Engaging Symbols GENDER, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC ART IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENCE Adrian W.B. Randolph Yale University Press New Haven and London Copyright © 2002 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Leslie Fitch Set in Fournier and Futura type by Leslie Fitch Printed in Italy at Conti Tipocolor Libiury of Congress Cataloging-in- PuBLiCATiON Data Randolph, Adrian W. B., 1965- Engaging symbols: gender, politics, and public art in fifteenth-century Florence/ Adrian W. B. Randolph, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-300-09212-1 I. Art, Italian—Italy—Florence— 15th century. 2. Gender identity in art. 1. Title. N6921.F7 R32 2002 709'.45*51090 24—dc2i 2001008174 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 987654321 Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Florence, Inc. i 1 Common Wealth: Donatello’s Ninfa Fiorentina 19 2 Florentia Figurata 76 3 Engaging Symbols: Legitimacy, Consent, and the Medici Diamond Ring 108 4 Homosocial Desire and Donatello’s Bronze David 139 5 Spectacular Allegory: Botticelli’s Pallas Medicea and the Joust of 1475 193 6 O Puella Furax: Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes and the Politics of Misprision 242 Notes 287 Bibliography 339 Index 375 Photography Credits 381 4 Homosocial Desire and Donatello’s Bronze David El Davit della cone e una figura et non e perfecta, perche la gamba sua di drieto e schiocha. (The David of the court is an imperfect figure, because from behind his leg is silly.) —Francesco Filarete In 1466 Medici hegemony was seriously threatened by the so-called Pitti- Neroni conspiracy.' Nonetheless, with political mettle and a considerable amount of luck, Piero de’ Medici emerged unscathed, and, in the fall of 1466, Medici authority appeared unassailable. Seeking to ingratiate himself with Piero de’ Medici, Niccolo Risorboli, a friend of Bernardo Pulci, penned an exorbitant canzone in praise of Piero and celebrating the political triumph of the Medici line. The can'^one adopts the voice of Fiorenza, who, likening Piero to Roman statesmen who had similarly overcome conspiracies and intrigues, showers the gouty banker with hyperbole. Fiorenza addresses Piero as “O splendor rilucente, o santo raggio,” emphasizing the unimpeachable good of Medici rule by recalling Piero’s father, “Cosimo santo e felice,” whom the fe­ male narrator calls “padremnioJ-’ Then, toward the end of the poem, Fiorenza utters the following lines: 139 Donatello’s bronze david I [Fiorenza] see to your [Piero’s] left and right sides Two green little laurel branches rise. And it appears that each desires To shade my hair with its fronds, On a column is an armed one. Who appears to give grief to your enemies. So that you fear and love That which is done by him to overcome Goliath. This was that unjust and ill-spirited faction. That wanted to take from me those who were born with me. Just like the sun pleases the sky So it [the faction] turned in flight and its great iniquity Fell to reason and to justice.^ If, as seems likely, this poem was indeed composed shortly after the failed Pitti-Neroni conspiracy of 1466, it represents the earliest known textual response to Donatello’s bronze David (fig. 4.1).’ Its imagery and wording are striking. Operating within the political tropes described and discussed in the previous chapters, the personification of Fiorenza “speaking” Risorboli’s lines presents a particularly intimate, familiar, and familial relation between the Medici and their city. The two green branches Fiorenza sees refer, un­ equivocally, to Lorenzo and Giuliano, Piero’s sons. As discussed in Chapter Two, the image of laurel shading Fiorenza’s hair operates within a well- known political and poetic trope. But Risorboli moves from textual imagery to the material, when he has Fiorenza focus on the “armed one on a column,” who “overcomes Goliath.” Risorboli, I submit, offers an interpretation of Donatello’s bronze David, a political statue that was, at that time, in the mid­ dle of the courtyard of the Medici palace on the via Larga. David’s victory over Goliath, Risorboli comments, resembles Piero’s victory over his ene­ mies. It is, however, intriguing that in the poem, Risorboli distances Piero from the violence done by David; Piero is seen to “fear and love” the violence done to Goliath. While the Medici profited from the suppression of the Pitti- Neroni conspiracy, they did not wish to be associated with the punishment of their opponents. It was better to have the abstraction “justice” and David take care of the “unjust and ill-spirited sect” that threatened Medici rule. Although scholars agree about very little concerning Donatello’s bronze David, there is, I believe, general consensus that it was a political statue.'