Stefano Cracolici, 'Courts and Patronage', in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, ed. Gaetana Marrone
(New York-London: Routledge, 2007), vol. 1, pp. 516-520.
COURTS AND PATRONAGE
The relationship between patrons and clients and
the correlated phenomena of patronage and clientage offer the most viable approach to the intricate
question of the Italian courts and their culture in
the period between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The complexity of the question
dates back to an old view of the late medieval and
early modern periods, a view haunted by the legend
of the rise of the Italian middle class, once seen as
the pivotal factor in the development of the modern
liberal state. Neglected by political and social historians, who excluded the courts from this historical itinerary, the undeniable and almost disturbing
presence of the courts spawned a form of descriptive history among intellectual and cultural historians chiefly interested in portraying the ceremonial
splendor of Italian courtly life. This resulted in an
artificial dichotomy between two separate forms of
institutions, in which the political concept of state
was favored over the cultural concept of court, the
modern idea of bureaucratic administration over
the archaic idea of personal cult, and the rational
implementation of economic policies over the passionate dimension ofluxury. From this perspective,
the differing concepts of state and of court seemed
utterly irreconcilable: The state came to identify a
positive pole in the institutional development of
European history, associated as it was with a
strong and shared claim to modernity; the court
represented instead a negative pole, doomed as it
was to irrationality, waste, and corruption.
This old dichotomy, and the concomitant devaluation of the court, was overturned by a set of
groundbreaking studies, pioneered outside the
field of history by sociologist Norbert Elias (The
516
Court Society. 1983) and anthropologist Clifford
Geertz (Negara: The Theatre State in NineteenthCentury Bali. 1980). These studies made historians
aware of the complex web of public and private
relations deeply ingrained in princely governance
and of the ritual, sacred, and symbolic aspects that
informed the very idea of princely power. As synthetically affirmed by British historian Trevor
Dean, "court and state are now seen as complementary, confused, or identical, and no longer as
separate worlds" ("The Courts," 1995). Courtly
patronage, whether in the arts, government, academies, or business, is currently regarded as a fundamental, if not an unreservedly necessary, dynamic
component in the gradual process of centralization
of power that characterized the various forms of
rulership in pre-industrial Europe. The unique patron-client relationship certainly involved idiosyncratic favoritism, self-interested nepotism, and the
tribal preferment of friends, proteges, and other
acolytes active within the princely sphere of influence. But it also enabled the emergence of a new
class of court managers, carefully chosen on the
basis of their merit and competence, to recast in
cultural and political terms the prestige and authority of the prince and his family. It is still a matter of
debate whether the activity of these courtly operators ought to be interpreted as a strategic maneuver
to domesticate and integrate nobility into a composite ruling class, as Elias had influentially purported, or, conversely, as a way to allow members
of the aristocratic elites to gain influence and status
within the court, as suggested by Ronald G. Asch
and Adolf M. Birke, in their introduction to
Princes. Patronage, and the Nobility (1991). There
COURTS AND PATRONAGE
is no doubt, however, that the study of the way
systems of patronage operated, their aims and
procedures, their cultural ramifications and social
stratification, and their aesthetic and ideological influence on the actual production of culture constitute
an important and vibrant branch of historical
investigation.
If it is true that patronage studies and court
studies converge on numerous issues, their respective domains do not entirely coincide. Patronage,
broadly defined as the patron's act of supporting
and protecting a given client in exchange for a
given service, is not limited only to the courtly
context; it also comprises the sponsoring activity
of several corporations not necessarily connected
to a prince or to members of his family, such as
religious confraternities, civic organizations, oligarchic republics, learned academies, independent
presses, or professional guilds. The distinction between courtly patronage and other forms of corporate patronage can be heuristically described by
means of what anthropologists have termed the
"Big Man" system, in which historians have recognized several key features of the courtly institution.
This comparison has allowed scholars to portray
the court as a hierarchical institution resembling
certain tribal societies characterized by the aceumulation of power in the hands of one political
leader; by the development of patterns of reverence
and benefaction governing exchanges between the
leader and his or her subordinates; by competition
between rivals and their client groups, both in
politics and the arts.
