Quidditas Volume 20 Article 10 1999 Milan and the Development and Dissemination of Il ballo nobile: Lombardy as the Terpsichorean Treasury for Early Modern European Courts Katherine Tucker McGinnis University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Renaissance Studies Commons Recommended Citation McGinnis, Katherine Tucker (1999) "Milan and the Development and Dissemination of Il ballo nobile: Lombardy as the Terpsichorean Treasury for Early Modern European Courts," Quidditas: Vol. 20 , Article 10. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rmmra/vol20/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
[email protected],
[email protected]. Milan and the Development and Dissemination of Il ballo nobile: Lombardy as the Terpsichorean Treasury for Early Modern European Courts Katherine Tucker McGinnis University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill E MOSCHE D’ITALIA IN UNA POPPA, Volando in Francia, per veder i ragni….”1 In these lines, titled “Di Pompeo Diabone,” the L Milanese artist and poet Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo celebrated the Italian dancing masters who, lured like flies to the web of the spider, served in the courts of France.2 In the sixteenth century there were many Italians in France, including a large number of influential and prosperous dancing masters.3 In spite of obvious connections with Florence via Catherine de’ Medici, the majority came from Lombardy, an area long considered the center of il ballo nobile, the formalized social dance that emphasized courtesy, courtliness, memory, and expertise.