Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World [New ed.] 9781009276214, 9781009276191, 9781009276184, 1009276212

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COURTLY MEDIATORS

In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the centre of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors and luxury goods actively participated. By articulating how and why transcultural objects were exchanged, displayed, copied and framed, she provides a new methodological framework that transforms our understanding of the Italian Renaissance court. Clark’s volume provides a multisensorial, innovative reading of Italian Renaissance Art. It demonstrates that the early modern culture of collecting was more than a humanistic enterprise associated with the European roots of the Renaissance. Rather, it was sustained by interactions with global material cultures from the Islamic world and beyond. leah r. clark is Associate Professor of History of Art in the Department for Continuing Education and Fellow of Kellogg College at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and co-editor, with Kathleen Christian, of European Art and the Wider World, 1350–1550 (Manchester University Press, 2017).

COURTLY MEDIATORS TRANSCULTURAL OBJECTS BETWEEN RENAISSANCE ITALY AND THE ISLAMIC WORLD LEAH R. CLARK University of Oxford

Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge cb2 8ea, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05-06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009276214 doi: 10.1017/9781009276191 © Leah R. Clark 2023 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2023 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited, Padstow Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data names: Clark, Leah Ruth, author. title: Courtly mediators : transcultural objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic world / Leah R. Clark, University of Oxford. description: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. identifiers: lccn 2022055181 (print) | lccn 2022055182 (ebook) | isbn 9781009276214 (hardback) | isbn 9781009276184 (paperback) | isbn 9781009276191 (epub) subjects: lcsh: Art and globalization–Italy–History–To 1500. | Art and globalization–Italy–History–16th century. | Art objects–Collectors and collecting–Italy. | Italy–Court and courtiers. | Mediterranean Region–Commerce–History–To 1500. | Mediterranean Region–Commerce–History–16th century. classification: lcc n72.g55 c59 2023 (print) | lcc n72.g55 (ebook) | ddc 709.45/0903–dc23/eng/20221221 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022055181 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022055182 isbn 978-1-009-27621-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

List of Plates

page ix

List of Illustrations

xi

Preface and Acknowledgements

xv

Primary Sources and Abbreviations

xix

1

2

I N T R OD U C T I O N : C OU R T L Y M E D IA T O RS

1

A Global Renaissance?

8

Frames, Composite Objects and Objets Croisés

14

Sensorial Conditions and Objectscapes

21

DI P L O M A T I C E N T A N G L E M E N T S : ME DI A T I N G O B J E C T S A N D T R A N S C U L T U RA L E N C O U N T E R S

29

Introduction

29

Mediterranean Diplomacy and Warfare

31

The Ottoman Neapolitan War

40

Displaying Collections and Ekphrastic Tours

45

Conclusion

51

MO B I L E T H I N G S / M O B I L E M O T I F S : OR N A M E N T , L A N GU A G E A N D H A P T I C S P A C E

59

Introduction

59

Ornamental Objects

68

Words for Things?

69

Migrating Motifs

81

Haptic Space

94

Conclusion

96

v

vi

CONTENTS

3

4

5

THE PEREGRINATIONS OF PORCELAIN: FROM MOBILITY TO FRAMES

104

Introduction

104

Porcelain as Gift

106

Documenting Porcelain

111

Framing: Arresting Mobility and Capturing Liminality (the ‘In-Between’)

119

Materials and Humanist Culture: Situating Porcelain in the Studiolo

129

Making Worlds: Global and Local

135

Portable Porcelain Pathways: From Naples to Ferrara

137

Conclusion

140

FI T F O R T H E G O D S : P O R C E L A I N I N A L F O N S O D ’E S T E ’S C A M ER I N I

150

Introduction

150

On Things and Heidegger’s Jug

152

Showcasing a Collection: Alfonso’s Camerini

155

Alfonso’s Camerini and Material Culture

160

Fit for the Gods: Pictorial Translations

170

Metamorphosis, Transmateriality and Disegno

178

Conclusion

188

FR O M T H E S I L K R O A D S T O T H E C OU R T A P O T HE C A R Y : 196 A R O MA T I C S A N D R E C E P T A C L E S

Introduction

196

Aromatics: The Social and Medical Functions

209

The Objects and Their Uses

223

Albarelli: Objects on the Move

236

Words on Things/Words as Things

241

Spezieria/Studiolo: Intellectual Machines

242

Conclusion

251

vii

CONTENTS

C O N C L U S I O N : A R R E S T I N G MO B I L I T Y

2 63

Transfer: Valencian Tiles for Naples

265

Translation: Neapolitan Tiles

270

Conclusion

281

Appendices I Inventory of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, 1493 II Inventory of Don Ferrante d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria, Taken in Ferrara, 1 October 1527

289 289 291

III Inventory of the Stanza delle Porcellane, Ferrara, 1559

304

IV Inventory of the Este Court Spezieria, Ferrara, 1535

306

Bibliography

311

Index

335

Colour plates can be found between pages 172 and 173.

PLATES

Colour plates to be found between pages 172 and 173. I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV

Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in His Study, c. 1475 Deep dish with Aragonese arms, probably made in Manises, Valencia, Spain Andrea Mantegna, Adoration of the Magi, about 1495–1505 Bowl with mounts and case, porcelain, China, Ming, Jiajing reign (1522–66) Giovanni Bellini with Titian and Dosso Dossi, Feast of the Gods, 1514–29 Haïder Turkigouï, depiction of a pharmacy, Tabriz, 1501–55 Domingo and Leonardo Crespí, Obsequies of King Ferdinand I d’Aragona, completed early 1440s Benvenuto di Giovanni, Birth of the Virgin, predella, 1460s Domenico Ghirlandaio, Saint Jerome in his Study, 1480 Domingo and Leonardo Crespí, Annunciation (detail of ), completed early 1440s Domingo and Leonardo Crespí, Alfonso at Prayer (detail of ), completed early 1440s Aragonese tiles from Castel dell’Ovo, Naples with Aragonese arms and imprese, 1440s–1450s Floor tiles, Caracciolo chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples, mid-fifteenth century Floor tiles with ‘PONTANVS FECIT’ inscription, Cappella Pontano, 1490s

ix

ILLUSTRATIONS

Color versions available at www.cambridge.org/Clark_CourtlyMediators 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16

17

Porcelain bowl with gold and gem overlay, 1540–90 (bowl) Jingdezhen, China, 1570–1600 (mount), Ottoman Drug jar (albarello) painted in blue, Damascus (?), Syria, first half of the fifteenth century Basil pot, tin-glazed earthenware, metallic lustre, 1440–70 Ferraiolo, Ottoman Embassy of 1494, Cronaca della Napoli Aragonese, c. 1498 Cipriano Piccolpasso, trofei and rabesche, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557 Basin of Sultan Qaitbay, brass inlaid with silver, Mamluk (Egypt or Syria), c. 1468–96 Tughra on a letter from the Ottoman envoy Mustafa Beg to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, from 19 April 1497 Tughra (insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent, ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 1555–60 Ottoman bottle, glazed pottery, Iznik, 1529 Lidded basin, brass inlaid with gold and silver, Mamluk (Syria or Egypt), fifteenth century Perfume/incense burner, brass, pierced, engraved and silver damascened with black lacquer infill, Mamluk (Syria or Egypt), fifteenth century Albrecht Dürer, embroidery pattern with seven six-pointed stars and four corner pieces, after Leonardo da’ Vinci, woodcut, before 1521 Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, knot designs, Essempio di recammi, 1527 Cipriano Piccolpasso, porcelana and tirata, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, c. 1557 Cipriano Piccolpasso, Groppi con fondi e senza and candelieri, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, c. 1557 Trenchard bowl, painted in underglaze blue, Ming dynasty, Jiajing reign (1522–66), Jingdezhen, China; silver-gilt mounts, London, England, 1599–1600 Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, c. 1557

page 15 16 18 30 60 67 83 84 85 88

88

89 90 92 93

105 108

xi

xii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

18

19

20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Cup with stylised lotuses on a continuous stem of foliage and scrollwork border, Jingdezhen, China, porcelain, Ming dynasty, fifteenth–sixteenth century Bowl made into cup with mounts, porcelain decorated with underglaze blue (interior), enamel and gilding (exterior), Ming, Chia Ching export porcelain, Jingdezhen, China, 1522–66; German gilt silver mounts, 1583 Gaignières-Fonthill vase, porcelain with bluish-white glaze, China, Yuan Dynasty (1300–30) Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio, c. 1557 Drawing showing the Gaignières-Fonthill vase (Figure 20) transformed into an ewer with silver-gilt and enamelled mounts, watercolour on paper, France, 1713 Albrecht Dürer, two designs for columns, pen and brown ink, with watercolour, 1515–18 Bowl, blue and white porcelain, Jingdezhen, China, Ming dynasty, 1436–64 Bowl, blue and white porcelain made in Jingdezhen, Ming dynasty, 1426–35 View of Aragonese drug jars, including an albarello with a portrait of a young man with a hat (Federico d’Aragona?) Albarelli with arms of the Duke and Duchess of Calabria (Alfonso d’Aragona and Ippolita Sforza), Naples, 1465 Miniature from fifteenth-century manuscript on Galen (181v) from Miniaturen der lateinischen Galenos-Handschrift der Kgl. Oeffentl. Bibliothek in Dresden Db 92–93 Avicenna, Canon of Medicine, fifteenth century Albarello for mostardo, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), obverse and reverse, Italy, 1543 Detail of Jan van Eyck, The Three Marys at the Tomb, oil on panel, 1425–35 The Adoration of the Magi and The Retreat of the Magi, 1470s or 1480s Drug jar (albarello) with content sign, tin-glazed earthenware, Valencia (Manises), sixteenth century Perfume burner, c. 1450–1500, brass, pierced, engraved and silver damascened with black lacquer infill, Venice or Syria? Incense burner, from the catalogue of the Settalla collections, drawing, seventeenth century Water bucket, brass and damascened with silver, Mamluk (Egypt or Syria), fifteenth century Porcelain bottle, porcelain with cobalt blue, Jingdezhen, China, second half of the fifteenth century Shelf still life, detail from Filippino Lippi’s The Annunciation, panel, 1483 Albarello with a portrait of a woman (Eleonora d’Aragona), Naples, c. 1475

109

112 115 116

120 125 173 174 197 198

200 202 203 217 218 219 228 229 233 234 235 238

xiii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Drug jar (albarello) with pseudo-Kufic script, tin-glazed earthenware, Valencia (Manises), 1375–1400 Drug jar (albarello) with Kufic pattern, tin-glazed earthenware, Montelupo, Italy, mid-fifteenth century Carafa tiles with Carafa imprese, mid-fifteenth century, Valencia (Manises) or Naples Floor tiles, Caracciolo chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples, mid-fifteenth century Cappella Pontano, interior with floor tiles and inscriptions, 1490s, Naples Doodles on customs registers, fifteenth century, ASNa Dipendenze della sommaria, I 580 Doodles on customs registers compared with Caracciolo tiles, fifteenth century

243 244 267 272 274 282 282

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In 2020–2 when I was writing this book and putting the final edits to it, four major global incidents occurred: COVID-19, Brexit, Ever Given (a container ship’s blockage of the Suez Canal) and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The COVID-19 pandemic will likely be remembered for decades, even centuries to come, demonstrating just how quickly a pandemic can spread in a world so intricately connected by airplanes and the rapid movement of people and things. Brexit – the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union – gave rise to serious tensions and conflicts within families and between friends. Open borders and access to European trade, for some, underscored Britain as a place for multiculturalism and tolerance. However, tolerance and mixing also gave rise to xenophobia and a fear of ‘British traditions’ becoming so multicultural they would no longer be recognised as ‘British’. Ever Given is not likely to have a considerable impact on the collective memory, but the 400-metre-long vessel’s blockage in March 2021 of the Suez Canal, an artery that makes up 12 per cent of global trade, did have a lasting effect, with oil prices soaring and delays to global shipping for the months that followed. The Suez connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and provides the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put further pressure on oil supplies and had economic ramifications around the world, not to mention the loss of lives and culture. All of these issues – a pandemic, access to shipping routes, war and contested ideas of identity – also figured prominently in the Renaissance. Globalisation is not new, but the politics and technologies as well as the fad for certain goods have, of course, changed since the Renaissance. While this is a book about the past, it should resonate with the present. The seeds of this project began in 2007, when I first began archival research in the Archivio di Stato di Modena for my PhD thesis on the exchange and collection of objects in the Italian Renaissance courts (later published in 2018 as my first monograph). I was interested in the collections of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, and I spent months toiling through her account books and inventories. I meticulously recorded most of her collections but did not transcribe her entire inventory. Looking mostly for paintings in her collections, my concerns were around intertextuality and the religious preoccupations of a xv

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female collector. A few years later, in 2009, looking for global connections, I became aware that I had overlooked so much rich material that did not fit into the normative story of the Italian Renaissance. I returned to my transcriptions and discovered one of the largest collections of Chinese porcelain in the fifteenth century. That inventory became the starting point to reconsider Renaissance collecting from a global perspective. My interests in this area have been enriched through conference presentations and discussions, as well as numerous scholars whom I have encountered along the way. At the Open University (OU), where I worked from 2013 to 2021, I was part of a team writing a new module called Art and Its Global Histories. Together we had to think about how to teach a global perspective of Western European Art. I am grateful to Kathleen Christian for this journey together (my co-editor on the first textbook), but also many of my other colleagues at the OU who worked on the module. During that time, I also founded Open Arts Objects, an online platform dedicated to widening participation and providing free resources for the teaching of Art History, particularly in schools. This project made me particularly aware that art historical concerns are ones that must engage with today’s world. Under the rubric of ‘impact’, this project was much more than just a Research Excellence Framework (REF) case study, but rather a way of understanding the important role Art History has in everyone’s lives, and that what we do in the academy has ramifications for the outside world. This was also particularly clear during my exhibition for the British Academy’s Showcase festival in 2019, where I encountered a range of people – from judges to ambassadors to visitors off the street – who engaged with the multisensorial exhibition and who raised interesting parallels between Renaissance global trade and today’s world (thanks to Helen Coffey and Katie Ault for their help with this exhibition, and to all the wonderful people at the British Academy). The fabulous colleagues at Open Art Histories, the Association for Art History, Art History in Schools, Art History Link Up and the numerous A-level teachers I worked with, as well as the numerous museums where we filmed (including education teams such as Clare Cory at the Ashmolean), are all inspiration for finding new ways to make Art History relevant and accessible. However, these projects have also brought attention to the ethical consequences of writing Art History and my own reflection on what and how we study the art of the past. I am also indebted to members of the OU’s Medieval and Early Modern Research Group: our annual conferences, sensory experience seminars and discussions have greatly informed this book. I am particularly grateful to Helen Coffey for our regular conversations on sensory experiences over wine, coffee and tea. I am also indebted to numerous conference and session organisers and audience members for their feedback when presenting this material; there are

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

far too many to name. Particularly important for my work on Naples has been the growth of interest in this crucial city through the foundation of The Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities at La Capraia, Naples (a partnership between The Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and the Capodimonte Museum). Particular thanks go to Sarah Kozlowski who has been such an important connector for anyone working on Neapolitan material, as well as to Francesca Santamaria who has been a huge help with working on the collections at the Capodimonte Museum. My work with Nancy Um and the authors on the special volume of the Journal of Early Modern History in 2016 has also informed my ideas on diplomacy and gifts. I am also indebted to the funds that have supported this research: The Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada allowed me to first access the archives in Italy during those PhD years; the British Academy supported the more recent archival research and trips to Italy and Spain; the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded the Mobility of Objects across Boundaries project (led by Katherine Wilson and myself ); and the Gulbenkian in Lisbon hosted me as a visiting fellow for two weeks (particular thanks to Jessica Hallett). I am also indebted to the Italian Art Society, the Association for Art History and the Department for Continuing Education at Oxford for covering the image subventions and copyright fees. I must include a note on images here as I received some funding for image subventions, but publishing a book of this kind is an expensive endeavour. I could not include all the images I needed, and very few are in colour. A book like this needs multiple sides of one object with different lighting to really support the argument, something I haven’t been able to do. Some museums and institutions were extremely generous, providing all images for free, for which I am extremely grateful, while others still charge a ridiculous amount of money for one image and reproduction fees. Ultimately, we art historians are the ones who will further the research in museum collections; what we can afford to publish in our books will also condition the future canon. The links to online images in the footnotes will hopefully overcome the limitations of the images published in this book. This book wouldn’t be possible without all the amazing collections I have consulted around the world, from the archives across Italy to the museums and libraries in the UK and further afield. Special thanks go to all the people working in these institutions, from the cleaners to the archivists. Thanks, too, to my editor Beatrice Rehl who supported the endeavour from the start, to the two thoughtful reviewers who put time into providing constructive feedback, and to the wonderful team at Cambridge University Press. Friends and family who have supported me are far too many to name here, but a few do require a mention. I thank, in particular, my Poppy Loves book club friends who are always ready for a laugh, an adventure and a stimulating

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conversation. Morgan Phillips has been an amazing producer, friend and a listening ear for any new discoveries I find; Katie Baldwin Kirtley, a stalwart friend for all things Art History and not – a friendship ignited at the Courtauld so many years ago. Other art historian friends and colleagues who have provided support and intellectual stimulation include Susanna Brown, Sara Knelman, Melissa Chatton, Camilla Auriol Roy-Bry, Anuradha Gobin, Krystel Chéhab, Sonia del Re, Olivia Wolf, James Clifton, Bronwen Wilson and Angela Vanhaelen, among many others. Finally, I could not have done this without the support of my family. My family in England have continued to encourage me on my art historical adventures, especially Charles and Liz Clark whose home is always full of fine meals, rich conversations and encouragement. My own identity is due to my interactions with other cultures and my own sense of unboundedness: my British father was born in Peshawar (what was India but is now Pakistan) and immigrated to Canada as a teenager, where he met my Canadian mother. My parents brought me up on a tall ship, sailing around the world where I was introduced to a wide range of cultures from remote islands in the South Pacific to the high-rises of the eastern seaboard of North America. I thank my parents for encouraging an open mind and engraining in me that knowledge comes not only from books but also through travel. They have been instrumental in endorsing encounters with the unknown as a way to understand our world and our place in it. To my four sisters, I am forever indebted – Julia Smith, Rachel Clark, Christina Clark-Kazak and Esther Clark – they are beacons of hope and inspiration for not just me but also my ten nieces and nephews. Finally, I owe my sanity to my Siamese cat, Simla, who saw me through months of solitary lockdowns while I wrote and thought about this book, and to the beautiful English countryside that provided me with daily walks to refresh my mind.

PRIMARY SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

ARCHIVAL ABBREVIATIONS

ASF CS MAP ASMA AG ASMo AMB AMB FIR AMB MIL AMB NAP AMB VEN AP CG C&S CPE 1245/1 1246/2 1247/3 1248/4 CR G 114 Mem M&F SPEZ ASMI SPE 200–250 323–334

Archivio di Stato di Firenze Carteggio Strozziane Medici avanti il Principato Archivio di Stato di Mantova Archivio Gonzaga Archivio di Stato di Modena Ambasciatori Ambasciatori Firenze Ambasciatori Milano Ambasciatori Napoli Ambasciatori Veneziani Amministrazione dei Principi Conto Generale Casa e Stato Carteggio Principi Esteri Ferrante I 1451–93 Alfonso d’Aragona Duke of Calabria 1468–94 Ippolita Sforza 1478–88 lettere di altri principi minori (including Matalona (Madaloni) (i.e. Diomede Carafa) 1472–1686) Carteggio di Referendari (Cancelleria) Guardaroba Inventory of 1493 of Eleonora d’Aragona, taken after her death (previously AP 640bis) Memoriale Munitione e Fabbriche Spezieria Archivio di Stato di Milano Sforzesco Potenze Estere Napoli, 1459–92 Ferrara, 1471–94 xix

xx

PRIMARY SOURCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

646 649 ASNa

Arrendamenti DIP SOM I Conti Dogane DIP SOM II Dogane

Turchia, 1453–99 Barberia, Tunisia 1400s Archivio di Stato di Napoli (Most of the court records were destroyed in World War II, although there exist some fragments) Dipendenze della sommaria, I serie 556, 567, 580, 587, 591, 625 336, 351 Dipendenze della sommaria, II serie: 44, 45 47, 50, 55, 78

Achivi Privati Archivio Carafa di Maddaloni e di Colubrano Archivio Caraccioli di Brienza: 4, 5, 12, 18. Archivio Caracciolo di Villa: 125 II, 125 III AVA Archivo de Valencia LIBRARY ABBREVIATI ONS

Bib Arist BE BHV BL BNN BNF

Biblioteca Ariostea, Ferrara Biblioteca Estense, Modena Biblioteca Històrica, València British Library, London Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

MUSEUM ABBREVIATIO NS

BM Met V&A

British Museum, London Metropolitan Museum, New York Victoria & Albert Museum, London

INTRODUCTION Courtly Mediators

ntonello da Messina’s Saint Jerome in His Study, from around 1475, presents the viewer with a curious architectural setting in which a wooden studio or desk showcases a global range of objects (Plate I). The framing device of the exterior architecture acts as an Albertian window, from which the viewer is invited to enter the scene.1 Two birds (a quail and a peacock) along with a metal barber’s basin, occupy a liminal space, between the exterior world of us, the viewer, and the fictive interior world of the painting.2 Our eye crosses the threshold onto Valencian (or possibly Neapolitan) blue and white tiles to another liminal space: a ledge accessed by three steps, where Jerome has taken off his shoes before climbing the stairs. Placed here on this second liminal ledge are two blue and white pots with plants and a cat, accompanied by a towel and pen case hung on the ‘wall’ above. We now move into Jerome’s space – that of the studio – where he sits on a cathedra chair and reads a book. On the shelf directly above Jerome’s head appears a short albarello, a receptacle used to store spices and medicines from the ‘East’, while beside it another ceramic vessel in blue and white glistens with lustre. The blue and white motifs found on these ceramics and floor tiles – probably a mix of Middle Eastern wares, Spanish imports, local Italian manufacture and maybe even Chinese porcelain – were the result of a global circulation of ceramics. Metalware, some likely decorated with damascene motifs, litter the shelves nestled beside beautifully bound books, indicating the scholarly activities that occurred there, the pages opening

A

1

2

COURTLY MEDIATORS

up a new world of learning and adventure for the armchair traveller, and by extension, the viewer of the painting. The Renaissance studiolo was like an entrepôt, where diverse objects from around the world converged, encountered one another and often, were dispersed again as they were given away, sold, transformed or reinstalled somewhere else. While such objects could create narratives of a harmonious interconnected world, they could also unsettle, asking the beholder to interrogate and question his or her place in the world.3 The Renaissance studiolo can thus be seen as a metaphor for port cities such as Naples, which brought in galleys from across the Mediterranean laden down with all sorts of goods and operated as a nexus of ambassadorial interchange. Naples has often been seen as a periphery within art historical narratives dependent on coherent styles within a Vasarian paradigm, but when considered within the geopolitics of trade and diplomacy, it instead becomes an important node in a network, setting the cultural standard for smaller states.4 This centre was a ‘mixed place’, bringing together cultures from across the Mediterranean, and in this sense, it was a space and place where the transcultural flourished. Antonello da Messina was a Sicilian who likely trained in Naples, where he probably learned the techniques of oil painting, and then travelled and lived in Venice for some time. Antonello thus represents numerous geographic painting traditions coming together, from the Netherlands to Naples to Venice. However, the work itself points to the ability of paintings to stage fictive geographies of their own.5 More commonly, fictive spaces are alluded to through the use of landmarks, architecture or clothing that locate the pictorial space in a particular geographic location, such as Gentile Bellini’s paintings for Venetian scuole, where the viewer becomes immediately aware of whether they are looking at a scene based locally in Venice or further afield such as Alexandria.6 More importantly for this study is Antonello’s use of transcultural objects as a means to signal geographies. These objects point to trade routes and diplomacy, conduits for these artefacts, which often travelled much further than the viewer of a painting, and eliciting a sense of ‘somewhere else’. The numerous doors and openings, such as the windows to either side of the studio, giving distant views of landscape with small boats, also underscore this movement of goods and people, and places an emphasis on the near and the far. The particularly small format of the work requires the viewer to get up close, encouraging an intimate relationship, inviting us to explore the fictive spaces of the painting, and as such, offers a virtual pilgrimage for contemplation. It thus allows the viewer a form of meditation through looking, much like the activities associated with the physical studiolo; a place for contemplation and the acquisition of knowledge. If the viewer was unable to travel to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, the objects on display instead present an itinerary of global things, similar to those artefacts brought home by pilgrims and

INTRODUCTION: COURTLY MEDIATORS

merchants from the Levant or exchanged as diplomatic gifts across Mediterranean courts. The barely visible crucifix above the left shelves facing Jerome evokes a vision, and suggests that through contemplation in such a space, spiritual transformation could also take place. The discarded shoes and the cardinal robes worn by Jerome also imply a physical engagement. As Niccolò Machiavelli famously noted before entering his study, he ‘put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born’.7 However, many courtly studioli were not only dedicated to conversing with ancient courts, but contemporary global ones. Such spaces, although often considered to be quiet places of self-reflection were also sociable spaces, and particularly in the courtly setting, they had secular as well as religious concerns at their heart. The objects collected ranging from antiquities to Chinese porcelain rendered the distant into the present, whether it was making present the ancient past, bridging a geographical divide or conversing with the heavenly sphere. Machiavelli’s metaphor of tasting food as intellectual nourishment corresponds to the convivial meals that sometimes took place within these spaces, such as those in the camerini of Alfonso d’Este explored in Chapter 4. The sweet-smelling herbs placed in pots on windowsills along with aromatics in albarelli or drug jars, incense burners and odiferous waters, examined in Chapter 5, highlight the sensorial engagement of these objects. Antonello da Messina’s strange architectural configuration populated with a wide range of artefacts thus acts as a pictorial reflection on the types of multimedia and multisensorial experiences such spaces engendered. The painting invites us to consider the multiple geographies at work as well as the multiple ‘surfacescapes’ and ‘objectscapes’ to use Jonathan Hay’s terminology (explored further in Chapters 2–4).8 The display of these objects within a studiolo marks just a moment in their itineraries, as they were traded, gifted, exchanged, copied and in turn, inspired new objects.9 This book is concerned with these very experiences and itineraries: how such objects started off as diplomatic mediators or cogs in the wheels of trade, how they made their way into collections or courtly domestic spaces, and how in turn, they inspired creative responses. Taking the Italian Renaissance courts of Naples and Ferrara as case studies, this book investigates the complex relationship between the objects in these collections and the larger diplomatic entanglements of Italian courts with those nearby of the Mamluks and Ottomans (the political and diplomatic landscape is explained in more detail in Chapter 1). Courtly Mediators investigates the processes and outcomes of exchanges of a range of materials and objects including Mamluk metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain and aromatics. These goods, and the people who exchanged them, are central to understanding what constituted the Renaissance court and

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how we consider the ways that courts defined themselves in relation to one another through the trade, acquisition and use of material objects. Thus, there were multiple actors at play within what has conventionally been described as the ‘Italian Renaissance’ as well as multiple modes of interconnection. Uncovering this expanded geography and field of interaction through materials and objects transforms our assessment of how the Italian courts, such as Naples and Ferrara, were entangled with courtly powers beyond the peninsula. This book concentrates mostly on the latter part of the fifteenth century with most examples drawn from the Aragonese period in Naples (1442–95) and the tenure of Eleonora d’Aragona as Duchess in Ferrara (1473–93). Chapters 4 and 5, however, venture into the sixteenth century to trace the survival of Eleonora d’Aragona’s porcelain under her son Alfonso d’Este or to draw on surviving sixteenth-century documents where there are none extant for the preceding century. The emphasis on ‘mediators’ in the title of this book underscores the different actors at play – people, materials and things – that mediated in and between courts in the fifteenth century, from the objects exchanged as brokers in diplomatic negotiations to the ambassadors who travelled and gifted them on behalf of their state. In Giovanni Florio’s A Worlde of Wordes (1598), ‘mediator’ is provided as the definition for an intercessor, ‘that goes between’, suggesting a position between two states.10 Many of the objects featured in this book reflect this ‘in-betweenness’, not only as objects that moved between two courts, but which also reveal multiple cultural traditions. In addition, many objects represent a liminal state in terms of material, such as porcelain that was framed in metal mounts, or damascene motifs found on leather and ceramics, borrowed from metalwork. Mediators thus also refer to ‘mediation’, which has an etymological link to media, pointing to the intermediality and transmateriality at work, and the way in which patterns and motifs were replicated and adapted across media. Other objects performed an evocative material mimesis, such as ceramics that employed lustre to convey a metallic sheen (see Figure 6, Chapter 2) or glass that was made to look like porcelain, a rhetorical enterprise which was far from a simple counterfeiting. This book is particularly attentive to fresh perspectives to characterise and reconsider these objects, which move beyond geographic categorisations. Indeed, it takes an art historical approach that deviates from binaries, linear trajectories, monolithic categories of identity and hierarchies of genres.11 As explained further below, terms such as transcultural, transmedial, composite and croisé are employed to move away from Eurocentric categorisations, underscoring that no object is a product of one singular culture nor are cultures ever stable or singular to begin with. The first two chapters provide a form of frame for the chapters that follow, identifying the diplomatic players and the categories of gifts exchanged, as well

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as the vocabulary used to describe these objects. The remaining chapters are case studies, showing how the frameworks of interaction and translation identified in the first two chapters play out in very specific scenarios and for particular categories of objects. In Chapter 1, the focus is on the role that gifts played in brokering the often-fraught relations between Italian courts and the Ottoman and Mamluk sultans in the fifteenth century. First, the objects of exchange are examined as mediators, active agents that enabled states to communicate or negotiate, sometimes at a distance and sometimes as part of public and private ambassadorial receptions. Second, the chapter looks at how these objects were put on display, after the initial ritual of gift-giving. The mutability of such gifts once they become domesticated into their new court setting provides a metaphor for the fragile and often short-lived, temporal quality of peace negotiations. This first chapter also examines how, after the initial moment of gifting, these objects featured as part of stately visits to a palace where ambassadors and fellow rulers were taken on tours of courtly spaces. These tours were certainly an extension of diplomacy, and their detailed accounts in letters and other humanist texts point to a particular literary and artistic culture around display, linked to ekphrasis. Chapter 2 addresses how the mobility of objects gave rise to the mobility of particular motifs and scrutinises what language contemporaries used to describe these objects, their motifs and their origins. Far from being straightforward, the lexicology of object descriptions often refers to style, designs or patterns, or even the place of purchase that carried geographical connotations, which might be misleading for us today. Taking inventories, ambassador reports, letters and humanist texts, the chapter analyses how vocabulary varied depending on who was doing the describing. Terms such as damascena or maiolica were intricately linked to the trade in objects rather than simply their origin of manufacture. Descriptions of objects from ‘somewhere else’ might be pointing to mobility itself as a category of value, which places emphasis on circulation and exchange rather than a beginning and an end, opening up new ways to categorise objects that go beyond geographical boundaries. In addition, this chapter addresses ornament, as the motifs on such objects were often key in their descriptions, but ‘ornamental objects’ also featured in humanist treatises. Thus, it addresses ornament in two senses: ornament as a decorative motif and objects as ornamental. By addressing the historiographical consequences of ornament (and the ‘arabesque’ in particular), the chapter considers how the decorative arts have traditionally been treated as ‘lesser’ in Art History and challenges the prejudice of ornament as void of meaning in comparison to more dominant forms of European representational modes. Engaging with ornament on three-dimensional objects, instead, as Chapter 2 argues, underscores its haptic as well as visual qualities, highlighting the intellectual and political potential of ornament.

