Bring on the festivities!
On this day in 1598, Pope Clement VIII entered Bologna on route back to Rome after a long visit to Ferrara. The well-known – and then 23-year-old – Italian artist Guido Reni (1575-1642) was commissioned to design the Bolognese decorations for the papal visit: these count among the artist’s earliest commissions, while the etchings included in the subsequent publication, Descrittione de gli apparati fatti in Bologna per la venuta di N.S. Papa Clemente VIII. Con gli disegni de gli archi, statue, & pitture. Dedicata a gli Ill.mi Sig. del Reggimento di Bologna, da Vittorio Benacci stampator camerale represent his first book illustrations. The decorations were lavish. The façade of the Palazzo del Senato, for example, was decorated with inscriptions celebrating the pontiff along with allegorical female figures, while richly decorative papal arms, angels, gold crosses, painted columns, while fine carpets and tapestries embellished the city’s gates, churches, and palaces. The fine etchings included in the following volume show such decorations created in honour of the Aldobrandini Pope, including triumphal arches, columns, statues, and other ceremonial structures, and are introduced by an account of the festivities written by the stampatore camerale Vittorio Benacci (1571-1629).
The Descrittione de gli apparati fatti in Bologna per la venuta di N.S. Papa Clemente VIII… is a fine example of the festival book, a genre of publication that flourished in 16th- and 17th- century Europe, when civic and courtly pageants were important for both political and cultural purposes. The richest concentration of such festivals took place in Italy, then a territory composed of diverse city states.
Festivals were often city-based and presented on significant occasions such as marriages, births, funerals, or arrivals of important figures, as well as in honour of important saints, as with the cult of Saint Rosalia. As the entry of Pope Clement VIII into Bologna suggests, they were grand and costly spectacles that brought together diverse figures including important artists and resulted in ephemeral architecture, plays, songs, parades, and various other festivities.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, we thought we’d take this opportunity to look at some of our favourite festival books.
Their splendour cannot be described, and anyone who did not see it could not believe it — J. M. Saslow
Scarabelli, Orazio (fl. 1580-1600) - D’Alfani, Epifanio (fl. 1586-115). Festival prints relating to the wedding of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici to the Princess Christine de Lorraine. Siena, Filippo Suchielli, [after 1592].
An extremely rare collection of these fine prints – all with wide margins – depicting the architectural ornamentation, scenic designs, and jousts relating to the event which mobilized, and combined the intellectual and artistic forces of Tuscany at the zenith of its prestige: the wedding of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I de' Medici, to the French princess, Christine de Lorraine, which took place in 1589.
While the pair had already married in 1586, the marriage was not celebrated until Christine's arrival into Florence on 30 April 1589. The festivities required ten months of preparations and lasted all throughout the month of May until 8 June 1589. They consisted of pageants, balls, games, cavalcades, processions, a naumachia or naval battle in the inner courtyard of Palazzo Pitti, and other performances – including a demonstrative soccer match in front of the Basilica di Santa Croce on 9 May – all glorifying the couple. Especially noteworthy are the so-called intermedi typical of the Florentine theatre tradition, i.e., short performances of songs, music, and dances inserted between the acts of the comedies being presented.
Owing to the magnificence of the events depicted, it may well be the only festival book to have received a monograph expressly devoted to it: James Saslow's The Medici Wedding of 1589.
See the full description here.
A wedding account printed on blue paper
Rinuccini, Camillo (1564-1649). Descrizione delle Feste fatte nelle Reali nozze de’ Serenissimo Principi di Toscana D. Cosimo de’ Medici, e Maria Maddalena Archiduchessa d’Austria. Florence, Giunta, 1608.
A marvellous and exceedingly rare copy, printed on blue paper, of one of the most famous festival books of the late Renaissance: the first edition of Camillo Rinuccini's description of the sumptuous ceremonies organised around the wedding of the eighteen-year-old Crown Prince Cosimo II de' Medici to the Archduchess of Austria Maria Magdalena, cousin of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, celebrated in Florence in 1608. This blue-paper copy was likely offered by the author to a member of the important Florentine Vettori family, whose coat of arms is stamped on the binding.