To be applied to the courtly system, this model
needs some further refinement. The institutional
figure of the leader entails not only "Big Men"
but also "Big Women," at the center of a complex
system of relations that includes members of their
families, their extended household, and the local
aristocratic establishment, all deeply entangled in
a web of self-interest, personal relationships, and
political allegiances, both private and public. A
paramount example of the gendered dimension of
the courtly system is provided by Mantua, ruled by
the marquis Ludovico Gonzaga (1412-1478) and
his influential wife Barbara Hohenzollern of Brandenburg (1422-1481), whose international connections and political intelligence assured the small
city-state of northern Italy European renown
and prestige, well before the reign of Francesco
Gonzaga (1466-1519) and his famous wife Isabella
d'Este (1474-1539), eager collectors of art, avid
readers of chivalric literature, and sensitive patrons
of humanists and poets. The system of reverence
and worship that governs the highly ritualized discourse of the client toward the patron entails
a progressive differentiation of the leader's entourage from the rest of the aristocratic entourage, a
differentiation that depicts the leader, whether man
or woman, as a distant and sacred entity. This
becomes evident in the proliferation of panegyric
orations, where the leaders are portrayed as godlike
entities, heavenly creatures, or divine rulers, but
affects also the conventions of regular epistolary
exchanges, where the princes are addressed as
dei (gods), semidei (demigods), celsitudini (celestial
entities), and so on. Patrons seek to assert and
confirm their political and cultural supremacy
within a given territory; clients provide them
with a highly discerning discourse with which to
manage and control, but also justify and legitimize,
their power. The relationship between patrons and
clients involves a complex system of procedures
through which notions of merit, competence, and
efficiency, whether within the realms of diplomacy,
politics, medicine, or the arts, are sophisticatedly
elaborated and consciously implemented in a web
of reciprocal exchanges and interdependences.
In the case of Italy, the study of courtly culture is
further complicated by the geographical distribution of different forms of power, government, and
dynastic traditions within the sociopolitical mosaic
of the peninsula, which make it almost impossible
to discern a unified rationale for investigating the
phenomenon from a national perspective. During
the fifteenth century, cities with strong municipal
or oligarchic traditions, such as Florence, Venice,
or Siena, tended to produce a quite different culture from the one produced in territories traditionally subjected to aristocratic families, such as
Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, and Naples. Equally different was the culture produced in centers within
the papal state and in centers governed by imperial
feudatories, not to mention those hybrid cases,
such as the court of the Estensi, where the rulers
were feudatories of both the pope and the emperor.
Similar discrepancies are also to be found between
courts ruled by families descending from ancient
aristocratic stocks, such as the Gonzaga, the Visconti, the Este, and those, such as the Medici and
the Sforza, descending from bourgeois origins or
more recent nobility. The flourishing oflyric poetry
during the second half of the fifteenth century, to
name just one prominent example, is less pronounced in Florence and Venice than in cities hosting major courts, such as Milan, Naples, Ferrara,
and Mantua; similar differences could be found
by studying the distribution of other emblematic
517
COURTS AND PATRONAGE
genres, such as chivalric or pastoral poems. All
these complexities and regional differences have
so far prevented a more general study of at least
one singlc court from its medieval origins to its
modern eclipse-a study that must also take into
account from a political point of view, the increasing presence in Italy of foreign powers and from a
cultural point of view, the emergence of other
forms of institutional patrons, both private and
public, such as learned academies, presses, theaters,
religious orders, prominent religious figures, professional associations, and even banks (the famous
Pietro Aretino started his career at the service of
the prominent banker Agostino Chigi).
A further distinction should be advanced, at
least heuristically, between forms of political patronage and forms of cultural patronage active
within the court. A corresponding divergence exists
between historians who tend to concentrate on the
administrative relations between court and household, as well as between court and state, and historians who instead consider the court a microcosm
of intrinsic political, social, and economic forces
that converged in shaping the main subject of
their inquiry, namely courtly culture. If the first
approach mainly characterizes the kind of history
practiced outside of Italy, and to some extent outside the field offered by the Italian courts, privileging instead the courts of France, Burgundy,
England, and Germany, the second approach, ambitiously endorsed by the Centro Studi "Europa
delle corti, " active since the late 1970s, is predominantly concerned with the study of the Italian
courts, especially those that flourished in the northern part of the peninsula from the fifteenth to the
seventeenth century. In the first phase of this interdisciplinary project, the center sponsored a wide
range of conferences and studies primarily focused
on the literary, artistic, and more generally cultural
legacy of Baldassare Castiglione'S Illibro del Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier, 1528), seen as
the epitome of the intricate system of values,
beliefs, and forms of life that informed the courtly
culture in Italy primarily during the sixteenth century. The goal of this initial approach was to elicit a
discursive vocabulary, both verbal and gestural,
through which to understand and appreciate the
way in which the highly differentiated courtly
operators staged their existence in theoretical and
conceptual terms. In the second, current phase of
the project, focussing on the rather abstract "grammar" that helped to define the court as a labyrinthine, self-enclosed, and highly symbolical space
of action, the center turned its attention to the
518
ways in which various categories such as adroitness
( accortezza) , discretion (discrezione) , dissimulation (dissimulazione) , favor (beneficio) , gracefulness ( grazia) , honor ( onore) , magnificence
(magnfficenza), nonchalance (sprezzatura), politeness (politezza), as wen as their .various synonyms
and antonyms, were part of a tangible system of
political references and social conditions that
allowed Italian courtiers to act, feel, and think
accordingly. In this vein Stefano Guazzo's La civil
conversazione (The Art of Conversation, 1574) is
read as an arbor textualis (textual tree) defining a
complex code of behaviors that deeply informed
courtly life (Amedeo Quondam, "Introduction,"
1993).