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In the third chapter, attention is turned to a little-known collection of porcelain, and yet one of the largest in Italy in its time, examining it through the lens of mobility, material engagement and collecting practices. The Medici of Florence have long been recognised as having the largest collection of Chinese porcelain in the fifteenth century, but Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, surpassed the Medici collections with over 170 pieces. Taking Eleonora’s collection as a case study, the chapter examines the European reception of porcelain, with particular attention to how contemporaries understood the different material and sensorial qualities of porcelain. In fifteenth-century Europe, porcelain did not come directly from China, but rather took a circuitous route along the Silk Roads, and then made its way into Italy through trade and diplomacy with other courts. Once in Europe, it was also often gifted again, sometimes set in mounts with dedicatory inscriptions or in etui (customised leather cases). These framing devices are examined as ways of making local a global commodity, arresting porcelain’s mobility temporarily. Porcelain is thus examined here as a novel collector item, which contributed to new approaches to collecting and the material world. Eleonora’s collection in Ferrara is also studied as an example of a portable pathway of goods from Naples to Ferrara and reveals how objects exchanged first-hand with the Ottoman and Mamluk courts in Naples might have made their way into smaller courts through familial networks. The fourth chapter builds on the collecting practices articulated in Chapter 3 but situates porcelain collections in the next century at Ferrara, including the discussion of a previously unknown yet important Stanza delle Porcellane (Room of Porcelain). By starting with Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, made as one of the Bacchanals for Eleonora’s son, Alfonso d’Este, the chapter argues that a narrow art historical focus on these paintings and their literary interpretation and programme have ignored the role of material culture (including porcelain) across the rooms. While commissioning the paintings (many by Titian) and objects for his camerini, Alfonso was also busy building a spezieria or pharmacy and decorating it with glasses and ceramics designed and procured by the artists Titian and Dosso Dossi. This chapter thus pays attention to Alfonso’s interests in technological innovation, including his pursuit of manufacturing ‘counterfeit’ porcelain, arguing that an emphasis on materials and their transformative qualities was a theme running throughout the paintings, but also in the objects of display, and in the larger interests of Duke Alfonso. The inclusion of porcelain in Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, as Chapter 4 reveals, is not simply a representation of Alfonso’s porcelain collections and his interests, but rather sets up a complex relationship between reality and fiction, and the metaphoric capabilities of material culture. The chapter contends that Alfonso d’Este utilised the material, sensorial and pictorial conditions of the camerini to explore broader understandings of disegno.

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The fifth chapter expands on the previous chapter’s reference to the court pharmacy by looking closely at the drug jars or albarelli and other aromatic vessels that graced the shelves of court interiors. The chapter explores what these vessels and their contents can tell us about the everyday sensorial practices of men and women at court. The very sociability of these jars was activated as they were taken off the shelf in the palace’s spezieria, mobilised through the carrying of the vessels to other rooms, which in turn activated courtly social and medical practices. Spices, aromatics and their receptacles were also commonly given by the Mamluk and Ottoman sultans, carrying with them sensorial practices, which reveals a ‘shared culture’ of fragrance, incense and aromatics across the Mediterranean and yet, adapted to serve particular theological and social practices. By interrogating new primary sources such as a previously unpublished inventory of the spezieria in Ferrara as well as contemporary descriptions of the Neapolitan spezieria, the chapter sheds light on how these spaces were integral to daily practices at court. Indeed, the physical proximity of the court spezieria and collecting spaces reveals that both were closely associated with news, knowledge and intellectual pursuits. The employment of the metaphor of the pharmacy in art of memory texts, as well as in other cultural references as a place of knowledge, had close ties to the concept of the studiolo and the later spaces of collecting such as Alfonso d’Este’s camerini. This chapter demonstrates that aromatics and spices – and their receptacles – were ubiquitous at court, not merely medicinal: they carried symbolic metaphors, which varied depending on where they were used, from the court chapel to the studiolo. The concluding chapter takes surviving tiles in Naples as a case study, pursuing how the mobility of motifs found on ceramics examined throughout this book were made local and more static by their incorporation into the architectural structures of Neapolitan palaces and churches. In the 1440s, Alfonso I d’Aragona shipped a large quantity of Valencian tiles to decorate his palaces in Naples: these were of course not ‘foreign’ for Alfonso and his Catalan court, rather they referenced his Spanish roots. Valencian tiles could also be found in the palazzo of Diomede Carafa, a prominent Neapolitan courtier, diplomat and humanist. Transported into Italy, these tiles reflected the larger cultural exchanges taking place in Naples and how designs circulated through transportable objects, eventually led to local production. Extant Neapolitan examples still in situ from the Caracciolo chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara and the Cappella Pontano show how the use of Valencian tiles by the ruling family soon gave rise to a taste for similar tiles by the local nobility and courtiers in the service of the Aragonese. This concluding chapter articulates how transfer and translation occurs – both visually and textually. Pontano’s chapel provides a particularly provocative example, where inscriptions underscore an emphasis on the written word, providing a complex

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relationship between text, media and translation. Inscribed with Pontano’s signature, the tiles become a medium through which Pontano articulates his social virtues in textual, material and visual form, forging a complex relationship between patron, author, artist and creator. The use of these tiles in spaces commissioned by humanists such as Diomede Carafa and Pontano asks us to reinterpret familiar humanist tropes. Pontano’s writings for example, demonstrate how he incorporated his experience of a global material culture in Naples, such as lustred ceramics, with traditional humanist approaches to splendour. This final concluding chapter emphasises one of the main remits of this book, that what has often been seen as quintessential examples of Renaissance revivals of a local antiquity – Pontano’s chapel or Carafa’s palazzo for example – need to be resituated within larger global visual cultures. A GLOBAL R ENAISSANCE?

Literature on the ‘global Renaissance’ (and more broadly on the Mediterranean) tends to sit between two trajectories, that of bazaars and battlefields.12 On the one hand, scholarship argues for a Renaissance that was open, fostering creativity and cultural interchange, and on the other, a clash of civilisations, often between Christianity in the West and Islam in the East. The types of transcultural objects studied here can underline the interconnectedness of the world, revealing that there never really are ‘pure’ or authentic cultural traditions and products.13 However, a celebration of transculturality can also hide the bleaker realities of cross-cultural relationships in this period, where power dynamics were often unequal and resulted in forced conversions, colonial domination and little room for negotiation. Warfare and conflict were not uncommon within and between states across the Mediterranean and thus, a more nuanced approach needs to be taken. The use of the terms ‘Renaissance’ and ‘global’ together can also appear as a persistent Eurocentric approach. I use the term Renaissance here in two ways: first, as a term for a period that roughly stretched over the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and secondly, to engage directly with and challenge the Eurocentric understanding of the ‘Renaissance’ as being a revival of a local classical antiquity. As has been argued, there were numerous Renaissances, moments of particular flourishing in centres that brought together arts, intellectual inquiry, sciences and innovation.14 Renaissance courts tend to still be studied as closed entities, with scholars concentrating on one court and one ruling family, insisting on categorisations of regional particularities. Italian scholarship on courts often relies on detailed archival research, which offers in-depth studies on individual Italian courts but little information on their transcultural nature or interaction with other courts, although Naples’ relationship with the wider world was often addressed in nineteenth-century

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scholarship.15 This book is not a global survey of courts in the Renaissance, which might risk a flattening out of the complex and unique encounters. Admittedly, this book focusses on the European courts of the Italian Renaissance, but it situates them within a larger global intersection of connections and interchange rather than as individual, solitary or closed courts. The primary sources I rely on are also mostly drawn from Italian archives and the sources are thus one-sided. Readers might ask why I have not chosen to study all courts – Ottoman, Mamluk and Italian – in the same depth. Comparative approaches can sometimes lose sight of the richness of individual cases and instead, I have chosen to focus on very particular studies at Ferrara and Naples. However, throughout the book I have tried to draw on a broader global scholarship, to consider how the reception of these objects in Italian Renaissance courts might have been informed or differed from their global counterparts. Many of the objects that are the focus of this book fall under the category of ‘Islamic art’ and are part of larger debates about the discipline of Art History, which has long been divided between those who work on European or Western art and those who work on ‘Non-Western’ art; categories that are becoming increasingly tenuous. Many artefacts in museums are due to the legacies of European colonialism when many of these collections were formed and thus, bound up in particular colonial ideologies and agendas. The global turn in Art History is both a welcome and an unwelcome one for scholars who work on ‘Islamic art’. Comparative studies that frame a new Renaissance arguing for interconnections across the Mediterranean, for some, still speak to a wholly Eurocentric agenda, which places Islamic works of art within a neo-Orientalist frame.16 These works of art are often still understood within Western categories, applying Eurocentric paradigms and criteria.17 There is a tendency to focus primarily on the Mediterranean, thus still serving a Western agenda: we incorporate bits of the Other in our own established narratives of collecting practices, neglecting other parts of the world where such intercultural dialogues and exchanges may have been taking place long before the ‘Italian Renaissance’.18 There were certainly numerous other places of transcultural encounter, particularly around other bodies of water such as the Indian Ocean or the Arabian and Red Seas. Although critics will say this book focusses on the Mediterranean, and still even a narrower field of the courts of Ferrara and Naples, it aims to offer new theoretical frameworks, vocabularies and methodologies to address the global circulation of objects, which I hope can be adopted for any region of interchange and applied more broadly to transcultural objects. In addition, the book sheds light on objects that, although central to many Renaissance collections, have been overlooked and thus, offers a new way to conceive of Renaissance collecting, which tries to overcome the discipline’s nineteenth-century Eurocentric origins.

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The Italian courts studied in this book were small players when put into perspective with global courts. The works in these collections were not necessarily pillaged colonial items but gifts from much more powerful empires – those of the Ottomans and Mamluks. While Italian understandings of foreign courts were embedded in often racist and religious ideologies as well as awe, power often rested in ‘non-European’ courts and thus, these courts need to be studied within their own political and historical frameworks, not within nineteenthcentury Orientalist or colonial paradigms.19 The power and strength of courts was evidenced in the quality and quantity of diplomatic gifts. For example, the Mamluks received Chinese porcelain from Yemen in the hundreds (400 or 500 in some lists) but when regifted to European courts, the Mamluks rarely exceeded thirty pieces at a time.20 Placed in perspective, European access to these goods was rather limited. It is also important to underscore the brutal realities of the circulation of goods, which are often left out of the stories of these fascinating objects, but are still an essential part of their biographies and itineraries. Chinese porcelain for example, was made by potters, painters and enamellers who were reportedly beaten by their masters if they made mistakes. In the early fifteenth century, four thousand craftspeople attempted to flee Jingdezhen, but soldiers dragged them back to work.21 One Song poet indicated the hardships and inequalities that were part of the potters’ life: Pots cover every inch of space before the door But there’s not a single tile on the roof. Whereas the mansions of those who wouldn’t soil their fingers with clay Bear tiles overlapping tightly like the scales of a fish.22

Once such goods made their way onto ships bound for ports, the cargo and crew were subject to piracy, where sailors could be enslaved and forced to convert, often leading to warfare or diplomatic rows. The word porcelain, as explored further in Chapter 2, is derived from the term for cowry shells, which were used as currency to purchase things as wide ranging as porcelain (the ceramic) and enslaved peoples, underscoring how the circulation of luxury goods was also tied up in the purchasing of human flesh, setting into motion the terrible realities of the slave trade for centuries to follow. Along with spices, enslaved people were also shipped; along with new discoveries or territorial expansion came power struggles and occupation. Italian courts’ relationships with other courts were part of a longer history of incessant warfare within the Italian peninsula and within Europe. Naples was the site of constant struggles of ‘foreign’ domination: the French Angevins in the fourteenth century, the Catalonian Aragonese in the fifteenth century, the brief French occupation in 1495, then followed by Spanish domination again ruled by Viceroys, who stayed for two centuries. Finbarr Barry Flood’s Objects of Translation provides an important model to study the transcultural

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interactions and cosmopolitanism of the premodern world, based on a ‘reconfiguration of premodern cultural geography’, which moves away from ‘static taxonomies’ and ‘linear borders of the modern nation-state’.23 While Flood’s study concentrates on medieval South Asia, similar overlapping economic zones and trade networks can be found in the Mediterranean in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; the focus of this book. A similar approach has been taken for the Ottoman Empire, where ‘Transottomanica’ has been employed as a term to move away from a fixed geographical entity and instead refers to a changing set of entanglements, flows, transfers and networks between the Middle East and Europe.24 My study of Italian Renaissance courts, and in particular Ferrara and Naples, builds on anthropological studies, which consider identity not as bounded, but rather a ‘nexus of relations and transactions actively engaging a subject’ or state.25 The Aragonese court in Naples, for example, was an urban centre made up of the ruling family (who were of Spanish/Catalan origin), as well as merchants, courtiers and barons who may have come from elsewhere, had conflicting political loyalties and who interacted with other courts regularly, while the larger city was host to a range of people who might have identified with a gamut of nationalities and religions. With regular embassies from Mamluk, Ottoman, Tunisian, Burgundian, Hungarian and other Italian courts, where resident ambassadors often stayed for months, Naples was certainly a shifting place of encounters. Naples thus plays a prominent role in this book, a court and imperial city that is often left out of histories of the Renaissance because of its heterogenous character.26 What made it an important centre of culture in the fifteenth century, drawing in artists, luxury goods and cultural practices from Catalonia, the Netherlands, France, Burgundy, Dalmatia, Damascus, Istanbul, Tunisia, Cairo, Alexandria and other Italian regions, has also made it unfavourable within a Vasarian tendency to privilege homogenic centres of production, such as Florence.27 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Naples was recognised by scholars such as Walter Benjamin for its ‘porosity’, but in a derogatory sense, a sort of formless precivilised Other.28 If we consider a site of exchange like Naples, outside a Vasarian paradigm as Stephen Campbell has suggested, we instead encounter a capital and port city that brought together multiple cultural traditions, setting the standards for other lesser courts such as Ferrara.29 Building on social and cultural theories of networks (or even better ‘meshworks’), Naples is studied here as an important node within larger global and local networks, creating a web of connections around it through marriage and military contracts, diplomacy and trade.30 These networks were not stable, but shifted and adapted as needed, where some players became central, and others faded from view. It would be as anachronistic to suggest that this centre of interaction did not have frictions, as it is to suggest globalisation is new. Flood rightly underscores

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the need to not celebrate premodern processes of interaction as modern multiculturalism but rather understand how these exchanges could prove both productive and destructive, and were constantly shifting.31 Indeed, frontiers are places where similarities and differences are often identified, and that difference itself can often be the source of identity construction.32 When confronted with fragmentation, individuals can often look for cohesion or tradition. The more that globalising processes take root, deep divides can occur, as individuals either embrace stasis or advocate for assimilation and change. The numerous embassies in Naples were precisely because of warfare, territorial struggles, piracy and competition over the monopoly of trade routes. Who the Other was and who the ‘enemy’ was often changed rapidly. For example, during King Alfonso I d’Aragona’s triumphal entry into Naples, various ‘nations’ staged thematic processions (later made permanent through their representations on the Aragonese triumphal arch and across visual culture).33 Since Alfonso’s right to rule was questioned and he knew successful rulership would only be found in the coercion and cohesion of his vast kingdoms across the Mediterranean, Alfonso sought to underline a unified state through a staged procession, which reflected a large and encompassing empire that included political and mercantile dominion: Florence represented other Italian states and his peaceful negotiations with those states; the barons represented Neapolitan support; the Catalans signified the Spanish contingency and Alfonso’s roots; and the Tunisians stood for his trade and mercantile relations with North Africa and other Islamic polities. For the part of the procession overseen by the Catalans, there was a staged battle between Spanish knights, who held lances with the insignia of Alfonso and individuals dressed as ‘Moors’ who wore turbans and carried scimitars. The battle actually began as a form of dance alla moresca but when the choreography reached its apogee, it transformed into a mock battle, which ended with the Spanish conquering the ‘Moors’. This was a tradition inherited from Spain, where battles between infidels and Christians accompanied by the Cardinal Virtues are recorded in the celebrations of 1414, when Alfonso’s father was made king and Alfonso was knighted.34 After the initial entry, every year, an annual triumphal procession was staged to commemorate Alfonso d’Aragona’s triumphal victory into Naples. In 1453, the procession began with eight men dressed in ‘Turkish’ costume, who held the standard of Saint George, decorated with a red cross and accompanied by 210 confratri of the confraternity of Saint George, who were led by King Alfonso. The procession, while commemorating Alfonso’s triumphal victory over Naples, was, as the chronicler tells us, to publicise a Crusade against the ‘Grand Turk’.35 When relations between Alfonso and Giovanna d’Aragona (the then Queen of Naples) became fraught in the early 1420s, pageantry soon reflected animosity. In 1423, the Aragonese had prepared a large wooden

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elephant on wheels accompanied by musicians and singers dressed as angels, as well as men with clubs dressed as wizards and Turks. Mounted men dressed as devils from the rival Neapolitan camp in the Capuana neighbourhood were to engage in a mock battle with the Aragonese in the guise of Turks. Since tensions between Neapolitans and Spaniards had been growing, the festivities were to soon materialise into a real battle, only to be stopped at the last moment due to a death of a high-ranking official.36 Thus, the ideological enmity between Christians and Muslims was often used as a foil to conceal the real and more immanent threat, that of the friction between Aragonese/Catalans and the Neapolitan barons (who would continue to rebel throughout Aragonese rule). While these staged processions thus posited the ‘infidel’ against Christians, these performances were ideological constructions that did not necessarily reflect actual relations. Rather, it seems that Aragonese relations with numerous states were fraught, and by merely examining these interactions as binaries, we hardly achieve a nuanced view of Alfonso’s empire, which was constituted by confrontation and negotiation. Alfonso appears to have used the Ottoman threat and the idea of Crusade as a way to negotiate relations with the papacy and other Italian states. While many scholars have stressed Alfonso’s anti-Turk and pro-Crusade policies, it has also been noted that Alfonso’s long relationship with Islamic polities both in Spain, in North Africa and in the Levant was central to much of his political career.37 Like Flood, this book seeks to historicise these transcultural encounters through the people, things and materials that created dynamic relationships and mediated between confrontation and consensus, continuity and change, alterity and identity.38 In recent years there has been a plethora of edited journal volumes, books and conferences in Renaissance studies concentrated on the mobility and circulation of objects, with a particular focus on global exchanges.39 In Art History, this is largely the result of two major changes in the discipline: the ‘object’/material turn and the global turn. These interventions in the field, however, have not approached the material in the same way, and some have been more successful than others in addressing the benefits as well as the shortcomings of these approaches. These contributions have allowed the field to test the waters, push the boundaries of particular theories and have led to more nuanced approaches. The recent emphasis on the circulation of goods and the mobility of objects, nevertheless, risks losing sight of the contestations and struggles that occurred in the early modern period. A celebration of the world of goods and consumption habits might simply be a return to, or a recasting of, Jacob Burkhardt’s celebration of the Renaissance as the birth of the modern (and now global) individual. As the field unfolds, scholars have already begun outlining the problems with these approaches.40 Cultural ‘exchange’ can sometimes be straightforward, but it rarely is. Along with translation, as anyone knows who has learned a new language, there are often misunderstandings. Entangled or crossed histories thus

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also recognise that there is often misapprehension, anxiety, misinterpretation and sometimes outright rejection of other cultural forms, which also need to be taken into consideration. FRAMES, COMPOSITE OBJECTS AND OBJETS CROISÉS

Naples as a periphery in art historical discourse and geographically at the edge of the Italian peninsula resonates with the metaphor of the frame or parergon, adopted throughout this book.41 The frame – such as a metal mount framing a porcelain piece (Figure 1; see also Figures 16 and 19 and Plate IV, Chapter 3) – rather than an unimportant side line often confronts the viewer and becomes central to interpretation and engagement with the work itself. Naples, while geographically on the periphery of Italy, became one of the main conduits for embassies and luxury goods into Italy from empires across the Mediterranean, such as the Mamluks and the Ottomans. At the centre of shifting relations, Naples resisted stasis and boundedness, particularly when it came to cultural production. This could serve to both articulate a particular Neapolitan identity, as it confronted ‘Other’ cultures, while it also gave rise to an early modern form of cosmopolitanism, found for example in the range of goods from around the world located in Aragonese palaces and those of courtiers and barons closely associated with the court. If the Neapolitan court was already transcultural, what then happens when an object from the Neapolitan court is gifted to the Ottoman court? Is this seen purely as a Neapolitan object reflecting the ‘Neapolitan court’ for the Ottoman court? What about Chinese porcelain gifted from the Ottomans into Naples? How can such objects be categorised? The idea of composite objects provides a means to move beyond geographic boundaries and instead places emphasis on exchange, circulation and metamorphosis. For example, a bowl now in the British Museum (Figure 1), but once belonging to the Ottoman collections of the Topkapı in Istanbul, provides a provocative example of a composite object.42 The bowl was made in the sixteenth century in the famous kilns at Jingdezhen in China, where porcelain was produced in great quantities and shipped around the world. The porcelain vessel is white with light blue roundels on the exterior, with the cavetto or interior sporting blue symbols of the eight treasures of Buddhism, deriving from early Indian ceremony. Already a composite object reflecting Chinese and Indian cultures, after it arrived in the Ottoman Empire, it is likely that local goldsmiths carefully adapted the object, by enhancing it with gold metalwork and gems.43 Unlike some mounts, which were used to repair broken pieces or to alter the object’s function or shape, such as adding spouts, feet or handles, these additions were purely ornamental but not void of meaning. Delicate gold leaf patterns provided additional decorations, enhanced with gold florets

INTRODUCTION: COURTLY MEDIATORS

fig 1 Porcelain bowl with gold and gem overlay, 1540–90 (bowl) Jingdezhen, China, 1570–1600 (mount), Ottoman. © The Trustees of the British Museum, 1904, 0714.1.

containing rubies. The base is inscribed in Chinese characters translated as ‘May ten thousand blessings gather together’. The British Museum’s catalogue reflects the difficulty of modern terminology and classification systems to pinpoint the specific ‘culture/period’, which the museum lists as ‘Ottoman dynasty (mount); Jiajing (probably (bowl))’.44 Indeed, the mounts have transformed what was a Chinese bowl into something Ottoman on the exterior, obscuring the Chinese decorations. In the interior, the decorative Buddhist motifs are derived from Indian culture, demonstrating a complex interlacing of cultures and styles into this one object. The bowl defies categorisation in the way that art historians have long been used to, or trained to, classify works of art in collections in terms of national schools.45 Such blue and white wares made in China were eagerly sought by rulers in the Middle East, North Africa and in Europe, and as they travelled across the globe, not only were they manipulated like Figure 1, but they left traces on the production of local wares, providing an interchange of motifs, techniques and materials. This is evident in drug jars or albarelli, which held associations with the ‘East’, not only because of the spices they held, but also their design and decoration as explored in Chapter 5. A drug jar in Paris (Figure 2), dating from the first half of the fifteenth century demonstrates this fusion of motifs.

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fig 2 Drug jar (albarello) painted in blue, Damascus (?), Syria, first half of the fifteenth century. Photograph © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre)/Hervé Lewandowski.

The albarello was made in Syria, most likely Damascus, and yet contains an emblem of the fleur de lis or florin, indicating it may have been created for export to Florence. The floral scrolls and flying birds are typical of Syrian wares inspired by Persian pottery and Chinese porcelain, yet the florin potentially points to Italian consumers.46 This object, in most of the literature, is thus seen as one of cultural interchange and complex customisation, perhaps ordered by the Medici. Yet, the fleur de lis was also employed by the Mamluks, raising questions about where this object was indeed intended to be ‘consumed’ and points to the confusion over origins in a global circulation of materials and motifs.

INTRODUCTION: COURTLY MEDIATORS

When objects circulate, they do not simply move from one location to another, but rather leave traces, altering their new settings and taking on new identities, leading to cultural transfer. Post-colonial studies have challenged the somewhat straightforward nature of understanding cultural transfer, claiming it is too Eurocentric by glossing over the dynamics of intercultural processes and transformations.47 Translation instead has often been used to emphasise how cultural products are not just transferred but translated, and not only occur between cultures but within them.48 Criticism of the term translation has also emerged, particularly because it uses a linguistic model for the interpretation of material and visual culture, and that it implies a desire to preserve the original meaning by the new user/artist/owner.49 While the material objects in this study are central to understanding the past, the use of language in inventories and ambassador reports, for example, is also a crucial part, as explored in Chapter 2, as were contemporary debates about the value of texts and images. The relationship between material and textual translations can be exemplified by a rare example of a basil pot dating from the fifteenth century, now in the Rothschild collections at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire (Figure 3). These sorts of pots, known as alfabeguers, also appear in paintings of the time, depicted in domestic interiors or on Italian terrazzi as markers of fine taste as well as serving curative purposes by scenting the air, such as in Antonello da Messina’s study (Plate I). The pot reveals the interlacing of numerous cultures in its material, decoration and function, as well as its name, demonstrating how composite objects reflect the complex exchanges engendered by fifteenth-century trade and travel. The word alfabeguer derives from the Arabic al-‘habac (sweet basil) becoming alfabaga in Valencian or albahaquero in Castilian.50 Already in 1397, the company of the merchant of Prato, Francesco di Marco Datini, was importing these vessels into Italy, recorded as alfabichieri.51 These linguistic mutations reflect the cultural translations of ceramics – both on a surface level of decoration as well as on a material one. As ‘foreign’ ceramics travel to a new location, they do not remain discreet ‘foreign objects’, but rather influence local production, producing new composite objects and in turn, new environments.52 The pot is made of ceramic lustreware, a technique that was adopted in Spain, learned from Muslim craftspeople. Ceramics coming from the Middle East and further afield from China were highly admired in Europe, and gave rise to replications, imitations and transmutations. The motifs on such a vessel demonstrate an incorporation of ‘foreign’ floral patterns made local, while the addition of an Italian coat of arms suggests it was designed for export to Italy. Once in Italy, these objects might be described in inventories as alla moresca (in the Moorish style) or even alla damascina (in the damascene style), raising complex issues around categorisations and labelling, as explored in Chapter 2.53

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fig 3 Basil pot (alfabeguer), tin-glazed earthenware, metallic lustre, Manises, Valencia, Spain, 1440–70, Waddesdon (Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by H M Government and allocated to the National Trust for Waddesdon Manor, 2016); acc. no. 10287. Photograph: Waddesdon Image Library, Mike Fear.

Such descriptions often reflect misunderstandings regarding provenance and sites of manufacture both for fifteenth-century viewers as well as scholars today who attempt to make meaning of primary sources. The complex water cavities built into the pot to keep the plant moist also reveal the level of technological dexterity needed to fire and assemble this pot, something collectors and users appreciated in conjunction with the decorations. Such technologies were embedded in artisanal knowledge, often learned through a mixture of

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hands-on experience, interaction with the objects and materials themselves, and textual or oral communication. Such an object’s use and reception in Italy thus reveal a complex pattern of exchange over time, how materials and motifs travelled in early modernity, and how, as scholars, we approach these complex interchanges. Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann have proposed the idea of histoire croisée or ‘crossed history’, which analyses both the global and local not simply from a comparative point of view, but by investigating the multilateral entanglements of multiple actors with varying viewpoints.54 This approach moves away from binary oppositions (East/West or North/South, for example) and places emphasis on frames of reference, rather than a transfer between two points, which usually implies some form of a beginning and an end.55 The use of the term croisé refers to a criss-cross, the possibility to reverse and reciprocate, which moves away from a linear process and places emphasis on intersections, whereby persons, practices and objects are intertwined or affected by this crossing process. Similarly, ‘sites of mediation’ refer to the places where dynamic processes of transcultural and translocal interactions, interconnections and entanglements take place.56 Drawing upon sociological, anthropological and historical studies, I propose the term objets croisés as a means to examine the entangled nature of early modern objects and material culture, providing a more complex reading of cultural interaction. In post-colonial studies, and most famously in the work of Homi Bhabha, what can emerge from transcultural interaction is a third space. In the colonial context, this often arises out of a dynamic interface between hegemonic and subordinated cultural forms, where difference is negotiated, translated and results in ‘hybrid’ identities.57 The term hybrid is both a useful and controversial term, often criticised as an easy label to use rather than explain the complexities of transcultural relations and it also comes with derogatory colonial connotations.58 The term ‘boundary objects’ has been proposed to articulate how such objects can both demarcate and combine identities.59 For Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer, who first employed the term in sociology, boundary objects ‘have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation’.60 This common ground is particularly important not only for shared objects but also common practices, such as the use of incense across the Mediterranean, which was both shared and adapted according to particular cultures and religions, examined in Chapter 5. The concept is enlightening, but the word ‘boundary’ unfortunately hearkens back to the fixedness of boundaries, suggesting boundedness and stasis, instead of highlighting how practices and objects were adopted, negotiated and renegotiated again. For the discipline of Art History, which takes objects and images as a central focus, we also need to find particular terms to articulate the varying degrees of

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transculturation in material culture. The alfabeguer used in Italy is a Valencian product but with transcultural motifs and might be considered a transcultural object or objet croisé as both the technology and the motifs reflect decades of transculturation. In contrast, a Chinese porcelain cup placed in an Ottoman mount (Figure 1) or a European metal mount (see Figures 16, 19 and Plate IV, Chapter 3), has not undergone a permanent material metamorphosis, but remains framed temporarily as a transcultural object and thus, might be better referred to as composite, but the porcelain cup itself reflects transcultural interchanges of motifs.61 Its reception within its European or Ottoman context is also no longer the same as its Chinese one. A closer look at the reception of the porcelain piece might also reveal that for an Italian viewer, porcelain may have been associated with the Ottoman Empire bound up in gift exchange rather than China, also underscoring how cultural associations might be embedded into an object through a mode of exchange, which has nothing to do with the point of manufacture (something further explored in Chapters 2 and 3). To reflect the relational and multiplicity of identities as well as temporalities, anthropologists have proposed object itineraries over biographies, which move away from a linear mode of a beginning and an end.62 Object itineraries instead are ‘open-ended and multidirectional, and they include elements, fragments, transformations, and intersections with other itineraries and lines’.63 The concept of object itineraries thus entails not only the circulation of objects within shifting networks, but also their fragmentation, metamorphosis, framing and their transformation into composite objects. The theme of metamorphosis recurs throughout the chapters that follow, showcasing how materials and objects were received and translated in different ways according to different contexts. The frequent reception of Mamluk and Ottoman embassies in Naples and the multicultural Catalonian/Neapolitan court gave rise to transculturation. For example, Valencian tiles (inspired by Middle Eastern and North African ceramics) shipped into Naples in the 1440s resulted in local tile production, incorporating Valencian designs with local Neapolitan ones. These tiles, as explored in the concluding chapter, placed in the Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano’s funerary chapel, fused local antique traditions with contemporary cosmopolitanism. This in turn was reflected in Pontano’s writings, giving rise to new interpretations of splendour and magnificence, by incorporating the global dimensions of visual and material culture. In contrast, as explored in Chapter 4, when Chinese porcelain, exchanged in Naples, made its way into the collections of Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara, a smaller court less at the ‘centre’ of diplomatic exchange, the emphasis was on material metamorphosis. Alfonso d’Este sought ways to replicate the material qualities of porcelain in his own ceramic factories, translating not necessarily so much the motifs but the material properties, underscoring how close case studies can reveal subtle differences in reception.

