Work in Progress"Europe of the Courts" and Court Studies

Marcello Fantoni

InDecember 1996, in its traditional meeting-place at the Istituto di StudiRinascimentali in Ferrara, the Study Group "Europa delle corti" celebrat-ed the twentieth anniversary of its foundation. The structure of "Europadelle corti" (hereafter EdC) could be described as a "light" one: its mem-bers annually elect a president, a secretary, and a treasurer, and in additionthere is an executive committee that meets periodically to discuss the plan-ning of the group's scholarly and publishing activity. This flexibility hashelped ensure the dynamism and survival of the group, both because it keepsadministrative costs low and because it has brought together committedindividuals and fostered initiatives around common interests.The moving spirits of EdC have been, at different times and for different

reasons, Giancarlo Mazzacurati, Amedeo Quondam, and Cesare Mozzarelli.To the first two goes the merit of having laid the project's foundations andof having shaped its focus on the basic texts and concepts of the courtly"way of being"; while the last was responsible for the group's shift towardpolitical and cultural history in the 1980s. In the art historical field AugustoGentili and Claudia Cieri Via also have had a powerful impact. But pre-cisely because of the nature of the group, to limit recognition to these fewfigures would be to do an injustice to the many others (among whom I shallmention only Carlo Ossola, Marzio Achille Romani, Adriano Prosperi, GianPaolo Brizzi, Daniela Frigo, Giorgio Cerboni Baiardi, Michel Plaisance,Giorgio Patrizi, and Gianni Venturi) who have also contributed their workand their ideas in the various disciplines.In these twenty years there have been many scholars who have passed

through EdC, even if only for a brief time, resulting in a constant renewaland interchange of personnel and ideas. Over time the group has expandedand become more aware of its proper scholarly role. It has been able to revi-talize itself in part because of its very permeability, but especially because ithas always maintained a strong didactic function, encouraging constructiveand uninhibited discussion free of academic constraints.For the Italian historical profession, which since the nineteenth century hasalways been diffident about accepting the court as a legitimate object of his-torical inquiry 1, EdC represents a clear signal of a new direction. Its workover the course of the 1970s and 1980s has in fact contributed decisively to

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undermining such prejudices, and it has made scholars increasingly awareof the central role of the court in the society, politics, and culture of theRenaissance and Ancien Regime.Over the years the members and associates of EdC have gradually identifiedcommon goals and methods, and its initiatives have steadily. expanded Notonly has the group promoted dozens of conferences and seminars, but, in par-ticular, it is also the creator of the book series Biblioteca. del Cinquecento,published by Bulzoni, which has by now produced some seventy titles (seethe appended list) .. This series includes monographs on single courts (Parmaand Piacenza, Urbino, Ferrara, Milan, Bologna, Florence, and Rome); edi-tions of texts and studies of authors that are essential for understanding theworld of the court (from Baldassarre Castiglione, Paolo Giovio, and StefanoGuazzo to Pietro Aretino, Giovanni della Casa, and, most recently, GiovanFrancesco Commendone); and works that focus on broader constituents ofthe courtly cosmos (from classicism, economics, fashion, and ritual to sci-ence, diplomacy, artistic patronage, and religion). Of the many paths thathave been explored, some have undergone extensive development over timeand others have branched out in different directions, while still others, suchas the area of economic history, seem to have been exhaustedEdC's activity has dominated scholarly production in Italy in this field anddefined its directionsand methods .. Furthermore, research and publishinghas not been limited to the previously cited Bulzoni series. A close rela-tionship exists, both in personnel and in orientation, with the journalCheiron, founded in 1984 and now also published by Bulzoni, while manyarticles by members of EdC have appeared in other publications.Over the years, EdC has emerged from the Renaissance triangle formed by

