the diversity of objects and our engagement with them. Moving away from a preoccupation with the fetish,

91 From Lelio Giraldi’s Progymnasma adversus litteras et litteratos, translated by Franco Bacchelli and quoted in Campbell, "Giorgione's Tempest," 302, n.9. 92 Keane, "Social Analysis of Material Things," 191. For the agency of objects and their roles in associations and as mediators see Latour, Reassembling the Social. 93 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 10. For an important history of the fetish and its use as a term, see William Pietz, "Fetishism and Materialism: The Limits of Theory in Marx," in Fetisihism as Cultural Discourse, ed. Emily Apter and William Pietz (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 119-51. For a discussion of Pietz’s fetish, also see Jones and Stallybrass, "Fetishizing the Glove," 114-5. For Latour “we explain the objects we don’t approve of by treating them as fetishes.” Objects, for Latour, can act, can do things, and can make you do things, and they are far too strong to be labelled as fetishes, while they are also too weak to be “treated as indisputable causal explanations of some unconscious action.” Bruno Latour, "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern," Critical Inquiry 20 (2004): 241.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 63 then, we may find it more fruitful to look at subject-object relations, to understand in Bill Brown’s words “not what things are but what work they perform” and to move beyond the paradox that things can be both meaningful and material.94

This thesis thus takes very different objects of analysis to demonstrate how the myriad of objects at court constituted relationships between and within courts, how they could initiate relations, and were crucial in the ritual and symbolic activities integral to court culture and the legitimation of power. By starting with the objects themselves, I trace a variety of associations across the Italian peninsula, opening up the concept of the court. The court, I argue, is not found only in the body of the prince, but also in the variety of objects, that were integral to ritual and symbolic practices, and that were important for the mutual and conflicting relations between diverse social groups.

94 Brown, "Thing Theory," 7. Lorraine Daston has explored this material/meaningful paradox in her introduction to a collection of essays, Lorraine Daston, "Introduction. Speechless," in Things That Talk: Object Lessons From Art and Science, ed. Lorraine Daston (New York: Zone Books, 2004), 9-24. For a useful collection of papers on subject-object relations in the Renaissance see, de Grazia, Quilligan, and Stallybrass, "Introduction," 1-13.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 64

Chapter 1. Carafa’s testa di cavallo: The Life of a Bronze Gifthorse

I. Introduction

“Very beautiful, a bronze head of a horse, and it is believed that it came from a horse dedicated to Nettuno equestre, which belonged to the Neapolitans in antiquity.” -Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Il forastiero1

Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s commentary on a large bronze horse’s head prominently displayed in the palace courtyard of Diomede Carafa, the first Count of Maddaloni, is only one of many similar accounts. Viewers today who stroll down Via San Biago dei Librai in the centro storico of Naples, can still catch a glimpse of the colossal horse’s head (albeit a terracotta copy) in the somewhat decrepit Carafa palace currently under scaffolding for restoration (Figure 5).

Capaccio’s observation on the horse’s head can be found in his Il forastiero from

1634, but starting from the fifteenth century, when the horse first made its appearance in the courtyard of Diomede Carafa, Diomede’s antiquities, and most notably the horse’s head, have featured prominently in the literature. The bronze head has sparked the interest of a variety of individuals, including contemporary diplomats and ambassadors, as well as later figures such as Johann Winckelmann.

In addition to the early narratives that speak to the bronze statue, scholars have returned again and again to the fragment over the centuries. Certain facts about the horse’s head remain unresolved including its original function, the artist of the work, and its most disputable factor—the question of whether the horse’s head is an antiquity or an early modern creation. The horse’s head is an enigmatic object

1 “Assai bella vna testa di cauallo di bronzo, e credesi che fusse di vn cauallo dedicato a Nettuno equestre che anticamente haueano i Napolitani.” Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Il forastiero. BNN: B. Branc 35.c.26 (Naples: Gio. Domenico Roncagliolo and Felix Tamburellus Vicarius General., 1634), 855.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 65 and in spite of the efforts of Neapolitan historians and art historians, it raises questions that have not been resolved.

The horse’s head, now in the Museo Archaeologico in Naples, is of bronze, an expensive material, and has been skilfully executed. Because it is a colossus, the features are rendered in their extreme: the eyes are large; the veins visible and protruding; the nostrils flared and immense; the mouth open bearing teeth; the skin taut in some places while wrinkled in others; and the ears carefully rendered with individual hairs fully visible (Figure 6). The details of its features and its colossal size would allow for the viewer to engage with it in diverse ways, either from up close or from afar. Its placement in the Carafa courtyard drew in a varied audience, including visitors to the palace and onlookers from the street. The anatomical and physiognomical features of the creature are somewhat distorted in their largeness, as Francesco Caglioti has observed, but it is perhaps the exaggeration of its features, its sculptural hyperbole, as it were, that commands our attention.2

Besides its colossal features, the fragmentary status of the horse’s head, I contend, is also the cause for discussion. Carafa’s horse’s head should be considered within the category of “loquacious” things, to use Lorraine Daston’s words.3 For Daston, particular objects give rise to a surprising amount of talk, but things also have the ability to talk if we are willing to listen to them.4 The bronze horse’s head is a quintessential example of this verboseness. While the bronze

2 Caglioti has noted the distorted features of the sculpture, Francesco Caglioti, "Horse’s head (Naples, Museo Archeologica Nazionale)," in In the Light of Apollo: Italian Renaissance and Greece. Exh. cat. Athens and Milan 2004, ed. Mina Gregori (Athens and Milan: Cinisello Balsamo and The Hellenic Culture Organization, 2003), p. 199. 3 Daston, "Speechless," 9-24. 4 Daston, "Speechless," 11.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 66 head has featured prominently in Neapolitan literature, and to some extent in the literature on Lorenzo de’ Medici (the benefactor of the horse), it is often treated as mute. Scholars have attempted to solve the mystery of its origins and to date it, either from antiquity or the Renaissance, and they have battled over Giorgio

Vasari’s attribution of the work to Donatello. What I intend to do here is something different. While discovering the ‘true’ history of the horse’s head might shed some interesting light on the object itself, I hope to demonstrate how the horse’s head epitomises and concretises certain social and political relationships. Furthermore, I hope to show why particular objects get taken up at precise historical moments and in specific cultural and political milieus. To push this further, I argue that the horse’s head not only represented certain political relationships, but also constituted or referenced particular spheres of cultural production. I mean cultural production in the largest sense and in ways that are crucial to the early modern period: the making of memories, friendships, alliances; the participation and institution of ritual events such as gift-giving, public contests, spectacle; and the consumption, connoisseurship, acquisition, and collection of things.

As long as details such as date, execution, or artist remain unknown, we are left with unanswered facts and become hindered by the process of trying to obtain those facts rather than looking at the thing itself. It is the very impossibility of obtaining all facts and knowledge about the horse’s head—its elliptical nature as a fragment—that has made scholars concentrate specifically on finding those facts.

But perhaps the very inaccessibility of this information should serve as a prompt

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 67 to study the object in new ways.5 That is to say, rather than looking through an object, we might try to understand what “work things perform,” and in what ways they may have something to say about particular subject-object relations as Bill

Brown has suggested.6 Brown analyses our tendency to “look through objects” because they are “codes by which our interpretive attention makes them meaningful, because there is a discourse of objectivity that allows us to use them as facts.” But he points out that we rarely get to the thing itself.7 Brown suggests that we often begin to confront the “thingness” of objects when they stop working for us.8 Taking Brown as a starting point and because key facts about the horse’s head remain elusive, it is perhaps more fruitful to consider the horse’s head not only as a means to understanding Neapolitan court society at the end of the fifteenth century, but also in terms of what actions it compelled, what relations it formed, what connections it produced, and what reactions it provoked. Instead of viewing the individuals in the exchange as the only active agents, we might look at the ways in which the object exchanged is also an active player. To use a question posed by Marcel Mauss, we might ask “what force is there in the thing given?”9

To begin, I will consider how the horse’s head generated various narratives about its provenance, by examining literary texts on the history of Naples. The statue takes up a prominent place within Neapolitan history, where the symbol of the equestrian is seen as synonymous with Neapolitan identity. The horse’s head

5 For an insightful study on fragments in the Renaissance, see Barkan, Unearthing the Past, Chapter 3. 6 Brown, "Thing Theory," 1-22. 7 Brown, "Thing Theory," 4. 8 Brown, "Thing Theory," 11. 9 Mauss, The Gift, 1.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 68 will then be examined as a diplomatic gift between Lorenzo and Diomede, situating the statue as an active agent in solidifying political relationships at the end of the Quattrocento. Furthermore, I will study the horse’s head in relation to the gifting, lending, and racing of horses, which constituted elite forms of sociability and revealed political dependencies and instabilities. Finally, I will situate the horse’s head within the culture of collecting, demonstrating that its value is not only manifested in its identity as a precious object, but in its importance as an object of exchange that forged connections between individuals.

II. The Literary Life of a Horse’s Head

Throughout the centuries the narrative of Carafa’s horse’s head was interwoven with a tradition regarding an antique equestrian statue. The historian

Gaetano Filangieri was the first modern scholar to trace these narratives through the literary sources discussing the horse’s head.10 In his article of 1882, Filangieri demonstrates that the histories of two horse heads became conflated in the sixteenth century. These histories will be outlined in detail below by examining the primary sources themselves, but for clarity, I will provide a brief synopsis of the two traditions here.

The first tradition of a horse’s head is linked to the history of an equestrian bronze statue, which was believed to have been placed in front of Naples’ Temple of Neptune in antiquity. This horse was alleged to have been cast by the poet

Virgil, and had magical healing powers for all infirm horses. When the Temple of

Neptune was destroyed, the Duomo of Naples was built in its place; however the

10 Gaetano Filangieri, "La testa di cavallo di bronzo già di casa Maddaloni in via Sedile di Nido," Archivio storico per le province napoletane vii (1882).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 69 equestrian statue remained and through popular legend, the tale of its healing powers continued into the Christian period. The horse was also said to be a symbol of Neapolitan freedom, so that in 1253, King Conrad IV of Hohenstaufen

(known as Re Corrado to the Italians) demonstrated his dominion over the rebellious city by placing a bridle on the horse and attaching an epigram. This epigram stated that the Neapolitan horse had governed itself until the just king placed reins on it, symbolising his authority (“Hactenus effrenis, domini nunc paret habenis, Rex domat hunc aequus Parthenopenis, equum”).11 The horse stood in front of the cathedral until 1322 when the archbishop had the body of the bronze statue destroyed to make the bells for the campanile of the cathedral. The horse’s head was then taken up as an insignia of the city as well as adopted as imprese (emblems) for two of the elite “seggi” or quarters of Naples (Figure 7).

Filangieri has noted that the first author to conflate the story of the cathedral’s horse’s head with the bronze head found in Carafa’s palace was Giovanni

Tarcagnota in 1566, who after telling the story of the cathedral’s equestrian statue, declared the relic horse could still be viewed in the courtyard of the palace of the

Count of Maddaloni (Diomede Carafa’s palace).12

The other narrative is of the Carafa horse head itself. In the sixteenth century Diomede’s horse’s head is both reported as an antiquity (from the Temple of Neptune) as well as a work by Donatello. Vasari notably dates it as an antiquity

11 Alfred de Reumont, The Carafas of Maddaloni: Naples Under Spanish Dominion (London: William Clowers & Sons, 1854), 120; Licia Vlad Borrelli, "Un dono di Lorenzo de' Medici a Diomede Carafa," in La Toscana al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico : politica, economia, cultura, arte : convegno di studi promosso dalle Universita di Firenze, Pisa e Siena : 5-8 novembre 1992, ed. Luigi Beschi (Pisa: Pacini editore, 1996), 236; George L. Hersey, "The Arch of Alfonso in Naples and its Pisanellesque "Design"," Master Drawings 7, no. 2 (1969): 19. 12 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 408-9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 70 in his first edition of the Lives and proceeds to attribute it to Donatello in his 1568 edition.13 It is also said that the Carafa’s horse may be part of an unfinished work of an equestrian statue of King Alfonso I d’Aragona, which was to be part of the sculptural decoration of the triumphal arch at the Castel Nuovo.14 It was not until the nineteenth century that a letter from Diomede Carafa to Lorenzo de’ Medici was found in the Archivio di Stato in Florence that solved part of the mystery.

Diomede writes to Lorenzo thanking him for the horse’s head and says he has displayed it prominently in his courtyard.15 While the letter indicates that

Diomede’s horse’s head is most likely not the remains of the Duomo’s equestrian statue, scholars still battle over the question of whether the horse’s head is a work by Donatello or an antiquity, and some still maintain it is the remnant from the cathedral.16

The primary sources unfortunately do nothing to solve the mystery and if anything, seem to confuse the issue. One of the first narratives about the colossal horse comes from Giovanni Villano’s sixteenth-century chronicle of Naples.17 In his recounting of Virgil and his great deeds, Villano relates the story of Virgil’s creation of a metal horse, which cured the infirmities of horses and which was

13 Lauri Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 349, Doc 228 for both versions. 14 Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 198-200. 15 For the reproduction of the letter see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 283, Doc 10; Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 416. 16 Hersey, for instance, still believes it be the Virgilian relic. Hersey, "Arch of Alfonso," 22. 17 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 407. Villano’s text was first published in the sixteenth century, with a later edition in the seventeenth century. Giovanni Villano, "Croniche de la Inclita Cità de Napole emendatissime, con li Bagni di Puzzolo, & Ischia nouamente ristampate, con la Tauola cum Priuilegio," in Raccolta di varii libri (BNN. RACC. NOT.C.314) (Naples: Regia Stampa di Castaldo, 1680).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 71 then destroyed to build the bells of the cathedral.18 He goes on to say that the remains of the horse were to be found in the ‘corte’ of the main church of Naples and that the neighbourhood of the Piazza de Capuana incorporated a gold horse lacking a bridle for their insignia or arms. In addition, Villano reports that the neighbourhood around the Piazza di Nido took the insignia of a black horse without reins, symbolising the horse on which the king attached the epigram to show his control over the citizens.19 Following Villano is the fifteenth-century historian and humanist, Pandolfo Collenuccio who repeats the same story, claiming it was Conrad who placed the Latin inscription.20 Filangieri also notes that the Neapolitan Pietro de Stefano repeats Collenuccio’s and Villani’s narratives, stating that the bronze statue was destroyed by religious authorities to be used in the construction of a large bell for the cathedral and maintaining that in memory of this horse, the Seggio di Capuana used the insignia of the horse with bridle but without reins.21

18 Villano, "Croniche," 13 (Chapter 20). “Come fè un Cavallo sub certa constellatione che sanava la infirmità de li Cavalli CAP XX: Anche fe` forgiare vno Cauallo de Metallo, sub certa co’stellatione de Stelle, che per la visione sola, dil quale Cauallo, le infirmitate s’haiuano remedio di sanità, il quale Cauallo li Miniscarchi de la cità de Napoli hauendo di cio’ grande dolore, che non haniano guadagno à le cure de li Caualli infirmi, si andaro vna nocte & roctura, il dicto Cauallo perdì la virtù & f`o conuertuto a’ la constructione de le campane de la maiore Ecclesia de Napoli, in nello Anno MCCCXII. Il quale Cauallo si staua guardato à la Corte de lapredicta Ecclesia di Napoli, del quale cauallo si crede, che la Piazza de Capuana portel’Arme, ò vero insegne, cioè vno cauallo in colore d’oro, senza freno, per la qual cosa quando il Serenissimo Principe Re Carlo primo, intrò in la Città di Napoli, marauiglandose de la Arme di questa Terra, ò vero Piaza & de la Piaza di Nido, la quale hauia per Arme vno Cauallo nigro, pure senza freno, si comandò, che sosteno scripti doiversi. Hactenus effrenis, nunc freni portat habenas, Rex domat hunc Aequus, Parthenopensis Equum. Deli quali Versi la sentential in vulgare si è questa, che el Re iusto di Napoli doma questo Cauallo isfrenato, `a li homini senza freno, li apparecchia le retine del freno.” 19 Villano, "Croniche," 13. 20 Pandolfo Collenuccio, Historiae Neapolitanae. BNN: RACC.VILL.A.65 (Basil: Apud Petrum Pernam, 1572), 161-2, Libro IIII. Also see Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 408. 21 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 408.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 72

As mentioned, it is Giovanni Tarcagnota (also known as Lucio Fauno) who introduces a new element to the story, which has particular interest for the Carafa horse as it is at this moment that the two horse heads get conflated.22 In

Tarcagnota’s 1566 Del sito et lodi de la cita di Napoli, he repeats the narrative of the Duomo horse’s head but adds that this head can now be viewed in the house of the Duke of Maddaloni.23 Filangieri notes however, that the next historian,

Luigi Contarino, in his Nobiltà di Napoli recounts the story of the Duomo’s horse but makes no reference to Diomede Carafa.24 However, Tarcagnota’s conflation of the Duomo’s horse with Carafa horse’s head does not get forgotten and in 1585

Antonio Summonte recounts a similar tale. After describing the bronze horse’s head and its original placement in front of the cathedral, he claims that the relic of this head can now be found in the courtyard of the Duke of Maddaloni in the

Seggio di Nido and remarks that the first noble seggi still take the horse as their insignia today.25 Summonte also notes that during his time, while the walls near the Porto Capuana were being fortified, a marble bust of a horse was discovered

22 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 408-9. Also see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 347 Doc 226. 23 “Et quella gran testa di bronzo, che se vede hora in casa del Signor Duca di Madaloni, potrebbe agevolmente essere reliquia di quel cavallo.” Quoted in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 347 doc 226. 24 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 409. 25 “Soggiunge il Collennuccio, che andando Corrado verso la Chiesa Maggiore di Napoli: la quale all’hora era la Chiesa di S. Restituta nel piano auanti la porta (c’hora è doue stà posto l’Arciuescouato, fondato da Carlo I.) ritrouò vn Cauallo formato di bronzo (reliquia del quale è quella testa; fabricata dentro’l cortiglio del Duca di Maddaloni al Seggio di Nido:) qual cauallo no’ `e dubbio alcuno, che fù l’insegna della Città, poi che vedemo che i due primi seggi, ò piazze de’ Nobili di q’sta Città fin’ hoggi dì se ne serueno p/ loro insegne, dico quei di Capuana, e Nido...” Giovanni Antonio Summonte, Dell'Historia della città , e regno di Napoli. Tomo Secondo nel quale si descriveno i gesti di suoi Re Normandi, Tedeschi, Francesci, e Durazzeschi, dall'anno 1127 infino al 1442. Seconda editione. BNN: B.BRANC. 117 K (28 (Naples: Antonio Bulifon and Novello de Bonis, 1675), 116.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 73 lacking both its feet and head, 26 thus demonstrating that the equine was incorporated into the iconography of the city and became a visual topos for

Neapolitan society. Later in the sixteenth century, Gian Battista Carafa, a distant relation of Diomede Carafa, wrote a history of Naples, including the history of the

Virgilian horse but makes no connection between it and the horse’s head in the

Carafa palace.27 In 1592 Lorenzo Shrader of Halberstand lists the antiquities in the Carafa courtyard and mentions a colossal horse’s head but makes no other reference to its history or provenance. 28 Scipione Mazzella, in his history of the kings of Naples dating from 1594, recounts the history of the Duomo’s head but makes no mention of Carafa’s horse.29

Giulio Cesar Capaccio’s Il forastiero of 1634 makes reference to the horse twice.30 Capaccio’s book takes the form of a discussion between a foreigner and a local, and the first reference to the horse’s head is described by the “cittadino” when he recounts the history of the “cauallo di bronzo” that was placed in front of the Duomo, which he says is an ancient Greek work originally dedicated to

26 Summonte, Historia Tom. II, 116-7. 27 Carrafa, Historie, 93-4 (Libro Quarto). Gian Batista Carafa quotes the same Conradian Latin verse, and in addition adds his own vulgar translation “Questo destrier già di fortezza pieno, Del suo Rè giusto hor obedisce al freno.” 28 “Caput aenei aequi ex colosso” quoted in Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 410; Italo M. Iasiello, Il collezionismo di antichità nella Napoli dei Viceré (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2003), 113. Shrader’s text was printed in Helmestad under the title Monumentorum Italiae hoc nostro saeculo et a Christianis poita sunt, Libri quatuor. 29 Scipione Mazzella, Le vite dei re di Napoli. BNN. SEZ NAP II.C.74 (Naples: Gioseppe Bonfadino, 1594), 60-1. “[Corrado] Ando` poi alla chiesa maggiore & in mezzo del campo di essa era vn bel cavallo di bronzo antico postoui per ornamento del luogo per dinotare la liberta` della citta`. Currado che intesse il simbolo dell’animale che era senza freno, gli fece porre il freno, sopra del quale vi fece intagliare, questi due versi latini. Hactenus effrenis, domini nunc paret habenis Rex domat hunc aequus Parthenopensis equum. Onde poi i cavalieri Napoletani del Seggio di Capoana vsarono di fare per insegna del detto loro Seggio vn cauallo d’oro col freno in campo rosso, ma no’ cos`i fecero i cavallieri del Seggio di Nido, i quali per arme del loro colleggio, vsarono di far’ vn cauallo sfrenato nero in campo d’oro, per dinotare che la liberta` son fu maia ` loro tolta.” 30 Capaccio, Forastiero. Also commented on in Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 410-11.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 74

Nettuno Equestre and later bridled by Corrado.31 The “forastiero” proceeds to ask about the two seggi that use the horse as their insignia.32 The “cittadino” conjectures that the “Cauallieri di capoana” have retained the impresa of the bridled horse in memory of this action of Corrado to show their obedience to the ruling house, whereas the “Caualieri di Nido” have retained the horse without bridle, as a means to show that vassals should never have to render allegiance by force.33 The second mention of the horse’s head appears when the “cittadino” is describing all the antiquities to be found in the “casa del Duca di Madaloni” (the

Carafa palace).34 After listing numerous statues he notes that there is a beautiful head of a bronze horse, which is believed to be the same horse that was dedicated

31 Capaccio, Forastiero, 173. 32 Capaccio, Forastiero, 173. 33 Capaccio, Forastiero, 173-4. “C. Non mai la peggio al sicuro. Anzi per dimostrar domino più tirannico, ad vn Cauallo di Bronzo ch’era nella piezza della Chiesa maggiore, opera molto antica, e giudicato che i nostri antichi Greci la dedicassero a Nettuo Equestre (di che mancai di ragionarui nella nostra Religione) fè porre vn freno, con vn’Epigramma scritto, oue si dischiarua di voler esser domator di questo cauallo, e le parole sono queste che e tengo bene `a memoria; Hactenus essrenis Domini nunc paret habenis Rex domat hunc aeequus Parthenopensis Equum. F. Hò veduto in due vostri Seggi due Caualli dipinti; in vno vn Caual bianco con freno, in vn’altro vn Cauallo nero senza freno. Sarebbero forse significatori di questo negotio? C. Non potrei affirmar cosa alcuna di certo. Ben presuppongo che i Cauallieri di Capoana ritenessero l’impresa del Cauallo frenato, forse per memoria di quest’attione di Corrado, ma’l freno se ne sta’ sciolto, per mostrar che sono obedientissimi, e che’l freno potrà girarlo oue vuole chi’l caualca, massime quando’l caualcatore saprà fare il maneggio, come sono i presenti Re, non come Corrado che per caualcar a suo modo, cadde dal cauallo, e non l’indouinò nel governo. E come che i Caualieri di Nido, sono quasi tutto con corpo con quei di Capoana, com’intenderete vn’altro giorno, essendo vniti ne i voti, & in ogni altra cosa che appartenga alle loro Piazze, ha voluto ritenere anch’essi l’impresa del cauallo, ma di altro colore acciò che da gli altri siano conosciuti, e senza alcun freo, p/ che la fedeltà di Vassalli non deue hauer hauer seruitù soggetta per forza, ma seruitù tale che sia grata a i Principi per auualersene quando, e come ad essi piace, e forse anco han voluto significar, che se prima gli altri Re volsero mantener in qualche freno i Napolitani, alla fine poi gli altri il rilasciarono, conoosciuta c’hebbero la lor fedelta, come nel principio di caualcar vn cauallo si raffreno, che conosciuta la sua natura, se gli può rallentar la briglia. Intendete però questa inaudita crudeltà di Corrado, che venendo Henrico suo nipote da Sicilia, il fè vccidere per camino.’ 34 Capaccio, Forastiero, 854.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 75 to Nettuno equestre and on which Corrado placed a bridle, thus conflating the two stories.35

Filangieri remarks that Francesco Capecelatro in 1640 recounted the horse’s placement in front of the Duomo but rejected the legend of the bridle and

Corrado, however he asserted that the relic of the Duomo’s bronze horse could still be viewed in the palazzo of the Conti di Maddaloni.36 Filangieri also observed that Francesco de Magistris in the late seventeenth century retained the traditional story of Corrado, linking Carafa’s horse with the Duomo horse.37

Pompeo Sarnelli’s Guida dei forestieri from 1685 deals with the horse’s head twice.38 First in reference to the insignia of the elite seggi, and again in his section on the history of the cathedral, recounting the story of Virgil and the destruction of the horse’s body, stating that the head is now conserved in the courtyard of the

“Palagio di Diomede Carafa nella via di Seggio di Nido.”39 Sarnelli provides us with something very important in the 1688 and 1697 editions of his Guida—an engraving of the courtyard of the Palazzo Carafa, depicting the antiquities to be found there (Figure 8).40 Most interesting is the title given to the image depicting the Carafa Palace, which is labelled “Palazzo del Cavallo di Bronzo.” The bronze

35 Capaccio, Forastiero, 854-5. 36 “di cui, come dicono, è reliquia quella testa ancor oggi si vede nel palagio dei Conti di Maddaloni” quoted in Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 411. 37 Status rerum memorabilium tam ecclesiasticarum, quam politicarum ae etiam aedificiorum fidelissimae civitatis neapolitane. Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 411-2. 38 Pompeo Sarnelli, Guida dei forestieri. BNN: RAC.NOT B1076 (Naples: Antonio Bulifon, 1685), 53. 39 “…onde rupperto la detta Statua, e del corpo, ne fu formata la Campana grande della Cathedrale; e’l capo conservatoli fu pemesso nel cortile del Palagio di Diomede Carafa nella via di Seggio di Nido.” Sarnelli, Guida, 53 and 72-3. 40 For reproductions of the image see Bianca de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza nella Napoli del Quattrocento (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007), 79, fig. 49; Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 37, Fig 12; Rosa Franzese, "Luoghi favalosi nella posilicheata di Sarnelli," Napoli Nobilissima 23 (1984): 117 fig 3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 76 horse’s head thus becomes the symbol of the palace and the family itself. This is particularly important considering that palazzi were deemed to be the seat of a family and were frequently named after the family who built them, even after they changed hands.41 Here the horse has become symbolic, and to an extent, metonymic of the palace and also of the Carafa family itself. The horse’s head is prominently depicted in the courtyard, almost alive in its realism, and resembles a real horse’s head more than bronze statuary.

Carlo Celano’s Delle notizie del bello, dell’antico e del curioso della città di Napoli originally published in 1692 repeats the story of the Duomo’s horse’s head in the “prima giornata,” complete with the legend of Virgil, the healing of sick horses, and the statue’s destruction for the cathedral’s bell.42 He includes the fact that the head and the neck of this horse can be now found in the cortile of the palazzo of the Conti di Maddaloni.43 Later on in the “giornata terza” he lists numerous antiquities to be found in the palazzo of Diomede Carafa including a large horse’s head.44 Celano remarks that many have marvelled at this statue, and he attempts to clear up some confusion around the history of the horse’s head. He notes that Giorgio Vasari had claimed it to be a work by “Donatello Fiorentino”

41 For the importance of the palazzo in the early modern period, especially in Florence, see Richard Goldthwaite, "The Florentine Palace as Domestic Architecture," in Banks, Palaces and Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence (London: Variorum, 1995); Brenda Preyer, "Florentine Palaces and Memories of the Past," in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 176-94. 42 Carlo Celano, Delle notizie del bello, dell'antico, e del curioso della città di Napoli, vol. I Notizie generale e giornata prima. BNN: RAC VILLA 615 (Naples: Salvatore Palermo, 1792), 112-3. Filangieri also mentions Celano see, Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 412. 43 “Il capo ed il collo restò fano e si conserva dentro del cortile della casa de’ Signori antichi Conti di Maddaloni, come in altra giornata si vedrà.” Celano, Notizie Vol I, 112. 44Carlo Celano, Delle notizie del bello, dell'antico, e del curioso della città di Napoli, vol. II Giornata seconda e terza. BNN: RAC VILLA 615 (Naples: Salvatore Palermo, 1792), 146. Filangieri wrongly cites this in the second day rather than the third day, Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 412-3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 77 and yet Celano insists that many ancient historians have always spoken of this statue as the impresa of the city, still retained by the Seggi di Capuana and Nido.

Celano also corrects Vasari by explaining that the horse made by Donatello was not the colossal horse’s head, but a small equestrian statue on a column, which was placed in the middle of the Carafa courtyard, and was a copy of the larger horse (both visible in the Bulifon print, Figure 8).45 He explains that one day King

Ferrante was to go hunting with Diomede Carafa, but instead of waiting for

Diomede at the Castello, Ferrante showed up at Diomede’s palazzo before Carafa was dressed. Ferrante waited in the courtyard, and Diomede, in honour and in commemoration of his king, erected in his courtyard a statue of Ferrante on a horse in the exact spot where Ferrante had waited.46 It is this statue—not the bronze head—that Celano declares to be the work of Donatello.47 Diomede’s horse’s head and its connection with the ancient equestrian statue of Neptune is thus recounted throughout the centuries, but another narrative emerges here, connecting Donatello to the work.

We cannot be certain where and how the authorship of Donatello became associated with the horse’s head, but there are a few documents from the sixteenth century that affirm that Donatello’s authorship was already under deliberation.

Early records come from two manuscript copies of Antonio Billi’s Lost Libro in the Magliabechiano in Florence, probably dating between 1506-30; however the

45 Celano, Notizie Vol II, 148-9. 46 Celano, Notizie Vol II, 148-9. 47 Celano, Notizie Vol II, 148-9. “Un giorno avendo stabilito Ferdinando di andar col Conte a caccia, e levatosi per tempo, non essendo venuto in castello, secondo l’appuntato, il Conte; egli postosi a cavallo andò nel suo palazzo a sollecitarlo, e l’aspettò nel cortile, finchè fosse levato da letto, e vestito; onde il Conte in memoria di un cosi segnalato favore, fece eriggere in quel luogo, dove aspettato l’aveva, la colonna, come si vede, e sopra vi collocò la statua del Re a cavallo, e questa fu quella, che fece Donatello, trovandosi in Napoli.”

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 78 date of the actual manuscript is unknown.48 The two manuscripts, identified as the

Codice Strozziano and the Codice Petrei are very similar, with only minor variations in text. Both note under the section on Donatello that the artist created a large head and neck of a horse, which was to be part of an unfinished portrait of

“re Alfonso di Aragona, Sicilia, Napoli e di altri reami” and that this head is now in Naples in the “palazzo del conte di Matalona de’ Caraffi.”49 Giovambattista

Gelli, in his Vite d’Artista, notes that Donatello made the head and neck of a horse in Naples for a portrait of King Alfonso, but that it was left unfinished, and he does not mention it in relation to Diomede Carafa’s horse’s head.50 In 1524,

Pietro Summonte, in a letter written from Naples to Marcantonio Michiel in

Venice, comments on a beautiful colossal horse’s head found in the “casa del signor conte di Matalone” and observes that it is by the hand of Donatello.51 In the

1550 edition of the Lives, Vasari notes that many have attributed the horse’s head

48 The manuscript itself is up for debate, as scholars have questioned whether Antonio Billi was actually the author, or simply the owner, and whether the text was written by a single author or by a number of writers. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 38 and 343 doc 218; Licia Vlad Borrelli, "Considerazioni su tre problematiche teste di cavallo," Bollettino d'Arte 71 (1992): 74; Borrelli, "Un dono," 240. 49 Fastidio first noted the connection to the Maglibechiano text in 1893, Don Fastidio, "Notizie ed osservazioni: la testa di cavallo del Palazzo Maddaloni," Napoli Nobilissima 2, no. 9 (1893): 159. The two texts are quoted in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 343, doc 218. Codice Strozziano: “una testa et il collo d’uno cavallo di molta grandezza, è opera molto degna fatta per finire il resto del cavallo sul quale è l’immagine del re Alfonso di Ragona e Sicilia, Napoli e altri reami, la quale è oggi in Napoli in casa del conte di Matalona de’ Caraffi”; Codice Petrei: “Fece una testa col collo di un cavallo di molta grandezza, opera molto degna, con il resto del cavallo in sul quale è la immagine del re Alfonso di Aragona, Sicilia, Napoli e di altri reami, la quale è in Napoli nel palazzo del conte di Matalona de’ Caraffi.” Also see Carl Frey, ed., Il Codice Magliabechiano cl.XVII.17 (Berlin: G. Grote'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1892), 78. 50 “Fece ancora a Napoli il collo con la testa di cavallo opera meravigliosa per fornirlo e farvi su la immagine di re Alfonso, ma non lo finì.” Girolamo Mancani, "Vite d'Artisti di G.B Gelli," Archivio storico italiano xvii (1896): 60. Also quoted in Borrelli, "Un dono," 240. 51 “In questa cittá [Napoli], in casa del signor conte di Matalone, di man di Donatello, e quel belissimo cavallo in forma di colosso, cioé la testa col collo di bronzo.” Fausto Nicolini, L'Arte Napoletana del Rinascimento e la lettera di Pietro Summonte a Marcantonio Michiel (Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1925), 166. Also see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 332, doc 196.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 79 in Diomede Carafa’s palace to Donatello, but he claims that Donatello was never in Naples.52 In his 1568 edition, he states that in the palazzo of the counts of

Maddaloni there is a horse’s head by the hand of “Donato,” and because it is so beautiful many believe it to be antique.53 In the nineteenth century Filangieri discovered the inventory of Roberta Carafa, Duchess of Maddaloni dating from

12 January 1582, which listed the goods in the palazzo on the via Sedile di

Nido.54 Among the list of antiquities held in the palazzo, the inventory notes a

“cavallo di bronzo, opera del Donatello.”55 Scholars have debated whether this was in reference to the horse’s head or the smaller equestrian statue of Ferrante.56

It should be noted here that no inventories exist of Diomede Carafa’s goods from the fifteenth century. A copy of Diomede Carafa’s will of 1487 can still be found in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, but it contains no reference to his collection, only bequeathing his property and lands to his relatives.57

Recently, art historians have returned to the fragment in attempts to fill in the missing pieces. Art historian George Hersey suggests that the colossal statue

52 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 349, doc 228. 53 Both texts are quoted in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 349, doc 228. The 1550 edition reads, “Attribuiscongli alcuni che e’ facessi la testa del cavallo che è a Napoli in casa del conte di Matalone; ma non è verisimile che così sia, essendo quella maniera antica e non essendo egli mai stato a Napoli.” The 1568 edition reads, “ed in casa del conte di Matalone, nella città medesima [Naples], è una testa di cavallo di mano di Donato tanto bella che molti la credono antica.” 54 By this date, the Carafas had a number of palaces but this address confirms that the inventory taken was the original 1466 palace of Diomede Carafa. Unfortunately I can not locate this inventory. Filangieri notes that the original of this inventory was shown to him by his friend, “Signore duca di Maddaloni” who had obtained his title and rights to the “Casa Maddaloni e Colubrano” through his maternal family. I searched in the Archivio Carafa di Maddaloni e di Colubrano in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli for this inventory but it no longer exists, and has not been located by other scholars. When the inventory is mentioned in the literature, Filangieri is always referenced as the source. Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 419. 55 Quoted in Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 419. 56 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo."; Reumont, The Carafas, 119-20. 57 ASNA Archivio Carafa di Maddaloni e di Colubrano I.A.2. The will was published by Persico in 1899 as an appendix to his biography of Diomede and more recently his collection has been discussed by de Divitiis. Tommaso Persico, Diomede Carafa. Uomo di stato e scrittore del secolo XV (Napoli: Luigi Pierro, 1899); de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 80 once belonging to Diomede and now in the Museo Nazionale in Naples is antique and is actually the Conradian horse from the Duomo, but that it has been touched up by a Renaissance artist.58 Hersey believes that it was used by Donatello as a model for the unfinished equestrian statue of Alfonso, which he explains as follows. In 1458 Donatello’s assistant and bronze sculptor, Antonio Chellino, arrived in Naples to work on the triumphal arch.59 As Chellino had worked on the statue of Gattamelata with Donatello in Siena, Hersey assumes that he must have been brought down to Naples to work on a large equestrian portrait of Alfonso, which was intended for the upper niche of the arch of the Castel Nuovo.60 To further this theory, he cites two letters written by Alfonso to the Venetian Doge

Francesco Foscari and to the Venetian ambassador in Naples, demonstrating that

Alfonso was aware of the Gattamelata statue by Donatello and was interested in having a similar one made.61 Hersey then tries to establish a theory that would coincide with both stories of the horse’s head: both its connection to Donatello and its status as a relic of the Cathedral horse. He states that Alfonso probably sent the antique statue north in 1452 to be used as a model for Donatello as an

“ideal prototype.”62 He also proposes that the head was probably remodelled and altered upon Lorenzo de’ Medici’s request, thereby making a suitable gift for

58 Hersey states “a number of writers have even gone so far as to suggest that Diomede’s possession had no relation to the cathedral horse, but that it, and perhaps also the small statue, were made by Donatello or his assistants in preparation for an equestrian portrait of Alfonso.” Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 53. Hersey also dealt with the subject in 1969, where he suggested that Diomede’s horse could either be a copy of the Duomo’s horse, or the actual horse. Hersey, "Arch of Alfonso." 59 Hersey, "Arch of Alfonso," 22. 60 Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 53. 61 Alfonso wrote, “when we heard about the skill and subtlety of mind of Master Donatello in making statues of bronze and marble, we had a great desire to have him near us and in our service for a time.” Quoted in Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 54 and full Latin text on page 66, Doc 7. 62 Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 54.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 81

Diomede. Hersey thus contends that Chellino, an expert in bronze, would have arrived in Naples in 1458 to supervise the work on the equestrian group that

Donatello was undertaking. In June 1458, Alfonso died, only a few months after

Chellino had arrived. Due to the political turmoil with Ferrante’s succession to the throne, work on the arch was not resumed until 1465; by 1466 Donatello had died, leaving the statue incomplete and thus Ferrante commissioned a smaller project for the upper niche of the arch. Hersey suggests that Lorenzo sent the prototype, the “Virgilian head,” now reworked, back to Naples to Diomede as a gift.63

Recently, art historian Francesco Caglioti has found other connections with

Donatello in documents pertaining to the Florentine merchant Bartolomeo

Serragli.64 Serragli (d 1458) dealt in luxury objects often between Florence and

Naples and was closely tied with the Medici and the Aragonese. In the autumn of

1456 payments are recorded to Donatello for a large unspecified work in bronze.65

It was also in the autumn of 1456 that work on the triumphal arch at Castel Nuovo was undertaken. In addition, Caglioti has noted that in February 1453 Serragli paid money to an intermediary, Antonio di Lorenzo, who was “busying himself with a bronze horse that must be done.”66 Caglioti refutes Hersey’s argument that the horse’s head is an antique and claims it is the work of Donatello. Caglioti contends that Antonio Lorenzo, who had been paid a sum for a bronze horse, probably travelled up to Padua, where Donatello was working to strike a deal with the sculptor and to examine the equestrian statue of Gattamelata. Caglioti argues

63 Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 54. 64 Caglioti, "Horse's Head." 65 Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 199. 66 Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 199.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 82 that Donatello must have accepted the commission, but suspended work after trying to juggle too many projects, only completing the horse’s head. Work was resumed on the arch in 1465 and completed in 1471, but by this time Donatello had already died. Caglioti also conjectures that when Lorenzo de’ Medici visited

Naples in April 1466 he must have noticed the empty space in the upper arch.

When Donatello died later that year, Caglioti suggests that Lorenzo may have remembered the horse’s head in Florence, and as the Medici were prominent patrons of Donatello, the statue could have easily been found in one of the Medici workshops.67 Recalling the original purpose for the statue, Caglioti argues,

Lorenzo shipped the horse’s head to Carafa in 1471, uncoincidentally the same year that the arch was finally completed.68 Caglioti has also remarked on the statue’s strange construction, noting that the head is not tilted, and therefore appears a bit too upright and rigid. This, he proposes, is because the neck is cut obliquely and therefore suggests that it should have been part of a larger statue.69

It is evident, then, that whether or not a work by Donatello, the horse’s head created a web of associations around it. If, as Caglioti suggests, it was a work by

Donatello, commissioned by Alfonso but ending up in Lorenzo’s hands, the horse’s final passage down to Naples and into the courtyard of Carafa underlines the connections such an object activates through its social life.70 The numerous narratives that were generated by the statue demonstrate how its fragmentary nature prompted discussion about its provenance. It is its very elusiveness that

67 Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 200. 68 Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 200. 69 Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 199. 70 I use the term “social life” in reference to Appadurai, ed., Social Life of Things.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 83 gives rise to diverse stories, causing some writers to connect it to the historical foundations of Naples, while encouraging others to attribute it to fifteenth-century artistic invention and skill. This ambiguity seems to be part of its appeal, fostering interest in its very fragmented incomplete form.

Later Histories of the Horse’s Head

In addition to the early narratives, Carafa’s horse’s head continued to be a source of commentary in subsequent centuries. In 1755 Margravine Wilhelmina of Baireuth confirmed the presence of the horse’s head in Carafa’s palace and noted that it was an antique bronze.71 Both Winckelmann in 1758 and Johann

Wolfgang von Goethe in 1787 also record visits to the Palazzo Carafa.72

Winckelmann contests Giorgio Vasari’s attribution to Donatello and comments that it is “exceedingly beautiful” and references the tradition of the horse’s head being an antique from the Duomo.73 The antiquities of the Palazzo Carafa slowly diminished through the centuries, and in 1809, the heir to the collections,

Francesco Carafa, Prince of Colubrano, donated the horse’s head to the Museo

Reale.74 In a letter dating from 14 January 1809, the Minister of Internal affairs

71 “Au Palais Carafa ou Il ya la Tête d’un cheval Antique de Bronze. Le Cheval etoit entier lorsqu’on le deterra, et force de L’admirer le Comun Peuple lui rendit un espece de Culte. Ce qui fut cause qu’un fut obligé de la Briser. Il est dans la Cour de ce Palais. Il ny a rien de curieux dans cette Maison qu’une grande quantité de Vases Etrusques.” Quoted in Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, 117 n. 91. 72 Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, 117. 73 “At Naples, one admires, in the inner court of the Colobrano palace, the exceedingly beautiful head of a horse, which Vasari wrongly ascribes to the Florentine sculptor, Donatello.” Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of Ancient Art, trans. Alexander Gode, vol. III (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1968), Chapter II, 82. In the note, he comments: “It is impossible to praise too highly the colossal head of a horse for its admirable workmanship. According to the tradition, it is a remnant of an entire horse of bronze which formerly stood in front of the Cathedral at Naples, but which was converted by the order of an archbishop in to a bell.” 383, n. 25 74 Giuseppe Ceci, "Il Palazzo Carafa di Maddaloni, poi di Colubrano," Napoli Nobilissima 2, no. 9 (1893): 170; Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, 118.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 84 thanks the Prince of Colubrano for the donation, commenting that it is one of the most beautiful works done by the hand of an antique sculptor.75 In 1822 Lorenzo

Giustiniani published a guide to the Royal Bourbonic Museum in Naples (the collection which is now mostly housed in the Museo Nazionale) claiming that the horse’s head was a Greek antiquity.76 He retold the mythic history of the horse’s head and noted that he was currently writing a dissertation to clear up some of the history of the horse’s head, but to my knowledge, these findings were never published. The horse’s head is currently in the Museo Nazionale di Napoli; however it is not on public display and can be found in the administrative entrance to the museum. There are two copies of the horse’s head in the city: a terracotta version in the Palazzo Carafa on via San Biago dei Librai (Figure 5) and a bronze cast in one of the Metro stations.77

Recent studies and technical examinations have done little to end debate about the dating of the horse. Scholars have looked to other works by Donatello in attempts to trace similarities or differences. Donatello’s Gattamelata, for instance, has often been a source of comparison. Filangieri saw a close similarity between the Gattamelata and the horse’s head, while Aldo De Rinaldis in 1911 was not convinced there were enough similarities and believed the statue to share affinities

75 “Il Re ha molto gradito l’offerta fattaglia da V.E. del monumento in bronzo rappresentante un busto di cavallo, riguardato come una delle più belle opere della mano maestra degli antichi scultori, che fiorirono un tempo nella nostra patria, e mentre le manifesto la compiacenza della M.S., La prevengo che sarà collocata nel Museo Reale con delle note incise in marmo ove sarà fatta onorevole menzione del dono che Ella ha fatto.” Quoted in Ceci, "Palazzo Carafa," 170. 76 Lorenzo Giustiniani, Guida per lo Real Museo Borbonico/A Guide Through the Royal Bourbonic Museum (Naples: Tipografia Francese, 1822), 42-3. 77 Caglioti incorrectly states that the original is in the metro station. Caglioti, "Horse's Head," 198.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 85 with works from the Greco-roman period.78 More recent work by Licia Vlad

Borrelli attributes the metallic composition of the bronze and its facture to

Renaissance practices and particularly to the workshop of Donatello.79 In addition, Edilberto Formigli’s technical analysis of the horse’s head has led him to believe it was a Renaissance construction, executed by Donatello or in the circle of his workshop.80 However, Lauri Fusco and Gino Corti cite two recent publications on the collections in the Museo Nazionale (1995 and 1996), which propose that the head is ancient.81 This has led Fusco and Corti to believe that the small equestrian statue of Ferrante, which was in the courtyard of Carafa’s palazzo, is the work by Donatello and the bronze horse’s head is probably ancient.82

The Carafa horse’s head has also been compared to an ancient horse’s head that belonged to the Medici and was known to have been on display in the courtyard of the Medici Palace in Florence. The Medici horse’s head has always been declared an antiquity, but some suggest that Donatello copied the Medici horse’s head and that Lorenzo de’ Medici subsequently gave the Donatello copy to Diomede as a gift.83 The Medici horse is much smaller than the Neapolitan one and the two have been compared recently by Borrelli (Figures 6, 9 and 10).84

78 For a discussion of the different scholarly views in relation to Gattamelata see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 224, n. 26; Borrelli, "Un dono," 241. I have not been able to procure the article by de Rinaldis (A. de Rinaldis, “Di un’antica testa di cavallo in bronzo attribuita a Donatello” Bollettino d’arte 5 (1911): 241-60) 79 Borrelli, "Considerazioni."; Borrelli, "Un dono." 80 Edilberto Formigli, "La grande testa di cavallo in bronzo detta 'Carafa': un'indagine tecnologica," Bollettino d'Arte 71 (1992): 83-90. 81 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 39. 82 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 38-9. 83 A summary of the literature can be found in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 224 n. 26. also see Borrelli, "Considerazioni," 75. 84 Borrelli, "Considerazioni."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 86

Luigi Beschi has traced the Medici horse’s head, beginning with a document of

1495 that inventoried sculptures to be moved from the palazzo Medici by the

Signoria during the Medici exile.85 Among the items listed is a “testa di cavallo che era nell’orto.”86 It was later returned to the Medici courtyard, where it was seen in 1536 by Johann Fichard who commented on a bronze head of a horse, noting that it was much smaller than the Neapolitan one.87 The Medici horse’s head was later listed in sixteenth-century inventories of the palace and is currently on exhibit in the Museo Archeologico in Florence.88 We can only be certain that

Lorenzo de’ Medici at one time owned or had access to two horse heads, one that he kept and one that he sent down to Naples as a gift to Diomede. While Naples had a particular connection to the symbol of the horse, equestrian statues were also highly regarded across Italy, and Carafa’s horse’s head should be viewed within this broader iconography, whereby a wide range of individuals collected, commissioned, and displayed equestrian statues.89

Carafa’s horse’s head has thus become a subject of contention among historians and art historians, from the sixteenth century to the present. Its fragmentary nature—both in its form and in its unknown provenance—gives rise to speculation and narratives. Its equestrian iconography, as noted in the early

85 Luigi Beschi, "Le sculture antiche di Lorenzo il Magnifico," in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo: convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze, 9-13 giugno 1992), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1994), 295. Also see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 35. 86 Beschi, "Lorenzo," 295. 87 Beschi, "Lorenzo," 295. The text is also quoted in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 37 and 344, Doc 219. 88 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 36-7. 89 For two useful studies on the equestrian in the early modern period, see Pia F. Cuneo, "Beauty and the Beast: Art and Science in Early Modern European Equine Imagery," Journal of Early Modern History 4, no. 3/4 (2000): 269-321; Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests. Renaissance Art Between East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 132-85, Ch. 3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 87 narratives, is linked to existing legends of Naples’ history. The statue encouraged discussion not only about its provenance, but also about the individuals who exchanged it. The horse’s head, as a gift, was thus connected to larger political dialogues taking place on the Italian peninsula.

III. Lorenzo and Diomede: Arbitrators Between Florence and Naples

“We were there [Palazzo Carafa], looking at the bronze statues he [Diomede] had received from Lorenzo de’ Medici.” -Zaccaria Barbaro90

After a lengthy history of the horse’s head and its life in literary narratives, we can now turn to the individuals involved in the exchange of the horse’s head.

Understanding the intense political scene and commercial interests of King

Ferrante and the Medici will provide a political and economic backdrop for the gift of the bronze horse’s head. Rather than examining the horse’s head as a static object in a collection, it is more fruitful to examine how it participated as a key agent in socio-political networks. As Arjun Appadurai has effectively demonstrated, it is studying objects in their historical trajectories that illuminates their social and political potential.91 To begin, I will provide a brief overview of the individuals involved in negotiations between Florence and Naples. I will then turn to the horse’s head and its place within these politics.

Diomede Carafa, first Count of Maddaloni is well known in the world of fifteenth-century Italian politics. Not only was Carafa known for his various roles at the Neapolitan court and his close relationships with the Aragonese, he was

90 “stemo assia lì [il palazzo Carafa], vedendo le statue de bronzo l’havea hauto da lorenco de’ Medici. Et, prexa licentia, trovai messer Zuanbatista.” Gigi Corazzol, ed., Dispacci di Zaccaria Barbaro (1 novembre 1471-7 settembre 1473 ), Corrispondenze diplomatiche veneziane da Napoli. Istituto Italiano per gli studi filosofici (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1994), 399. 91 Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 88 also renowned as a famous collector and antiquarian, as well as the author of numerous Memoriali, a series of humanist texts dedicated to the Aragonese.92

Diomede is also reported as having an important role in the successful siege of

Naples by Alfonso I d’Aragona, stressing his support of Aragonese rule.93

92 The most reliable and comprehensive biography on Diomede is still Persico’s nineteenth- century study, see Persico, Carafa. Other useful biographical information can be found in Franca Petrucci Nardelli, ed., Memoriali di Diomede Carafa (Roma: Bonacci Editore, 1988); Gioacchino Paparelli, Diomede Carafa: Dello Optimo Cortesano (Salerno: Beta, 1971); Franca Petrucci Nardelli, "Carafa, Diomede," in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1976). Two recent studies have examined Diomede’s antiquities and architectural patronage, de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza; Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, specifically 110-18. For English publications see John D. Moores, "New Light on Diomede Carafa and his 'Perfect Loyalty' to Ferrante of Aragon," Italian Studies 26 (1971). Bentley, Politics and Culture, 141-6 . de Divitiis has also published a few articles in English based on her Italian book, see Bianca de Divitiis, "Building in Local All'antica Style: the Palace of Diomede Carafa in Naples," Art History 31, no. 4 (2008): 505-22; Bianca de Divitiis, "New Evidence on Diomede Carafa's Collection of Antiquities," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70 (2007). Reumont’s text of the Carafa family, although translated in English, is often riddled with mistakes as he relies essentially on sixteenth century sources. Reumont, The Carafas. Diomede also often features in Florentine literature, specifically studies that look at artistic exchanges between Florence and Naples, see Borrelli, "Un dono."; Eve Borsook, "A Florentine Scrittoio for Diomede Carafa," in Art, the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H.W. Janson, ed. Mosche Barash and Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981); F. Sricchia Santoro, "Tra Napoli e Firenze: Diomede Carafa, gli Strozzi e un celebra ‘lettuccio’," Prospettiva 100 (2000); Mario del Treppo, "Le avventure storiografiche della Tavola Strozzi," in Fra storia e storiografia. Scritti in onore di pasquale villani ed. P. Marcy and A. Massafra (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 1994). For his palace see Georgia Clarke, Roman House-Renaissance Palaces, Inventing Antiquity in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 36-8; Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo."; Ceci, "Palazzo Carafa." The first history of the Carafa family was published by Biagio Aldimari, Historia genealogica della famiglia Carafa, vol. Secondo. BNN: Bibl Branc 111.H. 18 (1691). For the horse’s head see the above section on its literary life. 93 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 1. While scholars have deliberated over Diomede’s true role in the campaign, he is often said to have been involved in the final siege and to have altered the fortunes of the Aragonese at a moment when their victory appeared to be in peril. A wound to Diomede’s leg while defending a tower allowed a sufficient amount of Alfonso’s troops to enter Naples and lay claim to the city. While the literature is conflicting on whether it was actually Diomede who was decisive in the Aragonese victory, letters in the Modena archives attest to an injury to Diomede’s leg, something he complains about later on in life to his former student, Eleonora d’Aragona, daughter of King Ferrante and Duchess of Ferrara. (“calò a la gamba dove ebe la ferita quando trasivemo in Napoli” 4 April, year unknown, ASMO CPE 1248/4.) Some of these letters are also quoted in Moores, "New Light on Diomede."; de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 25. The sources that differ come from sixteenth-century accounts of the siege. Angelo di Costanzo in Historia del Regno di Napoli (1581) reports that Diomede Carafa was the leader of the expedition; Bartolomeo Facio (also known as Fazio) in De rebus gestis ab Alphonso primo (1512) claims the defender of the tower who forfeited his life for the Aragonese cause was not Diomede but Giovanni Michele Calatovillo; Tomaso Fazelli gives all the honour of the siege to Diomede and claims he was the first to hoist the Aragonese flag (De rebus siculis). For variations in the literature see Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 2.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 89

Aside from his military career, Diomede was respected for his loyalty to the

Aragonese cause and was involved in administration at court. By 1451, Diomede already had the title of “scrivano di razione” and on 28 May of that same year he also assumed the role of “amministratore generale dei beni.”94 These roles are often outlined as multifaceted; he has been labelled treasurer, guardarobiere, counsellor, as well as general secretary and administrator.95 Rather than attempting to define Diomede’s specific job description, it is perhaps more useful to see it as characteristic of Diomede’s many roles at court, which seemed to get only more numerous with time and which functioned on both personal and political levels in his relations with the Aragonese. After Alfonso’s death,

Ferrante was made king, and at his coronation ceremony in 1459 Diomede was made cavaliere.96 During Ferrante’s reign Diomede’s power increased; he was granted feudal titles and lands, and he frequently appears on the diplomatic scene as a crucial participant in privy councils, as advisor to the king, and as arbitrator with political figures across Italy.97 In 1466 Diomede was granted the title of

Count of Maddaloni, and in this year he also finished construction on his famous palazzo in the Seggio di Nido, where he moved the office of scrivano di razione.98

94 Paparelli, Diomede Carafa, 14; Petrucci Nardelli, "Carafa, Diomede," 525; Persico, Carafa, 66. 95 Persico, Carafa, 74; Paparelli, Diomede Carafa, 15; Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 7. 96 Antonio de Trezzo, the Milanese ambassador in Naples, reports in a letter from 10 February 1459, ASMI SPE 200, Letter 92. When the letters are numbered in a busta, I have provided the number; however, many of these letters are often numbered in an arbitrary sequence, not necessarily in chronological order, and are often placed out of sequence. In addition, I have often found different letters with the same number. Petrucci Nardelli, "Carafa, Diomede," 525. 97 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 9. 98 Paparelli, Diomede Carafa, 17-8. The moving expenses were paid for on 5 March 1466: “A Cola Schiavo ed a 3 altri fecchini un ducato per recar tavole e cassoni dell’Uffizio dello scrivano di razione dall’Arsenale di Napoli, ove si teneva il detto Uffizio, fino a Nido in casa di Diomede Carafa dove nuovamente e ordinato che si tenga.” Nicola Barone, "Le Cedole di Tesoreria dell'Archivio di Stato di Napoli dal 1460 al 1504," Archivio storico per le province napoletane IX (1884): 207.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 90

The palace was host to visiting dignitaries and illustrious people such as

Sigismondo d’Este, Antonio of Burgundy, and Matteo Maria Boiardo, among others.99 In addition, the Palazzo Carafa is frequently noted in diplomatic documents as a place where ambassadors and other diplomats often went to confer.100 Diomede seems to have acquired a lot of wealth through his land holdings, both in property outside of Naples as well as shops and houses in the city centre, and is noted as providing financial assistance to the crown during times of deficit.101

Diomede’s power and wealth at times rivalled the king’s, but his success was due to his unfailing loyalty to the Aragonese cause. While Diomede’s loyalty to King Ferrante was unwavering, he also stands out as an astute arbitrator and negotiator, not merely a puppet for Ferrante, but a clever advisor who acted in the interest of Ferrante, but not necessarily always in compliance with the king.102

Many ambassadors commented on Diomede’s powerful position and he was regarded as an integral part of diplomatic relations. Diomede was also a recipient of numerous diplomatic gifts, suggesting that he was seen as an important negotiator for Ferrante and for Italian politics at large. Zaccaria Barbaro, the

Venetian ambassador in Naples, noted that Diomede had the reputation of a

99 Paparelli, Diomede Carafa, 18; Petrucci Nardelli, "Carafa, Diomede," 526. 100 The Venetian ambassador Zaccaria Barbaro often discusses visiting Diomede in his palace “Andando hoçi a visitare Madama Leonora el magnifico signor conte, che era al zardino suo.” Among other visits, he records going to see Diomede while he is sick with fever in bed, and he finds all the sons and daughters of the king at his bedside. Barbaro also notes that all of the ambassadors had been there visiting Diomede throughout the day. Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 130, Letter 60, from January 7 1472 and 225, letter 104, 31 March The Milanese ambassador also reported a visit of the Venetian ambassador to Diomede’s garden on 8 April 1475, see ASMI SPE 227. 101 Persico, Carafa, 120, 35. 102 Moores’ analysis of Diomede reveals the Count’s political savvy most tellingly. Moores, "New Light on Diomede."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 91

“secundo re.”103 In 1458, Firmano Petrucci wrote to the Neapolitan ambassador in

Milan, Bartolomeo da Recanati, commenting that Diomede was a sort of factotum and stating that the best way to ingratiate oneself with King Ferrante was to get on

Diomede’s good side.104

In 1472 the dissolution of the marriage between Eleonora d’Aragona, daughter of Ferrante and Sforza Maria was under negotiation and Diomede Carafa played an important role in the Sforza divorce and her betrothal to Ercole d’Este,

Duke of Ferrara.105 It was at this time that Diomede received a medal from Ercole d’Este via the Ferrarese ambassador, asking in return a portrait of Eleonora.106

Diomede was thus assumed to have a particular force in the outcome of the marriage negotiations. Consequently, in 1473 during the marriage ceremonies in

Naples for Eleonora and Ercole, Ercole’s brother and proxy in the nuptials,

Sigismondo d’Este, presented Diomede and the secretary of the court with gifts of silver.107 Diomede was also the recipient of silver items from the Venetian ambassador in 1471 and a series of gifts from Filippo Strozzi.108

Also telling are the recommendations given by Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of

Calabria to her brother, Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan in 1472 for gifts to be given to the Neapolitan court, detailed in a letter I found in the Milanese

103 “Costui fì reputado el secundo re et però io lo honoro...”Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 225, letter 104, from 31 March 1472. 104 Paparelli, Diomede Carafa, 15. 105 See for instance letter from Francesco Maleta to the Duke of Milan from 24 April 1472, ASMI SPE 221. 106 Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 212, Letter 101 from 28 March 1472. 107 ASMI SPE 224. 238. Letter from Francesco Maleta to the Duke of Milan, from 22 May 1473. 108 The gift from the Venetian ambassador 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. The gifts from Filippo Strozzi were part of many gifts brought down from Florence by Filippo in 1473 to the Neapolitan court. See chapter two below as well as del Treppo, "Avventure," 510. Originals for the Strozzi account books are located in ASF, cart. strozziane v 22, 95r.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 92 archives.109 In response to advice asked by Galeazzo, Ippolita recommends giving two horses to the king and two horses to the Duke of Calabria, but in addition, she suggests that he give one to the “Conte di Matalone” (Diomede Carafa).110 She explains the addition of the gift to Diomede is necessary because if Galeazzo has both the duke and the count as partisans, he has “the heart of the king in [his] hands.”111 Ippolita, who was often caught between loyalties for her natal family, the Sforzas of Milan, and her marital family, the Aragonese, was well aware of the intrigues at the Neapolitan court and who one might ask to obtain favours, even though this often aggravated political relations between the Sforza and

Aragonese.112 In addition to these gifts, Diomede was also the recipient of many other presents from figures such as Lorenzo de’ Medici and Eleonora d’Aragona.113

Lorenzo de’ Medici first travelled to Naples in April 1466, where he went to establish relations with the Aragonese court and to promote the Medici cause.114 Lorenzo went to Naples again in the winter of 1479-80 to seek peace, when political relations between Florence and Naples were in utter turmoil

109 Francesco Maleta, Milanese ambassador to the Duke of Milan, ASMI SPE 223. 228, 31 December 1472. 110 ASMI SPE 223. 228. 111 “…se anchora paresse ad quella mandarne uno al Conte de Matalone: ad me pareria senon bem facto: ch[e] havendo v[ostra] subl[imi]ta dicto conte e lo Duca p[er] v[ost]ri vuy haveti el cuore del Re i[n] mano.” ASMI SPE 223. 228. 112 For Ippolita Sforza and her controversial role at the Neapolitan court, see Evelyn S. Welch, "Between Milan and Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria," in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494-95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Hampshire and Vermont: Variorum Ashgate Publishing Company, 1995), 123-36. 113 See below for gifts from Lorenzo de’ Medici. For exchanges of gifts between Eleonora and Diomede see ASMO CPE 1284/4, letters of 17 November, 22 November, 26 May, 8 July, 10 February. Written in Diomede’s own hand, none of these letters are given a year. 114 Judith Hook, Lorenzo de' Medici: An Historical Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), 20-1; Borrelli, "Un dono," 239.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 93 following the Pazzi Conspiracy.115 It was upon the first visit to Naples that

Lorenzo became acquainted with Diomede. A series of letters from Diomede to

Lorenzo surviving in archives in Italy and abroad suggest that the two men were in regular correspondence.116 While the gift of the horse’s head is often seen as a sign of a great friendship between Diomede and Lorenzo, their relationship should not be disassociated from the Italian political scene.117 Both Lorenzo and

Diomede were diplomats who acted on behalf of larger regimes and interests:

Diomede for the Aragonese and Lorenzo both for Florence and the Medici bank.

John Moores has questioned how close this friendship really was, and suggests that both Lorenzo and Diomede were conscious of the benefits such a friendship and its reputation could provide.118 Comprehending the political situation and the particular climate that such gifts were given will shed light on the ways in which such objects do not merely symbolise political relationships, but in many cases constitute and even sometimes complicate those particular relationships.

Although the first surviving letter between Diomede to Lorenzo dates from

March 1471, it suggests that there was earlier correspondence that has now been lost. In the letter of 5 March 1471, first published by Francesco Novati in 1894,

Diomede sends a Neapolitan buffone to Lorenzo for the festivities in Florence in honour of Galeazzo Maria Sforza’s visit.119 Lorenzo, as mentioned, had been in

115 Hook, Lorenzo, 113-4. 116 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 11. 117 Borrelli calls it a “grande amicizia” Borrelli, "Un dono," 239. For a more realistic portrayal of the relationship see Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 12. 118 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 12. 119 Francesco Novati, " I manoscritti italiani d’alcune biblioteche del Belgio e dell’Olanda," Rassegna bibliografica della letteratura italiana II (1894): 206. “Magnifice domine honorande comm.: hauendo fatto pensiero che alla uenuta de lo Ill.mo S. Duca de Milano in Florenza se faranno de le feste et piaceri et recordamonce che v.s. pilliao piacere quando fo in Napoli de quisto

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 94

Naples in 1466 and according to the letter from Diomede, had found the particular

Neapolitan buffone amusing. The letter from Carafa regarding the buffone dates from 5 March 1471 and five months later on 12 July 1471 we find another letter from Diomede to Lorenzo, thanking him for the colossal horse’s head.120 This has led Borrelli to conjecture that the gift of the horse’s head may have been given as a counter gift from Lorenzo for the buffone sent to Florence.121 However, I suggest that these actions are not simply examples of gift exchange, but rather should be seen as symbolic of the rituals of gift-giving, which constitute larger political and social relations. Furthermore, attention needs to be paid to the specific forms and materialities of the objects exchanged, rather than merely studying the reciprocity of gifts.

The late 1460s and early 1470s were filled with complex negotiations between Naples and Florence, which involved constantly changing alliances and secret agreements with other ruling powers. As Vincent Ilardi has put it “nothing is more illustrative of the total disorientation of the Italian diplomacy in the three year period following the death of Francesco Sforza than this display of moves, and counter-moves, a constant ripple effect, devoid of any grand design or goal.”122 With this in mind, political relations between individuals of state were extremely uneasy and prone to constant scrutiny. In 1470 there was talk of

nostro creato de lo actigiare suo hauemo deliberato mandarlo alla s.v. extimando adesso li piacer à piú che allora et hauemoli ordinato et commeso che iusi (sic) che starà in Florenza il magnifico misser Antonio Cicinello stia dicto mio creato ad ordinicione et comandamento de v.s. alla quale me recomando et offero in omne cosa gli posso compiacere et seruirla me lo uollia ordinare che me serà gratissimo satisfarli. Dat. Neapoli v˚ marcij 1471.” 120 Filangieri, "Testa di cavallo," 416; de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 98-9; Borrelli, "Considerazioni," 76; Borrelli, "Un dono," 239; Persico, Carafa, 107. 121 Borrelli, "Considerazioni," 76. 122 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 98.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 95 renewing the triple alliance or Lega between Milan, Florence, and Naples. The league was to provide a form of “diplomatic hegemony” in the peninsula on a

Milan to Naples axis with Florence, namely the Medici, providing financial support.123 The aim of the Lega was to provide a strong alliance that would deter the Venetians from any expansions in the mainland and provide enough influence to determine favourable elections of popes.124 Maintaining a solid Lega would also ensure, it was hoped, to deter any foreign powers, notably the French and the

Turks from invading.125 The actual result was much less simple and even less executable.

In the late 1460s Galeazzo Sforza was eager to reclaim Bergamo, Brescia and Crema, which had been ceded to Venice with the Treaty of Lodi, and he was seeking Ferrante’s help in obtaining these lands from Venice.126 In May 1469 a papal-Venetian alliance was instituted, and Pope Paul II was anxious to have

Ferrante pay tributes and arrears that were owed by the kings of Naples as vassals of the Holy See.127 Consequently, this led Galeazzo and Ferrante to strike a secret agreement, whereby Galeazzo assured aid to Ferrante in the case of war between

Naples and the papacy and Ferrante in return would provide support for the recovery of the lands from Venice.128 Turkish threats to Venice’s Negroponte in

1470 forced Italian states to reconsider a unified Italy to counter the Turks, and specifically there were rumours that Venice was seeking a secret alliance with

Naples. These rumours provoked enough suspicion in Galeazzo Sforza and

123 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 93-4. 124 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 94. 125 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 94. 126 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 96. 127 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 97. 128 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 98.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 96

Lorenzo de’ Medici, that they sent ambassadors down to Naples to insist on a triple alliance.129 The Italian League was re-established on 22 December 1470; however it served more as an attempt at reconciliation than a reflection of actual political stability.130 With the fall of Negroponte to the Turks, the Turkish invasion was ever more a reality to Ferrante, and on 1 January 1471, the king signed a secret alliance with the Venetian ambassador, Vittore Soranzo. This was primarily an allegiance against the Turks but it also contained a clause that stipulated either party would provide defence if attacked by the enemy, notably

Galeazzo and the Angevins.131 By October 1471 the rupture between Galeazzo and Ferrante had reached its height and Cavalchino Guidoboni, a go-between for the two rulers, had lost all hope for any reconciliation.132 Specifically, Guidoboni blamed Galeazzo because he had antagonised Venice’s fans at court, specifically

Diomede Carafa and Orso Orsini.133 It was also in October 1471 that Galeazzo became the butt of many Neapolitan jokes, causing Diomede to comment that

Galeazzo was such a coward that “he would not dare to enter Bergamo and

Brescia even if their gates were left open.”134

As noted, Ferrante had signed a secret treaty with the Venetian ambassador,

Vittore Soranzo on 1 January 1471. Only a few months later in March of that year, the Milanese ambassador, Giovanni Andreas, reported to Galeazzo Sforza that the Venetian ambassador had given Diomede a gift of two silver flasks and a

129 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 98; Medici, Lettere I, 175-6 and 206-7. 130 Medici, Lettere I, 236; Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 104. 131 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 106. 132 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 109. 133 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 109. 134 “s’el Sig.re vedesse aperte le porte de Bergomo et de Bressa, che non haviria ardire de intrarli.” Translated by Ilardi, from a letter from Cagnola to Cicco, Naples, 15 October 1471, ASMI SPE 220, Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 110.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 97

“large and beautiful” confetera. 135 This demonstrates that Diomede was often used as a target for diplomatic gifts and such gifts could win favours or constitute larger dependencies. The fact that the Milanese ambassador found it necessary to report the news of this gift in a letter to the Duke of Milan also indicates that such gifts were understood as tell-tale signs of allegiances, specifically when relations between these states were already fraught. Although Diomede disliked Galeazzo, he was also aware that a war between Milan and Naples would cause irreparable harm to the state of Italy, and on 14 July 1472 he was part of a secret agreement with the Milanese ambassador Francesco Maletta, Ippolita Sforza, and other trusted advisers. The agreement included a pledge by Galeazzo not to aid the rebels in Barcelona, and in return Ferrante was limited to how much aid he would provide Venice if attacked by Milan.136

As Humphrey Butters has noted: “the world of Italian politics was so fluid and treacherous, the creation of impressions so cardinal a feature of it, that no single ruler or regime could ever expect to command a clear view of what was going on.”137 Lorenzo de’ Medici was embroiled in these constant negotiations between Milan and Naples and he had the Florentine ambassador in Naples monitor and analyse Ferrante’s behaviour. Lorenzo also sought other sources of information so that he could be provided with a clear understanding of the

135 A confetera is a type of dish often elaborately decorated with precious stones. “Questo ambassatore ven[eziano] secu[n]do ho da bon loco ha facto qua de molti p[rese]nti degni in nome de la Seg.re cioe al conte de mathalone [Diomede Carafa] al quale ha donato duy fiaschi dargento e una confetera grande e bella.” ASMI SPE 220, Postscript dated 28 March 1471 from letter 206 from Giovanni Andreas to Galeazzo, Duke of Milan. 136 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 114. 137 Humphrey Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo: convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze, 9-13 giugno 1992), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1994), 145.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 98 situation and his place in it.138 Lorenzo’s relationship with Ferrante was complex; he often found Ferrante difficult to deal with and was aware that their friendship was clearly based on Ferrante’s acknowledgement that Lorenzo had political and financial advantage.139 Part of Lorenzo’s stakes in Naples was based less on a belief in Ferrante’s rule, but rather a fear of the increase in power to the Pope or the French if they were to overthrow Naples.140

Aside from the specific diplomatic negotiations of political alliances,

Lorenzo’s relationship with Naples was also embroiled in the interests of the

Medici bank. Thus while Florence was negotiating a renewal of the Lega in 1471, that same year the Medici bank decided to re-establish a branch in Naples, which had been inactive since 1426.141 Raymond de Roover sees no reason why Lorenzo would have opened the bank in this year, but suggests that it had to do with political motivations.142 Hook proposes that the reopening of the bank was not for commercial purposes at all, but solely to “foster the Florentine-Neapolitan alliance.”143 It is noted that the bank did extremely poorly, due partly to mismanagement and partly to the fact that the majority of the loans were made out to the Neapolitan crown, notorious for its deficit, thus underlining its political intent rather than any hopes for profit.144

In addition to re-instituting the Medici bank in Naples, the Medici and the

Aragonese were involved with other commercial negotiations in relation to alum

138 Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," 145. 139 Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," 145. 140 Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," 150. 141 Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank. 1397-1494 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1966), 257. 142 de Roover, Medici Bank, 257. 143 Hook, Lorenzo, 30. 144 de Roover, Medici Bank, 254-61.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 99 mines in 1470-1.145 The papacy sought to have a monopoly over alum and from the mid 1460s the Medici were the primary associates for the papacy in the market of alum.146 The Neapolitan crown also laid claim to alum mines on the island of Ischia, which were farmed by a Neapolitan merchant, Angelo Perotto. In

1470 the Medici bank in Rome entered into a twenty-five year agreement with the operator of the Ischia mines, and the deal was ratified in June 1470 by Pope Paul

II, Ferrante, and the Medici as owners and financers of the Tolfa and Ischia mines.147 Although the contract was stipulated to last twenty-five years, the agreement dissolved in 1471. De Roover suggests that the dissolution of the contract may have been due to the Medici’s recognition that the alliance was not advantageous or it may have been due to the dissatisfaction of consumers of the poorer quality of the Ischia alum, while others have suggested that the contract was revised to be more equitable because of the improved relationship between the papacy and Naples with the election of Sixtus IV.148 Whatever the reason, it is clear that the Medici and the Aragonese were imbricated in a series of economic and political dependencies throughout this time. In what follows, I would like to highlight the particular agency of the horse’s head as a material form of exchange within these socio-political relations.