INTRODUCTION: COURTLY MEDIATORS

SENSORIAL CONDI TIONS AND OBJECTSCAPES

This book is attentive to a tripartite scheme – touch, transfer and translation – which underscores the importance of sensorial conditions of cultural transfer and translation, and in particular the haptic, optic and olfactic. As the chapters that follow show, transcultural encounters occurred through the multisensorial performances of embassies or experiences of travel, as well as through the physical and phenomenological engagement with these objects in collecting spaces and the domestic sphere. Court objects could be sites of mediation in themselves, but this mediation varied depending on status and access to objects as well as forms of encounter. Sensorial responses to objects could range from the exceptional to the more mundane. Luxury objects gifted between princely elites were put on display only for those privileged few who were part of gifting ceremonies. These might not be experienced by many but observed afar by more people. Other objects such as albarelli had a range of users, as they were displayed in apothecary shops or used at home. By paying attention to the senses, this book moves beyond art historical hierarchies and geographical categorisations, which often privilege painting and sculpture over material culture, frequently resulting in the same historical conclusions. A focus on the senses opens up new ways to investigate the interconnectedness and cultural transfer and translation of courtly objects, and their associated material, aural, olfactic and visual practices. The senses have become the subject of scholarly interest in recent years, but most early modern studies have a tendency to focus on religious experience although this is rapidly changing with a broader ‘sensorial turn’ in the humanities, which builds on the anthropology of the senses.64 Scholars have called for a more historically specific understanding of a ‘period body’, and Islamic and Byzantine studies have been particular areas of Art History providing pioneering ways of approaching the senses in relation to visual and material culture.65 While embracing a sensorial approach to the past, it is important to also note that the study of the senses is not neutral and has its own historiography.66 By focussing mostly on three-dimensional objects, I draw on innovative methodologies, particularly those of Jonathan Hay, Bissera Pentcheva, Nina Ergin and Margaret Graves, to consider how objects were craftily manipulated by artists and collectors within a three-dimensional landscape, to reveal ‘object-spaces’ or ‘objectscapes’, which are temporary and ephemeral.67 Objectscapes rely on a performative paradigm, where objects, materials and ornament interact with other objects, materials and ornament, demanding engagement from beholders. Engagement thus varies according to context, ranging from intellectual and philosophical to spiritual and physical. To reimagine these objectscapes is difficult for the past because they are by definition

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ephemeral, but by paying close attention to materials, and their phenomenological engagement, as well as treating ornament as something threedimensional rather than two-dimensional, we can facilitate new ways to look at Renaissance spaces and collections. The senses also open up the possibilities of different experiences, thus not assuming there is one ideal viewer or visitor. The archaeologist, Yannis Hamilakis, employs the term ‘sensorial assemblages’ to not only consider the pairing of a thing with a body (a hand holding a vase) but the copresence of numerous elements including bodies, things, substances, memories, information and ideas.68 These approaches also offer new and more nuanced ways to understand transcultural encounters and transfers. Antonello’s painting hints at these complex objectscapes and sensorial assemblages (Plate I), where a space such as a studiolo brought together objects that came from various geographical locations but spoke to each other through shared and transformed motifs within a threedimensional space: Chinese porcelain that had blue motifs, which had incorporated Persian designs, which inspired Valencian ceramics that combined Islamic lustre techniques with Christian IHS monograms, which in turn referenced other media such as metals, inspiring local Neapolitan tile production. Or the Chinese–Ottoman porcelain mounted bowl (Figure 1), which was not simply Ottoman or Chinese but brought together multiple traditions from India, China and Turkey. Such objects held aromatics, incense or rose water, and would have played with light, felt cold or warm to touch, and even made sounds when interacted with. It is likely a contemporary viewer may have not been able to make out all these different media, cultural and historical references, but they would have registered the concatenation of media, motifs and materials and their effect on the senses.69 Like the cosmopolitan cities of Naples where such artefacts travelled in and out of, these objects gave rise to interconnections and novel ways of seeing the world, mediating between nearness and distance, novelty and familiarity. Such objects might have also served an ideological function for a collector who wanted to project a worldly identity, or for a prince who wanted to show his connections to other more important, global courts. These objects were often filled with aromatics, generating olfactic experiences, while holding them up to the light, the mounts occupied a space between the beholder and the ceramic, an ‘in-betweenness’ of both form and space. The gems inlaid in gold onto the surface of the ceramic might have held symbolic associations, while the porcelain, for a European viewer, was understood to be an apotropaic and its aromatic contents could sometimes perform a similar function. Treating these motifs or ornaments as flat two-dimensional transfers of distinct cultures thus misses the point. Rather, these objects ask us to consider how identity is constructed through an encounter with the Other, which might have varying degrees of familiarity or Otherness, but is always processual and in negotiation,

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and sometimes found in ornament or through the physical handling of a novel object. Courtly Mediators argues that the collecting culture of Renaissance Italy, while tied to humanistic enterprises more traditionally associated with the European roots of the Renaissance, was also connected to diplomatic negotiating, trade and encounters with other material cultures. The chapters that follow prompt us to reorient our understanding of Italian Renaissance courts, as provisional and influx spaces, adapting and responding to changing landscapes (and sensescapes) made up of people, practices and things. NOTES 1

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Amanda Lillie, ‘Entering the Picture’, in Building the Picture: Architecture in Italian Renaissance Painting, eds. Caroline Campbell and Amanda Lillie (2014), www.nationalgallery.org.uk/ research/research-resources/exhibition-catalogues/building-the-picture/entering-the-pic ture/apertures-and-arches In Marcantonio Michiel’s description, he specifically noted the peacock, the quail and ‘barber’s basin’. Marcantonio Michiel, ‘Notes of a Connoisseur’, in Italian Art, 1500–1600: Sources and Documents, eds. Robert Klein and Henry Zerner (Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1966), 25–30. Mia M. Mochizuki, ‘Connected Worlds: An Introduction’, in The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, eds. Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Boston: Brill, 2017), 5–6. Stephen Campbell, The Endless Periphery: Toward a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 14–15, 35–6. Ibid., 30, 55–6. Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, eds., Bellini and the East (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2005); Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer, and the Oriental Mode, vol. I, The Hans Huth Memorial Studies (London and New Jersey: Islamic Art Publications with Sotheby Publications, 1982). Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (London: Penguin Classic, 2003), xxi. See also Leah R. Clark, ‘Collecting, Exchange, and Sociability in the Renaissance Studiolo’, Journal of the History of Collections 25, no. 2 (2013): 176. Jonathan Hay, Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2020). For object itineraries see Alexander A. Bauer, ‘Itinerant Objects’, Annual Review of Anthropology 48, no. 1 (2019): 335–52. Giovanni Florio, A Worlde of Wordes (London: Arnold Hatfield for Edward Blount, 1598). Claire J. Farago, ‘The “Global Turn” in Art History: Why, When, and How Does It Matter?’, in The Globalization of Renaissance Art. A Critical Review, ed. Daniel Savoy (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017), 304–6; Mochizuki, ‘Connected Worlds’, 25. Eric R. Dursteler, ‘On Bazaars and Battlefields: Recent Scholarship on Mediterranean Cultural Contacts’, Journal of Early Modern History 15, no. 5 (2011): 412–34. See also David Nirenberg, ‘Islam and the West: Two Dialectical Fantasies’, Journal of Religion in Europe 1, no. 1 (2008): 3–33. For a summary of the literature and scholarly activity around ‘Mediterraneanism’ see Mariam Rosser-Owen, ‘Mediterraneanism: How to Incorporate Islamic Art into an Emerging Field’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–39. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 2004); Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn, ‘Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America’, Colonial Latin American Review 12, no. 1 (2003): 5–35.

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Jack Goody, Renaissances: The One or the Many? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Some still argue this is not a useful but harmful term; Avinoam Shalem, ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? A Plea for a Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 15. For Ferrara, see Luigi N. Cittadella, Il castello di Ferrara. Descrizione storico-artistica (Ferrara: Stab. Tip. Libr. di D. Taddei e Figli, 1875); Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.I (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1995); Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.II (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1997); Emanuele Mattaliano, ed. Da Borso a Cesare d’Este: La scuola di Ferrara, 1450–1628 (Ferrara: Belriguardo, 1984). For Naples, see Nicola Barone, Un nuovo registro di Cedole della Tesoreria Aragonese, vol. 11 (Naples: Stab. Tipografico del Cav. A. Morano, 1886); Riccardo Filangieri, Castel Nuovo. Reggia Angioina ed Aragonese di Napoli (Naples: E.P.S.A. Editrice Politecnica, 1934); Riccardo Filangieri, ‘Rassegna critica delle fonti per la storia di Castel Nuovo – parte seconda: il castello aragonese’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 62/23 (1937); Atanasio Mozzilo and Giuseppe Galasso, eds., Storia di Napoli. Napoli Aragonese, vol. IV tomo I (Torino e Firenze: Arti Grafiche, 1974). Avinoam Shalem, ‘Dangerous Claims on the “Othering” of Islamic Art History and How It Operates within Global Art History’, Kritische Berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften 2 (2012): 69–86; Shalem, ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”?’, 1–18; Moya Carey and Margaret S. Graves, ‘Introduction: The Historiography of Islamic Art and Architecture, 2012’, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 6 (2012): 1–15. Shalem, ‘Dangerous Claims’, 80. See also Farago, ‘The “Global Turn”’. For a useful overview of the literature see Giorgio Riello, ‘The “Material Turn” in World and Global History’, Journal of World History 33, no. 2 (2022): 193–232. Rosser-Owen, ‘Mediterraneanism’, 1–39. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979). Lists of gifts are discussed in Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate. Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2014). For gifts across Asia, see John Carswell, Blue and White. Chinese Porcelain Around the World (London: British Museum Press, 2000); John Carswell, ‘More about the Mongols: Chinese Porcelain from Asia to Europe’, Asian Affairs 36, no. 2 (2005): 158–68. Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art. Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010), 33–4. Quoted in ibid., 34. Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’ Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 2. See also Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012). For the productive possibilities of cosmopolitanism see Bronwen Wilson, ‘Art History, Boundary Crossing, Making Worlds’, I Tatti Studies 22 (2019): 416; Margaret C. Jacob, Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 1–12. Arkadiusz Christoph Blaszczyk, Robert Born and Florian Riedler, ‘Introduction: Movable Objects’, in Transottoman Matters. Objects Moving through Time, Space, and Meaning, eds. Arkadiusz Christoph Blaszczyk, Robert Born and Florian Riedler (Göttingen: V&R UniPress, 2021), 9–26. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 344. Recent volumes and essay collections have begun to address the historiography and reassessment of Naples, see Tommaso Astarita, A Companion to Early Modern Naples (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Melissa Calaresu and Helen Hills, New Approaches to Naples c.1500–

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c.1800: The Power of Place (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013); Marcia B. Hall and Thomas Willette, Naples, Artistic Centers of the Italian Renaissance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Gerardo de Simone, Adrian Bremenkamp and Sarah Kozlowski, ‘Special Issue, New Approaches to Fifteenth-Century Naples’, Predella 43, no. 44 (2018). For a summary of the range of artists who worked in Naples, see Serena Romano, ‘Patrons and Paintings from the Angevins to the Spanish Hapsburgs’, in Naples, eds. Marcia B. Hall and Thomas Willette (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Walter Benjamin and Asja Lacis, ‘Naples’, in Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, ed. Peter Demetz (Boston: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), 163–73; Ronald G. Musto, ‘Introduction: Naples in Myth and History’, in Naples, eds. Marcia B. Hall and Thomas Willette (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 10. Campbell, Endless Periphery, 9–15. Also see Musto, ‘Naples in Myth and History’, 18–19. Campbell, Endless Periphery, 15. For network theory see Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). For meshworks, see Tim Ingold, ‘Rethinking the Animate, Re-animating Thought’, Ethnos 71, no. 1 (2006): 13–14. Flood, Objects of Translation, 2–4. David Abulafia, ‘Mediterraneans’, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. William V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); David Abulafia and Nora Berend, eds., Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002). For an important warning about embracing ‘Mediterraneanism’ as a ‘bias-inflicted subject’ reflecting a contemporary ‘yearning for peaceful multiculturalism’ see Rosser-Owen, ‘Mediterraneanism’, 4–5. For the procession and representations of it see Antonio Pinelli, ‘Fatti, parole, immagini. Resoconti scritti e rappresentazioni visive del trionfo napoletano di Alfonso d’Aragona’, in Arte e politica tra Napoli e Firenze. Un cassone per il trionfo di Alfonso d’Aragona, eds. Giancarlo Alisio, Sergio Bertelli and Antonio Pinelli (Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 2006); Grazia Distaso, ‘Scenografia epica: il trionfo di Alfonso, epigoni tassiani’, Biblioteca di critica e letteratura 32 (1999); Marzia Pieri, ‘“Sumptuoisissime Pompe”: Lo spettacolo nella Napoli Aragonese’, in Studi di filologia e critica offerti dagli allievi a Lanfranco Caretti, ed. Lanfranco Caretti (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1985); Ellen Callmann, ‘The Triumphal Entry into Naples of Alfonso I’, Apollo 109 (1979); Filangieri, Castel Nuovo. The seminal text on the Aragonese arch remains George L. Hersey, The Aragonese Arch at Naples. 1443–1475 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973). Alan Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon, Naples, and Sicily, 1396–1458 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 26–7. Camillo Minieri Riccio, ‘Alcuni fatti di Alfonso I di Aragona dal 15 aprile 1437 al 31 maggio 1458’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane VI (1881): 417. Ryder, Alfonso, 104. Ibid., 292–5. Flood, Objects of Translation, 2. The literature is growing at a rapid pace, for a useful overview see Riello, ‘Material Turn and Global History’, 192–232. Some key texts include Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, eds., Circulations in the Global History of Art (London: Routledge, 2016); Finbarr Barry Flood et al., ‘Roundtable: The Global before Globalization’, October 133 (2010): 3–19; Anne Gerritsen, ‘From Long-Distance Trade to the Global Lives of Things: Writing the History of Early Modern Trade and Material Culture’, Journal of Early Modern History 20, no. 6 (2016): 526–44; Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, ‘Spaces of Global Interactions: The Material Landscapes of Global History’, in Writing Material Culture History, eds. Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 111–34; Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests. Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Luca Mola and Marta AjmarWollheim, ‘The Global Renaissance: Cross-Cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period’, in Global Design History, eds. Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley (New

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York: Routledge, 2011), 11–20; Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar. From the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Meredith Martin and Daniela Bleichmar, ‘Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World’, Art History 38, no. 4 (2015); Wilson, ‘Boundary Crossing’; Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800 (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013); Anna Contadini, ‘Artistic Contacts: Present Scholarship and Future Tasks’, in Islam and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini (London: The Warburg Institute, 1999), 1–65; Giorgio Riello, Anne Gerritsen and Zoltán Biedermann, eds., Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Daniel Savoy, ed., The Globalization of Renaissance Art: A Critical Review (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Claire J. Farago, Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America, 1450–1650 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Catarina Schmidt and Gerhard Wolf, eds., Islamic Artefacts in the Mediterranean World: Trade, Gift Exchange and Artistic Transfer (Venice: Marsilio, 2010). Shalem, ‘Dangerous Claims’, 69–86; Dean and Leibsohn, ‘Hybridity’, 5–35; Rosser-Owen, ‘Mediterraneanism’, 1–39. This builds on a recent seminal text: Anna Grasskamp, Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2019). There are other similar examples still in Istanbul, including some that have been turned into incense burners; Beyza Uzun and Nina Macaraig, ‘Scenting the Imperial Residence: Objects from the Topkapı Palace Museum Collections’, The Senses and Society 17, no. 1 (2022): 78–9. Jessica Harrison-Hall, Catalogue of Late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 2001), 9:61. Ibid., 9:61. Anna Grasskamp and Monica Juneja, eds., EurAsian Matters: China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object, 1600–1800 (Cham: Springer, 2018), 3–4. Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 97. Michael North, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400–1900 (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2010). Flood, Objects of Translation. Mika Natif, Mughal Occidentalism: Artistic Encounters between Europe and Asia at the Courts of India, 1580–1630 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 110–11. Anthony Ray, ‘The Rothschild “Alfabeguer” and Other Fifteenth-Century Spanish Lustred “Basil-Pots”’, The Burlington Magazine 142, no. 1167 (2000): 371–5; al-Isla¯ mı¯ Mathaf al-Fann, Oliver Watson and Hubert Bari, eds., Beyond Boundaries: Islamic Art Across_ Cultures (Doha, Qatar: Museum of Islamic Art, 2008), Cat. 64. Ray, ‘Rothschild “Alfabeguer”’, 371. Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch, ‘Introduction: About the Agency of Things, of Objects and Artefacts’, in The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations. Art and Culture between Europe and Asia, eds. Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch and Anja Eisenbess (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 10–22. In most examples throughout this book, I intentionally provide the Italian original within the text rather than in a footnote, as attention to language is particularly important in this study. Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006): 30–50. There have also been critiques of circulation, as it suggests the absence of hierarchical structures, see Emanuele Lugli, ‘Linking the Mediterranean: The Construction of Trading Networks in 14th and 15th-Century Italy’, in The Globalization of Renaissance Art: A Critical Review, ed. Daniel Savoy (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 161–3.

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56 Susanna Burghartz, Lucas Burkart and Christine Göttler, eds., Sites of Mediation: Connected Histories of Places, Processes, and Objects in Europe and Beyond, 1450–1650 (Leiden: Brill, 2016); Grasskamp and Juneja, EurAsian Matters, 7. 57 Bhabha, The Location of Culture. 58 Dean and Leibsohn, ‘Hybridity’, 5–35; Rosser-Owen, ‘Mediterraneanism’, 8–9; Grasskamp and Juneja, EurAsian Matters, 8; Luís Urbano Afonso, ‘Patterns of Artistic Hybridization in the Early Protoglobalization Period’, Journal of World History 27, no. 2 (2016): 215–53. 59 Natif, Mughal Occidentalism, 111–12. 60 Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39’, Social Studies of Science 19, no. 3 (1989): 393. 61 For a reflection on the term metamorphosis in transcultural exchanges, see Jessica Keating, ‘Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court’, Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 732–47. 62 For a relevant bibliography see Bauer, ‘Itinerant Objects’, 335–52. Biographies of course refer to the seminal contributions by Kopytoff and Appadurai in Arjun Appadurai, ed. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 63 Bauer, ‘Itinerant Objects’, 343. 64 Constance Classen, Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and Across Cultures (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); Gregg Baker, Empire of the Senses (London: Gregg Baker Asian Art, 2009); David Howes, Sensual Relations: Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003); David Howes, ed., The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Toronto, London: University of Toronto Press, 1991); Robert Jütte and James Lynn, eds., A History of the Senses: From Antiquity to Cyberspace (Cambridge and Malden: Polity, 2005); Herman Roodenburg, ed. A Cultural History of the Senses in the Renaissance (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Yannis Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 65 Alice E. Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker, eds., Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2016); Erin E. Benay and Lisa M. Rafanelli, ‘Introduction: Touch Me, Touch Me Not: Senses, Faith and Performativity in Early Modernity’, Open Arts Journal Winter 4 (2014–15); Martina Bagnoli, A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2016); Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009); David E. Karmon, Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); François Quiviger, The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art (London: Reaktion, 2010); Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, The Music Room in Early Modern France and Italy: Sound, Space, and Object (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Niall Atkinson, The Noisy Renaissance: Sound, Architecture, and Florentine Urban Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016); Zuzanna Sarnecka and Wojciech Szymański, ‘Introduction, Special Issue on the Senses’, Ikonotheka 29 (2019): 5–9. For Islamic and Byzantine examples see Nina Ergin, ‘Rock Faces, Opium and Wine: Speculations on the Original Viewing Context of Persianate Manuscripts’, Islam 90, no. 1 (2013): 65–105; Nina Ergin, ‘The Fragrance of the Divine: Ottoman Incense Burners and Their Context’, The Art Bulletin 96, no. 1 (2014): 70–97; Tera Lee Hedrick and Nina Ergin, ‘A Shared Culture of Heavenly Fragrance: A Comparison of Late Byzantine and Ottoman Incense Burners and Censing Practices in Religious Contexts’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 69 (2015): 331–54; Bissera V. Pentcheva, ‘Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics’, Gesta 50, no. 2 (2011): 93–111; Bissera V. Pentcheva and Jonathan S. Abel, ‘Icons of Sound: Auralizing the Lost Voice of Hagia Sophia’, Speculum 92, no. S1 (2017): S336–S360; Bissera V. Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon: Space, Ritual, and the Senses in Byzantium (University Park: Pennsylvania State University

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Press, 2010). See also the special issue on the senses and the Islamic world, Christian Lange, ‘Introduction: The Sensory History of the Islamic World’, The Senses and Society 17, no. 1 (2022): 1–7. For the affective, multisensory, embodied and performative nature of automata see Angela Vanhaelen, ‘Strange Things for Strangers: Transcultural Automata in Early Modern Amsterdam’, The Art Bulletin 103, no. 3 (2021): 42–68. The limitation of the senses to five is a Western tradition and its history is also bound up in colonial agendas. As Hamilakis has explained, sensorial modalities are context specific, and depend on class, gender, age and other forms of identity, Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 10, 16–41. Ergin, ‘Rock Faces’, 65–105; Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 70–97; Margaret S. Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Jonathan Hay, ‘The Passage of the Other: Elements for a Redefinition of Ornament’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 62–9; Hay, Sensuous Surfaces; Pentcheva, ‘Hagia Sophia’; Andreas Reckwitz, ‘Affective Spaces: A Praxeological Outlook’, Rethinking History 16, no. 2 (2012): 241–58. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 126–8. Bodies moving in a space also evoke different sensorial experiences of an object or architecture, resulting in kinaesthesia, 22. For bodies in architectural space, see Karmon, Architecture and the Senses. Hay, ‘Passage of the Other’, 66–7.

CHAPTER ONE

DIPLOMATIC ENTANGLEMENTS Mediating Objects and Transcultural Encounters

INTRO DUCTION Boys and girls are generally not enthused by the price of a gift, but for the beauty of its ornament, what we call today elegance, so that beakers of fine glass, what is now called crystal, pleases the tastes of a young girl more than silver . . .. On some occasions rarity can also determine value . . . [and] art [can] make an acceptable gift . . .. There are some that prefer the tiniest little vase of that material which they call porcelain to vases of silver and of gold even though the latter are of higher cost. It does happen occasionally that the excellence of the gift is not judged so much by its cost, as by its beauty, its rarity, and its elegance . . .. Not long ago the King of Syria [the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt] sent to [King] Ferrante [of Naples] a giraffe and a donkey among other gifts, procured from the furthest regions of the Orient . . .. Amongst the gifts were many precious objects, but these two animals made the [gesture of the] gift all the more excellent because of their strangeness as they had never been seen before.1

Giovanni Pontano alludes to the beauty of gifts, their unique ornamentation (discussed in the next chapter) and the value of rarity. Gifts have been the subject of much scholarly interest in recent years, and central to this book are the material negotiators that mediated between courts, but the beauty of the gift can often obscure the tensions that led to its proffering. Ambassadorial records from the court of Naples are full of accounts of embassies, negotiations and gifts, written home by resident ambassadors to their respective courts, revealing that the city was a hub of diplomacy, where alliances were forged and frictions arose between states across the Mediterranean.

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fig 4 Ferraiolo, Ottoman Embassy of 1494, Cronaca della Napoli Aragonese, c. 1498. The Morgan Library, New York, MS M.801, 104v. Photographic credit: The Morgan Library & Museum, New York.

Figure 4 shows such an embassy from 1494 of the Ottomans in Naples from a Neapolitan chronicle (Cronaca della Napoli Aragonese), attributed to a son of Francisco Ferraiolo, possibly a goldsmith.2 The text tells us that the chronicler witnessed the procession, as the Ottoman party was greeted by King Alfonso II d’Aragona, and together they entered the Castel Nuovo. The artist, who is presumed to be the same person as the author, identifies the Ottomans through clothing and script. In the top depiction of the procession, the Imbasciatore de

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turchi proceeds on horseback towards the left, sporting a turban with a rounded top and facial hair, and followed by three men. Two are similarly dressed in turbans with pointed ends, while the third wears simpler clothing, different headgear (a long hat) and carries a banner, bearing three crescent moons. They are preceded by Aragonese musicians, including trumpeters bearing Aragonese flags. Below, the Ottoman ambassador is identified by script again and a rounded turban, now placed beside King Alfonso II. They are preceded by three men, two on horseback – an Ottoman with a pointed turban and a Neapolitan, possibly a member of the Aragonese family – and a man on foot. Behind them are three men on horseback, one in Italian dress and the other two identified as Ottomans with their long hats and crescent moon banners. A curious marginalia depiction of a naked woman stands awkwardly between the two scenes, a form of ornamentation that appears throughout the book, where flourishes of foliage borrowed from metalwork or ceramics suggest the goldsmith’s possible authorship. The image depicts what would have been a common sight on the streets of Naples, from the point of view of a Neapolitan resident but not someone associated with the court, underscoring the ubiquitous presence of foreign embassies in Naples. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the key players in late fifteenthcentury Mediterranean diplomacy. Taking Naples as a case study, it underscores how entangled relations were and how diplomatic negotiations were constant, due to the need to respond to an ever-changing landscape with multiple players. With these negotiations came gifts, material mediators, which are listed here, but which are more closely examined in the chapters that follow. The Neapolitan Ottoman war of the early 1480s is showcased as an example of what these negotiations entailed and how other resident ambassadors reported on these embassies. Such embassies were occasions for the hosting court – in this case Naples – to not only negotiate with the Ottomans but also persuade other courts of its power, through the pomp and circumstance of processions, receptions and feasts, and through tours of the Aragonese palaces. The final section of this chapter looks at how such palace tours were an extension of diplomacy and how the detailed accounts in letters and other humanist texts of these tours gave rise to a particular literary and artistic culture around display. As this chapter argues, visiting collections can also be understood to have contributed to the practice of ekphrasis, beyond the pictorial tradition, drawing upon sensorial experiences of these spaces and the encounters with images and objects. MEDITERRANEAN DI PLOMACY AND WARFARE

This book concentrates on a period in Italy that witnessed complex political and diplomatic negotiations, within Italy and abroad. Alliances and counteralliances were constantly shifting, and it would be too difficult to summarise

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the entire political scene for the cast of characters that this book addresses: the Italian courts and their relationships with the Ottoman and Mamluk empires, which in turn also extended to relations with the Aqquyunlu rulers and Tunisia as well as other European powers, such as Spain and France. Some of these complex webs of diplomatic ties are exemplified in this chapter by using case studies from Naples and its relationship with states across the Mediterranean. As mentioned in the Introduction, Alfonso I d’Aragona’s arrival into Naples saw a new network of diplomacy and trade from that port city, as he sought to expand southwards into North Africa and take control – either through trade deals or land expansion – towards the Ottoman Empire. A few words on the Ottoman and Mamluk empires and their relationship with Italian states is necessary to set the scene, followed by select examples of important political moments that showcase just how entangled these states were in internal Italian politics. Mamluk literally means slave and refers to the rise of a warrior-slave caste who ruled over a vast area of the eastern Mediterranean stretching from Syria to Egypt between 1250 (648) and 1517 (923). Qaitbay ruled from 1468 to 1496 and features prominently in Italian Quattrocento politics. The Mamluks controlled the monopoly over the spice trade and thus, striking trade deals with the Mamluks was key to the success of Italian states and their merchant bankers who imported these luxury goods (from spices and medicines to precious stones and textiles) into Italy in exchange for European linen, wool, silks, olive oil, metals and other commodities.3 Italian states were granted their own fondaci or overseas ‘colonies’, where their merchants and diplomats could live for periods of time.4 The Mamluks also had possession of the pilgrimage sites in the Holy Land, which were lucrative as a travel industry but also figured in Italian states’ diplomatic bargaining with the Mamluks. The Mamluks were often in diplomatic struggles with the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, which was also often at war with Italian states, such as Venice and Naples, thus creating diplomatic entanglements. Mamluk power began to fade when Tamerlane incurred into parts of Syria, and the Portuguese’s expansion of trading outposts along the African and Indian coasts led to economic competition and, increasingly, the loss of their trade monopoly. The Mamluks fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1516–17. The Ottoman Empire was formed in the thirteenth century, reaching its zenith as one of the most powerful states in the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and it lasted into the twentieth century.5 In the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Empire began large-scale imperial expansion, and under Mehmed II (r. 1451–81), the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) was conquered, turning it into a flourishing Ottoman capital. Mehmed was well known as a collector and patron, inviting artists from around the world to his capital, including the Venetian Gentile Bellini and

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the Ferrarese Costanza da Ferrara, who was employed at the Neapolitan court. At times, the Ottoman Empire stretched as far as today’s Hungary in the north, western Iran in the east, Saudi Arabia in the south and Algiers in the west. Diplomatic missions were usually because relations had soured due to a range of reasons, which could include piracy and the capture of goods and people (often resulting in enslavement), the need for new trade deals, the maltreatment of Italians in fondaci or on pilgrimage sites or outright war due to the incursion of troops into borderlands. Diplomatic gifts were exchanged with the Mamluk, Tunisian and Ottoman courts early on in Aragonese rule. As early as 1438, King Alfonso I d’Aragona was recorded covering expenses for the accommodation of moro Hamer Mendorra, the Tunisian ambassador, who had presented various gifts to Alfonso, including two lions and a lioness. The receipt of such gifts also required the facilities to maintain live animals, and it was noted in 1439 that Alfonso had to cover costs for the damage these animals accrued to the building in which they were held.6 Rare and prized animals were common gifts between states, including leopards, dogs and horses, and were often used as pawns in complicated diplomatic manoeuvring. In 1482, for instance, the Milanese ambassador to Naples reported that the ‘Great Sultan of Egypt’ had sent some animals from Alexandria as part of negotiations to gain favour with King Ferrante, during the territorial struggles between the Mamluks and the Ottomans.7 In 1482, during a particularly fraught moment between Florence and Naples, Lorenzo de’ Medici received the gift of an Ottoman war horse sent by Ferrante from the spoils taken after the recapture of Otranto.8 In 1489, King Ferrante wrote to his daughter Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, about gifts he received from the Ottoman ambassadors visiting Naples, which included vases of silver, brocades and silks, and dogs.9 Ferrante underlined that the ambassadors stressed the amicability and great peace (amicitia and bona pace) between Naples and the ‘Grand Turk’, making clear the interests and onerous weight of the gifts. Gifts went both ways, of course, and there are various entries for cloth, animals and other types of objects given to Islamic states. For example, the organist Perpinet, in 1472, was paid for the gift of an organ from King Ferrante to be given to the King of Tunis’s son, via the Tunisian ambassador, Leone Cisella.10 Tunisia was important for Neapolitan trade, with boats filled with Sicilian grain often making a direct route to Tunisia, and in Alfonso I’s time, it was the target of successive campaigns, including the temporary conquest of the island of Djerba in the 1430s.11 The presence of Tunisian ambassadors during Alfonso’s triumphal entry into Naples and their representations on the Castel Nuovo arch are an indication of a long and protracted relationship with Tunisia. In April 1443, there were payments for gifts given to Faquinet Turcomanno, dell’ambasciadore moro (the ‘black ambassador’), and to Abraflm

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and Azmet, trumpeters, and to eight other mori, who were servants of the ambasciadore moro of the King of Tunisia. The account notes that they had stayed ‘a long time’ at court and were now returning to Tunisia. On 6 December of that same year, Alfonso was recorded making a payment to the ambassador of Tunisia for the freeing of one Christian prisoner.12 In November 1471, payments were recorded again for the expenses of the ambassador of the King of Tunisia for the thirty-eight days he was in residence in Naples, from 27 September to 4 November, as well as of Giovanni Sayes, the Tunisian ambassador, who was in Naples again from 27 September to 30 December 1472.13 In July 1473, a peace treaty was realised between the Aragonese and Tunisia, and in September of that year, payments were made for a black enslaved person that the king was giving to the ambassador of the King of Tunisia on the occasion of peace, a reminder that it was not just objects and animals that were exchanged but human flesh as well. In June 1474, more payments were associated with a treaty between Naples and Tunisia. Other Italian states were also recipients of lavish gifts from Islamic polities, but their transport could sometimes prove difficult, pointing to the problems one could encounter during the movement of goods. In 1476, a Mamluk ambassador visited a number of states, including Milan. Leonardo Botta wrote to the Duke of Milan noting that the Mamluk ambassador would be gifting zibetto (civet) and ‘two of the animals who make it’ as well as musk, balsam, ‘sweet waters and other odiferous things’.14 However, the goods were stolen by a Sicilian servant in the service of the ambassador as they were being transported by boat along the Po, showing how complicated and risky the gifting process could be. The choice of gifts was also crucial, and a bad choice could send misconstrued messages and exacerbate tensions. For example, when King Alfonso of Castile sent al-Nasir Muhammad a sword, a Venetian gown and an object that resembled a coffin, the gifts were interpreted as a threat, and the counter-gift was a black rope and a stone, which had an overt message: ‘You, dog, should be either leashed or stoned’.15 Mamluk chancellery secretaries were advised to be knowledgeable about gemstones, animals, birds, scents and spices in order that they could compose educated verse and diplomatic correspondence on these subjects.16 In 1473, Sultan Qaitbay of Cairo sent Doge Nicolo Tron twenty pieces of porcelain, medicinal herbs, sweetmeats, fine sugar and a civet horn.17 Well known are the gifts from Qaitbay’s ambassadors, who arrived in Florence in 1487 and gave Lorenzo de’ Medici rich textiles, including a ceremonial tent, sweetmeats, spices and a giraffe, among other items. The primary sources recording the Florentine gifts vary in their descriptions, underlining the incomplete nature of documentary evidence. In the Florentine Luca Landucci’s chronicle, the embassy was recorded with a fair amount of detail.