* Regardless of the doubts surrounding its original function and loca­ tion, with the construction of the new Medici palace on the via Larga, the 140 Donatello’s bronze david David seems to have become the centerpiece of its first courtyard; Risorboli’s canzone tells us that it had probably gained this preeminent position by the au­ tumn of 1466. Perched on a column in the main courtyard of the Palazzo Medici, the David produced a new coordinate on the political visual grid of Florence; what is more, it thereby produced a triangular form, linking the new Medici palace to the Palazzo Vecchio and to the Mercato Vecchio. The notional lines connecting these charismatic centers were reinforced by the name Donatello. For in placing that artist’s bronze rendition of David in their courtyard, the Medici drew an unavoidable analogy between that space and the space of government, where Donatello’s marble version of the Old Testament hero had been placed in 1416. Furthermore, in setting the bronze David on a col­ umn, the Medici echoed the columnar monument to Wealth in the Old Mar­ ket, the traditional center of the Medici family in Florence and, as discussed in Chapter One, a space rendered political through the Doviiia monument. The symbolic nexus binding these sites was reinforced by Donatello’s authorship of these public icons.’ The bronze David remained in the Palazzo Medici until 1495 when, fol- ^ lowing the flight of Piero di Lorenzo de ’ Medici, the republican Signoria con­ fiscated it, along with many other Medicean statues and objets d’art.'* The David was moved from the Palazzo Medici to the Palazzo Vecchio, where, ironically mimicking its former position, it was placed in the main courtyard of the city hall.’’ In both these palaces the David, on a columnar base with juridical con­ notations, stands triumphant, having judged, condemned, and executed his people’s enemy, Goliath. Held up to the apostrophized citizenry of Florence j as a moral and political exemplum, this David is, however, an unlikely hero.!/ - That this naked ephebe should be allotted political iconicity is visually odd. /; / This oddity has vexed twentieth-century writing about the David, rendering 'jij the David “enigmatic.”* Political explanations attempting to cover up the ^ brazen nudity and youthfulness of the boy by piling on contextual data have not succeeded in taming the object. While Donatello’s unprecedented decision to represent David without clothes is curious, it is not the nudity of the David per se that has baffled mod­ ern scholars; rather, it is the distinctive presentation of adolescent nudity set forth in the bronze that has presented analysts with troubles. For if the bronze David proffered to citizens an allegory celebrating the triumph of intelligence over physical might, it set this pointedly political moral within an apparently eroticized frame. It is the seeming incompatibility between the erotic and the political that has troubled art historical analysis of this work. Nonetheless, as 141 Donatello’s bronze dav/d this book attempts to prove, during the fifteenth century, these two categories were not only close, they were also functionally related. Here, I would like to contend that, like the Doviiia, which attempted to galvanize the reggimento in a shared amorous and patriotic gaze, the David developed its political mes­ sage within discourses of love. Figuring the state as a beautiful adolescent boy, the statue offered to fif- \\ teenth-century viewers a body defined as possessing paradigmatic represen- li' tational clarity; simultaneously, the statue invoked (and revoked) a desiring ' (Cultural gaze. In this instance, however, the cultural material of this visuality is no longer to be found in the public traditions of heterosexual political personification, but rather in the social and visual structures of what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has usefully called “homosocial desire.”^ Sedgwick’s phrase helps circumvent the deadlock reached between historians of pre­ modern sexuality concerning the nature of male-male relations, between “Boswellian” essentialists, who promote a transhistorical and transcultural gay identity, and “Foucauldian” relativists, who argue for the historical sin­ gularity and cultural contingency of sexual identities.Akin to similar de­ bates in feminist scholarship, the dichotomy between so-called essentialists and so-called social constructivists derives from the very different political motivations and strategies of their proponents." Sedgwick’s concept of “ho­ mosocial desire” alleviates the most acute problems faced when dealing with the disparate approaches to the history of male, same-sex relations.'^ By “homosocial desire” she intends to draw together two seemingly incompati­ ble social phenomena: male-male sex and the social bonding of men defining masculinity.