As noted, Diomede sent a buffone from Naples to Lorenzo in Florence to partake in the festivities of Galeazzo Sforza’s visit to Florence in March 1471.

This was specifically at a time when there were a series of alliances and counter-

145 de Roover, Medici Bank, 152-66. 146 de Roover, Medici Bank, 153. 147 de Roover, Medici Bank, 154. 148 de Roover, Medici Bank, 156, n.3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 100 alliances between Florence, Milan, and Naples. Diomede, an astute player in the scene of politics, would have realised the importance in maintaining and reminding Lorenzo of their relationship. But Lorenzo may have also realised the importance of the friendship. Not only would he have been aware that Galeazzo’s relationship with King Ferrante threatened the re-signing of the League; but presumably, he also realised that Galeazzo’s behaviour was not winning any points with Diomede. King Ferrante is known to have been a difficult individual with whom to negotiate— “molto timido, pauroso et povero,” as Giovanni

Lanfredini, the Florentine ambassador in Naples in 1484, reported to

Lorenzo149—and thus Diomede was probably a more suitable candidate for negotiations. It may have been his understanding of Diomede’s character that prompted him to give him the gift of the horse only a few months later. As Beschi has noted, Carafa, the collaborator of Ferrante, was a good target diplomatically for this gift especially considering the concurrent political instability.150 Lorenzo may have recognised that having Diomede on his side would be a critical component in his diplomatic relations in Italy. In addition to the intricacies of the triple alliance, it should also be remembered that Lorenzo was establishing the

Medici bank in Naples in the spring of 1471 in addition to the negotiations around the alum mines, the same year that the horse’s head was given. Eve Borsook has observed that Lorenzo must have sent the bronze horse’s head to Diomede just before Lorenzo’s departure as an ambassador to Rome for the coronation of

149 Quoted in Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples." 150 Beschi, "Lorenzo," 294-5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 101

Sixtus IV.151 With a new pope on the scene, political relations would have been unstable, necessitating the re-negotiations of alliances. While determining his relations with the new pope, Lorenzo most likely wanted an ally like Diomede, as

Naples was sure to be a key player in future negotiations concerning not only political alliances but alum and commercial interests.

In short, the gift of the buffone, right at the moment when Galeazzo was visiting Florence, was an explicit gesture made by Diomede to encourage Lorenzo to respect Florence’s alliance with Naples, and the gift of the horse’s head was a way for Lorenzo to solidify his relations with Diomede, with the understanding that the diplomatic relationship was going to be a long one, and extremely crucial in the game of Italian politics. But in addition to the horse’s head Lorenzo also provided Diomede with a series of other antiquities. It is unclear whether these were gifts or purchases; however it demonstrates that the exchange of objects encouraged and facilitated communication and conversation between Lorenzo and

Diomede.152

Lorenzo’s trip to Rome in 1471 was successful on various fronts: on a political level, Lorenzo established himself as an astute negotiator and diplomat; on an economic level, he strengthened relations between the papacy and the

Medici bank; and on a cultural level, he acquired the majority of the late Paul II’s collection of antiquities.153 While many of these antiquities were desired by various rulers across Italy from Ludovico Gonzaga to Galeazzo Sforza, Lorenzo

151 Borsook, "Florentine Scrittoio," 93. 152 If these antiquities were indeed gifts, then Fusco and Corti who claim that Lorenzo only ever gave one antiquity away, that being the horse’s head, are incorrect. They make no note of these other antiquities, passed from Lorenzo to Diomede. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 11. 153 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 6-9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 102 was successful in procuring the majority of the booty, as the Medici bank ingratiated itself with Sixtus IV, cancelling previous debts in return for many of the items in Paul II’s collection.154 This enraged Galeazzo Sforza who had his eye on some particular items in July 1471, and who was later told in September that he could not buy directly from Sixtus but would have to deal with the Medici bank.155 Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici were granted the positions of

“depositors general” of the Camera Apostolica in 1472,156 thus revealing that they had achieved favour with the pope, profiting economically from the alliance, and they must have also hoped for political advantage through the connection. Beyond the seizing of Paul II’s property, Lorenzo received “two ancient marble heads with the images of Augustus and Agrippa” from Sixtus as a gift.157 While the relationship with Sixtus had deteriorated by December 1474, which resulted in the revocation of the office of Depositor General, Lorenzo still managed to come away from Rome with many of Paul II’s antiquities.158

After sending the horse’s head in late spring or early summer of 1471 to

Diomede, Lorenzo must have felt that he still needed to ingratiate himself with the primary counsellor to King Ferrante. In March 1472, exactly a year after Diomede had sent the buffone to Lorenzo, the Venetian ambassador Barbaro reported that

154 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 9. 155 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 8-9. 156 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 9. 157 “di settembre 1471 fui eletto imbasciatore a Roma per la incoronatione di Papa Sisto IV, dove fui molto tornando e di quindi portai le due teste di marmo antiche della imagine di Augusto e Agrippa, le quali me donò detto Papa.” Quoted from Lorenzo’s Ricordi, see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 6 and 337, doc 204. 158 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 103

Diomede had received some “cameini” from Lorenzo.159 Barbaro was visiting

Carafa who was sick in bed with a fever when Diomede showed him the “cameini belissimi” that had belonged to Paul II, noting that these “cameini” had arrived in the last few days via the Medici.160 Barbaro uses the idiom that these gems had been “capitati nel suo [Diomede’s] cogolo,” an expression in the Venetian dialect making reference to a heavy net, usually used to catch eels more effectively.161

Barbaro continues to comment that Diomede has the reputation of a second king, and therefore Barbaro will honour him and entertain (“acchareço”) him as is needed.162 Barbaro, who was at the Neapolitan court to solidify an alliance between Naples and Venice, rightly notes Diomede’s particular importance at court, but also seems to be an astute observer of Diomede’s capabilities of utilising this position in procuring gifts and favours. There is a hint of disdain in

Barbaro’s observations: first in his “cogolo” expression, indicating that Diomede was somewhat aggressive in his acquisition of antiquities; and second, coming from an ambassador from the Republic of Venice, Barbaro’s comment about

Diomede as a second king should be seen as a negative quality with tyrannical overtones. In the autumn of that year, Barbaro remarks on six antique bronzes that

Diomede had received from Lorenzo de’ Medici.163 A few days later, Barbaro reports having been at the Palazzo Carafa, and having seen the “statue de bronzo”

159 Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 225, letter 104 from March 31 1472. The terms “cameini” or “cameo” were used in the period often in reference to gems carved in relief, and were usually antiquities. See Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, xxii. 160 Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 225. 161 Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 225, editor’s note. 162 “Costui fì reputado el secundo re et però io lo honoro et acchareço in modo luy vuol” Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 225. 163 “Lorenço de’ Medici ha mandato al conte de Matalone 6 figure antique de bronço; et cum simel et altri meçi cercha fare el fatto suo, et vienli fatto.” Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 381, Letter 181, from 4-5 October 1472.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 104 that Diomede had received from Lorenzo.164 Whether these were actual gifts or items purchased through Lorenzo it is unclear, but as it has been noted many rulers across Italy were seeking to obtain the antiquities from Paul II. The fact that

Diomede got his hands on a few items through Lorenzo demonstrates that

Lorenzo had privileged Diomede.

Diomede Carafa was astute in recognising the importance of enmeshing his personal reputation with that of Aragonese hegemony and how the nurturing of culture could become a political and social tool. Similarly, as Melissa Bullard has observed, Lorenzo de Medici’s ability to understand the political potential of his well-crafted image is reflected in his ability to weld his ‘personal reputation’ with

Florence, but also in his knowledge of ‘how culture and its patronage could be potent instruments of prestige and power’.165 Both Diomede and Lorenzo had to walk a fine line in order not to overstep their preconceived role within politics.

Lorenzo was fully aware of his precarious place within a republic while still attempting to formulate his political and economic leadership through discreet means. Diomede comprehended the necessity of stressing his loyalty to the crown, yet sought political and economic power through his role as political mediator, landowner, humanist, and collector. In his Memoriali, Carafa is careful to emphasise the need of the courtier to exhibit virtue by pleasing his Signore and to let go of any aspirations for political power, while he also warns against excessive

164 Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 399, Letter 188 17 October 1472. 165 Melissa Meriam Bullard, 'Lorenzo de' Medici: Anxiety, Image Making, and Political Reality in the Renaissance', in Lorenzo de' Medici. Studi, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, Florence, 1992, 9-12.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 105 riches and prodigality.166 It seems Carafa’s writings were an attempt not only to provide recommendations for the present court and for future generations, but also acted as a foil to any criticisms there may have been about his own political ambitions and excessive expenditure on his palace. Lorenzo and Diomede were thus both astute observers of social decorum and understood the ways in which political power was often about acting as arbiters and negotiators. Lorenzo and

Diomede’s understanding of the relationship between politics and culture contributed to their success. Studying the exchange of objects, such as the horse’s head, thus illuminates the interdependencies between the political and the material.

IV. The Significance of the Equine: Palii, Barberi, and Gift horses

Why a horse and what did the equine mean for fifteenth-century viewers?

By understanding the significance of horses in the late Quattrocento, we might come to a better appreciation of the importance of the object’s iconography.

Horses were a common gift between rulers of state and horseracing was a popular social activity in the Quattrocento. Indeed, as Michael Mallett has observed, horses “represented something more than sport or recreation: they provided political and social prestige.”167 The importance of horses should be viewed within three main activities: the giving and loaning of horses between rulers and important figures, which constituted diplomatic relations and political manoeuvring; the actual horseraces or palii, which were connected to a city’s

166 Giuliana Vitale, "Modelli culturali nobiliari a Napoli tra Quattro e Cinquecento," Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane 105 (1987): 89. 167 Michael Mallett, "Horse-Racing and Politics in Lorenzo's Florence," in Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics, ed. Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann (London: Warburg Institute, 1996), 257.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 106 identity, and often its patron saint; and the participation in the actual event of the horseracing, either as observer, contestant, or as owner of a racehorse.

Horses, in particular, provided a range of ways to signify prestige and social standing. To purchase and breed horses one had to have access to a substantial amount of funds. In addition, one had to have the knowledge about horses as there were many types of breeds, some special to jousting, others more suitable to hunting and riding.168 The Gonzaga were famous for their stables;169 Lorenzo de’

Medici became increasingly interested in purchasing and maintaining horses as well as partaking in tournaments;170 Ferrante was also renowned for his

“collection” of horses and indeed, is also recorded commissioning books on medicine for horses;171 but many leading members of the Italian elite across Italy all owned or took interest in horses, horseracing, and the gifting of horses.172 King

Ferrante played a key role in the exchange of horses with individuals across Italy and abroad. In 1460 Ferrante is recorded sending a horse to the pope;173 in 1471

Ferrante sent four great corseri to the Duke of Modena complete with all their apparel and cloth;174 in 1472 he sent two horses to the Duke of Milan;175 in 1473

168 Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 255. 169 Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 255. 170 Hook, Lorenzo, 17 and 34-5. 171 On 3 March 1474, Neapolitan court records show a payment to a Giovanni Marco for three books on the medicine of falcons, of men, and of horses. Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 397. On 17 November 1492 the court records note a payment to “Antonio Scariglia di Napoli”, a miniaturist for work on a “libretto di s[ua] m[aesta] de medicine de cavallj.” Nicola Barone, "Le Cedole di Tesoreria dell'Archivio di Stato di Napoli dall'anno 1460 al 1504," Archivio storico per le province napoletane x (1885): 20. 172 Mallett, "Horse-Racing." Also see Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, ed. R. Fubini, vol. V (Florence: Giunti, 1977), Introduction to letter 467, page 34-7. 173 Payment recorded 1 May 1460, Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 12. 174 “Questo s[igno]re Re ha mandato a donare alo Ill[ustrissimo] ducha de Modena quarto belli corseri co[n] le selle coperte de brochato doro et con li fornim[en]ti simili forniti dargento sopradorato lavorati molto dignam[en]te.” ASMI SPE 220. 6, 1471 10 June, Giovanni Andrea to Galeazo Maria Duke of Milan

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 107 he gave horses to the individuals involved in the bridal party of his daughter,

Eleonora d’Aragona, including Sigismondo and Alberto d’Este.176 Many horses were exchanged between the Gonzaga and Ferrante,177 and in 1492 Francesco

Gonzaga requested a particular horse from Ferrante to use for a giostra in

Milan.178 Horses were also a common gift between foreign powers, and were continually exchanged between Naples and France and Naples and Turkey—two powers who were constant threats to the Neapolitan kingdom.179 King Ferrante also commonly gave a horse and a gold chain to ambassadors upon their departure from Naples.180 The gift of horses carried political import, often when relations were unsteady or undetermined. For instance, during the hostile relations between

Naples and Milan in 1471, Cagnola, the Milanese ambassador, was given the

175 “hogi la P[refa]ta M[aes]ta me ha facti vedere li duy cavalli ch[e]l manda a v.s. [Duke of Milan] a dirvi el vero s[igno]re sonno duy nobilissimi e bellissimi corseri e giurame essa M[aes]ta che] poyche glie Re non ussirono del regno duy megliori corseri.” ASMI SPE 223, Letter 147, 19 November 1472, Francesco Maleta to the Duke of Milan. 176 “La M[aes]ta del Re ha donate ad M Sigismondo e M/ Alb[er]to otto corseri cum le barde dorati d[el]le piu belle se facino ad Napoli. Vinti altri cavalli cu[m] le selle solam[em]te ha distribuita fra questi gentilhoi[mini] principali...” Francesco Maleta to Galeazzo Sforza, ASMI SPE 224. 2, 23 May 1473. 177 In 1467 Ferrante wrote to Ludovico Gonzaga about a horse that Ludovico particularly liked, which the king had bought for Ludovico, ASMA AG 802 letter of 23 February 1467. In November 1478 Ferrante sent two more horses to Mantua, to Federico Gonzaga, ASMA AG 802, letter of 28 November 1478, Ferrante to Federico Gonzaga. On 24 January 1482 Georgio Brongoli reported that Ferrante was giving a “corsero” and a “zanetto” to Francesco Gonzaga, see letter of 24 January 1482, Georgio Brongoli to Francesco Gonzaga, ASMA AG 806. 178 Letter of 25 July 1492, Ferrante to Francesco Gonzaga, ASMA AG 802. 179 For example Ferrante gave horses to the ambassador of the King of Datia in April 1474 (ASMI SPE 225); he gave a horse to the ambassador of France on 25 March 1474 (ASMI SPE 227); the Hungarian ambassadors are given horses in 1475 (ASMI SPE 227); in March 1467 and in April 1482 the ambassador of the Turk gave horses to Ferrante as gifts from the Sultan (ASMA AG 805 and ASMI SPE 241, respectively); gifts from the French ambassador in November 1484 include horses (ASMI SPE 244) and upon the French ambassador’s departure he is also presented with horses and mules in January 1485 (ASMI SPE 245). 180 In 1472 Ferrante gave a horse and some silver to Carlino Cammastro, a Milanese ambassador to Naples (ASMI SPE 221); in 1475 he provided the Hungarian ambassadors with cloth and horses (ASMI SPE 227) and in February and March 1482 the Milanese and Florentine ambassadors received horses from the king (ASMI SPE 237 and 238).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 108 unpleasant role of intermediary between Galeazzo and Ferrante.181 Cagnola was embarrassed about Galeazzo’s reputation in Naples, and Galeazzo, sensing

Cagnola’s timidity, recalled him for being too gentle with the Neapolitan court.182

Upon his departure, Ferrante, who understood Cagnola’s awkward position, awarded the ambassador with a horse and a gold chain.183

Horses were also deemed to be a suitable gift for Ferrante. When Francesco

Maleta, the Milanese ambassador in Naples, was asked by the Duke of Milan in

1474 what an appropriate gift for the king would be, he recommended sending horses.184 In particular, Maleta provides three suggestions that would be suitable as a gift from “principe ad principe”: his first suggestion is two or three horses; the second, a pair of beautiful stallions; and his third suggestion, some falcons with their own special cage.185 The relations between the papacy and the

Kingdom of Naples were constituted by the gift of a horse. Tribute payments to the papacy were always accompanied by the present of a white riding horse from the rulers of Naples, dating back to the times of the Angevin monarchy.186 During unstable relations with the papacy, Paul II demanded the tribute money from

Ferrante, but the king only sent the token white horse, which did not satisfy Paul

II, and as an act of breaching social and diplomatic decorum, he sent back the horse to Ferrante.187

181 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 110-11. 182 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 110. 183 Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 111. 184 A copy of the letter sent by the Duke of Milan requesting recommendations for suitable gifts can be found in ASMI SPE 226 (Letter number 107 from 14 November 1474, from the Duke to Francesco Maleta). 185 ASMI SPE 226. 100 from 29 November 1474. 186 Bentley, Politics and Culture, 28. 187 Bentley, Politics and Culture, 28.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 109

The exchange of horses between Ferrante and Lorenzo de’ Medici allows us to see how political relations between these two individuals were embroiled in the gifting of horses. Mallett has demonstrated that gifts and loans of barberi were part of patronage and gift-giving networks and that Lorenzo’s dependence on horses from Ferrante in the early stages of their relations should be seen as a sign of a broader dependence on Naples.188 At the end of July 1470 when relations between Milan, Florence, and Naples were most unstable, Lorenzo had Otto

Niccolini look into procuring four horses from Sicily and the king became involved, offering two horses to Lorenzo as gifts.189 More horses were exchanged between Lorenzo and Ferrante in 1477 and again in April 1480 when six corsieri and a mule arrived in Florence as a gift from Ferrante.190 As Judith Hook has noted, the exchange of horses played a large role in diplomatic manoeuvring so that in 1477, when relations between Ferrante and Lorenzo were deteriorating,

Lorenzo gave the king two stallions, il Sardo and il Gentile.191 It was also in 1477, preceding the Pazzi Conspiracy, when threats to Lorenzo’s life were already circulating in rumours and his relationship with King Ferrante was particularly unstable, that Ferrante opened up his stables for Lorenzo’s servant to select a pair of jousting horses to be borrowed for a tournament in Florence. Lorenzo then returned the favour by the gift of a mare to the king.192 In 1482 Lorenzo received the gift of a Turkish war horse sent by Ferrante from the spoils taken after the

188 Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 260-1. 189 Medici, Lettere I, 179. 190 Medici, Lettere V, 35; André Rochon, La jeunesse de Laurent de Médicis (1449-1478) (Paris: Société d'édition 'Les Belles Lettres', 1963), 263-4; Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 258. 191 Hook, Lorenzo, 34. Medici, Lettere V, 35. 192 Hook, Lorenzo, 92.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 110 recapture of Otranto.193 In light of the political situation and in conjunction with a letter from Diomede to Lorenzo this is particularly noteworthy.

In 1481 Ferrante sought aid from Lorenzo in evicting the Turks from

Otranto, relying heavily on Lorenzo for financial assistance.194 In return, Ferrante offered the restitution of lands occupied by the Sienese that had been controlled by Naples in the Pazzi war of 1478-80.195 As Butters has noted, it was the invasion of the Turks in Otranto that forced the Duke of Calabria to leave Siena, where he had been enjoying a commanding political role.196 Relations between

Lorenzo and Ferrante have been traditionally assumed to be good in the early

1480s, but Moores, among others, have recently shown that the restitution of the

Sienese territories took longer than expected.197 A letter from Diomede to

Lorenzo demonstrates that the lands were only being slowly reacquired after much deliberating and general hostility. The letter dates from 9 January 1482 and

Diomede is particularly offended by Lorenzo’s aggressiveness in the matter, rebuking Lorenzo for his treatment of Ferrante.198 With this in mind, Ferrante’s gift of the Turkish war horse in 1482 could signal larger political and social tensions, but is also indicative of the ways in which horses not only signified relations, but were used in constituting political dependencies. Furthermore, horses could be used as a testing ground for understanding the nature of political

193 Hook, Lorenzo, 34. 194 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 11. 195 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 11. 196 Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," 147. 197 Pontieri stresses that relations were good during this time, Ernesto Pontieri, "La dinastia Aragonese di Napoli e la casa de' Medici in Firenze," Archivio storico per le province napoletane 26 (1940): 280. Butters and Moores have stressed the fraught nature of the relations, Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," 147; Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 11-2. 198 Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 12 and 22-3, doc VII.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 111 relations. For instance, Hook suggests that Lorenzo’s request in 1478 for a loan of jousting horses to the rulers of Piombino and Forli had little to do with the actual need of horses, but were rather a criterion for investigating their political attitude toward the Medici and Florence, significantly during the hostilities that followed the Pazzi Conspiracy.199

The gift of horses is also connected to the public horse race known as the palio. The palio derives its name from the pall or embroidered cloth that was awarded to the winner of the horse race.200 The palio should be seen in connection to public rituals, so often enacted in the early modern period, where civic identity and personal prestige are confronted and negotiated. Prestige and honour could be bestowed in many ways. A rider who successfully won a race would have the honour of being the winner, but likewise, the owner of the horse would be similarly honoured. In addition, it was prestigious to have one’s horse partake in another city’s palio, and would thus establish one’s social reputation in another city. The palio however was also a site of political tensions and sometimes revealed latent hostilities.

One particularly instructive example of the political dimension of horseracing is the palio of Siena in the 1480s. Siena occupied an uncertain position between various ruling powers, and was therefore a crucial race for foreign leaders to compete in.201 Lorenzo was thus very eager to participate in the

Assumption palio in August 1480 in Siena, where Alfonso d’Aragona had profited from a pro-Neapolitan coup in April of that year and where the fate of the

199 Hook, Lorenzo, 35. 200 Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 254. 201 Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 259.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 112 ceded Florentine lands was to be decided. In addition, those who partook in organising the race were influential diplomatic figures.202 Competing in the palio was a way for Lorenzo to re-establish himself in the city. It appears that Lorenzo’s horses were not successful that year,203 but what becomes clear is that the palio was often connected to politically-heightened moments and made apparent socio- political relationships.

The exchange of horses as gifts or loans thus constituted political and social networks between influential individuals. Appadurai has examined how the kula system of the Western Pacific—the exchange of shells between powerful men— belongs to a paradigm that he titles “tournaments of value.”204 Tournaments of value are “periodic events” where participation is usually restricted to those in positions of privilege and usually constitute a form of contest or assertion of prestige, power, and even cultural capital.205 Appadurai thus uses the term to draw a comparison between kula exchange and Baudrillard’s understanding of the art auction, which “like the fête or the game, institutes a concrete community of exchange among peers.”206

202 Mallett, "Horse-Racing," 258; Medici, Lettere V, 36-8. 203 Medici, Lettere V, 39. 204 Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 21. The kula system of the Western Pacific involves the exchange of kula shells between powerful men. The term “keda” is used to describe the route or path that the kula shells take, but it also refers to the wealth, power, and prestige that are attached to these forms of exchange. It is the very complex relationship between subjects and objects, that is, between people and things that is illuminated by the exchange of kula shells. Anthropologists who have studied this phenomenon note that it is not only the men who define the shell value, but the shells also define the value of men, thus indicating that both shells and men are mutual agents in defining one another’s value. This particular reciprocity of value is defined by Nancy Munn, quoted in Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 20. The active agency of things is effectively argued by Mauss. For his discussion of the kula, see Mauss, The Gift, 20-5. 205 Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 21. 206 Baudrillard quoted in Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 21.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 113

Gifthorses and horseracing should be categorised as tournaments of value, as should the gifting and displaying of antiquities during the same period, since both activities constitute certain forms of association, prestige, power, and knowledge. Within the exchange of kula shells, “keda” is a term used to define both the movement of the shells and their social function. Keda, for Appadurai,

“is thus a polysemic concept, in which the circulation of objects, the making of memories and reputations, and the pursuit of social distinction through strategies of partnership all come together.”207 The circulation of things between courts created memories, social distinction, and instituted strategic alliances. The gift of the horse’s head, then, should be seen within these tournaments of value, but unlike kula shells, the horse’s head is a specific rather than a general object. The value of the horse’s head lies not only in the fact that it was an object that partook in symbolic exchanges, but that it was a representation of a symbolic object. The placement of the head in the Carafa courtyard became a mnemonic device, a reminder of the exchange between Diomede and Lorenzo, and alluded in its iconography to the exchange of live horses.

The protome of the equine as a gift from Lorenzo to Diomede thus was interlinked with notions of the equestrian associated with gifthorses, horseracing, and political prestige and alliances. The symbol of the horse had a particular identity with Naples, as already mentioned, it was imbricated in the history of the city connected to the Virgilian equestrian statue and the tyrannical bridling of

Corrado; it was connected to the market of horses as Naples was a trade route from North Africa and the East; it was adopted as insignia for two elite seggi; but

207 Underline, my emphasis. Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 18.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 114 it also had a connection to Neapolitan coinage. As an emblem of the city, the horse featured prominently on Neapolitan coins in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but already in the Roman period, a horse’s head was featured on coins in the Campania region (Figure 11).208 In February 1472 Ferrante decided to produce new coinage, which became commonly called “cavalli,” named after the horse depicted on the reverse, with the portrait of Ferrante on the front (Figure

12).209 The equine depicted on the coin was an unreined horse, with the motto

EQUITAS REGNI, stressing Ferrante’s just rule, but also alluding to the history of the horse that was bridled by Corrado’s tyranny. 210 Ferrante’s own succession to the throne had been threatened by the barons’ revolt and alliance with the

Angevins, which culminated in the Aragonese victory at the Battle of Ischia in

1465.211 The Baron’s Revolt of 1485-7 was also blamed on Ferrante and his son

Alfonso’s tyrannical policies.212 The coin was thus a symbol of Aragonese legitimation linking their rule to the history of the city, and by depicting a reinless horse, Ferrante was suggesting that his rule provided freedom to the people, and subverted any tyrannical undercurrents.

But once again, Ferrante’s policies and power assertion do not stray far from Carafa’s own legitimation of power. What is perhaps most telling is a letter written by Ferrante to the officials of the royal camera from 16 February 1472,

208 Mario Rasile, I 'cavalli' delle zecche napoletane nel periodo Aragonese. (Gaeta: Presso la Poligrafica, 1980), 7; Borrelli, "Un dono," 235-6. The date of the Roman coin is debatable see Michael H Crawford, Coinage and Money Under the Roman Republic. Italy and the Mediterranean Economy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 26-30 and 8-9 and 106, Figure 33. 209 It was also referred to as “cavalluzzo”, “calaluzzo”, “cavallirazzo” or “callo.” Rasile, Cavalli, 7. 210 Hersey, "Arch of Alfonso," 20 and 3, n. 14. 211 Bentley, Politics and Culture, 24-5. 212 Bentley, Politics and Culture, 29-33.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 115 indicating that it was Diomede Carafa who had suggested depicting the horse on the reverse of the coin.213 We know that Diomede already had the bronze horse’s head in place in his courtyard by July 1471, so he must have suggested to Ferrante soon afterwards that the equestrian symbol would be a suitable image for the coin.

Already an emblem for the two prominent seggi of Naples, and specifically the

Seggio of Nido, in which Diomede’s palace was erected, his suggestion to put the equine on the back of the new Neapolitan mint aligned Diomede, his family, and his palazzo with the institution of the coin. Although horses were not an uncommon motif in the early modern period, featuring prominently in equestrian statue iconography and also often on coins and medals, Carafa’s suggestion can still be seen as closely tied with the horse’s head given by Lorenzo. It should be noted that the horse featured on the back of Ferrante’s coin is a full body of a horse and not a fragmentary head; any link to Carafa is thus not overt. We also do not know whether Carafa’s suggestion specified a full bodied horse or just the bust. The depiction of a bust of a horse, however, had already been depicted on a medal for Francesco Sforza by Pisanello.214 With the fraught political situation in the early 1470s, Naples may not have wanted to make any reference to the

Sforza’s medal or assume any alliances with the Sforzas, which may have influenced the decision to steer away from depicting only the horse’s head on the coin.

213 Rasile, Cavalli, 7. 214 Francesco Sforza’s medal by Pisanello from 1441, had his portrait on the front, and on the reverse was an image of a horse’s head with no bridle, see George Francis Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance Before Cellini (London: British Museum, 1930), 8, number 23.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 116

As the horse on the coin referenced the city’s history and Aragonese rule, it might have also reminded viewers of the new horse’s head prominently displayed in Carafa’s courtyard. Rather than viewing the horse on the coin as an explicit reference to Carafa, then, it should be seen as contributing to concepts of the equine and how Carafa’s horse’s head was perceived within the larger symbolism of the equestrian. The naming of the coin as “cavalli” zoomorphicised a monetary value, providing a further connection between the equestrian symbol and signs of wealth and prestige. Aragonese legitimacy, Neapolitan identity, and Diomede’s own political and social prestige, thus are all associated with the symbol of the equine. My archival research detailing the exchange of horses between important political figures highlights the ways in which the equestrian iconography of the horse’s head, and its role in gift exchange between Lorenzo and Diomede, would have been closely connected to the social and political associations of the equine.

V. The Horse’s Head and The Culture of Collecting

Beyond the political, economic, and diplomatic aspects of the gift of the horse’s head, the object should also be understood within the sphere of culture, which comes with its own set of politics. Neither Diomede nor Lorenzo were heads of state. They were important diplomatic players in the games of peninsular politics, but both obtained their powerful roles through careful manoeuvring. As has been shown, it was through the delicate giving or accepting of gifts, and the amicizie that were formed through letter-writing and gift-giving that gained them access to their political prestige and power. But the gifts chosen and the timing of their proffering was a learned skill and has very much to do with the culture of

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 117 collecting and display, intrinsically linked to the politics of knowledge.215 The gift of the horse’s head and the procurement of other antiquities for Diomede, are clear indications that Lorenzo knew what would be suitable for an individual like

Carafa. Instead of giving Diomede a live horse, which may have underlined his military and cavalleresque qualities, Lorenzo chose to give a bronze horse’s head, stressing Diomede’s knowledge of antiquities and his reputation as a collector, yet still alluding to the valour and prestige embodied in the equine.

Diomede’s thank-you letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici clearly states the prestige bestowed by the gift of the horse’s head, as well as Carafa’s understanding of the need to publicly display the statue. Diomede states in the letter that he has placed it well in his house, whereby it can be viewed from every angle. He goes on to note that not only will its placement provide continual memory of Lorenzo de’ Medici to Carafa, but to Carafa’s sons, and that they will always be obliged to Lorenzo for his love shown through such a gift, which is an

“ornamento alla dicta casa.”216

Diomede’s palace was a form of museum: ancient busts were built into the exterior walls; spoliated columns supported the cortile; busts of pagan emperors, ancient sculpture, epigraphs, and the famous horse’s head occupied prominent places in the courtyard; and sculpture, medals, modern art objects and paintings

215 For the politics of knowledge around the social life of things see Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 41-56. 216 “ho recevuto la testa del cavallo la Signoria Vostra s’è dignata mandareme, de che ne resto tanto contento quanto de cosa havesse desiderato et re[n]gracione Vostra Signoria infinite volte sì per essere stato dono digno como per haverlo da la Signoria Vostra. Avisandola ll’ò ben locato in la mia casa, che se vede da omne [sic] canto, certificadove che non solo de Vostra Signoria ad me ne starà memoria ma ad mei fillioli, i quali di continuo haveranno la Signoria Vostra in observanciai et serannoli obligati, extimando l’amore quella ha mostrato in voolere [sic=volere] comparere con tale dono et ornamento alla dicta casa....” Quoted in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 283, Doc 10.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 118 filled the interior rooms and studiolo.217 The collection was discussed, as was the horse’s head, throughout the centuries, being compared by Johann Fichard in

1536 to one of the most important early collections in Rome, that of the Palazzo della Valle.218 While Diomede’s collection was made up of many different items he received as gifts, many of the antiquities were pillaged from the Temple of

Neptune in Pozzuoli, currently part of the church of San Francesco.219 Indeed,

Diomede founded the diocese of San Francesco and acquired the lands in 1472 through the intercession of his cousin Tommaso Carafa, who was the archbishop of Pozzuoli, and thus found many antiquities on his property.220 Pozzuoli was a well-frequented destination with the Aragonese and nobility, not only for its restorative baths, but also as a site to visit antiquities and ruins.221 The Neapolitan palace thus became a depository for Carafa’s collections, the seat of the lineage, and also a political locus, containing the office of the scrivano di razione. It thus acted as a material signifier of the Carafa lineage, but also spoke to Carafa’s political allegiance to the Aragonese.222 Carafa had the reputation of a staunch supporter of the Aragonese, but this reputation was reiterated, if not largely created, by Diomede himself. The inscription on the cornice of the entrance portal

217 For a recent study of Diomede Carafa’s collection see de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 95-127; Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, 110-18. 218 Clarke, Roman House, 226. 219 de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 102. 220 de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 102. 221 For instance in October 1489, artists are paid by the Duke of Calabria to visit Pozzuoli to look at the antiquities there. Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 6. In 1466 Ippolita writes to her mother, Bianca Maria, about going to Pozzuoli for the baths and to look at antiquities there, ASMI SPE 215. 101, 6 January 1466. “Domane el mio ill[ustrissi]mo consorte me mena a pozolo et a caccia et avedere quelli bagni et quelle antiquitade inseme...” 222 The Carafa Palace and Diomede’s collection as a material embodiment of Carafa’s political and familial aspirations was the study of an assessed essay I wrote during my Masters at the Courtauld Institute of Art. I am particularly grateful to Patricia Rubin and Caroline Elam for their insights and advice on the subject.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 119 to Carafa’s palazzo declares his wish to honour Ferrante and his patria, followed by the title of Count of Maddaloni.223 In addition to other inscriptions, the palace is adorned with the Carafa arms and imprese as well as the Aragonese arms and

Ferrante’s own devices on the façade, courtyard, and doors.224

Many recent studies on early modern culture and collecting practices have shown that collecting and the spaces of collections have links to larger epistemological discourses and the construction of knowledge.225 It is through the ordering of things and the accumulation of artefacts wrought from diverse materials in collections, that the past is manipulated and knowledge is constructed, understood, and legitimated. It was in this vein that heads of state, popes, and prominent families collected and celebrated their collections. The slippery nature of some objects—whether they were truly ancient or all’antica— only added to the display of connoisseurship: active engagement with the object prompted efforts to discern its true provenance.226 Collections were also used to

223 IN ONOREM OPTIMI REGIS FERDINANDI ET SPLEDOREM NOBILISSIMAE PATRIAE DIOMEDES CARAFA COMES MATALONE MCCCCLXVI, Clarke, Roman House, 243; Roberto Pane, Architettura del rinascimento in Napoli (Naples: E.P.S.A., 1937), 107; de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 48-9. Another inscription in the courtyard, on the pedestal of a spoliated column, claims that Carafa founded the “building in praise of his king and as an ornament to his fatherland; perhaps there might be a more suitable larger site in this city but he thought it shameful to forsake his ancestors.” Clarke, Roman House, 36-7; de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 48-9. 224 A large marble slab with Ferrante’s stemma with the inscription FIDELITAS ET AMOR is still visible today in the centre wall of the courtyard. This inscription is also repeated in the frontispiece in two of Diomede’s memoriali written for Beatrice and Eleonora d’Aragona (Figure 57), de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 48. The original doors are still used, with the insignia of the Carafa along with Ferrante’s, carved onto the front panels, so that when the doors were open Ferrante’s stemma would have been visible from the street, along with the other antiquities, and when they were closed, the portal inscription and the carved insignia would be clearly visible as a symbol of Carafa’s allegiance to the king. 225 Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory; Findlen, "Possessing the Past."; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970); Pomian, Collectionneurs; Pomian, Collectors. 226 For a useful study on antiquities and their reception in the early modern period, see Barkan, Unearthing the Past.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 120 create one’s identity through the objects collected, possessed, and celebrated and they could serve certain political or social goals. The horse’s head thus provided a perfect gift: a colossal fragmented sculpture given from collector to collector. The sculpture itself provides a venue for the legitimation and testing of knowledge

(today as in the fifteenth century), in discerning whether it is an antiquity or an all’antica work.

The sheer size of the horse must also be taken into account as part of its material value as a gift and then as a collector’s item. It is not a small intimate cameo or even a miniature bronze equestrian statue, which would be found in the studiolo or in more interior spaces of the palazzo. The size of the horse and its placement within the courtyard of the Palazzo Carafa turns a private statue into a public monument, an object whose visibility and status generates discussion and forms of association. The gift of the horse’s head itself thus becomes a public statement, a gift that fosters new possibilities for viewership and engagement.

Anonymous viewers would have obtained glimpses of the statue through the open doors of the palazzo, whether they were participating in a passegiata down the street or whether they were visitors who had come to see the statue specifically.

Political leaders, diplomats, ambassadors, members of the court, and friends of the

Carafa family would have had a closer engagement with the statue. Even if they merely passed the bust on their way into the inner sanctum of the Palazzo Carafa, its colossal form and its prominent placement would have commanded an engagement with it. The numerous sources that talk about the statue lead me to believe that many would have had a significant connection with the horse’s head.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 121

It solicited, as it still solicits today, much attention and interest, taking an identity of its own, separate from Carafa, and yet always somehow connected to him.

VI. The Agency of the Thing Given: Conclusion

Returning to the question posed by Mauss concerning the force of the thing given, I would like to reiterate that the horse’s head should be seen as an active player in gift exchange, which is undoubtedly tied to its larger role in political partnerships. The bronze statue was not only a material signifier of political relations, it created memories of association and partnership. Ronald Weissman has observed that during the early modern period individuals sought to engage with family, friends, or patronage networks, and when this was unobtainable, one looked to convert “all necessary contacts with strangers into ties of obligation, gratitude, and reciprocity.”227 The case of the horse’s head demonstrates how ties of obligation and reciprocity were constituted by material things, in this instance, a gift. This particular gift can be seen as a diplomatic manoeuvre by Lorenzo, but it constituted a series of political dependencies, obligations, and reciprocities.

Pomian has examined the ways cultures single out certain things as

“sémiophores”—objects which are harbourers of meaning and signification.228

Pomian distinguishes between the visible and the invisible, that is to say, between objects that are useful or utilitarian (objets utiles) and those that are meaningful, outside utility (sémiophores, “objects qui n’on point d’utilité”).229 For Pomian it is the meaningfulness of objects that is the basis for their exchange value for

227 Ronald Weissman, "Taking Patronage Seriously: Mediterranean Values and Renaissance Society," in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 44. 228 Pomian, Collectionneurs, 12-3 and more in depth in his section on ‘Les collections: les visible et l’invisible’ 30-53. 229 Pomian, Collectionneurs, 42.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 122 collecting, and their preciousness is due to the fact that they represent the invisible, the symbolic.230 This idea of sémiophores and its connection with the invisible is something I have attempted to get at. The meaningfulness of the horse’s head operates on multiple levels. It is not only that there is an interestedness in the object; that is, it is not only that certain historical individuals are interested in, and engaged with the horse’s head, but there is an interestedness inherent in the object itself. In short, the thing becomes something that has interest, that has agency. As in the circulation of kula shells, it is not only the people that give the thing value, but the thing itself which brings value and prestige to the giver and receiver. Its agency is bound to its symbolic value, which is what makes it a sémiophore. It is here that my use of Pomian’s terms “useful” and “meaningful” must be truly understood as there is potential for confusion. The value of the sémiophore is linked to the thing’s meaningfulness (symbolic value) rather than an overt usefulness (utilitarian value). While the opposition of the sémiophore with the utilitarian object certainly resonates with distinctions made between gift and commodity exchange, I am hesitant to stress the gift/commodity polarity. As it will become evident in the proceeding chapter, objects at the end of the fifteenth century often occupied a position that can be characterised both as commodity and sémiophore. My aim in this chapter is to demonstrate why certain objects get singled out at particular times, and how they become culturally relevant. In this case, why a bronze fragmented statue in the form of a bust of a horse is deemed an appropriate diplomatic gift between two individuals heavily involved in politics on the Italian peninsula. Why is that specific horse

230 Pomian, Collectionneurs, 43.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 123 prominently displayed in that palace courtyard, and why does it elicit so much discussion? It is because certain objects—in their iconography, their form, their provenance—are particularly salient, and can convey complex political and social messages. The enigmatic nature of the horse’s head—its uncertain provenance, its reference to a body of equestrian iconography, its fragmented form—makes the object particularly resonant.

Mauss has claimed “the thing given is not inert. It is alive and often personified.”231 For Mauss, interestedness is intrinsically linked to the notion of obligation: “obligation is expressed in myth and imagery, symbolically and collectively; it takes the form of interest in the objects exchanged” and the objects are never completely separated from those who exchange them.232 What I would like to stress in closing is that the exchange of objects is not only about things and not only about individuals, but it is about relations between people and things. It is about the obligation that a thing solicits, and the particular subject-object relations that get formed.

The horse’s head becomes a topos that gets taken up throughout the centuries. Given as a diplomatic gift, it defined the value of Lorenzo and Diomede on a variety of different levels. The horse’s head distinguished both Lorenzo and

Diomede as political arbitrators and astute diplomats; it established both men as collectors, antiquarians, and learned individuals in the circle of humanists; it pushed them into the circle of gift-giving rituals between heads of state;

231 Mauss, The Gift, 10. 232 Mauss, The Gift, 31.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 124 furthermore it connected the gift with the symbolism of the equine, linked to the prestation, giving, collecting, jousting, and racing of horses.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 125

Chapter 2. Bankers, Merchants, and Pawning: Practices and Circulation

I. Introduction

Benedetto [da Maiano], maestro of the lettuccio, left yesterday for Rome [...] on which he has already applied, in gilding, 300 pieces of gold, I don’t know if it will be enough [...] He assembled it this morning in the shop, without saying anything to me, and everyone leaving from the sermon saw it, and it was noted by everyone that you were making it for the King [of Naples]: if it was by your commission or by the order [of the king], I don’t believe anyone could guess. And it was esteemed a beautiful thing and was much admired by everyone who saw it, those [versed] in the arts as well as [regular] citizens. [Giovanni Bonsi] and [Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi] returned more than once to see it, because they really admired it; and those [familiar with the shop] say that these things are made to great perfection there, and all in all it was highly praised. Even if Pierfrancesco [de Medici]’s [lettuccio] cost 200 fiorini larghi and […] the cornice decoration on his is prettier, I don’t believe the body of it to be. -Marco Parenti in Florence to Filippo Strozzi in Naples, 12 April 14731

Marco Parenti’s commentary on the grand lettuccio (daybed) commissioned by Filippo Strozzi and sent as a gift to King Ferrante of Naples raises a number of issues in relation to the social exchanges and associations formed through the circulation of objects between Florence and Naples. Made in the workshop of the

1 “Benedetto, maestro del lettuccio, partì ieri per Roma [...] òvi già messo, a dorare, 300 pezi d’oro, non so se basteranno [...] Rizollo a queste mattine in bottega, sanza dirmi nulla, e all’uscire della predicha ognuno il vide, e è noto per tutto che tu l’ài fatto fare pe’ l Re: se è per sua comessione o per tuo ordine questo non credo che sia inteso. È tenuo da chi l’à veduto una bella cosa e piace molto a ognuno, chosì dell’arte chome cittadini .16. (Giovanni Bonsi) e .17. (Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi) vi ritornorono a vedere più d’una volta perché stimo piacessi assai; e chi è stato costà dice che queste cose sono fatte molto a punto [(a perfezione)] a coteste costà, e insomma è molto lodato. Nondimeno quello di Pierfranceso costò fiorini 200 larghi e credo anche che sia più bello el corniciame [(l’ornamento delle cornici)], ma il mezo [(il corpo)] non credo.” The text is from an edited version of Parenti’s letters; the translation is mine. The explanatory text in brackets, such as the names in cipher and the translation, are from the editor’s notes. Marco Parenti, Lettere, ed. Maria Marrese, vol. XXXVIII, Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento. Studi e testi (Florence: Olschki, 1996), 236-8, letter 92. Del Treppo’s and Borsook’s transcription vary slightly as they do not recognise that ‘16’ and ‘17’ are ciphered names rather than the amount of people who viewed the lettuccio, see del Treppo, "Avventure," 488-9; Eve Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi," Antichità Viva 9, no. 3 (1970): 14, Appendix I.9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 126 da Maiano brothers in Florence, who were famous for their intarsia work across

Italy, displayed both in Florence and in Naples, the lettuccio attracted the attention of many, and indeed influenced a taste for lettucci and for the work of the da Maiano brothers in Naples. The especially large form of the lettuccio and its function as a daybed asked viewers to engage with it in a particular way, which emphasises the need to pay specific attention to the forms, materials, and functions of objects. Indeed, as I argued in the previous chapter, it is often something in the thing itself—its material, its form, its value—which is the cause of its movement, and such trajectories often illuminate the object’s political and social potential.2

This chapter examines the practices of merchant-banking through pawning, credit, and mercantile networks, which facilitated the circulation of objects, causing objects to change hands constantly, and to come into contact with a wide range of individuals, a process through which objects accrued histories. Gems, jewellery, and antique hardstones were sought after, not only for their material or artistic qualities, but also for their histories, their provenances, and their previous illustrious owners. Used as collateral, many objects could be pawned or given as credit, but unlike money, objects were, and are, absorbent of meaning and memories, thus not only forging bonds between those who come in contact with them, but also bringing about hostilities and complications. These objects also circulated in visual form through replication across media from architectural medallions to manuscript illumination. This circulation across space provided the

2 For the correlation between the trajectories of objects and their social and political potential, see Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 127 basis for further representations creating a field of visual citations. This process not only circulated the fame of the objects, but such representations also served as a means to stabilise the loose and circulatory nature of the objects themselves, allowing individuals to own copies of these transient objects.

Much of the literature on merchants and banking in the early modern period has been examined in terms of economics, providing a quantitative analysis of items, prices, supply, and demand.3 Other studies have looked at the cultural aspects of merchant families, such as the famous Florentine merchant-banking houses, concentrating on cultural products in terms of family chapels and artistic patronage.4 More recent studies, notably work by Lisa Jardine and Evelyn Welch,

3 Michele Cassandro, "Affari e uomini d'affari fiorentini a Napoli sotto Ferrante I d'Aragona (1472-1495)," in Studi di storia economica Toscana nel medioevo e nel rinascimento. In memoria di Federigo Melis, Biblioteca del 'Bollettino Storico Pisano' (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1987); de Roover, Medici Bank; Raymond de Roover, Business, Banking, and Economic Thought in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Selected Studies of Raymond de Roover., ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago and London University of Chicago Press, 1974); Lorenzo Fabbri, Alleanza matrimoniale e patriziato nella Firenze del '400. Studio sulla famiglia Strozzi, vol. XII, Quaderni di Rinascimento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1991); Michele Jacoviello, "Affari di Medici e Strozzi nel regno di Napoli nella seconda metà del Quattrocento," Archivio storico italiano 144 (1986); Giuseppe Petralia, Banchieri e famiglie mercantili nel Mediterraneo aragonese. L'emigrazione dei pisani in Sicilia nel Quattrocento, vol. 34, Bolletino storico pisano (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1989); Alfonso Silvestri, "Sull'attività bancaria napoletana durante il periodo aragonese," Bollettino dell'Archivio Storico Banco di Napoli 6 (1953); Pasquale Sposato, "Attività commerciali degli Aragonesi nella seconda metà del quattrocento," in Studi in onore di Riccardo Filangieri (Naples: L'arte Tipografica, 1959); Sergio Tognetti, "Uno scambio diseguale. Aspetti dei rapporti commerciali tra Firenze e Napoli nella seconda metà del Quattrocento," Archivio storico italiano 158 (2000); Alfonso Leone, ed., Il giornale del Banco Strozzi di Napoli (1473), Fonti e documenti per la storia del Mezzogiorno d'Italia (Naples: Guida Editori, 1981). Mario del Treppo and Alfonso Leone, Amalfi Medioevale, ed. Luigi de Rosa, vol. 5, Biblioteca di studi meridionali (Naples: Giannini Editore, 1977). The first general studies on merchants in the Medieval period and Renaissance are Jacques le Goff, Marchands et banquiers du Moyen Age (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1966); Georges Yver, Le commerce et les marchands dans l'Italie méridionale au XIIIe et au XIVe siècle (Paris: Albert Fontemoing Éditeur, 1903). 4 For instance, the literature on Filippo Strozzi focuses mostly on his artistic patronage, rather than on his position as merchant-banker. John Russell Sale, "The Strozzi Chapel By Filippino Lippi in Santa Maria Novella" (PhD Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1976); Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi."; Eve Borsook, "Documents for Filippo Strozzi's Chapel in Santa Maria Novella and Other Related Papers-I," The Burlington Magazine 112, no. 812 (1970); F. W. Kent, "'Più superba de quella de Lorenzo': Courtly and Family Interest in the Building of Filippo Strozzi's Palace," Renaissance Quarterly 30, no. 3 (1977). Goldthwaite has studied Strozzi’s banking activities in relation to the wealth of the Strozzi

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 128 have broadened our understanding of the social aspects of consumerism, looking at what it meant to shop and purchase objects in the early modern period.5 In addition, there have been other larger studies that place the Renaissance at the beginning of the history of consumerism and materialism, in contrast to studies that situate the genesis of these trends in the Industrial Revolution.6 This body of literature discusses consumerism and commodities, but rarely gets to the actual materialities or the things themselves. This chapter focuses on particular objects and their material forms as well as the dynamic relations formed through the circulation of objects, facilitated by merchant-bankers in the purchasing of goods, the transferring of objects, the pawning of possessions, and the circulation of material things. All of these give rise to interests in particular materials, to the formulation of narratives about objects, and to new forms of association. In contrast to the colossal horse’s head which had a restricted circulation—from

Florence to Naples—the gems and jewellery examined in this chapter circulated much more frequently as currency and thus implicated a wider range of users and owners. The smaller nature of these objects also incited a more intimate family: Richard A. Goldthwaite, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence. A Study of Four Families (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 31-73. 5 Jardine’s work is useful conceptually, but has been critiqued for its historical inaccuracies. Jardine, Worldly Goods; Welch, Shopping. For the critique see, Martines, "Review," 193-203. Matchette’s recent work has also examined the social aspect of the second hand market, Matchette, "Credit and Credibility." Other studies include Lawrin Armstrong, Ivana Elbl, and Martin M. Elbl, eds., Money, Markets and Trade in Late Medieval Europe. Essays in Honour of John H.A. Munro (Boston and Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2007); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ed., Merchant Networks in the Early Modern World, vol. 8, An Expanding World. The European Impact on World History 1450-1800 (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996); Donatella Calabi and Stephen Turk Christensen, eds., Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700, vol. 2, Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Marcello Fantoni, Louisa C. Matthew, and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco, eds., The Art Market In Italy. 15th- 17th Centuries/ Il mercato dell'arte in Italia secc. XV-XVII (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2003); Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels. Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). 6 Findlen, "Possessing the Past," 83-114; Mukerji, Graven Images; Goldthwaite, "Empire of Things."; Goldthwaite, Wealth and Demand.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 129 attachment from the beholder, as they were held in the hand or worn on the body.

The lettuccio, while a larger object, is examined to demonstrate how Florentine merchant-bankers working with the Neapolitan court introduced new luxury goods, leading to the formulation of tastes and knowledge around certain types of objects.

The term “merchant-banker” is used to reference individuals who were involved in trade, but also in transactions dealing with large quantities of money.

In the period itself, “mercante” is often used to refer to those who are involved in transactions that we would associate today with banking. Frederic Lane and

Reinhold Mueller have distinguished three types of individuals dealing with money: international bankers, pawnbrokers, and local deposit bankers; however these can often be interchangeable, and in the case of Florentine bankers who worked with the Neapolitan court, this diversification was certainly the case.7

Furthermore, many firms acted in the capacity as merchants and sometimes this was their primary business, whereby credit, pawning, and loans were secondary, and often linked to their business transactions in goods.

This chapter begins with an introduction to the various individuals involved in the circulation of goods, focussing on three main merchant-banking firms—the

Strozzi, the Medici, and the Gondi—as well as their clients. I examine the wide range of individuals who came into contact with one another through the exchange of goods. The Strozzi bank is given particular attention and I examine a

7 Frederic C. Lane and Reinhold C. Mueller, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Coins and Moneys of Account, vol. I (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 69. De Roover has stressed the diversification of Italian merchant bankers, de Roover, Business, Banking, 210.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 130 list of gifts given from Filippo Strozzi to “friends” in Naples to show the variety of individuals the merchant-banker was in contact with, and how these gifts could solidify relations and give rise to new interests in different objects and artists. I then turn to the things themselves, to demonstrate how the particular shape, material, and function of an object results in different forms of engagement with, and interests in, that object. The commissioning of Florentine lettucci and their shipment to Naples involved a series of intermediaries, and also prompted competitive commissioning, leading to certain forms of knowledge around the consumption and commissioning of particular objects. The circulation of gems and their diverse owners allowed objects to accrue histories, and led to the formulation of narratives about specific gems. These histories contributed to their value, as did the dissemination of those gems through replications in visual imagery, from architectural medallions to manuscript illumination. Finally, the last section investigates the practices of pawning, and examines how the circulation of jewels could often complicate relationships as individuals competed against each other for these objects. The final section also looks at the ways in which individual jewels were invested with names, becoming personified and personalised through the process of naming.

II. Circuits and Networks: Merchants, Clients, and the Courts

The manufacture, purchasing, exchange, and circulation of luxury goods allowed for numerous individuals to come into contact with those goods. This section will outline the people involved in the circulation of objects, beginning with the merchant-bankers who facilitated the movement of objects, followed by a brief outline of their clients, which included dukes, duchesses, kings, queens,

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 131 counts, and barons. It is also important, however, to stress that besides the merchant-bankers and the consumers involved in the exchange of goods, a wide range of other individuals also participated in the circulation of objects.

Individuals hired by the court such as guardarobieri, secretaries, ambassadors, and servants were often involved in procuring, receiving, storing, or maintaining goods. There were often, too, a series of intermediaries in the process of moving objects, and this could include various individuals ranging from those who packed and shipped the goods, customs agents who recorded duties, to operators of ships carrying goods oversea or of carriages overland. Indeed, as Arnold Esch notes in his study on Roman custom registers from 1470-80, “the statues, inkwells, decorative vessels of precious metal, dainty candelabra and caskets that surrounded […] cardinals in their studies, or which are depicted in paintings of St.

Jerome or St. Augustine by Ghirlandaio, Carpaccio and Botticelli are the same objects that the customs official held in his hand, examined and evaluated, and upon which he conferred a name.”8 Furthermore, as is evident from the excerpt from Marco Parenti’s letter above, artists and the makers of the objects were, of course, also directly involved with the artefacts and sometimes even accompanied them. The type of engagement with the object depended upon its size, and its particular material form. In the case of the lettuccio, Benedetto da Maiano travelled to Naples to assemble the daybed for the king as will be elaborated upon below. There were also varied viewers, as Marco’s letter notes, sometimes

8 Arnold Esch, "Roman Customs Registers 1470-80: Items of Interest to Historians of Art and Material Culture," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42, no. 1 (1995): 87.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 132 anonymous passers-by during the production stage, or as invited guests or visitors at court, when the objects were on display and used.

Banchieri a Napoli: The Florentine Firms of the Strozzi, the Medici, and the Gondi

Trading if on a small scale, should be considered a vulgar thing; if, however, it is on a grand scale, importing many things from different parts of the world and distributing them without fraud to all, then it should not be despised. Indeed it seems worthy of praise, if those who undertake it, once they are satisfied with the fortunes they have made retire from the ports to their lands in the countryside.9

The presence of foreign merchants and bankers operating in the Neapolitan kingdom had been facilitated by King Alfonso I’s favourable policies towards foreign trade, and this practice was continued under his son and successor, King

Ferrante.10 Foreigners operating in business within the kingdom included

Florentines, Genoese, Pisans, Sienese, and Catalans, among others. Ferrante’s policies furthered Alfonso’s, as he continually sought to abolish export taxes on raw materials and granted individual tax exemptions to particular merchants.11

Ferrante’s trade strategies have been studied to reveal that they created a “scambio

9 Tomas Garzoni’s sixteenth-century rephrasing of Cicero. Quoted and translated in Welch, Shopping, 68. 10 For banking operations and foreign merchants in the Mezzogiorno see Mario del Treppo, "Il re e il banchiere. Strumenti e processi di razionalizzazione dello stato aragonese di Napoli," in Spazio, società, potere nell'Italia dei Comuni, ed. Gabriella Rossetti (Naples: Liguori Editore, 1986); del Treppo and Leone, Amalfi Medioevale; David Abulafia, "The Crown and the Economy under Ferrante I of Naples (1458-94)," in City and Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Essays Presented to Philip Jones, ed. Trevor Dean and Chris Wickham (London and Ronceverte: The Hambledon Press, 1990), 125-46; Silvestri, "Attività bancaria," 80-121; Sposato, "Attività commerciali."; Tognetti, "Uno scambio."; Bianca Mazzoleni, ed., Fonti Aragonesi. Fabrica del Castello di Cotrone (1485), Libro de Fuste di Policastro (1486), Registro IV della Tesoreria Generale (1487), Concessione di Sale ai Monasteri (1497-1498), vol. IX serie II, Testi e documenti di storia napoletana pubblicati dall'Accademia Pontaniana (Naples: Presso L'accademia, 1978). 11 Ferrante’s relatively tolerant policy towards the Jews and Jewish refugees has also been seen to be financially motivated as he saw them as potential financiers and expert artisans, particularly in the cloth industry, Abulafia, "Crown and Economy," 134-7.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 133 diseguale,” that is, an unequal exchange between north and south: the south exporting raw materials and foodstuff, while many textiles and luxury goods were imported into the kingdom from the north.12 What becomes evident is that

Ferrante’s economic dependencies did not steer clear from political dependencies, and that the circulation of goods and money constituted political, social, and economic relations. My study will concentrate on the role the circulation of objects played in exchanges between north and south and how these exchanges initiated, solidified, and complicated relationships. By understanding the ways objects partake in these social exchanges, we can also begin to comprehend how objects themselves can be sites of particular tensions and conflicts.

There were a number of companies engaged in trade and banking with the

Neapolitan court at the end of the fifteenth century, including the firms of the

Spannochi, Nacci (Medici), di Gaeta, Strozzi, and Gondi.13 While these companies served the crown, the records show that the Aragonese only constituted part of their clientele, which included merchants, barons, and the nobility.14 The circulation of goods and money, then, was not restricted to the king and his court, but involved a more open clientele and provided wider areas of exchange.15 This also suggests that the court should be viewed as an open system,

12 Tognetti, "Uno scambio."; Abulafia, "Crown and Economy," 126. 13 del Treppo, "Re e banchiere," 279. 14 The accounts of the Strozzi Bank in 1473 for instance shows that the state only formed 36.6% of its clientele, while merchants constituted 53%, citizens 5.10%, and ‘feudatari’, such as local lords and counts, comprising 5.3.%. del Treppo, "Re e banchiere," 248. 15 For a study on the court as a site of cultural exchange as an open rather than closed institution, see Nolde, Svalduz, and del Río Barredo, "City Courts," 254-85.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 134 and constantly in flux through the steady circulation of objects and people.16 The merchant-banking companies of the Strozzi, the Gondi, and the Medici will be my main focus here, as they offer a wide range of examples from which to draw.

Filippo Strozzi, an exile of Florence, became one of the main bankers serving the Neapolitan crown at the end of the Quattrocento.17 The Strozzi family had been exiled from Florence in the 1430s due to anti-Medicean sentiment stemming from one branch of the family.18 Upon the death of his father, Filippo

Strozzi, not yet thirteen, took on the responsibility of providing for his family and regaining the family’s prosperity. Filippo had family relations who were involved in business ventures internationally in Spain, Bruges, Rome, and Naples. In 1447

Filippo moved down to Naples from Spain to work with his cousin, Niccolo di

Leonardo Strozzi and in 1461, his brother Lorenzo joined him from Bruges.19

Although he continued to be an exile from Florence, Filippo became a correspondent for the Medici in 1455, while continuing to work under his cousin,

Niccolo Strozzi.20 When Niccolo left Naples for Rome in the early 1460s,

Lorenzo and Filippo took the opportunity to branch out on their own, and on 28

16 The court as an open system is receiving acceptance from many scholars in court studies, especially in regards to the earlier courts of the fifteenth century. See my introduction and see Asch, "Court and Household."; Dean, "The Courts." 17 Goldthwaite’s study of the Strozzi remains to be one of the most informative on the family, see Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 31-73. Sale’s PhD Thesis also proves to be a useful source, Filippo Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", especially 7-82. For Strozzi patronage see Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi." One account book of the Strozzi Bank is published, see Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi. Filippo Strozzi kept constant correspondence with his brother-in-law, Marco Parenti and the letters are published in Parenti, Lettere. For Strozzi’s quest to return from exile see, Mark Phillips, The Memoir of Marco Parenti. A Life in Medici Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987). For the Strozzi family in general see Fabbri, Alleanza matrimoniale. The Strozzi archives in Florence are also well preserved, containing letters as well as account books. Carte Strozziane (CS), Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF). 18 Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 7. 19 Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 9-11. 20 Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 135

January 1463, King Ferrante conceded to Filippo Strozzi and his agents the rights to conduct business in the kingdom.21 Filippo’s relations with the king served him well. Not only did Filippo’s business in Naples—the establishment of a bank and fondaco—earn great revenues, he was granted the title of councillor of state, and it was Ferrante who negotiated Filippo’s repatriation to Florence.22 On 13

September 1466 Ferrante wrote to Lorenzo de’ Medici, urging him to allow

Filippo to return to Florence.23 Ferrante also arranged for his son, Don Federigo, to negotiate with Piero de’ Medici on the part of the Strozzi, when Federigo was passing through Florence for the wedding celebrations of Ippolita Sforza and

Alfonso II d’Aragona.24 On 20 September 1466, the Florentine magistrate council of the Otto di Guardia lifted the ban on many exiled Florentines, including the

Strozzi and on 30 November 1466, Filippo returned to Florence.25 While Filippo established himself in Florence, his brother Lorenzo remained in Naples and together, they opened a branch in Florence in 1470 and later a branch in Rome in

1482.26 Although Filippo was based now in Florence, he still carried out commissions and loans for the Neapolitan crown, and the south continued to be a great source of revenue for the Strozzi Bank. Filippo was also still heavily involved with the Aragonese, travelling down to Naples throughout the 1470s.

Ironically, Filippo, once an exiled Florentine, was given the role of intermediary between Florence and Naples following the Pazzi Conspiracy and he was asked to

21 Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 55. 22 Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 56-7. 23 Pontieri reproduces the letter from Ferrante to Lorenzo, see Pontieri, "La dinastia Aragonese di Napoli e la casa de' Medici in Firenze," 288. 24 Phillips, Memoir, 127. 25 Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 14. 26 Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 14-5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 136 accompany Lorenzo de’ Medici to Naples in 1478.27 Correspondence in the

Strozzi Archives in Florence reveals Filippo maintained close relations with many ruling families across Italy, including the Aragonese, suggesting that his business formed both mercantile as well as more personal relations with a wide range of individuals.28 It was Filippo’s business relations with the Aragonese, which provided him with important social contacts, and led to his repatriation to

Florence.

The Strozzi bank was used for a variety of purposes. As a banker, Strozzi provided quick capital for the crown, furnished loans to the Aragonese, supplied credit for pawns and bills of exchange for larger payments. In his capacity as a merchant, Strozzi purchased various luxury objects in Florence and shipped them to the Neapolitan court and he also arranged for Florentine artists to travel to

Naples and work for the court. Throughout his life, Filippo was an important contact for books shipped from Florence to Naples. While Naples had a set of resident court humanists, scribes, and illuminators and there are frequent payments to these individuals in the accounts, the Neapolitan court still sought to purchase and commission books outside of Naples, notably from Florence.29

Filippo also acted as an agent for the Florentine book-seller Vespasiano da

27 Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 56-7. 28 For instance, Filippo named his daughter and son after the king’s children, Eleonora and Alfonso. When Filippo’s son, Alfonso Strozzi, was baptised in Florence, Filippo had Lorenzo de’ Medici serve as the proxy Godfather for the boy’s namesake, Alfonso II d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria. This is noted in 1467 in one of Filippo Strozzi’s record books, see ASF, CS, Serie V-17, 189V. Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, for instance, wrote to Filippo on 17 December 1475, thanking him for advising her on the health of her father, King Ferrante, ASF CS, serie III, 133, 47R. 29 Just to list one example, on 28 September 1470, Ferrante paid 37 ducati 2 tari and 18 grana through Filippo Strozzi for Aristotle’s Etica Economica e Poetica. Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 230.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 137

Bisticci, providing many books for Neapolitan clients, including the court secretary Antonello Petrucci, Ferrante’s ambassador Marino Tomacello, and the humanist, court counsellor and secretary, Giovanni Pontano.30 As we will continue to see, these merchant bankers were not merely pawns or disinterested intermediaries for the flow of books and other such objects; they also contributed to the taste for these objects, as they actively purchased many of the same items for themselves. For instance, Filippo is recorded as purchasing a wide range of books for himself, some directly from Vespasiano: texts on ancient history, contemporary histories of Florence and Italy, other contemporary works, and a series of religious texts such as the Psalms and the Gospels.31 Filippo’s collection included printed books and manuscripts and he is recorded paying for expensive illumination, most notably for his famous Pliny, which will be elaborated on below. His purchases from Vespasiano also strengthened relations with the bookseller, and in the late 1480s Vespasiano gave Filippo a collection of the lives of four Strozzi family members, which included a forward to Filippo.32 Filippo’s mercantile activities thus solidified relations with the Aragonese and also led to

30 On 22 July 1471 Marino Tomacello asked Filippo for help in urging Vespasiano to complete a book Marino had ordered, and again Marino is recorded shipping books through the Strozzi Company in 1474 and 1475. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 37 and 73, n. 137. Marino Tomacello, who served as Neapolitan ambassador to Florence, also appears to have functioned as a contact for the shipment of books for the Neapolitan court. On 28 November 1473 Marino was paid for a large quantity of books including Tre deche di Livio, Commentarii di Cesare, a volume of works by Virgil, among others consigned to the Biblioteca Reale. There were ten books in all in the account, see Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 237. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 37. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 37 and 73, n. 137. On 22 March 1473 Marino was in charge of shipping four books of poetry from Florence to Naples through a Florentine “mulattiere” named Biagio di Marzo, Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 387. Giovanni Pontano purchased a number of unnamed books from Vespasiano through Filippo Strozzi in 1467 and 1468, Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 73, n. 138. In 1480, Strozzi is also noted procuring books for Federigo da Montefeltro for a sum of sixty-six florins, Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 37. 31 Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 38-43. 32 At about the same time, in 1487, Filippo is recorded offering a gift of rich violet cloth to Vespasiano which cost Filippo 12 d’oro larghi. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 37 and 516, Appendix A, Doc. 6.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 138 interests in new objects, which will be elaborated on in the example of the lettuccio below.