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On 11 November, he notes that some animals were sent from the sultan: a giraffe, which was ‘very big and very beautiful and gentle, which can be found in many paintings in Florence’, as well a large lion, goats, horses and animals described as ‘very strange’, possibly antelopes. It was not until 18 November that the abovementioned animals were presented in the Signoria in a ceremony that required an interpreter. In the piazza, a large crowd gathered to view the gifts, and Landucci notes that the ambassador stayed in Florence for many months, receiving an allowance and numerous gifts. Finally, on 25 November 1487, the same ambassador presented to Lorenzo de’ Medici ‘odoriferous things, in beautiful vases alla moresca, and flasks full of balsam, and a beautiful large tent alla moresca’.18 The translation here is intentionally awkward and literal as the translations of this passage differ greatly in their interpretation, and this is significant for our understanding of these objects. In 1487, Piero Dovizi da Bibbiena described the gifts received from Qaitbay in a letter to Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice Orsini. He noted a beautiful horse (baio), strange animals (montoni), goats of various colours with ‘longs ears [which hung down] all the way to their shoulders’, a large flask of balsam, two civet horns, bongivi and aloeswood that one can wear on one’s person, big vases of porcelain ‘not similar to anything seen before nor better worked’, various textiles, large vases of confectionaries, myrobalan and ginger.19 These descriptions of the gifts from Qaitbay are confusing. Many describe the vases as being in the Moorish style (alla moresca), which modern scholars have often interpreted as Valencian vases, but why would the Mamluks be giving the Medici Valencian vases? It is more likely that these were blue and white Syrian ware, made in Mamluk territories, or Chinese porcelain, a common gift from the Mamluks. Other gifts from the Mamluks to Florence are recorded in a letter of 1485 from Francesco Nacci and Matteo Gandolfo in Naples, which mentions some ‘things’ (cose) being sent from Qaitbay; and in 1486, Gandolfo reported that he was waiting in Naples for ‘the stuff’ (le robe) that had not yet arrived from the sultan.20 The fact that it was in Naples that they were waiting for such goods stresses the centrality of Naples in diplomatic negotiations with the Mamluks and as one of the main points of entry into Italy. In 1489, Lorenzo de’ Medici sent some ‘counter-gifts’ to Qaitbay, including a lettiera with a casapancha (a sort of day bed with storage) decorated in ivory (presumably inlay), which, according to the Florentine ambassador, Luigi della Stuffa, the sultan deemed worth more than gold, as well as a forziere or chest and a mirror, also worked in ivory and some textiles.21 The choice of a lettiera recalls the famous lettuccio the merchant-banker, Filippo Strozzi, had gifted to the King of Naples in 1473, which had caused a stir in both Florence and Naples, and was thus also seen as a suitable gift for a sultan and may have also been advertising Florentine craftsmanship.22

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Literature that has taken a Tuscan-centric approach has highlighted Lorenzo de’ Medici as a magnificent de facto ruler, collector and diplomat, erudite and illuminated by his humanist learning, while his nemesis, King Ferrante of Naples, is often described as a cruel tyrant. More recent studies on Ferrante’s diplomacy have shown that the Aragonese were crucial diplomatic players and central to the rise of the so-called new diplomacy that emerged in the fifteenth century.23 In a study of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s collections, Lorenzo’s collection of fifty-two items of Chinese porcelain is declared as the largest in Italy, and it is noted that even the ‘Ottoman Sultans owned fewer pieces’.24 Yet, new evidence here shows that the Aragonese had large collections of porcelain, and in particular, Eleonora d’Aragona’s 1473 inventory recorded over 170 pieces. The Ottoman sultans certainly had a much larger collection than any Italian prince at this time, as is evidenced by the collections still housed today in the Topkapı Saray.25 Looking more closely at the diplomatic entanglements and the role that Naples played both within Italy, as part of the Italian Lega, and abroad sheds light on our understanding of this port city. This also raises historiographical questions on how history has been written to centre on northern Italian city-states in terms of encounters with the Mamluks and Ottomans, and in particular the republics of Venice and Florence. Aside from the Medici and the Aragonese, Chinese porcelain was given by the Mamluk sultans to Doge Foscari in 1442, to King Charles VII of France in 1447, to Doge Malipiero in 1461, to Caterina Cornaro of Cyprus in 1470, to Doge Barbarigo in 1490 and to the Signoria of Venice in 1498 and 1508. By sending porcelain to Italian elites, the Mamluks were promoting a costly new product that had begun arriving in their territory in sufficient amounts to export, and porcelain is further explored in Chapters 3 and 4 in relation to its peregrinations and collecting practices.26 The Mamluks’ monopoly of the spice trade in the fifteenth century meant that they had luxury objects in abundance, traded along the Silk Roads, which they gifted as diplomatic gifts as a means of brokering territorial and commercial deals. The gifts from 1442 to Venice were described as a sign of friendship and love, including thirty pieces of fine porcelain, the kind used for Mamluk dining (nostro viver) and a small vase of fine balsam.27 The list of gifts in 1461 to Doge Pasquale Malipiero was identified in a copy of a letter from ‘Signor Soldano Albufer hamer Sultan Elmayrdi’, the son of Sultan Lasseraf Aynel, which included benzoin, aloeswood, two pairs of carpets, an ampoletta of balsam, theriac, different types of sugar (zuccheri moccari and canditi), a civet horn (cornetto di zibetto) and twenty pieces of porcelain: seven plates (piattine), five low bowls (scodelle) (four large and one small), five large plates (piattine) and three other low bowls (scodelle) (one biava and two white).28 In January 1473, gifts were given to Doge Nicolo Tron, accompanied by a letter in Arabic and its contemporary Italian translation. This included twenty

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pieces of porcelain, five pieces of muslin (sesse), aloeswood, benzoin, balsam, theriac, a civet horn and sugar. As the letter explains, these were given as gifts to negotiate the quality of velvet from Venice, which had become increasingly adulterated with copper, and to ask for the release of Muslim merchants who had been attacked aboard their ships by the ‘Franks’ and taken prisoner, including the rape of a Muslim woman.29 In 1490, more gifts came in the form of balsam, civet, theriac, aloeswood, benzoin, sugar as well as twenty-five piaene of porcelain and eight scudele of porcelain. The 1498 gift list to Venice also included many of the same aromatics as well as a horse saddle with silver and gold decorations and fourteen pieces of porcelain: eight merzori, four piadane and two scudele.30 Many of these aromatics were a speciality of Mamluk territories, and their associated social, religious and medicinal practices are examined in more depth in Chapter 5. Gifts exchanged between Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, and the Mamluk court also provide examples of the types of goods exchanged and how such objects were imbricated in political dialogues. In 1477, the Cypriot ambassador received ceremonial garb to wear during audiences with the sultan and was given benzoin and balsam incense, aloe and a vial of theriac to pass on to Caterina. Caterina also received fourteen pieces of Chinese porcelain from Cairo. Again, in 1477, the sultan also gifted a gilded saddle with a gold cover and silk bridle and followed up these gifts with a horse and golden spurs.31 It is likely that the saddle and bridle were decorated in damascene, a motif that was employed across the Mediterranean, but often associated with Mamluk manufacture. Gifts to the Mamluk Sultanate from Caterina and the payment of tribute were clearly a way to keep relations cordial and any attempts to thwart her throne at bay. For example, in 1476, Caterina made sure to send the tribute to the Mamluks because don Alfonso d’Aragona (the illegitimate son of Ferrante d’Aragona, not to be confused with the Duke of Calabria, the future King of Naples, Alfonso II d’Aragona) was in Cairo, and rumours from a Milanese ambassador suggested that the sultan was eager to make don Alfonso King of Cyprus.32 In 1503, the Venetian governor of Cyprus received gifts of aromatics such as civet and aloeswood but also ceremonial garb: a gold cloak lined with ermine, a gold and velvet horse cover, a gilded saddle and other textiles. In addition, fourteen pieces of porcelain, including eight large piadene, four vernichali and two small basins (scudeloti picoli), as well as ten boxes containing close to eighty vials of aromatic substances were gifted.33 Under King Ferrante, the Mamluks and Aragonese were embroiled in a plot over the control of Cyprus, which resulted in the coup of 1473–4 and eventually led to Ferrante’s illegitimate son living in Cairo for over ten years. When Jacques II (the husband of Queen Caterina Cornaro of Cyprus) died, different factions attempted to take control over Cyprus with the help of foreign powers. Cyprus was inhabited by a diverse group of individuals,

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including Catalans and Spaniards, many of whom were affiliated with the interests of King Ferrante d’Aragona. Others looked to Venice for security, which created tensions between Venice and Naples, who had already long been at each other’s throats ever since the Aragonese had seized power in Naples. Jacques had agreed a union between his daughter Charla and Ferrante’s son, don Alfonso, and it was this agreement that fuelled the attempted coup in November 1473, led by Archbishop Fabregues.34 After killing a number of people at Caterina’s court, the conspirators forced the young daughter of the deceased king to marry don Alfonso ‘promising him many rich Cypriot estates as a dowry’ and ‘made him successor to the realm’.35 The plot did not go according to plan, as the conspirators needed outside support and funds, and King Ferrante was reluctant to give any, after both Venetian and Milanese ambassadors in Naples encouraged him not to interfere. Archbishop Fabregues thus fled in January 1474, albeit with 60,000 ducats worth of jewels and other goods. In 1475, Naples was again embroiled in a plot to oust Caterina, when don Alfonso joined forces with Charlotte Lusignan, Jacques II’s half-sister, and travelled to Cairo to petition the sultan to join their cause. The politics around Cyprus and the various contenders to the throne are complicated, but it does appear that at this point the sultan had now accepted Caterina’s rule or at least was not interested in seeing don Alfonso on the throne. From the scant sources, don Alfonso was arrested or at least taken against his will and kept at the sultan’s court in Cairo for over ten years, until 1487.36 This may have been a political move on the part of the sultan, using Alfonso as a pawn to barter with King Ferrante, but also to scare Cyprus and Venice with the possibility of another coup. While Alfonso was at the Mamluk court, King Ferrante kept close ties with him, even sending him wine, and one wonders what other kinds of material culture and food were exchanged between father and son. The German Felix Fabri, in his travelogue, noted that during his visit to Cairo, Alfonso had been incorporated into the Mamluk court, to the extent that he was dressed in Mamluk clothing.37 Alfonso’s return to Naples is also documented by local chroniclers. On 27 September 1487, Notar Giacomo recorded that Alfonso had returned from Cairo dressed ala moresca.38 The French merchant and chronicler, Philippe Gérard di Vigneulles, remarked that Alfonso was received back in Naples with great fanfare, greeted by the principal barons of the kingdom and trumpets and song. Vigneulles also noted that Alfonso was dressed alla turca and accompanied by several ‘Turkish’ servants, not necessarily a reference to Ottomans, as ‘Turk’ was a nomenclature for Muslim at the time.39 While Alfonso remained in Cairo, there were numerous embassies from both sides, with Neapolitan ambassadors sent to Cairo and vice versa, resulting in the continual exchange of gifts between Sultan Qaitbay and King Ferrante.

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Qaitbay’s ambassador, Ibn-Mahfuz, is frequently recorded at the Neapolitan court, where he received an annual provision from King Ferrante as well as clothing. Battista Bendedei, the Ferrarese ambassador who was also often resident in Naples, noted that Ibn-Mahfuz ‘has stayed here many times, so much so that he is very familiar with the king and duke’.40 A close relationship with the Mamluk sultan was crucial at a point when relations with the Ottomans were extremely contentious, leading to the invasion of Otranto in Puglia in the early 1480s. Trade deals with the Mamluks were also key in Aragonese hopes to counter Venice’s maritime power. In 1479–80, the Count of Sarno, Francesco Coppola, was in charge of giving gifts to the ambassadors of the Mamluk sultan, who were resident in Naples. Francesco Gaetano was also sent to Alexandria in December 1480, laden down with lavish textiles for clothing as gifts for Sultan Qaitbay in his position as consul, in the hope of securing trade deals.41 In 1480, the sultan also sent King Ferrante gifts, including textiles and a giraffe. Giraffes were an exceptional gift, mentioned by Pontano and also highlighted in the stories of the gifts that Lorenzo de’ Medici received. Indeed, representations of Lorenzo’s giraffe proliferated in paintings in Florence, and Ferrante’s giraffe also appeared in a large mural painting of Naples (no longer extant), which was painted on the balcony of his daughter Eleonora d’Aragona in Ferrara.42 Weapons of war were also exchanged, and it was rumoured that Ferrante was seeking a formal alliance with the Mamluks. In 1483, European travellers to Cairo reported on a ship load of military equipment that King Ferrante had sent, which included complete sets of armour composed of helmets, brassards and gloves as well as halberds, axes, swords, daggers, bows, catapults and gunpowder.43 Relations with these states were also experienced by merchants and diplomats who lived abroad in places like Damascus, Cairo, Istanbul and Alexandria.44 There was a Neapolitan fondaco with a changing resident consul in Alexandria recorded throughout the fifteenth century, and notarial documents attest to merchants from Amalfi, Gaeta and Naples living for considerable time in the Levant, demonstrating a prolonged presence of Neapolitan merchants overseas.45 Names of Neapolitans occur throughout ambassadorial records as individuals being sent to the Ottoman and Mamluk courts and who would have brought back material culture and its associated practices with them. For example, Iacopo Pontano, the nephew of Giovanni Pontano, was sent as an ambassador to the Ottoman court in 1489.46 The Count of Sarno, Francesco Coppola, invested in galleys and trade with the Levant, which was coupled with his rise in political power and favour with King Ferrante during the 1470s and 1480s. His profits from the soap, silk and paper industries were intrinsically linked with his trade in raw goods, most of which came from the Levant, on top of his investments in coral fisheries in Tunisia.47 From Alexandria, he imported sought-after spices to be sold at a profit in Europe.

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His favour with Ferrante enabled him to claim a monopoly over the kingdom’s foreign trade, and his wealth was so great that in 1482–3, during the War of Ferrara, he loaned the king twenty galleys, fifteen big round ships and eleven others. King Ferrante’s partiality towards Coppola was soon to change, however, when he was accused of a conspiracy plot and his goods were confiscated. This included thousands of ducati in jewels and silver, agricultural industries and land holdings in Naples and across the kingdom and further afield, including 25,000 ducati in Alexandria, and his expensive textiles were distributed amongst the king’s army. Among the spices in his possession was a significant amount of pepper and cinnamon, and it appears he had stores in Rhodes as well as in Rome, Florence, Genoa and Siena.48 THE OTTOMAN NEAPOLITAN WAR

Naples as a place of divergence and convergence is also evident in the drawnout negotiations with the Ottoman Empire throughout the fifteenth century. This culminated in outright war in July 1480, when Ottoman troops invaded Puglia, on the southern heel of Italy in the Kingdom of Naples. The Aragonese acted quickly. Alfonso d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria and son of King Ferrante of Naples, travelled from Tuscany where he had been commanding troops following the Pazzi War. By the time that Alfonso’s troops arrived, the Ottoman leader, Gedik Ahmed, had captured and occupied the fortress and town of Otranto.49 The Ottoman incursion caused great strain on the resources – both military and monetary – of the Neapolitan court, causing the royal family to pawn much of their library and jewels. The invasion also caused various Italian states and the papacy to loan funds to support the campaign, since such an incursion threatened not only the peace of Italy but also, as it was understood, its religious constitution. The death of Mehmed II in spring 1481 and the increasing strength of Italian troops allowed for the recapturing of Otranto and the reclaiming of Neapolitan lands, sending the Ottoman troops back across the Adriatic. A medal, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of Alfonso d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria by Andrea Guazzalotti (or Guacialotti) from 1481 showcases the duke’s victory over Ottoman troops on the reverse.50 Aragonese victory is clearly stated through the inscriptions and Ottoman troops are easily identified – and thus distinguished from the Italian victors – by their turbans and their hands bound behind their backs, as they process through an arch at Otranto.51 Alfonso follows on a triumphal cart, recalling his grandfather and namesake Alfonso I’s portrayal on the arch at the Castel Nuovo in Naples. These Ottoman troops had little time to rest in prison, however, as they were soon utilised by Alfonso to support Ferrarese troops in the war between Ferrara and Venice. Alfonso’s aid of Ferrara, however, did not reflect a stable or

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straightforward alliance. Ercole d’Este of Ferrara had been sent to Naples during childhood to be educated, acting as a companion to King Ferrante and received many privileges under Alfonso I d’Aragona. Once Ferrante seized power, however, Ercole was slighted by the new king and sided with the Angevins, rising up against Ferrante in the rebellion.52 Following the defeat of the Angevins, Ercole returned to Ferrara where he subsequently became the successor to Borso d’Este. Ercole’s marriage to Eleonora d’Aragona (Ferrante’s daughter) was aimed to repair diplomatic relations with Ferrante, but Ercole did not prove to be a consistently loyal son-in-law, siding with Florence during the Pazzi War and often favouring Milan over Naples (exemplified through the political marriages of his children, Alfonso and Beatrice d’Este with Anna and Ludovico Sforza, respectively). Naples however was to prove an important ally during the Ferrarese war with Venice, when Alfonso arrived with his army of Ottoman troops. The Ferrarese diarists recorded the arrival of Duke Alfonso d’Aragona on 15 January 1483 and on the following day, 2,000 infantry including turchi. Throughout the start of 1483, the presence of Ottoman calvary was of particular interest to the diarists, including in February, when the Ottoman army took siege of two Venetian boats that were coming from the Levant laden with speciarie or spices, gold and silver.53 On 8 March 1483, the Milanese ambassador to Naples, Branda da Castiliono, wrote to Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza to confirm that peace had been achieved between Naples and the Ottoman Empire and that the ‘Grand Turk’ was going to be sending an embassy, which would present ‘silver and other honourable things’ (argente et altre cose honorevole).54 This embassy took place in mid-April 1483 and provides rich documentary evidence on how the objects in these diplomatic exchanges – textiles, metalwork and aromatics – served as material memories of those exchanges and became integrated into local practices or gave rise to new traditions. Dynamic relationships were formed through encounters, but these objects also constituted other associations, beyond initial contact, through translation and metamorphosis. In April 1483, numerous ambassadors recorded the visit of the Ottoman embassy to Naples. The narrative here combines reports from April 1483 from the Milanese ambassador, Branda da Castiliono, writing to Duke Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, and the Ferrarese ambassador, Battista Bendedei, writing to Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara.55 These accounts are particularly useful as few Aragonese court records survive as the Neapolitan archives suffered severe damage in World War II. Both Castiliono and Bendedei noted that various diplomatic and political figures, including all the visiting ambassadors, gathered in the Regia Corte to receive the new ambassador of the Grand Turk, who had come to confirm peace. King Ferrante, the Ottoman ambassador and the rest of the diplomatic party then proceeded in procession from the Castel Nuovo to the house of the Duke of Ascoli, accompanied by

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trumpets and tambourines. The following day they all reassembled in the Sala Grande della Regina in the Castel Nuovo, which was decorated with ‘beautiful gold tapestries’. They moved into another room, which was similarly decorated, where another Ottoman ambassador appeared with a company of around twenty people, who were for the majority, dressed in silk al modo loro (in their style, meaning Turkish or Ottoman dress). They were attended by numerous political and diplomatic figures from the Neapolitan kingdom and across the Italian peninsula. The Ottoman ambassador first kissed the hand of King Ferrante, stating that the Ottoman sultan (Bayezed II) greeted him with a good heart with the intention of always having peaceful relations. The Ottoman ambassador then stated that the sultan’s friends were the king’s friends, and his enemies were the king’s enemies (amici per amici et inimici per inimici), a statement that appears repeatedly throughout the peace negotiations. According to both informants, this was all done through an interpreter who knew Italian well. The Ferrarese ambassador describes the interpreter as of ‘his nation but intelligent in our language’ (sua natione ma intelligente de la lingua n[ost]ra), using vocabulary that does not name specifics, such as Turkish or Italian, but still differentiates between a nationality that is not his own and yet the use of a language that is.56 The reports confirm that the king received the ambassador with great celebration and said that he was very pleased with the ambassador’s visit, stating that he also intended to have ‘good peace with this great ruler’. The Ottoman ambassador then fetched the rest of his company, five of whom presented various gifts from Bayezed II. These included around ten pieces of silver, comprising various bowls and cups; ten pieces of cloth, two of which were gold, and the others silk in various colours alla turchescha; and other textiles (damaschi and zambellotti). In addition, four Ottoman dogs and two ‘beautiful’ horses were also presented. The gifts, it was reiterated, were given, not because the king needed these things, but to show the love and benevolence of Sultan Bayezed II towards King Ferrante, and as a sign of perpetual peace, so that their ‘friends were friends and their enemies, enemies’ (amici per amici et inimici p[er] inimici). While both ambassadors’ reports are similar in the quantity and types of goods, looking more closely at how these objects are described can give us insight into how these objects were received and perceived by the Italian courts. The Ferrarese ambassador describes the metalwork, noting that some of the pieces were in the form of ‘broncini, small in size similar to ones in brass that are particular to them, in form and decoration’ (Broncini picholi de grandeza poco maiori de quelli di ottone comuni a loro p[er] o guisa e forma). Here, there is a clear distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us’; that is the shape and decoration of these vessels clearly belong to a tradition that is articulated as Other. It is the same for the velvet, which is described as ‘in diverse colours, in their style, dalmasco and

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zambeloti’ (cum diversita de colori a loro modo, dalmasco e zambeloti). The term a loro modo means ‘in their way’ or in this case, ‘in their style’, which distinguishes these fabrics as being different, from somewhere else.57 The Milanese ambassador, instead of making these sorts of distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, uses vocabulary that articulates and describes these objects in more detail with a greater sense of knowledge. He describes ‘two bacile with two large bronzini made of silver and six bowls with gold and following this . . . x or xii pieces of gold cloth with some parts decorated with silk alla turchescha, part damaschi and zambellotti’ (due Bacile con duy bronzini grandi dargente et sex taze sop[r]a dorate & seguiroreno . . . x o xii peze de drapi due doro et le altre parte de seta lavorate alla turchescha et parte damaschi e zambelloti).58 It is a reminder that reception of these artefacts would vary depending on the knowledge of the individual viewing them (even the spelling here differs), underlining that interpreting vocabulary in primary sources can be complex and often misleading.59 Descriptions of objects from ‘somewhere else’ highlight mobility itself as a category of value that places emphasis on circulation and exchange. The issue of language, such as alla turchescha, will be discussed further in the next chapter. Such moments of exchange also gave rise to a need to describe the Other, evident in a letter from Marco Trotti, the Milanese ambassador to Naples, describing the physical appearance of the Ottoman ambassador in 1481 who: is a dark man . . .: he wears long clothing alla turchesca of crimson silk with a white covering of silver brocade. His hat is of silk made in the way that the hyesuati wear their hats.60 In Milan this is called the calzeta. The other ambassador is in damascene clothing in the same style as the other ambassador, and on his head he wears a cloth like the moors wear. These are clothes that the real Turks [veri turchi] wear. Their looks are of robust men and very dark. They talk in their language with sentiment and practicality in the matters of war and they are well-informed on Italian things.61

While the heightened peace negotiations only lasted some days and the reports are focussed on the concentrated hours of the visit, the exchanges that took place are recounted, translated and circulated through tales – by word of mouth and letters – that then make their way across Italy and abroad, to their respective state rulers. Ambassadors sent from the Mamluks or the Ottomans, like their Italian counterparts, often stayed for a number of months, usually at the cost of the hosting court and such prolonged stays gave rise to further transcultural exchanges. The experience of the ritualised performance and their extended stay thus becomes memorialised in verbal and textual narratives, but also through the objects of diplomatic exchange. These objects were put on display and shown to visiting dignitaries for years to come, which worked to

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build both the recipient’s and the giver’s reputations. Integrated into the material culture of the local court, such ceramics, aromatics and textiles take on new meanings and functions, and in turn, inspire local production. Material gifts, particularly those described in the Ottoman–Aragonese exchange here, are ones that served a particular moment in time; solidifying peace negotiations. The mutability of such gifts, once they become domesticated into their new court setting, provides a metaphor for the fragile and often short-lived, temporal quality of those peace negotiations. A closer look at how the identities of these objects shift and are remade is essential for a more nuanced understanding of the metamorphoses such gifts undergo.62 Said another way, such objects are never stable, rather as they move from one court culture to another, their meaning, function and associations change, even if they are proffered within a larger global courtly culture. The ‘gift’ as a subject of inquiry has been the focus of recent early modern studies, many of which have incorporated and adapted anthropological concerns around obligation, reciprocity and indebtedness.63 Often given in public, gifts can render visible political alliances or dependencies but just as equally can be signs of betrayal, treachery or shifting alliances. Scholars more recently have also underlined how material and visual approaches can be productive in understanding diplomacy and ambassadorial exchange.64 In diplomatic relations, ties of obligation and reciprocity were constituted by material things. In anthropological terms, the thing itself brings value and prestige to the giver and receiver, thereby enhancing and constituting their identities. The choice of the gifts was also bound up in particular trade deals. In 1467, for example, King Ferrante had sent specific instructions to his ambassador, Bernardo Lopis, who was accompanied by gifts to negotiate Aragonese access to Ottoman silver in exchange for Puglia salt.65 Sadly, the specificity of the gifts from Ferrante are not mentioned, but silver was a key resource and material in commercial negotiations and thus, a suitable and symbolic gift from the Ottomans. It would be anachronistic to suggest that gifts were simply binding forces in premodern societies, however, as it was frequently in moments of intense disorder and mistrust that such objects were often given.66 The immediate value of these objects – porcelain, metalwork, textiles, aromatics – are predicated on the giver and receiver: the Ottoman sultan who needs to show an act of reconciliation with the Neapolitan king, but in doing so, also underlines his access to luxury goods, and through a public gifting ceremony, enhances the Neapolitan king’s reputation. However, the particular value and identity of these objects are as transient as the gifting ceremony. These objects are soon put on display, incorporated into the larger material culture and rituals of the Neapolitan court. Visiting ambassadors and princes were shown such objects, which may sometimes be reported as those that were given from a specific ruler but may

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just as well not be discussed at all in terms of their previous ownership or benefactor. They might instead become transformed into something that serves a novel or slightly altered function or even be materially manipulated by adding mounts or coats of arms (further explored in Chapter 3). The tour of palaces was a form of diplomacy – showcasing the collections to evidence the might and power of the ruler – in hopes that this projected power would be conveyed back to an ambassador’s respective ruler. These activities and their portrayal in epistolary exchanges became a form of cultural activity, which gave rise to an established tradition. DISPLAYING COLLECTIONS AND EKPHRASTIC TOU RS

We know that tours of collections took place in the fifteenth century, as is evidenced from surviving letters and accounts, most famously of the Medici collections, but how do these tours relate to a larger diplomatic culture? These tours were certainly an extension of diplomacy, and their detailed accounts in letters and other humanist texts point to a particular literary and artistic culture around display. As will be argued here, the experience of visiting collections can also be understood to have contributed to the practise of ekphrasis, beyond the pictorial tradition. Unlike other courts, where there are inventories recording the treasures of the ruling family, most of the court records for Aragonese Naples were destroyed in World War II. This has resulted in a reliance on nineteenth-century transcriptions of the archival documents, and increasingly and more fruitfully, ambassador accounts now found in other state archives. By piecing together these fragmented and dispersed documents, we can discern, on the one hand, the reception and exchange of objects as diplomatic gifts, as described above, and on the other hand, the display of those gifts and artefacts at later dates, as they were put on show and shown to subsequent ambassadors. In addition, the survival of inventories belonging to family members of the Aragonese who relocated elsewhere, such as Eleonora d’Aragona, the daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, who moved to Ferrara in 1473, provide insight into the kinds of objects the Aragonese had at their disposal. These objects were dispersed through familial and political ties, also underscoring how Naples became a node in a nexus, receiving objects from across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, which were then distributed within Italy. Numerous objects survive but they have long been detached from their original collections and are thus hard to tie to specific collections and patrons. However, as the chapters that follow show, it is possible to tie them to categories of objects that match textual descriptions and representations in paintings. Letters from visitors to the Castel Nuovo and the Castel Capuano in Naples from the fifteenth century paint an evocative picture of how the Aragonese

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collections were displayed. For the majority of Aragonese rule, the Castel Nuovo was the royal seat of power, where the king lived and where most official state visits took place. The Castel Capuano was the residence of the Duke of Calabria (the heir apparent) and was largely refurbished by Alfonso d’Aragona and his wife Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria. The descriptions summarised by Marin Sanudo (or Marino Sanuto) and a French visitor offer vivid scenes of the Castel Capuano and the concatenation of motifs, objects and materials the visitor would have engaged with.67 In one room ornamented entirely with paintings, possibly frescoes (ornata di depenture), there was an organ, while the next room was decorated with ‘pictures’ (ornata di pitture) and an organ. In another painted room (pur depenta), Sanudo references three long tables displaying various costly wares: the first had crystal of every type, the second was full of highly decorated crystal with gilding and coloured enamel, and the third, a large quantity of porcelain. The French correspondent described these as ‘vases made of crystal, porcelain, alabaster and marble in such huge quantities they must have cost more than ten thousand ducats’.68 The crystal was presumably from Venice; glass production was a Middle Eastern craft until the Venetians learned the technology and Murano became the leader in glass production in the fifteenth century, with the invention of cristallo by Angelo Barovier.69 Glass was highly sought after and was often displayed in tandem with other costly materials such as porcelain (as seen for example in the later displays in Alfonso d’Este’s collections, explored in Chapter 4). The porcelain was very likely authentic Chinese porcelain due to the close diplomatic relations with the Mamluks and Ottomans. While there is slim evidence on how the Aragonese obtained their porcelain, the sheer volume suggested here, and the large quantity recorded in the inventories of Eleonora and don Ferrante d’Aragona in Ferrara (see Chapter 3), indicates the court received these vessels as diplomatic gifts, via the Mamluks and Ottomans, as is recorded for other Italian states. Other rooms of the Castel Capuano are described as decorated with fine tapestries, in addition to two studioli. One studiolo was entirely decorated in intarsia and is presumably the one designed by Giuliano da Maiano for Alfonso, Duke of Calabria.70 In this room, there was a table covered with a damask carpet, on which sat four books bound in silk and decorated with jewels and silver fasteners. Displayed on this table too was a large silver inkwell, two jasper candelabras and a bronze bust of King Ferrante (possibly the same or one similar to the bust now in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples). More rooms were decorated with carpets and tapestries, including a small chapel and a bedroom, which led towards another studiolo. Some of these carpets may have been gifts from the Ottomans, as in 1463 Ferrante is recorded as receiving as many as a hundred carpets from Mehmed II.71 This study was decorated with books and a bronze portrait of Giovanni Pontano. It is likely that these latter rooms and study had belonged