Ferrara, Mantova, and Urbino, and from that fragmented signorial world ofthe Po Valley region on which its early studies were concentrated As thegroup's geographical horizons have broadened, so its chronological bound-aries have expanded and the questions it has been concerned with have mul-tiplied Appropriately enough, in addition to the series title, .Biblioteca delCinquecento, on the volumes published by EdC there now appears the broad-er and more demandIng phrase, Centro studi sulle societa di antico regime.The chronological period now covered by the group's activities ranges

from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century,2 from the formative period ofthe court to the twilight of the Ancien Regime. In addition to illuminatingthe chronic historiographical obscurity that shrouded the seventeenth centu-ry in Italy, the perspective of the longueduree has also had the merit ofiden-tifying classical culture, which both permeated and was propagated by the

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civilization of the court, as a powerful unifying feature of the AncienRegime up to the threshold of the age of revolution3These studies have found, on the whole, that the ethical and behavioral

codes generated within the system of the sixteenth-century courtspersistedwell beyond the traditional boundaries of the Renaissance. Indeed, this per-sistence has made it possible to hypothesize a "long Renaissance", or a"delayed modernity", anepoch that was characterized - and this is anothersignificant conclusion of the group's researches - by the European-widedimensions of courtly culture.Just as the century of the Enlightenment, for all its new ferments, has been

reabsorbed into the Ancien Regime, .so in the future the study of the courtmight well expand into the nineteenth century, or on the other side into theMiddle Ages, by searching for earlier "medieval" or even late antique mod-els, and for those ideological, symbolic, ritual, and iconographic featurespeculiar to the court. Further effort to integrate within the general picture ofthe court the micro-signorial regimes of central Italy in the fourteenth and fif-teenth centuries (the Trinci in Foligno, the Cybo in Massa, the Vitelli in Cittadi Castello, etc.), the Angevin-Aragonese court in Naples, and especially theLateran court in Rome, is necessary in order to grasp the connection betweenthe watershed represented by Castiglione and his medieval background.As the expansion of horizons rendered the overall portrait more complex

and multifaceted, the old evolutionary models and courtly typologies relat-ed to the northern courts became increasingly inadequate. As a conse-quence, new research and debate on other examples and models has beengenerated4 This.has gone hand in hand with the need felt within EdC forreflection on its own historiographical development and positions, and,more generally, on the ideological and cultural climates which, over time,have determined different interpretations of the court. In addition to theforementionedwork on.the image of the court in the culture and historiog-raphy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and to the more limited sur-veys by Merlin and by Fantonis, several seminars have been dedicated tothis theme in the last five years, and another will be held in Rome in .19976It should also be mentioned that, in the course of this process, EdC has

been only partially influenced by anthropology and virtually untouched bythe wave of enthusiasm for Norbert Eliasin the 1980s, after the Germansociologist's trilogy was translated into Italian. The sole exception has beenthe publication in the series of Hubert Ehalt's La corte di Vienna ira Sei eSettecento. The thesis of the warrior turned courtier is in fact inadequatefor making sense of the complexity of the Italian political scene and of the

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heterogeneous character of the societies with which the different Italiancourts interacted. In addition, the social-psychological approach poorlysuits the cultural cosmos of the sixteenth century, when - precisely in Italy- certain ideological theorems were developed and a courtly "form of life"took shape which would later reappear in the. Versailles. of Louis XIV.At the same time, a profound lack of understanding has distinguished the

relations between EdC and the Anglo-American historical field, producingsharp criticisms of the methods used and the problems posed in the studiesthe group has published The controversy has concerned (and to some extent.still concerns) the "false interdisciplinary nature".of numerous conferencepublications, and an excessive attention to literary and "cultural" aspects ofthe court7 The latter have been labeled a "discourse on discourse" thatignores the more important phenomenon of clientelism, following the pathsopened up by network analysis and prosopography.In recent years this rift seems to have been partially mended, due both to