In addition to the lettuccio sent to King Ferrante in 1473, Filippo recorded sending numerous gifts to various individuals in the Neapolitan kingdom demonstrating that Filippo sought to ingratiate himself not only with the king, but also with a larger social group, including the king’s children, as well as humanists, advisors, secretaries, and merchants at the Neapolitan court. The list of gifts, first published by Mario del Treppo, appears in one of Filippo Strozzi’s account books, which records credits and debits, as well as more personal notes and details, such as those often found in Florentine ricordanzi.33 The pages detailing the gifts to Naples begins with gifts to the royal family, proceeded by a list of gifts given to influential individuals at the Neapolitan court. The next individual listed after the king to be bestowed with gifts is Diomede Carafa who was given two “marble heads,” presumably antiquities, two painted Flemish cloths, as well as a painting of Saint Francis by “Rugiero,” generally accepted to be by Rogier van der Weyden.34 Following Diomede, are gifts for Orso Orsini,

33For instance, there is mention of the birth of his son and his baptism, while there are also records of business transactions such as an account of jewels consigned to Giuliano Gondi. ASF, CS V.22. The list of gifts is located on 95R. For a published version of the gift list, see del Treppo, "Avventure," 511. 34 Al S[ignore] Mes[ser] diomedes Carraffa conte di Matalon[e] Ij teste de marmo costorono ...... f. 8 la[rghi] Ij pannj d[i] fiandra depintte ……f. 12 }In t[ut]t[o] f.40 I sanfranc[esco] depinto in una tavola di ma[no] d[i] Rugierj Costo d. 10, ma valeva 20 ...... f.20 j˚ bacino di bischotellj My transcription. ASF, CS V.22 95R. Also see del Treppo, "Avventure," 511. Most scholars agree that surely this was a painting by Roger van der Weyden. See de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 37, 96; del Treppo, "Avventure," 516; Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 13. Northern paintings and Netherlandish art had a particular cultural value across Italy, but in particular in Naples. In the fifteenth century the demand for northern art increased, with improved trade and commercial contacts between northern centres such as Bruges and the Italian cities of

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 139

Duke of Ascoli and Count of Nola, who received one marble head “in perfezione,” presumably not damaged or broken, which cost 5 florins (one florin more than each of the heads Diomede received).35 Next after Orso Orsini is a list of gifts for the king’s sons: Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, and Don Federico. Both received the same gift of a chess set in ivory as well as foodstuff; each chess set costing 12 florins.36 Eleonora d’Aragona, soon to be the Duchess of Ferrara, received a mirror, with the reflecting plate made of polished steel in a wooden frame with her arms carved in intarsia.37 The gift of the mirror would have given

Florence, Venice, and Genoa. Rather than commissioned pieces, northern paintings circulated between the north and south as commodities, and this circulation also imbued the paintings with histories, which contributed to their value. In addition, the northern identity of these paintings also added something novel to their value within the commodity of style, and encouraged such paintings to be viewed as collectibles. Bartolomeo Facio, a humanist at the Neapolitan court, for instance, included van Eyck and van der Weyden in his biography of the four most eminent painters of his time. Michael Baxandall, "Bartholomaeus Facius on Painting: A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript of the De Viris Illustribus," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): 90-107. For the taste for Netherlandish art in Italy see Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004). Also see Roberto Weiss, "Jan Van Eyck and the Italians Part I," Italian Studies 11 (1956): 9-13; Andreas Beyer, "Princes, Patrons and Eclecticism. Naples and the North," in The Age of Van Eyck. The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting, 1430-1530, ed. Till-Holger Borchert (New York and London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 119-27. 35 “j˚ testa di marmo in p[er]fezio[ne] costo...f.5” ASF CS V.22 95R. Also transcribed in del Treppo, "Avventure," 511. 36 “Al s. ducha di chalab[r]ia j˚ tavoliere e schachiere dosso lavoravo molto bello e con li schachi e tavole davorio costo f. 12 12 marzolini grossi j˚ bacino di finochio...f. 3 in tutto f. 15” The entry of ‘S. don Federicho suo fratello” is very similar. ASF CS V.22 95R. Also see del Treppo, "Avventure," 511-2. Their younger brother, Don Giovanni, however only received some foodstuff amounting to 3 florins, 37 “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 del Treppo, "Avventure," 512; Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 515, Appendix A.iv.4. I found no mirrors corresponding exactly to this description in Eleonora’s inventories or account books, although there are a few which may reference this mirror. An account book which records the comings and goings of Eleonora’s possessions from 1478-85, lists only one specchio: “Specchio, uno grande dorado de relevo de legno cu[m] l’arme de conte da mattalone [Diomede Carafa] la q[ua]le e una charto tirado in cerchio et sta ditte specchio in guardaroba a piechado.” ASMO AP 638.135R. On 10 February 1490 Eleonora gave a specchio with a silver frame to Isabella d’Este: “a di x di febraro 1490. Spechio: uno da arxento como il pe et fodro se pexa [onze] cinto quarante oto lo qu[ale] la Ill[ustrissi]ma M[adam]a lo adato ala ill[us]tra marhesana sua fiolla in compto di dono.” ASMO AP 640. 25R. The same account book of AP 640 also lists the mirror

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 140

Eleonora something to take with her to Ferrara, and may have been strategic on

Filippo’s part, as a way 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 another similar mirror.38 This letter reveals that a merchant-banker such as Filippo was not only a supplier of goods to the courts, but his relationships with individuals from the court were initiated through the exchange of goods and his gifts, such as the mirror, which spurred further interests in such objects. These objects were also signs of Filippo’s own participation in the commissioning and exchanging of luxury objects that the high with the arms of Diomede Carafa, and notes that it is now broken, 61V. Another mirror is listed of wood in a triangle but claims that this has the arms of the Este: “spechio uno di legno fato a triangolo mese doro atorno come una arma dala cha[sa] d’este vechio e rotto,” 116V. There are a number of mirrors listed in the inventory taken after her death in 1493, some of which are listed as “di azalo,” a Ferrarese variant of the world for steel “acciaio”: “uno specchio di azalo dopio [scilicet] da doe lute di ramo smaltato”; “Uno specchio di azalo in uno tabernacelo di legno dorata”; “uno altro specchio di azalo in uno tabernaculo di legno dorato”;“Uno spechio di azale in uno quadreto che se assera cum doe porte cum lavorieri intagliati di lavorieri di legno”; “uno spechio di azale tondo in uno quadreto cornisato e dorato”; “uno spechio di azale quadro grande in uno quadro di legno cum la soa porta di legno di mezo releva dorate,” ASMO G 114. 75V and 131R (formerly AP 641). Also published in Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.II (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1997), 35. For mirrors and their decoration and composition in the early modern period see Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 234-5. Del Treppo also noted that Isabella d’Este possessed a “specchio d’azzaio,” which may have been any of the mirrors once owned by Eleonora, although Isabella is recorded as commissioning a number of steel mirrors. del Treppo, "Avventure," 505. For Isabella d’Este’s mirrors see Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 234. 38 “Nobilis amice dilectissime. Intexo q[uan]to ne scrivesti agiorni proximi circal facto del specchio in havevemo richesto etc: vi dicemo q[ua]n[do] havesti il modo farne far[e] uno simile ad quello ce donasti ad quello M[aestro] dicete ritrovarsi in Roma che fece laltro hare[m]o grato ce ne facciati fare] uno che sia la[v]orato per excelentia & tanto [d]igno q[uan]to sia possibile: & fornito chel sera procurareti indrizarnelo per mo[ripped]uo & incontinenti mi remetteremo li denari del consto: ma no[n] il potendo [ripped-far?] far[e] al dicto M[aestro] no[n] durareti fatica farlo far[e] ad altro. Parendoni p[er] altre mane[ripped] cio non potre essser[e] benservita. Benvalete, ferr[ari]e xxv februarj 1475 Elyonora: Elio[no]ra de Aragonia Ducissa ferrarie Vincentuis secrete” My transcription. Also see del Treppo, "Avventure," 505, n.86. del Treppo states that the letter is autograph. Indeed, the letter is signed by Eleonora but the body of the letter is written in elegant humanist script by her secretary and not in her hand.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 141 elite, such as courtly individuals, also participated in. Eleonora’s list of gifts concludes the entries for the royal family, and the account is tallied at this point, coming to 283 florins.

It is interesting to note that both Diomede Carafa and Orso Orsini are included in the list comprising the gifts for the royal family, rather than on the list detailed on the following page, which consists of less costly things and includes gifts for important members of the court. While most of the gifts on this following page range in value from 2 to 4 florins, two individuals are singled out to receive higher priced items. Pasquale Diaz Garlon, “chastelano del chastello novo” and guardarobiere of King Ferrante, who also served under Alfonso I, is the recipient of a tapestry depicting green foliage designs, costing 10 florins.39 The secretary

Antonello Petrucci (later hung by Ferrante for his traitorous alliance with the

Barons) also received a smaller tapestry with foliage designs.40 All of the other individuals listed received foodstuff. These included: Guglielmo Candell,

Ferrante’s scrivano di razione; Giovanni Sanchez, a Catalan merchant; Michele di

Belprato, another of Ferrante’s scrivano di razione; Giovanni Pontano,41 the famous humanist and secretary; Pere Bernat, tesoriere generale; Nicolò da

Procida, Count of Aversa; Ferdinando di Ghevera, Count of Belcastro; Tomasso

Tecchini, a Tuscan merchant; Cola d’Allegro, credenziere and scribe for the royal sigillo; Ghalzerano Martino, a Catalan merchant; Luigi Coppola, influential

39 “j˚ portale d’arazo a verdure minuta molto bello.” Pasquale also receives one “bacino di bischotelli”, ASF, CS V, 22. 95v. del Treppo, "Avventure," 512. 40 “j˚ portale d’arazo a verdure minuta.” He also received a “bacino de bischotelli” and a “bacino di finochio” ASF, CS V, 22. 95v. del Treppo, "Avventure," 512. 41 As an important figure, both in political and humanistic circles, it is interesting that he only received one “bacino […] pieno de bischotelli” for the cost of 2 florins.” del Treppo, "Avventure," 513.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 142 merchant and father of Francesco Coppola;42 Francesco Schales, son of a Catalan merchant; Galeazzo Sanseverino, Count of Caiazzo; Andrea del Dottore, a

Bolognese lawyer; Roberto Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno.43 The total amount for the gifts given to the Aragonese and important courtly individuals came to the sum of 342 florins. The list reveals the wide range of individuals that Filippo

Strozzi was acquainted with: from the king and his children, to political advisors and humanists, princes and counts, as well as merchants. Not all of the recipients were Neapolitan, but included individuals from Tuscany, Bologna, and Catalonia.

It is also intriguing that many of these individuals hold the titles of “scrivano di razione”, “credenziere” or “tesoriere,” all positions that involved dealings with the accounts, the movement of goods, or the maintenance and upkeep of luxury objects, and thus Filippo most likely came into contact with them through the exchange of goods.

The history of the Medici Bank in Naples is more complicated and seems to have been based primarily on political motives rather than financial gain.44 From

1426 to 1471 there was no branch of the Medici bank in Naples.45 During this time the Medici had correspondents in Naples, such as Filippo Strozzi, Benedetto

Guasconi, and Bartolomeo Buonconti.46 The reopening of the bank in 1471 was not as successful as it could have been as the branch dealt with frozen credits in

1475 and during the Pazzi War in 1478, all Medici property was sequestered to

42 Francesco Coppola was also executed by Ferrante as a conspirator with the Barons against the king. 43 del Treppo, "Avventure," 512-4. 44 See chapter one for the political role of the Medici in Naples. For a general survey of the Medici Bank see de Roover, Medici Bank. For the Medici Bank in Naples see Jacoviello, "Affari," 169-96. 45 de Roover, Medici Bank, 254. 46 de Roover, Medici Bank, 257.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 143 the Neapolitan crown.47 In the 1480s the Medici bank operated under the direction of Francesco Nacchi and Company, and it is his name that often appears in court records.48 The Medici Bank was also involved in negotiations around alum in the

1470s, which included a contract between the Papacy, Naples, and the Medici.49

While the larger company of the Medici Bank was involved with commerce and banking in Naples, it seems that Lorenzo de’ Medici had a more personal relationship in financing the Neapolitan Crown. Lorenzo was responsible for giving out personal loans to individuals such as Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of

Calabria and was often asked to negotiate on her behalf for other loans that she had accrued, which will be elaborated upon below in the section on pawning.50 In

1483 Lorenzo was nominated “camerlengo” by the king and he also received various concessions on custom duties for the regions of Naples and Puglia.51 He was also responsible for artistic exchanges between Florence and Naples. In April

1488 Ferrante asked Lorenzo de’ Medici for a plan of a palazzo to be sent down to Naples, and later in that year Giuliano da Sangallo accompanied his design of a grand palace.52 As will become evident, Lorenzo’s mercantile and political

47 de Roover, Medici Bank, 258. 48 Also recorded as Nazi, Nasi, or Nacci, de Roover, Medici Bank, 259. 49 See chapter one on the horse’s head, and also de Roover, Medici Bank, 152-66. 50 This will be elaborated on below. In 1485 Ippolita asked Lorenzo for 2000 ducati to redeem jewels from the Scolari brothers in Florence. See ASF MAP filza 45, 241R. In 1469 Alfonso d’Aragona wrote to Lorenzo apologising for Ippolita’s defaults in unpaid credits. For the letters see Pontieri, "La dinastia Aragonese di Napoli e la casa de' Medici in Firenze," 291 and 341. Also see Welch, "Between Milan." 51 Jacoviello, "Affari," 194. 52 The plan still survives in a book of Sangallo’s designs. For a reproduction see Stefano Borsi, Giuliano da Sangallo. I disegni di architettura e dell'antico (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1985), 395. Vasari’s famous passage recounts that upon his departure from Naples, Sangallo received presents of horses, clothes, and antiquities, as well as money from Ferrante. Sangallo,Vasari claims, refused both the money and gifts for himself, and instead decided to take the antiquities back to Lorenzo de’ Medici as gifts. These included a bust of Hadrian, a nude female, and a sleeping cupid in marble. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 350; Erasmo Percopo, "Nuovi documenti su gli

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 144 activities often complicated his relations with the Aragonese and provide a useful example of how objects create ties and obligations between individuals.

There is much less known about the Gondi Company. While the Gondi repeatedly appear in Neapolitan court account books and also in other court records such as in Ferrara, not much is known about their social and political roles in Italy.53 The Gondi Company seems to have made its fortune in gold, starting as a “mestiere dell’oro” but soon became involved in the import/export business of textiles.54 Giuliano di Leonardo Gondi (1421-1501) worked with many of the courts of Italy and was active in Naples as early as 1452.55 Giuliano’s brother,

Antonio, was responsible for bringing the silk and battiloro industries into

Giuliano’s business and the two brothers often worked together.56 Giuliano Gondi is often noted in records for the Neapolitan court in obtaining various luxury objects from Florence as well as pawning court objects for credit, and he is also recorded as being active in other courts such as Ferrara and Urbino.57 As a company originally based in the textile industry, it is not surprising the Gondi are

scrittori e gli artisti dei tempi aragonesi," Archivio storico per le province napoletane XX (1895): 315-6. Although the payment of 100 ducati to Sangallo in the Neapolitan Tesoreria has led many to question Vasari’s story, the tale illuminates the ways in which these artists were sources of cultural exchange between states and individuals, and how the stories of these objects circulated. Percopo, "Nuovi documenti vol xx," 314-6; Borsi, Giuliano da Sangallo, 401. 53 Goldthwaite notes that there are no diaries, or ricordanze for the Gondi and they do not appear as being involved in the public life of Florence. Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 157-86. The archives for the Gondi exist in Florence (Archivio Gondi in ASF). There are also later documents (mostly sixteenth century) in the Lea Library of the University of Pennsylvania, see Rudolf Hirsch and Gino Corti, "Medici-Gondi Archive II," Renaissance Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1970). For a general biography on Giuliano Gondi see S. Tabacchi, "Gondi, Giuliano," in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1976), 656-9. 54 Tabacchi, "Gondi, Giuliano," 656; Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 160. 55 Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 161. 56 Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 164. 57 Although the majority of the Neapolitan court records were destroyed in World War II, we are fortunate to have Nicola Barone’s nineteenth century transcriptions of many of the documents. See Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 5-34, 205-348, 87-429, 601-37; Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 5-47; Nicola Barone, "Un nuovo registro di Cedole della Tesoreria Aragonese," XI (1886).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 145 often recorded providing different types of cloth. For instance, in 1473 Duke

Alfonso d’Aragona bought silk and brocade from the Gondi through the Strozzi bank and in 1478 the court records note that the Gondi were paid for “la valuta di certa quantita di panni e sete” (cloth and silk).58 They are also listed as providing other cultural objects for the Aragonese, such as a map of Lombardy on 6 May

1486.59

The Gondi brothers were also responsible for the transferral of books from

Florence to Naples. On 2 August 1478 Giuliano Gondi was reimbursed for expensive cloth and he is recorded in court documents making payments to

“Vespasiano de Filippo” for a Tera Deca by Livio.60 On 19 April 1486 Giuliano

Gondi is recorded in a payment for the cost of a work by Seneca, transcribed for

Alfonso II d’Aragona and also for payments for costs towards another book by

Livio.61 Giuliano Gondi’s business with the Aragonese served him well politically as Ferrante intervened with the Florentine government in 1477 on Giuliano’s behalf, on grounds that still remain unclear.62 The Gondi also appear in Ferrarese court records providing cloth, jewels, and unspecified items for Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona.63 Giuliano’s relationship with the Este court in Ferrara must have

58 For the earlier record see Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi, 76. For the latter see Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 402. 59 ‘giuliano ed Antonio Gondi, mercantanti fiorentini, ricevono 9 duc 3 tari, prezzo di una carta ov’e dipinta tutta la Lombardia, consegnata a Pietrantonio Sanese.’ Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 604. 60 Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 402. 61 Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 620. 62 The Florentine chronicler Benedetto Dei reports that Giuliano was “amunito et chondanato […] per falsario.” Tabacchi, "Gondi, Giuliano," 658. Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 161, n. 18. 63 On 3 January 1487 Giuliano and Antonio Gondi are recorded as receiving payments from Eleonora d’Aragona for unspecified goods; on 3 April 1487 Giuliano Gondi is recorded being paid by Eleonora d’Aragona for a cross; on 21 May 1491 Giuliano and Antonio Gondi are paid by Eleonora for a gold frieze made of cloth, which cost 141 lire marchesane and 15 soldi. ASMO AP 633. 59V, 73V, and 221V. On 22 February 1487 Giuliano Gondi is recorded in Eleonora’s account

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 146 been quite close as I found a document recording Giuliano Gondi giving a gift of velvet to Anna Sforza upon her marriage to Alfonso d’Este in 1491.64 The Gondi also provide another example of how the practices of pawning can lead to disputes between individuals over objects and will be discussed in detail below in the section on pawning, when the pawning of a cross led to hostilities between the

Este and Aragonese.

All three companies had different relations with the Aragonese, but what becomes evident is that each company, in its own way, deepened its relationship with the Neapolitan court through the trading, exchanging, and pawning of goods.

This was not merely a case of court demand with the Gondi, Strozzi, and Medici supplying goods for the tastes of the court. Instead, these merchant-bankers should be seen as an integral part in the formation of tastes around certain objects and as points of contact between diverse social groups.

Clients and Consumers: The Neapolitan Court and Nobility

Contact was constant between merchant-bankers and the Neapolitan nobility. As I have mentioned, the relationship of the merchant-bankers with their clients extended beyond merely business, and often constituted social relationships, but these could also complicate political relations. Personalities, politics, interests, and human relationships inevitably complicate these exchanges and complex ties of obligation and memories were forged as objects circulated through different hands, whether as gifts or pawns. books as sending her expensive brocade material which was made into a bed cover (“coperto di lecto”). ASMO AP 638, 102R. On 30 March 1479 Giuliano Gondi is recorded being paid by Eleonora d’Aragona for sending 14 braccia of gold brocade cloth for the palio of Saint George. ASMO G9, 12V. 64 For the gift of cloth see, ASMO AP 589, 42R. Recorded on 31 March 1491. Antonio Gondi also died in Ferrara, see Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 164.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 147

Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria, for instance, constantly pawned her jewels, and often used her luxury objects as credit to make purchases. Her secretary, Baldo Martorelli, frequently appears in the Strozzi accounts on behalf of Ippolita for the purchasing of things such as shoes, silver, clothing, and jewellery.65 The accounts—including those of the Neapolitan royal tesoriere and the Strozzi Bank’s account books—also reveal a pattern of individual loans to one bank being taken over by another bank, so that the circulation of goods and money would not only imbricate the bank and the person who sought the loan, but also other individuals from other banks. For instance, on 2 January 1473, the

Strozzi bank paid 100 ducati to Lorenzo de’ Medici for the account of Baldo

Martorelli, who was working on behalf of Ippolita, who sought to purchase clothing. This complex transaction demonstrates how many diverse individuals could be implicated in these kinds of business dealings.66 Ippolita’s husband,

Alfonso II d’Aragona, also financed much of his cultural patronage through these various banks. For instance, in 1489 Alfonso purchased a silver portrait of himself through the Strozzi Bank for just over 34 ducati, to be given to Paolo della Pietra to be offered as a voto in the name of the duke, at Santa Maria di Loreto.67

Diomede Carafa, as noted in the previous chapter, was a collector of antiquities and contemporary art objects. A humanist and political figure, he was in contact with many individuals across Italy. Beyond Diomede’s official role for the Aragonese in Naples, which would have required him to correspond with

65 Various entries throughout Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi. 66 Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi, 15. 67 “all’orefice M. Gabriele de Pontill si pagano pel banco degli Strozzi 34 d 4t e 2 gr prezzo di una testa d’argento fina con la faccia dal Duca di Calabria al naturale, del peso di lib. 5 once 8 ½. Questa testa è stata consegnata a Paolo della Preta, perché in nome del Duca la mandi ad ofrire a Santa Maria di Loreto.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 6; Jacoviello, "Affari," 183.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 148 various merchant-bankers on behalf of the Aragonese, it seems that Diomede and

Filippo Strozzi were in contact quite regularly on a more personal basis.68

Diomede is recorded sending gloves from Spain through Filippo to Duchess

Eleonora d’Aragona of Ferrara (Diomede’s former student) and “una tassetalla” for his goddaughter, the young Isabella d’Este in Ferrara.69 In 1474, Diomede wrote a letter to Filippo informing him that he was sending his “creato Bernardino

Curiale” on a trip to Ferrara to visit Eleonora, but first he was sending Bernardino to visit Filippo Strozzi and his family, as well as to Lorenzo de’ Medici in

Florence.70 Diomede also had a personal account with Filippo and would have frequently dealt with the Strozzi Bank while serving as the court’s scrivano di razione. Filippo also served as an important artistic link for Diomede. In March

1467, Filippo is recorded paying two florins to an anonymous artist for a painted copy of Piero de’ Medici’s scrittoio for Diomede Carafa.71 Carafa, who was

68 For Diomede’s political role, see chapter one. 69 Diomede records these gifts are being sent via Filippo Strozzi in a letter to Eleonora. Almost all of Diomede’s letters are given month and day but with no year, but Moores suggests this letter may have been written in 1480. ASMO CPE 1248.4. Letter of May 26 14--? from Diomede Carafa to Eleonora d’Aragona. “Io mando ad dona Isabella una tassetella dove p[er] amo’r mio tal volta bene e cossi li mando quatro para d qua[n]te [...]alla v[ostra] Ill[ustrissi]ma s[ignoria] mando quatro para di gua[n]te li quali so’ l[i] q[ua]lli d spangnya di la bona conza [...] Dicte cose mando alla ve[n]tura p[er] mano di filippo di stroze” Moores, "New Light on Diomede," 21-2, Doc VI; de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 27. 70 “Mag[nifi]ce vir et fili car[issi]me salute: mandando oneralm[en]te et noble e dilecto mio creato b[er]nardino curiale ad visitar’ la Illma Madama Duchessa de Ferrara no[n] me parso honesto mandalo senza la p[rese]nte al quale b[er]nardino ho o’nerv[a] visita la s.v. li fillioli e lla brigata e se informe como stan’o p[er]ch[e] de ogne v[ost]ro b[e]n me alegro como q[ue]llo di] mei filliolj et p[er]ch[e] ha anco da me inco’missione dicto b[er]nardino visite lo Mag[nifi]co Lor[e]nso ne p[re]go n[ost]re lo indirigate ch[e] me ne farite prater’ et li ho da far’ cosa alcuna p[e] vuj son p[re]sto. Valete ex Neaplj xxviiij maij mcccclxxiiij. El Vostr conte, De Matalon” ASF CS III. 247, 266R. Also partially quoted in de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 27. It should be noted that this would have been the second time that Diomede sent a buffone to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the first on occasion for Galeazzo Maria Sforza’s visit, which may have prompted the gift of the horse’s head. 71 ‘…ed ad detto [x marzo] fiorinj ii paghati a uno m˚ depintore p[er] depinture in su fogli dal asenp[r]o del palcho della stala e scrittoio d[i] Piero do m[andai] e detti p[er] lo s[ignore] conte di matalone.’ ASF CS V, 17, 149v. For a discussion of the scrittoio, see Borsook, "Florentine Scrittoio."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 149 actively collecting antiquities, had moved into his newly erected palazzo in 1466 and was looking for a model for his studiolo, which he built soon afterwards.72

Filippo also facilitated the commissioning and shipment of a Florentine lettuccio to Diomede, which will be discussed below.

Del Treppo’s study on the clientele of the Florentine merchant-bankers working in the Neapolitan kingdom shows that outside the court, various feudal lords and “signori”—the prominent Neapolitan families such as those of the

Orsini, Sanseverino, Carafa, and Coppola—also used these banks, suggesting a wide range of individuals connected through the exchange of goods.73

Furthermore it demonstrates how an individual working for the court, like

Diomede, could form relationships with a merchant-banker like Strozzi, through transactions that could serve both personal/private and courtly/public interests.

III. Material Things and Their Histories: Beds, Gems, and Books

A wide range of cultural goods were shipped and facilitated by the various merchant-banking firms in close association with the Aragonese. Payments for things such as shoes, silverware, clothes, northern paintings, books, and jewellery appear in the documents for individuals such as Ippolita Sforza, Alfonso d’Aragona, Diomede Carafa, and King Ferrante.74 Florentine artists including

Benedetto da Maiano and Giuliano da Sangallo were also sought and their

72 For Carafa’s collection and building enterprise see de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza. Also see the above chapter on Carafa’s colossal horse’s head. 73 Del Treppo provides a break down of all the clients of the Strozzi bank in 1473, listing those connected with the administration of the state, women, artisans, ecclesiasts, feudal and noble clients, del Treppo, "Re e banchiere," 296. 74 Many of these are listed in the Neapolitan court records transcribed by Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX."; Barone, "Cedole ASPN X."; Barone, "Nuovo reg. di Cedole." For the only published record of the Strozzi accounts from Naples see Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 150 passage down to Naples was facilitated by Florentine merchant-bankers.75 While there are many examples to draw from, I want to focus on a few particular objects to understand how their materials and their cultural significance gave those objects value. How did the circulation of goods form interests in specific types of objects and give rise to narratives and stories?

The Florentine Lettuccio in Naples

Besides Filippo Strozzi’s gift of a lettuccio to King Ferrante, Filippo was responsible for sending two and possibly three other lettucci down to Naples, all for different clients and at different times. Lettucci and their decoration varied, but in general a lettuccio was a piece of furniture similar to a daybed (Figure 13).76

Lettucci often had armrests, which could be elaborately carved, and decoration was also frequently applied to the back panel or spalliera, as well as to the cornices and side panels, and they typically had a cassone or a chest built in

75 For Giuliano Sangallo see Borsi, Giuliano da Sangallo; Giuseppe Marchini, Giuliano da Sangallo (Florence: G.C. Sansoni Editore, 1942). For Giuliano da Maiano in Naples see Giuseppe Ceci, "Nuovi documenti su Giuliano da Maiano ed altri artisti," Archivio storico per le province napoletane xxix (1904): 786. For Poggioreale also see Antonio Colombo, "Il palazzo e il giardino di Poggioreale," Archivio storico per le province napoletane x (1885): 186-209, 309-42. Giuliano da Maiano actually died in Naples, and Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, is recorded in court records as providing medical assistance: “Et havendo nova che Mastro Mariano da Vajano [Giuliano da Maiano] fiorentino homo experto in la fabrica et in desegni stava malissimo ce mando’ li soi medeci et pratichi et ordino’ che non li manchasse alchuna cosa ut moris sui erat erga suos. Et quella stava a sua provisione et facea fare sue fabriche de la Duchesca et del Poggio. Et demonstrava sua Ill.a Signora che certo l’increscea la malattia de quello: ad ogni hora lo mandava a visitare.”Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Effemeridi, Delle cose fatte per il duca di Calabria (1484-91) di Joampiero Leostello da Volterra da un codice della Biblioteca Nazionale di Parigi, reprinted from 1883 ed., 6 vols., vol. I (Naples: Societa Napoletana di Storia Patria, 2002), LXXIV. Also quoted in Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Indici degli artefici delle arti maggiori e minori. La piu parte ignoti o poco noti si napoletani e siciliani si delle altre regioni d'italia o stranieri che operarono tra noi con notizia delle loro opere e del tempo del loro esercizio. Da studii e nuovi documenti. Dalla Lettera H alla Lettera Z, 6 vols., vol. VI (Naples: Tipografia dell'Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1891), 86-7. 76 For a general survey of lettucci see Maddalena Trionfi Honorati, "A proposito del 'lettuccio'," Antichità Viva 20, no. 3 (1981): 39-48. Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 148-53.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 151

(Figures 14 and 15). The spalliera could be painted with a scene, like those decorating cassoni, or elaborately carved with intarsia (Figure 16).

In June 1467 Filippo’s account books record a commission to Giuliano da

Maiano for a lettuccio for Diomede Carafa to be sent to Naples in July of that year.77 Diomede’s lettuccio was four and a half braccia (roughly 2.6 metres); it cost twenty-five florins and was sent down to Naples via the galley of Piero

Vespucci.78 As Diomede’s palazzo was known to be a location where business was often conducted, the lettuccio was presumably viewed by many. As a piece of furniture, it would have solicited a form of bodily engagement, as viewers either sat on it, passed by it, or even bumped into it. The Venetian ambassador, Zaccaria

Barbaro, for instance, reported in March 1472 that he had gone to visit Diomede who was sick with fever, and noted that all the sons and daughters of the king as well as the ambassadors had been in to see him.79 While there is no reference to where Diomede was situated, one might assume that he was either in a daybed or in bed, and suggests how such objects, although somewhat “private” or personal may have actually had a more public function. Indeed, Figure 16 is a print from

77 There are a series of payments for the lettuccio, one recorded as ‘Uno lettuccio d[i] b[raz]a 4 ½ fatto fare p[er] lo s[ignore] comptte di matalone de dare ad xviij de luglio f xxv fatte bud/ a guliano denardo legniauiolo p[er] fatura depso a ogni suo spexe [...] f[iorini] 25.’ ASF CS V-17, 77R, 85V, 86R. Also see de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 27; Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'," 42; Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi," 14. 78 ASF CS V-17, 86R. Also see del Treppo, "Avventure," 497. The conversion from braccia to metres varies slightly in the literature, and it also varied slightly between region. I use Zupko’s conversion, which notes that in Florence 1 braccia was 0.584 metres, in Ferrara 0.634 metres and 0.699 metres in Naples. Presumably because the account books were in Florentine measures, I take the braccia in Strozzi documents to refer to the Florentine braccia. Ronald Edward Zupko, Italian Weights and Measures from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981), 40-8. 79 “Io fui heri a visitor el c[o]nte di Matalone per haver habuto uno pocho de febre et a uno tempo li era tuti soi figluoli et figluole del re a sua visitatione, poi li fu tuti li ambassadori sono qui, in diversi tempi.” Letter 104 from March 31 1472, Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 225.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 152

Savonarola’s The Art of Dying Well, which shows a sick man reclining on his lettuccio, while visitors come to attend to him. This provides interesting evidence of one of the social components of these pieces of furniture.80

Two years after Diomede’s commission, Filippo’s account books from

1469 record a lettuccio for his brother, Lorenzo Strozzi, who commissioned a

“maestro Domenicho depintore” to paint and manufacture the lettuccio.81 This commission included painting a figure and “other things” on the lettuccio and was intended for Lorenzo’s room, presumably in the Strozzi residence in the quarter of the Portanova in Naples.82 Considering that the Strozzi were well acquainted with the merchant and court community, Lorenzo’s lettuccio most likely was viewed by a wide range of individuals.83

In 1473 Filippo Strozzi travelled down to Naples and, as mentioned, he recorded various gifts that he was sending or bringing down to Naples for his friends: “choxe donare a napolj a amicj di casa.”84 It is interesting to note that he specifies these individuals as amici rather than clients, and suggests Filippo’s close acquaintance with these individuals. The lettuccio for the king was among the gifts and is described as follows:

80 Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 148. 81 ‘A dì detto [1.1.1469] per resto di uno chonto di m˚ Domenicho dipintore, cioè per manifattura del lettuccio della chamera di Lorenzo, cioè per chonciare una figura e altre cose, ebe ch. Portò Matteo di Giorgio: tr.5’ del Treppo, "Avventure," 497; Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi, 734. 82 For the Strozzi residence in Naples, see del Treppo, "Re e banchiere," 233-4. 83 Leon Battista Alberti is recorded staying at the Strozzi palazzo in Naples between March and June 1465. Although this date is earlier than the lettuccio commission, it demonstrates a wide range of visitors to the residence. See de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 47, 71-2. 84 ASF, CS, V, 22, 95R-95V. The gifts are recorded as bought between 24 November 1472 and 3 June 1473. The list comprises various court individuals from the king to the king’s secretaries. For a partial transcription see del Treppo, "Avventure," 510-13. Sale lists all the individuals but does not include all of the gifts given. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 514-6, Appendix A. IV.4.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 153

J˚ lettuccio d[i] nocie d[i] b[racci]a 6 ch.ol chassone e spalliere e chordicie molto bello ritravovi dentro d[i] p[ros]pettiva da Napoli el chastello e loro circhustanzie costo de p[rimo] chosto f[iorini] 110 la[rghi] e tra ghabella e portatura fino a napoli c[h]e ando p[er] terra venne la:...... f. 180.

1 wood lettuccio, 6 braccia with cassone and spalliere and cornice, very beautiful, in which is depicted a perspective of Naples with castle and environs, initial cost 110 fiorini larghi and with transport all the way to Naples, travelling by land, comes to:………………………..f. 180.85

The lettuccio was thus six braccia or 3.5 metres, made with a chest, spalliere, and a cornice. It also contained a perspective of Naples, with the castle, presumably the Castel Nuovo and its surroundings, and it cost 180 florins including transportation from Florence to Naples.86

The lettuccio, or more specifically the perspective of Naples, has been a source of scholarly debate in the last fifteen years. In 1994 del Treppo believed he had discovered new evidence regarding the lettuccio and suggested the lettuccio commissioned by Strozzi to be the Tavola Strozzi, now in the Museo di San

85 This is my transcription. Sale and I both transcribed ‘chordicie’ whereas del Treppo has written ‘chornicie’ although he notes that he has amended the original ‘chordicie.’ Regardless of the spelling we can assume that ‘cornice’ is what is intended here, as the cornice was much commented upon in letters. ASF CS V, 22, 95R. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 514; del Treppo, "Avventure," 511. 86In addition to the lettuccio the king received a variety of foodstuff, a common gift between individuals in this period, which came to 10 florins: “II bacini di marzolini 24 d[i] lb. 6 copia j˚ bacino d[i] finochio j˚ bacino d[i] 12 salsiciuoli 2 schatole di fichi delle moaxe de San Ghagio.” ASF, CS V.22 95R. For the exchange of foodstuff as gifts see Welch, Shopping, 70.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 154

Martino in Naples (Figure 3).87 The Tavola Strozzi has been the subject of scrutiny, ever since it was discovered by Corrado Ricci in 1904 in the house of

Prince Carlo Strozzi in Florence.88 The painting depicts the triumphal flotilla of the Aragonese returning from the Battle of Ischia in 1465.89 The Tavola Strozzi’s provenance, before its discovery in 1904, is unknown and its original function, artist, date, and the reason for execution are all up for debate.90 The painting depicts many of the important buildings in Naples, including the main castles, churches, and monasteries. The triumphant ships proudly fly flags from bow and stern, depicting the insignia of the Aragonese, the Order of the Ermine, as well as the insignia of other prominent families, including the three moons of the Strozzi

(not visible in most reproductions).91 It is painted on wood, and this has led del

Treppo to conjecture that the painting is indeed part of the lettuccio commissioned

87 Del Treppo declared he had found an unpublished document in the Strozzi Archives—the portion of the account book stating the purchases of Filippo Strozzi for his Neapolitan ‘amici,’ del Treppo, "Avventure," 487. However, this document, quoted above, had already been noted and transcribed by John Russell Sale in 1979 in his doctoral dissertation on the Strozzi Chapel in Santa Maria Novella, Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 514, Appendix A.iv.4. The Tavola Strozzi is not in the Capodimonte as stated in some of the literature, but rather in the Museo San Martino in Naples. 88 The first scholar to write on the subject was Croce who wrongly identified the scene as the triumphal entry of Lorenzo de’ Medici into Naples. Benedetto Croce, "Veduta della città di Napoli nel 1479 col trionfo per l'arrivo di Lorenzo de' Medici," Napoli Nobilissima XIII (1904): 56-7. It has been consequently been a topic of debate, see Bologna, Napoli e le rotte, 195-9; D. Catalano, "Indagine radiologica della Tavola Strozzi," Napoli Nobilissima XVIII (1979): 10-1; Guido Donatone, "Il lettuccio donato da Filippo Strozzi a Ferrante d'Aragona: la Tavola Strozzi," in Napoli, l'Europa. Ricerche di Storia dell'Arte in onore di Ferdinando Bologna (Rome: Meridiana Libri, 1995), 107-11; Roberto Pane, "La Tavola Strozzi tra Firenze e Napoli," Napoli Nobilissima XVIII, no. 1 (1979): 3-10; Cesare de Seta, "L'Immagine di Napoli dalla Tavola Strozzi a Jan Bruegel," in Scritti di Storia dell'Arte in onore di Raffaello Causa, ed. Pierluigi Leone de Castris (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1988), 105-17; del Treppo, "Avventure," 483-515. 89 The painting’s subject is verified by a letter from the Milanese ambassador in Naples describing the event, see del Treppo, "Avventure," 483-4. 90 The painting has been attributed to both Neapolitan and Florentine artists such as Colantonio, Francesco Pagano, and Francesco Rosselli. The historical accuracy of the triumphal entry and the geographical specificity has led many to believe it was either done by a Neapolitan artist or was executed by the Florentine Rosselli, who was a cartographer and miniaturist. De Seta argues it is a work by Francesco Rosselli, de Seta, "Immagine di Napoli." For a summary of the literature and artistic attributions see del Treppo, "Avventure," 484-5. 91 del Treppo, "Avventure," 492.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 155 by Filippo Strozzi, as lettucci often contained painted spalliere.92 While Guido

Donatone supports del Treppo’s argument, Fiorella Sricchia Santoro has found other evidence that the perspective of Naples was actually intarsia.93 As the

Maiano brothers were known for their woodwork and intarsia, Santoro suggests it would only make sense that the depiction of Naples on the lettuccio would have been an inlaid perspective.94 Indeed, intarsia typically plays on perspective, depicting complicated images of still life or geographical views.95 There is further evidence which puts into question del Treppo’s argument. Both del Treppo and

Santoro have ignored a document mentioned by Sale, which notes that there were

92 Del Treppo underlines that many of the references to the lettuccio in the correspondence often stress the importance of the ‘mezzo’, which he assumes to be in reference to the famous Tavola Strozzi. del Treppo, "Avventure," 487. 93 Santoro notes that del Treppo does not reference the letter of 3 April 1473 written by the Strozzi Company in Florence to Filippo Strozzi in Naples, quoted in part above. Santoro bases her argument on evidence which appears later in the letter, suggesting that the term “prospettiva” references intarsia work. The letter states: “Non piace a Benedetto da Maiano il modo avete preso a richiedere Giuliano o lui del venire costi, perchè e sono d’achordo e ànno fatto proposito l’uno el’altro di loro di non volere più attendere a prospettiva, e se fussi stato intaglio di rilievo vi si sarebbe achordato.” Quoted in Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'," 45. and Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 524 Appendix A.x.38. While this section of the letter does not make direct reference to the lettuccio but rather the decision of the Maiano brothers to no longer work on intarsia (“prospettiva”), it has led Santoro to believe that the use of the term “prospettiva” for intarsia should also be an indication that the same term used in Strozzi’s account book for the lettuccio (“prospettiva Napoli”) references intarsia work. Later in the letter it is revealed that Filippo Strozzi wanted the Maiano brothers to work on some choir stalls in intarsia, and thus the statement implies that Benedetto did not want to work on the project because he was giving up woodwork. This affirms Vasari’s statement that Benedetto quit work on intarsia to take up sculpture instead and is furthered by the letter of 12 April 1473 from Parenti to Strozzi which declared that Benedetto “vuole atendere a lavorare di marmo.” Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 56-7, n. 25. Also see Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi," 14, Appendix I.9; Parenti, Lettere, 237. 94 Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'," 45. 95 These types of intarsia were often found on cabinets in the studiolo, such as the woodwork done in Federigo da Montefeltro’s at Urbino, which has been attributed to the da Maiano brothers, Thornton, The Scholar, 121. For the Urbino and Gubbio studioli see Cecil H. Clough, "Federigo da Montefeltro's Private Study in his Ducal Palace of Gubbio," Apollo 86 (1967): 278-87; Olga Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo and Its Conservation, 2 vols., vol. 1. Federico da Montefeltro's Palace at Gubbio and its Studiolo (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999); Luciano Cheles, The Studiolo of Urbino: An Iconographic Investigation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986). For the da Maino brothers’ work see Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto, ed., La bottega di Giuliano e Benedetto da Maiano nel rinascimento fiorentino (Florence: Octavo Franco Cantini Editore, 1994).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 156 two paintings depicting Naples belonging to Strozzi at his death, and suggests there were a number of depictions of Naples, any of which could have been part of the lettuccio.96

What I do think is important here is the evidence that there were a series of representations of Naples that have a relation to Filippo Strozzi, including the view of Naples depicted on the lettuccio, and also that views of Naples can be understood to have become a topos at this time. Filippo’s choice to include a view of Naples on the lettuccio thus would have not only emphasised the king’s power and dominion over the city, but also spoken to the other views of Naples which were circulating. Furthermore, perspective views were often found in intellectual spaces such as the studiolo. The art of perspective was seen as a science, which was connected to the difficulty of execution and its visual conceit.97 It should also be noted that Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara and daughter of King

Ferrante, commissioned a series of representations of Naples. Eleonora had a

96 The paintings are mentioned in a list of items given to Alfonso di Filippo Strozzi upon Filippo’s death: “uno Napoli di legnio in charta pechora in tavola di legnio” and later in the inventory “una charta in su uno legnio dipitovi napoli.” Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 24-5 and 66, n. 85. These are Sale’s transcriptions taken from ASF, CS V, 65, Fol.20 left. Since the Tavola Strozzi was found in the Strozzi palace, we might also assume that it has a Strozzi provenance rather than an object owned by the king. Filangieri has suggested that the Tavola Strozzi was probably painted by one of Ferrante’s manuscript illuminators and that when he pawned many of his books during the war with the Turks, he probably also pawned the Tavola Strozzi, which explains why it was found in the merchant-banker’s house. Riccardo Filangieri, Castel Nuovo. Reggia Angioina ed Aragonese di Napoli (Naples: E.P.S.A. Editrice Politecnica, 1934), 250. While paintings were not typically objects pawned by the court and there is no documentary evidence to support this claim, Filangieri does raise an interesting point, suggesting that the Tavola Strozzi could have been commissioned by Ferrante, and we might assume that it was perhaps even a gift from Ferrante to Strozzi. The depiction of the Strozzi moons as well as the Aragonese imprese on the flags, suggests that the painting was commissioned with both the Aragonese and the Strozzi in mind. Filippo Strozzi provided loans for the Battle of Ischia, and it may well have been a gift from Ferrante to Strozzi in appreciation for Strozzi funds, and given to Filippo before he left for his repatriation to Florence in 1466. This would also suggest that the lettuccio’s perspective of Naples may have even been modelled on the Tavola Strozzi. However, this is all conjecture until further evidence is found. 97 For a study on perspective, and the connection between intarsia and intellectual ideas, see James Elkins, The Poetics of Perspective (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), especially 133.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 157 view of Naples depicted on her balcony in the Castel Vecchio in Ferrara.98

Eleonora also had a camerino in her garden apartments painted with a view of

Naples and she is recorded sending a painting of Naples to either Milan or

Mantua, two cities in which her daughters, Ferrante’s granddaughters, lived.99

The gifts of representations of Naples and the movement of such objects between courts signals a conscious reference to the Aragonese dynasty, not only for the daughter of the King of Naples and his granddaughters, but also for those involved in economic and social relations with the king, such as Filippo Strozzi.

The Strozzi lettuccio would have arrived in Naples at the beginning of May 1473, just before Eleonora left on her bridal procession for Ferrara on 24 May 1473.100

She would have thus viewed the depiction of Naples on the lettuccio at this time, whether it was intarsia or the Tavola Strozzi, and thus may have influenced her own commissions of representations of Naples.

98 The view was painted by the court artist Giovanni Trullo who was paid for the work on 31 December 1485. ASMO M&F 20. 155V 99 Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 113. There is some discrepancy between two documents, both recording payments for the artist Ercole de’ Roberti to paint a view of Naples: on 2 October 1493 Ercole is paid for work already completed, including a painting of Naples to be sent to Milan; and later in the same account book he is recorded being paid again on the same date for a painting to be sent to Mantua. “[...]A retrare napuli per mandare a milano como al M[e]m[oria]le x (92 e accredito a lei in psto” ASMO M&F 28. 37V. “m˚ Hercule depintore per lo amo[n]tare p[er] ta[n]te opere lui a facto dare adepinzere la loza del zardino secreto da madama e aretrare napuli per mandare a matoa como al Mle x (92 e a debito ala ast.” ASMO M&F 28.169R. Also published in Joseph Manca, The Art of Ercole de' Roberti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 216, documents 60 and 61. Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 23. This is not the first time that the Ferrarese accounts confused Isabella and Beatrice d’Este. Confusion also arises in the accounts of marriage chests, which are first recorded for Beatrice, but then subsequently corrected in another document in relation to Isabella. In this instance we know that they referred to Isabella because the date of her marriage and execution of the wedding chests both coincide. See Manca, Art of Ercole, 199-201, Docs. 19 and 20.. Either Milan or Mantua would have been suitable destinations for the depiction as both of Eleonora’s daughters were living in these two cities— Beatrice d’Este, the wife of Ludovico Sforza in Milan, and Isabella d’Este, the wife of Francesco Gonzaga, in Mantua. Beatrice had spent part of her childhood in Naples, and may have been a more suitable candidate. 100 L. Olivi, "Delle nozze di Ercole I con Eleonora d'Aragona," memorie della R. Accademia di Scienze , Lettere ed Arti di Modena 2, no. 5 (1887): 36.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 158

The king’s lettuccio was much discussed in a series of letters between the

Florentine silk merchant Marco Parenti and his brother-in-law Filippo Strozzi.101

Filippo left for Naples before the lettuccio was completed and Marco supervised the final work on it and arranged for its shipment to Naples.102 On 3 April 1473 the Strozzi Company in Florence wrote to Filippo Strozzi in Naples stating that the lettuccio was finished but that Marco wanted to have the predella redone as well as “other things” and that Marco was also having more gold applied.103 On

12 April 1473 Marco wrote to Filippo updating him on the lettuccio’s progress, which is the letter quoted at the start of this chapter. Marco’s letter raises some interesting points in regards to the reception of the lettuccio. As stated in the letter, the daybed had been admired by many Florentines who had come to see it in the shop and its beauty caused viewers to return more than once to admire it.

This letter reveals that the lettuccio was a site of interest for Florentine citizens, those well-versed in the arts as well as regular citizens, “piace molto a ognuno, chosì dell’arte chome cittadini.” Marco writes that Benedetto da Maiano had left the previous day for Rome, en route to Naples, and that the artist had already used

300 pieces of gold leaf on the lettuccio. Admirers were told that the lettuccio was for the king, and Marco notes that many wondered whether it was commissioned by the king or whether it was a gift from Strozzi. Marco also compares it to a lettuccio by Benedetto da Maiano owned by Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, which cost

101 Marco Parenti’s letters have been published and edited, see Parenti, Lettere. 102 For the lettuccio see del Treppo, "Avventure."; Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'." and also Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 12-3. 103 ‘El lettuccio is va fornendo sarebbe ora finito ma Marcho v’à fatto rifare la predella dintorno e certe altre chose e vuole fare mettere d’oro alchuni luoghi e ce n’è anchora per parecchi di.’ Part of the document is reproduced in Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 524, Appendix A.x.38. Also see Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'," 45.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 159

200 fiorini—considerably more than Strozzi’s commission. Marco states that the cornice of the Medici lettuccio, may be more beautiful but the “mezo”

(presumably the spalliera and interior decoration of the king’s lettuccio, and most probably the view of Naples), surpasses the Medici lettuccio.104

Marco’s comments also reiterate the competitiveness in the commissioning of such objects. Marco’s comparison of the two lettucci, one commissioned by the

Medici and the other by Filippo, suggests rivalry, but also references the knowledge and taste that is part of the commissioning of such an object.

Appadurai has noted that the politics of knowledge is a crucial component in defining luxury goods, whereby such objects require a specialised knowledge. 105

That is, knowledge is linked not only to connoisseurship, but also to the knowledge of production and consumption of these objects. The commissioning of luxury objects, such as lettucci, is thus not only about the amount that they cost, but also about the knowledge around the object: how much one should pay, what sort of materials one should use, what artist to commission, and how it is valued within a culture. Marco suggests that Filippo, although spending less on the lettuccio, has actually proved to be more astute, as his lettuccio rivals and even exceeds the Medici lettuccio. By observing that viewers marvelled at the lettuccio and pondered over whether it was commissioned by the king or by

Filippo, Marco equates Filippo’s taste and economic capabilities of commissioning such a luxury object with those of the King of Naples. I am

104 Also see del Treppo, "Avventure," 489-90. 105 Appadurai signals out five characteristics of luxury goods: restriction to elites, complexity of acquisitions, semiotic virtuosity, specialised knowledge, and a high linkage between consumption to body/person/personality. Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 38. Also see his section on knowledge and commodities, 41-56.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 160 tempted to push this further, by stating that another crucial component of these luxury goods at this time was linked to narratives around these objects. That is to say, what also becomes important is not only knowing their histories, production, or provenances, but also the genealogies and relationships of the lettucci, in short—who owned what, where they were located, and how they were appreciated. In this case, the knowledge that Pierfrancesco de’ Medici owned a lettuccio, and that a new lettuccio was being commissioned for the King of

Naples, allowed viewers to compare the two, and to create relations between these objects. This sort of interest in particular objects and the comparisons they give rise to, creates a demand—in this case for the lettuccio—that turns “just a bed” into a culturally resonant object, commissioned by a select group of individuals, who become well versed in “lettuccio knowledge.” However, this knowledge or familiarity with the lettuccio then gets disseminated into the larger cultural field as it is shown on display in the bottega, viewed by many citizens both versed and non-versed in the arts, and engaged with as furniture in the palazzo, by visitors and servants.

After Marco’s letter we have further news about the lettuccio. A letter from the Strozzi Company in Florence to the branch in Naples dated 30 April 1473, and published by Eve Borsook, affirms the delivery of the lettuccio and the arrival of

Benedetto da Maiano in Naples to assemble it.106 The letter also notes the

106 “Sarà a Dio piacendo arivato e’ letucio e voi vistolo, e saravi stato Benedetto da Maiano e fatto il bisogno et aconc[i]olo insieme come à stare. Così s’atende e che sia piac[i]uto e chonosc[i]uto chome è stato qui, che invero è stato tenuto una bella cosa, come è, e ancho il pregio ve lo può mostrare, chè come visto arete, fiorini CX larghi al Maiano s’è avuto a paghare. Vedrassi le spese apunto vi si sarano fatto a meterassi al conto, avisate e diravisi. E voi arete fatto cho’ veturali el meglio arete potuto che, in vero, ci parse meglio rimeterne ala vostra discrezione...” From ASF,

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 161 reception of the lettuccio in Naples, stating that it was esteemed as a “bella cosa.”

On 15 May 1473 Marco wrote to Filippo in response to the latter’s letter, confirming that the lettuccio had arrived in Naples, and that Benedetto was also there.107 On 20 July 1473, Strozzi’s account book records the payment to “Ristoro di Iacopo da Lantella vetturale” (the carriage driver), for “the carriage from

Florence to here [Naples] of a decorated lettuccio, which was given to the Maestà del Signor Re.”108 There is no news about the lettuccio, until almost a year later, when Filippo on 1 May 1474, now in Florence, writes to Lorenzo Strozzi in

Naples. Filippo states that he has sent some additions to the lettuccio, including

“la chorona e monte di diamante” (crown and the impresa of the mountain of diamonds) along with cloth, noting that these “adornments” will make the already beautiful lettuccio even more beautiful.109 He instructs Lorenzo to make sure to affix them well (“chonficare bene”), with the crown above the arms, and the prettiest stone in front (“la chorona, sopra l’arme, e la più bella pietra sia il dinanzi”). The crown presumably symbolised royalty and the mountain of diamonds was a common impresa used by the Aragonese, often associated with the Order of the Ermine, but the material of these objects is not mentioned, except for the comment about the stone, and we cannot be certain whether these were wood intarsia, painted wood, or perhaps inlaid wood with gems or precious

CS III, 133. 16, published in Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi," 14, n.0. Also mentioned and published in del Treppo, "Avventure," 489. 107 Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 525 Appendix A.x. 39. 108 Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi, 522. 109 “Ieri raviai la chorona e monte di diamante cho’ panni: i’ lettuccio fu bello, e questo adornamento lo farà viepiù bello. Farà’la chonfichare bene, cioè la chorona, sopra l’arme, e la più bella pietra sia il dinanzi. Non scrivo altrimenti al Re; fa’ le parole tu e aspetta al darlla il tenpo, chè non c’importa 15 dì più o meno. Verrà tutto più di 40 fiorini larghi.” Transcribed in del Treppo, "Avventure," 489. Also see Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'," 45.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 162 stones. It is unclear why Filippo, a year later, felt the need to send down more embellishments for the lettuccio, but the addition of the imprese and cloth demonstrate that the lettuccio was highly decorated.

While I have noted that a lettuccio was used as a daybed, visual imagery also suggests that when used by royalty, it could also serve as a throne, when giving audience.110 Figure 13 depicts a lettuccio as a seat of honour, where King

Solomon gives audience from his lettuccio as a throne.111 Here King Solomon reclines with pillows and the cloth behind forms a sort of canopy. We might assume that the cloth that Filippo added to the lettuccio may have served a similar purpose. Regardless, the depiction suggests the ways in which the object would have had an intimate relationship with the body of King Ferrante, as well as with those who viewed it. Decorated with his imprese and a view of Naples, it would have linked the king’s territory, his personal mottos and imprese with his physical body. While we have no other accounts of the lettuccio, the letters suggest that the object was a source of discussion, not only for those involved in the commission, but also for the Florentine citizens who came to marvel at it, as well as for the

Neapolitan court who received it when it arrived in Naples. Furthermore, the particular nature of the lettuccio—a piece of furniture on which one sits or reclines—furthers the sociability of the object, as one gave audience from it or received visitors.

110 Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 148 and 53. Trionfi Honorati, "A proposito del 'lettuccio'," 40. 111 Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 153, Figure 67. Thornton also provides another example of a lettuccio used as a throne in the Judgement Scene in the Story of Susanna and the Elders c. 1500 by the Master of Apollo and Daphne in the Art Institute of Chicago, 148, Figure 163.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 163

Filippo’s commissioning of the lettuccio also influenced Duke Alfonso d’Aragona to have a similar one made three years later. This suggests that

Alfonso, the son of Ferrante, undoubtedly viewed the king’s lettuccio, and that he sought to own one and participate in the commissioning of lettucci, which had now become a sought after item at the court of Naples. Between 1476 and 1477

Giuliano da Maiano worked on a lettuccio for Alfonso.112 Although Alfonso’s lettuccio does not have a direct link with Filippo Strozzi, the commission was made by Andrea Partini, a business associate of Filippo and probably an associate of the Benedetto Salutati, the head of the company that shipped the piece of furniture.113 Alfonso’s choice to have his lettuccio made by the da Maiano workshop followed the tastes of the previous three lettucci that had been sent down to Naples from Florence. The documents for the commission were discovered by Dario Covi in the archives of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in

Florence, in the account books of Benedetto Salutati and Company, Florentine merchant-bankers who also had branches in Rome and Naples. The account books record a number of payments to Giuliano from 24 July 1476 to 16 August 1477, that came to 210 fiorini larghi, roughly comparable to the amount Pierfrancesco de’ Medici paid for his lettuccio, but considerably more than Strozzi’s commission.114 Alfonso also had 2200 pieces of gold leaf and 150 pieces of silver leaf applied to the lettuccio by the painters Lorenzo di Piero and partners, which

112 Dario A. Covi, "A documented 'lettuccio' for the duke of Calabria by Giuliano da Maiano," in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus (Firenze: 1978), 121. 113 Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 121; del Treppo, "Avventure," 498. 114 Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 121.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 164 cost another 25 florins and 6 danari.115 More expenses were incurred for packing and shipment, which included the paper, rope and other materials to pack it, customs taxes, and freight charges. These shipping accounts also reveal that other lettucci were shipped with the larger one.116 A document of 16 September 1477 from the Salutati books, records the shipment of three lettucci, claiming two of them were for the accounts of the Salutati Company and the third lettuccio was for the account of Simone Vespucci.117 Nothing else is known about Alfonso’s lettuccio, and Nicola Barone’s transcriptions of the court records for 1476 and

1477 are practically blank for this period.118 The accounts of the Salutati

Company from 1475-9 reveal, as Covi has suggested, that the Salutati seem to have had a standing account for lettucci during these years.119 The accounts also demonstrate that the commissioning of such items, and their shipment from one city to another, involved a series of intermediaries: the makers, the artists, the merchants, the shippers, the customs agents, the receivers, the consumers, and the viewers.120

115 Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 122. 116 Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 122. 117 “chonto di 3 lettucci mandamo a Napoli a nostri, che 2 per nostro chontto e l’atro di Simone Vespucci, el qual chonto avemo la Pisa da Iacopo Neretti.” Transcribed in Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 122 and 5, Doc 1. 118 It is unclear whether this is because there were no records for these years when Barone transcribed them, or if they were not deemed important enough to transcribe and since they are now destroyed, we will never know. There is only one entry for 1476 in Barone’s transcriptions, which references a payment for the coronation of the new Queen of Naples; 1477 is completely absent from his transcriptions. Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 401. 119 Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 121. 120 It should be noted that on 16 February 1476 Benedetto Salutati and the heads of his associated companies, Lorenzo Strozzi, Francesco Nori, and Andrea Spannocchi, hosted a banquet for Alfonso, Duke of Calabria and the other offspring of King Ferrante. Francesco Novati, ed., Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, vol. IV Part 2, Fonti per la storia d'Italia (Rome: Tipografia del Senato and Istituto Storico Italiano, 1911), 420. This suggests that Alfonso d’Aragona and Benedetto Salutati sat down at a table together in mid February 1476, and six months later on 24 July 1476, Giuliano da Maiano was paid for some work already done on the lettuccio through Salutati. “E dì detto [24 July 1476] f. 8 larghi, per lui a Giuliano da Maiano lengnauo[vo]llo, portò

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 165

In addition to the Neapolitan lettucci, it should be noted that Eleonora d’Aragona, who had spent her childhood in Naples, also commissioned a lettuccio for her apartments in Ferrara. On 28 August 1488, Eleonora paid a “Maestro Piero de Paxa Intaiadore” in Modena for wood for a lettuccio.121 On 30 December 1489, a “Maestro Pollo Toto” was paid 75 lire marchesani for a large lettuccio, presumably the same one she bought the wood for in August 1488. The large lettuccio was manufactured in Modena, and placed in her garden apartments near the Castel Vecchio.122 We do not know anything about the decoration of the lettuccio but an inventory was taken in 1489 of all her cloth and tapestry items and lists a “tomarazo” for the lettuccio in Eleonora’s room. The inventory of 11

April states that it was a small tapestry, made of expensive material—“raso alexandrine”—which was sewn in Ferrara by Biagio del Bailo, one of Eleonora’s favourite cloth artisans.123 While not of Florentine manufacture, Eleonora’s lettuccio demonstrates that Eleonora’s taste for such an item may have been

Giovanni suo fratello, per parte d’1˚ lettuccio gli fa...... f. 8” Covi, "Documented lettuccio," 126, Doc. 2. Benedetto Salutati was also responsible for sending the gift of a tondo by Botticelli to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga in 1477, which cost just over 41 florins, demonstrating that Salutati was in contact with a variety of individuals through the exchange of artistic objects, whether he was serving in the capacity of a merchant in shipping the items, or whether he was participating in the cultural practices of gifting or entertaining. Dario A. Covi, "A Documented Tondo by Botticelli," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Ugo Procacci, ed. Maria Grazia Ciardi Dupré dal Poggetto and Paolo dal Poggetto (Milan: Electa editrice, 1977), 270-2. 121 “Ill[ustrissi]ma madama n[ost]ra di dare ad xxviij di agosto [1488] L cento uno d 18 M tantj la fiore di spina apagato in Modena alinfrascrite persone: M[aestro] Piero de paxa Intaiadore per oto sentj di legno per lo letuzo....L2.8.0” ASMO AP 637. 49V. 122 “M Pollo toto di avere ad xxx d[i]x[em]bre L setante cinque M per lavalute di uno letuzo grande luj a fato fare in modena alla Ill[ustrissi]ma M[adama] e sto asstinato per M[aestro] biaxio Roseto ingegniero di Sua S[ignoria] dite L 25 lo q[u]ale fo posto nel zardino di sua Ex[ellen]tia e posto suxo lo inventario (instario?) di M[aestro] batiste dala masa zardinoero...... L75” ASMO AP 639. 153R. 123 “Tomarazo una picollo di raxo alesandrino lo quale talgio q[ui] di biaxio del baillo per lo letuzo de camarino de la Ill[ustrissi]ma m[adam]a nos[t]ra come al˚ di Racord (178...... n.1” ASMO AP 640. 155v.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 166 fostered and influenced by the Florentine lettucci sent to Naples, where she was raised.

The lettucci destined for the Neapolitan court all differ in price. While

Diomede’s lettuccio appears to be the cheapest, costing only twenty-five florins, such a price could still purchase a decent amount of decoration. Lorenzo de’

Medici’s inventory, for instance, contained a lettiera decorated with walnut mouldings and tarsie, which was appraised at four florins, and his lettuccio was valued at forty-five florins, which was made out of cypress and had walnut panels decorated with intarsia.124 The cost of Diomede’s lettuccio would have placed his decoration somewhere in the middle of these two, and may have contained no gold leaf. Very few lettucci survive (Figures 15 and 17 are some of the only extant examples), however there are depictions in paintings of the period that give us an idea of how they might have been used (Figure 14).125 The print from

Savonarola’s Predica dell’arte del Bene morire (Figure 16) shows a lettuccio with what appears to be intarsia on the spalliera, divided into sections, similar to surviving lettucci.

Filippo Strozzi’s commissioning of the da Maiano brothers for lettucci appears to have introduced a Neapolitan sensibility for their work. We know that

Filippo Strozzi facilitated the trip of Benedetto da Maiano from Florence to

Naples when he commissioned the lettuccio for the king, and this sparked an

124 Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 149. 125 The Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, for instance, contains a lettuccio. Many spalliere paintings or works on panel that exist today in their fragmented form may have initially come from lettucci as well as other furniture such as cassoni.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 167 interest to have the brothers work in Naples.126 Giuliano da Maiano travelled to

Naples in 1484 to execute work on the great arch at the Porta Capuana, erected near the Castel Capuana which was the residence of Duke Alfonso d’Aragona and

Duchess Ippolita Sforza.127 Interestingly enough, it was the Gondi Bank, and not the Strozzi Bank, that was largely responsible for paying Giuliano da Maiano’s work for Alfonso. Court records reveal that Giuliano da Maiano was paid twenty florins via the Gondi Brothers on 2 March 1485 to make the trip down to Naples as an architect for Alfonso d’Aragona.128 On 27 April 1485 Alfonso paid twenty ducati for the price of a mule he was giving to “Giuliano da Maiano architetto fiorentino,” who had arrived only a few days before in Naples “per fare certi disegno e certe fabbriche” (for some designs and some work/construction).129 On

8 August 1487, the Gondi are recorded paying 232 ducati for unspecified designs by Giuliano da Maiano done in July of that year.130 Joampiero Leostello da

Volterra in his Effermeridi, a chronicle detailing the deeds of Alfonso II, notes that on 17 February 1487, Alfonso had begun work on his various architectural

126 For Giuliano da Maiano in Naples see Ceci, "Nuovi documenti," 784-92. 127 Erasmo Percopo, "Nuovi documenti su gli scrittori e gli artisti dei tempi aragonesi," Archivio storico per le province napoletane XIX (1894): 577. 128 “A Giuliano e Antonio Gondi, mercanti fiorentin: ventidui ducati, quarto tari, et sono per la valuta di vinti fiorini di grossi che per hordinazione del ditto signore [duca di Calabria] pagorono in Firenze a Juliano di Lionardo di Majano, architettore, quali venne qui in Napoli al servizio di Sua Signoria; et per loro a Biliocozo Gondi: xxii duc, iv tari.” Percopo, "Nuovi documenti vol xix," 578, Doc I. 129 “A Lupes, spagnuolo cozzone, si danno 20 duc correnti, prezzo di una mula baia pura, che il signor duca ha donato graziosamente a Giuliano da Maiano architetto fiorentino, il quale nei di passati venne in napoli al servizio del ditto signore, per fare certi disegno e certe fabbriche.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 603-4. 130 “A Giuliano e ad altri eredi d’Antonio Gondi se danno 232 ducati valuta di 200 ducati d’oro che il Duca fece pagare nel luglio in Firenze a Giuliano da Mayano per certi disegni.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 623.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 168 projects and had employed Giuliano da Maiano as his architect.131 Indeed, some scholars have labelled Giuliano “architetto ducale” from 1488 to 1490, during which he not only provided designs but supervised various architectural projects.

These projects involved the building of the Palazzo di Poggioreale and work in the Castel Capuana, which included renovations to Alfonso’s studiolo and oratory.132 In his Lives, Vasari states that Alfonso commissioned Giuliano to execute the work on his scrittoio, presumably intarsia panelling similar to the studiolo at Urbino (Figure 60).133

It was the da Maiano brothers’ impressive skill in intarsia seen on lettucci that sparked an interest in their work, and inevitably led Benedetto to work in

Naples. The lettucci sent down to Naples caused fascination with the object both in Florence and in Naples. The king’s lettuccio, when displayed in the bottega, caused viewers to admire it, to compare it with the Medici commission, and to discuss its connections with the King of Naples. The various lettucci as they were constructed in Florence and then shipped to Naples thus involved a number of individuals, leading to a fascination not only with the lettuccio form, but also with specific lettucci. Lettuccio knowledge was thus formulated through the discussion of and comparison between particular lettucci owned by illustrious individuals.

131 “ILla Signoria comincio’ a dare ordine a fare fabrica et mando’ per Messer Juliano designatore a Fiorenze.” Filangieri, Effemeridi (Leostello), LXXIV. First published in Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Effemeridi, Delle cose fatte per il duca di Calabria (1484-91) di Joampiero Leostello da Volterra da un codice della Biblioteca Nazionale di Parigi, 6 vols., vol. I (Naples: Tipografia dell'Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1883). 132 Giuliano employed many Florentine masons and builders to work on Poggioreale, as well as the Palazzo Como in Naples. Ceci, "Nuovi documenti," 785-6. For Poggioreale also see Colombo, "Poggioreale," 186-209, 309-42. 133 Santoro, "Un celebra 'lettuccio'," 53, n. 39.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 169

Gems, Medallions, and Books: Circulation, Replication, and Transmission

The example of the lettuccio in Naples gives us an idea of how merchant- bankers were integral to the formation of tastes in new objects, but in what ways did they participate in the circulation and interest in antiquities and previously owned objects? This section examines the ways in which objects, specifically gems, circulated in a variety of forms, and how the commissioning of books in

Florence facilitated the dissemination of antique gems depicted in manuscript illumination. Merchant-bankers often found themselves in ideal positions to procure antiquities, and thus facilitated circulation through ownership. The Medici courtyard medallions, and the gems they copy, are ideal examples of these two forms of circulation: through ownership and through visual replication.

In 1452 the Medici paid for seven marble medallions, which copied motifs of famous antique cameos and gems (Figure 21). These medallions have been attributed to Donatello or his workshop and were placed in the spandrels of the arches in the courtyard of the Palazzo Medici.134 What is interesting is that the cameos copied were not then in the Medici collections, but in the following forty years would come into Medici possession. Three of the engraved gemstones that were used as sources, Daedalus and Icarus, Athena and Poseidon, Dionysus and the Satyr, entered the Medici collection in 1462; the Chariot with Dionysus Led by Psychai and Diomedes and the Palladium were acquired by Lorenzo from

Pope Paul II’s collection in 1471; the centaur was acquired in 1492; and the

134 Mariarita Casarosa Guadagni, "The Medici Collection of Gems During the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," in Treasures of Florence. The Medici Collection, 1400-1700, ed. Cristina Acidini Luchinat (Munich and New York: Prestel, 1997), 74.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 170

Dionysus with Ariadne and Naxos is known to have belonged to the Gonzaga family.135 What I think is important here is twofold. On the one hand, these gems were passed through a number of hands, and it is through these various owners that narratives begin to be told, causing a variety of individuals to be interested in their provenances and histories. On the other hand, it is through their display, their engagement, and their copying by artists, that their fame and their stories are circulated.

The gem of Diomedes and the Palladium (Figure 18) for instance, was procured in 1465 by Pope Paul II (formerly Pietro Barbo before his election to pope), when he oversaw the estate of Ludovico Trevisan, the Chamberlain of the

Apostolic Camera, who died in that year.136 It was in September 1471, after Paul

II’s death and the coronation of Pope Sixtus IV, when Lorenzo de’ Medici travelled to Rome as an ambassador, that he obtained the Diomedes and the

Palladium. Lorenzo writes in his ricordi:

In September of 1471 I was elected ambassador to Rome for the coronation of Pope Sixtus IV, where I was very honored, and from there I carried away two ancient marble heads with the images of Augustus and Agrippa, which the said Pope gave me; and, in addition I took away our dish of carved chalcedony [the Tazza Farnese] along with many other cameos [i.e., gems] and coins which were then bought, among them the chalcedony [the Diomedes and the Palladium].137

135 Casarosa Guadagni, "Medici Collection of Gems," 74. Also see Nicola Dacos, "La fortuna delle gemme medicee nel Rinascimento," in Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Le gemme. Catalogo della Mostra Palazzo Medici Riccardi., ed. Nicole Dacos, Antonio Giuliano, and Ulrico Pannuti (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1973), 133-62. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 124-8. 136 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 2. 137 Quotation and translation from Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 6 and 337, Doc. 204. Fusco and Corti took the quotation from Ricordi del Magnifico Lorenzo di Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici. The original is located in Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence, Ms. II. IV. 309, 1-2v.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 171

It should be noted that Lorenzo did not receive these in his role as ambassador, but rather in his position as a member of the Medici bank. The

Medici bank in Rome cancelled the past papal debts accrued by Paul II, and made

Sixtus new loans, through which they acquired the gems. As Niccolò Valori states in his biography on Lorenzo in the early sixteenth century, “many of the gems and pearls which Pope Paul collected with single-minded zeal, he [Sixtus] conceded to them [Lorenzo and Medici roman bank] either for nothing or for a very small price.”138 The Diomedes and the Palladium’s history was, however, even more intriguing for Renaissance viewers. Both Lorenzo Ghiberti, in his Commentaries

(1450) and Vespasiano da Bisticci in his Vita di Niccolò Niccoli (after 1480) narrated the strange tale on how the gem came into the possession of Niccolò

Niccoli, the owner of the gem before Ludovico Trevisan. Niccolò is said to have seen a young boy in the street, sporting the chalcedony around his neck. Niccolò, who was extremely taken by the gem, asked the boy how much he wanted for it, and of course the boy, having no idea of how much such a thing was worth, demanded five florins for it.139 This anecdote underlines the different ways the stories of these gems circulated through diverse forms of rhetoric. Filarete and da

Bisticci note that Niccolò sold it to Ludovico Trevisan for two hundred ducati, and we know that it was then passed on to Paul II.140 It should be noted that three additional versions of Diomedes were in Paul II’s inventory in 1457, and yet he

138 Quoted in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 6. 139 The two texts by Ghiberti and Bisticci can be found in Nicole Dacos, Antonio Giuliano, and Ulrico Pannuti, eds., Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Le gemme. Catalogo della Mostra Palazzo Medici Riccardi., vol. I (Florence: Sansoni Editore, 1973), 86, Docs II and III. Also see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 334-6, Docs 199-203. 140 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 335, Doc 201; Dacos, Giuliano, and Pannuti, eds., Tesoro di Lorenzo, 86, Doc III.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 172 still sought to obtain the Niccoli-Trevisan’s version, now probably quite famous through the narratives that were circulating in collecting circles.141 Lorenzo’s ricordi above underline his fascination and pride in procuring the famous

Diomedes gem, and in 1495 it was mentioned as one of Lorenzo’s best three gems by Caradosso Foppa in a letter written to Ludovico Sforza, after visiting the

Medici collections: “El melio non is trova, zoè el sugiello di Nerone [the Marsyas gem], el caro di Fetonte [the Phaethon gem], el calzidonio [the Diomedes gem]”

(“better ones, one could not find, that is the Marsyas gem, the Phaethon gem, and the Diomedes gem).142 The gem was listed in an inventory of objects inherited by

Margarita of Austria from Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, as well as in her testament of 1567.143

Various copies were made of the gem. It was depicted in manuscript illumination, such as in the decorations of a breviary of Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara

(Figures 19 and 20 ), replicated in the Medici courtyard medallions mentioned above (Figure 21), reproduced on medals, mounted in rings, and used as seals.144

The replications in a variety of media suggest that many would have come into contact with this gem. While today we may view these jewels or gems in manuscript illumination as merely anonymous or imagined objects, the histories attached to these objects imply that contemporary viewers would have been far more aware of the particular copies of gems they were viewing and would thus have associated those representations with the various narratives told about the

141 For the provenance of the gem see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 247, n. 47. 142 Quoted from a letter written 9 February 1495, found in ASMI, Autografi, Cesellatori 92, and published in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 325, Doc 171. 143 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 247, n. 47. 144 Dacos, "Fortuna delle gemme," 160.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 173 original object’s provenance and owners. The posture of Diomedes was also adapted and used by a number of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and

Michelangelo.145 The price of the gem also increased over a short span of time, and I would suggest that its value was intrinsically linked to its growing fame, which was promulgated through the various copies circulating across Italy. In

Lorenzo’s inventory of 1492, the Diomedes gem was listed at 1500 florins, 300 times the pilfered price of 5 florins that Niccolò paid, and close to eight times more than Ludovico Trevisan paid for it.146

Similarly, the Chariot of Dionysus Led by Psychai (Figure 22) was procured by Lorenzo through the estate of Paul II and was also used as a model for one of the Medici medallions, when it was still in Paul II’s possession. In Paul

II’s inventory of 1457, the gem was listed at 100 ducats, but by 1492, when

Lorenzo’s inventory was taken, it had increased ten times in value, to 1000 florins.147 It was also copied in numerous forms, and was used many times in manuscript illumination, including Filippo Strozzi’s copy of Pliny’s Natural

History (Figure 23).