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to Duchess Ippolita Sforza, who had only died in 1488. Pontano was a wellknown humanist and secretary to the king, but he was also the scribe of some of Ippolita’s letters. The portrait of Pontano may have been one of a series of portraits, which had been displayed in her study. Ippolita Sforza wrote to her mother in Milan in January 1466, shortly after her arrival in Naples, detailing her plans for her studiolo:72 I have finished my studiolo for reading and writing and as I have written Your Illustrious Ladyship [Bianca Maria Sforza] previously it would please me to have portraits of the Excellency of His Lordship, my father [Francesco I Sforza] and Your Ladyship and all of my Illustrious brothers and sisters because . . . it would give me continuous consolation and pleasure.73

From Ippolita’s secretary we learn that she had intended to decorate the studiolo with portraits of her husband, Alfonso d’Aragona, the count of Maddaloni, Diomede Carafa and other gentlemen at court. Ippolita Sforza’s marriage to Alfonso d’Aragona was negotiated to solidify a political alliance between Milan and Naples. Ippolita played a crucial role in Italian politics, as she occupied a fraught place as daughter of the Duke of Milan and daughter-in-law of the King of Naples, two individuals who were constantly in uneasy relations. Her imbrication in a crucial moment of diplomacy is evident in her role as Lorenzo de’ Medici’s signatory on the peace treaty of 1480, following the Pazzi Conspiracy.74 Ippolita was also well known for her humanist education and her speeches (including one in 1459 to Pius II during the Diet of Mantua to form a Lega against the Turks). The portrait cycle in her studiolo was a material and visual form of rhetoric, speaking to her political connections across Italy and her diplomatic role. Finally, Sanudo mentions a pharmacy or spezieria of the duke, accessed above the study by a flight of stairs. This is a tantalising suggestion, but we are not given much more detail here. Could this have been the location of surviving albarelli or drug jars sporting portraits and arms of the Aragonese (see Figures 26, 27 and 39, Chapter 5)? The pharmacy’s close proximity to the studiolo also emphasises a close relationship between nature and art, medicine and knowledge, and the value of spices as both precious and rare. It was, as mentioned, the monopoly over the spice trade that many states fought over during this period (the importance of aromatics in the courtly spezieria and their links to knowledge and well-being will be elaborated further in Chapter 5). A letter from a Ferrarese ambassador from 8 May 1494 provides further evidence on the Castel Nuovo, describing the newly fashioned apartments of Alfonso II d’Aragona, soon after he had become king and changed residences from the Castel Capuano.75 The ambassador describes being taken on a route through seven rooms that were covered with lavish velvet tapestries of

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different types and colours, covered with Alfonso’s emblems. The tour of these apartments began with the more private rooms, which served as bedrooms, and culminated in a small studiolo that was decorated alla moresca, containing ‘beautifully’ bound books and a precious chess set.76 It is hard to know what the ‘Moorish’ design or decoration of the studiolo looked like, but it is possible it was decorated in leather, which at this time used ‘arabesque’ motifs as wall coverings made in Spain (and later in the sixteenth century, made in Venice). This may have been similar to work carried out alla moresca by two Spaniards in 1487 for Alfonso’s sister, Eleonora d’Aragona, in Ferrara.77 While few leather wall coverings survive, such work is also found on shields and book bindings, for which there is a better survival.78 Like many other crafts, the designs and motifs found on portable objects imported into Europe were adapted by local craftspeople and were described by contemporaries as damascena or alla moresca, terminology further explored in the next chapter.79 The ambassador was also shown other rooms including the chapel and the sala grande, where he noted the richest tapestries in ‘all of Naples’ from Flanders.80 Sanudo also recorded sixty small and large silver vases on the credenza at Poggioreale, the country retreat and summer residence of Alfonso II d’Aragona.81 He also describes the treasury-cum-studiolo in the Torre di L’Uovo of the Castel Nuovo where the king kept his jewels as well as three organs. It was here too, that there was a grand cabinet with 430 compartments that held medals and cameos, and many works in gold. Nearby, there was a table covered in black velvet where the king could show off his jewels and collars to visiting dignitaries.82 This arrangement suggests an involved form of display, one that required the king to open drawers and empty contents onto the black velvet (the contrast would have shown off their lustre). It is easy to imagine the sorts of conversations and storytelling that this activity would engender. Jewels and gems had specific names and were often known through their associations with previous illustrious owners and gold collars were often given as signs of diplomatic friendship or obligation, some attached to knightly orders.83 It is these activities – taking out objects and putting them on display – which prompted conversations and pointed to the sociable and even performative nature of collecting.84 For example, Poliziano noted that Lorenzo de’ Medici’s gems had been put in armoires opened for viewing when Raffaele Riario visited and during a feast in 1492, coins and medals were displayed in vessels divided by their materials – those in gold were in four basins and those in silver were in a large damascene vessel.85 Such viewing practices drew attention to the framing devices of these objects – velvet bags, compartments in desks, metal mounts, damascene bowls – which in themselves were works of art and part of the performative nature of display, while removing them from these frames required a physical handing, emphasising touch and other senses.

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Such detailed descriptions of rooms and works of art connect these diverse objects across time and space, which in turn compile a form of inventory of the collections for the reader. Similar ekphrastic descriptions of palaces and their interiors appear in other texts of the time, such as Sabadino degli Arienti’s fifteenth-century accounts of the Este palaces in Ferrara and their villas of Belfiore and Belriguardo in De triumphis religionis or the Bentivoglio palace in Bologna in his Hymeneo Bentivoglio.86 Here, descriptions of furniture and textiles adorning rooms are accompanied by fantastic descriptions of theatrical displays at the dining table. On some occasions, we also find such detailed accounts by ruling family members when they partook in marriage processions or other festivities and wrote home about them.87 The necessity to describe specific objects and spaces by ambassadors as a means to report on the collections of one ruler to another ruler contributed to a culture of telling stories and recounting works of art. It should be remembered that Renaissance ambassadors wore many hats: at home they often occupied important court offices serving as secretaries, humanists and guardarobieri, or often performed all these roles at once. Baldassare Castiglione is a well-known later example of someone who achieved the combined roles of diplomat, author and courtier. In addition, ambassadors could be collectors in their own right, gaining reputation and status through their acquisition and knowledge of goods. Detailed descriptions of works of art also appear in inventories and account books, where the compiler was required to describe a work so as to distinguish it from other works and provide details for evaluation. Such descriptive requirements also gave rise to a culture that placed emphasis on the ability to articulate in words the visual properties of objects, from iconographic details on a gem to the number of pearls embedded on a saltcellar’s rim. Indeed, in the fifteenth century, more attention was often paid to the details of material culture than the iconography of paintings. This need to describe details also underscored the inability or difficulty of a complier to find the words to describe new objects and motifs not previously encountered, as explored in Chapter 2. Inventories can also indicate how stories about the provenance of an item might have been recalled in order to write a precise entry, particularly in relation to provenance, as this could often add value to an item. For example, Cardinal Pietro Barbo’s inventory references objects as being attached to memories of specific events or to particular people, such as an entry that describes a sapphire ring that had been used by Pius II at his coronation in 1458 or an ancient bronze sculpture of a seated laughing boy with a dog that had belonged to Stefano Porcari.88 As gifts, works of art became the material means of diplomatic negotiating. In some instances, representational works of art could act as ‘mute diplomats’ to use Anthony Colantuono’s words, whereby paintings or objects could be persuasive and serve rhetorical purposes within diplomacy.89 As Colantuono’s study has shown, some paintings might even have been seen as a way to

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introduce a particular diplomatic discussion, where the ambassador might have aided the viewer in interpreting complex subject matter or symbolism.90 In certain cases, the imagery might have had a particular political message, which needed careful deciphering. In this sense, the painting prompted a formal analysis, bordering on ekphrasis, which initiated a political discussion. Rather than stimulating a paragone debate (although it could), the picture in question worked with language to provide a more nuanced outcome, which neither words nor pictures could do by themselves. Narratives were also connected to the relationship between rhetoric and art production, between artistry and history, and between historia and ekphrasis, prevalent in humanist and artistic circles and the culture around the studiolo, and emerging at a particularly important moment in the development of the history of art. These stories within modern interpretations are often examined as a means to determining provenance or simply seen as ‘tales’, rather than a source of interest in themselves. Paying attention to these stories and an emerging document culture – ambassadorial letters, inventories, diaries and account books – shows the important role they played in the development of ekphrasis as a genre. Material culture was instrumental in the production of this culture of describing, yet Vasari with his emphasis on narrative paintings has obscured this larger tradition of ekphrasis.91 In his well-known Imagines, Philostratos the Elder employs ekphrasis in the description of paintings that he had seen in a gallery in Naples. It has been suggested that the gallery is a fiction, assembled from a common repertoire of known texts and images for his audience, but the ekphrasis in this case is used to recount a chain of events.92 In the Byzantine tradition of educating boys, ekphrasis was linked to the notion of ‘leading someone around’ and therefore, was connected to a form of tour. This tradition of recounting spaces and works of art was also part of viewing practices that emerged within the collecting culture of the studiolo. Decipherment, for Leonard Barkan, was an essential hermeneutical tool for reading visual imagery in the Italian Renaissance and was closely associated with decoding narrative.93 Studioli such as those at Urbino, Gubbio, Ferrara and Mantua, and the works made for such spaces, depended on the viewer’s ability to decipher complex narrative to arrive at meaning. In the case of the Gubbio studiolo, as Robert Kirkbride has argued, the study was specifically designed as a thinking space for the education of Guidobaldo Montefeltro, which used mnemotechniques and a density of texts and images to provide a ‘“Rhetoricus” with not one but endless routes for narrative composition’.94 This exercise is both a physical and a mental one – the engagement with objects and paintings/images within a space and the mental routes those objects and images elicit. The recounting of those spaces and the description of the things seen became a rhetorical exercise through ekphrasis.

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A recounting of a chain of events or a series of spaces can be linked back to historia – an important humanist trope for narrative painting. However, it also opens up avenues to understand the numerous narratives we find in letters of the time, and often in ambassadorial reports, where the writer provides us with minute details of a processional route, a description of a palace or the display of collectibles. Narrative and historia are often connected to the mythic paintings associated with the studioli of Isabella d’Este in Mantua and her brother, Alfonso d’Este, in Ferrara (explored in Chapter 4). Ekphrasis in the Byzantine tradition had close ties to the notion of narrative evoked in terms of the historia, as it was part of the education of boys in their study of rhetoric.95 In this tradition, ekphrasis was defined as ‘a descriptive speech bringing the thing shown vividly before the eyes’. Thus, ekphrasis was a visual passage, which would describe a subject so vividly that it would turn ‘listeners into spectators’, thus evoking multiple senses.96 Quintillian argued that it is through such descriptions ‘that images of absent things are represented to the mind in such a way that we seem to see them with our eyes and to be in their presence’.97 In a time before the widespread use of mechanical reproduction of images or objects, descriptions played an important role in knowledge circulation. Quintillian also pinpoints an essential component of ekphrasis in relation to object collections, which allows the reader to ‘be in their presence’. For example, the particular material qualities of porcelain – the smooth cool touch when held or the iridescent colour when brought to the light – created a particular ‘aesthetic phenomenology’ to use Bissera Pentcheva’s words.98 This multisensorial experience, when viewed with the lighting conditions in a particular space, and in tandem with other objects made out of a variety of materials, created a particular experience that might be part of the ekphrastic tour of a palace. Such objects might have also been configured into a narrative, activated when viewed with other objects and representational works of art – frescoes, tapestries or paintings. As argued in the following chapters, these narratives might not have been as singular or prescriptive as we tend to think, rather these ‘object-spaces’ moved beyond simply the domain of the pictorial and into the phenomenal.99 CONCLUSION

Proffered as diplomatic negotiators in semi-public ritualised events, objects of exchange became integrated into collecting programmes and practices. Shown off to visiting dignitaries, the objects featured as part of narratives that bolstered the ruling family’s reputation – how the Aragonese negotiated with the Ottoman sultan during the war of Otranto, for example. Such gifts on display could also work to define a state’s identity as a key player on a global stage. However, such objects and materials did not often sit neatly on a shelf by

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themselves. Rather, they were often framed with other objects, placed in mounts, customised bags or were integrated into painting programmes as local artists represented such objects as part of new ways to conceive and understand these novel artefacts. The chapters that follow articulate just how these objects of trade and diplomacy became incorporated into Renaissance Italian court culture – from the language used to describe these objects in inventories and the motifs that became entangled with local visual cultures to the framing devices of collecting spaces and the aromatics that scented the air, giving rise to new practices and approaches to the visual, material and olfactic worlds. NOTES 1

2 3

4

5

All translations are my own unless stated. Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1999), 213. For a discussion on Pontano and the decorative arts, see Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Public Magnificence and Private Display. Giovanni Pontano’s De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts’, Journal of Design History 15, no. 4 (2002): 211–21. For an overview of Pontano, see Jerry H. Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 127–34; Matteo Soranzo, Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014). The manuscript is now in the Morgan Library, MS M.801. Riccardo Filangieri, ed., Una cronaca napoletana figurata del Quattrocento (Naples: L’arte Tipografica, 1956). The literature is vast; I provide only a select bibliography here and in particular, studies that focus on the Mamluks and their external relations: Deborah Howard, ‘Venice and the Mamluks’, in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), 72–89; Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate. Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2014); Linda Komaroff, ed., Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts (Los Angeles and New Haven: Los Angeles County Museum and Yale University Press, 2011). Deborah Howard and Francesco Bianchi, ‘Life and Death in Damascus: The Material Culture of Venetians in the Syrian Capital in the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, Studi Veneziani XLVI (2003): 233–300; Eric R. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). The literature is vast, and what are provided here are largely those studies that concentrate on the Ottoman world and its interactions across the Mediterranean: Virginia H. Aksan and Daniel Goffman, eds., The Early Modern Ottomans. Remapping the Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Robert Born et al., eds., The Sultan’s World: The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art (Brussels: Bozar Books and Hatje Cantz, 2015); Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994); Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650. The Structure of Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Metin Kunt and Christine Woodhead, eds., Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age. The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London and New York: Longman, 1995); Gülru Necipo˘glu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York and Cambridge: Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press, 1991); Anna Contadini and Claire Norton, eds., The Renaissance and the Ottoman World (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013); Born et al., The Sultan’s World:

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6 7 8 9

10

11

12 13 14 15 16 17

The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art; Arkadiusz Christoph Blaszczyk, Robert Born and Florian Riedler, eds., Transottoman Matters. Objects Moving through Time, Space, and Meaning (Göttingen: V&R UniPress, 2021). Camillo Minieri Riccio, ‘Alcuni fatti di Alfonso I di Aragona dal 15 aprile 1437 al 31 maggio 1458’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane VI (1881), 16, 19. Archivio di Stato di Milano Sforzesco Potenza Estere (hereafter ASMi SPE), 238. Judith Hook, Lorenzo de’ Medici: An Historical Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), 34. Archivio di Stato di Modena (hereafter ASMo), Carteggio Principi Esteri (hereafter CPE), 1245/1: ‘presente de alcunj vasellj de argento, et de brochati et sete et ance de alcunj canj da parte de rpo’ Ambassiatore: ne dede le lre’ del Gran S.re et ne saluto et conforto multo amirabilimente da parte de quello congratulandose dela nra bona dispositione et offerendone bone et grata amicitia con continuatione de pratica et de bona pace: con parole piacevole et multo accomodate. Li fo p/ noi condecenteme/te resposto:et satisfacto ad tucte le parte toccate: arranzando et honorando ipo’ ambassiatore, secundo me parse in essa audientia conveniente. Recerco infine che de poi haverria ad parlar’ con noi piu domesticamente: offersemoli ch/ adonne sua requisitione et tucte fiate ch/ la satisfatesse lo intenderiamo de bona et gratia volunta’. Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Indici degli artefici delle arti maggiori e minori. Dalla Lettera H alla Lettera Z, vol. 6 (Naples: Tipografia dell’Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1891), 265. Such exchanges were also common within Islamic diplomacy but were often more extravagant. For example, the Safavid Shah Ismail’s gifts to Qansuh al-Ghawri in Cairo in the early sixteenth century, in an attempt to bring the Mamluks into an anti-Ottoman coalition, included seven cheetahs with silk jackets, horses and horse-trappings, fine arms and armour, gold cups and silver basins and ewers, gold brocades and satins, Turkish prayer rugs and runners, fine cottons and velvet robes. Michael J. Rogers, ‘“The Gorgeous East”: Trade and Tribute in the Islamic Empires’, in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. Jay A. Levenson (Washington, New Haven and London: National Gallery of Art and Yale University Press, 1991), 70. Patrizia Meli, ‘Il mondo musulmano e gli ebrei nelle corrispondenze fiorentine da Napoli’, in Poteri, relazioni, guerra nel regno di Ferrante D’Aragona. Studi sulle corrispondenze diplomatiche, eds. Francesco Senatore and Francesco Storti (Naples: Clio Press, Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 2011), 318–20. For Tunisia as a pivotal point for goods in terms of mercantile networks, see Emanuele Lugli, ‘Linking the Mediterranean: The Construction of Trading Networks in 14th and 15th-Century Italy’, in The Globalization of Renaissance art: A Critical Review, ed. Daniel Savoy (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 174–5. For Alfonso I’s policy and attempted expansion, see Alan Ryder, The Kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous: The Making of a Modern State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); Atanasio Mozzilo and Giuseppe Galasso, eds., Storia di Napoli. Napoli Aragonese, vol. IV tomo I (Torino e Firenze: Arti Grafiche, 1974); Ernesto Pontieri, ‘Dinastia, regno e capitale nel Mezzogiorno aragonese’, in Storia di Napoli. Napoli Aragonese vol. IV tomo I, eds. Atanasio Mozzilo and Giuseppe Galasso (Torino e Firenze: Arti Grafiche, 1974), 127–9. Minieri Riccio, ‘Fatti di Alfonso ASPN VI’, 234–5. Filangieri, Documenti, 6, 265; Nicola Barone, ‘Le Cedole di Tesoreria dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli dal 1460 al 1504’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 9 (1884): 238. P. Ghinzoni, ‘Un ambasciatore del Soldano d’Egitto alla corte milanese nel 1476’, Archivio storico lombardo II (1875): 165. Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 25. Ibid., 22. Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 23.

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18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39

40 41 42

43 44

45 46 47 48

Patrizia Meli, ‘Firenze di fronte al mondo islamico. Documenti su due ambasciate (1487–1489)’, Annali di Storia di Firenze IV (2009): 244. Quoted in Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 78. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), MAP 39, 504. See also the discussion in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, doc. 87. Meli, ‘Firenze e mondo islamico’, 253. Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 59–60, 74–84. Paul M. Dover, ‘Royal Diplomacy in Renaissance Italy: Ferrante d’Aragona (1458–1494) and His Ambassadors’, Mediterranean Studies 14 (2005): 57–94. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 78. John Carswell, ‘“The Feast of the Gods”: The Porcelain Trade between China, Istanbul and Venice’, Asian Affairs 24, no. 2 (1993): 180–5. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 23. Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1978), 194. Ibid., 195. John Wansborough, ‘A Mamluk Letter of 877/1473’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24 (1961): 200–13. Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 196. Holly S. Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 94–6. See also Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 195. Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice, 95, 273, fn. 159. Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 106. Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice, 61. Quoted in ibid., 62. Ibid., 82–3; Francesco Forcellini, ‘Strane peripezie d’un bastardo di Casa d’Aragona’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane XXXIX (1914): 459–61; John D. Moores, ‘Diomede Carafa and His Unpublished Correspondence’, PhD Thesis (University College London, 1967) 248–9. Forcellini, ‘Strane peripezie’, 270. On Italians wearing local clothing abroad, see Deborah Howard, Venice and the East. The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100– 1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 38. Notar Giacomo, Cronica di Napoli, ed. Paolo Garzilli (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1845), 165. Alfred de Reumont, ‘Ricordi di Philippe Gérard de Vigneulles, intorno al soggiorno da lui fatto nel regno di Napoli al tempo di Ferrante I d’Aragona’, Archivio storico italiano 9 (1853): 10. See also Forcellini, ‘Strane peripezie’, 459–61. Meli, ‘Firenze e mondo islamico’, 245. Forcellini, ‘Strane peripezie’, 180–1. ASMo M&F 20. 155V. Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este, 1471–1505, and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 113–14 and 416 doc. 21; Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.I (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1995), 340. Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 106; Forcellini, ‘Strane peripezie’, 180–1. Howard, Venice and the East, especially 43–64; Irma Schiappoli, Napoli Aragonese: traffici e attivita marinare (Naples: Giannini Editore, 1972), 65; Eliyahu Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). Ashtor, Levant Trade, 503. Meli, ‘Il mondo musulmano’, 291–350. Schiappoli, Napoli Aragonese, Part II; Ashtor, Levant Trade, 501–3. Schiappoli, Napoli Aragonese, 243–9.

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58

59

60 61 62 63

Imber, Ottoman Empire, 36. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Anne D. Thomson, 1923, 23.280.23: www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/195051 NEAPOLIS VICTRIX/OBITALIAMACFI/DEMRESTITVTAM/MCCCLXXI/ OPVSAND•G•PRATENS Werner Gundersheimer, Ferrara: The Style of a Renaissance Despotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 176–7; Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 9–11. Giuseppe Pardi, ‘Diario ferrarese dell’anno 1409 sino al 1502 di autori incerti’, Rerum italicarum scriptores 24.7, no. vi (1928): 107–9. ASMi SPE 241. Letters from March and April 1483 can be found in ASMi SPE 241 and ASMo, AMB NAP 4. ‘Lo interpetre pure de sua natione ma intelligente de la lingua nra’, ASMo AMB NAP 4 201, letter from 17 April 1483 from Battista Bendedei to Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. ‘li presento i’ mano de cinque de li soi circa x pezi de argento. Alcuni in modo de Broncini picholi de grandeza poco maiori de quelli di ottone comuni a loro p/ o guisa e forma: & alcune pichole e taze: dende da circa x peze due drapo doro de veluto cum diversita de colori a loro modo, dalmasco e zambeloti’, ASMo AMB NAP 4 201–3, letter from 17 April 1483 from Battista Bendedei to Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. ‘prima due Bacile con duy bronzini grandi dargente et sex taze sop’a dorate & seguiroreno ex ordine x o xii peze de drapi due doro et le altre parte de seta lavorate alla turchescha et parte damaschi e zambelloti et apreso segnitoreno iiii cani et duy belli cavalli, leardi’, ASMi SPE 241 39. For the problems of language, see Chapter 2, as well as Elizabeth Rodini, ‘Mobile Things: On the Origins and the Meanings of Levantine Objects in Early Modern Venice’, Art History 41, no. 2 (2018): 246–65; Leah R. Clark, ‘The Peregrinations of Porcelain: The Collections of Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona of Ferrara’, Journal of the History of Collections 32, no. 2 (2020): 275–88. Also translated into Chinese for a special issue on the spatial turn, Leah R. Clark, ‘瓷器的旅程：费拉拉公爵夫人的收藏品.艺术理论与艺术史学刊’, Journal of Art Theory & Art History 55 (2020). For examples in the Chinese context see Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004). For an emphasis on understanding what constituted ‘object knowledge’ see Clark, Collecting Art, 11–15. Gesuati/Jesuates, meaning a religious order, not the Society of Jesuits, which was not founded until 1540. ASMi SPE 235, 18 October 1481. For the metamorphosis of objects as transcultural gifts at the Mughal court see Jessica Keating, ‘Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court’, Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 732–47. The literature is vast and expanding, but key texts include Anthony Cutler, ‘Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 247–78; Anthony Cutler, ‘Significant Gifts: Patterns of Exchange in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Early Islamic Diplomacy’, Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 79–101; Valentin Groebner, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts. Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000); Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift. Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003); Cecily J. Hilsdale, Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Giorgio Riello, Anne Gerritsen and Zoltán Biedermann, eds., Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

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64 Nancy Um and Leah R. Clark, ‘Special Issue: The Art of Embassy: Situating Objects and Images in the Early Modern Diplomatic Encounter’, Journal of Early Modern History 20.1 (2016). 65 Francesco Trinchera, Codice Aragonese o sia Lettere Regie, Ordinamenti ed Altri Atti Governativi de’ Sovrani Aragonesi in Napoli. Riguardanti l’amministrazione interna del reame e le relazioni all’estero, vol. I (Naples: Stabilmento Tipografica di Giuseppe Galanco, 1866), 98. 66 Patrick J. Geary, ‘Gift Exchange and Social Science Modeling’, in Negotiating the Gift. PreModern Figurations of Exchange, eds. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003), 129–40; Beate Wagner-Hasel, ‘Egoistic Exchange and Altruistic Gift. On the Roots of Marcel Mauss’s Theory of the Gift’, in Negotiating the Gift. Pre-Modern Figurations of Exchange, eds. Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003), 141–71. See also discussion in Clark, Collecting Art, chapter 1. 67 The sources are compiled as an appendix in Bianca de Divitiis, ‘Castel Nuovo and Castel Capuano in Naples: The Transformation of Two Medieval Castles into “all’antica” Residences for the Aragonese Royals’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 76, no. 4 (2013): 441–74. 68 Ibid., 469. 69 Rosa Barovier Mentasti and Stefano Carboni, ‘Enameled Glass between the Eastern Mediterranean and Venice’, in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), 259; Maria Vittoria Fontana, ‘Islamic Influence on the Production of Ceramics in Venice and Padua’, in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), 280–93; Catherine Hess, ed., The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004). 70 Giuliano da Maiano was paid for work on an oratory, a study, a chapel, as well as a room ‘above the terrace’, see Giuseppe Ceci, ‘Nuovi documenti su Giuliano da Maiano ed altri artisti’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane xxix (1904): 790. 71 Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 171. 72 For a discussion of her studiolo and letters, see Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Between Milan and Naples: Ippolita Maria Sforza, Duchess of Calabria’, in The French Descent into Renaissance Italy 1494–95: Antecedents and Effects, ed. David Abulafia (Hampshire and Vermont: Variorum Ashgate Publishing Company, 1995), 123–36. For two recent publications, see Diana Maury Robin and Lynn Lara Westwater, eds., Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations (Toronto and Tempe: Iter Press and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017); Jeryldene M. Wood, Ippolita Maria Sforza: The Renaissance Princess Who Linked Milan and Naples (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2020). For her collecting see Judith Bryce, ‘“Fa finire uno bello studio et dice volere studiare”. Ippolita Sforza and Her Books’, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance LXIV, no. 1 (2002): 55–69; Leah R. Clark, ‘Collecting, Exchange, and Sociability in the Renaissance Studiolo’, Journal of the History of Collections 25, no. 2 (2013): 7. 73 ASMi SPE 215, letter 101, 6 January 1466, Ippolita Maria Sforza to Bianca Maria. Quoted and translated in Welch, ‘Between Milan’, 127. See also Robin and Westwater, Duchess and Hostage, 82–3, Letter 24; Tommaro de Marinis, La biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona, vol. 1 (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli Editore, 1952), 109; Emilio Motta, Nozze principesche del Quattrocento: Corredi, inventari, e descrizione (Milan: Tipografia Fratelli Rivara, 1894), 68. 74 For a reproduction of the agreement, see, ‘Procura di Lorenzo de’ Medici per Ippolita Maria d’Aragona Duchessa di Calabria e Niccolò Michelozzi’ in Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere, ed. R. Fubini, vol. 1 (Florence: Giunti, 1977), 373–6, Appendix VII. For Ippolita’s role and her negotiation of it at court, see Clark, Collecting Art, 96–9; Wood, Ippolita Sforza. 75 de Divitiis, ‘Castel Nuovo and Capuano’, 460, Appendix 2.

DIPLOMATIC ENTANGLEMENTS

76 77 78

79

80

81

82 83

84 85 86

87

88 89

90 91

Ibid., Appendix 2, 472–3. Original in ASMo CR 85, 8 May 1494. ASMo AP 633 139V. Ernst J. Grube, ‘Venetian Lacquer and Bookbindings of the 16th Century’, in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), 231–43; Anna Contadini, ‘“Cuoridoro”: tecnica e decorazione di cuoi dorati veneziani e italiani con influssi islamici’, in Arte veneziana e arte islamica: atti del Primo simposio internazionale sull’arte veneziana e l’arte islamica, eds. Stefano Carboni and Giovanni Curatola (Venice: Edizioni l’Altra Riva, 1989), 231–41. Extant bookbindings from the Aragonese collections suggest what the walls may have looked like in the studiolo, such as the cover of Johannes Duns Scotus made for King Ferrante, now in the Bibliothèque National de France (BNF, F. 1–248). Eleonora d’Aragona’s books were also described as covered in decorations alla domascina, ASMo G114 136V. Anna Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament in the Style World of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 290–308; Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400–1600 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991), 85–6. Andreas Beyer, ‘Princes, Patrons and Eclecticism. Naples and the North’, in The Age of Van Eyck. The Mediterranean World and Early Netherlandish Painting, 1430–1530, ed. Till-Holger Borchert (New York and London: Thames and Hudson, 2002), 119–27; Paula Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400–1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 2–3. Marino Sanuto, La Spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (Estratto dall’Archivio Veneto, Serie I) (Venice: Tipografia del Commercio di Marco Visentini, 1883), 240. Ibid., 240. See also de Divitiis, ‘Castel Nuovo and Capuano’, 474. Leah R. Clark, ‘Transient Possessions: Circulation, Replication, and Transmission of Gems and Jewels in Quattrocento Italy’, Journal of Early Modern History 15, no. 3 (2011); Leah R. Clark, ‘Dispersal, Exchange and the Culture of Things in Fifteenth-Century Italy’, in The Agency of Things in Medieval and Early Modern Art: Materials, Power and Manipulation, eds. Grażyna Jurkowlaniec, Ika Matyjaszkiewicz and Zuzanna Sarnecka (London: Routledge, 2017). For gold collars see Clark, Collecting Art, 193–8. Clark, ‘Collecting and Sociability’, 171–84; Clark, Collecting Art, 1–11. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 194. Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d’Este: The ‘De triumphus religionis’ of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, ed. Werner L. Gundersheimer (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972); Carolyn James, ‘The Palazzo Bentivoglio in 1487’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 41, no. 1/2 (1997): 188–96. See, for example, detailed descriptions of Eleonora d’Aragona’s wedding procession and the festivities in Rome, Meg Licht, ‘Elysium: A Prelude to Renaissance Theater’, Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 1 (1996): 1–29. Xavier F. Salomon, ‘Cardinal Pietro Barbo’s Collection and Its Inventory Reconsidered’, Journal of the History of Collections 15, no. 1 (2003): 9–10. Anthony Colantuono, ‘The Mute Diplomat: Theorizing the Role of Images in Seventeenth-Century Political Negotiations’, in The Diplomacy of Art. Artistic Creation and Politics in Seicento Italy (Milan: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 2000), 51–76. Ibid., 67. Svetlana Alpers, ‘Ekphrasis and Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari’s Lives’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23, no. 3/4 (1960): 190–215. Narratives and storytelling are also often related to antique sculpture, see Leonard Barkan, ‘The Beholder’s Tale: Ancient Sculpture, Renaissance Narratives’, Representations 44 (1993); Leonard Barkan, Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 133–66.