Florence witnessed an unprecedented series of events in celebration of the union between Cosimo, who would become Grand Duke of Tuscany only a few months after his marriage, and his bride from the powerful Habsburg house: plays, musical intermezzi, giostre, horse ballets, a triumphal procession, banquet, and even a naval battle or naumachia on the Arno river. Camillo Rinuccini narrated all of these magnificent events, and his Descrizione enjoyed wide and immediate success. Especially noteworthy is Lorenzo Franceschi's Ballo et Giostra de' venti (fols. N1r-N4r), a poem in octaves describing a horse ballet illustrated with a fine thirty-two-point compass rose or wind rose (fol. N4r), which was also issued separately from the Giunti press.
See the full description here.
The festival of Saint Rosalia, the ‘little Saint’ of Palermo
Paruta, Filippo (1552-1629). Relatione delle feste fatte in Palermo nel 1625 per lo trionfo delle gloriose reliquie. Di S. Rosalia vergine palermitana. Scritta dal dottor don Onofrio Paruta, canonico della chiesa metropolitana di Palermo, figlio di Filippo. E poi perfettionata da don Simplicio Paruta monaco cassinese.... Palermo, Pietro Coppola, 1651.
An extremely rare edition of this festival account attributed to Filippo Paruta, but edited by his son Simplicio – who is also responsible for signing the dedication to the Senate of Palermo – and published posthumously under the name of his other son, Onofrio.
In the note to the reader Onofrio provides a detailed list of the works (orations, occasional writings, inscriptions for ephemeral architecture, etc.) of his father, Filippo, who was secretary of the Palermo Senate and chiefly responsible for the iconographic program realized on the occasion of the 1625 festivities.
At the beginning of the 1620s, the viceroy Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy rebuilt the Accademia dei Riaccesi, which gathered in the Royal Palace, and entrusted the scholar and mathematician Carlo Maria Ventimiglia with the direction of the academy. Around his figure gravitated many of the artists and scholars who designed the program and the solemn procession of the relics of Saint Rosalia, held in June of 1625 as a sign of gratitude for deliverance from the plague. Among them were the painters and architects Gerardo Astorino and Vincenzo La Barbera; the engraver Francesco Negro; the scholar Martino La Farina, who conceived the allegorical arch of the Genoese nation; and, above all, Filippo Paruta, who was also linked to Ventimiglia through a common passion for numismatics and antiquities. Paruta was involved in all literary activities related to celebratory events since the end of the sixteenth century. In 1625 he inspired the triumphal arch that the Senate erected in Piazza Villena and was responsible for the account of the festivities, which in the end was only published after his death in 1651.
The constitution of such a large and complex team to be entrusted with the creation of the apparatuses testifies to the importance of this event which officially marked the beginning of the cult of Saint Rosalia. The solemnity of 1625 had no immediate follow-up and it was only in 1649 that the feast of Saint Rosalia was formalized with all those peculiarities that would characterize the following decades (see below). In 1625, in addition to the impressive processions and solemn ceremonies in which all local communities, religious and civil, took part, two magnificent horse rides were organized; one, in particular, took place at the conclusion of the festivities, after the solemn mass in the cathedral. It was followed by fireworks, organized by the German nation, along with tournaments and jousts. At the very end the nobility walked in gala dress along the Via Colonna.
See the full description here.
Festival culture in Baroque Palermo
Vio, Ignazio de (1659-1749). L’Emporio delle glorie palermitane, o vero il compendio di molti pregi della Città di Palermo, consecrato a S. Rosalia Vergine Palermitana, nella solennità di quest’anno 1704.... Palermo, Domenico Cortese, 1704.