In 1476 Filippo engaged in a business venture with the printer Nicolaus

Jenson in Venice, producing editions of Pliny’s Natural History translated into the vernacular by Cristoforo Landino and dedicated to King Ferrante.148 This edition was distinctive because there were two sets of books printed: one that was printed on regular paper, of which many were sent to London to Italian expatriates; and

145 For a list of the copies see Dacos, "Fortuna delle gemme," 160. 146 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 127. 147 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 124. 148 Jardine, Worldly Goods, 143-7; Jonathan J. G. Alexander, ed., The Painted Page: Italian Renaissance Book Illumination 1450-1550 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994), 163-76.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 174 the other, printed on parchment, a much more expensive material and consequently, only a limited number of copies were made. The first set led to a flourishing trade of books shipped between Venice and London for the Italian community in England.149 The more expensive parchment copies became highly valued objects and constituted a hybrid: a printed book embellished with elaborate manuscript illumination. Filippo made sure to obtain his own copy and adorned it with expensive illumination, which was done by Monte di Giovanni di Miniato and possibly his brother.150 Filippo’s manuscript is now in the Bodleian Library in

Oxford and its frontispiece contains portraits of Ferrante, Filippo Strozzi, and his young son (Figure 23) and is also illuminated throughout, containing portraits of

Ferrante along with the Aragonese arms, as well as Strozzi arms and imprese.151

The frontispiece is embellished with mythological representations in cameo-like shapes, which copy gems from the collection of Lorenzo de’ Medici, including the famous Dionysus on a Chariot Led by Psychai.152 The frontispiece thus spoke to Filippo’s social, cultural, and political relations. The presence of Ferrante’s portrait in the book alluded to Filippo’s acquaintance with the king through mercantile and political networks. The copies of the gems also placed Filippo within the socio-cultural spheres of collecting and humanist knowledge. The artistic rendering of the gems would have provided Filippo with an example of the famous gems in Lorenzo’s collection, but they could have also been the subject of

149 Jardine, Worldly Goods, 44. 150 Payments are recorded between April 1479 and March 1483 to the illuminator Monte di Giovanni for work on Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Sale, "Strozzi Chapel", 39; Borsook, "Documenti relativi alle Capelle di Lecceto e delle Selve di Filippo Strozzi," 20, Appendix xii; Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 175. 151 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 175, Catalogue 85. The frontispiece appears on folio 5R. 152 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 174.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 175 discussion, enabling Filippo to contemplate the different renderings of the subject matter in sculptural gem form versus the painted illumination. As a merchant- banker, Filippo came into contact with a wide range of gems and jewels and thus was most likely well-versed in the knowledge of their circulation. Here the illuminator has altered the gem slightly, by placing the chariot on a deeper ground, rather than a ledge-like plane, and he has added a barking dog in the foreground.

A copy of the Dionysus Chariot appears depicted in the manuscript illumination of Alfonso II d’Aragona’s copy of Livy’s Roman History (Figure

24).153 The illuminations were done in Florence and are attributed to Gherardo di

Giovanni di Miniato, while the script has been attributed to Messer Piero di

Benedetto Strozzi. It has been suggested that the manuscript might be connected with a payment to Vespasiano da Bisticci in Florence via the merchant Giuliano

Gondi listed in the royal accounts in 1479.154 Here we have the Dionysus Chariot at the top of the page, illuminated in gold. The illuminator has eliminated the dog, and the chariot now appears on a ledge, resembling the actual gem. One of the other medallions from the Medici courtyard is depicted, as well as Alfonso’s various imprese. In the left and right borders there appears the Aragonese imprese of the mountain of diamonds, the flaming throne, and the sprouting stock, all emblems linked to the Order of the Ermine, of which Alfonso was a member.155

Alfonso also collected gems, and we know that he had been in competition with

Lorenzo de’ Medici, among others, for procuring the gems belonging to Cardinal

153 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 160, Cat. 76. 154 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 160. 155 For the Order of the Ermine see chapter four.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 176

Francesco Gonzaga in the 1480s.156 Alfonso’s knowledge of gems and his participation in the collecting of such gems is thus alluded to by the depiction of such objects in his copy of Livy. If one could not own the particular gem itself, one could still gain access to that gem within a system of value that placed importance not only on ownership (which was still a crucial part), but also on the replication, invention, and translation of artistic forms. The manuscript depicting the gems also signals the ways in which these objects circulated not only through written narratives and letters, but also through visual imagery and replication.

The Dionysus Chariot also appears in a Missal, which belonged to Thomas

James, Bishop of Dol in Brittany, and dates from 1483 (Figure 25).157 What is interesting is that the illumination is not by either of the Miniato brothers but by

Attavante degli Attavanti, who was known to have received commissions from patrons outside of Florence such as King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and King

Manuel of Portugal.158 Various artists must have thus had access to these gems, or at least their copies, a circumstance which alludes to the ways these small intimate objects should be seen as having a larger public presence. Here the Dionysus

Chariot appears at the bottom right of the page, in black and white, resembling the tonal differences of the original gem. Other Medici gems are also found in the border illumination, and the central altar is a copy of the Della Valle-Medici sarcophagus. Attavante also copied the Dionysus Chariot gem in his illuminations of Ptolemy’s Geografia now in the Bibliothèque National de Paris.159 This

156 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 14. 157 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 56, Cat 3a. 158 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 56. 159 Dacos, Giuliano, and Pannuti, eds., Tesoro di Lorenzo, figure 88.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 177 suggests that not only were these gems disseminated through copies within Italy but it was also through the international book trade and mercantile networks that they were also viewed abroad.

The copying of Medici gems and medallions in a variety of media, especially in manuscript illumination, indicates that these objects were appreciated not as anonymous antique gems, valued for their appearance and artistic skill alone, or their rarity, but also because they were specific gems, which had illustrious owners, and whose histories were well known to those who collected, exchanged, and copied them. It appears that these gems were continually taken note of—by ambassadors, agents, artists, collectors, and political figures—and that part of the interest in ownership was also interest in the knowledge around the gems: who owned what, who bought what, and how one might procure more. Lorenzo’s practice of engraving his gems with

“LAV.R.MED.” also alludes to the ways in which possession of these gems had become something linked to one’s identity.160 By engraving his name onto the gems, Lorenzo was sure to make a mark on the biographies of those gems, if they ever were to leave his possession, making certain his name would be associated with the other illustrious individuals said to have owned such objects. What becomes clear, then, is that collectors of these precious gems were not merely keen on accumulating or amassing large quantities of any gems, but rather there was a knowledge of particular gems, and that their histories were intrinsically linked to the value of those objects. The depictions of gems in manuscripts

160 As Findlen notes “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.” Findlen, "Possessing the Past," 95.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 178 formed a connection across space to the objects themselves, between visual copies and the actual gems, and signal the importance of intermediality. This intermediality draws relationships between the books found in the studiolo, and the objects collected, stored, and shown there. It was Florentine illuminators who had access to these gems or their copies, which allowed for the visual dissemination of those gems across Italy and abroad. The constant circulation of these objects as currency was somehow pinned down when these gems were depicted in illumination, allowing a visual record of something that repeatedly moved. In some ways, allowing ownership of something one did not own. The practices associated with the circulation of objects, and the complications between individuals such circulations provoked, will now be elaborated upon further in my discussion on pawning.

IV. The Practices of Pawning: Objects and Contenders

It is appropriate to join splendour and magnificence, because they both consist of great expense and have a common matter, that is money. But magnificence derives its name from the concept of grandeur and concerns building, spectacle and gifts, while splendour is primarily concerned with the ornament of the household, the care of the person and with furnishing. –Giovanni Pontano161

Money was the common denominator for splendour and magnificence; it was what courts sought and bankers provided. But as Pontano notes, money was not an end in itself, it was what provided the foundations for gifts and ornament, buildings and furnishings, spectacle and fame, splendour and magnificence. The ways in which the courts obtained money from bankers to finance their magnificence constitutes a crucial component in the exchange of objects. The

161Original in Latin; quotation and translation in Welch, "Public Magnificence," 214.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 179 loaning of money and the pawning of objects not only formed social and political relationships, these activities also facilitated the circulation of objects, allowing objects to change hands continually as a form of currency. It was also through these exchanges that allowed mere “traders” to become merchant-bankers and pursue similar courtly activities that gave them “splendour.”

While the companies of the Strozzi, the Gondi, and the Medici, among others, can be seen as commercial agents and traders that facilitated the circulation of goods through commodification, these companies should also be examined in their capacity as pawnbrokers and bankers. As banks, they provided loans, facilitated payments for individuals’ salaries, provisions, and purchases, and provided bills of exchange for larger ventures. The loaning of money and the pawning of objects also reveal the anxieties around money and its relationship to cultural objects, as well as underlining the social tensions around one’s wealth in relation to one’s status. While my focus is not on money, but rather on objects, in examining the different loans and money exchanged between the Neapolitan crown and Florentine bankers, I found that loans not only constituted political dependencies but also facilitated the circulation of objects, through the practices of credit and pawning.

Credit was a common custom in the early modern period, and many transactions were conducted with a promise to pay, or with a credit secured with one’s belongings, often an object of similar value used as a pledge.162 Purchasing objects, then, often involved the exchanging of one item for another, and introduced different objects to different individuals on a regular basis. Pawning

162 Welch, Shopping, 90-3. Matchette, "Credit and Credibility," 225-41.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 180 was also another very common activity across all social scales, whether it was the pawning of small personal items such as clothing or larger scale pawning of jewels and court libraries. Much of the nobility across Italy pledged their jewels as security for loans, sometimes only for a few days, while others for months or even years on end. The institution of pawning had rules which varied from city to city, but in general, the pawned object was used as a pledge for a sum, which was to be repaid with interest. When the sum was repaid, the objects would then be returned to the rightful owners. However, often enough, the money loaned could not be repaid and the pawnbroker was required to give notice to the owner of the object that his or her objects would soon be the lender’s possessions. There was usually a grace period of a month or so that followed, and if the loan remained unpaid, these objects were then the property of the pawnbroker, who was free to do what he wanted with the goods. Individuals who could not repay their loans lost a certain respectability and also often lost their ability to borrow, branded as uncredit-worthy.163 As Welch has noted, early modern objects should be seen as stores of value, whereby most items—from handkerchiefs to jewels to books— could be offered as pledges.164 I would suggest, however, that the value of objects was not only monetary, and many objects carried conflicting identities, because they were seen both as containing economic value as well as cultural value, an

163 For pawning see Welch, Shopping, 196-203. Also see Lane and Mueller, Money and Banking, 75-8. For later pawning and the institution of the Monte de Pietà, see Vittorino Meneghin, I monti di pietà in Italia: dal 1462 al 1562 (Vicenza: L.I.E.F. Edizione, 1986); Carol Bresnahan Menning, Charity and State in Late Renaissance Italy: The Monte di Pietà of Florence (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993). 164 Welch, Shopping, 196. Also see Evelyn S. Welch, "From Retail to Resale: Artistic Value and the Second-Hand Market in Italy (1400-1550)," in The Art Market In Italy. 15th-17th Centuries/ Il mercato dell'arte in Italia secc. XV-XVII, ed. Marcello Fantoni, Louisa C. Matthew, and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2003).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 181 idea which will be elaborated below. Since magnificence, liberality, and splendour were underlying themes of cultural display and consumption during this time, individuals were more prone to invest any cash they might have in cultural objects, which could then be pawned or put up for credit when needed.165 Aside from the social aspect, there was also a practical side to pawning and pledging, since individuals did not have private bank accounts, they thus sought to put the liquid cash they had in more cultural investments, such as clothing, jewels, and the decoration of their houses.

Funding of military exercises, the running of the court, and court expenditure, especially at times of weddings and other celebrations, required large amounts of money that were frequently sought by the courts through loans. These loans were not only obtained through merchant bankers but also other political figures, and thus could create political dependencies. The Neapolitan crown was notorious for its deficit and offers numerous examples on how loans and the pawning of objects complicated relationships within and between courts. Ippolita

Sforza, Duchess of Calabria, who is well recorded in documents for her continual pawning and loans, provides a good example of how these loans situated her in complex political relations. Ippolita married Alfonso d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria in 1465.166 Raised at the court of Milan, Ippolita received a humanist education

165 For a useful study on the relationship between these concepts and economic and consumption patterns in the Renaissance see Guerzoni, "Liberalitas." Also expanded in Guido Guerzoni, Apollo e Vulcano. I mercati artistici in Italia (1400-1700) (Venice: Marsilio Editore, 2006). 166 For recent work on Ippolita Sforza see Welch, "Between Milan," 123-36; Judith Bryce, "Between Friends? Two Letters of Ippolita Sforza to Lorenzo de' Medici," Renaissance Studies 21, no. 3 (2007): 340-64; Judith Bryce, "'Fa finire uno bello studio et dice volere studiare.' Ippolita Sforza and Her Books," Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance LXIV, no. 1 (2002): 55-69. Diego Zancani, "Writing for Women Rulers in Quattrocento Italy: Antonio Cornazzano," in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. Letizia Panizza (Oxford: European

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 182 and was well known for her literary capabilities and interests in humanistic pursuits.167 Ippolita’s marriage to Alfonso d’Aragona was arranged to solidify an alliance between Milan and Naples, although her relationship with the Aragonese court, which was often unsteady, frequently led to hostilities and diplomatic embarrassment between the two courts.168

Before her move to Naples, Ippolita maintained her own retinue of servants and she received an annual income, which provided her with an independence to pursue cultural activities, which she sought to continue after her relocation to

Naples, building a studiolo and filling it with her collection of books and

Humanities Research Centre, 2000), 58-63; Eileen Southern, "A Prima Ballerina of the Fifteenth Century," in Music and Context. Essays for John M Ward, ed. Anne Dhu Shapiro (Cambridge: 1985), 183-97. For earlier work see Alfredo Baccelli, "Ippolita Sforza, Duchessa di Calabria," Rassegna nazionale Serie III. Vol XI (1930); Alessandro Cutolo, "Vita familiare di Ippolita Sforza," Nuova Antologia 1842 (1954): 225-30; Alessandro Cutolo, "La giovenezza di Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchessa di Calabria," Archivio storico per le province napoletane 34 (1955): 119- 34; Benedetto Croce, "Due letterine familiari di principesse italiane del Quattrocento," Humanisme et Renaissance 6 (1939): 296-7. There is no complete biography on Ippolita Sforza. For early modern sources see Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, "De Hippolyta Sphorza, Duchessa di Calabria," in Gynevra de le clare donne, ed. C. Ricci and A. Bacchi della Lega (Bologna: Presso Romagnoli-dall'acqua, 1888), 332-52. Mauro de Nichilo, Fra Bartolomeo Sibilla, l'orazione in morte di Ippolita Sforza, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studio (Monopoli: Monopoli atti del convegno, 1988). Jacobus Philippus Bergomensis Foresti, De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus BL 167.h.17; G 1448; 1B.25751 (Ferrara: L. de Rubeis de Valentia, 1497), 159-60.For her wedding see C. Canetta, "Le sponsalie di casa Sforza con casa d'Aragona," Archivio storico lombardo 9/10 (1882 and 1883); Alessandro Lisini, Le feste fatte in Napoli nel 1465 per il matrimonio de Ippolita Sforza Visconti con Alfonso, Duca di Calabria. Da lettere del tempo (Siena: Tip. e Lit. Sordo-Muti di L. Lazzeri, 1898); Dora Musto, "Alle origini dell'intesa Napoli- Milano sotto Alfonso d'Aragona: I capitoli nuziali di Alfonso, principe di Capua, e d'Ippolita Sforza," Archivio storico per le province napoletane xcviii (1980): 176-84; Rachele Magnani, Relazione private tra la corte Sforzesca di Milano e casa Medici, 1450-1500 (Milan: Premiata Tipografia S. Giuseppe, 1910). For her two orations to her mother, Bianca Maria Sforza and to Pius II, see Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, eds., Her Immaculate Hand. Selected Works by the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983), 45-8. Some of her letters are also published in Ferdinando Gabotto, Lettere inedite di Joviano Pontano in nome de reali di Napoli, ed. F. Gabotto, Scelta di curiosita letterarie inedite o rare dal secolo xii al xix (Bologna: Presso Romagnoli-Dall'Acqua, 1893). 167 Ippolita, for instance, recited public orations to figures such as Pope Pius II and was well versed in the vernacular, Latin, and Greek. For her literary career see King and Rabil, eds., Her Immaculate Hand, 45-8. 168 This is evident in many letters from Milanese ambassadors in Naples back to Milan in ASMI SPE (Napoli). For a summary of these letters see Welch, "Between Milan."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 183 portraits.169 Her salary, however, proved to be a problem. Soon after her arrival in

Naples, the Milanese ambassador Antonio de Trezzo, reported in October 1465 to the Duke of Milan that he had negotiated with the king about the duchess’ annual salary of 8000 ducati, which seemed too low, and that the king had added an extra

1000 ducati per year and stated that if Ippolita had any extra expenses, he would be happy to provide funds when necessary.170 Welch has noted that her monthly provisions of 1,000 ducats were rarely paid and resulted in the “monotonous ritual of pawn-broking and personal loans.”171 The letter of October 1465 indicates that her monthly income was actually 750 ducats, however Ippolita is recorded as receiving varying amounts in the court records for her “provisione”: 1000 in

September 1465;172 720 ducats in April and June 1473;173 750 in April and May

1473; 174 and an unspecified amount in October 1485.175 As the Neapolitan court records no longer survive, transcriptions from the nineteenth century as well as the account books of the Strozzi are the only records to base our study on,

169 Welch, "Between Milan," 125; Bryce, "Fa finire." 170 ASMI SPE 215. 232, from 25 October 1465 Antonio de Trezzo (also written de Tricio) to the Duke of Milan. 171 Welch, "Between Milan," 132. 172September 30 1465: “Sono somministrati 1000 duc a Madama Ippolita, Duchessa di Calabria, e per essa a Baldo de Martorelli suo Segretario e tesoriere; questi 1000 ducati le is danno in conto della sua provvisione.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 32. 173 27 April 1473: “a m. Piero Bernardo duc dccxx, per lui a m. Baldo de Martorelis; d˚ sono per m.a la Duchessa di Chalavria a chonp˚ della provisione di questo mese.” 25 June 1473: “al detto duc dccxx, per lui a m. Baldo de Martorelis; d˚ sono per m.a la Duchessa di Chalavria, a chonp˚ della provisione sua di giugnio.” Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi, 315, 465. 174 5 April 1474: “Si danno 1440 d. alla Illma Duchessa di Calabria a compimento di 1500, sua provvissione pel mese di aprile e di magio p. v., che il Re le fa anticipare per l’andata, che ella deve fare in Aquila alle perdonanze di S. Berardino.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 398. 175 The only surviving evidence for the Neapolitan accounts (tesoreriere) are fragments located in the Archivio di Stato di Napoli. What does survive, however, are the inventories of the account books and a list of individuals paid. Again, these offer an incomplete record, because they merely indicate the banks and sometimes the individuals who were paid, but without the details of the payment. Ippolita is listed as receiving her “provisione” for October 1485: “Conto ven Rationale d’Io’anne de Saxi Tesoreria del Sig.le Re dal pm di luglio p/ tutto l’oxb/re 1485 […]All Illma Madama Ippolita maria Sforza Duchessa di Cal.a p/ sua prov.e” ASF, Inventario cedola tesorarie 1/IV. The book is titled “Altro repertorio delle Cedole di Tesorie del 1437 al 1648.”

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 184 providing a certain amount of information regarding Ippolita’s salary, although still very incomplete. They do, however, reveal that Ippolita at times was paid her salary, whether on a regular basis, we cannot tell. The Neapolitan court’s notorious deficit would support Welch’s claim, and later letters from the Milanese ambassador do indicate that she had some financial difficulties in relation to her salary. However, Ippolita was known as an individual who was keen to negotiate and manipulate her situation, and it would not be surprising if she had exaggerated her poverty imposed by the king if it meant she could seek further financial advantage through Milanese and other networks. Regardless, the documents indicate that Ippolita was constantly pawning her possessions and using them as pledges for loans.

In July 1469, Alfonso d’Aragona wrote to Piero de’ Medici in embarrassment for Ippolita’s unpaid loans with the Medici Bank.176 Ippolita had borrowed the sum of 1,800 ducati, and Alfonso apologises for his wife who has been “negligent in regards to our honour and credit.”177 Alfonso stresses again that it was not “culpa nostra” but completely due to Ippolita’s negligence. It should be noted that the Aragonese were in political negotiations with the Medici at this time, and these unpaid loans would have been an added stress on already

176 Pontieri, "La dinastia Aragonese di Napoli e la casa de' Medici in Firenze," 290, n. 18. 177 “Essendove nui obligati et debitori de milleottocento ducati, de li quali vui per nostra parte facestivo promessa et sicurtà al magnifico messer Ludovico de Campofragoso, dodemo ordine che per la illma ducissa nostra consorte al tempo fossero pagati et remessi, per che dicti denari foreno pigliati et servero per suo bisogno, et persuadendone fermamente ceh dicto pagamento per honore, credito et fede nostra, che piu de la propria vita reputamo, fosse per essa ducissa facto, ne stavamo con la mente quieta et reposata. Adesso, sentendo che dicto pagamento e stato oltra lo promesso tempo dilatato, ne pigliamo acerbissimo dolore che la dicta ducissa sia stata negligente circa quello tocca il honor et credito nostro. Per la qual cosa vi pregamo e astringemo caramente vogliate haverene exusati et confortarlo patientemente, acteso non essere commesso per culpa nostra, ma solum per negligentia de quella a la quale se po’ dare ogni defecto. Peró, essendo advisati de la cosa, havemo statim providuto siano pagati.[...]” Quoted in Pontieri, "La dinastia Aragonese di Napoli e la casa de' Medici in Firenze," 290, n. 18.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 185 fraught relations. In February 1471, Ippolita received 4,000 ducati from her brother Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, which she received for a pledge of her jewels. Two letters written to Galeazzo record the arrival of the money: one from Ippolita and one from Iacomo de Sereno, the Milanese “camariero” of the duke, who was responsible for bringing down the money.178 Ippolita states that she is happy for the arrival of the 4,000 ducats because they were in dire straights, and now she does not have to sell her jewels, thanking Galeazzo for the coins, which bear the portrait of Galeazzo. Both Iacomo de Sereno and Ippolita note that as soon as they received the money they alerted Ferrante, Alfonso II d’Aragona,

Diomede Carafa, as well as other gentlemen and courtiers.

178 ASMI SPE 220. 180 and 181. Letters of 19 February 1471: one from Ippolita Sforza to Galeazzo Maria and the other from Iacomo de Seremo, the individual who brought the money down to Naples. Letter 181 from Ippolita to Galeazzo reads: “Illustrissime[...] e gionto qui il nobile Iacomo de Seremo Camariero de v[ostra] s[ignoria]. el quale ne ha visitat lietam[en]te da sua p[resen]te et domatene iiij.m ducati doro da la testa de v[ostra] ex[celentia] con una gratiosa et piacevole l[ette]ra de ditta sua Imagine prima macra et hora grassa invero s mio p[er] non trovarse de vendere n[ost]re zoie noi eramo in gran[dissi]ma necessitate de dinarj et affanno et p[er] non havere richiesto ne fatto richiedere alcuna cosa a v[ostra] s[ignoria] no[n] eravamo in pensero alcuno de tal p[rese]nte. Et ben che noy siamo cert[issi]me del singulare et fraterno amore che v[ostra s[ignoria] ne porto pure concorendo tante cose ad uno tratto de essere cosi lietam[en]te visitare con cosi gratiosa l[ette]ra et degno p[rese]nte e chiara demostratione a tutto el mondo de lo i’menso amore v[er]so di noy. Invero s[ignore] mio non sapiamo p[er]che no[n] siamo mancata da legreza tanta e la contenteza havemo recevta et ne pare come e ver[issi]mo ne sia cresciuta vita gioventute fama reputatione gloria et cosi havendone prest[issi]mo advisata la M[aes]ta del S[ignor] Re. Lo ill[ustrissi]mo n[ost]ro consorte, il M[agnifi]co conte de Mattalone et alcunj s[igno]ri et gentilhominj n[ost]ri ne sonno sta facte tante congratulatione con tanta festa et alegreza che no[n] fe potria explicare. Ma con quanto honore digmitate et gloria de v[ostra] ex[celen]tia p[er] lavano desideramo lo intenda piu tosto p[er] altrij l[ette]re che p[er] le n[ost]re. Regratiamo adonca v[ostra] ex[celent]tia infinitam[en]te restandoli imp[er]petum obligate. Et cosi p[er]mettemo p[er] li piaceri utile dignitate et stato de v[ostra s[ignoria] doverli sempre mettere tutte le n[ost]re facultate tutto il n[ost]ro potere et la propria vita. Non scrivemo al p[rese]ntee de n[ost]ra propria mano chel faremo p[er] il ditto Iacomo Iterim ne recomandiamo ala Magnannima cleme[n]tia de v[ostra] s[ignoria] p[re]gandola ne recomanda ala n[ost]ra Illma et honoram. As orella et abbbraccia li suoj ill[ustrissi]m[i] figlioli da n[ostr]ra p[ar]te ex castro capuano neapolis die xviiij febrij 1471 e.d.ill.m d. Cordialissima soror Hippolytamaria de Aragona vicecomes ducissa Calabrie etc.” Welch also partially transcribes the letter from Ippolita to Galeazzo both in Italian and its English translation, Welch, "Between Milan," 132.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 186

These letters reveal that while the monetary value of the coins was essentially what was important, the fact that they depicted the portrait of

Galeazzo, turned them also into cultural things, and allowed Ippolita to see a depiction of her brother, who she comments has gained weight.179 Iacomo de

Seremo proceeds to comment that this money has elevated the Duke of Milan’s reputation in Naples and in all of “Catalonia”, where such an act reflects his

“grand magnanimita.”180 At a time when political tensions between Milan and

Naples were most unstable, Iacomo’s comment that King Ferrante was extremely pleased to be allied with such a person, also underlines the ways in which such loans constituted political relationships. Ippolita sought financial help again from her brother in 1473. On 21 July 1473, Ippolita wrote to Galeazzo asking for 4,000 ducati, for which she would pledge 5,000 ducati worth of jewels.181 This was her second request, the first request not having received a reply. The desperate nature of the situation is stressed by a third letter on 20 August 1473, requesting the loan again, and there are no later documents to testify whether she did indeed receive the money.182 Ippolita’s dependence on Milan, while freeing the Neapolitan

179 See above letter, “sua Imagine prima macra et hora grassa.” 180 ASMI SPE 220. 180. “Gia sono quatro di chio gionsse a napoli et quanto vostra i[lustrissima] s[ignoria] me haveva comesso exequi fece el p[rese]nte de li dinari a la Ill[ustrissi]ma d[on]na Duchessa de Calabria vostra sorella ala p’ntia de tuti li suoy genitlhomini a li qualli parse esso presente una degna e bella cossa et no[n] meno digna quanto la p[er]sona che’l ma[n]dava che veramente no[n] mancho e la reputatione de v[ostra] i[lustrissima] s[ignoria] qui quanto ella se sia et tanto piu ciesere quanto vedeno la grand magnanimita[...]questa novela solamente manifestata ala M[aes]ta del S[ignor] Re et ali diti gentilhomini ma a tuto napoli in modo che credo ormay sia in tuta catalonia assay se ne dice in laud de v[ost]ra i[lustrissima] S[ignoria].” 181 ASMI SPE 224. 115 Letter of 21 July 1473 Ippolita Maria to Duke of Milan, written by her secretary Baldo Martorelli, “Noi volemo mandare a v[ostra] s[ignoria] gioie ch[e] siano bone p[er] ducati 5000. et glie suplicamo glie piaccia de p[re]starne ducati quattromilia p[er] quello tempo ch[e] alei piacera senza li quali tanto e el n[ost]ro bisogno ch[e] no possiamomuere.” 182 “Questi giorni passati per doi lettere havemo richeisto v[ostra] s[ignoria] sopra le n[ost]re zoie, prestarne quattromilia ducati.” ASMI SPE 224. 168, Letter of 20 August 1473, from Ippolita Sforza to the Duke of Milan. A letter from 28 July 1473 by the Milanese ambassador Francesco

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 187 crown of further deficit, also positioned her in a role to defend the Milanese cause whenever possible. Ippolita’s letters to Milan clearly indicate that she was willing to provide information on the Neapolitan court to serve Milanese ends, including bribing Neapolitan officials, and solidifying a relationship with the king’s mistress to receive more insider information.183

Ippolita’s recurrent loans with the Medici bank had similar consequences.

The letter by the embarrassed Alfonso apologising for Ippolita’s defaulted loans does not appear to have deterred the Medici from providing further loans to

Ippolita. It may have been her close relationship with Lorenzo de’ Medici, first fostered on his visit to Milan for Ippolita’s wedding celebrations, and solidified over the subsequent years, that allowed for some leniency.184 On 10 July 1474

Ippolita wrote to Lorenzo requesting 2,000 ducati on her “honour as a woman.”185

In 1480 Ippolita served as Lorenzo de’ Medici’s signatory on the peace treaty between Florence and Naples, which was signed just after Lorenzo returned to

Florence from Naples.186 Her willingness to help the Florentines and Lorenzo on various occasions was probably due in part to her dependence on Lorenzo for

Maleta states that Ippolita and Alfonso had gone away for ten days, which reveals that Ippolita, after returning and still having not received news of the loan, decided to send a third letter. “Questi giorni passati per doi lettere havemo richeisto v[ostra] s[ignoria] sopra le n[ost]re zoie, prestarne quattromilia ducati.” ASMI SPE 224. 168, Letter of 20 August 1473, from Ippolita Sforza to the Duke of Milan. 183 For a summary of these letters see Welch, "Between Milan," 132-4. Primary sources can be found in ASMI SPE 225 and 227. 184 For Ippolita’s relationship with Lorenzo see Bryce, "Between Friends." Some of the correspondence between Ippolita and Lorenzo is published in various volumes of Lorenzo’s letters edited by Riccardo Fubini, Nicolai Rubinstein and Michael Mallett, Lettere, Florence: Giunti, 1977. 185 Quoted in Welch, "Between Milan," 132. Also referenced in Magnani, Relazione, 62. 186 For a reproduction of the agreement, “Procura di Lorenzo de’ Medici per Ippolita Maria d’Aragona Duchessa di Calabria e Niccolò Michelozzi” see Lorenzo de' Medici, Lettere, ed. Nicolai Rubinstein, vol. IV (Florence: Giunti, 1977), 373-6, Appendix VII.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 188 money.187 Lorenzo’s trip to Naples strengthened ties with Ippolita, which was stressed by both the Milanese and Ferrarese ambassadors’ reports stating they could not find Lorenzo in his lodgings because he was with Ippolita.188 In 1481 when the king was seeking financial assistance across Italy for the war against the

Turks, who had invaded Otranto, he specifically asked the Florentines for help, the Gondi having already anticipated loaning 18,000 ducati to the crown.189

Lorenzo, although on supposedly peaceful terms with Naples, was somewhat hesitant to provide funds, as the Sienese territories that had been under Neapolitan control, had still not been ceded to Florence.190 Ippolita leaked out confidential information, which reached Milan and Florence, declaring that Ferrante was not using all of his resources, and was therefore not in such a desperate state as he made out to be.191

However, rumours began circulating in the 1480s that the King of Naples had little money and was truly in need of funds. Reports from the Milanese ambassador in Naples confirm the deficit of the king, which caused him to pawn the queen’s and duchess’ jewels, as well as the library, and the crosses from the churches.192 Having her own jewels pawned for a cause she may not have supported, or at least did not instigate, may have also been impetus for Ippolita to

187 For correspondence detailing the relationship, such as a request by Lorenzo to Ippolita for help in procuring gloves for his mistress, see Bryce, "Between Friends," 361-2. 188 ASMI SPE 229. 48. Letter of 23 December 1479 from Petrus de Gallarate and Giovanni Angelus de Talentes to the Duke of Milan. “non essendo el M[agnifi]co Lorenzo nel suo logiamento per essere andat a visitare al Ill[ustrissi]ma du[chessa] de Calabria.” On 23 December 1479 the Ferrarese ambassador wrote to Ercole d’Este also reporting that Lorenzo de’ Medici was with the Duchessa di Calabria for ‘gran tempo.’ ASMO AMB NAP 1, Letter 13.12, from Nicolaus Sadoletus in Naples to Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, 23 December 1473. 189 Medici, Lettere V, 224, n. 9, letter 497. 190 Butters, "Lorenzo and Naples," 147. Also see chapter one for these particular negotiations. 191 Medici, Lettere V, letter 497, specifically 229, n.15 and 56, n.9. Welch also discusses this, Welch, "Between Milan," 132. 192 ASMI SPE 232 and 233.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 189 provide confidential information to her allies. On 3 August 1480 the Ferrarese ambassador in Naples, Nicolo Saldoleto, also reported the money problems of the king.193 Nicolo informed Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara that he had heard rumours for some time, which he at first was not prepared to believe, detailing that “this king has no money.” Nicolo’s conversation with other ambassadors as well as a Florentine merchant who had not been reimbursed for merchandise, confirmed the truth that the king was indeed in arrears, amounting to a hundred thousand ducati in debt.194 Nicolo affirms that the king was looking for money

“p[er] ogni via” and was pawning cloth and other things. On 26 December 1480 the Milanese ambassador reported to the Duke of Milan that the king was in need of funds, and would probably have to use the silver and jewels from the church treasuries.195 Although church treasuries were usually not allowed to be depleted for courtly expenditure, the fact that the war with the Turks was seen as a religious crusade against the infidels to defend the Christian faith, sanctioned such measures.196 On 15 June 1481 the Milanese ambassador wrote again from Naples, stating that the Turks had invaded Otranto and that the king, in order to sustain the costs of the campaign, was to pawn the “zoye et argenti” belonging to the royal

193 “ una cosa voglio scriver[e] a v[ostra] S[ignoria] ch[e] gia piu di ho alduta dire e mai no[n] lho creduta ch[e] e ch[e] questo S[ignor] Re no[n] ha dinari[...] p[er]ch[e] lamb[ascia]tri de Luca ch[e] fu qui m[isser] Zohe Giudozani me dixe ch[e]l era cosa certa...” ASMO AMB NAP 1. Letter 13.71, 3 August 1480, Nicolo Saldoleto to Ercole d’Este. 194 “Re stava suxo i[n]teresse de forsi cm. Due” 195 “tuti li arenti et zoie de le chiesie.” ASMI SPE 232. 2 from 26 December 1480. The letter does not state the sender, but it is presumably Marco Trotti, the Milanese ambassador at this time, to the Duke of Milan. 196 Corrado Catello and Elio Catello, L'Oreficeria a Napoli nel XV secolo (Napoli: Mauro Editore, 1975), 28.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 190 house, including the jewels of the Queen of Naples and the Duchess of Calabria, as well as the contents of the royal library.197

Indeed, books, similar to jewels, held cultural as well as monetary value.

Tommaro de Marinis has published documents pertaining to the pawning of books from the Royal Library through the Florentine Bank of the Pandolfini.198 On 19

January 1481, a contract was drawn between Battista Pandolfini and Ferrante d’Aragona, stating that Pandolfini was to loan the king 38,000 ducati for the war against the Turks, and in return the king would pawn his jewels and books as security.199 The contract stipulated that the money should be repaid by 15 May, and if it was not repaid, Pandolfini had the right to sell all the pawned objects. If the objects were sold and did not make 38,000 ducati the court would have to pay the difference, but if the items were pawned and received more than 38,000 the surplus should be returned to the court.200 The document is interesting because it

197 “Ill[ustrissi]mo et ex[cellentissi]mo s[ignore] mio sing[ularissi]mio. Como per altre mie ho scripto replico che li turchi sonno in otranto stanno durissimi et non fanno demonstratione alcuna volerse revolere: inno ogni torno signi non solo volerse deffendere et fare ultima prova de la loro fortuna ma de morire prima d[i] che lassare quella terra. Ita che me pare potere indicare sara dura impresa et prolonga no se stima habita muntio mortis Turrcos domini et dibito assay che sara necessario sostenere questo s[ignor] Re per la v[ostra] ex[cellenti]a & collgiati soy de novi subsidj secondo gia ha rechiesto per tre volte q[ua]n[do] senza quelli manco potra infertur i[n] sostenere la grande et intolerabile spesa: ha in mantenere exercito et armata ch[e] lha che habij possuto per lo passato: perche como per altre mie v.s. havera inteso ha impegnate lintrate: zoye & argenti soy della regina e della Duchessa de Calabria et de tuta casa soa fino alla libraria: havendo mo v.s. sostento la spesa ha fino qui [...]” ASMI SPE 233. This letter is not numbered. 15 June 1481 from Marco Trotti to the Duke of Milan. Again on 30 June 1481 Marco Trotti reports that the Neapolitan crown has to pawn the tapestries and library. 198 Tommaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei re d'Aragona, vol. 1 (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1952), 41. 199 The original contract is located in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (MS. Nouvelles Acquisitions lat. 1986) and transcribed in Tommaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei Re d'Aragona, vol. II (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1947), 187-92, Inventario A. 200 The document is too long to transcribe here, but I will transcribe the relevant parts: “…Per tenore del presente nostro albarano confessamo essere debitore ad vui Baptista Pandolfini, mercatore florentino, habitante in la cita nostra de Napole, in ducati trenta octo milia, ad carlini dece per ducato [...]et per majore vestra securita et cautela ve havemo facto consignare le infrascripte joye et libri, li quail tenerite in loco di pigno[…] Et si per li quindice de mayo primo futuro ad vui non serrano pagati li dicti ducati trenta octo milia in tucto o parte, simo contenti et ve

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 191 provides a detailed description of all the jewels pawned, listing the number of individual pearls, the types of gems and gives us an idea of how elaborate these jewels indeed were.201 The document does not, however detail whose jewels these were, and we are thus unable to differentiate the duchess’ jewels from the queen’s and king’s.

The number of books totalled 266, and included works by Petrarch, Virgil,

Ovid, Seneca, Cicero, Facio, and even the Bible, among others.202 Again, in

December 1494, we find the court pawning many items from church treasuries to local goldsmiths, which comprised mostly church crosses, but also a tabernacle, a chalice, and even an image of the Virgin.203 Such pawning illuminates the ways in which objects move beyond their intended paths during times of crisis, suggested by Appadurai.204 Such religious items were created for devotion, yet in the case of war, they were taken out of their intended religious use to function as monetary

donamo plena faculta che possate vendere tanto de li dicti pigni ad vui ut supra donati, che del retracto de quilli che venderite ad qualsevole persona, de qualsevola stato, grando et conditione sia, habiate la integra satisfactione del dicto debito, o de quella parte che restassevo recuperare, et possate le dicte joye et libri ad vui ut supra consignati pignorare et dare in pigno etiam cum interesse, loquale interesse vada ad carreco de nostra Corte et del preczo he retraherete de la vendita de dicti pigni, o de quella parte che venderite ve possate retenere et pigliare li dicti ducati trenta octo milia, o quella parte che restassevo havere cum spes, damni et interesse, empero che non possate vendere majore quantita de li dicti pigni, si non quanto bastara a la integra vestra satifactione,e tnon siate tenuti ne astricti ad restituire li dicti pigni, o parte de quelli finche integrazmente habeate havuta la satisfactione del dicot debito, spesi, damni et intersse. Et quando lo preczo che se retrahera de li dicti pigni non bastasse a la integra vestra satisfactione de li dicti ducati trenta octo milia, spess, damni et interesse de quella quantita che mancara, promictimo satisfarve et pagareve integramente senza diminutione alcuna; et si havuta per vui la integra vestr satisfactione, alcune parte de li dicti pigni e de lo proceduto de quelli restasse et superasse, quella debiate resituire et tornare ad nostra corte.” de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol II, 187-92, Inventario A. 201 One entry, for instance, is as follows: “una corona de oro, in laquale sono sey balaxe, et sey diamanti et cento et octo perle, che in tucto pesa cum le dicte joye tre libre, undice unce et due quarte, quale corona ad vui e stata consignata in la nostra guardarobba et piu lo magnifico nostro socto consiglieri et secretario ve havemo facto consignare ducento quaranta perle supra certe fogliagi d’oro che sono vinti peczi, et omne peczo ha dui flori, et omne flore ha sey perle, che in tucto sono de peso unce dudice et tarpesi dece.” de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol II, 187-88. 202 For the list of books see de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol II, 190. 203 Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 26-7. 204 Appadurai, "Commodities and Politics," 26.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 192 objects, which in any other case would seem blasphemous. The commissioning of such objects were probably politically mediated by the donor of the cross or the priest of the church to begin with. This diversion reveals the contradictory nature of such items in the first place, as their value is embedded not only in their devotional aspects but also in their material qualities.

Documents pertaining to pawns are important not only for tracing the loans and the economic situation of the court, but also the ways in which these objects are described and seen as cultural and artistic things. In October 1497, the court accounts record the pawning of a saltcellar encrusted with jewels worth 500 ducati to Giovanni Carlo Tramontao, Count of Matera, providing an extremely detailed account of the object.205 These accounts give us insight into objects that are no longer extant and their artistic importance, and we are reminded, for instance, of Cellini’s famous saltcellar made for King Francis I, dating from about

1540 and priced at 1000 scudi.206 The pawned Aragonese saltcellar is described as being made out of jasper with feet, with each foot decorated with jewels, including a number of small diamonds and rubies set in gold. There were also small “fenestrette” on the cellar, perhaps window-like openings or depictions, which were encrusted with over sixty small pearls. On the body of the cellar there was a white enamelled elephant accompanied by two figures, who were also surrounded by a number of jewels, including diamonds and pearls as well as two sapphires. The lid of the cellar was also elaborately decorated with jewels all set in gold. The lid is described as depicting a gold figure in red enamel who held a

205 Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 36-8. 206 For Cellini’s saltcellar see, Belozerskaya, Luxury Arts, 81-3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 193 gold shield and arrow. The shield contained a small ruby, and the arrow’s point held a small diamond, while the figure’s head was dressed with a pearl and a small diamond. In all, the cellar contained 18 rubies, 18 diamonds, and 113 pearls.207 The cellar most likely corresponds to court records that note that King

Alfonso I d’Aragona purchased three elaborate salt cellars in September 1455 from a French merchant, living in Naples by the name of Guglielmo le Mason

(“negoziante francese dimorante in Napoli, Guglielmo le Mason”).208 On 14

September, King Alfonso I bought a gold saltcellar encrusted with diamonds, rubies, and pearls for the price of 3190 ducati; on 22 September he purchased a

207 “una salera grande di diaspro con la invencione de li alefanti che a lo pede de ipsa sonno li ioye infrascripte videlicet; in li sei grambuni che la tenino sospesa sonno tre diamante piczoli e tri robini et per lo intorno sonno sei altri diamanti tutti piczoli et sei robini treczoni tucti ingastati in oro et dudece perle de cunto grossecte de malo colore posti i certi provecti de oro et sonno per lo intorno de dicto pede appiccate dintro certe fenestrette trentaquatro perle de cunto pichole tonde de bello colore et due altre fenestre rocte che de mostra manchareno dui altri perle ad compto de xxxi, et tene de sopra uno montecto smaltato verde in lo quale sta posto uno alifante smaltato biancho che intorno de ipso sonno doe figure de vallecti smaltati che lo tenino con doe catinecte de oro et tene uno pectorale doro jn lo quale sono x perle piczole et una groppera doro che de jncze sonno octo perle pichole et le dicte dui figure tenino ciascuna de ipso uno cappello in lo quale stanno doe perle et de sopra dicti alefanti et una jorlanda ad modo de revellino in la quale sonno sei figure de relevo smaltati et per lo intorno sonno tre roboni piczoli buczoni et tre diamanti cioè lil dui quatri tavola et laltro facto ad triangolo tucti piczoli jngastati jn oro et per lo jntorno sonno dudece perle de cunto che le sei pendino et le altre sei poste in certe provecti doro trameczati con li dicti diamanti et robini et sopra dicta Jorlanda et la coppa de dicta salera in la quale sono jntorno xx perle de cunto piczole posti in certi provecti doro che pendino et la dicta coppa e sostenuta de sei colonne doro et piu ju lo coperchio de dicta salera sonno tri robinecti briczoni jngastati jn oro et dui diamanti tavola a quattro faczie jntorno et nze uno voyto che demostra mancate uno diamante et nze sonno sei perle de cunto de piu faczone trameczati a li dicti diamant et robini et jn la sommita de dicto coperchio sonno dui robini et dui diamanti piczoli cioe li robini breczoni et li diamanti tavola jngastati in oro et neze sonno octo perle de cunto che quatro pendino et le altre quatro stanno ferme trameczate a li dicti robini et diamanti tucti provati con pernecti de oro et de sopra sta una fegura de oro smaltata rossa quale tene uno scuto et una frecza de oro che jn lo scuto sta uno robinecto triczone jngastato et jn la ponta de la frecza uno diamante piczuolo et tene jn testa una perla de cunto chiacta et uno diamanta facto ad triangulo jn fronte et in tucto sonno rubini xviii diamanti xviii et perle cxiii pesa tucto insieme libre doe unce doe. Et piu uno jngasto de oro ad octo granponi et octo mencze cum uno zaffiro piczolo quase tundo tavola de bello colore ad octo facie, et piu un altro jngasto de oro ad octo grapponi et octo mecze lune con uno zaffiro ad octo facie oisso quase tavola.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 36-7. 208 Minieri Riccio’s study is based on the examination of the tesoreria account records of the Neapolitan court, no longer extant. Camillo Minieri Riccio, "Alcuni fatti di Alfonso I di Aragona dal 15 aprile 1437 al 31 maggio 1458," Archivio storico per le province napoletane VI (1881): 434.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 194

“gold decorated saltcellar with feet and eight angels […] decorated with diverse figures of men and animals, and on the cover, a figure of a Queen with a ruby on her hip, and on the right a diamond, and on her shoulder a band” for 8000 d’oro veneziani; and on 27 September, Alfonso purchased for 880 ducati “another gold saltcellar studded with diamonds, rubies and pearls with an elephant gilded in white.”209 These descriptions demonstrate how these objects were encrusted with precious jewels, but also artfully rendered, and that saltcellars or similar items served as artistic collectibles, useful tableware, and stores of economic value.

The pawning of jewels also allows us to understand the ways in which jewellery was not merely something worn or exclusively a female prerogative.

Jewels, instead, were important social and cultural signifiers for both men and women, appreciated for their monetary value as well as for their identities and close association with the body. The jewels pawned by the king also had specific names, underlining not only their importance, but also their individuality. Jewels that were personified with names contributed to their social biographies and the making of identities—both of the owner and the jewel. In 1486, the king pawned a balassio (a type of ruby) named La Roccha for the enormous sum of one

209 “sett 14.[1455] Compra dal negoziante francese dimorante in Napoli, Guglielmo le Mason, una piccola croce di oro ornata di diamanti, rubini e perle, che regala al duca di Calabria suo filgio;ed una saliera di oro tempestata di diamante, di rubini e perle, pel prezzo di ducati 3300, de’ quail soli ducati 110 per la croce ed I rimanenti ducati 3190 per la saliera. (ced 28.187). Sett 22. Alfonso compra del predetto negoziante francese Le mason per ducati 8 mila di oro veneziano, che sono ducati 8800 di moneta di gigliati, una saliera di oro lavorata col piede ad otto angoli, sostenuta da otto ometti di oro ed il rimanente e’ lavorato in diverse figure di uomini e di aniimali sul coperchio vi sta una figura di Regina che a’ un rubino nel fianco, nella destra una diamante, e nella mancina una bandiera (ced 30. 565) Set 27. Alfonso compra dal predetto negoziante Guglielmo le Mason per ducati 880 un’altra saliera di oro tempestata di brillanti, rubini e perle con uno elefante smaltato in bianco.” Minieri Riccio, "Fatti di Alfonso ASPN VI," 434.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 195 hundred thousand ducati d’oro to Carlo Borromei and Agneolo Serragli.210 On 31

December 1484 the king pawned more jewels through Filippo Strozzi: a balassio named il Foghato, a diamond named lo Specchietto, and a second balassio with

28 large pearls named il Davit.211 The naming of jewels, then, served as a way to keep track of these objects, but it also invested the jewels with individuality, allowing them to become personalised through this naming process. The movements of pawned jewels are also recorded. For instance on 26 September

1487, pawned jewels were sent from Florence with Francesco Valori, ambassador of Florence, to Naples for the Strozzi Bank. The list of jewels included a large ruby, an emerald, a brooch, among others. In the same delivery, it is recorded that a separate small wooden box containing il Davit, described as a pendant

“balascio” set in gold with pearls and placed on a gold chain, was consigned back to the court in December 1487.212 Il Davit was thus in Filippo’s possession for three years and one wonders who may have seen or had access to the jewel while it was in Florence. Jewels belonging to different individuals were also sometimes shipped together. On 24 March 1484, a box was shipped containing a collar belonging to Signor Gran Siniscalco, while it also contained a “choregiuolo da fondere”, probably a sort of dish or hardstone, belonging to Ippolita Sforza.213

210 Filena Patroni Griffi, Banchieri e gioielli alla corte aragonese di Napoli (Naples: Francesco Giannini & Figli, 1984), 13; Silvestri, "Attività bancaria," 83. 211 Griffi, Banchieri, 14. 212 “in una schatolina di legnio: uno balascio in tavola leghato in oro a uxo di pendente e con una catena d’oro. E ssi chiama il Davit. Con una perla perata grossa pendente….consegniò ala Corte il sudetto balascio nominato il Davit a’ dì di diciebre 1487” Quoted in Griffi, Banchieri, 20-1. From ASF CS 47, 99. 213 Griffi, Banchieri, 20. I have not been able to find a direct translation for “choregiuolo”, but I assume that it probably comes from the modern Italian word, “crogiolo”, which means crucible. In addition to the “da fondere” one must assume that it is some sort of vessel used for melting materials. The definition in Merriam-Webster for crucibles states that they were often made of a refractory material, such as porcelain. The material composition of the object may have been the

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 196

Loans and pawning were also clearly linked to trade relations, and merchants would often receive concessions on customs duties as payment. In 1475 the

Strozzi Company sold a balassio, which was set with three large pearls, two diamonds and an emerald to the king for 700 ducati d’oro in exchange for extracting an equivalent sum in salt out of Puglia.214 Similarly in 1477 Ferrante offered to waive the customs dues in the exportation of foodstuffs from his kingdom, in order to meet the 964 ducats, 3 tari and 4 grana he owed to the

Medici bank in Naples.215

Other records allow us to understand how common and frequent pawns and loans were for the Neapolitan court. The Strozzi account books clearly show that

Ferrante d’Aragona, Alfonso II d’Aragona, and Ippolita Sforza were constantly pawning items and taking loans from the Strozzi Bank.216 In 1484, Filippo is recorded as one of the individuals responsible for lending the king 164,982 ducati.217 In 1484 Ippolita pawned a large balassio set in gold, as well as a diamond with pendant pearls, and an emerald. 218 Particularly intriguing are the ways these objects were pawned and then sometimes returned for a few days to serve a purpose. For instance, Ippolita pawned a ruby (“uno rubino inchastato in uno sole”) to Gabriello di Soldo Strozzi, but she had her tesoriere Luigi Gattola ask for it back on 26 January 1488, with a promise that she would return it in five

reason for its pawn, as porcelain was often a material sought-after as collector’s items, and therefore highly valued. 214 Jacoviello, "Affari," 180. 215 Abulafia, "Crown and Economy," 136. 216 One of the Strozzi books have been published, see Leone, ed., Giornale di Strozzi. 217 Jacoviello, "Affari," 182. 218 Griffi, Banchieri, 19.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 197 days, so that she could wear it for the “festa data del marchese di Pescara.”219

Similarly, Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara pawned his most-treasured and famous triangolare, an enormous diamond, to the Gondi, with a half-pawn also consigned to the Medici, during Ferrara’s war with Venice. When he wanted the diamond returned to him for a week so he could wear it to the wedding celebrations of his daughter Isabella d’Este and Francesco Gonzaga, Ercole promised all the revenue of the salt mines of Commachio for a period of ten years.220 The diamond, while obviously a symbol of wealth, also had a particular association with Ercole, who used the diamante as his impresa, employing the image on architectural keystones, in manuscript illumination, and most famously, on the façade of the

Palazzo Diamante, the exterior of which is studded with diamond-like corrugations. Such an example shows the somewhat paradoxical nature of these jewels. On the one hand, they were used as liquid capital for loans or credit, but the investiture of these objects with names and histories, also invested these objects with meaning and significance. Jewels could reflect family memory, if they were closely associated with a family member and then passed down through the generations. They could also serve more public forms of memory if they were attached to a prominent family or political regime, such as those belonging to the

Medici. Such jewels were thus not only repositories of economic value, but also repositories of meaning, memories, identity, and prestige.

The volatility of political regimes and the fall of influential families also determined the selling and thus the circulation of goods. Many rulers across Italy

219 Griffi, Banchieri, 20. 220 Richard Brown, "Death of a Renaissance Record-Keeper: The Murder of Tomasso da Tortona in Ferrara, 1385," Archivaria 44 (1997): 37, n.0.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 198 eagerly sought to procure objects that were left behind by the deceased Pope Paul

II in the early 1470s, however, as noted, the majority of his collections was obtained by Lorenzo de’ Medici.221 The Medici’s expulsion from Florence in the

1490s resulted in a sale of their goods, which attracted the attention of individuals like Ludovico Sforza who wrote to his ambassador to see what objects he could acquire.222 Such an auction not only reflected the public disgrace of a once prominent family and the selling of their most precious and intimate objects on the public market, it also caused contemporary observers to comment on the transient nature of wealth and magnificence.223

The value of objects was not only reflected in their material worth, but as noted, also in their biographies and provenance. Objects that had been owned by illustrious individuals were thus ever more valuable and sought after. Lorenzo de’

Medici’s famous tazza farnese valued at 10,000 florins was not only greatly admired for its exquisite carving and the craftsman’s manipulation of the material, but also because it had been first owned by Federick II in the early thirteenth century, then a Persian Prince in Samarkand in the early fifteenth century, followed by Alfonso I d’Aragona of Naples and Ludovico Trevisan in the mid- fifteenth century, and finally Paul II before being acquired by Lorenzo in 1471.224

Rulers and diplomatic figures thus sought to purchase items that had had previous

221 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 6. Also see chapter one. 222 Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, "The Medici Sale of 1495 and the Second-Hand Market for Domestic Goods in Late Fifteenth-Century Florence," in The Art Market In Italy. 15th-17th Centuries/ Il mercato dell'arte in Italia secc. XV-XVII, ed. Marcello Fantoni, Louisa C. Matthew, and Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (Ferrara: Franco Cosimo Panini Editore, 2003), 313-23. 223 Luca Landucci for instance mentioned the sale three times in his zibaldone, noting it was a sign of God’s punishment for excessive pride. Welch, Shopping, 195. 224 Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 128. For Alfonso I’s ownership, see Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, 20-1.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 199 illustrious owners, which would reflect the new owner’s status and would also add his or her name to the list of famous owners. But such objects did not merely reflect the owner’s status, rather they created memories around the circulation of such objects, and indeed contributed, if not created, the beholder’s reputation.

Francesco Sforza asked to purchase jewels that had been pawned by Federigo da

Montefeltro for 4,000 gold ducats, because Federigo could not repay the loan and

Francesco wanted to avoid the jewels going on the open market.225 These purchases demonstrate the politics of acquisition and the tensions around the purchasing of another’s possessions. While many courtly individuals claimed they thought it better to purchase the items from an insolvent ruler, rather than allowing the items go on sale in public auction, the knowledge that another ruler owned one’s precious objects could provoke rivalry and political tensions.

V. Between Naples and Ferrara: The Bejewelled “Crocetta”

These political and social tensions are particularly telling in documents in the Archivio di Stato di Modena that constitute correspondence between Eleonora d’Aragona and the Ferrarese ambassador in Naples, Battista Bendedei, which to my knowledge have never been published.226 These letters discuss the pawning of a cross by Ippolita Sforza through the Gondi brothers (and their associate

Giovanni Scolari) in the late 1480s, and its consequent purchase by Ercole d’Este,

Duke of Ferrara. This case is especially interesting because it demonstrates the ways the pawning of objects involves a variety of different individuals. When pawning goes wrong, important issues come to the forefront. Failing to redeem a

225 Welch, Shopping, 197-8. 226 The letters are found in ASMO AMB NAP 6.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 200 pawned object reflects on the one hand, the disgrace of the individual who has pawned the object, the importance of the social value of the object, as well as the loss of monetary value. On the other hand, the selling of pawned objects also highlights the interest of individuals to procure items once belonging to others, not only because of the monetary value, but because that object has a history and social biography. While the correspondence is sparse in some instances, and is generally one-sided, constituting mainly of copy letters of dispatches from

Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara to her ambassador in Naples, Battista

Bendedei, we are able to form a general picture of the situation.227

On 28 May 1488, Ippolita Sforza wrote to Eleonora d’Aragona, stating that a “cross of jewels” (“croseta de gioye”) that she had pawned through “Iohanni

Scolari mercente fiorentino” had been sold to Eleonora without Ippolita’s consent.228 Ippolita noted that she had discussed the situation with “lo Magnifico misser Baptista ambasciatore,” the Ferrarese ambassador to Naples, and that she would be willing to pay Eleonora the price that Eleonora had purchased the cross for, if she would agree to send the cross back to Naples. Ippolita states that she will pay 500 ducati d’oro through Giuliano Gondi and that Eleonora can return the cross with the “cardinale de foyas”, who is coming to Naples with some of her other jewels, which she is having returned for “quelle feste per ornamento

227 These copy dispatches are found in ASMO, AMB NAP 6—the letters are not numbered. 228 ASMO CPE 1247/3, Letter of 28 May 1488. I have not been able to find any references in the account books to the purchase, but on 3 April 1487 Giuliano Gondi is recorded being paid 500 ducati doro by Eleonora d’Aragona for a cross with ruby. This seems a bit too early for Ippolita’s cross since Ippolita wrote in May 1488; however the price is exactly the same. The record of the purchase is in ASMO AP 633. 73V: “E ad dite (3 aprile[1487])...per sua s[ignoria] a bonaventura di mosto gtp [(conto)] per alty tante gpt [(conto)] pago fino ad 25 di genaro per sua s[ignoria] a zuliano gond[i] per Rp˚ [(resto)] d fp 500 d[ucati] d[oro] per lo prezio di una croxe di balas date a sua s[ignoria].”

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 201 nostro.” Ippolita states that she wants the jewel returned because she had not authorised the Scolari to sell it, but the letter also suggests how such jewels are important for one’s “ornament.” In this particular case, it seems to me

“ornamento” can be read as both adornment but also linked to a sort of pride or honour in the wearing of such jewels.

On 20 June 1488, Eleonora d’Aragona wrote from Ferrara to Battista

Bendedei in Naples in reference to the cross (“crocetta”), and stated she was attaching a letter written to Ippolita directly, but unfortunately it seems this particular letter to Ippolita is lost.229 On 23 July 1488, Eleonora writes again to

Battista outlining the situation surrounding the said cross.230 Eleonora claims that

Antonio Gondi had been in Ferrara and presented the cross to Eleonora to buy, but because she knew its provenance and did not want to cause any problems, she did not purchase it. Antonio then went to Venice to try to sell the cross to various merchants; Antonio was unsuccessful and returned to Ferrara to see if Eleonora would buy it, but she refused. Antonio consequently died, succeeded by Giuliano

Gondi who also urged Eleonora to purchase the cross. Eleonora claims in her letter that she contemplated the fact that if she did not buy it, the cross would be circulated by various merchants in all the cities across Italy (“per quante citade sono in Italia”).231 This, she argues, would be a fate that she was sure the Duchess of Calabria would not want the cross to have, and it would be better that she had it, rather than it being bought arbitrarily by “any merchant or gentleman who

229 ASMO AMB NAP 6. 230 ASMO AMB NAP 6, Letter of 23 July 1488 from Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1R. 231 Letter of 23 July 1488 from Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1R.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 202 wants it.”232 Eleonora’s husband, Ercole d’Este, then saw the jewel and was very pleased with it, which led him to purchase it. Eleonora asserts that the jewel is now with Ercole who is in Modena.

The beginning of the letter of 23 July reveals that Battista had talked to

Alfonso II d’Aragona, Eleonora’s brother, about the cross and that Alfonso was infuriated with Eleonora and Ercole. Alfonso blamed Eleonora because he said that these were “not things to do between siblings.”233 It seems Alfonso had used political motives, noting that Eleonora had an obligation to Alfonso because he had come to their rescue and had protected their state, obviously referring to his help during the War of Ferrara against Venice in the early 1480s. This underlines the particular political nature of such transactions as well as their social etiquette.

Eleonora finishes the letter stating that she is not certain on what grounds Alfonso has to ask for the cross back and that her reasons for buying the cross are justified and should not cause Alfonso to remain angry with them.234

On 22 August 1488 Eleonora wrote again to Battista Bendedei in response to three letters he had sent on 4, 7, and 12 of August about the cross.235 By this point it had become a larger matter and caused King Ferrante, Eleonora and

Alfonso’s father, to become involved. Eleonora responds that she has accepted the reprimands from the king, like an obedient daughter, but she continues to stress that they had purchased the jewel because they did not want it to pass into the

232 Letter of 23 July 1488 from Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1R. 233 “no[n] sono cosse da fare tra fratelli.” Letter of 23 July 1488 from Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1R. 234 “quanta iustifictione sia dal canto nostro…n[on] ha p[er] questo cagione de stare in colera cu[m] noi.” Letter of 23 July 1488 from Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1V. 235 ASMO AMB NAP 6, Letter of 22 August 1488, Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1R.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 203

“hands of other merchants.”236 Eleonora states that she will return the jewel to the

Duchess of Calabria on the condition that she receives a testimony from Count

Guido di Guidoni and Francesco Galiotto, as well as an explanation from Ippolita, clarifying why they should not have bought the jewel and why the Gondi should not have sold it. It seems that there may have been a question about whether the cross was sold legally, in reference to the procedures that one followed in regards to pawning. I have been unable to find information on Guido di Guidoni, but

Francesco Galiotto served at the Neapolitan court in the capacity of soldier, advisor, and diplomat and he also appears as humanist and a procurer of antiquities for Lorenzo de’ Medici as well a Milanese informer.237 Later in the letter, Eleonora also refers to “Messer Galeotto”, presumably the above Francesco

Galiotto, who has been praised by ambassador Battista as showing affection towards Eleonora as well as her son, who was resident in Naples.238 It seems that

Eleonora, who evidently understood that Ferrante, Alfonso, and Ippolita were all perfectly capable of stretching the truth when needed, felt inclined to get a clear understanding of the situation of the cross from various viewpoints.239 She had also received information from Battista Bendedei on 10 January 1487 that noted

236“ve respondemo che come obediente fiola havemo acceptato il recordo & admonitione[...]comprassemo etia’ p[er]ch[e] la no[n] andassae a mane de altri mercadanti.” ASMO AMB NAP 6, Letter of 22 August 1488, Eleonora d’Aragona to Battista Bendedei, 1R. 237 In 1490 Galiotto is recorded sending 6 Greek coins from Naples to Lorenzo. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 16, 20, 148, and document 31 and Also see Ilardi, "Towards the Tragedia," 112, n. 73. 238 “ mi piaciuto intendere qua[n]to ne scriveti in laude de M/ Galeotto p[er] la affectione el ni porta ad nui & ad epso n[ost]ro figliolo, & come el solicita se li faciamo q[ue]lle cose ch[e] siano de honore del s[ignor] Re & anche di comodo de n[ost]ro figliolo.” Letter of 22 August 1488, Eleonora to Battista Bendedei, 1V. 239 Eleonora would have probably relied on her close relation and former tutor, Diomede Carafa to obtain information, but he had already died in April 1487.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 204

Ippolita’s monetary problems and thus may have had some doubt about the situation.240

Eleonora’s letter to Battista of 22 August 1488 makes it clear that she was not happy with the treatment she received. She states that Battista is to tell

Alfonso that the words he used not only against her, but also against her husband, were unacceptable. Eleonora then proceeds to say that she will return the jewel via Giuliano Gondi as she has been asked by the king, but she would have rather been asked much more “lovingly” by Alfonso, as is customary between brother and sister.241 It also appears that the king had asked Eleonora to return it as “a gift,” to which she replies that she has already spent 300 ducati on “vedri” for

Alfonso, and the general tone of the letter suggests that she is unwilling.242

Furthermore, Eleonora clearly restates her case, asking Battista to tell Alfonso that if he thinks that she is returning it because of fear or threat she would “sooner toss it around a bit and break it in a hundred pieces.”243 On 25 August 1488, Eleonora writes to Battista Bendedei in response to four letters he had sent her on 13, 14,

18, and 19 August which detailed the severe illness of Ippolita, and subsequently her death on 19 August, which suggests that Eleonora had thus written the

240 ASMO AMB NAP 5. 53 241 “rimetteremola ne le mane de Zuliano Gondi come anche ni e sta richiesto & faremolo voluntiera p[er] obedire sua M[aes]ta et come e dicto se la mi fusse domandata p[er] altro modo amorevole come si co[n]viene tra fradelo & sorella.” Letter of 22 August 1488, Eleonora to Battista Bendedei, 1R. 242 “& ch[e] anchora la ni fusse sta domandata in dono [...] & anch[e] el dirati a Sua M[aes]ta ch[e] gia spendessemo tresento ducati in vedri per dare al S.re duca.” Letter of 22 August 1488, Eleonora to Battista Bendedei, 1R-V. 243 “& no[n] volemo p[er] niente che Sua Ex[celen]tia si persuada ni creda ch[e] la rediamo p[er] paura ne p[er] minazo, che quando la se havesse a rendere p[er] tal modo piu presto la getaressemo in po & la romperessemo in cento pezi.” Letter of 22 August 1488, Eleonora to Battista Bendedei, 1V.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 205 previous letter of 22 August about the cross before the news of Ippolita’s death had reached her.244

Finally on 5 September 1488 we have a letter from Alfonso to Eleonora, which states that Giuliano Gondi has arranged that Alfonso will pay Eleonora for the cross, which belonged to “the good memory of the Quon Illustrissima

Duchessa my consort” and he urges her to send it as soon as she can.245 Alfonso’s letter uses Ippolita’s death as impetus for the restitution of the cross, but it can also be seen in light of how such jewels represented individuals, and would have been important as a memory of the deceased. There is another document that most likely relates to the cross, demonstrating that Ippolita also urged Lorenzo to become involved, three years previously. On 2 March 1485, Ippolita Sforza wrote to Lorenzo de’ Medici asking him for some help in relation to some jewels she had pawned—some pearls and a bejewelled cross—for 2,000 ducati to “Joanni et

Raneri Scolari.”246 It was not uncommon for jewels to transfer from one firm to another if debts needed to be paid, or funds transferred, and the exact connection between the Gondi and the Scolari brothers is not particularly clear, but there was obviously a transferral of the cross from the Scolari to the Gondi at one point.

While Ippolita could have owned a number of crosses, it is also not unreasonable to propose that a cross that she had pawned to the Scolari brothers locatable in

Florence in 1485, may have been the same one to end up with the Gondi in 1488.

244 ASMO AMB NAP 6, Letter of 25 August 1488, Eleonora to Battista Bendedei, 1R-V. 245 “crocetta, ch[e] fo dela bona memoria dela Quón Ill[ustrissi]ma Duchessa n[ost]ra Consorte.” ASMO CPE 1246/2, Letter of 5 September 1488, Alfonso II d’Aragona in Naples to Eleonora d’Aragona in Ferrara. 246 “perle et una crocetta fornita de ioye.” Pontieri, "La dinastia Aragonese di Napoli e la casa de' Medici in Firenze," 341, n 83. This letter is also now available online through the ASF website. See ASF MAP, filza 45, 241R. (http://www.archiviodistato.firenze.it/rMap/index.html)

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 206

In Ippolita’s first letter to Eleonora, mentioned above, she had noted that it was the Scolari that the cross had been pawned through, not the Gondi. Three years was not an abnormally long period to have a jewel held in pawn, as is clear from the king’s Il Davit already mentioned, which the Strozzi bank had in Florence also for three years.

The example of the cross demonstrates the wide range of individuals involved in the pawning of one item—Ippolita who pawned the cross to the

Scolari firm; the transferral of the cross from the Scolari to Antonio Gondi and then upon Antonio’s death to Giuliano Gondi; the purchasing of the cross by

Eleonora and Ercole through the Gondi; the complications resulting in the pawn and the consequent deliberations between the Ferrarese ambassador, Ferrante,

Alfonso, Ippolita, Eleonora, as well as possibly Guido di Guidoni, Francesco

Galiotto, and Lorenzo de’ Medici; and finally the individual, perhaps the

Cardinal, who was to bring the jewel down to Naples. There is no evidence that the cross survives today, and its exact characteristics are not discernible from the letters, but one might assume it looked similar to other bejewelled crosses from the period (Figure 26).247 Illuminated manuscripts belonging to the Aragonese also depict jewels and may give us an idea of the appearance of these items

(Figure 27).

The incident of the crocetta was not the first instance in which correspondence between the Gondi, Eleonora, and Alfonso was initiated through the pawning of objects. On 15 January 1487 Eleonora wrote to Battista Bendedei

247 The term “crocetta” rather than just “croce” has led me to believe that the cross was indeed a piece of jewellery, possibly a pendant, rather than a large cross intended for an altar. The cross is also referenced as a jewel, and thus confirms this conclusion.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 207 in Naples about 2,300 ducati worth of silver she had pawned for Alfonso and notes that the loan would have to be repaid by April of that year if the pawned silver was to be returned.248 There was also another incident in July 1488, just before the issue of the cross, whereby the Queen of Naples, Giovanna d’Aragona, had received jewels from an agent working in Modena, a certain “Massaro de

Modena.” The jewels were apparently contraband, and Eleonora was in charge of smoothing over the situation.249 These letters demonstrate that the circulation of precious goods like jewels instigated a complex web of negotiations and how such objects could function as sites of latent political tensions and hostilities.

