Corti italiane del Rinascimento. Arti, cultura e politica, 1395-1530

The volume collects a series of essays, written by well-known Italian scholars (such as Francesco Paolo Fiore, Luisa Giordano, Franco Piperno and Alessandro Cecchi) discussing the close interrelationship that took shape in Italy along the fifteenth century between the development of Renaissance art on the one hand and the affirmation of seigneurial courts and seigneurial court culture on the other. The patronage of the ruling families of the small Italian city-states greatly favored the flourishing of the figurative arts and architecture, but also music, literature, and theater. The book starts with an introduction by Marco Folin on the critical issues of court art and its historiography, followed by an important essay on the historical and geographical framework of Renaissance Italy. The role of princely patronage in the development of music and literature is then examined: from the place of the humanists at court to the link between music and propaganda, from the first theatrical representations to the rise of the printing press and the publication of the most famous Renaissance books: Castiglione's Book of the Courtier and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The second, longer part of the volume, is arranged geographically and covers the entire peninsula, giving attention not only to the major courts, such as Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, Urbino, papal Rome, Naples and the crypto-court of the Medici in Florence, but devoting chapters to the minor courts spread around northern and central Italy, from the Paleologues rulers of Montferrat to the Malatesta court in Rimini, from Carpi under the Pios to the Orsinis' rule in Bracciano.