the internal evolution that has occurred among the scholars who direct EdC,and to the growing convergence of approaches. . The first encounter tookplace in 1993 in Chicago, at the conference on The Origins of the State, fol-lowed in December of that year by a seminar dedicated to the historiogra-phy of the court (which brought together in Ferrara scholars of variousEuropean nations), and, most-recently, by the inclusion .of sessions orga-nized by EdC at the Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America.EdC's early interests centered on the culture of the sixteenth century, begin-ningwith Castiglione and The Courtier. In particular, what was examinedwas the rules of representation and dissimulation, considered fundamentalelements of the theatricality that lay at the base of the Ancien Regime. Theaim of these studies was to throw light on the conceptual system withinwhich the courtier was functional and which he himself helped create, withthe assumption that the court expressed its cultural centrality mainly throughartistic and literary manifestations.One might say, therefore, that it was not structures and networks that were

the fulcrum of court life, but rather the system of values from which theseunequal personal relations.drew their. raison d'etre. It was in the field ofethics, in the dialectic between "honor" and "utility", in the codification of a"form of life", in the ways in which the protagonists of courtly societythought and perceived themselves, that one finds the fulcrum of that "speci-ficity" of the Ancien Regime on which EdC has insisted so forcefully.Branching out from these initial hypotheses, later studies aimed at analyz-

ing the more strictly. political and social valences of this cultural system.

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They examined, on one hand, the noble ethos and the homologies (bothpractical and theoretical) between the government of the state and theadministration of the aristocratic "household"8, and, .on the other, the denseweb of relations .and interests that surrounded the. prince and that made thecourt into an inevitable apparatus of power.Examining the concrete orientation of research, one can thus distinguish a

first phase in which scholarly interest was centered on the textual dimen-sion, on the "re-use" of classicizing codes and on the. courtly image; and asecond phase distinguished by greater attention to social and political phe-nomena .. The study ofRenaissance culture has.increasingly yieldedto thestudy of the society and the politics of the Ancien Regime.The turning point. occurred with.the publication of.the volumes on the

"Familia" del Principe e farniglia aris tocratica, which represented a five-year period (1983-1988) of rethinking and research aimed at applying theinterpretive approaches .developed in the first decade to concrete historicalcontexts. The goal of this initiative was to prove that, through Castiglione's"regula generalis sima" and the "form of life" that was created "in the Italianprincipalities from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries, it was in fact pos-sible to understand the Ancien Regime as a particular cosmos, a cosmoswhich took shape in this period and dissolved in the late eighteenth centu-ry"9 .. Instead of viewing this period as a prefiguration of modernity, in otherwords, these works increasingly profiled the specificity of the AncienRegime, one of the interpretive leitmotifs of EdC's work in the last"decade.In this. second phase the discourse on the court and on its "mode of being"lost its connotation as an "abstract grammar" and instead became a culturalsystem within which the people of the Ancien Regime thought and actedlO.This was "an order defined by such categories as honor, privilege, and nobil-ity, and based on that motionless motor that was the Christian God, whichtherefore made it ethical.. For thisreasotl it did not have - it could not have- specific ends thatmake it somehow comparable to the modem order"ll.Initiatives currently in progress and projects for the future are numerous.

The series entitled Italian History and Culture, published by CambridgeUniversity Press, has two volumes in preparation, one on the court of Romeby Gianvittorio Signorotto and another by Daniela Frigo on the diplomacyof the sixteenth-century sovereignties. The program for 1997-1998 alsoincludes the conclusion of the seminars on "The Presence of the RegularClergy in.Ancien Regime Courts", "The Sister Arts", and "The PerfectCaptain". The aim of the first is to study the role of members of the regularclergy at the major courts of Italy and Europe during the Ancien Regime.