VI. Conclusion

My analysis of lettucci, gems, and jewels in this chapter emphasises the ways in which the movement and circulation of objects not only bring value to those objects, but also illuminates what is at stake in them. That is, whether an object is exchanged as a gift, as a commodity, or as a pawn, a series of intermediaries are involved, all of whom may have different stakes in the things themselves. Studying the biographies of objects and their movements is a way to understand what those objects might mean and what work they perform for a certain society. Like Pomian’s sémiophores, Kopytoff uses the term

“singularization” to denote those things that have been categorised by a culture as

248 “Zuliano Gondi e stato qui e per tuti li modi del mondo voleva o che gli daesseno li 2300 Duce di lha ad haver’ d[i] li argenti n[ost]ri che forono impignati per lo Ill[ustrissi]mo S[igno]re Duca...sino ala aprile pro[xim]o che viene e che no[n] havendo dicte dinari il possa far’ ogni suo voler’ d[i] dicti argento.” ASMO AMB NAP 6, Letter of 15 January 1487 from Eleonora to Battista Bendedei. 249 “el facto de le zoglie de la M[aes]ta de la regina recevute al suo messo per il n[ost]ro Massaro de Modena come cossa de contrabando.” ASMO AMB NAP 6, Letter of 20 July 1488, Eleonora to Battista Bendedei.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 208 symbolic, often outside commodity exchange.250 The singularisation of goods often leads to two different systems of value: that of the marketplace versus the symbolic significance of an object. This is most apparent in items such as heirlooms or other cultural artefacts that have specific symbolic and social meaning, and these two systems of value often put pressure on the owner as well as the object itself, as the individual tries to negotiate between these two sets of values. Objects thus become sites of contention because they occupy a place where these different sets of values battle it out. As we have seen, cultural objects constantly moved in and out of the commodity phase in the late fifteenth century, largely due to political and economic instabilities.

This constant oscillation between commoditisation and singularisation is perhaps the defining factor of many early modern objects, and their value is embedded in this paradox. This alerts us to the ways in which these objects operated within differing systems of value. Some of these systems bear resemblance to modern economic exchange, but alongside these, there existed other forms of exchange which operated very differently. Singularisation is often linked to time, that is, objects that are tied to the past and are therefore rare, such as antiquities. However, I would stress that although antiquities had a lot to do with “possessing the past” to use Paula Findlen’s term, and were linked to forms of cultural memory embedded in antiquity, I would also stress that part of the appeal of these objects was that their biographies were not completely made, but were still in the making.251 Part of this appeal was entrenched in the paradoxical

250 Kopytoff, "Cultural Biography of Things," 73-6. 251 Findlen, "Possessing the Past." Also see Findlen, Possessing Nature.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 209 notion that they were symbolic things (sémiophores), precluded from the neutrality of commodity exchange, yet at the same time, their value was interrelated with their ability to gain biographies by passing through hands of illustrious owners, which happened during their commodity phase. Through the purchasing, collecting, and viewing of these objects, individuals were able to partake not only in the “making” of the histories of objects, but also in their own biography-making.

We have also seen that many objects circulated outside commodity exchange, sometimes as gifts and sometimes as pawns. As objects move, they carry with them ideas, which give them agency and demonstrate that culture is not only to be found in social relations or thought, but also in the material world.252

The form and function of particular objects are also linked to the ways in which they act symbolically and how they engage with viewers. A large piece of furniture such as the lettuccio would take up a prominent place in a household, and as a daybed, it was often used for individuals to lie on when they were sick and receiving visitors, as is referenced in the woodcut of Savonarola’s Predica dell’arte del bene morire (Figure 16). The function of the lettuccio, in such a case, promoted conversation between the visitors and the sick individual. But as an object embellished with artistic decoration, whether intarsia or painted spalliere, it could also cause discussion about its artistic qualities. Smaller gems and jewels solicit a more private or closer engagement as they are held in the hand and

252 Graves-Brown examines how material cultural shapes our lives, and that culture has for too long been regarded as something merely in thought or in social relations. Paul Graves-Brown, "Introduction," in Matter, Materiality, and Modern Culture, ed. Paul Graves-Brown (London: Routledge, 2000), 1-9. Mukerji has also studied the ways objects are carriers of ideas in relation to consumerism. Mukerji, Graven Images, 15.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 210 closely observed. Ownership of these gems was linked to temporality: they were often only possessed for a limited amount of time. One way of fixing the circulatory nature of these objects was to depict, copy, or imitate them in another visual media. This translation in visual form opens up a new way of viewing these objects; if one could not own the object itself, one could still participate in knowledge of that gem by viewing its copies. This situation suggests that artistic invention and inspiration were also crucial aspects of the circulation of such objects, and that owning different copies of an object was also important.

Objects circulated frequently in the early modern period through a variety of means as commodities, pawns, and gifts. Their identities were often formed or transformed through these exchanges, and gave rise to various forms of cultural translation. These objects—commissioned lettucci, pawned jewels, collected antique gems—all generated further interests in similar objects, and initiated, complicated, and solidified relationships across political, social, and geographical boundaries.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 211

Chapter 3. “An altarpiece that closes like a book”: Collection and Intertextuality at the Court of Ferrara

I. Introduction

[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 showed 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 […] -Ferrarese Ambassador Antonio Montecatini in Florence to Duke Ercole d’Este, 21 August 1480.1

The Ferrarese ambassador’s report of his visit with Giovanni d’Aragona to the Medici’s collections demonstrates that individuals involved in such visiting circuits engaged with a wide range of objects in different, yet connecting spaces:

1 “Ando po[i] a vedere la camera dove stava cosmo conducta i[n] milgiore fo[r]ma dove erano libri et piere preziosa molto solene. Ando poj nela sala vete qlle for[z]e d’ hercule tuti come[n]do poij i[n]tro ne la camera fu di piero et gi la mostro et q[ue]llo cortile co[n] za[r]dino di sopra e solaro co[m] q[ue]lla lozeta et d[i] q[ue]sta cam[er]a e mo[n]stroi la sua capella poi e[n]tro nel studio pure d[e]la camera fu de piero et q mo[n]stro p[ri]ma el dicto studio cu[m] ta[n]te copie d[i] libri g era una cossa stupe[n]da tute digni scripti cu[m] pena poi tornamo pire soto q[ue]lla lozeta li d[i] dicta cam[er]a et i[n] su una tavola li fece venire le sue zoie ch[e] erano vasi bochali co[n]fetiere d p[e]de fornite de ch[e] erano d[i] diese p[un]to masseri d altre. Eraci uno bichiero di cristallo fo[r]nito co[m] el cop[er]to e uno piedee] arz[en]eto erali ligate p[er]le d[i] co[n]to rubini e diama[n]ti e altre p[re]de. Una schudella scholpita de[n]tre d[i] ta[n]te varie figure ch[e] era una cosa digrafu reputata d[i] valuta d[i] quatromilia ducati poi li fece po[r]tare dui bacile gra[n]de pieri d[i] mediae a[n]tique de uno d medaie d[i] oro et laltro per d[i] medaie d[i] a[r]ze[n]to poi una careta co[m] molte zoie anelle e latre prede i[n]taiato.” ASMO AMB FIR 2. 1480 21 August. My translation varies slightly from the other published versions, partially quoted in Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 30; Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy, 81-2; Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de' Medici, 322-2, Doc 163.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 212 religious and devotional imagery in the cappella; tomes adorning the library’s shelves; vases and beakers, and small, intimate gems and medals taken out of cabinets. In a conversation from the mid-fifteenth century on the decoration of libraries at the court of Ferrara, one commentator discusses “how seriously statues and pictures were taken by the ancients, particularly in their libraries.”2 More than a century later, the Venetian Jacopo Contareno describes a cohabitation of the objects in his collections:

By the study I mean not only the room in which the books are to be found, but all those things contained in the four mezzanine rooms in which I ordinarily live. There are in these rooms exquisite things, beyond the belief of anyone who considers them well, such as manuscript and printed books, mathematical instruments, stones, secrets and other things, all of which have been gathered together by me with the greatest studiousness and care.3

All three of these quotes demonstrate a co-existence of books, sculpture, vases, medals, gems, and paintings within the spaces of collection and invite the viewer—the visitor or the collector—to engage in a dialogue, drawing relationships between the various objects.

Ercole de’ Roberti’s diptych (Figures 28a-b), once belonging to the collections of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, depicts the Nativity of

Christ on the left panel, accompanied by Mary, Joseph, and a shepherd, with the annunciation to the shepherds in the background.4 The right panel depicts Christ

2 Michael Baxandall, "Angelo Decembrio's De Politia Litteraria Part LXVIII," in Words For Pictures. Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism, ed. Michael Baxandall (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 66. 3 Quotation and translation from Thornton, The Scholar, 113. 4 Eleonora d’Aragona was the daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, and married Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara in 1473. For a general overview of her life see, Gundersheimer, "Women,

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 213 at the Sepulchre accompanied by two angels, with Saint Jerome to the left of

Christ, Saint Francis receiving the stigmata on the plane above Christ’s head, and

Calvary in the distant background. There were other devotional pieces in

Eleonora’s collections that also opened in two parts, including painted panels as well as diptychs in precious materials, and it should be noted that her husband,

Duke Ercole d’Este also had a number of similar items which are described as opening in two parts.5 The Roberti diptych encourages a dialogical reading not only through the panel-to-panel interchange, but it also referenced other texts and objects in Eleonora’s collection: citing texts, quoting paintings, and motivating copies. The diptych, now in the National Gallery in London, is described in

Eleonora’s 1493 inventory, taken after her death, as “a small altarpiece that closes like a book, covered in morello velvet with gilded silver fasteners and clasps, on one side a Nativity and on the other, a Christ at the sepulchre.”6 Traces of velvet on the diptych in the National Gallery correspond to the inventory description, and

Learning: Eleonora," 43-65; Luciano Chiappini, Eleonora d'Aragona, prima duchessa di Ferrara (Rovigo, 1956). 5 Numerous entries in ASMO AP 30 and G117. Also see below for a description of individual diptychs. 6 “una anchoneta che se assera a modo di libro coperta di veluto morello cum broche e azulli di argento dorati da un lato il persepio e dal altro un christo nel sepolchro.” ASMO G114.133V. Also published in Manca (below), Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 37; Giuseppe Campori, Raccolta di cataloghi ed inventarii inediti di quadri, statue, disegni, bronzi, dorerie, smalti, medaglie, avori, ecc. dal secolo xv al secolo xix (Modena: Arnaldo Forni Editore, 1870), 2. The diptych has not been studied in depth. Catalogue entries are included in Manca, Art of Ercole, 143-5, Cat.22; Denise Allen et al., "Catalogue: Ercole de' Roberti: The Renaissance in Ferrara. Special Supplement.," Burlington Magazine CXLI, no. 1153 (1999): xxxvi-xxxvii, cat IXa and IXb; M. Molteni, Ercole de' Roberti (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1995), cat 29. For a technical analysis see Lorne Campbell et al., "Two Panels by Ercole de' Roberti and the Identification of 'veluto morello'," The National Gallery Technical Bulletin 22, no. 1 (2001): 29-42.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 214

Ercole de’ Roberti was paid for numerous work done in Eleonora’s apartments, including her oratories and chapels.7

The diptych’s unique format will first be examined in relation to the history of the form in general. I will consider it in relation to its counterparts in the northern tradition, which served largely devotional functions and had links to

Books of Hours, and were used in both public and personal worship. The multiple uses and functions of diptychs demonstrate that they were used in both religious and secular spheres, public and private spaces. The form, and one’s engagement with it, will also be considered to demonstrate how its exterior/interior interchange encouraged a form of self-reflexivity in the object itself. I will then turn to a close examination of Roberti’s diptych. Scholars have noted that the manuscript quality of the diptych would have enhanced the devotional aspect of it, and underlined the symbolic unity of the composition.8 I suggest, however, that beyond the devotional aspect of its book form, the diptych may have spoken to humanist debates at the court of Ferrara around the position of the artist, social

7 The traces of velvet are noted in Allen et al., "Catalogue," Catalogue IXa and IXb. The panels have been dated between 1490-3 by Joseph Manca as well as by the curators at the National Gallery. Manca, Art of Ercole, 144-6, Cat. 22; Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxvi. This dating is based on stylistic evidence and in relation to the later dates that Ercole was working on Eleonora’s apartments. While this could be the case, there are also documents relating to 1486, when Ercole was also active on projects for the duchess. The first document from 21 August 1486 registers a payment to Ercole de’ Roberti for ultramarine blue for work on a “quadreto.” “E ad dite [xxj agosto] [Lire] tre [...] per sua s[ignoria] a m[aest]r[o] Echule di Ruberte d[e]pintoro qtl per comprare [onze] 1/4 di azuro oltramarino per de pinzere uno suo’ quadreto...... L.3” ASMO AP 633. 48V. Also published in Manca, Art of Ercole, 196, Doc 7. Two months later Ercole is recorded receiving payment for “fornimenti d’argento” for a “quadreto”, which could relate to the silver clasps for the diptych. “E ad dito [(20 oct)] L[ira] Cinque [soldi] ondxe [...] per sua s am[aestro] ercule d[e]pintore [conto] per comprare fornimenti di argento per fornire uno quadreto di Sua S[ignoria]...... L.5.16.0” ASMO AP 633. 49V. Also published in Manca, Art of Ercole, 196, Doc 8. Manca suggests that these payments are regarding a Madonna and Child now in Ferrara. For monographs on Ercole de’ Roberti, see Manca, Art of Ercole; Molteni, Ercole de' Roberti. Recent technical analysis has confirmed the velvet covering of the diptych to the late fifteenth century. This analysis also proved that there were originally clasps affixed to the velvet which corresponds to the inventory entry. Campbell et al., "Two Panels by Roberti," 29-42. 8 Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxvi-xxxvii.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 215 mobility, and the analogy between painting and scriptura.9 Roberti’s diptych makes claims for vision and the senses, and its physical form as a book will be examined in connection with humanist texts and the penitential and ascetic preoccupations of Ferrarese religious institutions such as the Corpus Domini convent, that placed a special emphasis on the conflation of Word and Flesh. In addition, the diptych motivated at least three copies by different artists, stressing the interest in artistic invention around this particular form and subject matter. The diptych’s painting-painting, painting-sculpture, and painting-text interchange is examined as giving rise to intertextuality. This intertextuality has links with contemporary notions of fabula, paragone, and imitation, and will be considered in relation to the ways the diptych quotes other works, as well as how it serves as a model for later works. Thus, while collections acted as forms of assembly of objects and people, which incited conversation and had links to the production of knowledge, the objects themselves were also capable of engaging in a form of dialogue through intertextuality. The diptych form already had a particular tendency toward intertextuality as it was a painting composed of two images or more, which engaged with one another and asked the viewer to assemble the disparate parts to form a whole.10 Analysing this tendency in conjunction with how such an object in the shape of a book may have engaged with humanist

9 I am indebted to Stephen Campbell’s work on the relationship between art production in Ferrara and humanist debates. See Campbell, "Pictura." This is also elaborated throughout his book on Tura, Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. 10 While a diptych is the term used to refer to a work of art containing two panels or tablets, in the case of many diptychs, there may be two images in the interior which face each other, but there could also be exterior images, which would make the diptych composed of multiple images rather than just two.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 216 debates at the court of Ferrara will illuminate how this devotional image could also serve rhetorical purposes.

II. Folding Images: A Genealogy of the Diptych Form

The word ‘diptych’ was not the term used to describe a diptych in the early modern period, rather, descriptions in archival sources refer to the physical structure of the object, such as “a panel consisting of two pieces,” “a panel with two leaves,” 11 “a small altarpiece that opens in two parts,” or in the instance of the Roberti diptych, “a small altarpiece that closes like a book.”12 The reference made to a book is not surprising considering that in late antiquity the terms

“diptychum” and “diptycha” were employed to describe a piece of writing on parchment or paper folded in two, as well as writing tablets joined together.13

Furthermore, Laura Gelfand has studied the ways in which the devotional diptych in the Netherlands had a strong correlation to Books of Hours, which were extremely popular in the period.14 Gelfand argues that the Netherlandish devotional portrait diptych more likely developed from manuscript illumination,

11 For entries in inventories, which mention diptychs, especially in French collections, see Dagmar Eichberger, "Devotional Objects in Book Format: Diptychs in the Collection of Margaret of Austria and her Family," in The Art of the Book. Its Place in Medieval Worship, ed. Margaret M. Manion and Bernard J. Muir (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 291. 12 The latter two are used often in Este inventories, see for example ASMO AP 30: “una anchoneta doro che se apre in due p[ar]te cu[m] la pietad[e] di uno lato e dalatro n[ost]ra dona cu[m] il fiolo in braza et s[an]ta catherina e dal lato d[i] fore dui altrj santi” and G 114: “una anchoneta che se assera a modo di libro coperta di veluto morello cum broche e azulli di argento dorati da un lato il presepio e da laltro un christo nel sepochro.” 13 Victor M. Schmidt, "Diptychs and Supplicants: Precedents and Contexts of Fifteenth-Century Devotional Diptychs," in Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006), 15-6. 14 Laura Gelfand, "The Devotional Portrait Diptych and the Manuscript Tradition," in Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006), 33- 45. This is also dealt with in her second chapter of her doctoral thesis, Laura Gelfand, "Fifteenth Century Netherlandish Devotional Portrait Diptychs: Origins and Function" (PhD Thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 1994), 12-37.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 217 rather than Byzantine or medieval precursors in ivory.15 The diptych in its general form, however, can be traced to its early developments found in late antique consular portraits and Byzantine iconic diptychs. The form was extremely popular in narrative French Gothic ivories and later gained currency in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in both secular and religious spheres, north and south of the

Alps.16 The diptych form was thus employed in a variety of media and in different contexts; some of these contexts will be elaborated below in attempts to understand how its form was important for its reception and indeed its meaning.

The diptych format will then be examined in relation to its Ferrarese context, exploring how and why it might have held cultural resonance in the collections of

Eleonora d’Aragona in relation to humanistic and religious discourses at court.

While diptychs could serve as large altarpieces, I am particularly interested in small diptychs that served as tools for personal devotion as well as the small pendent portraits that were common in Italy. It is the size of these smaller diptychs—generally the dimensions of a medium-sized book—that allowed

15 Gelfand, "Netherlandish Portrait Diptychs", 12. Also see Andrea G. Pearson, "Personal Worship, Gender, and the Devotional Portrait Diptych," Sixteenth Century Journal 21, no. 1 (2000): 99. 16 Gelfand, "Netherlandish Portrait Diptychs", 5; Schmidt, "Diptychs and Supplicants," 15-7. For a study on the Netherlandish diptych see two recent publications related to the exhibition Prayers and Portraits: Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych in Washington and Antwerp in 2007, John Oliver Hand, Catherine A. Metzger, and Ron Spronk, eds., Prayers and Portraits. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych (Washington, New Haven and London: National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, 2006); John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk, eds., Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006). Also see Laura Gelfand’s PhD Thesis with relevant bibliography, Gelfand, "Netherlandish Portrait Diptychs". and Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting (Doornspijk: Davaco Publishers, 1984). For Italy, the diptych is often studied in relationship to portraiture, for examples see David Alan Brown et al., Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women, ed. Susan Higman (Washington: The National Gallery of Art and Princeton University Press, 2001); John Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance (Princeton and Washington: Princeton University Press and The National Gallery of Art, 1979), chapter 5; Lorne Campbell, Renaissance Portraits. European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 53-67.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 218 viewers a close engagement with the object, similar to the reading of a manuscript.17 The small nature of diptychs and the ability to close them, which provided protection from general wear and tear, lent to their very versatility in use. Some diptychs were hung from the ceiling, suspended by a chain. Others were stored in chests and were taken out and placed on an altar during mass on special occasions, while others served as portable altarpieces. The form allowed for diverse functions in use and often one diptych could serve several different purposes in its social life. For instance, in the second half of the fifteenth century, the composer Guillaume Dufay inherited a diptych from Simon le Breton depicting the Virgin with an accompanying portrait of Simon.18 In 1474, Dufay bequeathed the diptych to Cambrai Cathedral where it was to be placed on the altar in Saint Stephen’s chapel on the days of Dufay’s and le Breton’s deaths and also on feast days, where it would complement Dufay’s sculpted epitaph in the same chapel.19 As Hugo van der Velden has noted, within the span of a few years the diptych had not only changed hands three times, but also function and location: originally it had served Simon as a devotional painting; it then provided

Dufay with a portrait and memento of a deceased friend; and finally it served as an epitaph and a liturgical device in Cambrai cathedral.20 There are other examples of these multiples uses, such as the Diptych of Josse van der Burch in the Fogg Art Museum. It was first used in personal devotion, and then later

17 While manuscripts varied greatly in size, I refer here to a general book size—from about 20 x 15 to 30 x 20 centimetres. 18 Hugo van der Velden, "Diptych Altarpieces and the Principle of Dextrality," in Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006), 125. 19 van der Velden, "Diptych Altarpieces," 125. 20 van der Velden, "Diptych Altarpieces," 125.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 219 installed over van der Burch’s tomb after his death, thus serving as devotional object, tomb-marker, and memorial.21

The multiple functions of diptychs highlight the portability and versatility of such objects, demonstrated by textual and visual sources. Margaret of Austria’s inventories reveal multiple locations for her diptychs, and suggest different uses in different contexts. Margaret’s apartments included a chapel, various rooms, a library, a study, and a separate room to house precious objects. Her inventories reveal that eight of her eleven diptychs were to be found in a “seconde chambre a chemynee”, probably Margaret’s bedroom, as well as in the adjoining “petit cabinet”, which was most likely a study.22 The remaining three diptychs are listed without any references to their specific location, and this may indicate that they were moved around, serving multiple functions in various locations. Margaret’s diptychs display a variety of narrative scenes from the life of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints, as well as donor images.23 Margaret of Austria’s four devotional portrait diptychs depicting portraits of herself have been identified as anomalies among the surviving northern portrait diptychs.24 Andrea Pearson has shown that devotional portrait diptychs were clearly linked to male forms of worship and underline the gendered division of devotion, noting that the majority of portrait diptychs depict male supplicants.25 Pearson demonstrates that diptychs were employed not in secluded private spaces, but rather functioned as a means to

21 Pearson, "Personal Worship," 118-9. 22 Eichberger, "Devotional Objects," 300-1. 23 Eichberger, "Devotional Objects," 303. 24 Pearson, "Personal Worship," 101. Also see Andrea G. Pearson, "Margaret of Austria's Devotional Portrait Diptychs," Woman's Art Journal 22, no. 2 (2001-2002): 19-26. 25 Pearson, "Personal Worship," 99.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 220 assist male devotees in bringing their “personal worship into the public arena.”26

As exemplified by the diptychs of Simon le Breton and Josse van der Burch, diptychs could serve more personal forms of devotion, as well as later performing more public roles as tomb-markers and liturgical devices, thus having a role in different kinds of ritual. However, even when used as personal devotional objects, diptychs could serve as bearers of social status in terms of ownership and display.27

The well-known manuscript illumination depicting Philip the Good at Mass reveals the use of a diptych in a partially enclosed space, and yet visible to those attending Mass (Figure 29).28 The diptych placed above the Book of Hours in the secluded space depicts a Madonna on the left and a kneeling figure on the right wing, presumably Philip himself.29 The image characterises what Pearson has understood to be a less rigid divide between public and private in the period, whereby “personal” devotion was not necessarily completely private, but rather hinged on more “public” forms of worship where devotions took “place within the visual range of others.”30 The image of Philip the Good also underlines

Gelfand’s argument that Books of Hours and devotional diptychs were intended

26 Pearson, "Personal Worship," 99-122. 27 Maximiliaan P.J. Martens, "Some Reflections on the Social Function of Diptychs," in Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006), 85- 91; Marina Belozerskaya, "Early Netherlandish Diptychs as Surrogate Luxuries," in Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006), 61- 71. 28 This illumination is often referenced in the literature on diptychs, see Belozerskaya, "Early Netherlandish Diptychs," 64; Pearson, "Personal Worship," 120; Schmidt, "Diptychs and Supplicants," 24-5; Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 31-2. 29 Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 32. 30 Pearson, "Personal Worship," 104.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 221 to complement one another and to function together.31 With this in mind, we might understand diptychs as carrying a similar social function to Books of

Hours, objects that served both a religious as well as cultural function, endowed with images that spoke to piety, style, prestige, and artistic knowledge. Both diptychs and Books of Hours could be transported at reasonable ease, and thus were moveable social signifiers that could be shown in different spaces and also used for devotion. For instance, when Borso d’Este travelled to Rome in 1470 to be invested with the title of Duke of Ferrara by the pope, he brought along his famous Bible illuminated by Taddeo Crivelli and Franco dei Russi.32 The multiple functions of diptychs and Books of Hours can be seen to be tied to their form, which allowed for easy transport, and enabled owners to display prestige and social status through the movement, transferral, and display of the objects. Such an object, then, had a social function beyond the devotional aspect, and should be seen as important not only for religious ritual but also social relations.

Engaging with the Diptych Form: Obverse, Reverse, Frames, and Images

The very form of diptychs is an aspect worth pursuing further, as it not only enables the viewer to engage with the object in a particular way, but it also endows the object with a form of self-reflexivity. While I have focussed on devotional diptychs thus far, secular portrait diptychs were also popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in Italy. In many portrait diptychs, another painting appears on the reverse, often depicting a motto, a device, coats of

31 Gelfand, "Devotional Portrait Diptych," 48. 32 Kurt Barstow, The Gualenghi-d'Este Hours. Art and Devotion in Renaissance Ferrara (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 8-9. Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 11.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 222 arms, a map, an allegorical subject, or faux marble.33 Piero della Francesca’s famous double portrait of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza with the reverse depicting allegorical triumphs is just one example (Figure 30a-d).34

The interior panels depict the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in profile, with a broad landscape in the background. The two exterior panels depict The Triumphs of Federigo da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza, where Federigo and Battista sit on triumphal carts accompanied by personifications of the virtues. In the background, the panoramic landscape continues from the interior panels, and at the bottom read two inscriptions praising the two individuals. The diptych as a whole, taking the inscriptions and triumphs on the exterior, with the portraits on the interior, has been interpreted in a number of ways, which are too varied to elaborate fully here.35 What is important is the way the four paintings function together to allow the viewer to construct meaning, and to engage with the diptych on both sides.

These double-sided portraits can be compared to medals whereby a portrait of an individual would be accompanied by an allegorical figure and motto on the reverse.36

Similarly, a single portrait with a painting depicted on its reverse can be seen to function in a comparable manner to diptychs, as they have both a reverse

33 Campbell, Renaissance Portraits, 66-7; Pope-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance, 205-9; Lorne Campbell, "Diptychs With Portraits," in Essays in Context. Unfolding the Netherlandish Diptych, ed. John Oliver Hand and Ron Spronk (Cambridge, New Haven and London: Harvard University Art Museums and Yale University Press, 2006), 33-45; Schmidt, "Diptychs and Supplicants," 17-8. 34 Pope-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance, 209-11; Martin Warnke, "Individuality as Argument: Piero della Francesca's Portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino," in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 81-90. 35 For a summary of the various interpretations see, Warnke, "Individuality as Argument: Piero della Francesca's Portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino," 87. 36 Pope-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance, 209.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 223 and an obverse, and constitute two images that are meant to function together.

Such paintings force us to ask what constitutes the frame. Where are the boundaries between the fictional world of the painting and the world of the viewer?37 As Victor Stoichita has observed, the painting on the obverse cannot be fully understood unless it is confronted with the image on the reverse.38 In the case of diptychs, when the panels are closed, it is often the exterior images that one sees first before the interior images are revealed, and thus the reverse images encourage the viewer to open and reveal the interior. A dialogue is thus formed between the outside and the inside, the reverse and the obverse; the work forces the viewer to engage with the two sides to comprehend the meaning of both images combined. Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, for instance, is only fully conceptualised when one looks at the reverse depiction of a juniper and its accompanying Latin inscription “Beauty Adorns Virtue” (Figure

31a-b).39 The juniper is a pun on the sitter’s name, and the inscription refers to the praise Ginevra received in a series of Petrarchan poems written by individuals in the Medici circle at the end of the fifteenth century, which celebrated her beauty and virtue.40 The identity of the sitter on the obverse is thus dependent on the image and script on the reverse, compelling the viewer to look at both sides and intimately engage with the object by piecing together the diverse components.

Other reverses had more psychological or moral tendencies, depicting skulls or allegories, forcing the viewer to contemplate the transient nature of this life or to

37 I am indebted to Victor Stoichita’s work on the frame and the self-reflexivity of images. See Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image. An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chapter 2, 17-29. 38 Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 20. 39 Brown et al., Virtue and Beauty, 142, Cat. 16. 40 Brown et al., Virtue and Beauty, 142.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 224 consider the moral virtues alluded to, in contrast to the portrait on the other side.41

These double-images have led Stoichita to remark that the reverse becomes

“another representation” or a form of anti-image; an image that posits itself outside or against the work, yet also integral to it.42 Such images function similarly to marginalia; far from being unimportant, they make the viewer more aware of the obverse image, and are central to the understanding of the portrait.43

In the Roberti diptych (Figures 28a-b), we are not confronted with a representation on the reverse, but rather, the exterior panels were covered with velvet. I would argue that the velvet operated in a similar manner to a reverse image. It constituted something that was always attached to the experience of viewing the image and yet also belonged to the exterior world. In particular, when the viewer opened up the diptych “like a book” and used it for personal worship, he or she would have felt the velvet on the reverse, while viewing the interior images. The velvet thus added another sensory component to the act of viewing.

The importance of the senses in viewing the diptych will be elaborated upon further below. For now, it is sufficient to note that the senses played an integral role in reading the images in the diptych, referencing the penitential forms of devotion popular in Ferrara that placed an emphasis on the senses and the bodily experiences of devotion. In addition, considering that the diptych was portable and may have been carried to, and viewed in, different surroundings, the exterior

41 See for example the Allegory on the reverse of the portrait of Bernardo de’ Rossi by Lorenzo Lotto. Pope-Hennessy, Portrait in the Renaissance, 214-6. 42 Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 20. 43 Stoichita sees these reversals or outside-the-work images as a form of parergon (para: against; ergon: work), Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 23. For the parergon also see Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 225 framing of the velvet was always part of the diptych; it served as the image’s continual background, and was integral to its mobility, allowing it to close and offering protection during travel. The velvet exterior thus constituted both its enclosure and concealment from the outside world, while also serving as the means to reveal the interior images and to establish the viewer’s first experience with those images through the opening process. The velvet also marked the diptych as a precious object, worthy of a protective covering similar to the binding of a book. Indeed, many of the books listed in Eleonora’s library had velvet as their material coverings, and often in the same colour of morello as the diptych (a purple-mulberry shade).44 The velvet may also be considered as a curtain, something that protects a precious object, similar to the curtains placed before a cult image, which both concealed and revealed the sacred.45 The velvet as curtain is also linked to representations of curtains within images, whereby the curtain itself becomes represented as a way to denote that the artwork has a certain status, and which plays with the various surfaces of reality in the image.46

In a portrait diptych of the Bentivoglio, rulers of Bologna, attributed to

Roberti, the artist employs the use of the curtain as a form of background to the two portraits (Figure 32a-b).47 Here, the curtain reveals part of the landscape, while simultaneously concealing it. It also plays a double function of acting as

‘background’ to the two portraits, highlighting their profiles in terms of negative

44 See the discussion below on Jerome’s text in Eleonora’s library, which detail the exterior coverings of her books as being covered in velvet. For a technical analysis of the velvet and its dating see Campbell et al., "Two Panels by Roberti." 45 For a discussion of the curtain in relation to cult images see Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence. A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 481. 46 For the importance of the curtain represented in images, see Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 60-3. 47 Brown et al., Virtue and Beauty, 103-5, Cat. 2 a-b. Also see Manca, Art of Ercole, 104-5, cat. 5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 226 and positive space, in addition to occupying a middle-ground between the individuals and the landscape. The velvet on the diptych also performed this role, acting as a sort of veil, encompassing the diptych, and constituting a threshold between profane and sacred space. Indeed, a technical analysis has suggested that the diptych did not have hinges, but that the panels may have actually been joined by the velvet binding.48 This veil or enfolding aspect will be elaborated further below in terms of the unveiling of truths in discussions of fabula, but it is important here in terms of the viewer’s engagement with the diptych form, as something that operates as our entry from the profane into the sacred.

Other Diptychs in Eleonora’s Collections

Eleonora’s collections contained other diptychs in a variety of materials, and the diptych form also appears in the collections of her husband, Ercole d’Este.

An inventory taken after Eleonora’s death in 1493 lists at least four diptychs. The first two diptychs were carved: one was listed as “an altarpiece that closes with two doors made of bone and ivory, carved and gilded with many figures in relief” and another: “an altarpiece in bas-relief that closes in two parts with a Christ and a Nostra Donna and Saint John.”49 The last two entries referencing the diptych form are very similar to each other, the second references the Roberti diptych, already quoted above, and the first describes something very similar, but without reference to its book-like qualities: “a small altarpiece that closes with a Nativity

48 Campbell et al., "Two Panels by Roberti," 35. 49 ASMO G114. 133V; 134R “una anchona che le asserra cum doe porte di osso e avolio intarsegliato e dorate cum figuri assai di mezo relevo” “una anchona di mezo relevo che se asserra in due parte cum uno christo e una nostra dona e Sto Zohanne”

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 227 on one side and a Christ at the Sepulchre on the other side.”50 In another inventory of Eleonora’s collections, more diptychs are listed, one was a “small gilded silver altarpiece with the whole Passion of Our Saviour on one side, and on the other the Nativity of Our Saviour” encrusted with precious gems, with two more relief images depicting a Nostra Donna carved in the form of a cameo and a

Christ, which together, presumably composed the outer doors of the diptych.51

Other diptychs in Eleonora’s collection included: a “very tiny, small, small gold altarpiece, with a Nostra Donna dressed in red with a Christ in her arms and on the other side a cross;” “a small altarpiece in gold” that opened in two parts, containing a Pietà on one side and on the other a Madonna with child and Saint

Catherine, and on the outside panels two other saints; 52 and finally a “small altarpiece made out of silver that opens in two parts” depicting a Saint George on one side with a Madonna and Child and two angels on the other.53

Numerous diptychs appear in an inventory of Ercole d’Este as well, many of which are similar to the ones in Eleonora’s collection, depicting Christ, the

50 “una anchoneta che se assera cum uno presepio da un lato e un christo nel sepolchro da la altro lato” ASMO G114. 133V. Also published in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 37; Campori, Cataloghi ed inventarii, 2. 51 ASMO AP 30. 45R. “Una anchoneta di arzento dorate e smaltata tuta cu[m] la passione del n[ost]ro sig[no]re da uno lato, dalatro la nativitade de n[ost]ro Si[gno]re cu[m] quatro rosette de rubinetj da rocha tristi per cadauno lato cu[m] una n[ost]ra dona di sotto intagliata in una predia a modo camaino e dalatro lato uno cristo cu[m] el pede informa del pe de calixe [?] pexa in tuto onze desesepte quartj uno” 52 “Una anchoneta doro che se apre in due p[ar]te cu’ la pietad[e] di uno lato e dalatro n[ost]ra dona cu’ il fiolo in braza e sta catherina e dal lato d[i]fore dui altrj santi [...]Di smalto pexa onze septe quartj uno” ASMO AP 30. 47R, 48V. This account is an inventory taken of both Ercole’s and Eleonora’s possessions. The first part of the inventory lists Ercole’s while the latter half lists Eleonora’s. 53 “Unaltra anchoneta di arze[n]to che se apre in due p[ar]te cu uno s[an]to zorzo da uno lato e dalatro nra dona cu[m] il fiolo in braza cu[m] due anzoli, et sancto et smalto dorata e dalatro difore.” ASMO AP 30. 48V. Saint George was the patron saint of Ferrara and would have carried ecclesiastical, religious, and political importance. For Saint George imagery in Ferrara, see for example, the organ shutters for the Cathedral by Cosmè Tura, which depict Saint George and the princess. Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, Chapter 5, 131-61.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 228

Madonna, and various saints, all of which are made in expensive materials such as gold or silver.54 In addition, Ercole’s inventory lists a “panel that opens in two parts with a gold cornice” depicting the “Duke of Milan and Madama Bianca.”55

This is presumably a double portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Milan, and is possibly the same double portrait that Borso D’Este, Ercole’s predecessor, had commissioned from Baldassare d’Este in the early 1470s, which was originally placed in the Palazzo Schifanoia.56 Ercole also owned a “panel in the form of a book” depicting Julius Caesar in a gold frame.57

A predilection for diptychs in Ferrara may have been influenced by the interest of the Este in emulating the princely magnificence of the Burgundian

Court, where the diptych form was popular. In addition, the Este’s interest in

Netherlandish artists, such as Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck, who were both known for producing a number of diptychs, may have also influenced the taste in the diptych form. Indeed, Leonello d’Este sent his illegitimate son,

Francesco, to be educated at the Burgundian court, and whilst there, Rogier painted a portrait of Francesco, which contained a portrait on the obverse with a coat of arms and an inscription on the reverse.58

54 These are listed in the first section of the inventory of AP 30. An inventory taken in 1494 lists many of the items that had once belonged to Eleonora, and now appear to be the property of Ercole. See ASMO G117. 55 “Uno quadro che se apre in due parte cu[m] le cornise dorate in sulquale e il duca di milano e m[adama] biancha” ASMO AP 30. 35V. Also listed in G117. 55V. Also published in Campori, Cataloghi ed inventarii, 30. 56 Campbell, Renaissance Portraits, 54. 57 ASMO AP 30.35V 58 It is interesting to note that for many years the sitter was unknown. It took numerous scholars to assemble the quotes and arms on the reverse in conjunction with the portrait, to identity it as Francesco d’Este. This reveals how the obverse/reverse are equally important and that this engagement is an integral part of understanding the painting as a whole. Ernst Kantorowicz, "The Este Portrait by Roger Van Der Weyden," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 3 (1939-40). Nuttall, From Flanders, 3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 229

The diptych was thus a popular art form in Ferrara encouraged by the cultural interest in the Burgundian court and the taste for Netherlandish art. The particular self-reflexive nature of the form forced viewers to engage with the diptych in a distinct way. This engagement gave rise to a particular mode of viewing, encouraging the viewer to make connections between the various images depicted on the different panels to construct meaning. This dialogical reading could also prove to be very interesting when the object referenced other texts and images in the collection, in addition to speaking to humanist and religious debates outside the work.

III. The Painting and Scriptura Debate: Paragone, Social Positioning, and the Status of Art in Ferrara

While the general form of the diptych has been studied in a variety of ways relating to devotional practices, portraiture, and the viewer’s engagement, we might ask why it was popular in Ferrara and why it was taken up by one of the leading artists at court. To answer these questions we must look to humanist debates at the court of Ferrara to understand the cultural and intellectual milieu in which these diptychs were produced and collected. The court of Ferrara provided an erudite and fervent humanist centre, which drew in many artists, humanists, and literary figures.59 The fifteenth century in Ferrara also saw a restructuring of the social organisation of the aristocracy, implemented by the Este in attempts to secure political loyalty by constructing a circle of courtiers who were dependent

59 For a general history of Ferrara see Gundersheimer, Ferrara. For the rule of Ercole d’Este in particular see Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara. For an outdated, and yet still reasonable overview, see Gardner, Dukes and Poets. For the Este and art production in Ferrara see Bentini, ed., Gli Este a Ferrara; Mottola, Natala, and Lorenzo, eds., Muse e il principe I; Mottola, Natala, and Lorenzo, eds., Muse e il principe II; Iotti, ed., Gli Estensi. La Corte di Ferrara.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 230 on the court for privileges and entitlements.60 This was particularly evident under the rule of Borso d’Este, who created a new nobility, and these practices continued under Duke Ercole; like Borso, Ercole’s legitimacy to rule was in question, and Ercole facilitated social fluidity and political loyalty by allowing civic and court offices to be bought every year.61 Ferrarese humanistic culture raised a number of issues in relation to the role of the artist, social mobility, and prevailing conceptions of art and its interpretations, exemplified in texts such as

Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria.62

Many of the concerns of the humanists centred on knowledge and the different forms that knowledge could take, through painting or script. Rather than looking at this humanist interest as merely repeating the notion of paragone, it is perhaps more useful to consider why it was taken up and what was at stake for those who engaged in this debate.63 Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise on painting served as a model for many of the Ferrarese texts that follow it later in the century, but as Stephen Campbell has noted, these literary works should be considered less in the context of innovative statements about painting, and more in terms of their “ideological framing of the question of art and its value.”64

Furthermore, we often find that the paintings themselves contradict or negotiate

60 Richard Tristano’s thesis examines the rise of new nobility under Borso d’Este and underlines how it was indeed Ercole’s rule that continued this mobility, see Tristano, "Ferrara and New Nobility", especially Chapter 5, 194-205; Campbell, "Pictura," 270. 61Brown, "Death of a Record-Keeper," 9 and 34-5, n.19. Also noted in Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 11. 62 Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia," 39-67; Michael 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): 304-26; Jon Pearson 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). 63Campbell, "Pictura," 267-95. 64 Campbell, "Pictura," 267.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 231 many of the theories raised in the humanist treatises and demonstrate the ways artists engaged with these debates through their work, often in ambiguous ways.

Writing in 1460, the humanist Ludovico Carbone commented on the nobility of art, noting that painting was called mute poetry by the ancients, and that works of art produced under a prince’s rule reflected the prince’s virtue.

Carbone states that the ingenium of the artists in service of the prince was a way to judge the prince himself. 65 The text aligns painting with poetry, stressing its liberal rather than manual practices, a theme that others such as Decembrio would not be so quick to extol. Carbone’s text, which defended the notions of virtue rather than lineage, had a particular social resonance, considering it was written during the reign of Borso d’Este whose legitimacy to rule was in question, and who consequently restructured the social organisation of the aristocracy.66 This social mobility inevitably formed contentious issues around new wealth, and humanist treatises that spoke to the nobility of virtue rather than birth, dappled with some of the anxieties around culture and social positioning. These debates were to play out in the circles of authors and artists, whereby many took advantage of this social fluidity, and through their humanist writings or painterly expressions, rose to prominence. This was, however, not only a concern for the

65 Ludovico Carbone was a humanist at the Ferrarese court who was known for his orations, and also wrote an oration for Eleonora and Ercole’s wedding celebrations in Rome, which he attended. For partial translations of his text, see Campbell, "Pictura," 269. 66 Campbell, "Pictura," 270. For Borso d’Este’s policies on social mobility see, Tristano, "Ferrara and New Nobility".

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 232 new nobility, but as Campbell has remarked, for Borso himself, whose mother was of questionable noble status.67

The particular emphasis on ingegno was neither new nor particular to

Ferrara; Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting at the end of the fifteenth century took up this debate, claiming that painting indeed should be considered a science, and that the transmission of knowledge could be achieved through the eyes.68 However, the claim for painting’s status held particular cultural resonance and social consequence in Ferrara. The emphasis on ingegno was an attempt to differentiate between manual and liberal practices, stressing the creative and noble faculties, and therefore aligning painting with poetry. The need for both Ferrarese artists and writers to make claims for their work as liberal practice clearly reflects the struggle to legitimate their social status. The humanists criticised certain artistic practices as mere opulence and adornment, and condemned artists for seeking to display ingenium through excessive gesture, although many artists did not follow the advice of the humanists, and employed extreme theatrical poses and unrealistic proportions. Ferrarese artists employed these devices, not because they were ignorant of humanist treatises, but because they pointedly engaged with those treatises, making claims for the position of the artist, drawing from cultural and religious practices such as the theatre and religious spectacle, and choosing different ways of rendering bodies because the subject matter called for it. Visual imagery in Ferrara thus should be seen as dialogic; the works are analogous to

67Borso was born of the illegitimate line of the Este, whereas Ercole was from the legitimate branch, although they were brothers through their father. See the family trees in Appendix A. Also see Campbell, "Pictura," 270. 68 Leatrice Mendelsohn, Paragoni. Benedetto Varchi's Due Lezzioni and Cinquecento Art Theory, ed. Donald B. Kuspit, vol. 6, Studies in the Fine Arts: Art Theory (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), 38.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 233 humanist texts, taking up debates, answering to them, and contributing to the intellectual community, not merely as reflections of intellectual discourse, but as agents that engage with that discourse.

The differentiation between liberal and manual practices, especially in relation to writing, was thus a particularly charged debate, and was played out in the discussion around the position of the scribe. Decembrio’s De politia litteraria takes the form of conversations held at the court of Leonello d’Este, whereby learned humanists discuss the relationship between painting and writing. 69

Although it was set at the court of Leonello, it was dedicated to Borso d’Este in

1465, and has been seen as an indirect criticism of Borso’s rule, by providing the reader with examples of the “philological rigour” of Leonello’s court with the now decadent and superficial display culture of Borso’s rule, where books were praised for their adornment over their content.70 Decembrio’s text juxtaposes a circle of learned Ferrarese humanists with the comical and ignorant, yet non- fictional figure of Ugolino Pisani, who is presented as the quintessential embodiment of an individual seeking ennoblement through writing, but who holds none of the social or intellectual graces.71 In Decembrio’s text, Pisani makes a number of social and cultural blunders, but most importantly for our purposes, he is ridiculed for confusing writer (scriptor) with copyist (librarius).72 What was criticised was his conflation of the manual scribe, who merely copied texts and made them beautiful through adornment, with the figure of the author, who had

69 It should be noted that Decembrio was not only involved with the court of Ferrara but also that of Naples, Eleonora’s natal court, both of which had flourishing humanistic communities. 70 Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 18. 71 See Baxandall, "Dialogue on Art."; Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia." For the figure of Ugolino Pisani see Perry, "Fifteenth-Century Dialogue." 72 Perry, "Fifteenth-Century Dialogue," 631.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 234 the intellectual capacity to compose and interpret texts.73 Similarly, the text criticises the clumsiness of painters “who make quite as many mistakes as scribes and copyists do.”74 Particularly, Decembrio singles out wall paintings and “those tapestries from Transalpine Gaul you see hung on walls” noting that “there is much skill in this kind of work, but the weavers and designers are far more concerned with opulence of colour and a frivolous charm of the tapestry than with the method or science of painting.”75 What is at issue here is the lack of science or application of intelligence and an unnecessary attachment to adornment and opulence. Another speaker in the dialogue, the famous humanist Guarino, however, stresses the importance of images, stating “both painting and writing tend to one end: the encouragement of learning and the desire for knowledge. It was for this reason that the Greeks and Romans often referred to both as scriptura.”76 Guarino thus argues that scriptura, a contentious and oft-returned to issue, could also be applied to the visual arts if it was used in an intellectual way, leading to knowledge and learning.

Artists at the Ferrarese court such as Cosmè Tura and Ercole de’ Roberti were aware of these debates, and can be seen to play with notions of scriptura in their works.77 The contentions around scriptura and ingegno are made explicit in

Alberti who criticises artists who seek to display their ingenium through impossible poses or extreme gestures.78 As Campbell has demonstrated, Ferrarese artists such as Tura often did not follow the advice of the humanists, employing

73 This is elaborated in Campbell, "Pictura." 74 Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia," 54. 75 Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia," 54. 76 Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia," 64. 77 For Cosmè Tura see Campbell, "Pictura." 78 Campbell, "Pictura," 275.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 235 extreme theatrical poses, unrealistic proportions, and “decorative linear elaboration,” which served as a means to achieve a particular mark, an artistic identity, which drew parallels between the lines of painting/drawing with those of script.79 Tura, for instance, employs the use of what Campbell has called a

“calligraphic line” to signal a relationship to writing, as well as constituting a form of signature particular to the artist.80 Such references to writing undoubtedly engage with debates around painting and scriptura, and were thus taken up both in the literary as well as artistic fields.

In Roberti’s diptych, painting’s ability to play with notions of scriptura is manifested in the book-like form, the presence of inscription, the figuration of script, and claims for the importance of the senses. Many elements in the right panel make reference to qualities in the left panel, creating a dialogue between the two sides. The Christ child lies in a crib, near a manger-type structure, while

Joseph, Mary, and a shepherd look on in adoration. The Dead Christ supported by angels on the edge of the tomb on the right panel takes the place of the baby

Christ in the crib in the left panel; the wicker crib has given way to the elaborate marble tomb. In opposition to the man-made shelter of Christ’s Nativity, Saint

Jerome occupies an ascetic cave, out of which he sees the suffering Christ.

Jerome’s foreshortened lion near the tomb mimics the foreshortened cow inside the manger.81 Saint Francis receives the stigmata from a faint seraph/crucifix in the sky, which mimics the angel appearing to the shepherds in the same quadrant on the left panel. The sketchiness rendered in the painting of the three shepherds

79 Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara. 80 Campbell, "Pictura," 276-7. 81 Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxvii.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 236 in the left panel is signalled again in the sketch-like forms of the three crosses at

Calvary on the right panel. The white detailing of the cloth around Christ’s cribsheet and Mary’s head scarf is taken up again on the white detailing of

Christ’s delicate loin cloth, emphasising that the quiet child in the manger will soon face his fate of Saviour, through death and resurrection from the tomb. This application of white, especially around the baby Jesus’ crib, as well as the sketch- like figures rendered in the distance, draw attention to the artist’s penmanship, similar to the linear contours and calligraphic lines that Campbell has characterised in Tura’s work. Such attention to linear qualities and script-like forms provides an evocative parallel between the hand of the artist in his brushstrokes with that of the formulations of letters, and suggests an analogy between painting and writing.82

The diptych speaks of visions: the vision of the angel to the shepherds, the image of Christ appearing to Saint Jerome, and the vision of the angel in the stigmatisation of Saint Francis. Roberti inscribes the importance of vision, and in so doing, he also makes claims for vision thus stressing the importance of the artist and the necessity of the visual arts, especially in relation to depicting the mystical events of Christendom. The partly visible inscription on the tomb’s lid, references the relationship of writing with painting. Roberti has rendered the inscription as a relief on the tomb, as if the surface of the painting itself has been punctured or carved away, re-asserting an attention to the hand of the artist,

82 Campbell has noted this particular tendency in Tura’s work, and quotes Filarete’s Trattato, which notes that both painters and scribes are identified by their hand. The painter is recognized by his ability to render forms, while the scribe can also be identified in his forming of letters. Campbell, "Pictura," 279.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 237 similar to the marks of his penmanship visible on the white detailing around

Christ’s crib. The inscription’s position on the lower right of the panel, it has been suggested, offers a connection for the viewer with the body of Christ. Denise

Allen notes that Eleonora’s thumb may have touched the name of Christ engraved on the tomb, and through touching it, Eleonora (or any viewer) would have made contact with the Word Incarnate, that is, a sacred relic of Christ.83 This contact between inscription and thumb, between painting’s representation and touch, would have been highlighted during the opening of the book-like form, where the viewer would have felt the velvet on the outside with his or her fingers, and found their right thumb placed on the name of Christ on the tomb.

If the inscription and the physical act of touching assert the primacy of the

Word, they do so in ambiguous ways. That is, it is through the senses that the viewer interacts with the Word, reinscribed by the idea of the relic, and the material forms of devotion. The placement of the inscription also sets up a paradox: while it is there in the painting, it is only half there, causing the viewer unease in reading it, relegating the textual forms associated with writing and script to the border of the painting. Roberti has placed the text in such a way that it is cut off by the frame, remaining continually on the border of what is inside and outside the painting, and causing the viewer’s awareness to shift between his script-like tendencies of rendering detail and the more sensory aspects of the painting which stress the physicality of the body, vision, and touch. Attention to the body is emphasised in a number of ways. While the individuals in the left panel all close their hands in a supplicating prayer position, they are juxtaposed

83 Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxvii.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 238 by Jerome, Jesus, and Francis on the right panel, who expose their bodies by their open-handed gestures, bearing their chest to the viewer. Furthermore the stigmata visible on Christ, which is then received in material form through the marks of blood on Saint Francis’ hands, emphasise the bodily transformations of devotion.

These bodily experiences of veneration were also well known to the citizens of

Ferrara who experienced the sights of saintly miracles in local spiritual figures, or through the spectacle of processions of confraternities who flagellated themselves.84 The transfiguration of the body through devotion, in the ascetic tradition, was seen as a direct link to the transformation of the body on the day of

Resurrection, and thus provided a correlation between Jerome’s and Francis’ somatic experiences with Christ’s Resurrection.85 These material forms of devotion were prevalent in Ferrara, specifically in relation to the disciplinati and confraternal groups, which will be explored further below in relation to Roberti’s

Saint Jerome.

IV. Word and Flesh: Caterina Vegri and the Corpo di Christo

The emphasis on the body of Christ would also allude to Eleonora’s involvement with the convent of Corpo di Christo, and the importance of the

Eucharist—the material form of Christ’s body—which was the central focus for the convent. This association would have reminded viewers of one of the most important annual processions and festivals in Ferrara—the Corpus Domini procession—whereby Eleonora and other prominent figures would physically

84 For an overview of how the penitential and eschatological preoccupations in Ferrara are related to Ferrarese art, see Timothy Verdon, "The Art of Guido Mazzoni" (PhD Thesis, Yale University, 1978), 16-9. 85 For a useful history of the body in Christianity, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 239 walk through the streets carrying the sacred host under a baldachino.86 Here the diptych interplays with ritual, as religious practices are literally enfolded into the diptych. Many of the objects in Eleonora’s collection took the body of Christ as their subject matter, and must be examined within the religious traditions and practices associated with the Corpus Christi.87 The convent of Corpo di Christo was an important convent of Clarissan nuns in Ferrara and it had ties with the

Corpus Christi convent in Bologna, and specifically with the figure of Caterina

Vegri.88 A particular emphasis on the relationship between word and image and the importance of the body of Christ are crucial aspects of the Corpo di Christo convents of Ferrara and Bologna and will be explored here, as many of the issues are taken up in Roberti’s diptych.

Caterina Vegri, later canonised as Saint Catherine of Bologna, was educated at the Este court during Leonello d’Este’s rule. She entered the Corpo di

Christo convent in Ferrara in the 1420s before being appointed to head the convent of Corpus Domini in Bologna in 1456, where she stayed until her death

86 Eleonora was very closely tied with a number of female religious groups, and most importantly with the convent of Corpo di Christo, where she was buried. Eleonora had a wooden oratorio built for herself in the choir of the church of Corpus Christi, as well as a cell, where she was noted to spend the night. Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 373. Payments for the work are found in court records, ASMO M&F 27.78. Eleonora also gave a painting depicting the scenes from the Life of Christ that she had ordered from Bruges to the convent. See Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 113. Eleonora’s account books repeatedly make reference to numerous alms Eleonora provided for the Corpo di Christo and other religious institutions, ASMO AP 633, AP 636, AP 640. Eleonora was also heavily involved in the running and organising of the annual corpus christi procession, which she describes in letters to Ercole, examined in Charles Rosenberg, "The Use of Celebrations in Public and Semi-Public Affairs in Fifteenth Century Ferrara," in Il teatro italiano del Rinascimento, ed. Maristella de Panizza Lorch (Milan: Edizione di Communità, 1980), 521-35. The original letters are located in ASMO C&S 131 and C&S 131-2. 87 The variants “Corpus Domini”, “Corpo di Christo,” and “Corpus Christi” are all terms used in the period. In the account books of Eleonora, Corpo di Christo is the most frequent term used for the convent in Ferrara. 88 For the earlier history of the convent see, Mary Martin McLaughlin, "Creating and Recreating Communities of Women: the Case of Corpus Domini, Ferrara," in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, ed. Judith M. Bennett (Chicago: 1989), 261-88.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 240 in 1463.89 Saint Catherine was both an artist and writer, responsible for producing many images and texts, and art historian Jeryldene Wood has examined how it was through the process of writing and painting that Caterina evoked the transcendence of God.90 Wood has also noted that art and an attention to luxurious materials were particularly significant for female spirituality in the convent of Corpus Domini in Bologna. Saint Catherine wrote a spiritual text entitled Le sette armi spirituali, which dealt with the spiritual weapons one could use to combat Satan and sin. The text was copied at Caterina’s request and sent to the convent in Ferrara, where the treatise had been written.91 Saint Catherine received many visions, and in one section of her text she describes how she had doubts concerning the divine presence in the Eucharist, when she had been visited by Christ who had explained the principles of transubstantiation, and from that moment on she longed for the spiritual nourishment of communion and made the

Incarnation one of the centrepieces of her painting and writing.92 Wood has also noted how Caterina’s manuscript illuminations often conflate word and picture, whereby the text often flows into the decorations on the page, providing a fusion of text and image.93 In her biography of Caterina written in 1469, Illuminata

Bembo noted that Caterina was educated at the Este court, and thus she may have had some familiarity with the humanist debates regarding painting and scriptura.

Illuminata Bembo, a contemporary of Caterina, also describes Caterina’s paintings in the convent in Ferrara, which are no longer extant, stating: “Gladly,

89 For Caterina Vegri see Jeryldene M. Wood, Women, Art, and Spirituality. The Poor Clares of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Chapter 5, 121-44. 90 Wood, Women, Art, 124. 91 Wood, Women, Art, 128. 92 Wood, Women, Art, 130. 93 Wood, Women, Art, 130-2.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 241 in the books and in many places of the monastery of Ferrara she painted the

Divine Word in swaddling clothes, and in painting him she often said with great tenderness: ‘I will take him by the band [of cloth] because he is the fire that wounds me deeply.’”94 It is interesting to note that Bembo directly references the

Christ Child as the Divine Word, even when she is commenting on Christ’s portrayal in the Flesh, offering a direct conflation between Word and Flesh.

Eleonora, who had an oratory and a cell in the convent in Ferrara where she was known to spend the night, would have surely seen these paintings and would have been aware of this strong emphasis on the relationship between Christ’s body and the Word. 95 While there are no specific references to Caterina’s text in

Eleonora’s library, there is a text listed as a tract by a sister of Corpo di Christo, which may well have been Caterina’s, and as we know that there was a copy of

Caterina’s text at the convent in Ferrara, Eleonora would have presumably had access to it.96 We also know that Eleonora’s mother, Isabella Chiaramonte, Queen of Naples, owned a copy of Catherine’s text and was also closely tied with

Ferrara’s religious institutions.97 Roberti who worked both at the courts of Ferrara

94 Quoted in Wood, Women, Art, 134. Wood has taken the quote from Suor Bembo’s biography of Caterina entitled Lo specchio di illuminazione from 1469. 95 Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 373. Payments for the oratory in the convent are found in court records, ASMO M&F 27.78 96 “tractato de una sore del corpo di Xpo coperto cu[m] cartonj di tella coperto” ASMO AP 638. 138R. 97 It seems that Giovanni Tavelli, the famous Bishop of Ferrara and an influential character in the history of Ferrarese spirituality, was acquainted with Isabella, for his translation of Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermons was dedicated to her. For a discussion of Isabella and Eleonora’s connections to the religious life in Ferrara see Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 112-4. Eleonora also travelled regularly to Bologna, as the illegitimate daughter of Ercole was married to Annibale Bentivoglio, the son of the rulers of Bologna. The convent of Corpus Domini, and the body of Caterina was a popular pilgrimage site across Italy. Ginevra Sforza Bentivoglio was known to bring illustrious guests to visit the site when they were Bologna. For instance, in 1463, Ginevra requested permission to have access to show the convent to three visitors. For the document see Archivio di Stato di Ferrara, Archivio Bentivoglio, Repert Contratti Tom III Lib 7, n. 29. Ippolita Sforza made

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 242 and Bologna would have also been aware of the tradition, as the convents were prominent religious institutions, and Caterina Vegri, in particular, had obtained cult status.

Roberti’s diptych emphasises the connections between Word and Flesh and text and image, issues with which Caterina and her followers were principally concerned. Roberti evokes these connections by depicting the two images of

Christ, as a naked baby and as the wounded Saviour, in conjunction with an attention to the Word in the inscription on the tomb. This emphasis re-asserts the material vestiges of Christ’s life celebrated through the Eucharist, which was an important aspect of the convent and the cult around Caterina. As an altarpiece, the displaying of Christ’s body by the angels on the tomb would make reference to the celebration of the Eucharist on the altar, and would have thus underlined the

Eucharistic dimension and notions of Transubstantiation. The right panel of the diptych stresses Christ as the cause of vision as well as spiritual and physical transformation. On the tomb, Christ serves as Saint Jerome’s vision in the desert.

Jerome is depicted with a rock used in penitential devotions, and the viewer is reminded that Jerome’s vision of Christ is the therapeutic consolation for his temptations in the desert. Saint Francis also reminds the viewer that it is through his meditations that he is physically transformed into the likeness of Christ with the stigmata.98 Both saints, in addition to the depiction of Christ, assert the

a special visit to the convent of Corpus Domini in Bologna upon her wedding trip from Milan to Naples. The wedding company arrived in Bologna on 25 April 1465, where Giovanni and Ginevra Bentivoglio were their hosts, Southern, "A Prima Ballerina of the Fifteenth Century," 190. For the document see Archivio di Stato di Ferrara, Archivio Bentivoglio, Repert Contratti Tom III Lib 7, n. 29. 98 For a useful discussion on the importance of the Body of Christ in penitential practices in Ferrara see Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 131-2.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 243 transformative power of Christ’s body, carrying Eucharistic overtones. The attention given to Christ’s body makes explicit the lines of John 1:14 where the

Word is made Flesh, and has specific resonance in the Ferrarese context, both in relation to Caterina’s teachings and to the humanist debate between script and painting.99 The tradition of comparing Christ’s body to a manuscript or a text was a popular and established tradition in Italy. The Franciscan Jacopone da Todi writing in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century observed:

I run to the cross and read Its blood-stained pages— This is the book that makes me A doctor of natural philosophy and theology. A book inscribed with golden letters And all abloom with Love.100

Girolamo Savonarola who grew up and was educated in Ferrara stated “take the crucifix for your book and read that.”101 This tradition of understanding

Christ’s suffering body and the crucifix as a book to read, in addition to the

Biblical tradition of seeing Christ’s body as the Word, asserts a conflation or at least an equal reverence for the Word and Image of Christ. Comparing the cross to the pages of a book has relevance in a Ferrarese context where the debate between painting and poetry, image and script, was prevalent. A devotional diptych, that engages with these issues and is in the form of a book, underlines the complex theological, Christological, and rhetorical implications of such an object.

The diptych thus takes up not only the devotional aspects of conflating

Word and Flesh, and its currency in the Eucharistic symbolism of the Corpus

99 Barstow discusses the important tradition of perceiving Christ’s body as a text, see Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 160-1. 100 Quoted in Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 160. 101 Quoted in Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 161.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 244

Domini tradition, but also the debate between painting and scriptura, which figured so prominently in the erudite circles at the court of Ferrara. The panel underlines the sensory aspects of devotion, through sight, vision, and touch. One might even say that taste and sound play a role here, if one is reminded of the taste of the Eucharist through the emphasis on Christ’s body, or through the sounding of the campanile, by the presence of the bell suspended from the cave, near Christ’s tomb. Indeed, bells have been examined to have had a special prominence during the feast of the Eucharist, or Corpus Christi, when the pealing of bells announced the moment of the elevation, when the bread was transformed into Christ’s body, and thus consecrated.102 Attention to the visual and material aspects of the diptych has been highlighted to demonstrate how a viewer may have engaged with the object. I will now turn to the spaces in which the diptych was most probably viewed, to understand how it interacted with other objects in

Eleonora’s collections.

V. Eleonora’s Collections

The references to devotional practices in Ferrara are extremely important for a diptych, which functioned as a small personal devotional object, but the diptych’s engagement with literary debates as well as other objects and texts in

Eleonora’s collections demonstrate that such an object might have had a role within artistic and humanistic circles at court. As I demonstrated in the introduction to the diptych, the versatility of such an object allowed for multiple functions, including both private and public uses. Eleonora, like Margaret of

102 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 58.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 245

Austria, had numerous rooms where her collections were kept, spread out across two locations. Eleonora had living accommodations in the Castel Vecchio as well as in her garden apartments, a project which was built under the initiative and direction of the duchess. These spaces included two studioli, two chapels, and a number of oratories, as well as various rooms, which served multiple functions, from bedrooms to entertaining spaces.103 Her collections were large and substantial, encompassing a wide range of religious materials. Inventories and account books reveal that Eleonora owned numerous objects, ranging from small devotional items such as sculptures of saints, gold and silver pace, to numerous small altarpieces (ancone) made out of a variety of materials, in bas-relief gold, silver, and copper, as well as painted works and many tapestries and cloth altar frontals. Her collections included many crosses, some very large made out of crystal and gold, and engraved with biblical scenes, and others very small, encrusted with jewels. She also had numerous agnus dei and a large collection of paternostri or rosary beads, many made out of extremely expensive materials. She also possessed many jewels, cameos, and rings, which were intricately carved with figures. Among the paintings listed in her inventory are two paintings by

103 For a discussion of her renovating projects see Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 98-114. Sabadino degli Arienti also describes Eleonora’s garden, see Arienti, triumphis religionis. There is often some confusion in the literature between the garden of the Corte (Ercole’s) and the garden of the Castello (Eleonora’s). Since the garden apartments no longer survive, it has led many scholars to confuse the two, notably Gundersheimer and Manca. For an explanation and clarification of the two, see Thomas Tuohy, "Rescuing Ferrara. Ercole de' Roberti and Art Historians," Apollo 137 (1993): 199-200. Eleonora’s account books survive and demonstrate that she was in charge of all the commissions and payments for the renovations of both the Castel Vecchio and the building of her garden apartments. See for example ASMO AP 633, 634, 637, 639, 640. Some of these accounts are published by Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.I (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1995); Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II; Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara. The accounts relating to Ercole de’ Roberti’s work, notably wall painting and his job as overseer for various projects, are also published in Manca, Art of Ercole.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 246

Mantegna, a Christ by Bellini, Flemish paintings of the Madonna, three images of the Maries, a large number of Madonnas, numerous Christs, a Saint Sebastian, a

Saint Jerome, a few images depicting Saint Francis, at least three depictions of the

Magi, a Last Supper, among others.104 Her account books also list commissions for paintings by artists such as Cosmè Tura and Gian Francesco Maineri.105 Her collection of sculpture consisted of a number of saints, including Saints James,

Jerome, Sebastian, Antonio of Padua, as well as a Nativity, and various Pietà, all in white marble, as well as a Saint George with feet made out of diamonds. In addition she had a number of objects that contained relics that would have stressed the bodily and material associations of the saints. She had many tapestries depicting Christ, the Crucifix, the Madonna, King Solomon and the Queen of

Sheba, and other religious imagery. Her inventories also list numerous mirrors, vases, flasks, and other similar decorative items, many of which contain the arms of political figures, such as Diomede Carafa, and the arms of the commune of

104 The inventory taken after Eleonora’s death in 1493 is partially published in Campori. Although Campori does not identify it as Eleonora’s, it comes from the inventory located in ASMO G114 (previously AP 638), which belongs to Eleonora’s accounts. Campori, Cataloghi ed inventarii, 1- 3. It is also partially transcribed in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 35, doc 17. Inventories of her items also appear in AP 640, which does not seem to have been taken for any particular reason, but rather as a way to track various goods in the guardaroba. Parts of this account book and inventory are also transcribed in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.I, 409, doc 597 bis. Another inventory of Eleonora’s goods is located in Ercole’s account books, but which records both Ercole’s and Eleonora’s possessions separately, AP 30. 105 In 1485 Girolamo Zuchola was paid for making a stretcher for a painting Tura was to execute for the duchess. Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 410 Doc12, h ; Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.I, 339, doc 489aa . For the original see the entry for November 20 1485, M&F 20.134, which states: “a fare uno telaro a m˚Goxema depointore per met[tere] susa una tela per la Ex[elenti]a di M[adama Eleonora].” Maineri, often referred to as “Zoanne Francesco di Parma” in documents, was paid for a number of different commissions. In 1489 he was paid for work done in the garden apartments of Eleonora, AP 633.170V. In 1492, Maineri is recorded painting images of Saint Augustine and Saint Francis for an oratory of the duchess, AP 637. 74V. In August of 1493 he was paid for ‘quadreto dorato’ AP 634. 41V and 43R.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 247 cities such as Siena, Florence, and Bologna, thus underlining her political role and her diplomatic connections across Italy.106

Eleonora’s library was composed mostly of religious texts, but also included works dedicated to her, as well as important secular texts by Fazio degli

Uberti, Petrarch, Pliny, and Caesar, written in French, Latin, and Italian. The spiritual books contained at least four works by Jerome, texts by later saints and preachers, such as Saint Bernardino, Saint Francis, Fra Roberto, Don Michele, and Saint Catherine of Siena as well as a few works on the lives of the Saints and the Desert Fathers. There are also numerous texts on spirituality: on the immortality of the soul, on sins and confession, on the Heavenly Ladder, on the

Christian soul, on the Passion of Christ, on the love of Christ, and on spiritual discipline. There are also some texts written by “sisters,” one of which was, as mentioned above, written by a sister of the Corpo di Christo, perhaps Caterina

Vegri. Furthermore there are a large number of texts specifically for devotion, including a long list of messali, Books of Hours, breviaries, and Bibles. Many of the books are described as illuminated and bound with expensive cloth, some of which contain representations of the Madonna or similar images on the covers.

Her collection of books reveals a tendency toward the penitential and disciplinati practices popular in Ferrara at the time, and alludes to a particular reverence for these forms of spirituality and devotion, paralleling the works of art she commissioned and collected.

106 Her accounts are also full of payments for various gifts to diplomatic individuals across Italy and Europe. See for instance, AP 633, which lists a number of gifts to individuals such as Alfonso d’Aragona in Naples, Beatrice d’Aragona in Hungary, the Pope in Rome, among others.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 248

Fabula and Forms of Assembly

In considering the wide range of devotional objects in her collection, I would suggest that many of these objects functioned both as devotional tools as well as art objects, appreciated for their different renderings which heightened their spiritual qualities as well as aesthetic sensibilities. The Roberti diptych thus needs to be examined, not as an entity on its own, but rather as an object that was part of this larger collection. In this context, it participated in a dialogue with other objects, a dialogue that can be understood as intertextual. While it served as a devotional object, the diptych was also a painting which cited other paintings, as well as texts. Dialogical relationships permeate the diptych: an intertext exists between the two panels which encounter each other, constituting a dialogue between the birth and death of Christ. A dialogue is created between the main figure of the Biblical narrative—Christ—and his encounters with later saintly individuals, Jerome and Francis. Connections are established between the painting and other paintings in the collection and between the diptych and the texts in

Eleonora’s library. Furthermore, a spiritual dialogue is at play, between God and the viewer, which constitutes the principle function of a devotional object—as an aid to communicate with the Divine—giving rise to a specific form of communion.

As a moveable object, that operated both as a devotional tool as well as an object praised for its artistic qualities, the diptych’s function would be varied. The symbolic in the Christian story depicted in the diptych, would have been read in a similar manner to the symbolic in myth. That is not to say that Eleonora’s religious paintings were interpreted as mythological paintings, but rather that the

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 249 viewer of such images would have brought to the objects many of the same kinds of hermeneutic tools for interpretation that she or he would have used for interpreting paintings with symbolic mythological matter, often located in studioli and the spaces of collection. Indeed, the idea of fabula can be applied to this painting, just as it is often applied to mythology. Literary paintings that play on the notion of fabula, have been interpreted as works that solicit the viewer’s participation, not only by matching the painting with a text or a textual program, but also engaging with intertextuality and various forms of citation.107

Fabula became a common topos in the early modern period, referring to fiction as well as a story, most commonly but not always associated with pagan mythology.108 Rhetorical concepts such as integumentum (covering) and involucrum (wrapping) also came to be seen as important fabulous modes in arriving at truth.109 Giovanni Boccaccio explored the notion of fabula in his

Genealogia, largely connecting it to pagan mythology and interpreting it as a veil.110 Boccaccio was arguing against previous thought that placed fabula as mere ornament and which saw it as a superficial tale in opposition to historia.