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92

93 94 95

96 97 98 99

Liz James and Ruth Webb, ‘“To Understand Ultimate Things and Enter Secret Places”: Ekphrasis and Art in Byzantium’, Art History 14, no. 1 (1991): 7. Lehmann-Hartleben argued that this was indeed a real gallery, Karl Lehmann-Hartleben, ‘The Imagines of the Elder Philostratus’, The Art Bulletin 23, no. 1 (1941): 16–44. Barkan, ‘Beholder’s Tale’, 136. Robert Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory. The Renaissance Studioli of Federico de Montefeltro (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), chapter 2, section 2.3, 35. James and Webb, ‘Ekphrasis in Byzantium’, 1–17; Simon Goldhill, ‘What Is Ekphrasis For?’, Classical Philology 102, no. 1 (2007): 3–4; Robert S. Nelson, Visuality before and beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143–68. James and Webb, ‘Ekphrasis in Byzantium’, 6; Alpers, ‘Ekphrasis in Vasari’s Lives’, 198. Quoted in Goldhill, ‘What Is Ekphrasis For?’, 4. Bissera V. Pentcheva, ‘Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics’, Gesta 50, no. 2 (2011): 93. Ibid., 93.

CHAPTER TWO

MOBILE THINGS/MOBILE MOTIFS Ornament, Language and Haptic Space

INTRO DUCTION

‘Arabesques’ (rabesche) confront trofei on a plate carefully drawn in the treatise on ceramics by Cipriano Piccolpasso, from 1556 to 1559 (Figure 5).1 On the left hand side, undulating lines form antique cuirasses and shields in a jumbled picture plane, while on the right, the motifs stand out more starkly, occupying contrasting areas, drawing attention to the spaces in-between; here, the body of the ceramic is given equal weight to the motifs that occupy it. By the sixteenth century, the term referring to the foliate pattern often associated with Islamic ornament was discussed and illustrated in the famous potter’s treatise by Piccolpasso. Piccolpasso provided interlacing patterns defined as rabesche or arabesques, which could easily be copied and employed in blue to give the effect of ceramics imported from the Middle East. Piccolpasso also employed the term porcelana to specify the ornamental designs often found on the rims of Ming blue and white vessels, incorporating scrolling foliage married with floral decoration such as peonies or small rosettes (see Figure 14). Piccolpasso’s treatise presents a sixteenth-century need to circulate knowledge of terms and the beginnings of a classification system for ornament, but in the absence of a clearly articulated taxonomic system, scholars are often left puzzled over terminology found in primary sources. This chapter is attentive to the words used to describe motifs and objects found in inventories and letters of the time. It comes from a desire to 59

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fig 5 Cipriano Piccolpasso, trofei and rabesche, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557. © Victoria & Albert Museum: MSL/1861/7446, f. 66R.

understand descriptions such as alla turchesca, which raise questions for modern scholars who work with inventories: does alla mean in the style of, thus not ‘authentically’ Turkish/Ottoman? Does turchesca refer to a geographic origin or a motif or style or ornamentation found on the object? Having long considered these questions, it was apparent that the issue of ornament and ornamentation was also key to looking at these objects of material culture – both as works that bear ornament and as ones that have also been characterised as ‘ornamental’. The chapter therefore begins by looking at the historiographic

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tradition of ornament, which had its roots in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury writing and thus, often served Western, Eurocentric and colonialist agendas. The start of this chapter underscores the necessity to disentangle ornament from an essentialist reading that, when studied in relation to Islamic art, is often characterised as either meaningless or an unchanging expression of Islam. It also examines how ornament as belonging to the ‘decorative arts’ has sidestepped the central role ‘ornamental objects’ played in Renaissance thought, from humanist texts to the spaces of collections. Renaissance contemporaries often tried to put into words the motifs and styles found on objects and our modern need for geographic specificity has often obscured the emphasis on mobility and exchange. Rather than using terms such as ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’, this chapter is particularly attentive to the specificity of objects that might have come from ‘somewhere else’ and how contemporaries described them. The difficulty for modern scholars to find clear geographic sites of manufacture for certain categories of objects such as metalwork is indebted to the very fact that motifs and techniques were mobile, and as objects travelled, they gave rise to translations and transmutations. Turning from words for things, I also examine words as things, and how pseudoscript could be made meaningful even if it did not have any semantic meaning – that is, when it was not actually legible as script. Finally, I also propose here that a consideration of motifs and ornament in three-dimensional terms offers a new way to interpret the reception of these objects. The migration of motifs, rather than simply two-dimensional patterns that were copied, was indeed engaged with in more haptic ways. Many of these objects did not stand alone but were gifted with other objects and then placed in collections, where the panoply of motifs and shapes interacted with one another, giving rise to particular multisensorial experiences as well as creative responses. While this chapter provides an overview of how these motifs moved across cultures and media, with attention to some of the theoretical contributions that are particularly important when considering these processes, closer readings of these types of objects and their cultural and social contexts will be explored in the case studies in the chapters that follow.

Ornament/Frame/Parergon Piccolpasso’s visual articulation of arabesques prefigured the taxonomic categorisation of ornament, and in particular, the ‘arabesque’ in nineteenthand early twentieth-century art historical writings. In the modern period, attention to ornament grew out of interests in industrial production and design, and later modernism, while the focus on the arabesque came out of orientalist writings on ‘Islamic’ monuments and European universalising

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encyclopaedic approaches.2 The literature on ornament is substantial and its definitions vast and varied; the focus here is to situate ornament in the context of the objects studied in this book and their reception. However, a look at the historiography is important to try to disentangle ‘ornament’ in the fifteenth century from its categorisations in modern scholarship. What later approaches share is an essentialising of ornament in general and the arabesque in particular. One nineteenth-century travelogue noted ‘the works of the various races under the sway of the law of Muhammad’ were ‘varied modes of the same art, since all the principles that inspire these races are derived from the same source’ including their ‘capricious ornaments known as arabesques’.3 More famously, Owen Jones’ The Grammar of Ornament written shortly after the Great International Exhibition of 1851 in London, classified ornament according to ethnoracial categories such as Turkish, Persian and Moresque, which Gülru Necipo˘glu notes ‘distorted the multi-ethnic culture of most premodern Islamic dynasties, whose rule had unified several geographic regions with mixed populations and religious minorities’.4 In a wellknown lecture by Adolf Loos from 1910 on ‘Ornament and Crime’, ornament is a threat of an unorderly Other or a regression into childhood, primitivism and even criminality: What is natural to the Papuan and the child is a symptom of degeneracy in the modern adult . . . the evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects . . .. No ornament can any longer be made today by anyone who lives on our cultural level.5

Another consequence of Eurocentric approaches to the history of ornament was the telling of a teleological story that roots ornament, like the arabesque, in a classical tradition. Jones traced the geometric and vegetal arabesque to the Greco-Roman tradition while Alois Riegl’s Stilfragen (1893) also understood the arabesque as a ‘genetic mutation’ of the classical palmette-and-tendril motif.6 Similar stories have also been told about Chinese ornament, such as the leaf scrolls appearing on porcelain having their genesis in acanthus motifs found in Hellenistic architectural decoration.7 In this vein, ornament is associated with a Eurocentric tradition that spread around the world. Ernst Gombrich for example, proposed that ‘designers will rather modify an existing motif than invent one from scratch’.8 While this provides an argument against ‘artistic genius’ working in a vacuum, it also opens up the possibility of emphasising a teleological story of ornament, and in particular, one that favours a Greco-Roman origin. This is a sort of occidentalising Orientalism that suggests all artistic roads came from as well as lead to Rome, or in other words, a domesticating of the origins of the ‘exotic’. It is therefore important to stress the complex strands of borrowing and mutation of designs and motifs, to avoid an emphasis on one ‘pure’ origin.9

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The tendency of encyclopaedic entries to characterise the ornament of Islamic design as static, also worked in opposition to the great succession of styles that marked European artistic culture, thus underscoring ‘Islamic ornament’ as an essential stable Other.10 The emphasis on Islamic art as ‘decorative’ was also seen as inferior to the mimetic artistic vocabulary of European models and this was often emphasised as being void of meaning.11 Viollet-le-Duc perceived Islamic art as a sort of sideline ornament: ‘in the Arabic monument, geometry supplied the vestment; in the western mediaeval structure, it gave the body’.12 This essentialising of ‘Islamic’ ornament resurfaced in the literature that appeared around the World of Islam festival in 1976 but now this universalising approach of the arabesque is no longer serving only an orientalist agenda but also a fundamentalist and nationalist one.13 It is this ahistorical treatment that Necipo˘glu finds particularly problematic, in that it creates the idea of an ‘Islamic culture’ that is monolithic and ‘characterized by [a] timeless continuum between the seventh and twentieth centuries’.14 A focus on geometry and abstract patterns, could for scholars such as Oleg Grabar enable a consideration of the sensorial conditions of Islamic visual culture, but this was often at the risk of perpetuating the ‘decorative versus iconographic’ dichotomy.15 It is this dichotomy that underlines the Othering of the arabesque, because it is often seen as meaningless in contrast to the mimetic representational qualities of ‘Western’ art. Sensorial, phenomenological and theoretical approaches to ornament, while crucial for moving away from teleology, at times place undue weight on the lack of representation in favour of embodied responses that are ‘void’ of meaning.16 These approaches to ‘Islamic’ ornament and the arabesque raise a number of clear paradoxes. First, the idea that only representational art can be meaningful does not chime with the art historical understanding that styles, such as classical and neoclassical, can have political or sociocultural messages in their employment. Surely then, outside the Western tradition other types of ornament, motifs and styles can carry meaning, particularly when considering their reception across cultures. Secondly, the emphasis on ‘Islamic’ geometric patterns serving a particular religious sensibility of Islam – such as the idea of ‘unity in variety’ and God’s ‘infinity and inexpressibility’ – assumes that all art produced across multiple geographies and for both secular and religious purposes was specifically religious.17 Indeed, it opens up the much larger question of the vocabulary we use to describe the art produced across the world, over centuries, under rulers who might happen to be Muslim. As Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom explain: the term ‘Islamic art’ seems to be a convenient misnomer for everything left over from everywhere else. It is most easily defined by what it is not: neither a region, nor a period, nor a school, nor a movement, nor a

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dynasty, but the visual culture of a place and time when the people (or at least their leaders) espoused a particular religion.18

‘Islamic art’ just like art produced under Christian rulers is not necessarily religious; much of it was in fact intended for more secular purposes.19 In the case of objects featured in this book, many were used in both secular and religious contexts and transversed Christian and Islamic cultures. Finally, this raises the issue of the need to locate and articulate different forms of ornament within specific geopolitical sites of production and reception. As Necipo˘glu has so eloquently argued, the taxonomic classifications of the arabesque, which often divide ornament into four categories (vegetal, geometric, epigraphic and figurative) according to ethnoracial ‘characterisations’ (Arabian, Moresque, Persian, Turkish and Indian) ‘masks the diversity, historicity, and potency of individualized regimes of visuality with their own distinctive ornamental modes’.20 Instead, ornament could produce visible forms of ‘distinction’, as part of deliberate projects of place- and culture-making, as for example in the distinctive ‘regimes of ornament’ that were formulated dialogically within Ottoman and Safavid visual cultures.21 Similarly, Andrew Morrall has argued that the adoption of ‘Italianate’ ornament in Germany in the sixteenth century served cultural and political agendas, as a form of social distinction.22 Here, Italianate designs were described as ‘foreign’, and appeared in pattern books to be adapted and developed by ‘intelligent and informed artists’, which appeared on a wide range of media, from drinking vessels to chapel decoration as a deliberate means of communicating taste.23 In the Safavid context, the sixteenth century witnessed the theorisation of ornament by court painters and calligraphers into distinct categories. These were categorised along the lines of (with some variations) isla¯ mı¯ or islı¯mı¯ (Islamic or vegetal arabesque), khata¯ ’ı¯ (Cathayan, chinoiseries), abr (cloudlike, marbled), da¯ q (or va¯ q; inhabited scroll or grotesque with human and animal heads) and girih (knotted, geometric interlace).24 Already in the fifteenth century, under Mehmed II, Ottoman texts distinguished between the foliate split palmette scroll (ru¯ mı¯, synonymous with islı¯mı¯) and the Chinese floral lotus scroll (khata¯ ’ı¯), underscoring a clear articulation of different patterns and motifs.25 Of course these distinctions belong to a localised knowledge, underlining the need to distinguish between what court illuminators in Istanbul would know (and what those motifs symbolised for them) and a less-focussed, global reception of such motifs at an Italian court. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman court saw the centralisation of workshops that were made up of a cosmopolitan group of local artists and those from further afield including Safavid Tabriz and Mamluk Syria and Egypt. This scriptorium supplied designs for work across media, including tents, tiles and carpets, across the empire but also provided the stimulus for

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further transcultural exchanges into Europe.26 For example, designs on paper were sent to Venice in 1554 accompanied by instructions for luxury fabrics commissioned by two Ottoman pashas, the grand vizier, Rüstem Pasha from Istanbul and the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Dukakinzade Mehmed Pasha from Cairo.27 Regardless of transcultural artistic exchanges and cosmopolitanism, or likely because of it, by the second half of the sixteenth century, the specialisation of the court scriptorium in Istanbul was divided into two according to ‘local and foreign’ artists: those who were Ottoman and those who were foreign (acema¯ n), many of whom originated from Iran. The theorisation of the different motifs, some with more clear geographic ‘origins’ and the articulation of ‘foreign’ artists, may have underlined stylistic difference and given rise to a particular consciousness of the relationship between identity and idioms of ornament.28 However, as Necipo˘glu has noted, it is not always easy to identify the distinct modes of ornament as they often appear in combined forms and permutations.29 Ottoman sixteenthcentury classifications might have therefore been in response to a growing anxiety around the amalgamation of motifs that were becoming so ‘crossed’ that they were increasingly hard to distinguish from each other and thus, no longer articulating a particular ‘pure’ cultural idiom. Indeed, it is important to situate these texts within the contexts in which they were written, where cosmopolitanism experienced in major centres such as Istanbul gave rise to the influx of craftspeople from across the empire and further afield, which for some, may have given rise to the blurring of too many boundaries. Similarly in Italy, by the sixteenth century in texts by authors such as Baldassare Castiglione, as Stephen Campbell has argued, ‘Italians’ taste for cosmopolitan luxury was linked to a catastrophic fragmentation that was both the signal and the cause of foreign domination’.30 This was particularly apparent in the wake of Spanish power and played out in the derogatory descriptions of Naples, which had long operated as a crossroads of cultural traditions, and by 1524, for Giovanni Summonte, was characterised as a sign of decline rather than the means of creative possibilities.31 If a centre such as Naples became a periphery in Renaissance art historical narratives, ornament itself became a periphery for the discipline at large. Ornament within art historical discussions is also often coupled with ‘decoration’ or the decorative arts, frequently sitting at the margins of a Eurocentric discipline, which has traditionally privileged the three arts of sculpture, painting and architecture. In architectural terms, the structure/ornament paradigm was apparent in Italian Renaissance texts, where Leon Battista Alberti, for example, claimed that the column was the principal ornament of architecture.32 Anne-Marie Sankovitch has suggested that ornament in this structure/ ornament paradigm can be interpreted as a supplement in relation to Jacques Derrida’s parergon:

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Ornament, the marginal and additional entity that is attached to, placed on the outside of, and comes after structure, turns out to be central, primary, and essential. Like a parergon, ornament remains exterior to structure, but its exteriority no longer signifies that it is easy to detach, or even that it is detachable at all.33

In Chapter 3, drawing on the work of Anna Grasskamp, I further explore how the European framing devices on Chinese porcelain can be considered parerga, as mediating devices that are both part of the work and outside of it. The relationship between the body of a ceramic covered in ornament, yet integral to it, and the metallic mounts added later also as frame/ornament/ parergon, suggests a layering of ornament and frames. How might metal mounts differ from the ‘ornaments’ in the form of blue motifs on the porcelain vessel? What do these layers of ornamentation or parerga entail for the beholder/viewer? This also raises further questions: in what ways does twodimensional ornamentation differ from three-dimensional? And how has ornament on three-dimensional objects often been treated as twodimensional? As Margaret S. Graves has shown, Art History’s predilection for taxonomical classifications by things like material, period, artist or dynasty causes problems for portable objects whose mobile nature often defies an easy point of fixed manufacture, usage or motifs and as such, are often left out of discussions all together.34 However, such objects – the focus of this book – traditionally have also been neglected in Art History because of a preference for ‘vision over touch’, and if such ‘minor’ or ‘decorative’ works make it into the art historical discussion, traditionally they were examined in relation to their ornament and a taxonomic ordering. The motifs that make up the ornamentation of many of the objects studied here need to be studied along haptic as well as visual terms. As Graves articulates, ‘artistic modes collectively and commonly termed “ornament” make up a three-dimensional system in which surface and space are mutually constitutive, rather than a twodimensional skin that can be unproblematically separated from its carriers’.35 Ornament when applied across media, and in stories of cultural translation, is often considered as a flat image, something two-dimensional that acts almost like a stamp, as it travels across form. A viewer or beholder’s interaction with ornament however becomes activated in different ways depending on the media on which it appears. In this respect, Jonathan Hay’s notion of ‘surfacescapes’ offers new models for interpreting the translation of ornament across cultures, but also highlights the importance in doing so for moving away from a seamless Eurocentric interpretation.36 Surfacescapes also emphasise the phenomenality of interaction, which takes into consideration the sensorial conditions when translated onto three-dimensional objects, such as ceramics. This is articulated particularly well in photographs of three-dimensional objects,

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where we often prize photos of ceramics that ‘frame’ the design centrally, turning the object into a two-dimensional image. Similarly, depictions of ceramics in domestic interiors by contemporary painters provide us with a singular viewpoint of the ceramic (for example in Plate I, Introduction). However, this provides us with only one way of interacting with such an object. Certainly, from afar when entering a room such as a studiolo, this would have been one form of interaction; the owner likely would have placed the object at a particular angle, and this perhaps resembles most closely our contemporary viewership of objects behind glass cases in museums. Yet such a ceramic would have then been taken off the shelf, held in the hand and turned to reveal the numerous sides, as well as perhaps the bottom or the interior, which certainly would have altered the ‘view’, turning the original two-dimensional ornament (‘imagescape’ for Hay) into a three-dimensional interactive object (see the difference in angles between Figures 26 and 27 (Chapter 5) for example). It is objects such as ceramics that enable us to contemplate the different dimensions of frame, limit and ornament. As Hay characterises this, the ‘imagistic dimension of the surface’ (exemplified by the photograph) highlights the ‘rhythmic affirmation of motifs across a surface in tension with a limit’, which privileges the image field or ‘imagescape’ over the surfacescape.37 For Graves, surfacescapes were craftily manipulated by artists, turning many objects into complex things through visuospatial play, rhetorical framing, interaction between figures, script or the allusion to other forms/materials.38 Holding up a ceramic or a metalwork in one’s hands, twirling it around to get the full effect of ornament also highlights one’s interaction with the motifs (as light might catch script as in Figure 6, also see Figure 10), a haptic experience that I will return to in the conclusion of this chapter, and which features in the chapters that follow.

fig 6 Basin of Sultan Qaitbay, brass inlaid with silver, Mamluk (Egypt or Syria), c. 1468–96. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 91.1.565.

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OR NAMENTAL OBJECTS

‘Ornament’ as a concept also emerged in the Italian Renaissance humanist tradition as a rhetorical, moral and literal idiom. In the rhetorical tradition, one only had to look to the Roman rhetorician Quintillian who discussed how a good discourse had to be ‘decorated’ through ‘ornatus’.39 This extended to the moral character of an individual through the right choice in clothing and the adornment of their home. The adornment of the house and the concept of variety further underscores the multimedia sensorial experiences of ornament in terms of surfacescapes. The Neapolitan humanist Giovanni Pontano dedicates an entire section on ‘ornamental objects’ in his treatise On Splendour (La virtù dello splendore) in relation to embellishment: We call objects ornamental if we acquire them not so much for use as for embellishment and polish such as seals, paintings, tapestries, divans, ivory seats, cloth woven with gems, cases and caskets variously painted in the Arabic [Arabicis] manner, little vases of crystal and other things of this type with which the house is adorned according to one’s circumstances and with which one decorates dressers and tables. The sight of these things brings prestige to the owner of the house, when they are seen by the many who frequent his house. But the ornamental objects, which should be as magnificent and various as possible, should each be arranged in their own place. Thus one is fitting for the hall, another for the women’s apartments.40

Pontano also discusses the term ‘brilliance’ as an important factor of ornament. He notes that in the search of fine things (cose belle), there is a specific term for the care of cleaning and brilliance (luculenza or in Latin luculentiam) and the person who practices this, a luculento.41 For Pontano, a luculento is exemplified by Mithradates, King of Pontus (today, north-eastern Turkey) whose treasure was found in his palace after his death, including ‘circa 2,000 onyx bowls (tazze), bedecked with gold; as well as numerous flasks and vases of extraordinary variety; tables and benches decorated with elegance, horse bits and hooves not only decorated with variety in gold, but also with gems and pearls done in the most refined art’.42 Pontano’s use of ‘polish’ and luculento had practical connections to the virtue of splendour and the lustrewares and other types of objects chosen for display. It was often the technological quality of an object that was valued and described, frequently in terms of the external appearance in its ability to shine. These radiant qualities of splendour – and the Latin verb splendere meaning to ‘shine, be bright; to gleam, glitter, glisten’ featured in the material and visual culture of the court, from shining bejewelled bodies to the glistening lustred wares on display and became synonymous with good rulership.43 Illustrious princes assumed responsibility of endowing their states with light and splendour.

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In the Islamic context, the Qur’anic term for ornament was zukhruf, originating from one of the names for gold and featured in medieval literature to indicate adornment or embellishment in both literary and visual arts.44 It is not clear whether Pontano knew of this tradition, and if so, it was likely not necessarily through a direct text but translations and reformulations by various authors. However, what is key, is it is the small portable art objects traded, exchanged and used across the Mediterranean that were inspirations for Pontano’s concept of ornament. The brilliant nature of lustreware, inspired by Middle Eastern ceramics made in Spain and eventually Italy, informed humanistic writings where the notion of splendour reflected luminosity. In the concluding chapter, I examine the tiles that were commissioned by Pontano for his funerary chapel, underscoring Pontano’s own patronage of such wares. Indeed, Pontano’s books on social virtues read like textual versions of studioli, inventories of a diversity of objects that were familiar to his Neapolitan courtly circle. This is evident in the passage that begins Chapter 1 on gifts and their relationship to magnificence, but passages from his treatise on splendour, as noted, also highlight the emphasis of objects as markers of distinction. Brilliance, ornament, splendour and lustre, although connected to humanist treatises and thus antique sources, were also certainly influenced by the objects on display and those that Pontano engaged with in Naples, which had provenances that extended beyond Europe. Ornament in the context of the home and display was thus the amalgamation of numerous objects – the concatenation of various motifs, materials and light reflections – that together created surfacescapes in a landscape of objects, but which ultimately reflected the character of the owner. We must be wary however in reducing decorative objects to merely ‘luxuries’ that are ‘machines for social identity’.45 There needs to be a distinction between the generic objects in Pontano’s treatise that are used as metaphors for splendour or magnificence and the actual objects that individuals engaged with. Eurocentric taxonomic and teleological approaches within an art historical hierarchy of ‘decorative’ versus ‘fine’ art have focussed our attentions on flattening ornament and turning it into something meaningless. Returning to primary sources and the physical interaction with objects can provide new ways to understand ornament and objects and to make them meaningful for interpreting the societies in which they circulated. To do so, a closer look at how contemporaries described these objects is required. WO RDS FOR THINGS?

Pontano’s description of objects around the home also raises the issue around language and the words chosen to describe images, objects, styles and motifs. The impetus for collecting objects was diverse in the Italian Renaissance, as were the means of acquisition, from diplomacy and trade to travel to the Holy Land or even

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mere curiosity. Many studies have approached the acquisition of ‘foreign’ objects in collections on a general basis, but more productive approaches are those that examine the specifics of particular collections or patrons and their reception within that context. Indeed, specific case studies underline the problem of using words such as ‘exotic’ to explain the reception of objects that reflect complex inter- and transcultural dialogues.46 It is also important to note that the employment of vocabulary used in one document by a notary might not have the same meaning when employed somewhere else by a collector or an ambassador. There is still much more research to be done in this area, but the question of language provides a productive avenue to pursue some of these complexities. The need to find words for novel things or even put into words the sensorial experiences of an object – its touch, its look, its smell or the combination of all of these as one interacts with it – is evident in texts of the time, from travel writing to inventories. It is also worth considering our own contemporary problem of defining objects that come from somewhere else in the Renaissance and the choice of vocabulary that we use: ‘foreign’ or ‘exotic’ are not usually the right words. How do we define objects that are collected in one geographic area but that have come from somewhere else, yet still reflect global connectivity? This is underscored in Grasskamp’s book Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe for example, which uses the word ‘foreign’ in the title but rightly addresses the problems of terminology in the introduction. In addition, the labels ‘Chinese’ or ‘European’ can be just as misleading to use, which do not reflect the connected nature of the world. As Grasskamp argues, her study makes distinctions between a ‘“European” object and its “Chinese” frame and vice versa to highlight and understand transcultural framings in Eurasian objects’.47 There is however a sort of paradox at work here, as art historians are continuously bound by geographic and cultural distinctions that seem more at home in the nineteenth century, when more recent studies are attempting to break down these very hierarchies and categorisations. This is a reflection of the very nature of a discipline that has been characterised as in crisis.48 If we are arguing that most objects are rarely exclusive to one culture – manufacture was usually the product of one or more cultural traditions and the materials used were often sourced from numerous geographic locations, most objects were composite to begin with – the use of ‘foreign’ seems to undermine that complex, composite nature. We need to find words that express process, exemplified by the difference between culture and cultural for example, whereby monolithic identities are displaced by dynamic patterns of engagement and cross-fertilisation.49 As explained in the introduction, terminology such as ‘boundary objects’, ‘composite objects’, objets croisés and transcultural/transculturation attempt to address these issues. Descriptions of objects from ‘somewhere else’ point to mobility itself as a category of value, which places emphasis on circulation and exchange rather

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than a beginning and an end and moves away from a linear, teleological approach. For Elizabeth Rodini, the language used by early modern writers served different requirements or were part of a different set of values than our own.50 In other words, texts of the time point to a more nuanced view of the circulation of objects that do not fit within a clear journey starting with the point of manufacture and ending with one consumer. Rather, the vocabulary employed seems to signal an understanding of points or nodes in an object’s biography or better its itineraries, which also raises issues around what constitutes ‘influence’.51 There is also a clear difference between scholars today who are able to pinpoint an object’s journey securely on Google Maps, with the possibility of even seeing a street view, with Renaissance contemporaries who may have had maps at their disposal but which were often as much cultural products bound up in social, religious and cultural prejudices as they were accurate cartographic representations of the world.52 Renaissance geographic understandings of the world were much more blurred and less in focus than ours. At the start of an object’s biography was indeed manufacture, where the appeal of the ‘Other’ might more likely be linked to high quality in terms of craftsmanship as well as materials.53 Technology was a key factor here too, but technological transfer might change the place of origin and thus descriptives. For example, gilded and enamelled glass produced in Egypt and Syria under the Mamluks at the end of the medieval period had a great impact on European taste. It was only in the fourteenth century that enamelled glass was produced in Venice, yet historically it was a technique developed by Islamic glassblowers and imported to Venice, possibly via Byzantium.54 It is a technology that encapsulates cross-cultural transfer and translation and exemplifies how Venetians learned to mimic luxury products from abroad and make them their own. Indeed, by the sixteenth century, Venetians were even producing mosque lamps and exporting them to the Islamic world.55 So, what was a Mamluk craft soon became associated with Venice, with the transfer of knowledge in production and manufacture. ‘Murano’ replaced ‘Mamluk’ in terms of associations with glass sophistication, and still holds those associations today. Venice was indeed a well-known place for Europeans to acquire goods from around the world; a gateway to the Silk Roads and therefore, the origins of many objects might not be clear, only that they came from Venice via somewhere else. Venetians were also very good at manufacturing products that looked like costly imports, a mercantile strategy that has confounded art historians yet points to a mark of Venetian craftsmanship that excelled at imitation.56 Unlike today, as Christopher Wood has noted, early modern objects did not come with labels or metadata providing consumers/collectors/users with information.57 Thus, vocabulary that was used to describe

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objects often refers to style, designs or patterns, or even the place of purchase, which carried geographical connotations that might be misleading for us today. What can the primary sources tell us then? Vagueness in many sources leaves us with a curious quandary, but perhaps we need to shift our demands of these sources. As Craig Clunas has examined, early modern European treatises on things were often much less detailed than their Chinese counterparts.58 In comparison to Chinese texts on material culture, which are marked by precision and often clearly identify materials as well as makers, humanist texts in the Italian context appear imprecise, at least where material culture was concerned.59 In fifteenth-century inventories at the court of Ferrara, a distinction might be discernible between descriptions of paintings and material culture. For example, the Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory of 1493 makes reference to artists of paintings such as Mantegna and Bellini, while glass, textiles and ceramics are described as from Pesaro or Milan or alla venetiana, alla moresca, alla siciliana, alla todesca or alla francese.60 Campbell has argued that paintings and sculpture were therefore viewed as a ‘different kind of commodity’ with different associated terminology.61 Pontano’s treatise quoted above identifies categories of objects but not precise things, such as ‘cases and caskets variously painted in the Arabic manner’. This is similar to Sabba da Castiglione’s section of his Ricordi dedicated to material culture, ‘Cerca gli ornamenti della casa’ published almost a century later: others furnish and adorn their rooms with tapestries and textiles from Flanders with figures, foliage [fogliami] and greenery; some with Turkish [turcheschi] and Syrian [Soriani] carpets and bed covers, and some with textiles done by hand by great masters, some with ingeniously wrought leather hanging from Spain; and others with new, fantastic and bizarre, but ingenious [nuove, fantastiche, & bizzare, ma ingegnose] things from the Levant or Germany. . . and all these ornaments I recommend and praise, because they sharpen one’s intellect, politeness, civility and courtesy [ingegno, politezza, civilità, & cortegiania].62

Terms such as ‘fantastic and bizarre’ point to a reaction to the objects, not their material qualities, while the use of ingenious twice suggests a level of ingegno encapsulated by these ‘decorative arts’. The intellectual curiosity and engagement here point to a function of these objects, and an interaction that highlights what Hay has characterised as ‘objects thinking with us’.63 This section comes after a long dialogue on quite detailed works by famous painters and sculptors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Material culture in this context does not come with known authors, but that is not to say they did not have an ‘intellectual hand’ that made them, something I address in Chapter 4.64 It is also intriguing that Sabba’s section on the decoration of the home begins with musical instruments, with very detailed types of instruments and he notes

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that some not only delight the ears but also the eyes, for example, those ‘ingeniously and excellently worked’ by masters such as Lorenzo da Pavia or Bastiano da Verona. This underscores a particular attention to multisensorial experiences but also known artistry/authorship, not detailed in the discussion of material culture.65 Raffaello Borghini’s description of Bernardo Vecchietti’s villa in Florence in the late sixteenth century underlines how the vast array of objects housed in the study could also provide astonishment: a great marvel to see is a study with five shelves where small statues of marble, bronze, clay and wax are arranged in a beautiful order. Fine stones of many sorts are arranged there, vases of porcelain and of rock crystal, seashells of many kinds, pyramids of precious stone, jewels, medals, masks, fruit and animals frozen in very fine stone [fossils], and so many new and rare things coming from India and from Turkey as astonishes whoever sees them. Beyond some further rooms, in another part of the villa, is a similar study completely stocked with silver and gold vases and prints and drawings by the most excellent masters that sculpture and painting have had. Precious distilled waters and very efficacious oils are there . . . very beautiful knives from the Orient, Turkish scimitars, worked in various ways, and a large number of cups and different porcelain vases.66