From a literary and cultural perspective, this
approach has made possible the reevaluation of a
different canon of works, hitherto confined to an
archaic repertory of unprofitable and unavailing
books by certain modernist interpretations of the
Renaissance. Besides authentic best sellers, such as
Castiglione'S II libro del Cortegiano, Giovanni
Della Casa's Galateo, avera de' costumi (Galateo,
1558), and Stefano Guazzo's La civil conversazione,
the references used by contemporary cultural historians to explore the phenomenon of the courts
also include once-neglected treatises and repertories such as Paolo Cortesi's De Cardinalatu (On
Cardinalship, 1510), Francesco Alunno's La fabrica del mondo (The Edifice of the World, 1548),
Giulio Camillo De1minio's L'idea del teatro (The
Idea of Theatre, 1550), Tommaso Garzoni's La
piazza universale di tulle Ie professioni del mondo
(The Universal Square of All the Professions of the
World, 1585), or Torquato Accetto's Della dissimulazione onesta (On Honest Dissimulation, 1641).
Dynastic poems and princely treatises, such as
Catone Sacco's Semideus (Demigod, 1438), written
for Filippo Maria Visconti (1392-1447); Francesco
Filelfo's Sforziade (1450) for Francesco Sforza
(1401-1466); Tito Vespasiano Strozzi's Borsias for
Borso d'Este (1413-1471); Giovan Mario Filelfo's
Martiados for Federico da Montefeltro (14221482); and Laurentias for Lorenzo de' Medici
(1449-1492), to name but a few, are also being
studied seriously for the first time. Together with
encomiastic, nuptial, and funeral oratory performances, these works form the cultural background
for a different appreciation of already canonical
works, such as Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando
Innamorato (Orlando in Love, 1482-1483), Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of
Orlando, 1532), Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme
liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1580), as well as
COURTS AND PATRONAGE
famous pictorial cycles, such as those exemplified
in Mantua by Andrea Mantegna's Camera pieta for
Ludovico Gonzaga (1414-1478), the "studiolo" for
Isabella d'Este (1474--1539), and the sumptuous
Palazzo Te, built and decorated by Giulio Romano
for Federico Gonzaga (1500-1540). This new body
of texts, sometimes available in accurate critical
editions but often still unedited, allows for a better
comprehension of those works traditionally labelled as anticourtly literature (notably those of
Pietro Aretino, whom Ariosto used to call by the
nickname of "flagella dei principi" or "scourge of
princes"), away from the partisan and sometimes
instrumental readings of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, which promoted these titles as
documents of the degeneration of courtly culture,
toward a more dynamic and dialectical understanding of the phenomenon.
The vast number of scattered studies sponsored
and produced under the aegis of the Centro Studi
"Europa delle corti" has been sharply criticized by
social and political historians active outside of
Italy, who blame them for the excessive attention
initially paid to the symbolic, textual, and totalizing dimension of the court, viewed primarily as an
"epiphany of power," to use Carlo Ossola's expression ("Ii 'luogo' della corte," 1978), at the expense
of different typological varieties, political-dynastic
variables, and historical realities. As Trevor Dean
bluntly expressed, the "study of the grammar and
rules of court society has not only questionably
elevated the court as a closed system but has also
neglected the study of relations between court and
society (whether the material support of the court
or its political support through patronage networks
and faction)" ("The Courts," 1995). The polemical
note called for a greater scrutiny of the mechanisms
of patronage and clientage in relation to the ascendancy of princely power and to the hierarchies of
skilled officers. This system of relationships gradually transformed the traditional retinue of courtiers
into a prebureaucratic system of political and administrative professionals. For British historians,
writes David Starkey, "the history of the court is
the history of those who enjoyed access to the
king" ("Introduction: Court History in Perspective," 1987); for Italians, the same history tends to
be approached as a formulaic vocabulary, a symbolic labyrinth, a stage for a graceful and highly
idealized conversation, viewed as an institutional
system that shaped the culture of the Italian ancien
regime. This methodological divergence, motivated
also by the considerable typological diversity of the
Italian courtly mosaic, has been fruitfully resolved
in the groundbreaking studies edited or written by
Cesare Mozzarelli such as, for instance, "Prince
and Court: Why and How Should the Court Be
Studied Today?" (1989) and La corte nella cultura
e nella storiografia (1983), and in a set of recent
Italian publications sponsored by yarious institutions, such as the well-established Istituto Storico
Italiano per if Medio Evo and the newly founded
Centro Studi "Matteo Maria Boiardo." In these
studies, the combination of different disciplines
and different methodologies constitutes an innovative field of scholarly inquiry in which to define, in
new terms and new perspectives, the culture of
what was once called the Italian Renaissance.