Boccaccio draws from Biblical writings to demonstrate that fabula is also part of the Holy Scriptures, he claims, “Christ who is God, used this sort of fiction again and again in his parables!” and notes, “our Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

107 Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 11-2. 108 For a discussion of fabula see Peter Dronke, Fabula. Explorations Into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden and Köln: E.J. Brill, 1974); Peter G. Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula. Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1994). Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 8-10. 109 Dronke, Fabula, 2. 110 Charles G. Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry. Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Books of Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum Gentilium in an English Version with Introductory Essay and Commentary (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1956), 48.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 250 often used [this form of fiction] when He was in the flesh, though Holy Writ does not call it ‘poetry’ but ‘parable’ some call it ‘exemplum’ because it is used as such.”111 It was also taken up by Erasmus, who noted that fabula could be connected to Christian narratives, such as the episode of Christ’s entry into

Jerusalem, whereby fabula was like a drama.112 Myth and fable-like narratives are thus seen as fictions, which require deciphering or an unveiling. For Boccaccio, it is the poet who is equipped with the capacity to make intelligible complex truths, through the “veiling of truth”, that is through the writing of poetry. As Campbell has explained “the truth needs the veil precisely to be visible.”113 This ornament, which is necessary for visualising the truth, for Boccaccio, is left too ambiguous and risks a false interpretation when it is extended into the works of artists.114 We have, once again, a conflict between painting and writing, and furthermore the tension of embellishments or ornament, which was a common anxiety in the circle of Ferrarese humanists.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Treatise on Painting attempted to counter such accusations by aligning painting with scientific principles which were reflections of higher values. Painting was thus capable of transmitting knowledge of truth, carrying moral overtones. Leonardo claims that the notion of unveiling was an important component of the philosopher’s quest for truth, and the contemplative as well as active engagement with a work of art could be seen to achieve the same

111 Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry, 49-50. 112 Bietenholz, Historia, 147-8. Theatricality in painting, which was a common feature of many Ferrarese artists such as Tura and Roberti, can be seen as having links to the famous sacra rappresentazione and theatrical displays held at the court of Ferrara. It can also be connected to Erasmus’ idea of drama as fabula, in relation to the Christian story. 113 Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 10. 114 Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 10.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 251 moral fulfilment as philosophical pursuits.115 Leonardo’s emphasis on the eye’s ability to transmit knowledge is suggested in Roberti’s diptych, with its emphasis on vision. The aspect of unveiling in relation to fabula can be applied literally if one considers the velvet covering as a curtain which uncovers the depictions of

Christ’s body and reveals the truths of the Biblical narrative. The panel makes claims for the importance of painting as veiling and the concept of fabula is taken up here, not in terms of pagan mythologies, but in terms of how painting can reveal the Truth through the assemblage of various Christian narratives, carrying biblical and moral connotations as Christ was the “the way, the truth, and the life.”116

Paragone and the Intertext

While the Christian narrative was not considered myth for medieval and

Renaissance Christians, it was a set of stories similar to fabula that were acted out in theatrical representations, in painting and other forms of representations, in the religious narratives of the saints, and in the Bible itself, most effectively through parables. Furthermore, if the role of fabula-type paintings were to function as a means to engage the viewer in assembling together different narratives or texts to understand the composition and reach higher ‘truths’, then the Roberti diptych can be seen as engaging with this fabula notion through its continual references to texts and images outside of the work itself. The Roberti diptych not only references the typology of the birth and death of Christ, enhanced by the book-

115 For the notion of unveiling in relation to the philosopher’s quest for truth see Dronke, Fabula, 63. For the active and contemplative engagement with a work of art as means to higher truth see Mendelsohn, Paragoni, 38 and 55. 116 John 14:6

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 252 like qualities of dividing the two narratives, but also in its inclusion of Saints

Francis and Jerome. As noted, Eleonora’s library contained various books by

Saint Jerome and Saint Francis, in addition to instructional texts on spirituality and the Bible itself, thus the painting would have set up a dialogue between the texts in her library and the objects collected in her studiolo. Intertextuality here works in a variety of ways, from painting-to-painting, painting-to-sculpture, and painting-to-text relationships.117 Specifically, Eleonora owned four books connected to Jerome: a Prologue by Saint Jerome to the Prophet Daniel; another text listed simply as a book by Saint Jerome written in the vernacular; the third titled “Saint Jerome on Righteous Living”; and finally a “Life of Saint Jerome with other things.” 118 The latter three were described as manuscripts and the text on righteous living contained some illumination. What is interesting is that both the Prologue to Daniel and the Righteous Living texts were covered in black velvet; the latter had two fasteners made out of gilded silver, and the vernacular text was covered with a more elaborate patterning in morello leather with gilding, and could be closed with three bronze fasteners. Not only were the texts alluded

117 For the importance of intertextuality in the art historical field, see Wendy Steiner, "Intertextuality in Painting," The American Journal of Semiotics 3, no. 4 (1985): 57-66. Stoichita, Self-Aware Image. For a study on intertextuality in general see, Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language. A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, ed. Leon S. Roudiez, trans. Thomas Gora, Alice Jardine, and Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980). 118 The books are listed in two inventories taken of Eleonora’s collections, one from ASMO AP 638, which has records dating from 1478-85, and one taken after her death from 1493, in ASMO G114. The entries from AP 638.138R-39R are: “Prologo de Sto gironimo sopra Daniello propheta coperta de veludo negro;” “Sancto Gironimo coperto de corame morello stampado alla damaschina;” “Sancto Gironimo del dritto vivere coperto de veludo negro.” Entries from G114. 136R-37R are more specific: “Sancto hieronymo del drito vivere in charta di capreto miniato coperto di veluto nigro cum dui azuli di argento dorati;” “Uno libro do Sto hieronymo in vulgare in charta di capreto coperto di curamo morello camurato ala damaschina dorato cum tri azuli di ottone;” “Uno libro di vita di sancto hieronymo e altre cose in charta buona scripto a penna coperto di montanina rossa.” The inventory of 1493, (G114) was also published in 1903, see Giulio Bertoni, La Biblioteca estense e la Coltura ferrarese ai tempi del duca Ercole I d'Este, 1471-1505 (Turin: Casa Editrice Ermanno Loescher, 1903), 229, Appendix II. The inventory of AP 638, to my knowledge, has not been published.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 253 to in the Roberti diptych, but the physical appearance of the diptych when it was closed referenced the exterior of the books themselves, corresponding to both the texture of velvet as well as the colour morello. Eleonora also owned a manuscript entitled Fiorito di Santo Francesco (The Little Flowers of Saint Francis) covered in white leather, which spoke to the narrative of Saint Francis in the image.119

Aside from the textual references, viewers would have made visual comparisons with the artworks in Eleonora’s collection that depicted the same narratives. We know, for instance that among the numerous altarpieces in her collection, Eleonora owned one in a northern style (“ala todesche”), depicting the

Passion with Saints Francis and Jerome.120 She also owned other altarpieces representing Saint Francis: one depicting the saint with Saint Peter Martyr;121 a large altarpiece in relief, presumably in a precious metal, depicting Saint

Francis;122 and Gian Francesco di Maineri is recorded in a payment in court documents for paintings of Saint Augustine and Saint Francis for an oratory belonging to Eleonora.123 There were also other images of Saint Francis, which

119 Listed again in both inventories: AP 638. 143V: “Fioretti de sto Francesco coperto di montanina biancha” and G114. 137R “Fiorito di Sto Francesco scripti a penna in charta buona coperto de curame biancho.” 120 “Anchona una i[n]casate como la pasione fatta alatodesche com santy franc[cesco] e santy Ieronymo vechio” AP 640. 124V. Also published in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.I, 409, doc 597bis. with a slight variance in transcription. 121 “Anchona una in casado come el volto santo e San Franc[esco] e san Pietro martoro” AP 640. 124V. Also published in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.I, 409, doc 597bis. 122 “Una anchona grande cum Sto Franz[esco] di mezzo relevo cum la coltrinella denanti di cendale cremesino dorata intorno” ASMO G114. 75v. Also published in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 36, doc 17. Franceschini, however lists it wrongly as a “Uno quadro dorato cum Sancto Francesco de mezo relevo, cum la coltrinella denanti di cendale cremesino, dorata intorno” confusing the entry above the anchona that lists a “Uno quadro dorato cum uno specchio grande” with the entry below, leaving out the “specchio” or mirror entry and conflating the two. 123 “E ad dito [16 di setembre] ...a m[aestro] Zoanne franc[esco] da parma [(Mainieri)] fina ad xj de aprile il q[ua]lle d[i]pinssa uno santo agustino [...] e san franc[esco] per lo oratorio di sua s[ignoria]...” AP 637. 74V. Also noted in Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 113, who notes that Venturi published the documents in 1888, in his article ‘”Gian Francesco Maineri, pittore” Archivio storico dell’arte, I, : 88-9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 254 are described as paintings rather than altarpieces, including a small painting depicting “Christ and Saint Francis and other figures” as well as “a painted panel of Saint Francis on wood” belonging to Eleonora but which Anna Sforza was using in 1493 in her oratory.124 Eleonora also had a small painting of Saint

Jerome, which I suggest is probably Roberti’s Saint Jerome now at the J. Paul

Getty Museum in Los Angeles, discussed below, as well as a statue of Saint

Jerome in marble.125 Eleonora’s collections were also full of paintings representing Nativities as well as depictions of Christ at the Sepulchre or similar compositions, and thus the diptych would have provided the viewer a model with which to compare the other renderings of similar compositions and incite paragone.

Jerome’s texts, which recounted his experience in the desert and his vision of Christ, are rendered on the panel depicting Jerome’s vision of Christ, not on the

Crucifix but at the tomb. The appearance of Saint Francis receiving the stigmata in the diptych, while offering an example of devotion and piety, also referenced the narrative of his stigmata, a story which was recounted in the text of Fioriti di

San Francesco. The depiction of Saint Francis, an event that occurred in the thirteenth century, was depicted alongside the narrative of Saint Jerome’s vision of Christ that occurred in the fourth century. These later two narratives are connected to the Biblical narratives in the panel that constituted the beginning and

124 “ Uno quadreto depincto cum uno christo e Sto francesco e altre figure cornisato e dorato”; “uno quadro depincto di uno sancto francesco di legno il quale há la p[refata] Ill[ustrissima] Ma[dama] anna nel suo oratorio”, G114. 133R and V. Also published in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 37; Campori, Cataloghi ed inventarii, 2. 125 “Uno quadreto depincto cum uno Sto hieronymo cornisato e dorato”; “Uno sancto hieronymo di marmoro biancho schieto”, G114. 133V, 75v. Also published in Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara II.II, 36.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 255 the end of the Christological cycle: the Annunciation to the Shepherds, the

Nativity of Christ, the Crucifixion, and Christ’s Entombment/Resurrection. The diptych thus encouraged an intertextual reading by combining a series of

Christian narratives, including stories from the Bible and later texts, as well as referencing other texts and artworks in Eleonora’s collection.

Stoichita, in his examination of seventeenth-century Flemish cabinet paintings, uses theories of conversation or discussion to explain how the viewer

‘reads’ such paintings. Cabinet paintings depict numerous art works, serving as a form of catalogue of a collection. Stoichita notes that cabinet paintings compel the eye “to proceed in blocks, to go without stopping from one “fragment” to the next, from one image to the next […] It is up to the spectator to construct, step by step, a combinatory technique, to establish bridges and correlations […] Linear reading is replaced by intertextual reading.”126 Roberti’s diptych, although not as complex as cabinet paintings, does ask the viewer to use a combinatory technique, in establishing relations not only within the painting, but with the objects and texts in the collection as a whole. The literary theoretician Chevalier de Méré, writing two hundred years after Roberti’s diptych was painted, saw discussion as a series of small paintings, which formed a single entity once the conversation was over.127 De Méré’s contemporary, Gabriel Guéret, also examined the multiple ways of understanding conversation, by using this combinatory metaphor:

Just one discussion can be both literary through its quotations—a collection of texts chosen for their inherent quality—oral or philosophical through its theme—ruins and the passing of time—, social through its address—a writer

126 Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 114. 127 Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 113.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 256

paying tribute to a great person, and finally, historical through its concluding allusion to contemporary issues.128

One might say that Roberti’s diptych functions on a similar level as

Guéret’s conversation, being literary through its collection of texts; philosophical through its theme of Christian asceticism, devotion, and redemption; social, through its placement in a collection and its relationship with its patron; and historical, through its allusion to contemporary devotional practices in Ferrara as well as through its construction of a historical narrative from the birth of Christ to the stigmatisation of Saint Francis. We may add another component—the visual—as the diptych not only quotes historical texts, but also quotes other paintings and is the source of quotation for later paintings.

To push these notions of intertextuality further, citation can also be considered in relation to the ways artists “cite” other artists, and provide the viewer with visual references to other works. Copying, emulating, or imitating, both in literature and in art, was a common practice in this period and was the subject of much commentary, but these practices take on further rhetorical implications when considered in relation to collecting. A collection is already an assembly of disparate objects, which come together through the ownership of an individual or family. Merely assembling them forces the objects to interact with one another, and asks the viewer to posit the objects against each other, finding similarities or differences.129 When an object in a collection solicits an

128 Quoted in Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 113. From Guéret’s Divers traités de morale et de l’eloquence, Paris 1672. 129 This becomes a crucial component of collecting spaces in the sixteenth and is discussed frequently. For instance, Giovanbattista Strozzi in his Dell’unità della favola, a lecture delivered in 1599, notes “The mind is pleased [by unity]; when the mind sees different and dissimilar things, it always seeks to find the similarity between them, and, if you will, it seeks to shape them with a

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 257 engagement with viewers and causes a new text or painting to be made in response, an intertextual relationship is formed. If such an object is a painting that cites another painting and both form part of the collection, we have a form of self- reflexivity and an intertextuality.130 In the early modern period, collections and their spaces had a particular intellectual and social function. Spaces of collecting have been studied both as a place for private study, as well as a social space.131

Visual imagery from the period often stresses the contemplative and religious aspect, reflected in depictions of the evangelists and Saint Jerome, where the study is seen as a means of retreating from the public and political aspects of life, and a place for contemplation and religious devotion. Written records, 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 often 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

form that it produces; in the same way, when in some study or chamber there are paintings, statues, minerals, petrified things, and other objects of this kind, if they are not organized among themselves, the mind organizes and arranges them on its own, and if they are organized, it is pleased by this, and however different they may be, the mind considers them as similar and assembled to make the unity that it desires, and it includes them under the category decoration and marvels.” Quoted in Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory, 211. 130 These points are raised in Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 104-5. For citation see Bernard Beugnot, "Dialogue, entretien et citation à l'époque classique," Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 3-4, no. 1976-7 (1976): 39-50. 131 For the history of the studiolo, see Thornton, The Scholar. Studies on collecting, the studiolo, and the museum have also touched upon these notions, see Findlen, Possessing Nature; Pomian, Collectionneurs; Pomian, Collectors. Also see Campbell’s discussion Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 29-57 (Chapter 1).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 258 the accumulation of items once owned by famous individuals.132 These forms of assemblage—both of objects and people—solicit a comparative analysis. They ask the viewer to assemble, combine, and compare the items on display. This gathering or assembling is closely linked to the idea of imitation and emulation, common tropes taken up by the humanists, but dating back to antique sources.133

While there were diverse ideas on the subject, the notion of imitation was linked to citing textual sources, either directly or indirectly, and it carried a wide range of metaphors. Such metaphors frequently employed the idea of collecting, often through the imagery of the bee, who through the collection of pollen makes honey.134 What is clear from many of the humanists’ texts is that there existed a tension between the importance of quoting other authors to demonstrate erudition on one side, and the risk of copying/aping, which was unproductive and lacked intellect on the other. A need for rivalry and competition also constituted part of the debate, demonstrating that many authors sought to surpass rather than merely follow.135 Quotation, citation, and assembly are connected to intertextual reading, encouraged by collecting spaces through the gathering of texts by different authors, but such forms of quotation can be equally applied to works of art. If the

132 For an analysis of diplomatic gifts in collections see Chapter one and for the purchasing of previous owned items see Chapter two. 133 G.W. Pigman II, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance," Renaissance Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1980): 1-32. 134 Pigman II, "Versions of Imitation," 6. Also see Stoichita, Self-Aware Image, 131-3. 135 Pigman II, "Versions of Imitation," 20. This is also hinted at in Decembrio’s text, where Leonello notes “In those noble ancient times painters and poets were praised and reward with almost equal generosity. Artists would show their work to each other and then correct it, whereas nowadays, as we know, they are consumed by rivalry with one another. You remember how Pisanello and Bellini, the finest painters of our time, recently differed in various way is the portrayal of my face. The one added to its handsomeness with a more emphatic spareness, while the other represented it as paler, though no more slender; and scarcely were they reconciled by my entreaties.” Quoted in Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia," 52.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 259 reading of various authors leads to their quotation and thus the production of a new text, looking also could yield new visual fruit.

Quotation is particularly important for the Roberti diptych, not only because it cites another painting, but also because it encouraged other works to copy it and make references to it. Roberti’s painting ventured into dialogue with other paintings; through citation, it quoted visual references from Mantegna’s

Adoration of the Shepherds, which has an Este provenance (Figure 33).136

Specifically, it quoted Mantegna’s shepherd in ragged dress, ripped at the knees on the right, and the wattle fence on the left.137 Mantegna’s painting was copied in a number of different ways: in manuscript illumination, in other paintings, as well as in drawings, and must have been viewed by many.138 While Roberti copies these elements, he also changes them, and creates a completely new composition.

For instance, the shepherd in Mantegna’s Adoration is much more ragged than

Roberti’s, not only in his dress, but Mantegna has also depicted his features as haggard, with wrinkles, and what looks like missing teeth. Roberti, in contrast, has borrowed the general stance of the shepherd, but has given him softer features, a supplicating pose with his hands in prayer, and he has made him more erect, while still copying the shoes and the torn knees.

136 Luke Syson, "Ercole de' Roberti: The Making of a Court Artist," The Burlington Magazine 141, no. 1153 (1999): xiii. The Adoration of the Magi was listed in the inventory of Pietro Aldobrandini who inherited many of the Este paintings, and has been assumed to have belonged to Borso d’Este due to circumstantial evidence. Jane Martineau, ed., Andrea Mantegna, Exhibition Catalogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Royal Academy of Arts, London (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992), 126 and 9,Cat 8, catalogue entry written by Keith Christiansen. 137 It should be noted that the wattle fence was one of Borso d’Este devices called the paradura, which was used for water drainage, but also referenced land claims, and would have thus associated Mantegna’s work with Borso, while the allusions to the paradura in Roberti’s work, may have been simply a reference to the Este family in general. 138 Keith Christiansen, "Early Renaissance Narrative Painting in Italy," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series 41, no. 2 (1983): 33-6. Martineau, ed., Mantegna, 126 and 9, Cat 8, written by Keith Christiansen.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 260

To copy/imitate/emulate is an act which recognises the model as having something worth drawing from. Although much of early modern literature on imitation stresses the will to surpass the original, it also alludes to the fact that the model has some sort of cultural resonance and distinction, in order for it to foster the desire to copy it in the first place. In cases where textual sources no longer exist, visual sources can function as traces, which the historian or art historian may follow to locate associations.139 Repetition of cultural forms, such as a painting or a text, allows us to understand how a painting may have been received in the period and demonstrates its cultural importance for its particular intellectual and social milieu.

Roberti’s diptych encouraged a series of copies, and Eleonora’s inventory of 1493 indicates a similar composition to the National Gallery diptych: “a small altarpiece that closes with a Nativity on one side, and a Christ at the sepulchre on the other side.”140 Joseph Manca notes that Gian Francesco Maineri used

Roberti’s right panel, Christ at the Sepulchre in a panel formerly in the Cook

Collection in Richmond, and sold at Sotheby’s in 1978, and he connects this painting to an entry in Eleonora’s inventory, that states a “small picture painted with a Christ and an angel.”141 I would argue, however, that the entry in the inventory that describes a painting almost identical to the entry for the diptych in the National Gallery, is actually a copy of the Roberti panel. I have found, as detailed below, three copies of the Nativity (the left panel) and two, possibly

139 Looking for traces of association, whereby both objects and humans are seen as actors is discussed in Latour, Reassembling the Social. 140 “una anchoneta che se assera cum uno presepio da un lato e un christo nel sepolchro da la altro lato” ASMO AP G114, 133V. 141 Manca, Art of Ercole, 144.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 261 three, copies of the Christ at the Sepulchre (right panel), most of which are attributed to Maineri. The problem that arises around these panels, however, is that most have been sold to private collectors in the last century and obtaining images or details on their location have proven difficult, a fate which has befallen too many Ferrarese paintings.142 Gian Francesco Maineri was from Parma, but is said to have studied under Ercole de’ Roberti and he was also employed by

Eleonora for a number of projects. I do not have a documented chronological order for the three copies, but I have made a suggestion below for their order of execution. In viewing the reproductions that I was able to obtain of these paintings, it seems that they may have not been executed by all the same artist, as the style differs between them. Furthermore, they are not direct “copies” but include innovations by the artists, and thus would fall within the idea of quotation: not a direct translation of the Roberti diptych, but an emulation. For the sake of clarity, I have provided a list of them below, listing them as “copies” in relation to the “original,” but I am aware that they do more than merely “copy”:

142 The major dissemination of Ferrara artworks, notably those owned by the Este, took place in 1598 when Ferrara was overthrown by the Cardinal Legates sent by the Pope to govern. Many of the works and archives were collected by the Este and moved to Modena. However many of the paintings in the churches were left behind or pillaged by various individuals. Emanuele Mattaliano, "A Story of Cultural Disaster: the Dispersion and Destruction of the Artistic Heritage of Ferrara," in From Borso to Cesare d'Este. The School of Ferrara 1450-1628, An Exhibition in aid of The Courtauld Institute of Art Trust Appeal (London and New York: Matthiesen Fine Art Ltd., 1984). Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini inherited much of what was left of the Este patrimony from Lucrezia d’Este, Duchess of Urbino. Many Ferrarese paintings were also hidden in the Certosa by the Ferrarese populace who feared the worst for their cultural heritage. For the history of the dispersion of Ferrarese paintings see Jaynie Anderson, "The Rediscovery of Ferrarese Renaissance Painting in the Risorgimento," Burlington Magazine 135, no. 1085 (1993). For the inventory of Lucrezia d’Este, which lists many paintings originally owned by the Este see Paola della Pergola, "L'Inventario del 1592 di Lucrezia d'Este," L'Arte antica e moderna (1959): 342-51. Also see Anderson, "Rediscovery," 539-49; Jadranka Bentini, "Da Ferrara a Roma e oltre. La migrazione dei dipinti ferraresi dopo la devoluzione," in Il museo senza confini. Dipinti ferraresi del Rinascimento nelle raccolte romane, ed. Jadranka Bentini and Sergio Guarino (Milan: Federico Motta Editore, 2002).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 262

Original: Ercole de’ Roberti’s diptych in the National Gallery, London. (Figure 28a-b) Panel A: Nativity, 17.8 x 13.5 cm Panel B: Christ at the Sepulchre, 17.8 x 13.5 cm

Copy 1A: Nativity, Attributed to Gian Francesco Maineri. Private Collection. Sold at Christie’s December 1969, Lot 140. 30.5 x 24 cm. (Figure 34) Copy 2A: Nativity, Attributed to Gian Francesco Mainieri. Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam. 24 x 18.5cm. (Figure 35) Copy 3A: Nativity, Private Collection Milan, formerly in Lurati Collection. Dimensions unknown.

Copy 1B: Christ Dead, Attributed to Gian Francesco Mainieri. Sold at San Marco Casa d’Aste Spa, Venice 9 July 2006. 48.3 x 36.2cm Copy 2B: Christ Dead, previously in Cook Collection. Dimensions unknown. (Figure 36) Copy 3B: Christ Dead, possibly the same as the above. Sold at Sotheby’s 13 December 1978, Lot 19. Previously in Cook Collection. Dimensions unknown.

The first, Copy 1A, as I have suggested, is the copy of Roberti’s Nativity sold at Christie’s in London on 5 December 1969, Lot Number 140 (Figure

34).143 The painting appears to be the first of the copies, because it most resembles Roberti’s left side of the diptych, while the second copy (Copy 2A,

Figure 35) seems to be much more elaborated. The painting (Copy 1A) measures

30.5 by 24 centimetres on panel, which is much bigger than Roberti’s panels, which measure 17.8 by 13.5 centimetres each. The manger structure is repeated, although slightly altered, with two doves appearing in the opening above, and the artist has rendered the attic story as if damaged by time. The shepherd has been moved from the right to the left, yet still bears rips at the knees, and he now

143 I am extremely grateful to Michael Hardy of Christie’s who scanned the catalogue entry from the 1969 catalogue and emailed it to me.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 263 carries a hat, inherited from Mantegna’s shepherd. Joseph has been moved to the right and now no longer copies Ercole’s painting but makes allusion to the tired

Joseph from Mantegna’s Adoration. The Christ Child radiates light from his crib, while rays of spiritual light filter down to Mary. It is not clear from the reproduction whether these rays of light are coming directly from Heaven or by the angel on the upper right corner. The angel also holds an inscription, which is illegible in the reproduction. Mary now takes up the centre of the painting, while

Christ’s crib has been moved slightly off-centre, to the left of the central composition. The foreground of the painting is demarcated by a ledge, which positions the scene of Christ’s birth in elevation in relation to the viewer and constructs almost a stage-like setting. The ledge might also be borrowed from

Mantegna’s Adoration, which forms an elevated plane on which the Madonna and

Child are placed.

The second copy (2A) of the Roberti original is a painting in Rotterdam attributed to Maineri, measuring 24 by 18.5 centimetres on panel (Figure 35).144

This is an elaborate reworking of the Roberti panel, which bursts at the frame with detail and contains a confusing jumble of planes. The same main structure occupies the central part of the panel, with two doves in the window, making reference to Copy 1A. Below Christ has been moved out of the crib and onto the ground, while an angel and a child carrying a banner (either a putto or perhaps

John the Baptist) have been added to the central composition, with the usual three characters of Mary, the shepherd, and Joseph. The shepherd has the same hat in

144 Eva C. Kleeman, Italiaanse schilderijen, 1300-1500: eigen collectie / Italian paintings, 1300- 1500: Own Collection (Rotterdam: Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, 1993), 73-4, cat. 19.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 264 hand from Copy 1A and Mantegna’s Adoration. Joseph also alludes to the previous copy and Mantegna’s work, but now he is placed in a strange space, almost lingering on the surface of the painting, above or on top of Mary’s mantle, rather than occupying the perspectival space. An angel hovers above the architectural structure, and a star on the right top corner sheds light down to the baby Jesus. There are many more added details, such as the three Magi in the right background who are now depicted in their full regalia, the elaborate landscape, and the appearance of other shepherds and a man on a horse on the left side in the background. The third copy (3A) of the Roberti panel is now in a private collection in Milan, and was once in the Lurati Collection.145 I have been unable to obtain an image of it, but scholars have noted that it most resembles the

Rotterdam panel.

The copies of the right panel of the Roberti diptych have been harder to trace. One sold in 2006 in the San Marco auction (Copy 1B), which is on panel and measures 48.3 by 36.2 centimetres, depicts Christ with the Saint John the

Evangelist and Mary Magdalene and an angel.146 The sales catalogue mentions another image of Christ and an Angel (Copy 2B), formerly in the Cook Collection in Richmond, and it provides an image of this copy (Figure 36), not the one sold in San Marco. Manca has noted that an image of Christ and an Angel was formerly in the Cook collection and was sold at Sotheby’s on 13 December 1978,

Lot 19 (Copy 3B).147 It is unclear whether there were two paintings by Maineri in

145 Kleeman, Italiaanse, 74. 146 San Marco Casa D'Aste Spa, "Sales Catalogue, Venice 9 July 2006," www.sanmarcoaste.com/dipinti_web.pdf. 147 Manca, Art of Ercole, 144.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 265 the Cook Collection or the literature is referencing the same one, and I have been unable to access the Cook Collections Catalogue printed in 1913 to confirm this.148 Copy 2B is also a departure from Roberti’s. While it continues to use

Christ’s body as the focal point, and employs the tomb as his support, the background has become a much more elaborate landscape. A cave-like structure appears in the background, but is no longer occupied by Saint Jerome. Two saints accompany the angel, while Saint Jerome and Saint Francis are both absent, and the crosses of Calvary are faintly painted in the distance. Christ’s loincloth is reminiscent of the Roberti diptych, as is his gesture and posture, although Christ is no longer in the tomb, but sitting on the edge, with his feet outside. The bottom of the painting employs a similar ledge to the copy of the Nativity (1A). This suggests that there were at least two, and possibly three, copies of the original right side of the Roberti diptych, and three copies of the left panel. The copies bring forward the intertextual nature of the paintings Eleonora collected, and suggests her collections were seen as a locus for artistic invention and citation; similar to texts on art that were taken up and cited, artists would come to engage intellectually with the works and create other works in response to those in the collection.

VI. Other Forms of Citation in Eleonora’s Collections

Eleonora’s inventory of 1493 lists other paintings that were copied, one of which was a panel depicting a “Madonna and Child with seraphim by the hand of

[Andrea] Mantegna” and below this entry is listed “another panel, copied from the

148 Sotheby’s was not able to answer my query on this painting, as they stated: “due to a large number of inquiries that we receive, Sotheby’s is unable to answer personal research questions.” Personal communication 5 March 2008.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 266 above, by the hand of a Modenese.”149 Scholars generally assume the Mantegna entry to be the panel in the Brera in Milan, which depicts the Virgin and Child surrounded by singing cherubim, not seraphim.150 No painting has been identified as the copy of Mantegna’s Madonna with seraphim by a Modenese.151 What is clear is that Mantegna’s Madonna with seraphim that was in Eleonora’s collection was seen by a Modenese artist and thus copied or emulated. Eleonora’s collections containing similar artworks, but executed by different artists, would have enabled viewers to contemplate the different ways of handling subject matter, and it would have fostered artistic competition. Her collections, containing objects which were almost all religious in subject matter, also spoke to the ways in which religious imagery could serve as a space for critical thinking and

149 “Uno quadro di legno di pincto cum nostra dona e il figliolo cum serafini di mano del sopradicto mantenga. Uno altro quadro retracto dal sopradicto di mano di uno modenese.” ASMO G114, 133R. 150 Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna. With a Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, and Prints (Oxford: Phaidon and Christie's Ltd, 1986), 477-8; Paul Kristeller, Andrea Mantegna (London and New York: Longmans, 1901), 306. The Brera Madonna has also been connected by scholars to letters found in the Gonzaga archives in Mantua, which are written between Eleonora and Francesco Gonzaga, as well as between Francesco Gonzaga and Mantegna. These letters date from November and December 1485, beginning with Francesco Gonzaga to Eleonora, who states that he will try to encourage Mantegna to finish a picture of the “Madonna and some other figures”, which he is painting for her, and Francesco notes that he hopes to bring it with him or will send it to her. A letter from Francesco Gonzaga to Mantegna indeed asks Mantegna to finish his painting, as the duchess desires to “have a painting in your hand” and he suggests, to satisfy the duchess, Mantegna is to use “every diligence to finish it” and that he should use his “ingegno.” ASMA AG 1183. These are reproduced in Kristeller, Andrea Mantegna, 482-3, docs 41-5. Gonzaga’s encouragement of Mantegna to use his ingegno suggests that he knew that Eleonora was a discerning patron and would enjoy the intellectual application in the painting. At this time Isabella d’Este was engaged to Francesco Gonzaga and since there are no payments involved in the transaction, it can be assumed that the painting may have been a gift from Francesco to his future mother-in-law, Eleonora. 151 There are however, a few paintings which have a similar theme. A painting in the Louvre, which has been attributed to a follower of Mantegna, probably a Veronese from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, is very similar to the Brera Madonna. A painting of the Virgin and Child with Seraphim and Cherubim in New York, whose authorship has been contested, has been attributed to be an early work by Mantegna, and follows a similar subject matter. The Louvre Madonna has softer features and gentler handling of the subject and could possibly reflect works by late fifteenth and early sixteenth century artists working in Emilia Romagna, such as Francia. Martineau, ed., Mantegna, 139, cat 12.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 267 discussion, referencing other ways one engaged with religious material at the court of Ferrara: through the varying interpretations of the Bible or religious teachings, through the intellectual debates held on conceptions of the Virgin, and through the ascetic and bodily transformations of worship.152

Another painting by Ercole de’ Roberti at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los

Angeles (Figure 37), depicts Saint Jerome, and might correspond to a painting listed in Eleonora’s inventory of a “small picture painted with Saint Jerome, framed and gilded.”153 Saint Jerome does not appear as the scholastic saint in the study, but as the ascetic in the desert, depicted in an awkward pose, bordering on impropriety, and placed within a rocky architectural setting. The reverse of the painting has been painted to resemble porphyry, and thus would have functioned similarly to a diptych, in the sense that it contains both an obverse and reverse, and suggests that it may have been portable.154 The small size of the painting, along with the large application of gold and brilliant colours, likely alludes to

152 The Este encouraged staged doctrinal debates, which were sites of contention for diverse religious groups. Theologians from the University of Ferrara were known to take part in public debates, often organised by Ercole, on the Conception of the Virgin Mary. Two traditions existed, the Duns Scotus view, that was largely supported by Franciscans, claiming that the Immaculate Conception was not accompanied by original sin, and the view proposed by Thomas Aquinas, largely supported by the Dominicans, declaring that original sin was involved in Mary’s conception. David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew. The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981), 59-60. These debates were taken seriously and sometimes even ended in public brawls. In 1487, Ercole and Eleonora organised and attended a public debate between a Dominican, Lorenzo Valenza, a Franciscan, Petrus Malfetta, and a Jewish scholar, Abraham Farissol, on the merits of Judaism and Christianity. Farissol published a book on the debate. Ruderman, Renaissance Jew. Also see Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 167. 153 G114. 133R. The painting is assumed to have been painted in 1474 for the Este, when Roberti is recorded receiving a payment from the Este. Scholars have generally dated the painting to the early 1470s based on the stylistic affinities it shares with Roberti’s Griffoni predella. Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxviii. However, putting the stylistic dating aside, throughout the 1480s and 90s Roberti was employed on numerous projects for Eleonora, any of which might be connected to this painting. 154 Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxviii.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 268 manuscript illumination.155 The painting raises many important issues in relation to religious practices as well as humanistic debates. Jerome’s body is bony and craggy, borrowing some elements from Tura’s emaciated bodies. Jerome’s face is almost skeletal, his hand almost too weak to hold up the sceptre which bears the vision of Christ, an emaciated depiction which makes reference to the importance of asceticism and the body in Ferrarese religious practices. A text listed in

Eleonora’s inventory, Schalla del paradiso, which was derived from John

Climacus’ Ladder of Divine Ascent, describes the benefits of bodily transformation through asceticism, whereby the wasted and emaciated body is a wondrous spectacle, made beautiful in its devotion to God.156 In the ascetic tradition, and in later literature, such as Climacus’ work, the body and soul are not seen in a dualist mode, fostering hatred for the corporal, but rather the body was a useful tool, something that was cultivated to join both body and soul.157 As

Campbell has noted, depictions of emaciated saints by artists such as Tura, created links between the divine artisanship of God, the creative practices of the artist, and the fashioning of the body as means to the beautification of the soul.158

155 The presence of the porphyry, thus encouraging the viewer to engage with both sides, has also been seen as giving the painting the status of a precious object or gem. Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxviii. 156 For a discussion of the text see John Rupert Martin, The Illustration of the Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus, ed. A.M. Friend, vol. 5, Studies in Manuscript Illumination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954). Also see Brown, Body and Society, 231, 7-9; Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 86. A document in Eleonora account/inventory book records that the camerlinga of Eleonora on 20 March 1488 took the book entitled “Schale del Paradixo” to be used by Eleonora. This confirms that it was not only a book which sat on a shelf in her library, but one she had asked someone to bring out for reading. “Fiore di spina, camerlinga della Ill[ustrissi]ma n[ost]ra M[adam]a di dare ad xx di m[ar]zo [1488] la infrascrite quantitade de robe altri date ala guardaroba: […] Libro uno chiamato schale del paradixo aparea lo inventoario cop[er]to di braxilio come la tela.” 157 Brown, Body and Society, 235-7. 158 Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 93 and 7.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 269

The body and its material transformations through ascetic practices or divine intervention was a recurrent theme in Ferrara and in Ferrarese painting.

Throughout the Quattrocento there grew an increased interest in saintly individuals, culminating in Ercole’s aggressive campaign to have the stigmatist

Lucia Broccadelli transferred to Ferrara in the 1490s.159 Caterina Vegri had caused a sensation when her body remained miraculously animate after her death in 1463, exuding fragrant oil, and displaying radiant facial expressions in the presence of the Eucharist.160 There was a history of miraculous bodies in the Este family itself; two saintly individuals, both named Beatrice d’Este, were famous in

Ferrara: the first Beate Beatrice having produced miraculous signs on her body, which were celebrated by the annual ritual washing of her body and a procession by the nuns of San Antonio in Polesine, while the later Beatrice intervened miraculously in contemporary political events.161 In addition, certain confraternities, such as the Compagnia di Battuti Neri, participated in violent public acts of self-mutilation, such as flagellation and the drawing of blood during religious processions, causing the authorities to intervene when the blood was collected and celebrated as relics.162

Saint Jerome had a particular following in Ferrara, both in humanistic and ecclesiastical circles. An oratory dedicated to Saint Jerome was located near the

159 Gabriella Zarri, "Pietà e profezia alle corti padane: le pie consigliere dei principi," in Il rinascimento nelle corti padane. Società e cultura, ed. Paolo Rossi (Bari: De Donato Editore, 1977), 204-19. 160 Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 77. 161 These two Beatrice d’Estes should not be confused with the daughter with the same name of Ercole and Eleonora, who married Ludovico Sforza “Il Moro.” The body of the first Beatrice d’Este is still a visited cult site in the monastery of San Antonio Polesine in Ferrara. Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 77. 162 Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 84.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 270 church of San Francesco, which also served as the burial place of Giovanni

Tavelli, a famous Bishop of Ferrara.163 The oratory became a cult site for votive effigies, and Ercole d’Este’s interest with the cult of Tavelli has been seen as part of his programmatic attempts to appropriate religious devotion for political ends.

Saint Jerome, well known as the early scholar, was an important erudite figure in humanistic discourses and the culture of collecting.

Roberti’s painting of Saint Jerome should be seen as speaking directly in dialogue with Decembrio’s text, which asserts that there is greater skill in depicting nude figures, especially old men on small objects such as gems because the artist has to concentrate on rendering the body, without the opulent covering of ornament. In addition, the text encourages the use of images, such as depictions of Saint Jerome, in places of learning, such as the library.164 This correlation between the image of Saint Jerome and the study emphasises the relationship between texts in a library and the objects in a collection, and encourages the paragone tradition. Such an image also reveals its paradox: while stressing the need to re-fashion the body through asceticism—by removing all sensual desires—the jewel-like preciousness of such small devotional objects embody what one must deny. They make explicit the tensions in the act of collecting itself, and in the different ways artists dealt with those tensions in their formulations.

Roberti’s Saint Jerome, while speaking to ascetic practices, also worked to align the aesthetic capabilities of the artist in rendering flesh with the fashioning of the

163 For a study on the images of Saint Jerome see Bernhard Ridderbos, Saint and Symbol. Images of Saint Jerome in Early Italian Art, trans. P. de Waard-Dekking (Groningen: Bouma's Boekhuis, 1984). For a summary of Saint Jerome’s life, see Brown, Body and Society, 366-82. 164 Baxandall, "Decembrio's De Politia," 66.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 271 body through asceticism. Its reference to devotional practices thus could also serve a rhetorical function for the artist and the object’s claims for painting.

The image also speaks to the ways artists could engage with such a painting through citation. It has been suggested that the figure of Jerome may have been originally copied from a gem,165 and it is also noted that the image was taken up by a painter in the circle of Maineri, in the background of a Madonna and Child (Figure 38).166 Here, Jerome appears in a more cave-like structure, resembling Jerome’s cave in Roberti’s diptych, and he is depicted beating his breast with the rock in his hand. Another quotation of Roberti’s Jerome appears, slightly altered, in the background of an anonymous Ferrarese painting, now in

Dresden, depicting a Pietà (Figure 39).167 He continues to beat his breast, and the cave-like structure is now placed within a larger mountain-like outcropping.

Jerome has now been removed from his perch, appearing with one knee on the ground, a combinatory stance borrowed from both Roberti’s Jerome at the Getty and the Jerome in Roberti’s diptych in the National Gallery. He beats his breast and envisions a large crucifix, which is no longer in his hand, but planted in the ground. A drawing of Orpheus (Figure 40), assumed to be by a North Italian artist now in the Uffizi, follows a similar pose to Roberti’s Saint Jerome.168 Orpheus’ sitting posture with his splayed legs, mimics Jerome’s position in its opposite;

Jerome looks right, while Orpheus looks left, and it is Orpheus’ left knee that is bent with his foot on a ledge, rather than Jerome’s right. The lion from Roberti’s

165 H.D. Gronau, "Ercole Roberti's Saint Jerome," The Burlington Magazine XCI, no. 558 (1949): 243-4. 166 The painting is suggested to be in the circle of Giovan Francesco Maineri and was sold at Sotheby’s London on 30 November 1984, Lot 6. Manca, Art of Ercole, 104. 167 For a brief discussion of the image, see Barstow, Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, 185. 168 For the image see, Manca, Art of Ercole, Figure 89.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 272

Jerome is also copied on the left of the drawing, among the many other animals. If

Roberti’s Jerome was copied from an antique gem as H.D. Gronau has suggested, then both the Orpheus and the Jerome may have been copied from the same model; however the presence of the lion suggests that the drawing may have a direct correlation with Roberti’s Jerome. Roberti’s Saint Jerome served as a prototype for artistic invention, through citation, and created an intertextual relationship with other paintings in Ferrara. The figure of Saint Jerome had a particular resonance in the humanist, religious, and political spheres at the court of Ferrara, but the repetition of this particular pose underlines its importance in the circles of artists at court.

Roberti’s representation of the body of the aged saint in a difficult pose asked the viewer to compare the ways that the practices of asceticism through the fashioning of the body may have had parallels with the artist’s ability to fashion the body in a painting. Furthermore, the complex pose of Saint Jerome and the elaborate rendering of his tunic ventured into dialogue with humanist treatises, that spoke to the rendering of complex gestures, and in turn, the painting encouraged other artists to emulate such a pose.

VII. Conclusion

As is evident from the Ferrarese ambassador’s account after his visit to

Lorenzo de’ Medici’s collections, which began this chapter, an assembly of objects in a collection formed a gathering of individuals who came to look at those objects. These objects could only be engaged with when they were removed from their protective coverings, transported out of their boxes, taken off of their shelves, and touched, perused, viewed, and held up near other objects in the

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 273 collection. The diptych format, in itself, encouraged this form of engagement, as it required the viewer to open it up, and assemble all the various images on its panels. Such an object, as I have attempted to show, encouraged a range of dialogues. The diptych could be seen as facilitating a dialogue between the viewer and the divine, as it functioned as a devotional item. Following notions of fabula, the diptych asked the viewer to construct a dialogue by assembling the various texts and narratives it quoted. It was Boccaccio who noted that the etymology of

“the word “fable” (fabula) has an honourable origin in the verb for, faris, hence

“conversation” (confabulatio) which means […] “talking together”

(collocutio).”169 This “talking together” or confabulatio has links to notions of conversation evoked by Chevalier de Méré, who, if we recall, described discussion as a succession of small paintings. An intertextual reading of the diptych, dependent on notions of fabula, leads the viewer to construct meaning through its various quotations, both textual and visual, thus creating a form of

“conversation.”

This idea of “conversation” may be linked to the assembly of objects, such as the collections formed by men and women of state, that allowed for a gathering of people, which in turn, could give rise to discussion. Such assemblies should be seen as sites that bring about debates, concerns, and disagreements.170 The objects in Eleonora’s collections asked viewers to assemble the various sculptures, paintings, and texts that cited each other. These objects also engaged with

169 Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry, 47. 170Things, as Martin Heidegger has noted, have the ability to gather, designating a form of assembly, where individuals come to discuss. Heidegger, "The Thing." Also see Latour, "From Realpolitik," 22-3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 274 humanist and religious debates at the court of Ferrara. The various copies/imitations which many of the objects in Eleonora’s collections encouraged also speak to the ways value was placed on artistic invention, and the importance of works of art in giving rise to other works of art. There is an interplay in

Roberti’s diptych with the religious rituals and ascetic practices of ecclesiastical institutions in Ferrara, establishments which were under great stress and sources of contention, fought over by the Este and the papacy, as both sought political dominance over Ferrarese territories.171 Such a “religious” object, which referenced contemporary religious practices thus could also be seen to have ties with larger political issues. The diptych spoke to debates of painting and scriptura, which were connected to controversies of social mobility and the legitimacy of Este rule. Roberti’s diptych, through its intertextual dialogues, its employment of penitential and ascetic devotional practices, and its attention to

Word/Flesh, painting/scriptura debates, can be seen to actively engage with the viewer in a number of ways. It functioned rhetorically, asking the viewer to consider its theoretical, theological, and political implications, by paying attention to its particular form as a diptych, the artistic rendering of figures, its attention to

171 The Este were made papal vicars in the fourteenth century, which placed the Este as rulers under papal jurisdiction, but it was not until Borso d’Este’s rule, the predecessor to Ercole, that the Pope invested Borso with the title of Duke. The papacy’s ancient rights as overlords of Ferrara granted the resident secular clergy guardianship over this right. In addition, the Archbishop of Ravenna’s ancient claims to feudalship of Ferrarese territories gave him a prominent role within the political hierarchies in Ferrara. This relationship between the Este, the papacy, and religious institutions gave rise to fraught relationships between ecclesiastical authorities and the Este, leading Ercole to try to seek larger control over the election of ecclesiastical offices. See Gundersheimer, Ferrara, 13-65; Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 1-52; Adriano Prosperi, "Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche e le idee religiose," in Il rinascimento nelle corti padane. Società e cultura, ed. Paolo Rossi (Bari: De Donato Editore, 1977), 125-64. The politics of the Roverella family, who held high ecclesiastical offices and maintained complicated relations with the Este, are particularly well drawn out in Campbell’s discussion of their art patronage. See Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara, 99-129.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 275 the body and the senses, and its intertextual relationship with other art works and texts.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 276

Chapter 4. The Order of the Ermine: Collars, Clothing, and Representation

I. Introduction

The famous dual portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, with his son Guidobaldo in the Urbino studiolo, depicts Federigo wearing both the gold collar and the crimson mantle of the Order of the Ermine (Figure 41).1 The gold collar is composed of various imprese or emblems belonging to the Order, and the pendant gold ermine dangles from the collar onto his chest. His crimson mantle is lined at the neck with ermine fur, an animal recognised for its white purity and its black tipped tail. Other prestigious attributes complement the portrait such as the

Order of the Garter below his knee, his armour, his sword, and, of course, his male heir. Federigo reads a book, which signifies his honour and status, but also references humanist activities linked to the studiolo.2

Federigo da Montefeltro was a member of the Order of the Ermine and the

Order of the Garter, both of which he received in 1474.3 The Order of the Ermine was inaugurated by King Ferrante of Naples in 1465 after his successful victory over the rebellious Neapolitan barons, and it was thus closely associated with his rule and Aragonese hegemony. Federigo had supported King Ferrante during the

Baron’s revolt in the early 1460s and was later to die defending Ferrante’s daughter, Eleonora d’Aragona, and her husband, Ercole d’Este, during Ferrara’s

1 Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 620; Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo, 45. 2 All of these attributes might make up the performative aspect of portraiture in the early modern period, what Berger has coined ‘the fiction of the pose.’ See Harry Berger, "Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture," Representations 46 (1994): 87-120. 3 D'arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The Knights of the Crown. The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325-1520 (Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1987), 415; Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Italian Renaissance Illuminations (New York: George Braziller, 1977), 84; Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 620.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 277 war with Venice in the early 1480s.4 As Olga Raggio has commented, the portrait stands not only as a dynastic portrait, but also speaks to Federigo’s ambitions, that the prestigious orders he was granted emblematise.5 But the portrait also asks viewers to link together these various attributes to read the portrait a certain way, making connections between the objects and associating them with the sitter. The

Order’s collar functions similarly; composed of various smaller imprese, it asks the viewer to link together quite literally the chain’s components to understand the symbolic meaning. Chapter nine of the statutes of the Order of the Ermine detail the material and visual forms of the gold collar, employing adjectives and descriptive language, and providing the reader with a very visual record:

The collar we wish to be made in this way, that is that it be composed (colligato) of stocks (stipiti), that is trunks of trees, into the top of which are inserted shoots (ramicelli), which are beginning to sprout leaves, and similarly of chairs (sedie), from which burst flames, in such a way that they are joined (collocate) together, that is, one stock, and then one chair. And in this way the whole collar will be made, from which will be suspended, onto the chest, an image of the white ermine, in white enamelled gold, at the feet on which shall be a scroll with this word: DECORUM; and it should be understood to everyone our intention, that with these images of the sprouting stock, that which is converted into a better and more worthy seed, and by the purest (mundissimo) animal, we signify to our confratri only that which we must do, which is to be decent, just, and honest, and this is according to nature and the condition of each, which should be perpetual.6

4 Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo, 29-31. Federigo’s role in Italian politics is examined by Clough, although he perhaps over-emphasises Federigo’s influence. Clough, "Federico and Naples," 113- 72. 5 Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo, 45. 6 “El collare volimo sia facto in questo modo, cioè chi tucto sia colligato de stipiti, cio`e tronconi de arbori in la cima de li quali siano inserte dui ramicelli, li quali incomençano ad buctare fronde et similmente de sedie de le quale escano fiamme <...>,per modo che siano collocate inseme, cioè uno stipite et pi una sedia. Et in questo modo sia composto tucto el collare, del quale collare pender`a avanti el pecto una imagine di arminio biancho, de oro smaltato in bianco, a li pedi de’l quale sia uno breve con questa parola: DECORUM; et intenda ciaschuno qual mente sia la nostra, che con la ymagine de ‘l stipite insertato, el quale è convertuto in meglio et più digno seme, et de l’animale mundissimo, singnificamo a li nostri confratri quello solo deverse fare, lo quale sia decente, iusto et honesto, et questo secundo la natura et condicione de ciaschuno sia perpetuo.”

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 278

This remarkably visual account of the collar’s parts—stocks, trunks, shoots, leaves, chairs, flames—and their movements—insert, burst, suspend, and sprout—ask the reader to contemplate the ways in which the collar and its representations were understood in the period. Federigo’s portrait similarly encourages the viewer to piece together the portrait’s various attributes—to read it, and thus to compose the sitter’s identity. The portrait thereby underlines the ways in which such representations use emblematic modes of reading.

Federigo’s portrait is rarely studied in connection to the Order of the

Ermine; the gold collar and mantle are sometimes mentioned as belonging to the

Order, but they are only noted as some of the many attributes of the painting and sitter. In addition, the association with Naples has not been stressed, except in

Cecil Clough’s larger study of Federigo’s political relations with Naples.7 Yet it is precisely his Orders and his connections with Naples that are being flaunted in the painting.

This chapter examines symbols associated with the Order of the Ermine— the mantle, the gold collar, the ermine, and the imprese of the Order— demonstrating how these signs link individuals, representations, and spaces into a web of associations. In Federigo’s portrait we have an embodiment of the Order.

The mantle and the collar inscribe the sitter as a member of a larger collective group, not through the actual wearing of the objects, but through the portrayal— the staging of those objects through a representation. These objects are not simply

From Giuliana Vitale, Araldica e Politica. Statuti di Ordini cavallereschi 'curiali' nella Napoli aragonese (Salerno: Carlon editore, 1999), 141-2. My translation. An English translation is also published by Boulton’s with slight variations, see Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 424. 7 Clough, "Federico and Naples."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 279 political or prestigious markers. Rather, the representation of Federigo sporting the collar and mantle asks us to think about how the space of the studiolo and the portrait are linked to other spaces and representations across Italy, harnessing

Federigo’s body to a confraternal brotherhood and the forms of performativity enacted in its rituals and events.

Representations of the ermine had specific connotations with the Order of the Ermine, and its inauguration that was itself linked to historical narratives about the Order’s founder (King Ferrante) and his kingdom. These narratives were circulated in a variety of forms, through the statutes of the Order, through print, visual imagery, letters, word of mouth, and in public rituals like processions. Samuel Daniel in his Worthy Tract of Paulus Jovius printed in

London from 1585, restates the narrative of the Order of the Ermine as follows:

Ferrante…[did] bare a worthie Impresa, which began vpon the rebellion of Marino di Marciano, Duke of Sessa, and Prince of Rossana, who although he were Cosin to the King, notwithstanding did confederate with Duke Iohn of Augio, to procure the death of his Lord and King being at Parliament: but by meane of his hardinesse and noble courage, the treacherous purpose could take no effect…And after a time Marino being taken & cast into prison, he resolued with himself not to put him to death: saying, that he would not embrue his handes in the blood of his own kindred, (albeit he were vngrateful) contrary to the expectation & will of many his freends, and Counsailers: and in token of this his noble mynd and clemencie, he figured an Armelui [ermine] compassed about with a bancke of dung, with his mot, Malo mori quam feodari: being the proper nature of the Armelui rather to perishe by hunger and thirst, then by escaping through the mire to defile her self, and spot the polished white of her precious skin.8

8 Quoted in Joseph Kau, "Daniel's Delia and the Imprese of Bishop Paolo Giovio: Some Iconological Influences," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970): 325.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 280

The close association between the ermine, purity, fidelity, and the clemency of

King Ferrante of Naples was well known in the sixteenth century, printed in popular emblem books not only in Italy but in translations abroad, as is evident from Daniel’s passage. The fact that these associations were discussed and circulated throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, demonstrates how meaning can be produced through the repetition and replication of certain signs.

Ermine is the species of weasel designated as ermine only when the animal is sporting its white winter coat; otherwise it is known as a stoat.9 The “pure” nature of the ermine, linked to its immaculate white fur, has been discussed since antiquity. However, its connection to Ferrante and its ability to signal political messages began with the institution and the inscription of the statutes of the Order of the Ermine in 1465.

The statutes of the Order of the Ermine constituted an initial hand-written text, which was copied and transcribed every time a new member was invested.

The Order consisted of twenty-seven knights and this text, along with the gold collar and mantle, was given to each newly inaugurated member. The text was to be kept in the member’s library, and is considered not only as statutes to be read and followed, but also a material object constituting an important part of

9 For the ermine and other types of furs see Robert Delort, Le commerce des fourrures en occident à la fin du Moyen Age (vers 1300-vers 1450), vol. I (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1978); R. Turner Wilcox, The Mode in Furs. The History of Furred Costume of the World from the Earliest Times to the Present (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951), 5 and 16-7; Valerie Cumming, ""Great Vanity and Excesse in Apparell." Some Clothing and Furs of Tudor and Stuart Royalty," in The Late King's Goods. Collections, Possessions, and Patronage of Charles I in the Light of the Commonwealth Sale Inventories, ed. Arthur MacGregor (London and Oxford: Alistair McAlpine in association with Oxford University Press, 1989), 328. Musacchio’s study also provides a useful overview of the weasel species in Renaissance dress, although she claims that martens, ermines, sables, and skunks were all interchangeable in the period, which is clearly not the case in their price nor their symbolism. Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, "Weasels and Pregnancy in Renaissance Italy," Renaissance Studies 15, no. 2 (2001): 172.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 281 investiture. The inscription of the statutes is also linked to the ways in which the wearing of the Order’s mantle and collar invested the body with meaning. The various imprese attached to the Order—the mountain of diamonds, the flaming throne, the sprouting stock and, of course, the ermine—were made meaningful through their constant employment across media. The continual repetition of these different forms of inscription—textual, physical, and visual—allowed for the transmission of the sign of the ermine, and opened up discursive possibilities. No longer merely an emblem or a metaphor for purity, the representation of the ermine and the material components of the Order—the mantle and the collar— became something more, that spoke to association, prestige, and honour.

The adornment of the body with jewels and clothing in the early modern period has often been studied in relation to sumptuary laws and women.10 Adrian

Randolph has examined the communicative aspect of the bridal body, examining how the bride’s “physical and legal transition [was] unambiguously inscribed upon her body” through clothing and jewellery.11 This chapter examines how similar adornments—the mantle and the collar of the Order—were bestowed and worn by members of the Order of the Ermine, all of whom were men. The emblem of the ermine, not only as a representation on the gold collar, but also its replication across media, became crucial in publicising the Order, with its associated obligations and membership. The rituals of the Order required the

10 See for instance Adrian Randolph’s intuitive study, Adrian Randolph, "Performing the Bridal Body in Fifteenth-Century Florence," Art History 21, no. 2 (1998): 182-200. For sumptuary laws, see Diane Owen Hughes, "Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy," in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). For the relationship between exchanges of gifts and women, see Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985). 11 Randolph, "Performing the Bridal Body," 189.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 282 material forms of the Order (the collar and the mantle) to create a unity between a large body of members, and the unchanging sign of the ermine (the emblem) provided a constant repeatable statement both in ritual and everyday practices.

I begin this chapter with a brief introduction to the two orders of the

Aragonese—the Order of the Jar and the Order of the Ermine. I then examine the statutes of the Order of the Ermine, which detail the rules, obligations, and requirements of members of the Order. The bestowal of the Order of the Ermine was not restricted to the Neapolitan kingdom, and the granting of orders is considered within the larger diplomatic and political networks within Italy and

Europe. I then turn to the various representations of the Order of the Ermine, underlining the ways in which these images connected a wide range of objects in diverse places. These representations are found in a variety of media, from architectural embellishments and garden sculpture, to depictions in manuscript illumination and representations of the gold collar itself. The ceremonial activities of the Order are then studied, outlining the rituals of bestowal and expulsion.

These rituals are particularly important because they reveal how the Order was publicised visually through the mantle and the collar. It was through these material objects that a member was made and unmade, creating memories, obligations, and associations. I conclude this chapter with an examination of three panels painted by Ercole de’ Roberti which speak allegorically to the mottoes of the Order of the Ermine. My aim here is two-fold: on the one hand, I examine various representations of the ermine in a variety of media, which are all connected to the Order. This emblem appears on objects that are owned or associated with members of the Order, and it is through this repetition and

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 283 dissemination of the sign—the different processes in which these signs are read and the ways they connect a body of images—that the Order of the Ermine entered into the visual vocabulary of members and non-members. On the other hand, I examine the statutes, the mantle, and gold collar of the Order, to signal how the inscription of the statutes establishes not only the symbolism of the Order

(and thus the ermine) at large, but also determines other forms of inscription, such as the wearing of the mantle and the collar. That is, the writing of the statutes in

1465 creates laws that are binding, and determines the social relations of members connected to the Order for the next thirty years. These statutes detail the ceremonial procedures as well as rules pertaining to the wearing of the mantle and the collar, and thus set in place the ritual, social, and symbolic aspects of the

Order. The significance of the ermine, then, becomes no longer merely an animal representing purity; its representation operates instead as an active, engaging symbol, which generates a discourse around the Order of the Ermine, Aragonese hegemony, and international associations and obligations.12 It is these discursive practices that I am particularly concerned with, and how the material forms not only symbolise, but also activate and constitute the Order of the Ermine.

II. Della Giarreta e dell’Armellino: The History of the Order of the Jar and the Order of the Ermine

The Order of the Ermine was inaugurated in 1465 by King Ferrante d’Aragona of Naples, following a turbulent political period including contestations regarding Ferrante’s succession to the throne. The Order of the

12 I take the term “engaging symbol” here from Adrian Randolph, Engaging Symbols. Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 284

Ermine was not the first order for the Aragonese; the Order of the Jar, instituted by Don Fernando of Antequera, King of Aragon in 1403, served earlier as their dynastic symbol, and was inherited by Fernando’s eldest son Alfonso I d’Aragona, King of Naples and later Alfonso’s son, Ferrante.13 Knightly orders were not particular to the Aragonese, and were used throughout the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries as ways to create international communities, fostering political alliances and fidelity. The Aragonese were members of other orders, such as the

Order of the Garter (England), and the Order of the Golden Fleece (Burgundy and the Netherlands),14 but it should be noted that it was not only political rulers who received such orders, but also highly ranked individuals and ambassadors, thus binding an exclusive body of individuals across vast geographical areas.

While I will be going into further detail, describing the ceremonial, material, and political aspects of the Order of the Ermine, I will provide a brief history and general overview of the two Aragonese orders here. The Order of the

Jar, also called the Device of the Jar of the Salutation, or the Order of the Stole and Jar, was in use from 1403-1516. It originated in Aragonese Spain and was transferred to the Neapolitan Kingdom when Alfonso I d’Aragona succeeded

Giovanna II of Naples.15 The Order of the Jar was organised around the Salutation of the Angel Gabriel to Mary and was symbolised by the Jar of Lilies, which so often appears in the iconography of Annunciation scenes in the period. Members invested with the Order were given a gold collar (Figure 42), with the links in the

13 Details of the Order of the Jar can be found in Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 330-8. Vitale, Araldica, 35-54. 14 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 134-5 and 379. 15 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 330.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 285 form of Salutation Jars accompanied by a pendant griffon, as well as a white stole with a brooch of the Salutation Jar.16 In contemporary documents its title varies and is recorded as the impresa, devisa, or ordine della giarra, Giarrettiera, giarriglie, and Nostra Donna.17 The Order became specifically connected with

Aragonese rule in Naples when Alfonso founded a church dedicated to the Virgin on the spot where he had first set up camp during his successful siege at Naples.18

A procession was held yearly on 2 June to commemorate the day and Ferrante is recorded as maintaining this tradition, walking on foot with troops to the site every year. Joampiero Leostello noted in the fifteenth century that the church erected there was called the Church of Santa Maria Armellino, offering further connections for the Aragonese with the ermine and perhaps influencing the choice of this animal for the later impresa of the ermine.19

According to sixteenth-century sources, the Order of the Ermine was instituted following the rebellion of Marino di Marciano (or Marzano), Duke of

Sessa and Prince of Rossano.20 Ferrante was Alfonso’s bastard son and his right to rule was contested numerous times. In August 1458, Ferrante was finally

16 Vitale, Araldica, 40. Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 330, 5. For representations see 4, 6-7. Another representation of the collar of the Jar appears on the effigy of Gomez Manrique originally from the Monastery of Fresdeval, now in the Museo de Burgos, Spain. see Ronald Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery (London: The Victoria & Alberto Museum, 1992), 261, Fig. 135. 17 See for instance the court account books, Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 26, 629. 18 Alfonso was said to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary at Campo Vecchio, and she inspired him to enter Naples through an ancient aqueduct. An altarpiece was consequently painted by Jacomar, a Spanish painter, which depicted the Virgin’s apparition to Alfonso, and this altarpiece was said to have been carried in the annual processions to the site. The altarpiece was destroyed in the sixteenth century, along with the chapel at the Campo Vecchio. Cole, Virtue and Magnificence, 49. 19 Leostello reports that Ferrante went in procession to the location on 2 June 1488: “andare a santa Maria armellino locho doue lo S. Re Alfonso havea posto lo campo: et lo jorno predicto prese napoli: et a d commemoratione de cio lo prefato S. Re quello di ogni anno ce sole andare a pede con gente de arme et fanti: et in quella ecclesia aude missa cantata.” Filangieri, 'Effemeridi' in Documenti Vol I, 150. 20 Paolo Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese militari e amorose (1551), ed. Maria Luisa Doglio, vol. 4, Centro studi 'Europa delle Corti' (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1978), 55.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 286 recognised as legitimate ruler both by Pius II and the majority of the Neapolitan barons. However, just over a year later, in October 1459, Ferrante’ s brother-in- law, Marzano plotted against him, entering into negotiations with Jean, Duke of

Calabria, and René of Anjou, which resulted in five years of warfare. Most of the barons took the side of Marzano, and Ferrante was left only with the political support from his allies outside the kingdom: the Pope, Alessandro Sforza, Cosimo de’ Medici, and Federigo da Montefeltro.21 In July 1465, the Battle of Ischia resulted in Ferrante’s triumph over the Angevins, and just over two months later

Ferrante instituted the Order of the Ermine. The triumphant flotilla entering

Naples after the Battle at Ischia is depicted on the Tavola Strozzi (Figure 3), where ermines are present on the flags of the ships, underlining this correlation.22

The successful victory over Marzano was an important political moment for the

Aragonese, underlined by its various depictions in architectural projects—bas- relief narratives on the bronze doors of the Castel Nuovo (Figure 50) and a fresco cycle at the villa La Duchesca.

The Order of the Ermine had a religious dynamic, and was dedicated to

Saint Michael the Archangel. The principal feast day of the Archangel, September

29, was honoured by members of the Order, as was the feast of his apparition in

Monte Gargano on May 8.23 Saint Michael was not only appropriate as the model of knighthood, but the saint also had a particular resonance in the Kingdom of

21 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 403. For a general overview of the political climate in Italy during these years, see Vincent Ilardi, "The Italian League, Francesco Sforza, and Charles VII (1454-1461)," in Studies in Italian Renaissance Diplomatic History, Collected Studies Series (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986). 22 Pane, "Tavola Strozzi." The ermine emblems are not discernable in most reproductions of the painting. 23 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 410.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 287

Naples, as Monte Gargano, the famous pilgrimage destination and site of Saint

Michael’s apparition, was located in Apulia, within the kingdom’s confines.24 The

Order took the ermine rather than the archangel as its symbol. Individuals belonging to the order were invested both with the gold collar and a crimson mantle lined with skins of ermine and decorated with ermine fur around the neck, with a slit on the right side.25 These formed part of the material accoutrements of the Order—fur, gold, cloth—which became symbolically charged through the ritual activities and representations of the Order, which will be discussed below. It should be noted that there was an Order of Saint Michael the Archangel in France from 1469-1790, which employed the archangel as its symbol, as well as an Order of the Ermine in Brittany, active between 1381-1532, which also took Saint

Michael the Archangel as its patron saint, but neither of these seems to have been connected to the Neapolitan order.26

Early sources also speak about the Order and its symbolism. Paolo Giovio explains that Ferrante’s clemency in not executing Marzano for his treachery relates to the Order of the Ermine and its motto “Malo mori quam feodari” (I prefer to die rather than be defiled, or death over dishonour).27 The text is accompanied by an engraving of an ermine in the middle of a circle of dung

24 For Monte Gargano see John Charles Arnold, "Arcadia Becomes Jerusalem: Angelic Caverns and Shrine Conversion at Monte Gargano," Speculum 75, no. 3 (2000): 567-88. Michele D'Arienzo, "Il pellergrinaggio al Gargano tra xi e xvi secolo," in Culte et pelerinages a Saint Michel en Occident : les trois monts dedies a l’archange ed. Pierre Bouet, Giorgio Otranto, and André Vauchez (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 2003), 220-43. 25 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 426. 26 For the Order of the Ermine in Brittany and the Order of Saint Michael, see Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 274-8 and 427-47, respectively. Capaccio notes in his Il forastiero that there existed an order in England, which took the ermine also as its motto, but was called the “Ordine della Spiga”, (Order of the Spike) accompanied by the motto “A.ma.vic.” which Capaccio notes the French translate as “Plustost mourir.” Capaccio, Forastiero, 223. 27 Giovio, Dialogo, 56.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 288

(Figure 43); the ermine was recorded in contemporary literature as an animal who would rather die than soil itself, letting itself be captured by hunters rather than taking refuge in a dirty lair.28 The ermine is represented in profile, similar to other stamp-like portrayals of the ermine, and yet, with some attempt to make the animal appear three-dimensional, while the dung heaps are neatly piled schematically to form a circle, in almost garland-like form, around the ermine.

The image here emphasises the contrast between the purity of the animal and faecal matter, drawing a difference between the symbolic and physical aspects of the Order.

Scipione Mazzella’s sixteenth-century history of the Neapolitan kings, which contains the printed portrait of Ferrante sporting the gold collar (Figure 59), refers to the impresa of the ermine. Mazella notes that the Order was born out of the rebellion and treachery of Marino Marzano, remarking that the clemency represented by the ermine, a creature who would rather die than be defiled, was taken up by Ferrante who did not dare to stain his hands with his brother-in-law’s blood.29 In Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s Il forastiero, dating from 1634, the Order of

28 The ermine for instance is noted by Leonardo da Vinci in his Manuscript H, see James Beck, "The Dream of Leonardo da Vinci," Artibus et Historiae 14, no. 27 (1993): 188-9. 29 “...Portò Re Ferdinando una bellissima impresa, laquale nacque dal tradimento, e ribellione di Marino Marzano Duca di Sessa, e Principe di Rossano, il quale ancorche gli fusse cognato, nondimento (come di sopra s’è racco’to) s’accostò al Duca Giouanni d’Angiò, e macinò d’ammazar a` parlamento il Re suo signore, ma per l’ardire, e franchezza del Re l’effetto non puote seguire d’vcciderlo, e doppo alcun tempo essendosi rappacificato con il Re, e di nuovo secretam’ete tramado insidie, fu per ordine del Re fatto porre prigione con risolutione di no’ farlo morire per mano del boia, dicendo non volersi imbrattare le mani nel sangued’vn suo cognato, ancorche traditore, & ingrato, contra il parere di molti suoi amici partigiani, e co’siglieri, e per dechiarare questo suo generoso pensiero di clemenza figura` vn’Armellino circondato da un riparo di letame, con vn motto di sopra. Malo mori quam foedari. Essendo lo propria natura dell’Armellino di patire prima la morte, che fuggendo passar per luoghi brutti, oue potesse macchiare il candore, e la politezza dellla sua pretiosa pelle. Edesi l’effigie di Re Ferdina’do scolpita di marmo in molti luoghi di Napoli, ma più che altroue elegatissimamente fatto di rileuo dal petto in su` di bronzo nella Chiesa di Monte Oliueto di detta città, nella cappella della Passione

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 289 the Ermine is discussed as an impresa of fidelity.30 He notes that the Duke of

Urbino, “Gran FrancescoMaria Secondo della Rovere” has a Spanish copy of the statutes in his library, and Capaccio includes a quote from the statutes, which describes the appearance of the mantle and the collar. The collar can be found, he observes, on the bronze bust of Ferrante in the monastery of Monteoliveto in

Naples. Capaccio also recounts the history of the Order as having links to

Marzano’s treachery and Ferrante’s unwillingness to soil his hands with the blood of family, noting the use of the motto “Nunquam” and “malo mori quam feodari.”31 Capaccio thus draws links between the different texts, images, and places he had come into contact with, from the textual description of the collar and mantle in the statutes located in Urbino, to the representation of the collar on the bronze bust in Monteoliveto in Naples. Giovanni Antonio Summonte, in his history of Naples, recounts Ferrante’s particular devotion to the Archangel Saint

Michael and he cites Giovio’s belief that the institution of the Order of the Ermine

di N.S. Giesu Christo, e leggiardissmiamente depinta in Poggio Reale un miglio fuor di Napoli, & in habito particolarmente armato a cauallo di rileuo tutto di bronzo, nel palazzo del Duca di Mataluni, nel mezo del cortile, quale sta su` un’alta colonna di marmo.” Mazzella, Vite, 396-7. 30“ perche se ben so’ che quell’animale ha’ seruito per Impresa di fedeltà; non hò però mai saputo che fusse stato Ordine di Caualleria.” Capaccio, Forastiero, 222. 31 “ne io il seppi mai, eccetto che vn giorno ragionandone con quel Gran Francesco Maria Secondo della Rouere, Duca d’Vrbino, prontuario di tutto’l sapere, in quella sua famosa libraria di Castel durant; ne sapend’io che dirgli di questo Armellino, me fé legere un’autore Spagnolo, che ne scriue con queste parole ch’io volse pormi a memoria: Trahe en çima de aquella ropa vn manto abierto por el lado derecho de raxa carmesi, afforado en Armignios es roçagante como ropa de Estado que dizen llamarse el manto de la Empresa. Trahe mas en cima del dicho manto, vn collar de oro fecho Ibecio, todo de esclauones à manera de Castillos cada vno con vnas llamas de ruchiller que toman todo el esclauon. Tambien vno Armignio de esmalte blanco el qual cuelga de el dicho collar con vna pequeña cadenica. El dicho Armignio esta sobre vna letera de oro que dizen DECORVM; che poi con molto mio gusto viddi nel Monistero di Monte Oliueto nella Cappella Del S. Sepolcro fatto dagli Aragonesi, nel petto di Re Ferdinando. Et intesi poi che D. Ferdinando Primo essendo sollecitato alla morte di Martino Marzano Duca di Sessa, e Principe di Rossano perche hauea seguito le parti di giouanni Duca d’Angiù, hauea anco trattato di vccider l’estesso Re, non volse mai farlo, dicendo che non conueniua ad vn Re macchiarsi le mani nel sangue d’vn parente [...]Gli Aragonesi poi gli diedero il motto, Nunquam. egli altri Malo mori quàm foedari. ” Capaccio, Forastiero, 222-3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 290 was linked to Marzano’s treachery, noting that the nature of the ermine is to choose death over ruining its white fur, and references the Malo mori, quam feodari motto.32 Summonte also notes that Ferrante used both the image of Saint

Michael as well as the ermine on his coins; Saint Michael was accompanied by the inscription “Iusta tuenda” to signal Ferrante’s just rule, and the coin depicting the ermine was called “Armellina,” to remind all, he declares, of the

“ungraciousness of Marino and the generosity of Ferrante’s soul” (Figure 47).33 In a letter from September 1465, Angilberto del Balzo, the son of the Duke of

Andria and nephew of Queen Isabella and King Ferrante, reported to the Duke of

Milan about the wedding celebrations held in Naples in honour of Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso d’Aragona. Angilberto notes that King Ferrante had just made the impresa and the collar of the ermine public, with its accompanying chapters of observation.34 While the institution of the Order was thus timed to correspond

32 “Del fine di Marino Marzana duca di Sessa, e Princpe di Rossano ragionando Michel Riccio dice, che in progresso di tempo il Re lo fe’ morire di violenta morte[...]Il Giouio vuole che il Re risoluto di non far con violenza morir il Marzao suo cognato, hauesse figurato l’imprese dell’Armellino circondato di sangho (fangho?) col motto Malo mori, quam foedari, perciò che la propria natura dell’Armellino e’ di patir prima la morte per fame, e sete, ch’imbrattarsi cercando fuggire per non macchiare il candore, e la politeza della sua pelle, che rercio’ dicono i Naturali, ch’il cacciatore, che vuol prender l’Armellino, sapendo la sua natura, fa’ vn lungo riparo di fangho attorno la sua tana, & offerua che vscendo l’animal egli ottura l’entra a in tante, che non potendo egli vscire dal riparo per non restar imbrattato, ne potendo entrar nella tanta otturata, si lascia prendere.” Giovanni Antonio Summonte, Dell'Historia della città , e regno di Napoli. Tomo Terzo, ove si descrivono le vite, e fatti de' suoi Rè Aragonesi dall'anno 1442, fino all'anno 1500. BNN: B.BRANC. 117 K (29 (Naples: Antonio Bulifon and Novello de Bonis, 1675), 337-9, 449-50. 33 “Questa impresa [dell’ ermine], dunque ciascuno dell’età nosta si puo’ racordare, hauerla veduta scolpita nella moneta d’argento di questo Re nominata Armellina di valuta di grana quattro, e questo acciò fusse not a’ ciascheduno l’ingratitudine del Principe di Rossano, e la generosità dell’animo suo.” Summonte, Historia Tom. III, 337,450. 34 “Suso dicta festa [f]ece soa M[aest]à uno redarmes per esso poy fece bandire la imp[r]esa et l colaro del armedino con certi cap[e]lli da far observat[ione].” BNP ITAL 1591 MF 13322. 165R. Letter of 29? September 1465, Angilberto to the Duke of Milan. For information on Angilberto see Franca Petrucci Nardelli, "Del Balzo, Angilberto," in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1976), 297.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 291 with the feast day of the Archangel Michael, it also coincided with the marriage, which was to solidify a Milan-Naples alliance.