Borghini gives an idea of the types of objects displayed and some indication of geography but nothing particularly precise. There is an emphasis on variety, both in materials and in origins, and an indication of the sensorial conditions engendered by this array of waters, oils, silver, gold and porcelain. If such a range of objects according to Sabba were to sharpen the intellect and civility, they were also to ‘astonish’ for Borghini, another indication that it was the assembly of objects together that was prized in these treatises. In other examples, such as diplomatic gifts discussed in Chapter 1, the wording also varies, but is generally imprecise, for example ‘silver and other honourable things’, emphasising in that context, that what is noteworthy is material (silver) and the honour of the gift bestowed in the economy of diplomatic giftgiving.67 As explained in Chapter 1, different ambassadors had different levels of awareness and precision in describing gifts, and at times accounts were conflicting in what they saw. For example, the ‘Moorish vases’ (which some modern scholars have translated as Valencian) gifted to Lorenzo de’ Medici by Qaitbay, were also described by a contemporary as porcelain. Another way to underscore astonishment was the term ‘never seen’ in relation to the same vases in question, described by Piero Dovizi da Bibbiena in 1487: ‘big vases of porcelain not similar to anything seen before nor better worked’.68 Certainly, sixteenth-century humanist treatises differed from fifteenth-century diplomatic correspondence and inventories. However, the

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vagueness around authorship and geographic origins perhaps points to a different emphasis than our own and highlights a need to understand the reasons behind these descriptions in terms of the geographic and material itineraries of the objects themselves. Novel objects might have also given rise to novel sensorial reactions that would have been hard to put into words, what is known as ‘ineffability’ in cognitive science.69

Styles/Origins/Materials The fifteenth- and sixteenth-century documents examined throughout this book use a wide variety of vocabulary to refer to the ‘style’ of an object and its motifs, its materials and its ‘origins’ or nodes/modes of exchange. These factors were often interwoven and complex, in the sense that the word used to describe the style of an object might refer to a geographic association (sometimes once removed) or the material might refer to its mode of exchange or point of original manufacture of a technology that might have moved to a new site (such as how we might use ‘china tea cup’ today to describe the material of a cup that might have been made in England rather than China). Vocabulary that references geography can be extremely misleading in Renaissance documents, as is demonstrated by the use of the terms Indiana, alla Indiana and dell’Indie for a wide range of objects that sometimes came from India, but often referred to items from Africa, China, Japan, the Levant, the ‘New World’ and sometimes Europe.70 The confusion of origins is reflected in vocabulary of the time that is used to describe motifs found on many objects. Examples from inventories of Venetians who died in Damascus are revealing. Some wares are described as ‘Moorish’ (moresco), ‘Arab-style/arabesque’ (arabesco) or ‘in the style of Damascus’ (alla damaschina), while others are ‘in the Florentine style’ (alla fiorentina) or ‘Milanese’ (milanexe).71 Confusion over designs and motifs could even occur in treatises written by ‘experts’ such as Piccolpasso. In an excerpt on painting maiolica pots, he discusses adding una rabesca (an arabesque) on a plate, and yet the actual drawing that he chooses to illustrate his point is of a classical motif of a half human half vegetal form (grotesque), and he corrects himself in the next sentence: ‘Or I mean to say “grotescha”’.72 At the end of the book, however he provides illustrations of the differences between the terminology (Figure 5) and draws the reader’s attention to certain motifs being used in particular geographic areas of ceramic manufacture. Trofei, he tells us, are used everywhere, but particularly in Urbino, where arabesques ‘are more in use at Venice and Genoa than elsewhere’, while fruit and flower patterns ‘are truly Venetian’.73 The rabesche illustrated resemble designs that might have also been described by contemporaries as ‘damascene’, another loose term that is hard to pin down but that was frequently employed. For example, in 1512 when the

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Venetian Domenico Trevisan was sent to Cairo on a diplomatic mission, he was housed in a palace that had belonged to one of the former sultan’s wives. He described the palace as richly decorated with pavements of marble and porphyry with ‘gilded ceilings and rich ornament a la damaschina’.74 ‘Damascene’ provides a particularly illustrative example of the complexities of terms, techniques, materials and origins and as such it has been well studied, but it is worth articulating a few of the issues here as they have resonance for many of the objects studied here. Damascene metalwork raises problems around origins and classification and provides a valuable illustration of how approaching these works in terms of ‘composite objects’ or objets croisés rather than in traditional art historical terms of artist, patron or provenance can elucidate the complex processes of cross-cultural dialogues in the early modern world. From numerous surviving examples, it is obvious that there were multiple sites of production for damascene metalwork, which likely shifted over time, from Mamluk Syria and Egypt to Iran to Venice, Italy. These differences can be discerned by the inlay work and the application of silver, but are not particularly obvious to the untrained eye, and it is likely that contemporary viewers would not always have been clear where these items came from.75 Mamluk metalware, often in the form of candlesticks, bowls, basins and perfume burners, was decorated with inlaid silver that was stylistically associated with ‘Islamic’ motifs, such as arabesques and interlocking knotwork patterns (see Figures 10 and 11, also see Figures 34–36, Chapter 5). There is little documentary evidence surrounding the production of these objects and art historians have looked to the works themselves for evidence of their place of origin.76 In the nineteenth century, it was suggested that these were worked by Muslim craftspeople in Venice, and this gave rise to the term ‘VenetoSaracenic’ to describe this range of artefacts.77 This was largely discounted (and still is by many scholars), however archival evidence has confirmed the presence of an Armenian from Damascus in Venice in 1563 who was working in metal inlay, and who may have passed on the trade to Venetian craftspeople, although this theory is still debated.78 The application of the silver inlay differs among surviving examples, which also indicates several different places of manufacture and has led more recent scholars to categorise these objects into types: metalwork made in Mamluk territories; inlay applied in Syria to preexisting European vessels; European imitations; signed vessels.79 The second type would have involved a rather complex transcultural process, whereby undecorated vessels in European shapes made in northern Europe were shipped to Syria to be decorated (damascened) and then sold to European consumers, some even containing arms of European families, many Venetian. This complex process has also been questioned with the suggestion that Mamluk metalworkers could have adjusted the shapes to suit European consumers and left the shields blank to be customised once in Europe.80

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By the sixteenth century, craftspeople in Venice were producing ‘imitations’, but combining the arabesque with all’antica motifs, and using a different technique of inlay. The final category of metalwork is particularly intriguing, composed of a series of vessels that include inscriptions identifying the maker Mahmud al-Kurdi (Mahmud the Kurd), written in Arabic, often coupled with a transliteration in Roman characters.81 It is not certain where al-Kurdi was based, but the presence of Roman characters suggests an intended European audience. In the sixteenth century, we also see the introduction of the term agemina (or azzimina in Venetian dialect) to describe this metalwork. This term derived from the Arabic, al adjem, referring to a person of Persian origin, and appeared in a signature on an inlaid coffer decorated with ‘Europeanised’ arabesques, PAULUS AGEMINUS FACIEBAT.82 In 1561, Girolamo Ruscelli described ‘work in azimino or of tausia [likely meaning a form of tarsia or inlay]’ (lavoro azimino o di tausia) as copper that was hollowed out and filled with thin wires of silver or gold.83 Benvenuto Cellini instead referred to this work in metal on daggers inlaid with gold as turcheschi.84 In customs and shipping records, such metalwork is often very simply described as generic lavori de rame.85 While there is much debate about the place of manufacture, and the possibility of Muslim craftspeople in Venice has been largely discredited, a previously unpublished letter from the Ferrarese ambassador in Venice to Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara from 9 August 1491, suggests however that there may indeed have been ‘foreign’ craftspeople working in metal in Venice already in the fifteenth century. The ambassador remarked on a shop run by three ‘Turks’ in the area of Santa Sofia in Venice, who work in ‘gold and new things’.86 The use of ‘Turks’ here is likely not referring to a specific ethnicity, meaning Ottoman Turks, but as is often the case, a nomenclature for Muslims; another indication of confusion and uncertainty reflected in terminology.87 The more significant point here however, is that these uncertainties around the provenance of such objects ought to be regarded less as a problem than as an indicator of how closely artistic contact and exchange flourished across the Mediterranean, resulting in objets croisés that defy easy classification, encouraging and requiring new approaches to study this material.88 As Morrall has argued, a place like Venice, which learned to incorporate and in some cases copy ‘foreign’ material culture, can be seen as a ‘transformer’, where artistic traditions meet each other, combine and create new forms.89 The question mark around these vessels’ point of manufacture is also aggravated by the descriptive term damascena and alla damascina associated with diverse media used by contemporaries. Damascena (or domaschina) could imply blue and white ceramic ware, indicating various styles of pottery made in Damascus (see Figure 2, Introduction), but it was also used to describe a variety of objects employing interlacing motifs associated with the Middle East, found

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on textiles, leather, armour and as we have seen, metalware.90 The 1435 inventory of a Pesaro pottery workshop owned by Lorenzo Ciarlatini and Andrea Peloso includes small dishes decorated with damascene colours (fulcitos coloris damaschini) and damascene blue powder (azurri sive damaschini), suggesting it was referring specifically to the hue.91 In 1561, Michel Dusseau addressed different vessels found in apothecary shops, noting that syrups and opiates were reserved for pots and containers ‘painted and decorated with various colours, and for that reason they are called de Damas’.92 Textiles were also described as damaschi such as those gifted from the Ottoman sultan to Naples in 1483, discussed in the previous chapter, and frequently featured amongst lists of gifts between rulers.93 When employed in relation to textiles, damaschi referred to a fine silk made in various locations, including Turkey and Italy.94 Thus, in the case of textiles, damaschi had become a marker of quality and damaschino/a could refer to a pattern rather than geographic origin. The Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventories list damascene textiles including carpets (tapeti lavorato ala damaschina), a bed hanging of damascho biancho, an altar hanging of damascho biancho and numerous book covers imprinted with damascene patterns (stampato ala damaschina).95 Her account books also record purchases such as a payment to a Mastro Tiorante of Naples for cloth embroidered (tella contrate ala damaschina) made for the King of Hungary or a damascene dress (Camora una de damascho lionada), which was given to a Jewish girl who had come to Modena and converted to Christianity.96 Eleonora clearly knew her textiles and materials, evidenced by a letter from 1485, where she writes from Mantua with strict orders of different types of textiles for different spaces including one of her chapels.97 In later documents related to the court of Ferrara, books identified for potential purchase for Ippolito and Alfonso d’Este from Venice were described as bound in ornamenti damaschinj and ala damaschina rossa.98 By the sixteenth century, it is clear that the term simply referenced a motif, such as in 1535 when the Perugian noblewoman, Francesca Baglioni Ranieri, ordered a new dining service for a visit by Pope Paul III. From the Umbrian pottery centre of Deruta, she ordered damaschino schietto, that is biancho sopra bianco, a type of white-on-white decoration said to have been first invented in Ferrara (see Figure 14).99 The merchant-banker, Filippo Strozzi, who lived between Naples and Florence wrote to his relative Marco Strozzi in 1472 who was headed to the Levant, requesting carpets as well as ‘brass vases’ alla domaschina, ink stands or candlesticks ‘or anything that you think is nice’.100 It is important to underscore the question around whether alla was always accurately employed to refer to ‘in the style of’. In Filippo Strozzi’s inventory of 1494, the attention to different types of blue and white ceramics suggests that viewers made some differentiation, but this is not consistent across primary sources. Filippo’s inventory includes ceramics described as white with foliage alla porcellana,

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white and blue earthenware alla domaschina, and others simply described as blue and white earthenware with foliage.101 Was this a concerted categorisation that differentiated between alla porcellana, alla domaschina and simply blue and white ‘foliage’? Indeed, this ambiguity points to a critical issue regarding the extent to which Renaissance viewers were clear on the specific origins of objects they were looking at, and this too would have varied depending on the individual’s status, position and knowledge. In a fourteenth-century guide for merchants, Damascus is mentioned as a place to acquire spices, textiles, rose water, porcelain and painted vases.102 As the city of Damascus was an important trading centre, situated at the end of Asian caravan routes, as well as a staging post for Western pilgrims en route to the Holy Land, the terminology could simply refer to objects that were bought there, rather than produced there. Other examples of confusion over origin are exemplified in an inventory of 1424 of an apothecary shop where ceramics are described as from Damascus or maiolica (di Domascho o di Maiolicha), while in 1475, sugar at a wedding had been gilded and painted to look like ceramics from ‘Majorca or Damascus’.103 The term maiolica also underlines the generation of terms and how the roots of the word could have a relationship to mobility and transportation as it either referenced the area of manufacture of Málaga or the port where Valencian ceramics were shipped from, Majorca/Mallorca.104 Linguistic roots reflect routes and demonstrate that an emphasis on mobility is key for our understanding of so many of these portable objects.105 Documents from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries refer to ceramics produced in Spain as obra de málequa or de málicha (Málaga ware), referencing the town under the Muslim Nasrid dynasty that became known for its lustreware in the thirteenth century. By the fourteenth century, the main site of production of Spanish lustreware was in the Valencian region of Manises, but the de málicha label had stuck.106 By the sixteenth century, ‘maiolica’ came to signify the tin-glazed earthenware made in Italy, now simply a reference to painted ceramics made within Europe. Ceramic vessels and tiles (the subject of Chapter 5 and the concluding chapter) were amongst the cargo shipped from Valencia to Naples and were referred to in the 1450s as obra de terra, which also included descriptions of specific shapes that could reference their function (salsera, alfabeguer, scudelles, refredadors).107 The documents also make geographic references to merchants, potentially where they were located rather than necessarily their birthplace, such as Napols, genoves, salerno, palermino, venecia, sicilia, florenca as well as Germany. In a few particular cases, the geographic specificity could be replaced by a religious association through a name, suggesting they were perceived as ‘non-Christian’, such as mahomat consentani.108 Others were identified as Turkish (el turchi) or Bertomeu berber, with other examples even less specific but characterised by presumably the colour of their skin: Mateu negro, Maffomat moro or Homar moro.109 While not the focus of this study, a need to specify

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nationality, religion and ethnicity of these merchants as an identifying marker opens up further questions around how terminology at this time could be embedded into cultural (mis)understandings and bias. These need to be taken into consideration to provide a much fuller understanding of transcultural encounters through trade and diplomacy, but one which does not advocate for an early modern multiculturalism such as a conviviencia, which tends to ‘flatten the contours in what were evidently complex, dynamic and often rapidly changing landscapes’ to use Flood’s words.110 Rather, such vocabulary points to a contemporary need to come to terms with alterity and identity, confrontation and difference, which made up the complex world within which these portable objects moved. A reminder too that sites of cosmopolitanism could be found not only in cities such as Naples but also mobile communities, such as on ships, in caravanserai and fondaci.111 As argued in Chapter 5, the circulation and exchange of goods could both show a world connected through shared interests but just as equally be the source of unease, as it also facilitated the transmission of disease and new customs, as well as the spread of spies and news. Aside from the global geography, Italian inventories also reflect a reference to regional differences within Italy, such as albarelli described as bolognesi, which begs the question whether this was to do with the shape, the function, the decoration or the actual point of manufacture.112 References to silver and jewellery alla venetiana or alla milanese in documents from the fifteenth century suggest that they might be referring to particular areas of excellence in manufacture. Princes and state officials looked to establish specialisation in certain ‘arts’ to reflect a good government, rulership or a functioning economy. References to specific city-states might therefore be articulating expertise, which might also shift with the vagaries of political instability and investment.113 In the case of a court like Ferrara in the fifteenth century, the term alla ferrarese might reflect a new style that emerged under the Este and their patronage of Cosmè Tura, a court artist who oversaw creative programmes that included frescoes, silverware, cake decorations and ceramics.114 The complexities around lexicology are also identifiable in the example of Chinese porcelain, the focus of Chapters 3 and 4. The term ‘porcelain’ has various etymological roots linked to both the mysteries of the material make up and the means of exchange of the ceramic. Europeans who travelled to China in the seventeenth century were baffled at how the term porcelain came to refer to the material in Europe. For François Xavier d’Entrecolles (or Dentrecolles), a French Jesuit who lived in China for over three decades in the early eighteenth century, porcelain was ‘so little a Chinese word, that none of the syllables of which it is composed can even be pronounced or written in Chinese’.115 According to d’Entrecolles, in China it was called tseki, the Jesuit’s rendering of the characters for ci (higher fired pottery) and

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shi (stone). The manufacture of porcelain was a well-guarded secret, which led to numerous speculations about its material make up, as discussed more fully in Chapter 3. However, the material speculation had a bearing on how it became known as ‘porcelain’. In many primary sources from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, we hear various explanations of how it was made from shells (also named porcelain), mixed with water, shaped into vessels and buried underground for years.116 This explanation is likely a conflation of references to porcelain that appear in Marco Polo’s travel tales. Polo’s first reference to porcelain was in terms of the economy, referring to shells that were used as exchange in China: ‘Their money is as I shall tell you. They use white porcelain, namely the shells one finds in the sea’. However, he later clarifies that these shells are not found in China but come from India.117 He also used the term porcelain to describe the ceramic: ‘in a city called Tiunju, they make porcelain dishes, of all sizes, the finest that can be imagined. They are made nowhere else, but only in this city. Thence they are distributed throughout the world’.118 Italians called cowry shells porcellani supposedly because the humped back of the shell resembled a piglet (porcellus, derived from porco). As Polo insinuated, cowries were harvested in the Maldives in the Indian ocean and were employed as currency throughout Asia and Africa.119 In Ibn Battuta’s fourteenth-century travelogue, the traveller confirms cowries were used as a form of currency as well as for ships’ ballast, but were first obtained in the Maldives: ‘an animal which they gather in the sea and put into pits where its flesh disappears, leaving its white shell’.120 Those involved in global trade in Europe would have been acquainted with these shells, as Venetian merchants acquired them in Cairo as ballast, but would then use them as currency in ports in other countries, such as in Portugal and Morocco. The Portuguese then traded the shells in West Africa for ivory and enslaved peoples, underscoring the much grimmer side to the circulation of ceramics and shells.121 The association between cowries and porcelain was likely made because of the resemblance in their white milky material. Surviving examples from the sixteenth century demonstrate cowries were transformed by mounts into spoons or nutmeg graters, likely used as wondrous objects in collecting spaces, but may have also been used as utensils to ward off certain poisons, similar to porcelain ceramics.122 However, the use of the term to describe both ceramic vases and cowries underscores both as important mediators. The cowry shells recall and resonate with the kula shells of the Western Pacific made famous in anthropological literature, whereby the status of an individual depended on his or her ability to collect and exchange the highly desirable shells.123 Porcelain was used as a symbolic gift between rulers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, while the shells were used as currency, but both functioned as negotiators within complex modes of exchange.

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The extent to which the geographic area of Jingdezhen was associated with porcelain manufacture is hard to determine, but as explored in Chapter 3, it is likely very few collectors in Italy would have even associated it with China. Even in the seventeenth century, within China, porcelain was connected not to the kilns in Jingdezhen but Raozhou, where buyers often stayed overnight as there was no inn for travellers at Jingdezhen. Within China, porcelain was commonly called ‘Rao’ and characterised in the Song period as ‘Rao jade’ or ‘precious jewels of Raozhou’.124 In Portugal, it was not usually referred to as porcelain but louça da India, a term that had its roots in the first voyage by Vasco da Gama in 1499, which brought porcelain back to Europe via India. In 1563, a Portuguese cleric dining at the Vatican explained to Pope Pius IV that it ‘comes from India and is made in China’, pointing to how important nodes of exchange were not simply for the movement of goods but also for contemporary associations of objects and their motifs.125 MIGRATING MOTIFS

Words as Things If contemporaries searched for ways to identify things through words, they were also confronted with unknown scripts on objects that turned words into things. The presence of scripts, pseudoscripts and their transmutation into decorative motifs underscores how ornament can be meaningful beyond language (Figure 6 and Plate II; see also Figures 40 and 41, Chapter 5). The appearance of pseudoscript on portable objects in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not new. The insertion of pseudo-Arabic script in Italian paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has often been described as ‘exotic’, serving principally as accessories that were ‘literally senseless’ but conveying ‘symbolic meanings that differ . . . according to context’.126 Moving beyond a simple explanation of ‘ignorance’ or confusion, I suggest here that it is important to contemplate how the presence of these signs coupled with the fusion of a variety of motifs on these vessels, could speak to a ‘meaningful mingling’, to use a term borrowed from Alicia Walker.127 Indeed, by examining these signs as significant rather than generic or ignorant, it is possible to locate the creation of meaning within the object itself, and how ornament in the form of script could become meaningful even if incomprehensible in terms of language. This is particularly important in places of convergence, like Spain where a mix of ethnicities and languages was prevalent and script might carry with it multivalent meanings.128 This is also further explored in Chapter 5, when I turn to the case of apothecary jars with often arcane inscriptions that served a particular function in medical knowledge and worked to stress the authenticity of the apothecary.

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In September 1498, Isabella d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua wrote to Paride Ceresara, her humanist adviser, thanking him for the samples of ‘Syrian or Babylonian sacred letters’ he had sent, probably meaning ‘Syriac or Aramaic’.129 Such a confusion and uncertainty provides an indication of the interest in foreign letters on an associative level rather than a fully cognitive one. Isabella was likely interested in these ‘sacred letters’ as a holy language, with links to antiquity, Christian origins and even divinity. Inscriptions, like signatures, had the ability to convey meaning on a symbolic level beyond the literal message, through form and context.130 In March 1511, Lorenzo da Pavia wrote to Isabella d’Este about a metal vessel: My brother [is also] bringing a large damascened vase in a beautiful shape, inlaid well and with some large letters ala morescha, the most beautiful I have ever seen. And also, I have another smaller vase with cover – if you want it, I’ll send it – worked in a similar way but in the modern manner, done by the hand of the best master that can be found in Damascus.131

This passage is revealing on a number of accounts, as it conveys both a specific and generic knowledge. Firstly, the reference to ‘large letters ala morescha’ suggests ignorance of what the letters convey and even the specific script, yet Lorenzo da Pavia seems to suggest this serves a decorative function, which places the object as one from afar. This goes beyond simply collecting the ‘exotic’, rather as Rodini has observed, primary sources convey that contemporaries often placed emphasis on style and technique, rather than specific origins.132 Lorenzo is a discerning agent; his description conveys an astute knowledge of what is available on the market in Damascus, and in particular, the different styles and techniques of metalwork on offer. He mentions the hand of the best master but not the artist’s name, an emphasis here again on technique rather than attribution. It is hard to know what ‘the modern manner’ refers to but it is clear Lorenzo was able to make a comparison of difference between the two. The dish with script may have looked similar to a number of vessels with large script, such as a bowl now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with inscriptions praising Sultan Qaitbay (Figure 6) dating from his rule, somewhere between 1468 and 1496. The vase with cover in the ‘modern manner’ may have been referencing surviving examples in museums that bear a tighter knot pattern with a blackened ground, often with blank shields ready for customisation, or it may have referred to another form of design, such as star patterns found on metalwork belonging to the Este/Aragonese in Modena (see Figures 10 and 11 and Figure 36, Chapter 5). The inability to read scripts transforms the ‘reader’ into a viewer, translating text into shapes and lines. This might have been the appeal for collectors who looked upon Arabic inscriptions as geometric forms and motifs that might inspire other creative works. The handling of these objects in space would

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fig 7 Tughra on a letter from the Ottoman envoy Mustafa Beg to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, from 19 April 1497, Archivio di Stato di Milano SPE 646. Photograph by author. By concession of the Ministero dei Beni e le Attività Culturali (protocollo 2384 del 16.05.2022).

have also enlivened script, such as the way the light shines on the script and patterns in Figures 6 and 10, transforming them. The extent to which these inscriptions might inspire patterns and motifs could occur in diverse ways. A letter in the archives in Milan from the Ottoman envoy, Mustafa Beg to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, from 19 April 1497 written in Italian is marked by a grand insignia and seal (Figure 7).133 This script presumably illegible to Ludovico, juxtaposes itself against the legible script, acting as a sort of frame on the left margin, not part of the text and yet integral to the letter, ensuring its authenticity. Composed of horizontal parallel lines with S-like flourishes, it suggests the flourishing of the hand that wrote it. The seal on the exterior, renders a similar form but now framed in a black circle, a reversal of negative and positive space; the white script becomes a geometric pattern, in its stamped form. This abstract geometric form was intentional; known as the tughra, it was a calligraphic emblem of the sultan’s authority, used on official correspondence as well as coins. First employed in 1324, it developed into a complex form, which was composed of three vertical shafts and two concentric oval loops. It was intentionally not easily read or copied, executed by an official court artist; it was

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fig 8 Tughra (insignia) of Sultan Süleiman the Magnificent, ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 1555–60. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1938, 38.149.2.

also sometimes embellished with decoration by an additional illuminator. An example of the tughra of the Ottoman Sultan, Süleiman the Magnificent shows how elaborate the sign could become, where the negative space in-between oval loops has been filled with concentric motifs (Figure 8).134 Within the Italian court of Milan, it would have carried with it an aura of authority and unfamiliarity, even if it could not be read. These motifs soon migrated across media, sometimes called ‘Golden Horn’ or tughra motifs, and were often found on ceramics made in Iznik in the sixteenth century, but also adapted in Italy. An Iznik example from 1529 (Figure 9) displays scrolling florets in a band of pattern at the top, while the lower body is decorated with spiral scrolls with leaves and hooks, creating concentric circles. The circular decoration is inspired by the tughra motifs with concentric circles mimicking actual text, written in Armenian on the base as well as on the collar.135 This same tughra motif, further abstracted and simplified, can be found on other albarelli such as an example in the British Museum, thought to have been made in Genoa in the latter part of the sixteenth century, underscoring the ways in which motifs and script travel and transmute across cultures and in turn, create objets croisés but also give rise to creative responses.136

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fig 9 Ottoman bottle, glazed pottery, Iznik, Turkey, 1529. © The Trustees of the British Museum, G.16.

Mobile Motifs The interchange of motifs recycled and reshuffled, which migrated from one object or material to another and then returned back to be translated again, demonstrates a trajectory of circulation and underlines the notion that objects never reflect just one cultural tradition. For example, Chinese porcelain employed cobalt ore imported from Persia for the decorative motifs that were received and translated across the world. These in turn would inspire local

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Persian decorations on textiles, carpets and metalwork that might make their way back to China, where potters would adapt these so-called ‘foreign’ designs into their blue and white patterns, only to be recirculated across the world again. Anna Contadini has termed this criss-crossing of motifs across media the ‘freeing of the motif’, resulting in unclear provenances or ‘national’ identities.137 This concatenation of motifs, with no real ‘origins’ signals the crossed histories of so many objects discussed in this book, but how did this process occur and how might we trace the very local repercussions of these translations in the Italian courts? While this chapter offers an analysis of ornament, in its textual, visual and material means, the individual chapters that follow offer much more in-depth articulations of local reception and interpretation of these objects and their motifs. However, a focus here on metalwork will illustrate some key points, particularly in relation to language and the circulation of motifs. As exemplified by the term damascene, metalwork with its interlacing of complex patterns and lines, also contributed to new designs being incorporated into Italian production. As discussed, these were often made in brass, inlaid with silver and sometimes with gold and a black organic compound but their point of manufacture remains uncertain.138 Metal Mamluk incense burners or handwarmers provide provocative examples of how such objects came to be used in Italy, how their shapes and technology were part of an interchange of knowledge, and how their motifs soon became translated too, as explored in Chapter 5. We have seen how inventories and other primary sources described these motifs and how metalwork raises problems of identifying a site of manufacture, but how did contemporaries describe this process of translation? And how were these motifs incorporated into local designs beyond metalwork? In 1550, Giorgio Vasari referred to damascene wares in his technical prefix to The Lives of the Artists. Here, he explains how the damascene motifs had become so popular they were applied across media on a variety of different types of objects: In imitation of the ancients, the moderns have revived a species of inlaying in metals, with inlaid designs in gold or silver, making surfaces either flat or in half or low relief; and in that they have made great progress. Thus we have seen works in steel inlaid in the manner of tausia [tarsia], otherwise called damascening, because of its being excellently well done in Damascus and in all the Levant . . .. Wherefore we have before us today many bronzes and brasses and coppers inlaid in silver and gold with arabesques, which have come from those countries; and among the works of the ancients we have observed rings of steel, with half figures and leafage very beautiful. In our days, there is made in this kind of work armour for fighting all worked with arabesques inlaid with gold, also stirrups and saddle-bows and iron maces: and now much in vogue are such furnishings of swords, of daggers, of knives and of every weapon that men desire to have richly ornamented.139

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Vasari articulates metal inlay as a classical tradition, yet with its site of excellence now located in the Levant. He employs ‘damascening’ to describe the process, while the motifs are referred to as ‘arabesques’. Surviving metalware in the galleries in Modena showcase examples that can be connected to the Este collections, including those owned by Eleonora d’Aragona, as discussed more fully in Chapter 5. One example of a Mamluk basin with lid shows a different sort of geometric interlocking shape, in the form of stars, while the body bears script (Figure 10). A spherical incense burner bears interlocking geometric and vegetal scrollwork with silver inlay (Figure 11). These motifs and their complex interlocking designs were soon adapted and translated onto other material culture. A knot design by Leonardo da Vinci from the late fifteenth century signed ‘Accademia Leonardi’ and later copied by Albrecht Dürer demonstrates just how quickly such patterns could spread through the reproducible technology of print (Figure 12).140 Indeed, similar knot patterns appear in the Sala delle Asse in the Sforza castle in Milan, underscoring the migration of motifs across media. Vasari referred to Leonardo’s pattern as an example of how he ‘waste[d] his time in drawing knots of cords [gruppi di corde], made according to an order, that from one end all the rest might follow till the other, so as to fill a round; and one of these is to be seen in stamp, most difficult and beautiful, and in the middle of it are these words, “Leonardus Vinci Accademia”’.141 For Vasari, this sort of decoration or ‘ornament’ was deemed a waste of an artist’s time, leading to what would later be understood as ‘frivolous ornament’. Even though Leonardo’s motif is actually not continuous, the endless interlocking of motifs can be articulated as an approach to space more commonly found in ‘Islamic’ art of the period and makes a case for the ingenuity that is behind such patterns. Sylvia Auld’s study of Mamluk metalwork designs has outlined a difference in approach to concepts of space. In ‘Islamic’ design, space is indefinite whereas in early modern ‘European’ design, space is often defined or finite. This is often evident in borders, where on ‘Islamic’ wares, a repeat pattern might end at a border with a quarter or half motif, suggesting it goes on until infinity, whereas in European designs, the viewer is presented with a completed pattern. This also extends to different approaches to negative and positive space, where in European designs negative space is often secondary, while in Islamic design, negative space is as important as positive, with geometric patterns that often make it difficult to discern between primary and secondary elements; thus, also underscoring a continuous infinite space.142 A 1597 text by the Safavid court artist and librarian, Sa¯ diqı¯ Beg, shows an attention to motifs and their use in both fields: ‘Whatever your basic pattern be, in drawing your sketches you must be certain to attach equal weight both to the actual design, say, a floral lead (barg) and to the field (bu¯ m) in which it lies’.143 There is a risk here in essentialising ‘Western/Christian’ versus ‘NonWestern/Islamic’ approaches to space, but what is important is the ways in

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fig 10 Lidded basin, brass inlaid with gold and silver, Mamluk (Syria or Egypt), fifteenth century, Galleria Estense, Modena. Photograph by author.

fig 11 Perfume/incense burner, brass, pierced, engraved and silver damascened with black lacquer infill, Mamluk (Syria or Egypt), fifteenth century, Galleria Estense, Modena. Photograph by author.

