It is known that Florence, from the Grand Tour onwards, has been invaded by foreigners in love with her. Especially scholars. To the point that they made it until very recently the masters, insediandovi their libraries and their illustrious universities. Moreover, one of the most illustrious city’s cultural foundations bears the name of the publisher Gianpietro Vieusseux, Switzerland. And the historian par excellence of medieval Florence is a German jew lived between the nineteenth and twentieth century, Robert Davidsohn.
Then the British arrived; and finally the US. It was they who dominate the one that usually is pointed out as the “fiorentinistica”: a little ‘less perhaps philology and linguistics, solidly manned by the Academy of bran; However much history, art history, the history of entertainment, the dantistica and so on. Moreover, eminent scholars such as English or the American Nicolai Rubinstein (of Jewish origin portoghesegreca) Anthony Molho also had Italian students.
By now from one generation Italians, and indeed even the Florentines, seem to have been freed from this “foreign” hegemony, which must however much gratitude: and have been providing high-quality scientific evidence. Anyone wishing to verify the tone even at a level of more extensive summary ( “popular”, but in the best sense of the term) may access such as the excellent book written by four of them, Silvia Diacciati, Enrico Faini, Lorenzo Tanzini and Sergio Tognetti, who published a book with the suggestive title Puccini’s As a flowering tree. Florence between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Mandragora, 261 pages, € 16.00).
But other new features include a search of the salient aspects seriously original and innovative. As the massive but really fascinating civil and sacred representation Theatre in Florence during the Renaissance (Letters, illustrated, 535 pages, € 42.00) Paola Ventrone, today the show history professor at the Catholic University of Milan but with a fiorentinissimo pedigree Florentine scientific as alllieva Ludwig ( “Alvise”) Zorzi, Siro Ferrone and Sara Mamone.
Define this book a history study of the show would be deeply simplistic. Indeed it is, but, faithful primarily in what legacy forwarded by Ludovico Zorzi, Ventrone studied the show as the crossover success of a number of components at the same time religious, civil, artistic and strictly political. The age of the research object from which the work has sprung – and it is an uninterrupted work lasted more or less thirty years – going from 1382 to 1530, ie since the elite Florentine oligarchic firmly they took over the city government by reducing the political life in a close fight between large families among which emerged within a few years the Medici, until precisely the
in this respect the spectacular occasions – processions, jousts, tournaments, mystery plays – were gradually regulated through the dialectic of partnerships (the “companies”) that ran and large portions of town companies who took part in it: and their liturgical and procedural language no less scenic apparatus and technology became another increasingly complex and expensive, on the other hand more and more pervasive in respect of city life up to tarsformarsi into real organization tools of consensus.
Moreover, the civic character of the citizens shows and community identity that was expressed through them you can clearly grasp the fact that their core is characterized by the celebrations of the patron saint, John the Baptist. “San Giovanni ‘a Vole deceit”, it still says in Florence: the patron severe watched on political alliances, ready to punish the subject communities that were shown treacherous; and he kept watch on the economic health of the republic, since his likeness emblazoned on the reverse of the prestigious Florentine gold coin, the florin.
But over the patronal feast, every June 24, the government leaders and joined other occasions Florentine notables to their governors and did cause that they s’incontrassero and interacted with in contexts of intense symbolic significance. As happened for the feast of the Magi, which was celebrated on the occasion of the Epiphany, and which manifested itself through a sumptuous retinue funded by members of the great families gathered in a “company” at the head of which we find signicativamente before a member of the Strozzi family , which could have become the reigning dynasty in Florence, and then of the Medici, who actually became.
Another extraordinary moment in the life of the city was the Ecumenical Council of 1439, during which Santa Maria Novella is solemnly proclaimed the union of the Latin Church with the Greek one (but the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople broke that dream); and another 1459, when the city now firmly albeit discreetly ruled by Cosimo de ‘Medici (later called “the Elder”) hosted Pope Pius II. The frescoes of the Magi ride paintings by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Medici palace after that occasion summarize well the solemnity of the game and vanity underlies the manifestations of pomp.
But then, the book Paola Ventrone also provides us with images and information all the more we marvel. The beauty and ingenuity of certain machines, such as: immense theatrical talents through which s’inventavano admirable stage tricks, even flights of angels and heavenly or diabolical hoax. Many of these devices have remained designs and even model. In fifteenth-century Florence was held in baptism a new kind of passion play, which committed theater and acting resources but also posed political-religious and moral issues are often resolved boldly the great Archbishop St. Antonino Pierozzi resulting involved.
So how – and do not expect the, in fifteenth-century Florence that we imagine all stretched to the reinvention of the classic beauty (and was so, particularly because of Lorenzo the Magnificent) – often happens to run into chivalrous scenes from “the autumn of the Middle Ages” gothic flavor, solemn investitures of knights and jousting and tournament games: a ‘Middle Ages’ never would suspect that many of the humanists in Florence.
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