The timing of the institution of the Order then, should be seen as being integral to the political scene and contemporary negotiations, when an alliance with Milan was being fostered through marriage, and winning the fidelity of the local baronage was crucially important for Ferrante’s success. The Order was effectively political, promoting Aragonese hegemony and creating connections between members across Italy and Europe. An examination of the statutes will reveal how the Order sought to bind members into fidelity through precise regulations.

III. The Statutes of the Order of the Ermine

Two manuscript copies of the statutes of the Order of the Ermine exist today: a Latin copy in the British Library, and the other, in Italian, in the Abbey of

Santissima Trinità di Cava dei Tirreni.35 The Latin copy in the British Library dates from 15 April 1486 and contains the arms of the Aragonese and the Orsini together with an ermine dangling below (Figure 44).36 We know that Virgino

Ursino (or Orsini) received the impresa of the Ermine in 1487 and was sent a standard depicting various devices pertaining to the Order, such as the flaming throne and the mountain of diamonds in February 1487, and this manuscript

35 Unfortunately I have been unable to see either of these manuscripts. The Latin text was held at the Abbey in Cava, Codex Cavensis 64 and was published in 1845 by Giuseppe Maria Fusco. It is now apparently lost according to Clough, "Federico and Naples," 132, n. 81.The Italian version in the British Library is catalogued under MS. Add. 28,628. Vitale, Araldica, 109 and 31; Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 407. 36 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 406.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 292 presumably was his.37 There exist no printed copies of the statutes, and one may assume that each manuscript was transcribed when a new member of the order was invested. We have thus a text—a list of rules—that was reinscribed with each new member, which should be seen as an integral part of the rituals of investiture, and which provided a link between text and event. Furthermore, because the statutes were written rather than printed, they stress the processes associated with becoming a member—the physical transcribing of the rules—and they also authenticate the notion of an “original,” something authorised by the King/Capo himself. The text in both existing manuscripts, although in different languages, is virtually identical, and must have been based on the same original, thus underlining regularity and consistency.38

The statutes consist of 137 ordinances which are organised into thirty-three chapters, detailing the observances of the two annual feasts, the spiritual and fraternal obligations of the members, the ritual of induction, the Order’s habit and collar, the election of new members, the Order’s chapel and clergy, and qualifications for admission. The Order was to be comprised of twenty-seven

37 It should be noted that throughout the 1480s Ferrante sought to procure the leading Roman barons into his service. His first choice was to gain the support of Virginio Orsini, who indeed in 1485 had been paid as governor-general of the Lega during the Barons’ War. This condotta had been renewed in 1487 but dissolved in 1489, and thus was not completely secure. Ferrante obviously sought Orsini as a member of the Order of the Ermine to insure his loyalty to Naples. Orsini’s investiture was noted in an anonymous chronicle “Eodem anno [1487], il Signor Virginio Ursino pigliò la impresa del Signor Re l’Armellino, e quello de casa de Aragona.” Quoted in Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 404, n. 20. On 11 February 1487 payments are made for a standard with various devices to be sent to Rome to Virginio Orsini. Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 629. “Si consegna al tesoriere Giov. Antonio Poderico uno stendardi di tafeta circondato di un friso d’oro a modo d’interlaccio massiccio, con le armi del Re poste in mezzo e piu su con le sue divise cioe tre segie de foco, quattro manti di diamanti, quattro lacci di Salamone, tre gerbe di miglio, e li libri, e col resto del campo seminato de fiamma de foeo tucto facto de bactaria di fuoco e cinto di frangia d’oro. Questo stendardo deve inviarsi a Roma a Virginio Orsini.” Italics are part of Barone’s transcription, indicating the original dialect. 38 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 408.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 293 knights, in addition to a college of canons attached to the Order’s chapel, and three corporate officers.39 There was to be one Capo or Superiore who was the overseer of the Order (Ferrante and consequently his successors) and the other twenty-six members were called confratri et compagni.40

While the first companions were most likely appointed by Ferrante, all successors were to be elected by the surviving confratri.41 Those elected were to receive investiture of the Order in the chapel, following strict protocol, which will be elaborated below when we examine the collar and the mantle, but companions were also allowed to receive the investiture in absentia, if they could not travel to

Naples.42 Membership in the Order was to be for life, although Ferrante made sure that expulsion from the Order was also detailed in the statutes, if a companion was to partake in a shameful act.43 Unlike other orders, which did not detail expulsion, close attention to the rites of expulsion seem to have been an explicit attempt by Ferrante to discourage treason, thus underlining the Order as a symbol of fidelity.44 Furthermore, any confratri who committed an act that resulted in public infamy, or that caused a mark against those associated with the

Order, was required to send an excuse to the Capo, and to inform his confratri at the next meeting how he intended to rid himself of this infamy.45 Membership in the Order was thus never completely secure, and it was always about becoming

39 These numbers were symbolic in relation to nine orders of angels related to the Order. Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 411. 40 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 411-2. 41 If any confratre died, all members as well as the canons had to have a mass in his or her honour, amounting to 477 purgatorial masses. Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 419. 42 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 413. 43 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 416. 44 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 417. 45 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 420.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 294 and maintaining one’s reputation, according to the exemplum set forth by the statutes. Employment of the sign of the ermine in various media by Federigo da

Montefeltro, especially in portraiture, was a way of re-iterating one’s membership and one’s loyalty to the Order. To underline further the exclusive nature of the

Order, entry could only be granted—not requested—thus stressing the honour of bestowal.46

The statutes also contained stipulations on political allegiances and warfare.

All members were required to assist the Capo (Ferrante and then his successors) if he were to go to war against the enemies of the Christian faith.47 Giuliana Vitale has underlined the ethico-religious component of the Aragonese orders, noting that anti-Turkish sentiment was an underlying theme of knighthood.48 The

Aragonese were in constant negotiations with the Turk throughout the fifteenth century, resulting in the Turkish invasion of Otranto in the 1480s and such a stipulation was thus an overt way to foster crucial support—monetary and military—during these unstable times. Members were also required to inform other confratri if they found out anything that might prove harmful to them and they were required to assist those members who through war or travel, found

46 While the nobility of the confratri was stressed, the Order’s statutes were unusual in comparison to other contemporary orders in the fact that they explained that this nobility was not only the prerogative of those born into it, but also could be earned: “[a] And considering that the nobility of blood is of great value to perfect virtue and glory and the opinion of men, although he who is virtuous may be noble in himself (da per se), we ordain that this Order must be given to famous and noble men, not to the ignoble and vile; [b] either to such men as are noble from their antecedents (da li suoi antiqui), [c] or to such men as have earned nobility to their toil and industry, [d] provided that this earned nobility is of such a nature that it can be assimilated to noble lineages.” Boulton’s translation, Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 412 and 8. 47 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 418. 48 Vitale, Araldica, 2-35.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 295 themselves in the hands of the Infidel.49 Disputes between confratri were highly discouraged, and if any disputes were to arise between members, they were to be presented to the Capo before going to war; the Capo was then responsible for issuing judgement.50 As many of the members of the Order were principal barons of the kingdom and ruling political figures across Italy and Europe, the statutes can be seen as attempts to create fidelity and alliances among various conflicting political contenders. It was also a way for Ferrante to surround himself with a group of individuals dependent on him for overseeing peace.

The rules in relation to religious observations were quite detailed and extensive. Confratri were required to celebrate both feast days of Saint Michael and to take a Lenten fast on the eve of the principal feast, and to confess their sins and to take communion on the feast day.51 Furthermore, during the interval between the vespers of the vigil of the principal feast to the vespers of the feast day itself, they had to refrain from “all mundane work and exercises” and from

“all secular business not related to the feast, games, plays, jousts, or other exercises of arms, save in case of necessity.”52 All confratri who were subjects of the Sovereign were required to partake in the court celebration of the principal feast, unless they had a reasonable excuse, and any who were not able to partake had to participate in a similar service. 53

49 Members were also obliged to help any companion who had fallen into poverty. Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 419. 50 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 421. 51 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 419-20. 52 Translated by Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 419-20. 53 If a confratri did not celebrate the principal feast accordingly, they were to provide thirty masses for the souls of any departed members, and anyone who did not celebrate the feast of the Apparition had to feed nine paupers. Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 420.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 296

Specificities of the Order’s Chapel are also mentioned in the statutes. There was to be an Ecclesia de San Michaele, complete with twenty-seven stalls each affixed with a shield belonging to each member.54 The fact that no known church dedicated to that saint existed in Naples at the end of the fifteenth century poses a bit of a problem for defining a precise location. Some scholars have suggested that the ceremonies may have taken place in a chapel at the Church of

Monteoliveto, where Guido Mazzoni’s Lamentation was erected, containing a portrait of Alfonso II d’Aragona in the guise of Joseph of Arimathea, as well as the portrait bust of Ferrante (or possibly Alfonso II) wearing the collar of the

Order (Figure 58).55 Contemporary documents such as ambassador reports or chronicles do not necessarily clarify the issue. Leostello’s Effermidi, recounting the deeds of Alfonso II d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria, notes several times that

Alfonso celebrated the festa of Saint Michael in relation to the Order of the

Ermine. On 28 September 1487, for instance, Leostello records that Alfonso stayed in the Castel Nuovo (rather than in his residence at the Castel Capuano) because it was the day of the Ermine, and in the morning he listened to mass with the king, but does not detail where they heard this mass.56 There was a Sala dell’Ermellino in the Castel Nuovo, decorated with ermines which may have been a suitable spot, but one would assume that it would be designated as cappella or chiesa if this indeed was the space where mass was to be held, although Filangieri

54 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 421. 55 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 422. For Guido Mazzoni’s work in this chapel see Roberto Pane, "Guido Mazzoni e la Pietà di Monteoliveto," Napoli Nobilissima XI (1972); Hersey, Artistic Renewal of Naples, 109-10. 56 “Die xxviij. Eiusdem lo S. duca anno a dormire al castel nouo per che la matina era lo erminio: et la matina audi messa sollenne con lo S. RE et poi torno in castel capuano che fu Sancto Michele archangelo lo quale tene per suo aduocato et sua I.S. lo fa guardare da tucti de sua casa.”Filangieri, 'Effemeridi' in Documenti Vol I, 138.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 297 notes that there was an oratory beside it.57 There was also a large chapel in the

Castel Nuovo, which was often used for public masses and may have served the purpose. Leostello also notes that on 8 May 1488, the day of the Apparition of

Saint Michael, Alfonso went to hear mass with the “arminio” at “Santa Maria de

Monte Oliveto” for the festa of Saint Michael.58 Alfonso had a particular attachment to the Church and monastery of Monteoliveto, and because this was the day of the Apparition and not the principal feast, it may have been celebrated here. This reference to the Church of Monteoliveto is the only reference we have to an exact location, and it may well have served the purposes for the Order. It should also be noted that San Domenico Maggiore was once the monastery and

Chiesa di San Michele Arcangelo until the thirteenth century, and its history under that saint may have stuck well into the fifteenth century.59 San Domenico

Maggiore was an important church for the Aragonese, housing many of the family’s tombs, including Ferrante’s, and also the site of Diomede Carafa’s chapel and tomb.60 It is also possible that the church of Santa Maria Armellino, which was outside Naples, and as mentioned, was recorded as the church where the Aragonese travelled to on foot to celebrate Alfonso’s successful siege of

57 For a description see de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I, 134; Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 238. 58 “Surexit bona hora et expeditis quibusdam negocijs caualco et ando ad audire la messa cantata con lo arminio a sancta maria de monte oliueto proprter festum sancti Michaelis” Filangieri, 'Effemeridi' in Documenti Vol I, 216. The church of Monte Oliveto also goes by the name of Sant’Anne de’ Lombardi, see Vittorio Gleijeses, Chiese e palazzi della città di Napoli (Naples: La Botteguccia, 1991), 144-8. 59 Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Estratti di Schede Notarili, 6 vols., vol. III (Naples: Tipografia dell'Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1885), 5. 60 For Diomede Carafa’s tomb and the Cappella Carafa see de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 137-69. Thomas Aquinas was also a monk at this monastery. Filangieri, Documenti Vol III, 5.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 298

Naples in relation to the Order of the Jar, may also have been used for the Order of the Ermine.

The statutes were thus very specific in detailing the responsibilities of members. They outlined the required movements and actions of members and specified the rites, elaborating on the festivals and feast days to ensure all members across geographical space were connected through repeated ritual.

Although the location of the Order’s chapel is unknown today, its description in the statutes reveals that it served as a central location of ritual and investiture, complete with a seat for each member. This chapel thus served both as a geographical location as well as a symbolic space, operating as the sacred headquarters for the Order for members across Italy and Europe.

IV. Members and International Association

Ferrante not only bestowed the Order of the Ermine on individuals but he was also the recipient of other illustrious orders and such bestowals were part of international diplomatic networks. The objects of each order played a crucial role in investiture so that bestowal was intrinsically linked to the receiving and granting of specific objects. Therefore, we might view the bestowal of orders as similar to the rubric of gift-giving in the period. In 1475, Antonio di Borgogna came to Naples and was lodged at the Carafa Palace, and with him he brought his brother’s Order of Saint George.61 Alfonso I d’Aragona and Ferrante were both invested with the English Order of the Garter in 1450 and 1460 respectively as

61 Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, 105.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 299 well as the Burgundian Order of the Golden Fleece.62 In April 1473, the

Burgundian ambassador to Naples mentioned that Pierre of Luxembourg, nephew of the Duke of Burgundy and son of Louis, Count of San Polo, was to come in

May of that year with the “impresa of the said signor” to bestow upon King

Ferrante.63 Other political figures across Italy were invested with these orders as well: Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and son-in-law of Ferrante was invested with the Order of the Garter in 1480. Ercole was also possibly invested with the

Order of the Golden Fleece in 1475 when the local chronicler noted that Zoanne

Antonio, son of Diomede Carafa and ambassador of King Ferrante, invested

Ercole in the cathedral with the mantle and gold necklace of the order of

Burgundy, presumably that of the Golden Fleece.64 Ercole is also mentioned as a member of the Order of the Ermine. Duke Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino was invested both with the Order of the Garter and the Ermine in 1474.65 These individuals were thus not only connected through more obvious political court relations, but also as members of these orders.

62 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 135 and 379. Ferrante ordered the statutes of the Order of the Golden Fleece or “Ordine del Toson d’oro” to be translated from Flemish into Italian, see Angela Pinto, "'Coverti di seda et d'oro...' Legature per la corte aragonese," in Libri a corte. Testi e immagini nella Napoli aragonese, ed. Emilia Ambra (Naples: Paparo Edizioni, 1997), 110. 63 The ambassador of the Duke of Borgogna was there to celebrate the wedding festivities of Eleonora d’Aragona and her marriage to Ercole d’Este. This was reported by Zaccaria Barbaro. Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 569-70, Letter 264, 15 April 1473. 64 Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 394-5. The chronicler may have made a mistake in the Order, as Ercole is known to have received membership into the Order of the Ermine in November 1475, and considering that Zoanne Antonio was the ambassador of Ferrante, this may have been the mantle and collar of the Ermine and not that of Burgundy. Ercole is recorded receiving the Order of the Ermine in his letters to Galeazzo Sforza from November 1475, see ASMI SPE 323. 110 and 162. Ercole d’Este was depicted wearing the Order of the Garter in a fresco cycle in Belriguardo, described by Sabadino degli Arienti. Arienti, triumphis religionis, 61-2. Manca has translated the excerpt into English, Joseph Manca, "The Presentation of a Renaissance Lord: Portraiture of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (1471-1505)," Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte 52 (1989): 538. 65 Alexander, Italian Renaissance Illuminations, 84. Clough, "Federico and Naples," 160.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 300

The list of members invested with the Order of the Ermine is long, but examining some of the confratri is important in understanding what it meant to be part of the Order, and how Ferrante used the Order to create a circle of individuals dependent on him, not as subjects in his realm, but as an international brotherhood of fidelity devoted to the king.66 The investiture of an Order, along with its token clothing and collar or jewellery, was a form of obligation, which necessitated a response. When such a bestowal was given from one ruler to another, or from one

Head of an order to another, it was often reciprocated by the return of investiture.

Such acts bestowed not only honour, but also obligation, which is of course characteristic of the practices of gift-giving. For instance, King Alfonso I sent the stola and collar with his ambassadors to Philippe the Good in 1446, after he had been granted membership in the Order of the Golden Fleece by Philippe in

December 1445.67 Then in 1455, court records show that Alfonso paid for a gold collar to be given to Isabella di Portogallo, Duchess of Burgundy and the wife of

Philippe the Good.68 The record does not detail whether or not it was a collar of the Jar, but the price of the collar was roughly the same as the cost of the Order’s collars, and the orefice responsible for the work, Guido d’Antonio, had been paid throughout the 1450s for “collari d’oro dell’ordine della giara.”69 The Order of

66 For a list of those invested with the Order, see Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 414-5. 67 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 332 and 79. 68 “Luglio 28 [1455]. Alfonso fa lavorare del suo orefice Guido d’Antonio un collare di oro del peso di tre libbre, 3 once ed un quarto, del prezzo di ducati 348 e tari 2 per regalarlo a donna Isabella di Portogallo.” Minieri Riccio, "Fatti di Alfonso ASPN VI," 431. 69 Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Indici degli artefici delle arti maggiori e minori. La piu parte ignoti o poco noti si napoletani e siciliani si delle altre regioni d'italia o stranieri che operarono tra noi con notizia delle loro opere e del tempo del loro esercizio. Da studii e nuovi documenti. Dalla Lettera A alla Lettera G, 6 vols., vol. V (Naples: Tipografia dell'Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1891), 25.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 301 the Jar was one of the very few orders that accepted women into it, so it may well have been the Order’s collar. Nevertheless, whether the collar was a collar of the

Order or not, the gift underlines the obligations of reciprocity and the formation of diplomatic relations instituted by these orders.

It is interesting that Ferrante, after founding the Order of the Ermine in

1465, also continued to bestow the Order of the Jar on individuals after this date.

The Order of the Jar had less restrictive statutes than the Order of the Ermine, and

Ferrante may have bestowed the Order of the Jar on those individuals he wanted to honour, but not necessarily invest in a more formal and binding type of allegiance. The statutes of the Order of the Jar specified certain rituals such as vespers on Saturdays and feast days, and the wearing of the mantle and the device, but did not have any formal obligations regarding commitments between members or allegiances to the Capo.70 I found reports from Milanese ambassadors to Naples that record Ferrante bestowing the Order of the Jar on various ambassadors. On 6 September 1473 Ferrante bestowed the white stole and gold collar of the Order of the Jar to Misser Galeoto, Milanese ambassador to Naples.71

On 22 April 1474, the Milanese ambassador in Naples, Francesco Maleta reported that the Conte de Meiya, ambassador of the King of Datia, was knighted by King

Ferrante, and given the stola. Maleta also notes that afterwards the said ambassador mounted on his horse, wearing the “gold collar at his neck, valued at

300 ducati, that the king had given him and rode around all of Naples: as is

70 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 331. 71 “La M[aes]ta sua gli [Galeoto] ha donata la stolla biancha i[n]signa d[el] la militia de n[ost]ra dona cum una collana doro extimata ccc ducati doro.” ASMI SPE 224. 195. Letter from Milanese ambassador in Naples Francesco Maleta to the Duke of Milan.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 302 custom when one is made a knight, accompanied always by the Duke of Calabria

[Alfonso II d’Aragona] and all the barons, and he was taken to see all the memorable things of Naples,” thus publicising the Order.72 In March 1482, the

Milanese ambassador, Branda de Castiliono, reported that the king had invested two Spanish men, relations of the queen, with knighthood and had given them the

“gold collar with the white band”, presumably the collar and the white stole.73

Court accounts also suggest that Ferrante continued to invest individuals with the

Order of the Jar and Stole, as there are entries for the purchasing of gold collars di giarriglie in the 1480s. In 1492 payments were made for a “libro della impresa della stola” for Ambrosio, ambassador of King of Polonia, who Ferrante had recently knighted.74 The fact that the majority of individuals invested with the

72 “La martedi sequente el Re gli [conte de Meiya ambassatore de la M[aes]ta del Re de Datia] dede mangiare cu[m] cerminonia regale: essendo ad la tavola soli ambiduy: & fecello cavalero quella matina medesma ad la messa cantatan. V3 cavalero darme & degli la stola de la militia de n[ost]ra dona. La quale militie quanunq dicto ambass[ado]re recussasse molto. Dicendo farsi li cavaleri del paese suo o al sepolcro o ‘i Bataglia: no[n] dimeno lo interpetre lo vinse & fecello restare paceinte. Mangiat ch’ hebeno dicto ambassatore montoe ad cavallo cum linsigne d[e] la Milita & cu[m] uno colaro doro al collo d[i] valore d[i] ccc ducati ch[e] gli havea donato el Re & cavalcoe p[er] tuto napoli: como se costume d[i] qua ad simile creatione d[i] cavlaero accomapg[na]to sempre dal Duca d Calabria & da li dicti Baroni & gli fu facto vedere tute el cose memeorabile d[i] la cita.” ASMI SPE 225. 124. 73 “Questa matina al M[aest]a del s[ignor] Re per la celebratione de la messa in capella sua in p[rese]ntia de la S.na Regina et molti baroni fece duy spagnoli cavalleri, parenti de la p[refa]ta S.na Regina et gli dona una colana doro per uno con la banda biancha.” ASMI SPE 238. 2, Letter of March 26 1482. 74 “[giugno] 20 [1492]. al pittore Marco Cinico si danno 2 d per altrettanti che ne ha spesi nel prezzo di un libro della impresa della stola, il quale e stato consegnato per ordine del Re a M. Ambrosio ambasciatore del Re di Polonia, che sua M.a ha fatto cavaliere.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN X," 16. Payments for the Order of the Jar’s collar date from either 1487 or 1488: “[Feb] 15 [1487?] Alfonso Perez consegna alla r. Corte un collare d’oro di 22 carati, nel quale sono 32 pezzi fatti a modo di giarriglie, ed avanti il petto e un catenella d’oro pendente che sostiene un grifo d’oro con le ali di argento bianche, ed intorno ai piedi un cartello che porta scritto in lettere nere antiche per suo amore. Questo collare pesa una libbra, computata per 90 d d’oro in oro di 23 carati.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 629. Filangieri transcribes the same entry from the same page of the cedole but dates the payment to 1488. As these documents were destructed in World War II there is no way to know the exact date, Filangieri, Documenti Vol VI, 262. Clough, incorrectly states that the Order of the Jar was not inherited by King Ferrante, Clough, "Federico and Naples," 159. These various documents detailing Ferrante’s investing the Order to individuals, suggests that he did inherit the rights, or at least maintained the rights to grant membership.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 303

Order of the Jar throughout this time period were ambassadors, rather than ruling figures, suggests that Ferrante used the Order of the Jar to place honour on those of lesser ranks, not rulers, yet diplomatic figures belonging to other regimes, and thus created loyalties outside his own kingdom. It would seem then, that Ferrante reserved the Order of the Ermine for individuals who maintained some sort of political authority, such as counts, princes, kings, and dukes, and bestowed the

Order of the Jar on those who he knew might carry political weight, but not political power. This bestowal of the orders on a wide range of individuals across

Italy suggest the ways the orders were publicised outside of Naples, connecting individuals in bonds that although closely associated with the Aragonese, were not limited to the Neapolitan court.

Diplomatic relations between Burgundy and Naples in the 1470s were linked to the bestowal of the Orders of the Ermine and Golden Fleece. While

Ferrante was seeking a political alliance with Burgundy, he was also keen on solidifying these diplomatic relations by marrying his son, Federico, to the Duke of Burgundy’s daughter, Mary.75 On 5 December 1471, Zaccaria Barbaro reported that the Burgundian ambassador was to leave Burgundy for Naples, and was to bring a jewel worth 10, 000 ducati for the king from the Duke of

Burgundy.76 In 1472, on the arrival of the Burgundian ambassador, the court put

75 For diplomatic relations between Naples and Burgundy see Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, “Sulle mancante nozze tra Federico d’Aragona e Maria di Borgogna (1474-76), 69-105; Monique Sommé, Isabelle de Portugal. Une femme au pouvoir au XVe siècle (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1998), 442-4. 76 “Per lettere de’ xxviii octubrio dal’ambassador regio è in Borgogna sentesse al partire d’i ambassador del ducha per Italia, i quali portano a la Maestà regia uno fornimento d’oro da una tavola de valuta de ducati x mile per parte del signor ducha.” Corazzol, ed., Barbaro Dispacci, 93, Letter 42, 5 December 1471.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 304 on a feast in honour of him, at great expense.77 I found a letter dated 10 February

1472 from ambassador Francesco Maleta reporting to the Duke of Milan the details of a giostra held in Naples. Maleta notes that the king watched from a tribunale, accompanied by the Burgundian ambassadors on his right, noting that the king wore a coat lined with ermine and black shoes with the devices of the livery of the King of England. It was Don Federico who won the prize for the giostra, a diamond worth 100 ducati, and upon receiving the diamond, he immediately presented it to the first Burgundian ambassador.78 What is interesting from this report is not only the favouritism given to the Burgundian ambassadors, but the attention given in the description to the clothing, and specifically the wearing of the English impresa on the king’s shoes. Such close examination by

Maleta relates not only a need to define the pomp and magnificence of the king, but also as a means to describe the loyalties, alliances, and behaviour of Ferrante for the Duke of Milan. Such a description demonstrates that the wearing of impresa and the privileges of placement in approximation to the king could signal larger political dependencies. In 1474 Ferrante was granted membership into the

Order of the Golden Fleece by the Duke of Burgundy and later that year, Ferrante was to return the favour by granting the duke with his own Order.79 On 3 October

77 Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, 78-9. 78 “Heri he fu domenicha fe fece la giostra i[n] una piazza [...]La m[aes]ta del Re no[n] giostra’. Stete sopra uno Tribunale a vedere dicta giostra e appresso quella da mano drito erano li ambassatori B[er]gognoni. Da mano sinestra la illma Ma Duchessa de Calabria: & Ma Leonora cu[m] altre Damiselle assay de le piu nobile e piu belle de la cita. La prefata M[aes]ta haveva i[n] dosse uno zacho de zetonino negro cum perfilli de hermelino e le calze negre cu[m] la divisa sive liurea del Re de Ingleterra[...] il pretio fu delib[er]ato a Don Federico quale p[er] dio fece bene: che funo diamante extimato ducati cento e esso don federico i[m]mediate ne fece uno p[rese]nte al comspecto del pre’ al primo ambassate B[er]gognono.” ASMI SPE 221. 36. Letter of 10 February 1472 from Francesco Maleta to the Duke of Milan. 79 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 404.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 305

1474, Galeotto Carafa, the Mantuan ambassador to the court of Naples reported on Federico d’Aragona’s upcoming trip to Burgundy:

The said Illustrious Lord will bear the enpresa de lo Armellino, of which the Majesty of the Lord King was the founder, and which he will bear to the Duke of Burgundy, because the duke sent his own, that is, of the Fleece, to his aforesaid Majesty by one of his bastard brothers.80

On 25 October 1474, Francesco Maleta also reported that Don Federico was bringing the “ermellina imprehesa del S[ignore] Re” to the Duke of Burgundy.81

On 26 October 1474, the local chronicler told a similar tale, but elaborating on the dynastic and political motives, noting that Federico might marry the Duke of

Burgundy’s daughter.82 The marriage, as well as the bestowal of the Order was thus publicised not only in Naples, but also across Italy through ambassador reports, stressing the international publicity the Order was achieving, and how it was disseminated through a variety of sources. Neapolitan historian Ernesto

80 The letter is from ASMA, esteri, xxiv, 3. English translation from Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 404. “Lo dicto Illustrissimo Signor se portarà la enpresa de lo Armellino, de quale è stato inventore la Maestà del Signor Re, e quella portarà al Duca di Borgogna, perho che’l Duca manda la suoa che è del tosone e la predicta Maestà per uno suo frate bastardo, quale se aspetta qua per la fine del presente e la intrata de la loro...” Original Italian published in Ernesto Pontieri, ed., Fonti Aragonesi. I Registri della Cancelleria Vicereale di Calabria (1422-1453), vol. II serie II, Testi e documenti di storia napoletana pubblicati dall'Accademia Pontaniana (Naples: Presso L'accademia, 1961), 69-70. 81 “el prefato Don Federico portoe la ermellina imprehesa del S. Re suo p[a]tre al prelibato duca de Bergogna & i’ quelli di medesimi sua M[aes]ta la mandoe per la ambassatori suoy al Re de Ungaria cum duy conferi molto bellli & ap[aramen]ti & imbardati singularm[en]te secondo el costume de qua [Naples].” ASMI SPE 226. 60. 82 “Lo illustre Signore Don federico de Aragonia figliolo legitimo et naturale de re ferrando se parti da napoli per andare inburgugna et portaua la impresa de Armellina allo illustre ciarlles Duca de burgugna. Et con lui andaro multi Signori dell Regno homini valentissimi et experti in le arme et tra li altri nce fo lo Conte Cola decampo brascio Lo Signore Camillo pandone. Et altri: loquale signore don federico se acaso et piglio la figlia del duca de borbo dellaquale ne o procreata vna figliola femina nomine...” (The Illustrious Signore Don Federico de Aragonia, legitimate and natural son of King Ferrando leaves Naples to go to Burgundy and brings the impresa de Armellino to the Illustrious Charles, Duke of Burgundy. And with him will go many Signori of the reign, very valiant men and experts in arms[…] The signore don Federico, might marry the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, who has only produced one daughter…) Notar Giacomo, Cronica di Napoli, ed. Paolo Garzilli (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1845), 128.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 306

Pontieri has noted that Federico’s trip to Burgundy was twofold: to invest the duke with the impresa of the Ermine, and to solidify marriage negotiations.83

Relations between the two states seemed to have become quite complicated, involving various alliances and counter-alliances within the Italian peninsula and

Europe at large.84 In the end, marriage negotiations were called off, and Mary of

Burgundy was married to Maximilian in 1476.85 Pontieri has suggested that

Antonio of Burgundy’s visit to Naples in 1475, bringing the Order of San Giorgio to Ferrante, should be seen as a “cavallersco ricambio”, that is in the spirit of the counter-gift, a sort of counter-order or “knightly reciprocation.”86

The political aspects of bestowal are also telling in relations between the courts of Naples and Milan. On 5 October 1456, the Milanese ambassador reported that Alfonso I d’Aragona was to give Galeazzo Sforza the collar of the

Aragonese device, in response to the relinquishing of some lands belonging to

Alfonso. On 19 March 1457 Francesco Cusani returned from Naples with the gold collar for Galeazzo. The report detailed that the bestowal of Galeazzo with this collar, enabled Galeazzo to bestow (‘decorare’) another twenty nobles as he saw fit, as is custom with the patent of the king.87 The bestowal of the collar was given just a year after the signing of the marriage contracts in October 1455 between

83 Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, 84. 84 Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, 99-100. Also see chapter one for an overview of the Lega and diplomatic negotiations between Milan, Florence, and Naples. 85 Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, 102. 86 Pontieri, Storia di Ferrante I, 105. 87 “Ritorna alla excellentia vostra Francesco da cusano, dal quale essa serà informata de la condictione de qua, al quale la maiestà del re ha dato de mano sua el collare che essa dona ad lo inclito conte Galeaz vostro figliolo, et commette al magnifico messer Albrico Malleta che nomine et vice eiusdem maiestatis debbia decorare el prefato conte Galeaz del dicto collare et che poi esso conte Galeazz possa decorarne altri vinti nobili come ad luy parerà, secundo la forma da le patente d’essa maistà, quale la celsitudine vostra vederà.” Francesco Senatore, ed., Dispacci sforzeschi da Napoli. I. (1444-2 luglio 1458), Fonti per la storia di Napoli aragonese (Salerno: Carlone Editore, 1997), 495, Letter 191.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 307

Ippolita Sforza and Alfonso d’Aragona and Sforza Maria and Eleonora d’Aragona and thus acted as a confirmation of the alliances made through marriage.88

Galeazzo Sforza was also a member of the Order of the Ermine, thus underlining the importance for Ferrante to bestow his own Order on him, in addition to his father’s Order of the Jar. This is not surprising considering that the marriage negotiations between the Sforzas and Aragonese were only partially followed through and the fraught political scene in the 1470s would have induced Ferrante to reiterate the Sforza-Aragonese alliance.

Similar to diplomatic gifts, orders were often bestowed when negotiations were being deliberated; rather than merely signifying these relations, they often constitute an integral part of such relations, revealing the complexities of the rituals of diplomatic negotiations. The importance of the objects of each order— the Jar of Lillies, the Golden Fleece, or the Ermine—became crucial signs in promoting the orders, branding members and solidifying diplomatic relations. The employment of the ermine emblem across media and across space was a way to concretise these relations, forging connections that will be elaborated now by examining these diverse representations.

V. Representations of the Ermine: Architecture, Manuscripts, and Painting

The representation of the ermine and its repetition in diverse media attests to the discursive character of the emblem, and thus its political potential. The same depiction of the ermine—profile view, one paw lifted, and usually accompanied by a scroll—is repeatedly used, therefore acting as a sort of stamp,

88 Senatore, ed., Dispacci sforzeschi I, 277-8, Letter 105.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 308 print, or seal. In this flat stamp-like form the ermine can be seen as corresponding to what Harry Berger has called the “decorative mode,” whereby an image has a symbolic function and is closely related to ritual. A decorative image often favours artificial or flat representation to support its symbolic purpose, thus serving an iconic or ritual function.89 As a repeated form, it acts as an imprint that resonates with how the collar and mantle inscribed the body of each new member of the Order. The sign is registered, printed, inscribed, cast, and carved onto objects that include doors, coins, medals, books, walls, and furniture. To understand how the emblem does this, we must look at these different forms of representation more closely, but first we will turn to how the ermine is to be read as an emblematic signifier and an impresa.

The ermine as impresa, that is, as a device or emblem, will be examined briefly here in terms of the emblematic tradition. Emblem books gained popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of which Paolo Giovio’s

Dialogo dell’ imprese is probably the most famous (Figure 43).90 The ermine device functioned differently to the tradition of emblem books, which became popular in the following century, however it should be considered within some of the similar frames of reference. Emblems in general consisted of three parts: a

89 Harry Berger, "The System of Early Modern Painting," Representations 62 (1998): 33-4. 90 A large body of literature has recently emerged on emblems. See John Manning, The Emblem (London: Reaktion Books, 2002); John Manning, Karel Porteman, and Marc van Vaeck, eds., The Emblem Tradition and the Low Countries: Selected Papers of the Leuven International Emblem Conference 18-23 August 1996, vol. 1b, Imago Figurata (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 1999); Peter M. Daly and John Manning, eds., Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500-1700, vol. 14, AMS Studies in the Emblem (New York: AMS Press, Inc, 1999); Peter M. Daly, ed., Emblem Scholarship: Directions and Developments. A Tribute to Gabriel Hornstein, vol. 5, Imago Figurata (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2005); Daniel S. Russell, "Illustration, Hieroglyph, Icon. The Status of the Emblem Picture," Mikrokosmos. Beiträge Literaturnissenschaft und Bedeutungschung 65 (2002); Jan C. Westerhoff, "A World of Signs: Baroque Pansemioticism, the Polyhistor and the Early Modern Wunderkammer," Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 309 motto, a picture, and an explanatory text, which asked the viewer to assemble the three parts in order to produce meaning.91 Such forms of reading engage the viewer into dialogical relationships with the image and the text, and as Daniel

Russell has shown, emblems encouraged paradigmatic relationships, prompting viewers to string together disparate objects to produce meaning.92 For the sixteenth-century humanist Joannes Sambucus, this mosaic-like composition of emblems was indebted to the etymology of the word “emballesthia,” which in

Greek means “to insert” or “to present” something obscure requiring explanation and reflection. These disparate parts, for Sambucus, can thus be seen as functioning like tessarae of a mosaic or operating similarly to something inserted in a rhetorical context.93 Emblems and hieroglyphs could serve rhetorical purposes and were often employed to formulate a message in veiled allegorical terms for the purpose of refreshing a familiar text.94 The attention given to the piecing together of the various parts, as well as to the act of decipherment through a veil, both have strong correlations to the notion of fabula discussed in the previous chapter. These forms of reading, as exemplified in chapter three, were employed to interpret diptychs, double-sided portraits, medals, and other objects in the spaces of collections in the fifteenth century. The sign of the ermine, then,

91 Manning, The Emblem, 18. 92 Daniel S. Russell, "Perceiving, Seeing and Meaning: Emblems and Some Approaches to Reading Early Modern Culture," in Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500- 1700, ed. Peter M. Daly and Peter Manning, AMS Studies in the Emblem (New York: AMS Press, Inc, 1999), 83. 93 A.S.Q. Visser, Joannes Sambucus and the Learned Image. The Use of the Emblem in Late- Renaissance Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 89. 94 John Manning, "Introduction," in Aspects of Renaissance and Baroque Symbol Theory, 1500- 1700, ed. Peter M. Daly and John Manning, AMS Studies in the Emblem (New York: AMS Press, Inc, 1999), xvii; Rudolf Wittkower, "Hieroglyphics I. The Conceptual Impact of Egypt from the Fifteenth Century Onward," in Selected Lectures of Rudolf Wittkower. The Impact of Non- European Civilizations on the Art of the West, ed. Donald Martin Reynolds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 95.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 310 should be viewed within these forms of dialogical readings that were then developed further in emblem books a century later. Similar to mottoes or personal devices, the ermine had symbolic meanings that required a decipherment. But unlike personal devices, the employment of the ermine was not restricted to the use of one individual, but was something that linked the individual with an exclusive body of members who employed the emblem. While there are no specific laws outlining the use of the device of the ermine, it can be assumed that in general, the employment of the device was restricted to those who had received membership in the Order. Through the allegorical association of the ermine with fidelity, this symbolic association acted as a veiled political message. Rather than overt political propaganda, it was veiled within the representations of the Order and the ideals of brotherhood, to signal allegiance to the king.

There were a number of texts that dealt with the ermine, dating from antiquity, such as Pliny’s Natural History, as well as contemporary works including the moralising Tuscan text of animal stories entitled Flowers of Virtue and Leonardo da Vinci’s Manuscript H. Leonardo discusses the ermine twice, both times in relation to moderation, where the creature is noted as eating only once a day and is said to prefer death rather than stain its purity.95 The weasel, closely associated with the ermine, was discussed in a variety of bestiaries that cited Ovid, Pliny, and other ancient authors, and was believed to conceive through the ear and to give birth through the mouth. This underlined the purity of the

95 “[Moderation]. The ermine out of moderation never eats but once a day, and it would rather let itself be captured by hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity” and “Moderation curbs all the vices: the ermine prefers to die rather than soil itself.” From Manuscript H, folio 12R and 48V, quoted in Beck, "Dream of Leonardo," 188-9.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 311 animal, but also stressed that their conception and birth was miraculous and involved divine intervention.96 The institution of the Order of the Ermine in 1465 would have linked these existing notions of the ermine with the king’s adaptation of these concepts. The majority of authors who discuss the ermine in the sixteenth century, as discussed above, correlated the ermine with King Ferrante of Naples, thus stressing not only the natural characteristics of the animal, as representing purity and moderation, but also noting the un-natural or arbitrary aspects of its sign as a representation of fidelity, which alluded to the clemency of the prince in relation to Marzano and the Order’s mottoes.

For instance, a medal by Pisanello of Belloto Cumano from 1447 depicts an ermine on the reverse, probably in reference to purity, but also as a pun on the word bellotula alluding to Belloto’s name and the word weasel (Figure 45).97 The accompanying script only alludes to Pisanello as the artist of the medal, and makes no reference to Ferrante or the Order, as the Order was not yet instituted, and the use of the ermine was thus employed as a personal device, as a pun on the sitter’s name and probably alluding to purity. With the institution of the Order, medallic representations of ermines soon came to be closely associated with members of the Order. Federigo da Montefeltro is depicted on the obverse of a medal with the reverse depicting an ermine on a platform, accompanied by a scroll with the script “NON MAI”, a translation of one of the mottoes associated

96 Musascchio uses the term weasel interchangeable throughout the text for all small beasts, such as the ermine, sable, marten and skunk. Musacchio, "Weasels and Pregnancy," 181-2. These associations with purity and conception would have also provided correlations with the Order of the Jar, which was connected to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. 97 Wittkower, "Hieroglyphics," 102; Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance Before Cellini, 11, Medal 39.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 312 with the Order, nunquam (Figure 46).98 As a medal that circulated and was shown to a variety of individuals, the representation of the ermine and its motto would have made visible the sitter and the Order. While George Hill has suggested that the medal is a sixteenth-century copy, it demonstrates how the ermine became clearly associated with the Order and signalled political and social networks connected to the Aragonese. Indeed, Federigo was to employ the device throughout his artistic projects, in his palace, in portraiture, and in manuscript illumination, which signalled the prestige of being granted membership into the

Order, as well as a form of authentication, which will be discussed below.

Ferrante employed the use of the ermine, not on a medal, but on a series of his coins.99 One set of coins depicts the Aragonese arms on the obverse with the ermine on the reverse bearing the scroll with the script DECORVM (Figure 47), and another coin contained a depiction of the ermine on the obverse with the flaming throne on the reverse. Ferrante’s successors, Alfonso II and Ferdinando II

(Ferrandino) also used the ermine on their coins (Figure 48), and similar to the

“cavalli” coins which allowed for a direct correlation between the equine and money, the presence of the ermine on the Aragonese coins furthered a connection of the ermine with the Aragonese and correlated the ermine with the idea of money, and thus wealth.100 The use of the ermine on medals and coins allowed for a circulation of the sign, and enabled a variety of individuals across different spaces to come into contact with the representation. The employment of the

98 Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance Before Cellini, 79, medal 317. 99 Museo Gaetano Filangieri, ed., Un secolo di grande arte nella monetazione di Napoli (1442- 1556), vol. I (Naples: Museo Filangieri, 1973), 78, 9, cat. 67, 8 and 70. 100 Filangieri, ed., Secolo di monetazione, 96-7 and 102.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 313 symbol of the ermine thus became representative of Aragonese hegemony as well as the family’s political and social networks.

Significantly, the ermine is represented on one of fourteen medallions carved on the bronze doors of the Castel Nuovo in Naples dated by most scholars between 1474-7 (Figure 49 and 50).101 The bronze doors depict six scenes, which form a narrative of Marino Marzano’s treachery, leading to Ferrante’s final victory over the rebellious barons at Troia, in Apulia on 18 August 1462 (Figure

50).102 The top medallions once represented King Ferrante and his first wife,

Queen Isabella di Chiaramonte. The bottom medallions portray the artist,

Guglielmo Monaco, and an unknown portrait of a man, suggested by George

Hersey to be the humanist Bartolomeo Fazio, who he proposes may have been the designer of the program.103 The eight medallions, which frame the two central panels, depict the various devices of the Aragonese, many of which are associated with the Order of the Ermine. These devices, starting from the top left and moving clockwise are: the mountain of diamonds, the Aragonese arms, Ferrante’s personal device of jousting headgear with dragon, the flaming throne, the sprouting stock, the ermine with the motto PROBANDA, the open book, and finally the impresa del nodo or knot, the latter two being favourite devices of

101 Hersey references Filangieri who dated the doors between this time, noting that the cedole are missing between mid-1474 through the end of 1475, and because they are not referenced in other court records, he assumes this a suitable date. Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 42 and 95, n. 46. The reliefs currently located on the doors in the Castel Nuovo are actually copies. The originals are housed inside on display in the museum (Museo Civico). 102 For a discussion of the bronze doors, see Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 42-4, Figures 57-63; Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 209; Filangieri, Documenti Vol VI, 179. 103 Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 42-3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 314

Alfonso I d’Aragona, Ferrante’s father.104 The narrative scenes are not read in a consecutive manner, but rather, jump from top to bottom and then to the middle, and are accompanied by Latin text. The narrative begins at the top left, which depicts Ferrante’s meeting with Marzano at Calvi, accompanied by the Latin text:

“The prince with Jacopo and the deceitful Deifobo; they simulate a conference so that the king may be slain.”105 The next panel in the cycle, the upper right, depicts

Marzano’s attack on Ferrante’s life as he defends himself with his sword, with

Deifobo and the king’s attendant also in combat, accompanied by the text: “The

Mars-mighty king, more spirited than famous Hector, probed with his shining blade, that the plot might perish.”106 The next two scenes are on the two bottom panels, reading left to right, and depict the retreat of the Angevins and the

Aragonese entry into Accadia. The central panels thus compose the climax and the end of the story. The central right panel depicts the Battle of Troia, with the

Aragonese chasing the Angevins out, accompanied by the quote “The Trojan

Ferrante conquered the enemy in the field as Caesar conquered Pompey at

Oechalia” (Figure 51) 107 The final scene, the left central panel, depicts the siege and surrender of Troia, where the Aragonese enter the triumphal gate, and the

104 Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 209. For a description of the various devices used by the Aragonese, see Tommaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei re d'Aragona. Supplemento, vol. Tomo I. Testo (Verona: Stamperia Valdonega, 1969), 129-35. 105 PRINCEPS CUM JACOBO CUM DIOFEBO QUE DOLOSO/ UT REGEM PER[I]MANT COLLOQUIUM SIMULANT. Hersey’s translation, Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 42. 106 HOS REX MARTI POTENS ANIMOSIOR HECTORE CLARO/ SENSIT UT INSIDIAS ENSE MICANTE FUGAT. Translation from Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 42. 107 HOSTEM TROJANUS FERDINANDUS VICIT IN ARVIS SICUT POMPEIUM CESAR IN AHACTIS [OECHALIIS], translated in Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 43.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 315 final inscription reads: “Troia gave rest to our side, and an end to the labor, in which place the enemy shed much blood and was routed.”108

The way the viewer is asked to read the narrative scenes is particularly interesting. Not only does it give a spiralling effect to the narrative sequence, creating a motion of bodies and horsemen, as Hersey has noted, but the combination of text, device, and image asks the viewer to piece together the various components, encouraging an emblematic or fabulesque reading.109 The text is also important as it constructs the narrative, not merely narrating by the scenes, but by making the viewer compare the contemporary scenes depicted with the stories of antiquity. The entire cycle stresses the theme of Ferrante’s strength against his plotting rival, the traitor Marzano. The narrative begins with the murderous attempt on Ferrante’s life by Marzano depicted with very few figures, adding an emphasis on the two protagonists. It concludes with the victorious entry of Ferrante’s troops into Accadia. The placement of the ermine medallion is noteworthy, as it is situated closest to the viewer, at handle-level, and joins the other two devices on the same panel—the flaming throne and the sprouting stock—which make up the gold collar (Figure 51). Furthermore, the ermine is the only device that has an accompanying motto, PROBANDA. Probanda comes from the Latin probatus, that is tried, tested, approved, or most worthy.110 This motto was regularly attached to other representations of the ermine and thus stressed Ferrante’s right to rule, executing justice and laying claim to the throne

108 TROIA DEDIT NOSTRO REQUIEM FINEMQUE LABORI/ IN QUA HOSTEM EUDI [FUDI] FORTITER AC PEPULI. Translation from Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 43. 109 Hersey notes that the spiral like-reading acts as a sort of widening and swaying of a “funnel of men plunging into the depths of the scene.” Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 43. 110 Charlton T. Lewis, An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 316 through his victory over Marzano. The ermine’s location between the narratives of the Aragonese victory also stresses this correlation. It is also noteworthy that the other device at handle-level, which culminates the narrative of successful victory over treachery—the flaming open book—was instigated by Alfonso I d’Aragona, and is said to represent Alfonso’s act of burning the record books after the rebellious revolt of Sanseverino, as a sign of Alfonso’s clemency in forgetting

Sanseverino’s treason.111

The location of the doors must also be considered, as they are situated at the main portal of the Castel Nuovo, below the great marble arch which depicts the triumphal entry of Alfonso I d’Aragona into Naples (Figure 2, 52 and 53). The bronze doors are visible in Sarnelli’s print depicting the triumphal arch, the façade of the Castel Nuovo, with the doors shown below (Figure 52). Viewers would thus first observe the marble representation of Alfonso I d’Aragona on his triumphal cart, notably wearing his collar of the Jar. Visitors would then pass through the inner arch, a project commissioned by Ferrante in 1465, which depicted the procession and coronation of Ferrante, with the inscription:

“SUCCESSI REGNO PATRIO CUNCTISQUE PROBATUS/ ET TRABEAM

ET REGNI SACRUM DIADEMA RECEPI” (I succeeded to my father’s kingdom having been thoroughly tested/ and received the robe and holy crown of the realm.)112 Here again, we confront the word probatus, which would have provided a connection between Ferrante’s succession to the throne through being tried and tested, explored visually through the progression from the triumphal

111 Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 247. 112 Translation by Hersey. For the inner arch, see Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 41.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 317 arch depicting Alfonso’s entry into Naples, through the inner arch representation of Ferrante’s coronation, and culminating in the doors, with Ferrante’s successful victory over the treacherous Marzano. Considering that the triumphal arch was topped by a figure of the Archangel Michael, the patron saint of the Order, in conjunction with the portal doors which depicted the treachery of Marzano, the effect would have provided strong associations to the Order of the Ermine.

The portal was not the only location where the ermine made its appearance in the Castel Nuovo. There was a large room entitled “dell’Ermellino”, which had a ceiling made of 428 coffers decorated with the imprese of the ermine and the mountain of diamonds. Scholars have suggested this decoration probably resembled the ceiling of the Urbino studiolo, which also has coffers depicting various imprese including the ermine (Figure 54).113 In the “stanze nuove” there was also a table with stools painted with the impresa of the ermine.114 An ermine appeared in a terracotta group which formed part of a fountain found at

Poggioreale, the villa built by Alfonso II d’Aragona.115 It was noted by Capaccio in the early seventeenth century, who described the sculpture as an ermine being captured by hunters, thus alluding to the particular nature of the ermine, but no doubt, also symbolically referencing the Order and the clemency of the Aragonese in face of their traitors.116 Indeed, the whole villa is known to have had been covered with frescoes depicting the Barons’ Revolt, thus stressing the Order’s

113 de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I, 144, n. 53. Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 237-8. 114 Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 246-7. 115 Colombo, "Poggioreale," 201; Hersey, Artistic Renewal of Naples, 64. 116 “Ex creta etiam integrum Sirenis symbolum extat…Armellimun scilicet animal quod ne coeno fedatur libenter se capiendum venatoribus tradit.” Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Neapolitanae Historiae. BNN RAC VILL B 742 (Naples: Apud. Io. Iacobum Carlinum, 1607), 435.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 318 theme of the tried, tested, and just prince.117 Other Aragonese devices were also employed throughout the Castel Nuovo, such as the keystones in the main entry vault and as architectural embellishments in the interior courtyard.118 We also know that Filippo Strozzi decorated the lettuccio he gave to the king with the mountain of diamonds and Gaetano Filangieri has noted that Ferrante also had a bed with the impresa of the burning book accompanied by the motto Recedant vetera. 119

An ermine with the motto PROBANDA appears in the border illumination along with the other devices of the open book, the sprouting stock, the mountain of diamonds, the knot, and the flaming throne in Andrea Contrario’s Reprehensio sive objurgatio in calumniatorem divini Platonis, illuminated by Cola Rapicano

(Figure 55).120 The border decoration also contains copies of coins or cameos depicting busts of Hannibal, Antoninus Pius, Galba, and Nero. In addition there is a copy of the reverse of Alfonso I’s medal by Pisanello, depicting an eagle and other birds perched above a dead hare, and a portrait of Alfonso d’Aragona. The original Pisanello medal was accompanied by the motto LIBERALITAS

AUGUSTA. Liberalitas was often associated with the eagle, who shares its prey with other birds, and stood for the virtues of a good prince who rewarded those in his service.121 The initial C contains a portrait of King Ferrante, the dedicatee and

117 Hersey, Artistic Renewal of Naples, 65. 118 Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 95-6. 119 For the lettuccio see chapter two. The letter describing the devices on the lettuccio is reproduced in del Treppo, "Avventure," 489. For the other bed with the book device, see Filangieri, Castel Nuovo, 247. 120 The manuscript is located at the BNP, Latin 12947. Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 66, cat. 10; François Avril et al., Dix siècles d'enluminure italienne (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1984), 174-5. 121 Hersey, Aragonese Arch, 28.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 319 owner of the work, wearing a gold collar, which is too small to make out, and although the links do not mimic the devices of the ermine, the small pendant with the scroll could very well be the pendant ermine associated with the Order. The combination of emperors, the use of Alfonso’s medal stressing liberalitas, and the presence of many of the devices connected with the Order of the Ermine stress a continuation of the Aragonese dynasty, and the just rule of Ferrante.

Another text illuminated by Cola Rapicano dates from c.1480-5 and also contains an ermine in the border decoration, accompanied by the other devices of the flaming open book, the jar, the stock, the knot, and the flaming throne.122 Here the ermine is accompanied by the motto DECORVM on a scroll (Figure 56). The text is Book IV of Duns Scotus’ Quaestiones on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and the scribe, Pietro Ippolito da Luni, notes he is writing on the order of King

Ferrante “while turbulent warfare grips Italy”, probably referencing the invasion of Otranto by the Turks in the early 1480s.123 The presence of the ermine here, then, with the word decorum, perhaps references Ferrante’s propriety in face of war with the infidel, and alludes to the anti-Turkish sentiment in the statutes. The ermine appears often in other manuscripts belonging to the Aragonese, and these two examples should only be indicative of how often it was used.124

122 The manuscript is located in BL, Additional MS. 15273. Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 66, cat. 9. 123 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 66. 124 For example, Ferrante’s copy of Livy’s Roman History also contains an ermine on folio 7r, accompanied below by another motto of Ferrante’s “Amor min[c]iende e struggie.” The ermine takes its place in the border illumination among copies of cameos, representations of jewels, animals, and portraits of emperors. Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 118, cat. 49. For numerous examples of the ermine in illumination, see Tommaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei Re d'Aragona, vol. IV (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1947).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 320

An ermine also appears in the frontispiece of Diomede Carafa’s De istitutione vivendi, dedicated to Beatrice d’Aragona, the future Queen of Hungary and daughter of Ferrante (Figure 57).125 Here, Beatrice receives the book from

Diomede, who is kneeling on his knees, with the inscription DIOMEDES

PERPETVO FIDELIS, and above them is an ermine with a scroll with the word

DECORVM. The border also contains the imprese of the mountain of diamonds, the flaming throne, and the flaming book, as well as representations of the four virtues. Below, the arms of the Aragonese are supported by the arms of Diomede

Carafa with the inscription FIDELITAS. Tommaro de Marinis has also described a similar frontispiece in Carafa’s De regimine principis dedicated to Eleonora d’Aragona in the Hermitage.126 Carafa is one of the knights listed as a member of the Order of the Ermine, but the representation here of the ermine, I would suggest, not only symbolises his membership, but also stresses the symbolic capabilities of such a sign. That is, the presence of the ermine, hovering at the top of the page above the dedication portraits, in conjunction with the inscriptions of decorum and fidelitas, underlines Diomede’s allegiance to the king and the king’s daughters, who are the dedicatees of his texts. These representations stress the ways the immaterial notion of fidelity soon takes material form through the repetition and re-inscription of its sign—the ermine—and stresses its discursive possibilities by the constant confrontation of the sign in an array of media.

Eleonora moved to Ferrara and Beatrice to Hungary for their respective marriages, and this relocation underlines the ways in which these books would

125 The manuscript is located in Parma, at the Biblioteca Palatina, cod. 1654. de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 12-3, Fig. 4. 126 de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I Supplemento, 31.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 321 have been viewed in the libraries or studioli of these two women located across

Europe. Furthermore, as discussed in chapter two, images in manuscript illumination representing gems, medallions, and other precious objects, constituted ways that objects and their stories could circulate in the late

Quattrocento. The presence of the ermine in many manuscripts belonging to various owners underlines the ways the image and its significance were disseminated. The emblematic reading of such manuscripts, that is the piecing together of word, image, and sign, also allows for the viewer to engage with the representations in a dialogical and fabulesque manner. Moreover, the ubiquitous representations of the ermine on a variety of objects—in books in the library, on medals in the studiolo, on architectural decoration throughout the palace— establishes a circuitry of images that depend upon each other by prompting viewers to draw connections to similar images in other locations. This larger frame of reference—beyond the specific image being viewed—forges connections outside the image itself. It is thus the idea that circulates, the constellation of references that are condensed into the emblem and which activate discussions.

In addition to the representations of the ermine alone, we also find representations of the gold collar itself. These representations stress the material aspects of wearing the gold collar, and underline what the gold collar could symbolise for contemporary viewers. In contrast to a sign, the gold collar is a material possession and a worn object; representations of the gold collar substitute for an actual object, one that claims exclusive membership in the Order. The bronze bust attributed to Guido Mazzoni now in the Museo di Capodimonte in

Naples, sports the collar of the Order, with the devices of the open book, the

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 322 mountain of diamonds, the sprouting stock, and the flaming throne, composing the links of the chain with the ermine as the pendant (Figure 58). As a bronze bust, the relief of the collar on the three-dimensional sculpture provides the viewer with a solid form similar to the actual gold collar, and we are reminded of the artist’s modelling of the bronze, similar to the goldsmith’s facture of the actual necklace. As the gold collar is made through the process of the artist’s manipulation of the material, so the body is also made through a process as it is invested with the gold collar. As D’arcy Dacre Boulton has remarked, the collar represented here is not the same collar described in the statutes, as the devices of the mountain of diamonds and the book do not appear in the statutes’ description of the collar. Boulton has also noted that the devices appear to be applied here in random order, and these differences may be the result of artistic licence.127 The sitter also wears a pinned brooch on his cap, representing the Archangel Michael, thus also referencing the patron saint of the Order of the Ermine.

There is some debate around the identity of the sitter. It has long been assumed to be the bust of Ferrante, but Hersey and Roberto Pane have suggested that it is a portrait of Alfonso II.128 Hersey believes it to be Alfonso II because of the similarities shared between the bust and other portrait representations of

Alfonso and because the sculpture was noted by Mazella as originally placed in the chapel in Monteoliveto, a monastery which Alfonso had close ties with.

However, Mazzella’s reference to the bronze portrait in his Le vite dei re di

127 Boulton notes the order from his right shoulder to his left: mount, book, stock, chair, mount, book, mount, stock, chair, mount, book. Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 424, n. 99. However, as the pendant ermine was detachable, the ermine may have been attached to another collar. 128 Hersey, Artistic Renewal of Naples, 29; Pane, "Guido Mazzoni," 55.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 323

Napoli, dating from the sixteenth century, is located in his section on Ferrante.

Right after discussing the Order of the Ermine, he notes that a bust of Ferrante can be found in bronze in the chapel of the “Passione di N.S. Giesu Christo” in

Monteoliveto.129 Similarly, Capaccio also states that the bronze portrait is that of

Ferrante.130 The placement of the bronze statue in the chapel underscores the ways the collar and the Order would have been viewed by many, making the

Order public through its visual representations. While Mazzella’s text was published a century after the bust’s execution, and may or may not be accurate,

Mazzella does provide us with portraits to accompany his histories of the kings of

Naples.

The printed portrait that begins Mazzella’s section on Ferrante depicts the king in a very similar pose to the bronze statue, wearing a similar brocaded gown, with the pendant ermine, although the links of the chain are not those of the

Order’s collar, but resemble closely those of the Golden Fleece, and Ferrante is sporting a crown rather than the beret (Figure 59).131 Mazzella comments that there are a series of portrait busts in Naples of Ferrante, which suggests that any of these could have provided the model for the print; however the printed portrait could also be an innovation on the part of the artist, printer, or publisher.132 The portrait in the media of print would have circulated and thus disseminated the sign

129 Mazzella, Vite, 397. 130 Capaccio, Forastiero, 222-3. 131 Mazzella, Vite, 318. 132 For the printed portrait in frontispieces and biographical portrait books, see Ruth Mortimer, "The Author's Image: Italian Sixteenth-Century Printed Portraits," Harvard Library Bulletin 7, no. 2 (1996). Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice. Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), Chapter 4. Also see my MA thesis for relevant bibliography, Leah R. Clark, "Libri e Donne: Learned Women and Their Portraits" (MA Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 2005).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 324 of the ermine, underlining the diverse ways the Order and the representation of the ermine may have come into contact with a wide range of individuals, well into the sixteenth century. Here the medium of print also reminds us of the process of engraving, whereby the collar is engraved on to the plate, inscribing that portrait with the valorous sign of the ermine, similar to the ways the collar invested and inscribed the body with signification. Whether Ferrante or Alfonso, Mazzoni’s bronze bust demonstrates the way the collar was an important component of creating an identity for the sitter, marking him as a member or Capo of the Order and then publicising the Order through the bronze’s placement in the chapel and its copies in print.

As mentioned, Federigo da Montefeltro was depicted with the gold collar and the mantle in the portrait of him and his son (Figure 41). In considering the genre of portraiture, we might ask in what ways did the mantle and the collar construct and constitute the identity of the sitter? The collar and clothing branded him as part of the confraternal brotherhood of the Order and linked him to other illustrious members. The dual portrait is generally assumed to have been placed in the Urbino studiolo, keeping company among the other famous men depicted there.133 As Luciano Cheles has noted, “the status, interests, and other biographical details of the famous men are expressed through four main “codes”: garments, attributes, gestures and inscriptions.”134 If we view the dual portrait in a similar manner, the garments and collar play a crucial role in defining Federigo’s identity and status. The ermine and the gold collar appears in the coffers of the

133 Clough, "Art as Power," 23. For a discussion of the various debates on the organisation of the studiolo and the portrait, see Cheles, Studiolo, 15-8. 134 Cheles, Studiolo, 39.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 325 blue and gold ceiling in Urbino (Figures 54 and 60) and Federigo is represented again in the studiolo at Urbino sporting the collar of the Ermine, with the ermine pendant dangling, this time in intarsia, possibly by the da Maiano brothers (Figure

61).135 Thus Federigo was depicted twice with the gold collar in different media: one that was a painted realistic portrait playing on mimesis, and the other, an intarsia portrait in wood, that was part of the wall decoration of the studiolo and exemplified the artist’s skill in his manipulation of wood. In both the Gubbio and

Urbino studioli the ermine is a repeated motif throughout the intarsia decoration

(Figure 62). In the Urbino studiolo, the ermine, according to Cheles’ reconstruction, appears below the personifications of Hope and Charity, which he suggests was an appropriate placement considering the ermine symbolised purity.136 The collar is also reproduced in both the Gubbio and Urbino studioli, although the Gubbio representation is lacking the pendant ermine (Figures 60 and

63).137 The collar thus appears numerous times in the Urbino studiolo, twice on

Federigo, once in intarsia hanging from a cloth on the west wall (Figure 60), and repeatedly in the coffered ceiling encircling the letters FED DUX.138 The iconographic program of the Urbino studiolo was one in which symbols, texts, images, and portraits, worked together to allow the educated viewer to construct meaning. In this manner, the presence of the repeated ermine not only functioned as an attribute for Federigo in constructing his identity as a prestigious member of the Order, but it also aided in this emblematic reading of the entire room.

135Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo, 44, 119-21. Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 620; Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 33, fig. 4. 136 Cheles, Studiolo, 78. 137 Raggio, The Gubbio Studiolo, 120-1, Figure 5076. 138 Cheles, Studiolo, 84.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 326

Federigo employed the gold collar of the Order of the Ermine in its entirety in the illumination of his manuscripts, thus drawing further relationships between the variety of objects representing the sign of the ermine.139 Represented in his studiolo portrait, Federigo bears the gold collar, but the books used in that space also contained depictions of the ermine and the gold collar, therefore creating dialogues between the different representations and objects. Federigo’s copy of

Dante’s Divina Commedia (Figure 64a), for instance, contains a representation of the gold collar at the bottom of folio 97.140 Here the collar is illuminated in gold, depicting the links of the chain with the flaming throne, and a sprouting stock, with the pendant ermine.141 The ermine stands on a platform of dirt with a scroll, which descends into the border, forming one of the border medallions (Figure

64b). The collar encircles the coat of arms of Federigo, accompanied by the letters

FE DVX. The same folio also contains a representation of the Order of the Garter, appearing at the top of the page, encircling reclining putti. Furthermore, in the left border, a gold ermine appears in a medallion, and representations of the ermine appear throughout the manuscript.142 Federigo’s copy of Leonardo Bruni’s

Historia florentini populi also contains a representation of the gold collar in the border illumination, this time the collar is in full colour, the chain’s links representing the flaming throne and sprouting stock, now more similar to the spouting stock of the Aragonese device, and the ermine suspended below is white

139 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 406. 140 Alexander, Italian Renaissance Illuminations, 88, Plate 25. 141 The sprouting stock appears here more like a trunk. One wonders if the illumination was done following the description in the statutes rather than the actual collar, which might explain the odd portrayal here. 142 For example, an ermine appears in the upper border decoration of folio 1r. Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 133, cat 58.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 327 with a black scroll (Figure 65a-b).143 Below this representation an ermine alone is depicted on a grassy plain bearing a scroll. The representations of the ermine and the gold collar would thus be viewed every time the books were read and would have created connections to other representations of the ermine and collar across space: in the architecture of the Urbino palace, with Federigo’s portrait in the studiolo, and the other representations across Italy, featuring on coins, medals, and in architecture and sculpture.

The importance of the Order of the Ermine for the dukes of Urbino is also expressed in a portrait generally assumed to be Duke Francesco Maria della

Rovere (1490-1538) by Carpaccio. The portrait is accompanied by an ermine in the undergrowth, with the motto, MALO MORI QVAM FEODARI, written on a cartouche (Figure 66).144 Francesco is not known to have been bestowed with the

Order, but as he was the nephew and successor of Federigo, the presence of the ermine may have been a means to speak to the dynastic and political aspirations of the family.145

Federigo’s use of the ermine underlines the political as well as prestigious connotations that the ermine could project, but it also underlines the ways in which representations of a sign, and its repetitions through a variety of media, allow for the transmission of its semiotic capabilities, and indeed demonstrates the way a material object and its representations constitute political and social

143 Alexander, ed., Painted Page, 141, cat. 64. 144 Vittorio Sgarbi, Carpaccio, trans. Jay Hyams (New York and London: Abbeville Press, 1994), 154-5. 145 While he is not mentioned in the list of members published by most scholars, Capaccio notes that a Spanish copy of the statutes can be found in his library. This may have been the statutes inherited by Duke Federigo, or Duke Francesco may have been indeed invested with the Order. Capaccio, Forastiero, 223.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 328 relationships. Other representations of collars, such as those of the Jar and Golden

Fleece are represented on Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I’s triumphal arch, acting as decorative embellishments.146 Maximillian’s attention to genealogy and heraldry is explicit throughout the arch, and Albrecht Dürer’s representation of the collars of the Order of the Jar (Figure 42) and the Golden Fleece underline the international networks of such orders, as well as the ability of their depictions to signal social and political prestige.

Besides the employment of the ermine device in Urbino, Ludovico il Moro

(Duke of Bari 1479 and Duke of Milan, 1494-1500), who was invested with the

Order, also employed the device in diverse ways. A drawing in the Fitzwilliam

Museum in Cambridge by Leonardo da Vinci, usually dated to the mid-1490s, depicts the ermine being captured by a hunter, and has been suggested to be the disegno for a medal or fresco for Ludovico (Figure 67).147 The representation is especially interesting because Leonardo has not depicted any ermine, but specifically that of the Order. The stance of the ermine is the same pose that we see depicted on the collar and in manuscript illumination, and furthermore, it is accompanied by a scroll, presumably intended to have the inscription of one of the mottoes belonging to the Order. We also find the ermine—in its more natural

146 Eduard Chmelarz, Maximilian's Triumphal Arch. Woodcuts by Albrecht Dürer and Others (New York: Dover Publications, 1972). Depictions of the collar of the Order of the Jar appear on two columns, see Plates 14 and 20. For depictions of the Collar of the Golden Fleece see Plates 17 and 23. A depiction of the collar of the Order of the Jar also appears in another woodcut by Dürer in a text made for the Knight Waldauf von Waldenstein. The arms of the Knight are accompanied by three collars, one of which is the Order of the Jar. Willy Kurth, The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer (New York: Crown Publishers, 1946), 23-4, Plate 130. 147Carlo Pedretti, "La dama dell'ermellino come allegoria politica," in Studi politici in onore di Luigi Firpo, ed. Silvia Rota Ghibandi and Franco Barcia (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), 167. Janice Shell and Grazioso Sironi, "Cecilia Gallerani: Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine," Artibus et Historiae 13, no. 25 (1992): 53.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 329 form—being employed in Leonardo’s famous portrait of Cecilia Galerani, this time as a play on the sitter’s name, but no doubt also in connection to Ludovico and his membership in the Order, as she was his mistress (Figure 68).148 Here

Leonardo has played with the sign through mimesis, thus employing the ermine in an allegorical sense, complicating the correlation between signifier and signified, and asking the viewer to work harder at deciphering the meaning of the presence of the ermine.