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One of the several issues covered concerns the synchretism between politicsand religion that must have been at the heart of these princely regimes. Thesecond investigates the relationship between painting and literature in the16th and 17th century. With the invention of printing an obligatory relationwas established between texts and illustrations, and in this connectionimages were diffused, reproduced, andre-used. The final seminar analysesthe image of the captain or the prince/captain that appeared with increasingfrequency and significance both in literary and in iconographical sources insixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy. This image had a clear classicalfoundation and precise ideological meanings. The object is therefore not somuch the captain himself, but the discourse that was constructed around himand the ideological meanings that he conveyed. Finally, the group is alsoorganizing a conference on. Carpi under the rule of the Este and, for 1998,the fourth centenary celebrations of the end of the Este dynasty in Ferrara.

List of publications(publ. Bulzoni, Via dei Liburni 14, 00185 Roma. Fax 00396 4450655)1. M. A. Romani (ed) Le cortifamesiane di Parma e Piacenza (1545-1622),vol I: Potere e societa nello stato famesiano (1978)2. A. Quondam (ed) Le cortifarnesiane di Parma e Piacenza (1545-1622),vol. II: Forme e istituzioni della produzione culturale (1978)4. P. Giovio Dialogo delle imprese militari e amorose M. L. Doglio (ed) (1978)5. F. Gandolfo II "tempo dolce". Mistica, ermetismo e sogno nelCinquecento (1978)6. A. Santosuosso Vita di Giovanni della Casa (1979)7. D. A. Franchini, R. Margonari, G. Olmi, R. Signorini, A. Zanca and C.Tellini Perina (eds) La scienza a corte.Collezionismo eclettico, natura eimmagine a Mantovafra Rinascimento e Manierismo (1979)8. C. Ossola (ed) La corte e il "Cortegiano", vol I: La scena del testo (1980)9. A. Prosperi (ed) La corte e if "Cortegiano", vol II: Unmodello europeo (1980)10. P. Larivaille Pietro Aretino fra Rinascimento e Manierismo (1980)11. G. Ferroni II testo e la scena. Saggi sui teatro del Cinquecento (1980)12. G. ~ Brizzi, A. D' Alessandro and A. Del Fante Universita, Principe,Gesuiti. La politica farnesiana dell'istruzione a Parma e Piacenza (1545-1622) (1980)13. A. Gareffi Le voci dipinte. Figura e parola nel Manierismo italiano (1981)14. A. Quondam (ed) Le "carte messaggiere". Retorica e modelli di comu-nicazione epistolare: per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento (1981)15. A. F. Doni I numeri A. Del Fante (ed) (1981)

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16. G. P. Brizzi (ed) La "ratio studiorum". Modelli culturali e praticheeducative dei Gesuiti inltalia tra Cinque e Seicento (1981)17. G. Papagno andA. Quondam (eds) La corte e 10 spazio:Ferrara estense(3 vols) (1981)18. F. Erspamer La biblioteca di don Ferrante. Duello e onore nella culturadel Cinquecento (1982)19. G. Baldassarril1 sonno di Zeus. Sperimentazione narrativa del poemarinascimentale e tradizione omerica (1982)20. F. Ruffini Teatri prima del teatro. Visioni dell'edificio e della scena traUmanesimo e Rinascimento (1983)21. C. Mozzarelli and G. Olmi (eds) La Corte nella cultura e nella stori-ograjia. Immagini e posizioni tra Otto e Novecento (1983)22. F. Cruciani Teatro nel Rinascimento. Roma 1450-1550 (1984)23. A. Ferrajoli 11 ruolo della. Corte di Leone X. V. De Caprio (00) (1984)24. H. C. Ehalt La corte di Viennafra Sei e Settecento (1984)25. B. Basile (ed) "Bentivolorum magnificentia". Principe e cultura aBologna nel Rinascimento (1984)26. 1. Paccagnella 11 fasto delle lingue. Plurilinguismo letterario nelCinquecento (1984)27. M. Ariani Imagofabulosa. Mito e allegoria nei "Dialoghi d'Amore" diLeone Ebreo (1984)28. A. Gentili I giardini di contemplazione. Lorenzo Lotto, 1503-1512 (1985)29. D.Frigo 11padre difamiglia. Governo della casa e governo civile nellatradizione dell'" economica" tra Cinque e Seicento (1985)30. G. CerboniBaiardi, G.Chittolini and R Floriani (eds) Federico diMontefeltro. Lo stato, le arti, la cultura (3 vols) (1985)31. J. De Valdes Lo Evangelio di San Matteo C. Ossola (ed) (1985)32. E. Lee (ed) Descriptio Urbis. The Roman Census of 1527 (1985)33. C. Ossola,C. Raffestin and M. Ricciardi (eds) Lafrontiera da Stato aMazione. 11 caso Piemonte (1987)34. M. Beer Romanzi di cavalleria. 11 "Furioso" e il romanzo italiano delprimo Cinquecento (1987)35. R. Ciancarelli 11 progetto di unafesta barocca. Alle origini del TeatroFarnese di Parma (1618-1629) (1987)36. G. Mazzacurati and M. Plaissance (eds) Scritture di scritture. Testi,generi, modelli nel Rinascimento (1987)37. G. Parabosco 11primo libro dei madrigali (1551) N. Longo (ed) (1987)38. G. Barberi Squarotti Machiavelli 0 la scelta della letteratura (1987)39. P. Prodi (ed) Bernardo Clesio e il suo tempo (1988)