STEFANO CRACOLICI
See also: Renaissance
Further Reading
Asch, Ronald G., and AdolfM. Birke, "Introduction: Court
and Household from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth
Centuries," in Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The
Court atthe Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-/650,
edited by Ronald G. Asch and AdolfM. Birke, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991.
Biow, Douglas, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Bourdua, Louise, The Franciscans and Art Patronage in
Late Medieval Italy, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Burke, Jill, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual
Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.
Burke, Peter, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European
Reception of Castiglione's "Cortegiano," Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1995.
Chittolini, Giorgio, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo
Schiera (editors), Origini dello Stato: Processi di formazione statale in Ita/ia fra medioevo ed eta moderna,
Bologna: II Mulino, 1994.
Cummings, A. M., The Maecenas and the Madrigalist:
Patrons, Patronage, and the Origins of the Italian Madrigal, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,
2004.
Dean, Trevor, "The Courts," The Journal of l'Jodern History, 67(1995), 136-351.
Droste, Heiko, "Patronage in der [ruhen n・オコゥエセiョウᆳ
tion und Kulturform," Zeitschrift fur Historische Forschung, 30:4(2003), 555-590.
Elias, Norbert, The Court Society, translated by Edmund
Jephcott, Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
Gallo, F. Alberto, Music in the Castle: Troubadours, Books,
and Orators in Italian Courts of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1995.
Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The Theatre State in NineteenthCentury Bali, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1980.
519
COURTS AND PATRONAGE
Gundersheimer, Werner L., "Patronage in the Renaissance:
An Exploratory Approach," in Patronage in the
Renaissance, edited by Guy F. Lytle and Stephen
Orgel, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 198!.
Kent, Francis W., and Patricia Simons, "Renaissance Patronage: An Introduction Essay," in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, edited by Francis W. Kent and
Patricia Simons, Canberra: Humanities Research Centre
Australia-New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
King, Catherine, Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and
Widows in Italy c. 1300-c. 1550, Manchester and New
York: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Korshin, Paul J., "Types of Eighteenth-Century Literary
Patronage," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 7:4(1974),
453-473.
Lazzarini, Isabella, Fra un principe e altri Stati: Relazioni di
potere e forme di servizio a Mantova nell'eta di Ludovico Gonzaga, Rome: lstituto Storico Italiano per il
Medio Evo, 1996.
Matarrese, Tina, and Cristina Montagnani (editors), Il principe e fa storfa, Novara: Interlinea, 2005.
Mozzarelli, Cesare (editor), "Familia" del principe e famiglia
aristocratica, 2 vols., Rome: Buizoni, 1988.
Mozzarelli, Cesare, "Prince and Court: Why and How
Should the Court Be Studied Today?" Schi/anoia, 8
(1989), 33-36.
Mozzarelli, Cesare, and Giuseppe Olmi (editors), La corte
nella cultura e nella storiografia: Immagini e posizion!
tra Otto e Novecento, Rome: Bulzoni, 1983.
Ossola, Carlo, "II 'Iuogo' della corte," in Le Corti farnesiane di Parma e Piaeenza (1545-1622), edited by
Marzio A. Romani and Amedeo Quondam, vol. 1,
Rome: Bulzoni, 1978.
Quondam, Amedeo, Introduction to Stefano Guazzo, La
civil conversazione, vol. 1, Ferrara; Panini, 1993.
Santagata, Marco, and Stefano Carrai, La !iriea di corte
nell'ltalia del Quattrocento, Milan: FrancoAngeli,
1993.
Starkey, David, "Introduction: Court History in Perspective," in The English Court from the Wars of the Roses
to the Civil War, edited by David Starkey, London:
Longman, 1987.