The representation of the ermine, then, from the collar to architectural decoration to manuscript illumination repeats the symbol of the ermine as a stamp, similar to printing. It imprints the body and the objects within a network of associations, that is, a set of privileged associations only few were granted. Like a

“stamp” or seal, it both authenticates the objects as well as creates links between loci, forming a circuitry of imagery across media and space. These diverse representations thus worked to reinscribe the original ritual and promulgate the

Order. In contrast to the flat sign, the gold collar and the mantle of the Order inscribed the bodies of members, making the rituals of the Order memorialised through the materiality of these objects, which will now be elaborated upon.

VI. Ceremonial: Mantles, Collars, and Bodily Inscription

The activities of the Order of the Ermine will be examined here, through the material objects—the mantle and the collar—that provided participants with a

148 Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Lady with an Ermine has been interpreted a number of different ways, but what is generally agreed upon is that the presence of the ermine is a play on the sitter’s surname, Cecilia Gallerani, the Greek galé meaning ermine. The portrayal of a beast, which signalled purity and chastity, has also been seen as a suitable symbol for a mistress, who would have wanted to stress her chastity in the face of court gossip. Much has been written on the portrait, for bibliography see Shell and Sironi, "Cecilia Gallerani."; Pedretti, "La dama dell'ermellino."

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 330 form of bodily engagement, and thus transformed the material objects into richly symbolic things. That is, the mantle and the collar reiterated the bodily practice of investiture, and acted as material memories of the ritual of investiture. Moreover the repeated wearing of those items on specific days stressed further the transformation of individual bodies into a collective body.149

Let us start with the statutes detailing the regulations of investiture and the wearing of the mantle. The mantle is described in chapter eight of the statutes as follows:

The mantle of the Order which the companions shall wear shall be split and open on the right side, of crimson satin, falling to the heels, and shall be lined with skins of ermine and around the neck. The gown (veste) underneath the mantle shall be of white silk, falling to the heels.150

The gown was thus composed of a variety of expensive cloth materials and colours: crimson satin, white fur, and white silk, all of which are meticulously rendered in the portrait of Federigo da Montefeltro (Figure 41). Not only would the expensive material have signalled opulence for contemporary viewers, but the fact that the mantle was that of the Order of the Ermine would have created associations between the identity of the sitter with the King of Naples and other illustrious individuals bestowed with the Order. Chapter seven of the statutes explains in extreme detail how the companion-elect, who was not a sovereign

149 I am greatly indebted in my use of “material memories” to the work of Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing. 150 “El mantello de l’ordine el quale portaranno li confratri serrà spaccato et aperto da’l lato dextro, de setino raso carmosino long fine alle calcagna et serrà foderato de pelle de arminio et inserrato a’l collo. La veste de sopto el manto serrà de seta bianca et fine a li taloni sive calcagna longa.” Vitale, Araldica, 141. My translation, with slight variation, is based primarily on the English translation published in Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 426.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 331 prince, should be invested with the Order of the Ermine. I include a transcription here of this rite:

Firstly, we, dressed in the vestments and collar of the said order, with all the confratri of the order, all of who are present, will go together to the ecclesia in which we celebrate the officio. He who is taking the Order will go to the palacio and casa reale with the most solemn compagnia possible, and we will accompany him all the way to the said ecclesia. The insigni which will be bestowed on the said new knight will be placed in the sacrestia of the said ecclesia by the regio camerlino and guardaroba of the King and taken care of by the Herald or Official of Arms of the Order, and he will guard [the insigni]. The insigni will be brought on his arm when the officio commences and is celebrated, and will be placed on the right side of the altar, and the Chancellor will take [the insigni] and place the mantle and collar on the altar. The Herald will keep in his arm the white gown, and the officio and a solemn Mass of Sancto Michele archangelo will be celebrated. Between the Epistle and the Gospel, the most principal and distinguished of the companions, that is two or three confratri which the King has chosen, will stand up and accompany the knight to the middle of the sacristy, following the King of Arms, who will dress the knight in the white gown of the Order. Then they are to lead him back to the altar, where he is to kneel adoring God […] At the Offertory, […] the candidate is to be presented with the chapters of the Order and to listen to the instructions, and he is to swear with his hands placed in those of the Sovereign that he will diligently observe the chapters and instructions of this Order. When this is done, the Sovereign will place the collar on the said knight, which will have been taken from the altar by the Chancellor or Secretary, and given to the King, and the King will say these words: “Our Order for your great virtues, we have chosen you for a confratre and to signify this I give you these insigni, to render certain that by your virtue our amicable Compagnia will be ennobled, to the service and glory of the Omnipotent God, and in exaltation of the Holy Roman Church, augmenting this Order and your fame in this good moment. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” And the knight who has received the collar, is to kiss the Sovereign in sign of his faith.151

The companion-elect was therefore to first walk to the chapel with all the members of the Order, who were collectively dressed in the vestments of the

151 The Italian transcription of the rites is published in Vitale, Araldica, 135-40. For an English description of the rite, see Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 415-6.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 332

Order, his body made distinct from the collective body by his lack of the Order’s robes. This procession would have made visible the Order and its members to the citizens of Naples. The new member was then to receive the Order by swearing to obey the statutes, and being dressed and adorned in the mantle and the collar of the Order. Like the popular story of Griselda so often recounted in the

Renaissance, the new confratre is made and unmade, stripped and invested, through the unclothing and clothing of the body.152 It is through these rituals of investment that the clothes and materials become invested with meaning, turning the ‘real’ of fur, cloth, and gold, into symbolic things. At the same time, it is these material components that make the ritual effective. Exiting the church, the new confratre would not be the same individual he was when he entered the church, adorned now in the vestments of the Order, he is no longer distinct from his fellow confratri but made and dressed in their image.153

The investiture of Federigo da Montefeltro in 1474 and Ludovico il Moro in 1486 allows us to see the statutes in practice: the first constituting a visual record, the latter a textual one. A manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice depicts Federigo da Montefeltro receiving the Order from Ferrante (Figure

152 For the story of Griselda see Tenth Day, Tenth Story, in Italian, Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca (Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 1989). In English, Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (London: Penguin Books, 1995). For the Griselda story in relation to the exchange of women and clothing in the early modern period, see Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, Chapter 9, “(In)alienable Possessions: Griselda, Clothing, and the Exchange of Women”; Klapisch-Zuber, Women Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, Chapter 10, “The Griselda Complex: Dowry and Marriage Gifts in the Quattrocento”. 153 The importance of procession and its semiotic capacities for ritual is dealt with in Louis Marin, "Notes on a Semiotic Approach to Parade, Cortege, and Procession," in Time Out of Time, ed. Alessandro Falassi (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 226. Marin, for instance notes “parade, cortege, and procession create through their narrative aspect a system of values from which any parade, cortege, procession, or demonstration derives its legitimacy. The process of legitimization or actualization may, in turn, serve to formalize relationships between participants, such as the political relationship between a sovereign and a city.”

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 333

69a).154 The manuscript contains an anonymous oration delivered on the occasion of Federigo’s investiture and is dated from 1474. The script, written in golden lettering, is signed by Joan Marco Cinico, a cartolaio, printer, and court scribe

(Figure 69b), and the illumination is attributed to a Neapolitan miniaturist.155 De

Marinis has suggested there might be a correlation between this manuscript and a text listed in an old inventory of the library at Urbino.156 While the only reproduction that I have been able to find is very poor, de Marinis notes that the names of the three individuals represented are written on the outside scrolls around the cornice: ALFONSUS DUX; FERANTUS REX; FREDERICUS FEL

CO V.157 There are, however, many more individuals represented, spilling in from the two exterior doors on either side of the throne. It appears that the majority of the individuals wear the Order’s robes, except for the two gentlemen who frame the left and right of the throne. We might assume that these two non-members are high ranking officials at court, who are accompanying the king for the ceremony, or perhaps the corporate officers of the Order; thus the man to the left of Ferrante, in the Order’s robes, is likely Alfonso II. Ferrante sits on his throne, while

154 I have been unable to view this manuscript. De Marinis lists it under codice lat xi, 53 (or 4009) de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I, 48. Tommaro de Marinis and Alessandro Perosa, eds., Nuovi documenti per la storia del rinascimento (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1970), 171. 155 Cinico is noted in various court records as a printer, artist, copyist, bookseller, and scribe. See various entries in Barone, "Cedole ASPN X." It should be noted that he is also recorded as transcribing the statutes of the Order of the Jar in 1492, de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I, 134. Cinico also was the scribe for Beatrice’s copy of Diomede Carafa’s De regimine principis, now in Leningrad, which depicts the ermine in its illumination (Figure 57). The two frontispieces are rather similar, and as Cinico is recorded as an artist in court records, he may well have done the illumination. Alternatively, Cinico also seemed to have been involved in the book trade and production closely associated with the Aragonese, and may have employed the same artist for both manuscripts. 156 The inventory reads: “Narcisi theologi Melitensis Episcopi lucubrantiuncula in honorem Herminiani ordinis ab rege Ferando instituti cum laudibus excellentissimi Principis Federici Urbinatium Ducis. Ornatissima inserico rubro.” Quoted in de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I, 46. 157 de Marinis, Bib. Nap. Vol I, 46.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 334

Federigo kneels at his feet, and it appears that the illuminator has captured the moment when Ferrante has just finished placing the gold collar on Federigo’s neck. According to the statutes, this constitutes the final stages of investiture, when the king announces the companion’s entry into the Order, right before the member is to kiss the king in sign of his fidelity. While the image is not too clear, what is evident is the importance placed on the collar, as well as the unity of the members through the wearing of the vestments.

Ludovico’s investiture provides us with a textual account of the proceedings. In October 1486, Ferrante sent instructions to Philippo de Galerati and Simonotto de Belloprato, two individuals in the service of King Ferrante, to invest Ludovico Sforza with the Order of the Ermine in Milan.158 The Order was invested upon Ludovico, as is explained in a letter from Ferrante to Pirro d’Azzia, the Bishop of Pozzuoli, in recompense for Ludovico’s help during the Baron’s

Revolt and war with Innocent VIII, stressing the political elements of bestowing such orders.159 Ferrante’s instructions given to Philippo and Simonetto for

Ludovico’s investiture follow the statutes closely, and suggest that even twenty years after the initial founding of the Order, the statutes were still strictly

158 For the correspondence discussing the investiture see Rona Agata, "L'investitura di Lodovico il Moro dell'ordine dell'Armellino," Archivio storico lombardo CIII (1979): 346-58. Instructions were given to Philippo de Galerati and Simonetto de Belloprato, and were copied in a book of instructions kept in the Archivio in Naples, that were transcribed by Luigi Volpicella in 1916, Luigi Volpicella, ed., Regis Ferdinandi Primi, Instructionum Liber (10 maggio 1486-10 maggio 1488), Società Napoletana di Storia Patria. Monumenti Storici, Serie II. Documenti (Naples: Stab. Tip. Luigi Pierro & Figlio, 1916), 44-9. Capaccio notes in his Il forastiero that he had read these instructions. Presumably this was the same book that Volpicella transcribed, which Capaccio had access to in the seventeenth century in Naples: “Ho letto poi l’instruttioni che dona Re Ferdinando d’Aragona a Simonotto di Belprato, e Filippo di Galerati, quello Consigliero, e questo suo creato, i quali doueano conferire detto ordine di milita al Duca di Bari, doue si notano molti particolari del modo, & osseruanza di conferirlo, che potrò mostrarloui scritto per vostra sodisfattione.” Capaccio, Forastiero, 223. 159 Agata, "L'investitura," 349-50.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 335 followed. Both Philippo and Simonetto were to bring the “capitoli di dicto

Ordine” along with the “other necessary things to be given with this said impresa.”160 The instructions detail the rite, following the excerpt of the ritual, quoted above, very closely, noting that Ludovico was to be dressed in the “manto de lo Arminio” when taking the vow, kneeling upon his knees.161 In a letter from

November 1486, Ludovico writes to Branda da Castiglioni, Vescovo di Como, noting that he had “solemnemente acceptato et vestito la Impresa de S. Michele che ne ha per sua gratia mandata la M[aes]ta de S[igno]re Re Ferdinando” (“I solemnly accepted and [was] invested/vested [with] the Impresa of San Michele

[the Order of the Ermine] that by His graciousness King Ferrante had sent [to me]”).162 Here Ludovico notes that he not only accepted the Order, but uses the word vestito, which in Italian serves both as a noun—that of clothing or cloth—as well as a verb—to be dressed, or to get dressed.

In English, the words vestments or vest reference types of clothing, and resemble closely the word investiture, appointing someone in a position, that is, to invest that person with a title. The Italian investitura also draws a correlation between, investitura, vestito, and veste. The etymology of the word reveals the close relations between investiture and clothing. The clothing and unclothing of the body through vestito or investitura, that is, through the wearing of the mantle of the Order and the investiture of the Order, are crucial to the rite of initiating an individual body into a collective body. As Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter

160 “…de li capitoli di dicto Ordine, quali portate vui, Philippo, con le altre cose necessarie al dare di decta impresa.” Agata, "L'investitura," 358. 161 Agata, "L'investitura," 358. 162 Agata, "L'investitura," 346.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 336

Stallybrass have noted, “investiture, the putting on of clothes, […] quite literally constituted a person as a monarch or a freeman of a guild or a household servant.

Investiture was, in other words, the means by which a person was given a form, a shape, a social function, a ‘depth.’”163 As Jones and Stallybrass have shown, clothes in the early modern period were not merely things that people wore, but were heavily invested with meaning and memories; material was “richly absorbent of symbolic meaning.”164 Livery was one of the ways in which “the social system marked bodies”, associating them with certain institutions and subordinating them within a social hierarchy.165 Dress and costume, as Bronwen

Wilson has noted in her study on Venice, could serve as the location of identity and alterity.166 It was the things worn over the body that became sites to locate difference as well resemblance. Clothing could also act as a “material mnemonic,” incorporating the wearer—the bearer of the ermine mantle in this case—into a communal brotherhood, investing the clothes with reminders of the rules, and binding the confratri into a network of memories, obligations, and commitments.167

The collar and the mantle were thus crucial components of the rite, and we can also see that they held symbolic importance, when we turn to the statutes regarding expulsion, detailed in the last thirteen ordinances of chapter fourteen.

As Boulton has remarked, no previous founder of an order had contained any detail about the rite of expulsion, and Ferrante’s emphasis on this can be seen as

163 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 2. 164 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 8 and 20. 165 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 5. 166 Wilson, World in Venice, especially Chapter 2. 167 Jones and Stallybrass discuss the material mnemonics of clothing throughout their book, but for the emphasis on obligation and incorporation see Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 20.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 337 his attempt to discourage any acts of treason, thus underlining the overarching theme of fidelity.168 It also demonstrates that even when invested with the Order, one’s membership was never completely secure, therefore requiring members to always perform their duties and allegiance. The ritual of expulsion is interesting because it demonstrates the ways in which the material objects made and unmade the subject, that is, the ways the adornment of the body—through clothing and jewellery—could name and unname the confratre. If the votes from the Sovereign and companions led to the expulsion of the member, an expulsion ceremony was to take place where all confratri were to dress in full-length vestments of black cloth, announcing the sentence solemnly where the convicted confratre was to have the insignia of the Order taken from him.169 First the mantle was to be taken from the expelled member, and the King of Arms was to cry out “This man is no longer worthy of anything through which he might be numbered among the knights of this Order.” If the convicted confratre could not be present, then he was to return his collar and vestments, and the procurator who had presented him at his trial was to take his collar and vestments in place of the expelled member at the ritual expulsion. While the expulsion ritual is in some ways a reversal of the initiation ritual, the emphasis that the confratri of the Order should all wear black alludes to the mourning at the loss and defilement of a companion, but also reiterates the importance of dress. If the initiation ritual was to make all bodies one—a collective body in the wearing of the same clothing and collar—then the expulsion ritual unnamed the perpetrator as a member of the group by taking his

168 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 417. 169 The rites of expulsion are detailed in Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 417.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 338 vestments. The solemn wearing of black by the remaining members created a unity, not by the bearing of the Order’s vestments, but by unifying them all in black, underlining the crime and furthermore accentuating the tarnishing of the

Order by the expelled member’s disreputable behaviour. The act of expulsion can be linked to Victor Turner and Louis Marin’s notion of communitas, whereby the ritual “symbolically rehearses a confrontation with an enemy external to the group.” 170 This ritual of expulsion, enacted through the confrontation with the expelled member, makes visible the representation of the body—through the visual material signs of the mantle and the collar—and unifies and reinscribes the confraternal brotherhood of the Order.

The statutes detailed that the habit of the Order was to be worn when the members were engaged in the Order’s business, on feast days, and during ceremonies and meetings. The confratri were to process in their collars and vestments to the services on the eve, morning, and evening of the feast.171 This stresses not only the uniformity of the group as they moved through the streets of the city to the chapel, but also publicises the Order, through the performative representation of clothes and procession. This collective wearing by members across Italy and Europe would have unified a disparate body of individuals across geographic space on specific days. Jones and Stallybrass have examined how the metaphor of clothing as printing appeared frequently in literary references, often in negative terms of excessive wickedness and sin.172 Clothes had the ability to

170 Marin, "Semiotic Approach to Parade," 228; Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Cornell University Press, 1969), 96-7. 171 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 423. 172 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 3-4.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 339 leave a “print or character” upon both the observer and wearer, that is, clothes were seen as “printing, charactering, haunting.”173 Similar to the stamp of the ermine found across media, and like the inscription of the statutes, which were transcribed every time a new member was elected, the member’s body was first imprinted with the vestments of the Order on the day of inauguration, and then repetitively remade, reprinted, and reinscribed, every time the bearer put on his robes and collar to celebrate the feast days or rites as a confratre. The collar and the robe thus not only reinscribed the body through the ritual dressing on particular occasions, but they also worked as material mnemonics, speaking to memories of subordination and collegiality.174

To understand further what the mantle may have meant for confratri and observers alike, we will turn briefly to the significance of the ermine fur for fifteenth-century viewers and how the cloaks were described by contemporary commentators. The ermine had dual symbolic meaning: as an emblem, the animal could stand for fidelity, purity, and moderation; as something worn, the fur signalled opulence and wealth, and was often featured in sumptuary laws as restricted for royalty or nobles. The tip of the creature’s tail is always black no matter what the season and it was the black tip that was often used in dress. The fact that the animal was small and that many tails were required to adorn the exquisite robes meant that many ermines were used per item of clothing (see for example Federigo’s portrait, Figure 41). The fur itself was not only expensive, but

173 Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 4. 174 Jones and Stallybrass have discussed the power of material memories: “memories of subordination” in terms of livery/servant; “memories of collegiality” in terms of a livery company or guild; “memories of identity itself.” Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 2. For Jones and Stallybrass, the “repeated wearing acts as an inscription upon the body that can work with or against alternative forms of inscription.” Jones and Stallybrass, "Fetishizing the Glove," 117.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 340 the sheer number of animals needed to line robes also signalled opulence. It has been noted that ermine fur is always described in the plural in the period, thus underlining the fact that many skins are used to cover an area of clothing.175

The importance of dress, and the attention paid to different types of clothing and fur at this time can be detected in the precise descriptions I have found in ambassadorial reports. Attention given to describing the type of fur shows a knowledge in the period of various furs and their expense. For instance, in February 1459, the two Milanese ambassadors to Naples, Antonio di Trezzo and Francesco de Cusano, noted that King Ferrante, at his coronation, wore “a gown in green satin and on top, a mantle of crimson damask and gold, lined with ermines all the way to the ground.”176 This coronation robe may have influenced the actual mantle of the Order, which Ferrante was to institute six years later. In

March 1483 a celebration was held for Ferrante’s son, Don Federico who received some lands in Calabria. The Milanese ambassador commented that Don Federico was dressed in a “mantle of crimson satin, lined with ermines, all the way to the ground,” which seems very similar to the mantle of the Order of the Ermine.177

The chronicler Giacomo noted that on 16 May 1494 Virgilio Ursino entered

Naples, wearing a “scarlet gown lined with ermines, with a red hat with ermines

175 Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400-1500, ed. Aileen Ribeiro, The History of Dress Series (London and New Jersey: Bell & Hyman and Humanities Press, 1981), 215-6. 176 Italics mine. “el S.re Re per seguire li ordeni de la dicta incoronatione usci di castello vestito de una gona de zetanino raxo verde e de sopra uno mantello de damaschino cremsi in pano doro fordrato darmelini longo fin a terra.” ASMI SPE 92. Letter of 10 February 1459. For a useful source on the various types of fabric used in the Renaissance including a dictionary of commonly used terms, see Herald, Renaissance Dress. 177 “vestito de uno mongillo de damascho biancho et disopra uno mantello de zetonino raso cremsile fodrato de hermelini infin a terra.” ASMI SPE 241. 199. Letter of 1483 9 March, Branda da Castiliono to Duke of Milan.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 341 lining the interior.”178 As a member of the Order of the Ermine, Virgilio’s gown may well have been the Order’s mantle. The specific reference to the type of fur in these accounts gives emphasis to the fact that the particular fur of the ermine was noteworthy, and something that was discernible to most viewers.

We will now turn to the collar of the Order of the Ermine. As specified above in the statutes regarding the ritual of investiture, the Capo was to place the collar on the new confratre after he had sworn allegiance to the statutes and had put on the mantle, and the king was then to announce the companion’s entry into the Order, followed by a kiss. While the mantle cloaked the entire body of the wearer, branding him as a companion, the collar was a smaller, yet more intimate accessory. To attach the collar to the new companion’s neck, the king would have had to get close to the companion, inciting an intimate connection at the moment of bestowal. Jewels and jewellery were extremely important social markers in the early modern period, as discussed in chapter two. Not only symbols of wealth, they had names, were invested with histories, and exchanged hands numerous times. Their movements and their exchanges gave them their value—both economic and symbolic—and were crucial in initiating, solidifying, and complicating social relations.179

As detailed at the beginning of this chapter, the collar was composed of various Aragonese devices as well as the ermine pendant, which dangled below,

178 “lo Signore virgilio vrsino caualo per la Cita de napoli. Gran Connestabele del regno desicilia. Doue ad mano diricta andaua lo prencepe de altamura ad mano sinistra lo prencepe desquillace figliolo depapa alexando. Lo quale portaua vna veste de scarllato infoderata de armellini la barrecta rossa conla reuersa delli armellini etportaua innmano lo scepto de argento.” Giacomo, Cronica, 182. 179 See chapter two, which deals with many of these issues through the institution of pawning. For an insightful study on the social aspect of jewels see Randolph, "Performing the Bridal Body," 182-200.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 342 visible on Federigo’s portrait (Figure 41) and in the representations in his manuscripts (Figures 64b and 65b). The close attention to the individual components of the collar in the description suggests that contemporary viewers would have been aware of each component of the collar—the imprese and the ermine, and would have valued the collar both for its material worth as well as its symbolic status. Composed of symbols, which constituted the links of the chain, and acted as the signifiers (decency, justice, and honesty) of the Order as well as the confratri, the collar had the ability to colligere, that is to link or to gather, the various symbolic meanings together (“that it be composed (colligato) of stocks

(stipiti)…and…of chairs (sedie)…in such a way that they are joined (collocate) together.”) Similarly, its gathering ability (collocate) could symbolise its larger ability to gather its various members into unification.

The statutes also detail the regulations of its use in chapter ten, demonstrating the collar was to be worn regularly, and thus publicising the Order through its visibility in wearing it. Confratri were to wear the collar for the feast of Saint Michael Archangel, from the first vespers until the second vespers inclusive.180 They were also required to wear the collar once a week, on the same day of the week on which the Feast of Saint Michael (September 29) fell that year. The wearing of the collar on specific days by members in different geographical spaces would have provided a means to link individuals through space and time, creating a symbolic unity and further publicising the Order. If a confratre did not or could not wear the collar on the said days, he was to give an offering to a pauper. Knights of the order were also required to wear the collar in

180 Vitale, Araldica, 142; Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 425.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 343 battle, and if the whole collar was too inconvenient to wear, they were permitted to wear only the ermine. Presumably the pendant was detachable.181 Chapter twelve of the statutes deals with the loss of the collar, noting that if the collar was lost during battle, the confratre was not allowed to replace the collar without the permission from the king.182 In chapter fifteen the statutes instruct the companions that after their death the collar and the “other insigni” were to be returned by their heirs within four months to the “ecclesia de Sancto Michaele” or to another appropriate location. Failing to do so would result in a penalty imposed by the king and the Chapter.183 Considering that the collar was highly valuable, such a rule would ensure that the king would have the collar returned to him, perhaps to be used on the next companion elected, but it also ensured that only knights bestowed with the Order could bear the designated collars. Boulton has suggested that the financial obligations of the Capo of the Order of the Ermine were probably similar to those of the Orders of the Golden Fleece and Garter, which required him to provide the physical facilities for the Order’s activities, to pay for its festivities, and to provide the collars and vestments.184 This would have also provided a further obligation and indebtedness for the bearer of the mantle and collar, sporting jewellery and expensive clothing bestowed upon him, and yet always belonging to the king.

The gold collar, when studied as a piece of jewellery and gift, reveals itself as something that has a communicative aspect, an object that has value within the

181 Vitale, Araldica, 142. 182 Vitale, Araldica, 143. 183 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 425-6. 184 Boulton, Knights of the Crown, 411.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 344 political intrigues of courtly relations to signal social messages.185 In examining contemporary documents, it becomes apparent that the gold collar in general, apart from its association with an order, was a symbolic political object, rich in meaning and integral to the formation and maintaining of political relationships in the late Quattrocento. Gold collars were common diplomatic gifts in the late fifteenth century. My archival research has shown that King Ferrante often gave gold collars to foreign ambassadors upon departure from his realm. While the gifting of these collars is usually referenced in relation to the investiture of knighthood, such bestowal underlines the forms of indebtedness and obligation, as well as honour and prestige associated with the gold collar. For instance, on 10

June 1472, the Milanese ambassador reported that an individual, whose identity is unclear, referred to as the “moschetto,” was knighted and received two gold collars, each worth 300 ducati, as well as a horse and some expensive cloth.186 On

27 October 1473, Francesco Maleta also reported to the Duke of Milan that a certain “Signor Costanzo” was about to depart from Naples and that the king had already given him five horses and a set of trappings and that the king was intending to give him a gold collar worth 300 ducati.187 In March 1475, King

Ferrante gave a gold collar worth 300 ducati and a horse to the ambassador of

185 Gold collars or chains were also often commented in ambassadorial reports as being signs of wealth and reflections of the splendour of court, and letters often detail the approximate worth of collars just by merely looking at them. See Martines, Power and Imagination, 233. 186 “et gli ha mandati a donare per questo moschetto che stato qua questi giorni passati: al quale anchora come scripsi altre volte ha facto grande honore: et in questa sua p[resen]tita lha facto cavalero: et gli ha donate due colane doro de valore tutte due de circah ccc duch[ati] et certo brochato doro veluto et cavalli, et dinari secondo me, referto et con questo lha mandato a casa.” ASMI SPE 220. 6, Letter of Andrea Giovanni to Duke of Milan. 187 “La M[aes]ta del Re ha facta p[rese]ntare hogi al s. Constanzo cinqui cavalli e una para d’ Barde: & intendo certamente chel fa fare uno colaro de valor’ d/ ccc duc.ti ch[e] gli vole donare.” ASMI SPE 224. 50

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 345

France upon his departure from Naples.188 On 29 August 1485 the jeweller

Tommaso di Marino was paid in court records for the price of a gold collar that the king was giving to the ambassador of Hungary, “Gregorio Becchi.”189 Gold collars could also be given as wedding presents. Alfonso II d’Aragona gave a gold collar to the daughter of the Prince of Bisgnano in 1485 for her marriage to the nephew of Diomede Carafa.190 In October 1472 Francesco Maleta also reported to the Duke of Milan that the king had ordered that gifts be given to Eleonora d’Aragona for her nuptials to Ercole d’Este. He noted that Alfonso II gave his sister Eleonora a piece of gold brocade, a gold collar, and some silver that had been given to him in Florence.191

The political dimension of the gold collar is perhaps most telling in an exchange of letters between Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria and her brother,

Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, that I came across in the archives in Milan. On 1

January 1474 Ippolita wrote to Galeazzo, informing him that she had seen the gold collar that he had sent to the “Mag[nifi]ca Contessa Camerlenga,” presumably Antonella d’Aquino, who was married to Innico d’Avalos, Count of

188 “lo ambas[sado]re de christianissimo s[ignor] Re de Franza quale era qui parti heri per tornarsene i[n] Franza: donato da la M[aes]ta del Re de uno collaro doro de pretio de ducati trecento & de uno corsero.” ASMI SPE 227. 198, Letter from Francesco Maleta to Duke of Milan from 25 March 1475. 189 Filangieri, Documenti Vol VI, 126. 190 “Si paga con 36 duc correnti a Mro Bernardino di S. Croce, di Napoli, il prezzo di una catena d’oro di 22 carati lavorata a modo di morsi di cavallo smaltati in 56 pezzi, del peso di once 3 e trappesi 18, che il signor Duca di Calabria dono’ alla figlia del principe di Bisignano, sposa del nipote del Conte di Maddaloni.” Barone, "Cedole ASPN IX," 604. 191 “la M[aes]ta del Re ha ordinato ch[e] tuti li Baroni del reame p[rese]ntamo La ILlma ma Eleonora: e era el duca de Calabria ha comenzato: hagli donato una peza de borcato doro, uno colaro doro e quello dargento ch[e] fu donato ad esso in fiorenza.” ASMI SPE 223. This letter is unnumbered but is dated from 6 October 1472.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 346

Monteoderisio.192 Ippolita writes that the Contessa was extremely surprised by the gift, and informed Galeazzo that she had ensured that the Contessa knew that

Galeazzo had given the gift in reflection of the great love that he felt towards the

Contessa and her husband.193 Francesco Maleta also wrote to the duke on 5

January 1474 assuring him that the collar had arrived and that it had been presented to the Contessa as well as shown to Ippolita, and Alfonso d’Aragona, among others. Maleta comments that Ippolita had expressed her belief that such a gift would make the Contessa obligated to the Duke of Milan.194 Ippolita Sforza who was constantly caught in conflicting loyalties between her natal family, the

Sforzas of Milan and her marital family, the Aragonese, was very astute at understanding the political intrigues and how to best manipulate individuals into

192 Innico d’Avalos had been given the position of Grancamerlengo in 1449 by Alfonso I d’Aragona, and presumably still held the post as he held a number of court offices throughout Ferrante’s reign. For Inigo (Innico) d’Avalos see, G. de Caro, "Avalos, Inigo," in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1976), 635-6. 193 “...Havemo visto lo collaro doro ha ma[n]dato adonare v[ostra] ex.tia ala mag[nifi]ca contessa camerlenga, la quale e stata sola conte[n]teza et co[n]solacione ch[e] havemo havuta in questo capo danno et meritam[en]te ne havemo recevuta alegreza gran[dissi]ma per molti rispecti prima ch[e] qua no[n] se ragiona ne resona alt[ro] laude ch[e] la liberalita et magnificente de v[ostra] s[ignoria] dela quale cosa n[on] poteriamo exprimere qua[n]to piacer[e] ne pigliamo p[er] la gloria dele virtu de v[ostra] CeLne la quale e anocra n[ost]ra. Appresso p[er] el sign[o]re amore portamo al s[ignor] conte et ala contessa per li quali ne piazuto piu tal p[rese]nte ch[e] fe decemilia volte lo havessemo recevuto noi et se alamore et servitu ch[e] portiamo a v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia se po agionger[e] qualch[e] cosa questa volta per certo ne ha comp[r]ata p[er] sua schiana [schiava?]. ne recoma[n]diamo sempre a v[ostra] s[ignoria] la quale avisamo p[er] sua consolatione como noi et li ill[ustrissi]mi figlioli stiamo bon.mo et lo ill[ustrissi]mo n[ost]ro consorto attende al suo guarir[e]. Ex castro capuano neap[olis] primo Januarj mcccclxxiiij: havemo visto ancora de sua co’messione la resposta ch[e] fala prefata contessa, la qual[e] ne parsa no[n] essere’ a liena dal suo grand ingeng[no] ne dala grand’ affectione et revere[n]tia et servitia porta a v[ostra] Ill[ustrissi]ma...” ASMI SPE 226. 202. This letter is referenced very briefly in Welch, "Between Milan," 133. 194 “Ill[ustrissi]mo signore mio. Florio cavalaro de v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia andoe ad Cayrano terra del conte camerlengo ad presentare lo colaro doro ala contessa: la quale quanto lhabi haivuto caro, la s[ignore] v[ostra] potera vedere per la l[ette]ra chessa scrive ad quella. Io feci vedere dicto colaro ala Ill[ustrissi]ma Ma[dama] Madona v[ost]ra sorella [Ippolita Sforza]: & ce erano el duca suo [Alfonso d’Aragona]: madama Beatrice & don Zohanne. Tuti predicano la gloria & splendideza v[ost]ra’. Ma essa M[adam]a v[ost]ra sorella dice che piu se rende obligata a la v[ostra] subl[imi]ta de tale dono facto ala predicta contessa...” SPE 226. 215. This letter is referenced very briefly in Welch, "Between Milan," 133.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 347 her service.195 On 1 March 1474, Francesco Maleta wrote to the Duke of Milan, reporting that a certain “Z˚” would continue to be very useful in Naples, and necessary for Galeazzo.196 This mysterious “Z˚” appears repeatedly throughout

Maleta’s correspondence in his reports to the Duke of Milan in the 1470s as a code name for an individual who is constantly providing Maleta with useful confidential information.197 The letter of 1 March 1474 informs Galeazzo that to ensure that Z˚ continues to supply them with restricted and important information and maintain their secret contract, Maleta encourages Galeazzo to give Z˚ a gold collar to “la donna sua”, as Z˚ has shown a wish to have a gold collar for “his woman.” Furthermore, Maleta informs the duke that Ippolita believes that such a gift will show the duke’s love for Z˚ and the said collar will bear much fruit.198

195 For Ippolita’s position at the court of Naples and her complicated and fraught relations with the Sforza, see Welch, "Between Milan." 196 ASMI SPE 227. 181. 197 For instance, the mysterious Z˚ appears providing information during negotiations for the Sforza-Aragonese divorce, and Eleonora d’Aragona’s betrothal to Ercole d’Este, see ASMI SPE 221. 82 and 125, letters from 25 February 1472, and 20 March 1472, ASMI SPE 222. 108-9, Letter of 15 June 1472. Z˚ is also recorded repeatedly meeting with Ippolita and spending much time with her in 1471, see ASMI SPE 220. 169 and 172. Letters of 19 and 24 December 1471. Z ˚ also supplied information regarding the Turk in 1473, ASMI SPE 224. 206, Letter of 13 September 1473. 198 “La v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia ha possuto vedere per molte experientie qual el Z.˚ glie utile qua & se p[er] el passato ello ve e stato utile & necessario molto piu credo ch[e] serra per lavenire andar[e] le cose como vede andare v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia. Unde a Madonna vra’ sor.la pare debeati tenere dicto z˚: piu edificato sia po.le perch/[e] essendose firmato luy qua como e & haven[do] modo de piscare al fondo no[n] se tractara cosa tanto secreta & importante chesso no[n] lintenda & no[n] la significhi a v[ostra] s[ignoria] o per via mia o daltri ch[e] serra qui per quella. Como altre volte fu dicto a v[ostra] ex[celen]tia el dicto z˚ havea gran desiderio ch[e] la v. cel. Donasse uno collaro doro a la donna sua & sopra decio ne scrissi io ad essa ad suasione d[e] la P[refa]ta Madonna la quale de novo mha imposto debea replicare & confortare & pregare la subl[imi]ta v[ostra] ch[e] no[n] glia sia grave fare questa spexa d. CC o CCC Duc[a]ti perch[e] quelli 200 overo 300 duc[a]ti ch[e] spendesse v[ostra] s[ignore] ogne anno nel z˚, e renderiano grossissima usura & no[n] solamente faria el Parere suo ch[e] v[ostra] cel. usasse al p[rese]nte verso d[i] Luy questa demonstratione de amarlo & haverlo caro per cavare il predicto fructo da esso cioe del collaro ma quando gli statuisti ogne anno una Provisione secreta d[i] cc o ccc duc[a]ti non] ve saria sen[z]o utilissima spexa. S[igno]re la v[ostra[ Ex[cellen]tia e Prudent[issi]ma & son certo i[n] questa cosa mira piu alto ch[e] Madonna ne io saperessemo exprimere. Ma certo conorro bene cu[]m essa Madonna ch[e] a v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia no[n] debea esser grave donare d[e] P[rese]nti uno collaro d[i] cc ducati ad essa done del z˚: p[er] le rasone suprallegate & perche havendo io visto lo

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 348

Whoever this mysterious Z˚ is, this letter demonstrates the ways in which a gold collar could be seen as a sign of political allegiance, and such a gift not only symbolised relations, but constituted those alliances in the form of a bribe.

VII. Allegorical Representations of the Order of the Ermine: Roberti’s Three Famous Women Panels

Three last representations will be considered here, but rather than a print- like symbol of the ermine, these three paintings function together to symbolise the

Order of the Ermine through allegorical representation. The panels were painted by Ercole de’ Roberti probably in the 1480s or early 90s when Roberti was working in Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona’s apartments in Ferrara. The panels depict the three stories of Portia, Lucrezia, and the wife of Hasdrubal, who were antique heroines (Figures 70a-c). Ruth Wilkins Sullivan has interpreted the three paintings as following the Ermine’s theme of “death rather than dishonour.” This motto in its original Latin, malo mori quam feodari, was a recurrent theme, accompanying representations of the ermine impresa, most commonly in reference to Marzano’s traitorous rebellion.199 In analysing the panels we will see that they do indeed reference this motto, but I suggest that the interpretation of these three paintings should not be restricted to this single motto, but rather, they

desiderio i[m] menso ch[e] de cio tene il dicto z˚: de servitore velo faresti schiano & vigilan[issi]mo & solect[issi]mo i[n] tutte le cose v[ost]rr S[igno]re se io vedesse ch[e] questa spexa no[n] havesse ad esser a v[ostra] cel. fructuosa & come se dice renderve il centuplo no[n] la recordaria, perche] semp[re] me voglio trovare ad fare crescere il Thexauro v[ost]ro e n[on] desescere. In gra’ de quella reocmandome [con]tinuam[en]te Quando v.s. gli donasse questo collaro restaria contento d[i] tracta & de ogne altra cose p[er] parechi di p[er]chi intendo havea scritto de ceco d[i]certa tracta d[e] Brada. Ex neap p˚ Martij 1475.” ASMI SPE 227. 181. 199 The connection between the Order of the Ermine theme and the three panels was made recently in Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels." For the three panels see Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxiii, Cat. VI-VIII. Manca, Art of Ercole, 133-40; Joseph Manca, "Constantia et Forteza: Eleonora d'Aragona's Famous Matrons," Source: Notes in the History of Art 19, no. 2 (2000): 13- 20; Margaret Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines. Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 115-48.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 349 make reference to the other mottoes of decorum, probanda, and those associated with the collar outlined in the statutes: justice, decency, and honour. Like many of the paintings that Roberti painted for the duchess, there is no exact record in the account books, but the theme of the paintings as well as their Este provenance, have led most scholars to conclude that they were probably spalliere intended for one of Eleonora’s rooms, maybe one of her studioli.200 While most of the objects in Eleonora’s collections were religious in nature, these three panels follow the stories of famous antique female heroines, a theme closely connected to Eleonora, as she was the dedicatee of Bartolommeo Goggio’s De laudibus mulierum, and she was included as a famous woman in Jacopo Filippo Foresti’s work De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus, which was published after her death in

1497 and dedicated to Eleonora’s sister, Beatrice d’Aragona.201 The attention to the body and the fact that each heroine inflicts pain on herself would also have had correlations to the religious paintings in Eleonora’s collections, which spoke

200 The panels were originally suggested to have formed part of the decoration of cassoni made for Isabella d’Este’s marriage, for which Ercole de’ Roberti received payments. The Este provenance of the Lucretia panel, recorded in the inventory of Cardinal Alessandro d’Este, however, suggests that they were created and used in Ferrara rather than outside. The inventory of Cardinal Alessandro d’Este was taken in 1624, and mentions “un quadro di Lucretia Romana dipinto su l’assa suttile ma schiappata in due parti con cornice di noce.” The Lucretia panel is indeed warped and split vertically, thus corresponding to the inventory entry. Manca, Art of Ercole, 59-60, 138; Campori, Cataloghi ed inventarii, 72. 201 Foresti, De claris mulieribus (BL), folio CLXIv. Goggio’s Laudibus mulierum was in Eleonora’s library as the inventory taken after her death records a copy of it. ASMO G114.137R: “Libro composto per me[sser] Bart[olomeo] Gogio di Laudib[us] Mulieru[m].” Also published in Bertoni, Biblioteca estense. For Goggio, see Werner Gundersheimer, "Bartolommeo Goggio: A Feminist in Renaissance Ferrara," Renaissance Quarterly xxxii, no. 2 (1980). Conor Fahy, "Three Early Renaissance Treatises on Women: 'De Laudibus Mulierum' by Bartolomeo Gogio; 'De Mulieribus' by Mario Equicola; 'Defensio Mulierum' by Agostino Strozzi," Italian Studies 11 (1956).There is a manuscript of this text in the British Library, Bartholamei Goggio, De laudibus mulierum. British Library Additional Manuscript 17415 (Ferrara?: XVTH century).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 350 to the ascetic and bodily transformations prevalent in Ferrarese religious culture.202

The theme and the literary sources for the paintings have been debated.

Wilkins Sullivan suggests Valerius Maximus’ Memorable Acts and Sayings of the

Ancient Romans as the source for Ercole’s three women.203 Although many scholars have accepted Wilkins Sullivan’s contention that the three panels are connected to the Order’s motto, Margaret Franklin and Joseph Manca do not find it convincing.204 Franklin has suggested that the panels’ narratives follow

Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris and signal the evaluation of women in the courts at the end of the Quattrocento, while Manca claims the panels are indebted to Bartolommeo Goggio’s text, which stresses the themes of constancy and fortitude. In consideration of Eleonora’s collections, which incited intertextual relationships between paintings, texts, and objects, as well as the notion of fabula, as discussed in chapter three, I would suggest that the three panels may have drawn on a series of texts and narratives about the famous women from antiquity, rather than restricting themselves to one source. Furthermore, the texts that Manca and Franklin argue for, which they contend compromise Wilkins Sullivan’s interpretation, I suggest, still support a connection to the Order of the Ermine.

Within the particular humanistic milieu that the panels were produced, this

202 For the importance of asceticism and the body in Ferrarese religious practices, see chapter three. 203 Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 610. 204 The Catalogue from the Roberti Exhibition claims Wilkins Sullivan’s argument as convincing and Dora Thornton, Luke Syson and Stephen Campbell have all referenced the three panels as enacting the motto of the Order of the Ermine, see Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxiii; Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy, 19-20; Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 68. Manca and Franklin refute the connection, see Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 135-6; Manca, "Constantia et Forteza," 17.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 351

“collection” or assembly of texts would have provided an intellectual stimulus for viewers, allowing them to piece together their knowledge of antiquity depicted in each panel, and to decipher the motto of the Order of the Ermine in an emblematic fashion.

The panel of Portia and Brutus in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth depicts the story of Portia recounted by Maximus, Plutarch, and Boccaccio

(Figure 70a). As the story goes, Portia took a razor and pretending to trim her nails, she gave herself a wound, which Brutus thought she had obtained through neglect. However she explains that she inflicted the wound to show her loyalty to him, and that she would be capable of killing herself if his plot to kill Caesar failed. Roberti has represented this particular moment, with Brutus looking down at Portia’s foot where a wound has been inflicted, and her hands are gestured in a manner as if she is explaining her loyalty. This part of the story is found in

Maximus’ chapter On Fortitude, and Portia appears again in his chapter Of

Conjugal Love, where she swallows burning coals to end her life. This she does after she has heard that her husband Brutus has been slain, and would rather die than end up in the hands of the enemy.205 Boccaccio’s biography of Portia stresses her inheritance of her father’s “bravery and perseverance” and Franklin has seen this as particularly stressing the father-daughter bond, which was applicable for both Eleonora and Portia.206 Furthermore, Franklin believes the Roberti panel to be influenced by the woodcut that accompanied Boccaccio’s printed version in

1473, both which she claims, refute Wilkins Sullivan’s argument. Manca has

205 Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 610-1. 206 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 132-6.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 352 interpreted all three panels in reference to a passage found in Goggio’s text where he lists “Lucretia, Sofonisba, Portia, Vetruaria and others” as matrone who are laudable for their constancy and fortitude.207 Thus he believes constancy and fortitude to be the overarching theme, instead of “Death rather than Dishonour,” and that Roberti chose to substitute Sofonisba with Hasdrubal’s wife.

The panel depicting The Wife of Hasdrubal and Her Children (Figure 70b) housed in the National Gallery in Washington, is an unusual subject and has no precedent in fifteenth-century iconography. There are no known medieval or

Renaissance references to the story but it is described in Appian’s Punic Wars as well as Maximus,208 and thus the panel was most probably a compilation of antique sources. The story appears in Appian’s description of the defeat of

Hasdrubal’s Carthaginians by the Romans under Scipio Aemilianus, where

Hasdrubal’s wife (unnamed) is witness to her husband pleading for his life.209

Hasdrubal’s wife, upon seeing her husband beg, decided she was not to suffer a similar fate, and immolated her two children and herself in the burning Temple of

Asclepius.210 Maximus’ description varies slightly, noting in his chapter Of

Fortitude that the wife chided Hasdrubal for “begging his own life at Scipio’s hands, taking her Children…in her right and left hand, willing to die, she flung herself into the flaming Ruines of her Country.”211 Roberti depicts Hasdrubal’s

207 Manca suggests that “ Eleonora read this passage in Goggio, was intrigued by the possibilities, and decided to have heroic matrons depicted by her court painter, Roberti.” While the passage may have been an influence on the three panels, I would hesitate in claiming that this small passage was the sole source for the cycle. See, Manca, "Constantia et Forteza," 17. 208 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 145. 209 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 145. 210 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 145. 211 The quotation is taken from a seventeenth-century English translation quoted in Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 613.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 353 wife among the rubble of the collapsing temple, with her two naked boys, as the flames rise up out of the floor. Manca has suggested that this particular subject was chosen, because Eleonora, like Hasdrubal, refused to surrender to her enemies, during the attempted coup by Niccolò d’Este in 1476, and during the

Venetian invasion in 1482.212 Wilkins Sullivan has noted that while an exemplar of Fortitude, contemporary viewers may have been preoccupied with the “moral ambiguities” of her act.213 Franklin has also noted that the subject posits

Hasdrubal as neither an admirable ruler, husband, or father, none of which Ercole d’Este, the husband of Eleonora, would have been eager to identify with.214

Franklin proposes that rather than supporting the “death over dishonour” theme, the inclusion of this tale stresses that Hasdrubal’s wife was an agent of her own death.

The Death of Lucrezia panel depicts Lucrezia in the act of stabbing herself in the presence of her husband, Collatinus and his companion, Junius Brutus

(Figure 70c). The artist of this painting has been deliberated upon and it is has been suggested that there is some workshop help, most probably the hand of Gian

Francesco Maineri; the Galleria Estense in Modena, where the work is located, lists the panel to be by Maineri.215 Lucrezia appears in Maximus’ Chapter Of

Chastity, where she stabs herself after being raped by Sextus Tarquinius.216 The story was well known in the Renaissance, and Boccaccio recounts the tale, closely

212 Manca, "Constantia et Forteza," 17. For the coup led by Niccolò see, Gundersheimer, Ferrara, 180-1. The local chronicler provides details on the war with Venice, see Giuseppe Pardi, "Diario ferrarese dell'anno 1409 sino al 1502 di autori incerti," Rerum italicarum scriptores 24.7, no. vi (1928): 98-118. 213 Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 612. 214 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 145. 215 For attributions see, Manca, Art of Ercole, 138, cat. 17c. 216 Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 612-3.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 354 following Livy’s account. Tarquinius was the son of the tyrant Sextus Superbus, who while staying as a guest in Collatinus’ home, became enamoured of Lucrezia and one night entered her bedroom. Finding Lucrezia resistant, he threatened that if she did not comply, he would kill both her and her servant, and would lie that he had killed them upon finding them together in bed. She submitted to the rape, but the next morning Lucrezia called together her father, her husband, and her husband’s relative Junius Brutus (a relative of Portia’s husband), telling them the details of the crime, and then committed suicide in front of them all. In the end,

Junius Brutus overturns Sextus Superbus, and as Maximus claims, Lucrezia’s death “gave the Roman people reason to change the authority of kings for that of consuls.”217 The scene depicts Lucrezia before she kills herself, and Junius and

Colatinus are both portrayed in elaborately rendered armour. Franklin has noted that there is also a correlation between this depiction and the accompanying woodcut of Boccaccio’s printed version, which also only depicts the two men.218

While Lucrezia’s story has often been promulgated as a justification for republicanism, the stories of Lucrezia and Portia seem a paradoxical choice for a duchess and a daughter of a king. Franklin has noted that marital chastity, the women’s courage, and political loyalty are emphasised rather than republican motifs.219 Indeed, I would stress that all three stories discuss the theme of justice and loyalty to political alliances, often made through familial bonds.

Republicanism might be touted, if it is in contrast to tyranny, and thus what is

217 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 138. 218 Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 142. 219 Franklin outlines the republican overtones, see Franklin, Boccaccio's Heroines, 143.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 355 underlined here is clemency as well as fidelity to one’s moral and political convictions.

While most of the scholarship on these panels, and indeed on Eleonora, has stressed a didactic inclination, such a reading limits the ways with which these objects were viewed.220 By analysing the different narratives rendered in each panel—a compilation of antique and contemporary sources—the series invites the viewer to engage with the images in a fabulesque mode, that is, by piecing together the various texts and images. The viewer, in the end, comes up with an emblematic reading of the panels, referencing the impresa of the Order of the

Ermine. The overarching themes of justice, fortitude, and honour, should be seen as referencing the mottoes of the Order of the Ermine. We might be reminded here that the motto “death rather than dishonour” is only one of the many symbolic interpretations associated with the ermine and that the mottoes of probanda and decorum were also closely associated with the Order. Rather than restricting the theme to malo mori quam feodari, it is perhaps more useful to see the three donne illustri fitting within the larger overarching themes of the Order which stressed fidelity, propriety, as well as the tried, tested, and just ruler.

Fidelity, propriety, and decorum were also suitable themes that could be easily adapted to promote acceptable female behaviour, exemplified here by the three

220 Wilkins Sullivan notes “Eleonora’s cultural interests always leaned toward the moral and the didactic.” Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 624. The catalogue from the Roberti exhibition, in reference to these panels states: “The didactic and exhortatory purpose of the paintings is apparent in the way the subjects are presented.” Allen et al., "Catalogue," xxxiii. Gundersheimer claims “to the extent that Eleonora was at all receptive to humanist culture, it was the moral and didactic aspect of the classical revival that she favored.” Gundersheimer, "Women, Learning: Eleonora," 54. Manca notes that “Eleonora was what we might call a Christian stoic, believing that the performance of virtuous duty was higher than any other activity and that pain was to be not only not avoided, but even welcomed if virtue was at stake…Goggio’s text and the paintings by Roberti mirror her own life and actions.” Manca, "Constantia et Forteza," 19.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 356 heroines. Furthermore, the theme of decorum while closely associated with the

Order was also a commonly discussed topic in connection to painting and the visual arts, relating to propriety and the need for deference, as well as “that proportion, correspondence or conformity that style has with the subject.”221

These themes of the Order also had a particular resonance for both Eleonora and Ercole d’Este. Due to political turmoil and succession in Ferrara during

Ercole’s childhood, Ercole was sent to Naples to be educated, and acted as a companion to Ferrante, his future father-in-law, yet contemporaries, both being born in 1431.222 Ercole received many privileges under Alfonso I d’Aragona, but once Ferrante seized power, Ercole was slighted by the new king and sided with the Angevins, rising up against Ferrante in the rebellion instituted by Marzano.223

Following the defeat of the Angevins at Troia, Ercole returned to Ferrara where he subsequently became the successor to Borso d’Este. Ercole’s marriage to

Ferrante’s daughter, Eleonora in 1473, repaired diplomatic relations between him and Ferrante, and Ercole was to receive the Order of the Ermine two years later.

The famous women panels thus had not only links to the city in which Eleonora and Ercole were raised, but also signalled the political tensions and reconciliation between Ferrante and Ercole, highlighting the clemency of Ferrante, a theme often emphasised in relation to the Order.

Roberti’s three famous women panels depicting antique subject matter require the viewer to assemble the three distinct stories to decipher the

221 This comment was made by Andrea Gilio in the sixteenth century and quoted in John Shearman, Mannerism (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1967), 166. 222 Gundersheimer, Ferrara, 176-7; Wilkins Sullivan, "Three Ferrarese Panels," 617. 223 Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 9-11.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 357 overarching themes of the Order of the Ermine. Seen as fabula, the three panels not only represent the antique stories of three women, but also act as a device to understand a higher meaning that is both political and moral. The mottoes of the

Order used in the three Famous Women panels demonstrate how far the significance of the ermine had disseminated since the inscription of its statutes.

The symbolism of the Order of the Ermine, here, is interpreted through an emblematic reading of textual and visual references, without the need for its most obvious sign, the ermine.

VIII. Conclusion

The statutes of the Order of the Ermine can be seen as a material manuscript that inaugurated the Order, and was bestowed on individuals upon entry into the Order, a material object placed on a bookshelf in one’s library or studiolo, and taken out, referred to, and strictly followed. But it can also be seen as an integral part of the Order itself, something that gave rise to other forms of inscription, as it detailed the rituals and acts that ought to be followed, which inevitably led to the inscription of the body through the wearing of the mantle and the collar. Roger Chartier has examined “the manifold shifting and unstable relations between the text and its materialities, between the work and its inscriptions.”224 The statutes thus constituted both the symbolic and material aspects of the Order, through their inscription, circulation, and appropriation, giving rise to associations and representation. It was through the diverse modes

224 Roger Chartier, Inscription and Erasure. Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), viii, ix. Chartier has examined this topic in a number of his works, see Chartier, Inscription; Roger Chartier, Forms and Meanings. Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 358 of the Order—the diamonds, fur, dung, and gold, the performance of the rituals associated with the Order, the mantle and the collar which constituted those rituals, the semiotics of the ermine and the representation of the ermine across media—that the Order linked a series of spaces, events, and people.

The Order of the Ermine was instituted in 1465 and bestowed throughout the late Quattrocento, a turbulent political period in Italy and abroad. The various objects associated with the Order—the statutes, the mantle, the gold collar, and the ermine impresa—were ways to transform the immaterial notion of fidelity associated with the Order, into material form, thereby creating memories and obligations. Rather than viewing these material components as only signifying relations between individuals, it is much more fruitful to see these material objects as comprising those relations, and indeed constituting ritual. As was evident with the horse’s head discussed in chapter one, the bronze sculpture as a gift was integral to relations between Diomede Carafa and Lorenzo de’ Medici, engaging both men in a system of obligation and reciprocation. Obligation was a crucial component of the Order, as is expressed by Galeazzo Sforza in letters discussing the bestowal of the Order on Ercole d’Este.225 As I have attempted to demonstrate, it was the statutes which declared the obligation required of members; it was the material objects—the mantle and the gold collar—and the significance of these objects, which solidified those forms of obligation and association. In an Order whose membership consisted of rebellious barons,

225 Three letters between Ercole and Galeazzo discussing the Order can be found in ASMI SPE 323. 110, 161 and 162. The letters are numbered not in chronological order, but are all dated from November 1475.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 359 political contenders, and shifting allies, the mantle and the gold collar unified the collective body.

The representation of the ermine in various media, transformed a highly exclusive impresa belonging to only twenty-seven members into a symbol that could have meaning and signification in social practice, not only in Naples but across Italy and even Europe. The repetition of the ermine sign acted similarly to citation, where part of a text quoted could reference a whole text or a body of literature. The ermine as representation stood not as a marker with one meaning, but opened up a web of associations and meanings. Its depictions on architecture, in manuscript illumination, and in portraiture, allowed for a variety of viewers to engage with its meaning, harnessing a constellation of symbolic associations and claims into one repeatable stamp-like form.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 360

Conclusion

In the Archivio di Stato di Modena, there exists a series of account/inventory books belonging to Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona. One of these accounts details many items in Eleonora’s ownership, and is less an inventory than an ongoing record of the movement of objects in her possession, labelled

“Libro della guardaroba della Ex[cellen]tia de Madama”, now listed as

Amministrazione dei Principi (Eleonora d’Aragona) 638.1 This book can be seen as a general account for the guardaroba for the years 1478-85, keeping tabs on items, from silverware to mirrors, and from tapestries to books. What is particularly interesting about this account book is that it often lists where the objects have come from, detailing the item as being received as a gift and from whom. It records when and if an item was pawned and specifies if an object has been borrowed or lent. In the case of items such as cloth and silver, the book notes if the cloth has been cut up and re-sewn, or if the silver has been melted down and remade into something else. It does not, therefore, fall into the category of a regular account book which keeps track of money and prices, but rather takes note of the movement of objects, thereby contributing to our understanding of the social lives of things therein. This account book does not, on the other hand, fit into the category we would normally associate with the inventory, as it does not list the items to record monetary worth, usually in the case of a death or will, but rather maintains a particular interest in the objects, their movements, and circulation. Under most items there are entries in different hands, from different years, that announce the particular object’s movements (Figure 71).

1 ASMO AP 638

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 361

A few examples taken from AP 638 written and overseen by Gironimo

Zigliolo will suffice to give an idea of the social nature and movements of such objects:

-Saucers two and ewers two, large, made of silver and worked alla venetiana with the arms of Signore Re [Ferrante], which were given by the ‘prefecto’ of Rome to Madama [Eleonora], weight: one of the saucers 58 onze and one of the ewers 58 onze. Consigned to Antonio to give to Misser Andrea di Zenaro, servant of the Duke of Calabria [Alfonso II d’Aragona]2 on the 7 of June 1484—which, instead, were given to Misser Piedro da lino [of Linen] in Modena. Note that the two saucers, which are in the guardaroba, as they appear in the said inventory [inventory written by Gironimo Zigliolo] at 15 and one of the ewers were pawned in Venice as it appears in the book of records of Zironimo at 9. The other ewer is in the guardaroba as it appears in the inventory of the said Zironimo, at 15.3

-Elephant teeth small, length, around two thirds of a brazzo...... two Note that Madama Her Excellency sent to Bologna half of one of the said teeth to Misser Egano di Lambertinj Item, other half of the said tooth Her Excellency gave on 10 January 1488 to her Illustrious children Don Alfonso and Madama Isabella [d’Este] Item another tooth, and posted and noted in the inventory of the said Gironimo at 1274

2 Alfonso d’Aragona came to the relief of Ferrara during the Venetian War at this time. 3 Bacili duj et bochalj duj grande di arzento lavorada alla venetiana cu[m] le arme del Sig[no]re Re [Ferrante Aragona] li q[ua]li dono il p[re]fecto de Roma a Madama pesa luno di bacali on[ze] 58 et luno di bronzinj on[ze] 58 Fino [con]segnati ad Antonio di dare al miss[er] Andrea di Zenaro homo del duca di calabria [Alfonso d’Aragona] adi 7 de zugno 1484—li q[u]ali inanzi erano stati dati al ditt mis[ser] predro da lino in modena Nota che li duj bazili (sono in guardaroba como apare al ditto inventario asp 15) et uno d[e]lli bronzinj e i[m]pegno a venestia como apare al libro di recordi di zironimo asp 9 E laltro bronzino e in guardaroba como apare alinventario de ditto zironimo asp 15. ASMO AP 638. 7R. There is a sign which looks like ‘asp’, which is often used to refer to some sort of numbering system in another inventory. I have transcribed it in the Italian as it appears and translated it to mean ‘at.’ 4 Denti di Aliphanti picoli longhi circa dui terzi de brazo...Duj Nota che la Extia de Madama mando a bologna mezo de uno di ditti denti a miss/ egano di lambertinj che fu dal mezo i[n]drete

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 362

-Garment, one, long made of crimson silk, unlined Note that the above garment was made into coverings for carriage horses, the said coverings are being sent by Her Excellency Madama [Eleonora] to Florence to Lorenzo de Cosimo.5

There is a particular interest in the movement of these objects and their provenances, in addition to marking the social and political nature of the items as gifts. While these lists were ways to keep track of the plethora of luxury court objects, we should also consider how they may have made the compilers of the lists pay attention to the details of each object. The parchment covers of these account books were often used for brief notes and we find quick sums of numbers being added as if the cover was a notepad. One of the writers of AP 638, perhaps

Gironimo, has scribbled “pensi la morte tua” on the front (Figure 72), creating a provocative statement regarding the transient nature of this life and contentious issues around the wealth of goods. The writing of such an inventory may have led those compiling to think of the issues at stake in collecting, reflecting magnificence, and yet also contemplating what it meant to acquire goods.

Another account book (AP 639) dating from 1487-89 pays attention to similar things; it records goods not because of a death, but to locate objects in certain rooms. In particular, it notes objects that are taken out for use in

Eleonora’s cappella by her chapelain, Don Iacomo, as well as in her oratory and some of the rooms in the Castello Vecchio. The book, however, soon turns into an

Item altro mezo de ditto dente Sua Signoria il dono adi 10 zenaro 1488 alli illustri soi filgioli Dono Alphonse et Ma Isabella Item altro dente e posto et notado allo inventario di ditto gironimo asp 127. ASMO AP 638. 101R 5 This is presumably Lorenzo de’ Medici. Vestido uno longo de raso carmesino deffodrato Nota che del soprascripto vestido ne fu facto fornimenti da cavagli da carretta li qali fornime[n]ti mando la Ex[cellen]tia de Ma[da]ma a fiorenza a Lorenzo de Cosmo. ASMO AP 638 . 31R

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 363 account book, recording payments and purchases, from about folio 24 verso onwards. The next book (AP 640) again records many of the items in Eleonora’s possession, often listing where they are, where they have come from, and dates from 1487-93. This inventory is of interest because it lists many of her paintings, altarpieces, and includes an inventory of the books in her library that lists sixty- seven texts. There are other account books and inventories but these few, in particular, offer interesting examples to understand the movement of objects and the various individuals involved. While in some instances an object’s movement may have only required restricted circulation—a painting of religious subject matter, for instance, might be moved from one room to another to be used in devotion, such as the diptych examined in chapter three—the accounts also record larger circulation such as those items exchanged as gifts between Ferrara and other courts.

The close attention in the accounts to the type of materials is similar to the description of pawned jewels discussed in chapter two. In writing the accounts, compilers were asked to pay very close attention to the styles of the objects (we find for instance “alla venetiana” or “alla turchesca”). We also find detailed descriptions of the amount of jewels or precious stones on the objects, the different materials of those objects, as well as their provenances. When we consider the individuals who had close contact with these objects we need to think not only of the owner—the duke or duchess for instance—or the visitors who would view the objects—ambassadors, diplomats, and other ruling figures—but also those who dealt with the objects regularly. This close engagement with diverse objects, I would contend, encouraged individuals—whether ambassadors,

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 364 princes, administrators, or humanists—to compare objects and forge connections between them. These forms of engagement with diverse objects and visual imagery led to particular modes of decipherment, causing viewers to draw relationships between diverse materials and forms.

Gironimo Zigliolo (also spelled Zironimo), the compiler of many of

Eleonora’s account books, was not merely a servant who tracked goods or recorded accounts, but rather, he was 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.6 Evelyn Welch has noted that in April 1491, Isabella d’Este wrote from Mantua to Gironimo requesting him to buy “anything that is new and elegant” in France for her, such

6 “Girolimo Ziliollo contraste di avere xxv di luio ....le quale gia comp[r]atj in franze [he has been paid on the previous pages of the accounts to go to Lione and purchase goods] ...e di avere dp tri L doe b tri d 4 M[archesani] per la valute de doe ancone doro le q[ua]le portare da lione e cosignate a fiore di spina in una sono sante barbara laltra sono vnj xpto [(christo)] .....(180....dp 3 L 2.3.4 ...E di dare dp uno d˚e L una b quat) di quat) d 4 M per la valute di uno fiasco de olio da spigot lo q[ua]lle comp[ra]atj a Lione…………dp 1 L1.4.4 ...E di dare dp duj ½ doro per lavalute di una ancona davolio dove la nostra done in mezo e ly 12 apostoly date a fiore di spina ...... dp 2 L 1.11.0 E di avere dp uno doro per lavalute di uno ce lamaro et uno casitina davolio date a fiore di spina ...... dp 1 L- E di avere L doe b scripte M per lavalute di uno armelino doro dapertura nel boneto che fiore di spina alo˚ de la zora...... L2.2.0 E di adare L una b cinque M per lavalute di duj santj Iacomj daraxintj date a fiore di spina ....alo gla zolgie...... (180...... L.1.5.0 E di avere L una b duj d 8 M per lavalute di sei sidarne di radrxe como lo manigo lavorato di curame...... L.1.2.8 Girlimo Ziliolo de avere ad xxv luio dp uno doro L M per lavalute di paltrj nostrj 450 dambro di piu e d[i]verse sorte ly q[ua]ly dite a fiore di spina ...... L.1 Ed dare d quat) d 2 M per lavalute da una scatolla di corr da tegnere zoia...... L.0.4.2” ASMO AP 639. 131R-132R

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 365 as “engraved amethysts, rosaries of black, amber and gold.”7 I have also found a series of letters from 1491 from 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.8 In addition, Beatrice d’Este

(daughter of Eleonora d’Aragona and Ercole d’Este, and wife of Ludovico il

Moro) also wrote to Gironimo in 1491, requesting he procure a variety of different items.9

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. Similarly, an individual like

Diomede Carafa served the Aragonese in capacity as secretary and counsellor, but he also had the title of guardarobiere at one point in his career. His own interest in procuring luxury goods would have been enhanced by having access to merchant networks operating within the Neapolitan kingdom, which gave rise to his contact with individuals like Filippo Strozzi and Lorenzo de’ Medici.

The surviving textual evidence from the period, such as ambassador reports, personal and official correspondence, inventories, account books (including those of the court, merchant-bankers, and pawn-brokers), popular narratives, printed histories, and even knightly statutes, all reveal a precision in describing the

7 Welch, Shopping, 250. He is also recorded buying velvet for Anna Sforza, Alfonso d’Este’s wife in 1496, Welch, Shopping, 353, n.19. 8 ASMO CPE 1219.9. Letters are dated from November and December 1491. 9 ASMO CPE 1219.9 Letters are dated from August and November 1491.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 366 materials, forms, histories, representations, and value of precious objects. The textual evidence suggests not only that viewers of these jewels, gems, clothing, and antiquities had a particular mode of seeing and interpreting these objects, but that these objects also played a critical role in social and political life, worthy of record, notation, and description.

This thesis has argued, in support of studies such as Arjun Appadurai and

Igor Kopytoff, that objects have social lives and biographies, characteristics which are significant in this period. However, I have also attempted to demonstrate why this is important and how it might allow us to understand social or political relations from a different angle. That is to say, rather than merely repeating the histories of an object, like the horse’s head, we might ask why there are so many narratives in the first place. What is it in the thing itself that gives rise to these narratives? How can representation be linked to social or political ideologies? How can a gift—a material object—be a critical reminder of political dependencies, obligations, and relations? It is by studying the very particularities of an object—its form, function, use, value, representation, iconography, material—that we can begin to understand the diverse and complex ways that objects partake in social life.

A colossal horse’s head, given as a gift from one diplomat to another, operates very differently to the gems and cameos constantly circulating between the collecting elite. These gems, used as currency, gain social and cultural value as they circulate, but they are also tied to representation through their dissemination in media. This process is different from the intertextual reading encouraged by the diptych form with its various textual and visual citations. The

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 367 function of the diptych in religious ritual, may be tied to the importance of the gold collar, the mantle, and the ermine emblem in the rites of the Order of the

Ermine, although in a different way. The ermine emblem operates as a repeatable sign, linking the members of the Order together across space, and through time, specifically on ritual feast days.

These diverse forms of engagement demonstrate that different objects do different things. Subject-object relations are not always predictable, and indeed, sometimes bring about unexpected results, such as the contentions formed between the Este and Aragonese around the purchasing of the bejewelled crocetta. Examining the circulation of objects within and between courts has brought to the fore latent political or social tensions, as in the case of the horse’s head in the complicated negotiations between Florence and Naples. Social, humanist, and religious concerns in Ferrara were also brought forward by studying the Roberti diptych and its engagement with a wide range of objects and visual images. Objects also reveal the formation of new networks or associations and the importance of groups not usually studied as associated with the court, exemplified by the individuals connected across Europe through the Order of the

Ermine as well as the relationships formed through the practices of Florentine merchant-bankers. By examining court relations through the objects themselves, I suggest that at this particular moment, the court was not centred solely around the prince, but rather it was composed as a complex and shifting system of relations, with a variety of actors and interests. These actors were often objects, that constituted an integral part of court relations, engaging viewers in political or social dialogues, and comprising an essential part of every court ritual.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 368

Primary Archival Sources

Archives Consulted and Abbreviations I have provided a list of the archives consulted, and in cases where it is useful, I have included the specific busta numbers with headings to facilitate further research. All busta numbers as well as page numbers or letter numbers, when available, are cited in the text.

ASF: Archivio di Stato di Firenze CS: Carteggio Strozziane

ASFE: Archivio di Stato di Ferrara Archivio Bentivoglio

ASMA: Archivio di Stato di Mantova AG: Archivio Gonzaga

ASMO: Archivio di Stato di Modena: AE: Archivio Estense AMB: Ambasciatori AMB FIR: Ambasciatori Firenze AMB MIL: Ambasciatori Milano AMB NAP: Ambasciatori Napoli AP: Amministrazione dei Principi (AE) Buste 631-640 include all of Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventories and account books AT: Arrazi e Tapezaria(AE) CG: Conto Generale(AE) C&S: Casa e Stato(AE) C&P: Castaldarie e Possessione(AE) CPE: Carteggio Principi Esteri 1245/1 Ferrante I 1451-1493 1246/2 Alfonso II duca di Calabria 1468-94 1247/3 Ippolita Sforza 1478-1488 1248/4 lettere di altri principi minori (including Matalona (Madaloni) (i.e. Diomede Carafa) 1472-1686) CR: Carteggio di Referendari (Cancelleria) G: Guardaroba (AE) 114: Inventory of 1493 of Eleonora d’Aragona, taken after her death. (previously AP 640bis) I&S: Intrata e Spesa(AE) LCD: Libri Camerali Diversi(AE) M: Mandati(AE) Mem: Memoriale(AE) M&F: Munitione e Fabbriche(AE) Tex: Texoreria(AE)

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 369

ASMI: Archivio di Stato di Milano SPE: Sforzesco Potenze Estere (buste 200-250: Napoli, from the years 1459-1492) (buste 323-334: Ferrara, from the years 1471-1494) SPS: Sforzesco Potenze Sovrane

ASNA: Archivio di Stato di Napoli (Most of the court records were destroyed in World War II, although there exist some fragments. Also see Barone’s various transcriptions from the nineteenth century) TGA: Tesoreria Generale Antica TA: Tesoreria Antica (Cedole) (TGA) F: Frammenti (TGA) Arch. Carafa: Archivio Carafa di Maddaloni e di Colubrano

Libraries Abbreviations

BA: Biblioteca Ariostea, Ferrara BE: Biblioteca Estense, Modena BL: British Library, London BNN: Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli BNP: Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (Manuscripts Ital 1583-91 contain fifteenth-century court letters from Milan)

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 370

Illustrations and Appendix withheld due to copyright.

Value and Symbolic Practices Leah R. Clark 434

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