Europa Triumphans: The Genoa Cluster
Cluster Leader, Maria Ines Aliverti
The decision to include a Genoa cluster among the texts of Europa
Triumphans arose from the recognition that among the city states of
Renaissance Italy Genoa must be counted one of the most significant,
politically, in trade, military power and commerce, and in its strategic
position astride the favoured route between the Habsburg capitals of Madrid
and Vienna. Moreover, Genoa enjoyed from the mid sixteenth century a
‘secoli dei Genovesi’, a period of economic prosperity and relative political
security which lasted well into the following century. Such a city as this,
finding its place among the leading states of Italy and the great powers of
Europe, must of necessity have developed its particular language of
ceremony, both to give expression to its burgeoning civic life and to greet
the princes, from Charles V on, who not infrequently chose to lodge in the
city during a wedding journey, or on their way from one part of their
dominions to another. The challenge was to identify manuscript or printed
materials which would exemplify in varying forms the ceremonial life of the
city over the period in question.
There were other considerations which made Genoa an interesting
example of a producer of courtly spectacle. The city was a republic, highly
conscious of its delicately-balanced oligarchic constitution which, as Carlo
Bitossi shows in an introductory essay, was being gradually formed as its
institutions coalesced during the sixteenth century. It was not altogether
easy for a republic to adopt the rhetoric of the court in its public displays,
though Genoa was not the only republic to choose to do so. The
adjustments of ceremony, and the vexed questions of prestige and
precedence, were bound to trouble the minds of the inventors and
consumers of spectacle. Genoa, too, was under the sway of the Habsburgs,
preferring almost throughout the period the alliance and protection of Spain
to that of France, a factor which would play its part in the reception of
French as well as Spanish princes in the city. Politically, therefore, a visual
language, and a language of iconography and inscription, would have to be
forged which could flatter—without conceding dignity or standing.
A group of scholars from Genoa and Pisa, under Maria Ines Aliverti
as cluster leader, selected eight texts, in excerpt, to exemplify Genoese
ceremonial across the period, ranging from the entry of the Prince Philip,
son of Charles V, in 1548, to the entry of the Cardinal Infante, Don
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Fernando of Austria in 1633, and taking in the entry of Christine, Duchess
of Lorraine, newly wed to the Grand Duke Ferdinand de’ Medici, in 1589,
and the triumphal arch for the entry of ‘the most Catholic Queen’ on her
wedding journey to join her husband the Archduke Albert of Austria in
1598. This selection gives a nice conspectus of inter-Italian and interEuropean associations for the Genoese over almost ninety of the most
significant years in their history, and shows the incorporation and adaptation
of a European rhetoric of ceremony. These texts are complemented by
others which cast light on civic ceremonial, including the departure from
office of the Doge Bernardo Claravezza in 1617, the election of his
successor Giovanni Giacomo Imperiale, and the coronation of Giorgio
Centurione in 1621. The process of civic self-incorporation was for the
Genoese a problematic one, with their background of contest between an old
and a new nobility, but it was an essential one too, in the interests of secure
government. The signs of growing self-confidence are there in the selected
texts as well as signs of a kind of collective nervousness, as the city aspired
to royal dignity and elected the Virgin Mary as their Queen.
The routine gestures of European courtly display are evident in each
of the chosen texts, with the normal appeal to classical precedent, and the
identification of local heroes, in this case most prominently the princely
house of Doria and the legended Christopher Columbus. But the political
facts make their way through the familiar surface. Extravagant dedication to
the Habsburg court is everywhere, a feature by no means unique among
Italian city states, but sharpened by Genoa’s dependent position, and by the
fact that the Doria, Princes of Melfi, who were patrons in effect of many of
the entries, were clients of the Spanish throne. Other special features
emerge. Genoa, as Lucia Nuti observes, provided a perfect amphitheatre for
the presentation of spectacle, at least outside the old city, being established
on a hillside overlooking the sea, so that both land-based and marine display
were possible and used. This same expansion of the spectacular could be
seen in the continuation of ceremonial themes on to the façades of great
houses, so that the built environment could itself be interpreted as
celebratory (Lauro Magnani). Even more so, public spectacle and
hospitality was expressed and enhanced by the use of Genoa’s fabled silk
and velvet manufactures, whether in the form of costume (gradually
assimilated to Spanish style) or in the form of soft-furnishings for the
palazzi where state guests were lodged (Bruna Niccoli). Such display was
standard for European courts, but Genoa seems to have excelled or at the
least challenged all others. Perhaps verbal skills (and certainly theatre) were
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areas where Genoa could not compete. Franco Vassoler studies the orations
for the electiion of the Doge, but finds them not altogether inspiriting,
except from time to time in the accompanying poetic effusions.
The characteristics of Genoa as a site for ceremonial display emerge
from Ines Aliverti’s collection with a clear sense of an important city
finding its way in an field of practice that had become obligatory for
European powers of any consequence. The city had its idiosyncrasies, like
the major part played by noble families, and one family in particular, in
hosting the princely visitors (they were never accommodated in the palazzo
ducale). But it adapted its customs and made use of its terrain to good
effect. The chosen texts and the introductions put us in possession of a
characteristic ceremonial practice that invites comparison with that of other
cities and states featured in the collection.
Ronnie Mulryne
University of Warwick
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