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40. G. F. Capra Della eccellenza e dignita delle donne M. L. Doglio (ed) (1988)41. C. Mozzarelli (ed) "Familia" del Principe efamiglia aristocratica (1988)42. A. Gentili Da 1iziano a 1iziano. Mito e allegoria nella culturaveneziana del Cinquecento (1988)43. C. Di Filippo Bareggi II mestiere di scrivere. Lavoro intellettuale e mer-cato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento (1988)44. A. De' Mori Giuoco piacevole M. G. Sanjust (ed) (1988)45. P. Floriani II modello ariostesco. La satira classicista nel Cinquecento (1988)46. G. Patrizi (ed) Stefano Guazzo e la Civil conversazione (1990)47. J. M. Cauchies and G. Chittolini (eds) Milano e Borgogna. DueStatiprincipeschi tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (1990)48. A. Gentili (ed) II ritratto e la memoria. Materiali 1(1989)49. L. Guicciardini L'ore di ricreazione A.M. Van Passen (ed) (1990)50. D. Frigo Principe, ambasciatori e "Jus gentium". L'amministrazionedella politica estera nel Piemonte del Settecento (1991)51. A. Stauble Parlar per lettera. II pedante nella commedia delCinquecento e altri saggi suI teatro rinascimentale (1991)52. C. Mozzarelli and G. Venturi (eds) L'Europa delle corti alla finedell'Antico Regime (1991)53. F. Rurale I gesuiti a Milano. Religione e politica nel secondoCinquecento (1992)54. G. Klingenstein L' ascesa di casa Kaun itz. Ricerche sulla formazionedel cancelliere Wenzel Anton Kaunitz e la trasjormazione dell' aristocraziaimperiale (secoli XVII e XVIII) (1993)55. A. Gentili, P. Morel and C. Cieri Via (eds) II ritratto e la memoria.Materiali 2 (1994)56. A. Gentili, P. Morel and C. Cieri Via (eds) Il ritratto e la memoria.Materiali 3 (1994)57. J. Burkhardt II ritratto nella pittura italiana D. Pagliai (ed) (1994)58. C. Sigonio Del dialogo F. Pignatti (ed) (1994)59. B. G. Zenobi Le "ben regolate citta". Modelli politici nel govemo dellaperiferia in eta modema (1994)60. A. Quondam (ed) Illibro a corte (1994)61. A. G. Cavagna and G. Butazzi (eds) Le trame della moda (1994)62. M. Fantoni La corte del Granduca. Forma e simboli del potere mediceojra Cinque e Seicento (1994)63. P. Pissavino and G. Signorotto (eds) Lombardia borromaica eLombardia spagnola, 1554-1659 (vols. 2) (1995)64. L. Ventura Lorenzo Leonbruno. Un pittore a Corte nella Mantova diprimo Cinquecento (1995)