A first edition of this work describing the magnificent religious festival held in Palermo in 1704 in honour of the city's patron saint, Saint Rosalia, who, according to local tradition, had saved the city from the plague. The text is attributed in the dedicatory epistle to the Jesuit Ignazio de Vio, teacher of theology, mathematics, and Hebrew. Between 1693 and 1704 he published several works on the festival of Saint Rosalia, which, initiated in 1625, began on 12 July and lasted four days. The cult of the patron saint was strongly supported by the Jesuits, who were directly involved – as this publication testifies – in the organisation of processions and other festivities.
The volume is supplemented with four fine plates, which are signed by the leading architect, engineer, and painter Paolo Amato (1634-1714), the designer and inventor of all the spectacular ephemeral structures or apparati. Amato was in charge of the fabulous decorations for almost all festivities commissioned by the Senate of Palermo between the 1680s and 1714, the year of his death. One of the folding plates, pictured here, is especially impressive: it measures 1098 mm (43.2 inches) in length, and shows a procession of chariots looking like galleons. The other plates are also of great interest, depicting various ephemeral structures used in the festival, such as an incredible firework machine built as a castle on an island surrounded by boats and elaborate church apparati.
See the full description here.
Bodoni’s finest illustrated book
Paciaudi, Paolo Maria (1710-1785). Descrizione delle Feste celebrate in Parma l’anno MDCCLXIX per le auguste Nozze di Sua Altezza Reale l’Infante Don Ferdinando colla Reale Arciduchessa Maria Amalia. Parma, nella Stamperia Reale, [1769].
A magnificent festival book printed by Bodoni just a year after his appointment as head of the ducal typography, on the occasion of the marriage of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma to the Archduchess of Austria Maria Amalia of Habsburg-Lothringen, Imperial Princess and daughter of Francis I and Maria Theresa. The wedding was formally celebrated at Colorno on 27 July 1769, but the splendid festival organised in celebration of the union took place in Parma. “On 19 July 1769, Maria Amalia left Mantua for her solemn state entry into the duchy of Parma [...] Finally, on 24 August, Ferdinando and Maria Amalia made their way in a huge procession from Colorno to the cathedral of Parma [...] Planning these events required all Du Tillot's formidable organizational skill, and he insisted on recording the results in the most beautiful way possible. To this end, he gathered Bodoni, [the chief architect of the ducal court Ennemond] Petitot, and Benigno Bossi, the renowned engraver, and exhorted them to produce albums that would astonish everyone with their magnificence. The first and most important of these was Descrizione delle Feste celebrate in Parma” (V. Lester, Giambattista Bodoni, pp. 79-80).
The resulting publication is one of the finest illustrated volumes issued from the Stamperia Reale, “Forse il più attraente di tutti i libri di Bodoni per la bellezza delle figure” (Brooks). It was realised by Bodoni in close collaboration with Ennemond Alexandre Petitot (1727-1801), the latter having been responsible for designing the sumptuous apparati, fabulous scenography, and lavish costuming prepared for those festivities. The bilingual text in Italian and French was composed by the court librarian Paolo Maria Paciaudi and describes the various celebratory performances: tournaments, costume balls, processions, fireworks, a pastoral play in the Boschetto d'Arcadia, and a Chinese fair, all of which are depicted in the marvellous plates, engraved by, among others, Benigno Bossi, Domenico Muzzi, and Giuseppe Patrini, and executed after the designs of such leading artists as G. Volpato, G. Zuliani, Paolo Maria Bossi, and above all the aforementioned Petitot.
The edition, presented here in its first issue, was printed in 1,002 copies, which are housed in different bindings. This copy is one of 144 bound in bazzana, i.e., mottled calf; some of these also bear the Bourbon-Parma coat of arms in gilt, as with the present example.
See the full description here.
How to cite this information
Margherita Palumbo and Julia Stimac, "Bring on the Festivities!" 27 November 2019, www.prphbooks.com/blog/2019/festivalbooks. Accessed [date].This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.