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Renaissance Political Theory and Paradoxes of Power 57 CHAPTER 3 Renaissance Political Theory and Paradoxes of Power Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa testifies to the fact that coercion and force were central to Cosimo I’s rise to power and to his vision of state formation. The Medici duke’s political bravado was responsible for his entry into Florence as a larger-than-life sovereign. And yet, aspects of early modern theory on gender and the state which problematize virtù inform Cellini’s bronze in ways that could have reminded viewers of problems with the construction of the ruler’s power, specifically, the transformation of Florence from republic to duchy. Flo- rentines, who held the value of republican liberty close to their hearts, would have been keenly aware of the insecure foundation of their past traditions as times changed rapidly while Cosimo consolidated his power. The controversy over the merits of government by the many versus by the few was still an unre- solved point of tension in sixteenth-century Florence. Some of the legal and cultural constraints imposed on Cellini were signs of the tighter vigilance and control of the public and private spheres besetting the development of the early modern state.1 Those restrictions affected Cellini’s vision of the Perseus and Medusa in a provocative fashion. Much political writing and visual imagery dating from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance treats the ruler’s head and body as symbols of the state. Six- teenth-century art epitomizing the body of the male ruler adoring, or over- coming the state personified as a woman’s body include Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine, a later pro-Medici sculpture, on the Piazza della Signoria (Fig. 20).2 The preceding ideological configuration takes a more complex turn in 1 Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 64ff. For a discussion of new government-run restrictions placed on individuals in Cosimo I’s absolutist state see John Brackett, Criminal Justice and Crime in late Renaissance Florence, 1537–1609 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 2 Paul Archambault, “The Analogy of the Body in Renaissance Political Literature,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 29 (1967): 21–53. David Hale, The Body Politic: a Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature (Paris: Mouton, 1971). Lynn Hunt, Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore: John’s Hopkins University Press, 1991). Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. John Najemy, “The Republic’s Two Bodies: Body Metaphors in Italian Renaissance Political Thought,” in Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. Alison Brown (Oxford: Clarendon © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004296787_004 58 Chapter 3 Figure 20 Giambologna, Rape of the Sabine, 1574–1580. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, Italy. Photo: Author..

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