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65. G. Godi Bandello. Narratori e dedicatari della prima parte delle nov-elle (1996)66. G. Mazzacurati Rinascimenti in trans ito (1996)67. C. Continisio and C. Mozzarelli (eds) Repubblica e virtu. Pensieropolitico e monarchia cattolicafra XVI e XVII secolo (1996)68. G. F. Commendone Discorso sopra la corte di Roma C. Mozzarelli (ed)(1996)

Notes1. See C. Mozzarelli and G. Olmi (eds) La corte nella cultura e nella stori-ografia: Immagini e posizioni tra Otto e Nocecento .(Rome 1983)2. C. Mozzarelli and G. Venturi (eds) L'Europa delle corti alla fine del-l'antico regime (Rome 1991)3. G.Mazzacurati Il Rinascimento dei moderni: La crisi culturale del XVIsecolo e la negazione delle origini (Bologna 1985); G. Mazzacurati and M.Plaisance (eds) Scritture di scritture: Testi, generi, modelli nel Rinascimento(Rome 1987); A. Quondam 'La Virtu dipinta: Noterelle (e divagazioni)guazziane intomo a Classicismo e 'Institutio' in Antico regime' , in G. Patrizi(ed) Stefano Guazzi e la Civil Conversazione (Rome 1990) pp 227-3954. See M. Cattini and M. A. Romani, 'Le corti parallele: Per una tipologicadelle corti padane dal XIII al XVI secolo' in G. Papgno and A. Quondam(eds) La corte e 10 spazio: Ferrara estense (Rome 1982) pp 47-825. P.Merlin'Il tema della corte nella storiografia italiana ed europea' Studistorici 1 (1986) pp 203-244; M. Fantoni 'Corte e Stato nell'Italia dei secoliXIV-XVI' in G. Chittolini, A. Molho and ~ Schiera (eds) Origini delloStato: Processi di formazione statle in Italia fra medioevo ed eta modema(Bologna 1994) pp 449-4666. .Some of the papers that have subsequently been published include O.Chaline 'Combien de royames nous ignorent: La cour dans l'historiographiefran~aise' Annali di storia moderna e contemporanea 2 (1996) pp 384-392;J. Rambaud Cabello, 'La corte degli Asburgo di Madrid: Tendenze stori-ografiche' ibid pp 393-400.7. The chorus of criticism has included, at various times, J. Lamer 'Europeof the Courts' Journal of Modern History 55 (1983) pp 672-673; L.Lockwood, in a review of G. Papgno and A Quondam (eds) 'La corte e 10spazio' in Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985) pp 726-727; T. Dean 'Le Corti:Un problem storiografico' in G. Chittolini, A. Molho and P Schirea (eds)Origini dello Stato pp 425-447.

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8. D. Frigo 11padre di famiglia: Governo della casa e governo civile nellatradizione dell'" economica" tra Cinque e Seicento (Rome (19??)9. C. Mozarelli (ed) "Familia" del principe, famiglia aristocratica (Rome1988) p viii10 C. Mozarelli 'Prince and Court: Why and how should the Court beStudied Today' Schifanoa 8 (1989) pp 33-3611 C. Mozarelli (ed) "Familia" p ix

Marcello FantoniMarcello Fantoni is a teacher of Italian Renaissance History at GeorgetownUniversity (Florence Program), Via Vecchia Fiesolana 26, 50014 Fiesole,Italy. He is also Academic Director. He received his PhD, on PoliticalSymbolism in Architecture in Italian Court Cities of the 16th Century, fromthe European University Institute in 1991. Hefounded, and is currently theeditor of, the journal Italian History and Culture.He has published a book, La corte del granduca, Forme e simboli del poteremediceo fra XVI e XVII secolo (Roma, Bulzoni 1995).

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