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fig 12 Albrecht Dürer, embroidery pattern with seven six-pointed stars and four corner pieces, after Leonardo da’ Vinci, woodcut, before 1521. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The George Khuner Collection, Gift of Mrs. George Khuner, 1975, 1975.653.105.

which artists’ approach to space in the area of ‘ornament’ was translated from one centre of production to another. Significantly, this approach to space also has a bearing on our interaction with these objects in space, a point to which I will return shortly. In Dürer’s various translations of Leonardo’s design (Figure 12), the four floating knots at the border of the print have been incorporated as framing devices, as if mounts, with a flourishing detail of tendrils that appear in

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fig 13 Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, knot designs, Essempio di recammi, 1527, Venice: Giovanni Antonio di Nicolini da Sabio e i Fratelli. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935, 35.75.3(1–55).

opposition, a ‘Westernising’ motif that occupies positive space and is finite.144 Interlocking designs such as these might have made European artists more attentive to their own creative use of negative and positive space, and the metamorphic capabilities of line, an issue discussed further in Chapter 3.145 By 1527, Giovanni Antonio Tagliente had published a pattern book with numerous designs that were looking to ‘Eastern’ prototypes, with damascene patterns, arabesques and scrollwork (Figure 13). His Essempio di recammi was addressed to women to use with their ingegno for stiches, but it was also, as he said, ‘useful for any artist’ looking for ‘many and various ornaments of

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design’ (molte & ornate varieta de disegno). The designs are mostly unlabelled, but in the text he notes various stitches, including damaschino as well as motifs including ‘marvellous circles, groppi [knots] moreschi, and arabeschi’.146 In some examples, the designs appear as if they are intended for ceramics, such as a circular design with a damascene frame that encircles a central representational image, while others are clearly drawn from bookbinding. The designs in Figure 13, show a mix of examples that seem to draw on Mamluk metalwork and Ottoman ceramics, with the central design resembling the geometric knot patterns derived from damascene ware. The bottom left circular pattern recalls the concentric pattern found on the incense burner in the Modena galleries (Figure 11). The top left and bottom right examples resemble the split palmette designs often seen on Ottoman ceramics and fabrics, with the top right and bottom left patterns combining these two elements. Similar designs also appear in patterns published by Francesco Pellegrino, first in 1530 as La Fleur de la Science de Pourtraicture and then later in 1543 and 1546 under the title Livre de Moresques. Here, numerous knot patterns and interweaving split palmette designs were provided, encouraging the reader to use them for different purposes and materials, such as bedcovers, metalwork, coffers etc. Pellegrino only employed the term moresques throughout, but notes in the introduction that this ‘portraiture’ is not only drawn from the antique but the modern, from ‘Italy, France, Germany, and countries of the Levant’.147 Pellegrino’s publication first titled ‘la Science’ and the repeated use of the word scienza in Tagliente’s publication, particularly in relation to the scienza del far di groppi (the science of making knots), suggests a theorisation of the knot design, perhaps even drawing on Leonardo’s work.148 While Tagliente employed a number of motifs, from floral to geometrics, groppi were the only pattern he actually explained. Taking the reader step by step, he notes ‘the true beauty of interlacing [groppeggiare] is to braid one cord from below and the other one from above; the interlaces done by those who do not follow such rules will lack grace. See, therefore, that the said interlaces come out being most excellent, and that they have variety’.149 Variety, as we have seen, was an important trope for both humanist compositions and for collections, and this had now extended to the execution of ornament. Between 1527 and 1600, 190 textile pattern books were published in Italy, most of them in Venice, revealing a new taxonomic approach to, and an interest in, ornament, not seen previously.150 Ceramic examples show how ceramicists incorporated these designs. A ceramic plate from 1537 now in the Victoria and Albert museum, for example, shows how ceramicists such as Maestro Giorgio Andreadi of Gubbio adapted these interlocking motifs as larger patterns for the interior decoration of a dish, where the negative space of the dish mimics the dark compound of the black niello found on metalwork, while the addition of

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lustre, added in a later firing stage, mimics shining metal.151 We have here a sense of transmateriality: a ceramic plate referencing another medium, that of metal. In Piccolpasso’s manuscript, the interlocking knot patterns were identified as tirata combined with a floral pattern he referred to as porcellana (Figure 14).152 A similar rendering of these foliage motifs also appeared in Ferraiolo’s marginalia in his chronicle of Naples, suggesting the goldsmith who decorated this book might have been looking at similar designs and reveals how transfer and translation could occur (Figure 4, Chapter 1). These patterns can also be found on surviving ceramics (such as Figure 18, Chapter 3 and Figure 25, Chapter 4) and on their European etui or leather covers (see Plate IV, Chapter 3). In another illustration, Piccolpasso adopted a knot pattern at the centre of the ceramic with the floral pattern ‘framing’ it, this time using the term groppi, providing two examples of how to incorporate these knot patterns (Figure 15).153 A simplified version of these knot patterns also appears on blue and white ceramics, often employing cross-hatching with interlocking circular ends, with varied execution success (see Figure 41, Chapter 5 where there are some errors). A reflection on terminology is key here, as gruppi or groppi appear throughout primary sources, those published in print as well as in inventories from the fifteenth century, suggesting they refer to knots or interlaces, as described by

fig 14 Cipriano Piccolpasso, porcelana and tirata; sopra bianchi and quartiere, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557. © Victoria & Albert Museum, MSL/1861/7446, f. 69V–70R

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fig 15 Cipriano Piccolpasso, Groppi con fondi e senza and candelieri, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557. © Victoria & Albert Museum: MSL/1861/7446, f. 70V–71R.

Tagliente. In Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory of 1493, we find two wool carpets similarly described as decorated with gropi ala morescha di piu gropi, presumably Ottoman or Mamluk, as well as a horse covering with a knot pattern.154 In the inventory of the Duke of Calabria, Don Ferrante d’Aragona, in Ferrara in 1527, two pieces of Chinese porcelain were described with gruppi patterns, one in blue and white and the other in celadon: Two other taccette of white porcelain decorated with blue inside and outside, with one decorated with a dragon in the middle, and the other with an animal’s head turned into knots. A tianello of green porcelain with its lip entirely decorated inside and outside in the style of a knot and at the centre a rose.155

Leonardo uses gruppi throughout his notebooks to describe designs for things as wide ranging as patterns for carnival dress, brass plates, velvet and leather.156 Knots were a key feature in Milanese dress, as depicted in portraits of the time, while knots were a common decorative motif for the Sforza, such as the Camera delli Gruppi in the Sforza castle of Pavia identified in documents from 1469, as well as the well-known knot work in Leonardo’s Sala delle Asse in the Sforza castle in Milan.157 The Sala delle Asse’s ‘diversi gruppi bizarri’, as Gian Paolo Lomazzo described the decoration in his Trattato dell’arte de la pittura, likely showcased Leonardo’s invention and ingenuity, but it has also been argued to

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have a relationship with textiles.158 The trees depicted in the Sala delle Asse have been identified as mulberry trees (morus alba), the leaves of which are the preferred food for the silkworm, while also conveniently playing on the patron Ludovico il Moro’s name. The golden cords that form the gruppi have also been interpreted as alluding to the gold silk thread that was a Milanese speciality. Indeed, the Sforza, throughout the 1450s and 1460s, made the silk industry a priority, forbidding the sale in Milan of foreign silk and prohibiting any counterfeit gold or silver threads in the weave. Under Ludovico, Milan’s silk was highly sought after and ‘the mulberries and silk that come from our Sforzescha’ were proudly shown off to visiting dignitaries as a sign of his prosperous reign.159 The motif of the knot, then, employed within the court of Milan became a sign of Sforza power, translating a design that might have originally been associated with import textiles and metalwork, but now made into a locally resonant sign of Milanese industry and manufacturing excellence. HAPTIC SPACE

As motifs migrated from imported objects onto locally produced artefacts, did they disrupt or alter Italian conceptions of decorative spaces on objects of material culture? Did these in turn alter new ways to engage with objects? The panoply of motifs that we see in later printed books such as Tagliente’s or Piccolpasso’s are also on display in the array of domestic objects we see in paintings from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.160 They suggest that real spaces were occupied by a variety of objects with surfacescapes that spoke to one another: floral patterns on porcelain sat next to damascene motifs on Mamluk metalware and the lustre on ceramics played with light, which in turn were placed on textiles or carpets bearing complex interlocking knot designs as well as worn on bodies that moved. These objects did not stand as imagescapes as they do in the paintings, placed on shelves just as a form of display, but rather were taken off, used, sometimes filled with incense or aromatics. As such objects were taken off shelves, their designs came alive, demanding that the viewer rotate them to reveal the endless patterns, or turn them over to discover new hidden patterns. Lustre on some ceramics would have also required a play with light in order to discern the patterns and images. In a well-known sketch in Piccolpasso’s manuscript, ceramicists are in the process of painting their wares, highlighting the two-dimensionality of applying an ornamental design onto the three-dimensionality of the ceramic, and evoking the imagescape/surfacescape paradigm, and the relationship between subject and object.161 On the wall behind the ceramicists appear twodimensional sketches, while the ceramicists hold the three-dimensional objects in their hands, with further pots displayed on the table with shading that highlights their three-dimensionality. A man on the right draws our attention

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to the physicality of the jug, its empty cavity enabling him to hold the object in place with his left hand. Piccolpasso highlights the haptic dimension of making, but similar engagement with these vessels occurred in their consumption and use. As mentioned, many of the patterns found on Mamluk metalware or Middle Eastern ceramics are interlocking and endless, lines multiply and double back on themselves, while the negative spaces are often occupied with endless flowers, leaves and dots. On Spanish ceramics, this endless repertoire of filled spaces – bryony, diaper and acacia patterns – led Richard Ettinghausen to describe these as horror vacui in 1979, a term that reflects a Eurocentric approach (see Figure 33, Chapter 5).162 As Laura Marks has argued, it is important to move beyond the ‘figurative prejudice’ of Art History that has often privileged the relationship between figure and ground, and instead pursue how the exploration of haptic space might have elicited a ‘rhythmic embodied response’ and a ‘tactile gaze’.163 Marks argues that as ceramic designs slowly moved from Iran to North Africa to Spain and then into Italy, the haptic space was ‘tamed’. If at first animals and other forms of representation were stretched, bent and abstracted to fill the circular dimensions of bowls, producing a ‘haptic space’, this abstraction became more mimetic to the extent that we finally get the sort of representations utilising Western perspectival systems seen in the istoriato wares of the sixteenth century produced in Deruta, Urbino and other Italian sites.164 The figurative and narrative takes precedence over the decorative and ornamental, and yet elements of the haptic survive, often in the margins, on the reverses or in the frames. The drug jars or albarelli explored in Chapter 5, underscore however that even when portraits become incorporated into local ceramic production in Italy, the tactility and haptic concerns of earlier ceramics remain, such as in the decorations that are infinite, running around the globular shapes that form the jars. The use of lustre and metallic sheen on some ceramics also emphasises a form of material mimesis and highlights how such ceramics required an engagement from viewers. For example, Plate II is a ceramic, which from afar, might parade as a metal bowl; on close inspection it shows its true material qualities. It then asks the viewer to engage with it, perhaps lifting it up, letting it play with light and even flipping it over to reveal a hidden image, as the reverse of this plate reveals a flying bull. Flipping it over would also reveal the true materiality of the object, its weight and tactility would be different than if it were made from metal.165 It is also important to underscore the difference between the haptic spaces on objects and the haptic spaces of objects. While paintings of the time turn these objects into images, they also suggest the concatenation of colours, motifs, surfaces and materials within the spaces of the studiolo or the domestic interior (Plate I, Introduction), which are also evoked by primary texts such as those

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quoted by Pontano and others. Objects occupy their own object landscapes or ‘objectscapes’ that interact with subjects as well as other objects. These are ephemeral, shifting with the light of day, and with the other objects, images and materials within the space. CONCLUSION

As this chapter has shown, from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries we see an increased interest in classification, on both textual and visual levels. In the move to a social biography, or even itinerary of objects, it is important to think about the difference between the singular and the generic. Familiar to many proponents of the social life of things, as Igor Kopytoff argues, ‘an eventful biography of a thing becomes the story of the various singularizations of it, of classifications and reclassifications in an uncertain world of categories whose importance shifts with every minor change in context’.166 The variety of objects described by Pontano belong to a generic set of goods, ones which represent different categories to sufficiently denote splendour and variety – those identified from Turkey or sporting arabesque patterns that denote they come from ‘somewhere else’. Specific objects mentioned in inventories were classified against each other: that vase in blue and white, but not the one that is Chinese porcelain; that one from Pesaro, but not the one decorated alla damascina. The encounter with a new object or motif might also have had unexpected results, leading to creative innovations. By the sixteenth century, attempts at taxonomy appeared in pattern books, and yet ironically, as these books sought to distinguish different patterns into categories, their reproducibility enabled local producers to mimic those motifs associated ‘from somewhere else’, giving rise to confusion over origins. NOTES 1

2

Cipriano Piccolpasso, I tre libri dell’arte del vasajo (Roma: Stabilimento Tipografico, 1857); Cipriano Piccolpasso, The Three Books of the Potter’s Art: I tre libri dell’arte del vasaio (London: Scholar Press, 1980); Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio MSL/1861/7446, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1557, 66R; Maria Vittoria Fontana, ‘Islamic Influence on the Production of Ceramics in Venice and Padua’, in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), 286–7. See the detailed overview in Chapters 4 and 5 in Gülru Necipo˘glu, The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture. Topkapı Palace Museum Library MS H. 1956 (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1995). See also Lara Eggleton, ‘History in the Making: The Ornament of the Alhambra and the PastFacing Present’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–29; Anne Leonard, ed., Arabesque Without End: Across Music and the Arts, from Faust to Shahrazad, 1st ed., Music and visual culture (London: Routledge, 2021).

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3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16

17

18

19

Achille-Constant-Théodore-Emil Prisse d’Avenne, quoted in Necipo˘glu, Topkapı Scroll, 62. Ibid., 63. See also Gülru Necipo˘glu, ‘The Concept of Islamic Art: Inherited Discourses and New Approaches’, Journal of Art Historiography 6, no. June (2012): 4–8. Quoted in Jessica Rawson, Chinese Ornament: The Lotus and the Dragon (London: British Museum Publications, 1984), 19. Much scholarship discussing ornament draws on Alois Riegl. See for example Rawson, Chinese Ornament, 24–5. Also the numerous essays in Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne, eds., Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Rawson, Chinese Ornament. From The Sense of Order. A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Quoted in Rawson, Chinese Ornament, 25. These borrowings are most evocatively demonstrated in studies of the transcultural exchange of objects. See for example, Anna Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament in the Style World of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 290–308; Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Jonathan Hay, ‘The Passage of the Other: Elements for a Redefinition of Ornament’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 62–9. Necipo˘glu, Topkapı Scroll, 66. Finbarr Barry Flood, ‘The Flaw in the Carpet: Disjunctive Continuities and Riegl’s Arabesque’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 92. Quoted in Necipo˘glu, Topkapı Scroll, 67. Ibid., 75–83. Ibid., 79. Ibid., 83. Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1993). Laura U. Marks, ‘The Taming of the Haptic Space from Málaga to Valencia to Florence’, in Gazing Otherwise: Modalities of Seeing in and beyond the Lands of Islam, eds. Olga Bush and Avinoam Shalem, 32 Muqarnas (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 257. For a critique of the unproblematised religious definition of the unity of Islamic art see Necipo˘glu, ‘Concept of Islamic Art’, 9–12. This is a reprint of Gülru Necipo˘glu, ‘The Concept of Islamic Art: Inherited Discourses and New Approaches’, in Islamic Art and the Museum, ed. Benoît Junod et al. (London: Saqi Books, 2012). See also Avinoam Shalem, ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? A Plea for a Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 11–12. Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field’, The Art Bulletin 85, no. 1 (2003): 152–84, 153. Necipo˘glu has pointed out some of the limitations of Blair and Bloom in their scepticism in adopting theoretical approaches, Necipo˘glu, ‘Concept of Islamic Art’, 10, especially fn. 22. Such concerns have informed debates around the naming of new galleries, for example those at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which opened in 2011 under the name ‘The Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia’, while the new British Museum’s ‘Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World’ aims to demonstrate the cultural diversity of ‘Islamic art’. Nasser Rabbat, ‘What’s in a Name? Nasser Rabbat on the New Islamic Art Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York’, Artforum International 50, no. 5 (2012): 75; Louise Nicholson, ‘A New Context: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Collection of Islamic Art’, Apollo 2011, 36.

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20

21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48

See also Moya Carey and Margaret S. Graves, ‘Introduction: The Historiography of Islamic Art and Architecture, 2012’, Journal of Art Historiography, no. 6 (2012): 3–4. Gülru Necipo˘glu, ‘Early Modern Floral: The Agency of Ornament in Ottoman and Safavid Visual Cultures’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 132. Ibid., 132–3. Andrew Morrall, ‘Ornament as Evidence’, in History and Material Culture, ed. Karen Harvey (London: Routledge, 2009), 51–70. Ibid., 53. Necipo˘glu, ‘Early Modern Floral’, 136–7. Ibid., 135–6. Gülru Necipo˘glu, ‘From International Timurid to Ottoman: A Change of Taste in Sixteenth-Century Ceramic Tiles’, Muqarnas 7 (1990): 136–70; Necipo˘glu, ‘Early Modern Floral’. Ibid., ‘Timurid to Ottoman’, fn.49. Necipo˘glu, ‘Early Modern Floral’, 142–4. Ibid., 138. Stephen Campbell, The Endless Periphery: Toward a Geopolitics of Art in Lorenzo Lotto’s Italy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2019), 21. Ibid., 17–24. Alina Payne, ‘Wrapped in Fabric: Florentine Façades, Mediterranean Textiles, and Atectonic Ornament in the Renaissance’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 274–5. Anne-Marie Sankovitch, ‘Structure/Ornament and the Modern Figuration of Architecture’, The Art Bulletin 80, no. 4 (1998): 704. Margaret S. Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). See also Marta Ajmar, ’Looking INTO the Transcultural Object’, in EurAsian Matters: China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object, 1600– 1800, eds. Anna Grasskamp and Monica Juneja (Cham: Springer, 2018), 247–53. Graves, Arts of Allusion, 60–1. Jonathan Hay, Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2020). Hay, ‘Passage of the Other’, 66. Graves, Arts of Allusion. See also Hay, Sensuous Surfaces; Ajmar ‘Looking INTO’. Morrall, ‘Ornament as Evidence’, 56. Translated and quoted in Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Public Magnificence and Private Display. Giovanni Pontano’s De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts’, Journal of Design History 15, no. 4 (2002): 211–21. For the original Latin and Italian translation see Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1999), 232–4. Pontano, Virtù sociali, 233–4. Ibid., 235. Timothy McCall, ‘Brilliant Bodies: Material Culture and the Adornment of Men in North Italy’s Quattrocento Courts’, I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 16 (2013): 445–90. Graves, Arts of Allusion, 62–3. Morrall, ‘Ornament as Evidence’, especially 61–80. Elizabeth Rodini, ‘Mobile Things: On the Origins and the Meanings of Levantine Objects in Early Modern Venice’, Art History 41, no. 2 (2018): 246–65. For examples in the Chinese context see Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004). Anna Grasskamp, Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2019), 17. Patricia Mainardi, ‘The Crisis in Art History (special issue)’, Visual Resources 27 (2011): 303–5.

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49

50 51

52

53 54

55

56

57

58 59 60

61

62 63 64 65 66

This builds on work by anthropologists such as Arjun Appadurai and is further addressed in Hay, ‘Passage of the Other’; Jonathan Hay, ‘Toward a Theory of the Intercultural’, Res 35 (1999): 5–9. Rodini, ‘Mobile Things’, 3. An important example of this approach can be found in Flood, Objects of Translation. For itinerary over biography see Alexander A. Bauer, ‘Itinerant Objects’, Annual Review of Anthropology 48, no. 1 (2019): 335–52. The literature on the social and cultural nature of early modern maps/globes is vast, for a start see Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories. Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997); Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests. Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); Sean E. Roberts, Printing a Mediterranean World: Florence, Constantinople, and the Renaissance of Geography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013); Mark Rosen, The Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘Conceit of the Globe in Mughal Visual Practice’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007): 751–82. Rodini, ‘Mobile Things’, 8. Stefano Carboni, ed., Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797 (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), cat.159; Hess, The Arts of Fire; Patrick McCray, Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999); Hugh Tait, ‘Venice: Heir to the Glassmakers of Islam or of Byzantium?’, in Islam and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1999). Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 123; Carboni, Venice and the Islamic World, 344. Elizabeth Rodini, ‘Imitation as a Mercantile Strategy: The Case of Damascene Ware’, in Typical Venice? The Art of Commodities 13th–16th Centuries, eds. Philippe Cordez and Ella Beaucamp (Turnhout/London: Brepols/Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020), 107. Finbarr Barry Flood et al., ‘Roundtable: The Global before Globalization’, October 133 (2010), 8–12. Although in some later collections, labels did help articulate the origins of an object, see Federica Gigante, ‘New and Rare Items Coming from India and Turkey’, in Constantinople as Center and Crossroad, eds. Olof Heilo and Ingela Nilsson (Beyoglu: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2019). Clunas, Superfluous Things. Ibid., 50–1. ASMo G114. For Eleonora’s collections see Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), chapter 3 and appendix; Leah R. Clark, ‘The View from Ferrara: “Venetian” Objects in Este/Aragonese Collections’, in Typical Venice? Venetian Commodities, 13th–16th Centuries, eds. Philippe Cordez and Ella Beaucamp (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 185–99. Campbell, Endless Periphery, 16–17. It should be noted though that many of the paintings and sculptures are not attributed to any artist in Eleonora’s inventory, and one of the paintings by Mantegna is noted as copied by a ‘modenese’. ASMo G114 133R. Translation taken largely from Mola and Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Global Renaissance’, 11. Sabba di Castiglione, Ricordi (Venice: Francesco Lorenzini, 1562), 118V. Hay, Sensuous Surfaces, 77–8. Graves, Arts of Allusion. See especially chapter 2, ‘The Intellect of the Hand’. Castiglione, Ricordi, 114R. Translated in Lloyd H. Ellis, ed. Raffaello Borghini, Il riposo (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 50.

99

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67

68 69 70

71 72 73 74

75

76 77 78

79

80 81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

‘ad praticar’ la pace: et per confirmatione di questo lo p.to s. gran turcho ha promesso di mandar’ da casa propria ad questo s. Re uno suo ambax’ quale li portara ad pn’tare com argente et altre cose honorevole’. ASMi SPE 241. Quoted in Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 78. Asifa Majid and Stephen G. Levinson, ‘Differential Ineffability and the Senses’, Mind & Language 29 (2014): 407–27. Lia Markey and Jessica Keating, ‘“Indian” Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inventories: A Case-Study of the Sixteenth-Century Term’, Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 2 (2010): 283–300. Deborah Howard, ‘Death in Damascus: Venetians in Syria in the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, Muqarnas 20, no. 1 (2003): 143–57, 145. Piccolpasso, Arte del vasaio, 47R. Ibid., 66R. See also Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2001), 234–5. Howard, ‘Death in Damascus’, 84. For the original see Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, eds. Federico Stefani, Guglielmo Berchet and Nicolo Barozzi, vol. 15 (Venice: F. Visentini, 1886), October 1512, col 109. Scholars have classified these into various categories. For an overview see Sylvia Auld, Renaissance Venice, Islam and Mahmud the Kurd: A Metalworking Enigma (London: Altajir World Of Islam Trust, 2004). Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament’, 290. I do not choose to use this term as it is misleading, privileging a Eurocentric and largely orientalist reading, which denies the complexity of manufacture, exchange and translation. For a detailed history of the nineteenth-century literature see Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 36–40; Marco Spallanzani, Metalli islamici a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: SPES, 2010), 11–12; Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament’, 297. Anna Contadini, ‘Translocation and Transformation: Some Middle Eastern Objects in Europe’, in The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations. Art and Culture between Europe and Asia, eds. Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch and Anja Eisenbess (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010); Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament’. Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 41. Ibid.; Sylvia Auld, ‘Master Mahmud and Inlaid Metalwork in the 15th Century’, in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New York, New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007), 212–15; Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 142–3; Doris Behrens-Abouseif, ‘Veneto-Saracenic Metalware, a Mamluk Art’, Mamluk Studies Review 9, no. 2 (2005): 147–72. Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 36. Espositioni et introduttioni universali sopra la Geografia di Tolomeo. Quoted and translated in Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 37. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 43. For customs registers see Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Dipendenze della Sommaria (hereafter ASNa, DIP SOM) II 45. ‘Una botuga d/ 3 turchi i’ venesia da santa sofia li qualj tirano oro e cosa nova’. ASMo AMB VEN 10.61 Letter from Fra Bartolomeo to Ercole d’Este. Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice. Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 6. Rodini, ‘Mobile Things’, 246–65; Rodini, ‘Imitation as Mercantile Strategy’, 107–19. The idea of ‘transformer’ draws upon Bernd Roeck’s work, see Morrall, ‘Ornament as Evidence’, 57–8. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 98–104. Luke Syson, ‘Italian Maiolica Painting: Composing for Context’ in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Timothy Wilson (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 16.

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91 Ibid., 16. 92 Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, Dans l’atelier de l’apothicaire: histoire et archéologie des pots de pharmacie: XIIIe–XVIe siècle (Paris: ePicard, 2013), 97. 93 In numerous archival sources, damaschi is employed to describe textiles on display during festivities or worn on the body for grand occasions in Naples, as well as a common item for gifts. See various letters in ASMi SPE 200, 225, 232. 94 Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament’, 294–5. 95 ASMo G114. 96 ASMo AP 633 83V; AP 638 42V. 97 ASMo CR 3, 23 August 1485. 98 ASMo AMB VEN 13. 99 Quoted in Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 16. For a discussion of bianca sopra bianca, see Chapter 4 below. 100 Marco Spallanzani, Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence (Florence: S.P.E.S, 2007), 104–5. 101 Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1978), 169. 102 Ibid., 43. 103 Ibid., 157. 104 Guillermo J. de Osma, Las Divisas del Rey en los pavimentos de “Obra de Manises” del Castillo de Nápoles: años 1446–1458 (Madrid: de Fortanet, 1909), 11. 105 Eva R. Hoffman, ‘Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, Art History 24, no. 1 (2001): 17–50. For routes and roots see Flood, Objects of Translation, especially 5–6; James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997). 106 Catherine Hess, ‘Brilliant Achievements: The Journey of Islamic Glass and Ceramics to Renaissance Italy’, in The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance, ed. Catherine Hess (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), 12–13. 107 Luciana Arbace, ed., Valenza-Napoli Rotte mediterranee della ceramica/València-Nàpols, les rutes mediterrànies de la ceràmica (Valencia and Naples: Generalitat Valenciana and Commune di Napoli, 1997); Osma, Pavimentos de Napoles. 108 From account books belonging to Johan Ferrer in the Archivo del Maestre Racional, Valencia 8.959, quoted in Osma, Pavimentos de Napoles, 14–16. 109 Ibid., 19–20. 110 Flood, Objects of Translation, 4. 111 Bronwen Wilson, ‘Art History, Boundary Crossing, Making Worlds’, I Tatti Studies 22 (2019): 416. 112 Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 157. 113 Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 235–7. 114 Ibid., 236–8; Stephen Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450–1495 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997); Stephen Campbell and Alan Chong, eds., Cosmè Tura: Painting and Design in Renaissance Ferrara, Exhibition Catalogue, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, January 30–May 12, 2002 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Electa, 2002). 115 Quoted in Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art. Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010), 69. Matteo Ricci also did not know why it was called porcelain in the West. 116 Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 65. 117 L. F. Benedetto, The Travels of Marco Polo (London: Routledge, 2014), 187–9. 118 Ibid., 265. 119 Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 70–1. 120 H. A. R. Gibb and C. F. Beckingham, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325–1354, vol. I–V (Farnham: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994), 827. 121 Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 71.

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122 See for example this spoon and nutmeg grater in the V&A: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/ item/O91798/spoon-unknown/ https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O156611/nutmeg-grater-unknown/ 123 Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992); Jerry W. Leach and Edmund Ronald Leach, eds., The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 16–20; Nicholas P. G. Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1991); Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1984). 124 Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 45. Anne Gerritsen, The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 39. 125 Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 70. 126 Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 51. 127 Alicia Walker, ‘Meaningful Mingling: Classicizing Imagery and Islamicizing Script in a Byzantine Bowl’, The Art Bulletin 90, no. 1 (2008): 32–54. 128 Tom Nickson, ‘“Sovereignty Belongs to God”: Text, Ornament and Magic in Islamic and Christian Seville’, Art History 38, no. 5 (2015): 838–61. 129 ‘littere sacre or siano syrie o babilonice’ quoted in Alexander Nagel, Some Discoveries of 1492: Eastern Antiquities and Renaissance Europe (Groningen: The University of Groningen Lectures, 2013). 130 Walker, ‘Meaningful Mingling’, 47. 131 ‘Mio fatelo porta uno vaso grande damaschino con belisima forma molta bela e ben intaiado e con certe letre grande ala morescha, le pù bele che abia maie visto[. . .] E ancora n’ò uno altro vaso menore con el covergo - se quela lo vorà, lo mandarò, lavorado a quela foza ma lavore moderno, pura de mano del meliore maestro che sia a Damascho. [. . .] Adì ultimo marzo del [. . .]1511. Vostro Laurentio da Pavia in Venecia. [. . .]’ Quoted in Clifford M. Brown, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia: Documents for the History of Art and Culture in Renaissance Mantua (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1982). 132 Rodini, ‘Mobile Things’, 7. 133 ASMi SPE 646. 134 Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 108; Necipo˘glu, Topkapi Palace, 76–7. 135 John Carswell, Iznik Pottery (London: British Museum Press, 1998). 136 Albarello, Iznik ‘Golden Horn’ style, earthenware, Genoa, 1550–1600, The Trustees of the British Museum, 1990,0502.1. www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1990-0502-1 137 Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament’, 290; Anna Contadini, ‘Artistic Contacts: Present Scholarship and Future Tasks’, in Islam and the Italian Renaissance, eds. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini (London: The Warburg Institute, 1999), 9–11. 138 Anna Contadini, ‘Middle-Eastern Objects’, in At Home in Renaissance Italy, eds. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006), 308–21; Contadini, ‘Threads of Ornament’. 139 Translation with some minor changes taken from Giorgio Vasari, Vasari on Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Louisa S. Maclehose (London: J.M. Dent & Company, 1907), chapter 20. 140 See for example, Leonardo da’ Vinci (or after), ‘fifth knot’, knot design, with a central shield inscribed ‘Academia Leonardi Vin’, engraving, 1490–1500, The Trustees of the British Museum, 1877,0113.366, www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1877-0113-366 141 Life of Leonardo, Vol IV Gaston du C. de Vere, ed. Giorgio Vasari: The Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (London: Macmillan, 1912), 91. 142 Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 67–8.

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143 Quoted in Graves, Arts of Allusion, 63. 144 Dürer has a number of variations on the theme, all with dramatic tendrils. See other examples in the Metropolitan Museum such as ‘The Sixth Knot’ 18.13.4; ‘The Third Knot’ 1984.1201.34. 145 The added tendrils appearing like mounts indeed resemble the mounts that were added to the famous Priuli wine cup, turning a Mamluk vessel into a European cup, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 311–1854. https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O84934/thepriuli-wine-cup-wine-cup-unknown/ 146 Giovanni Antonio Tagliente, Essempio di recammi (Venice: Giovanni Antonio di Nicolini da Sabio e i fratelli, 1527). www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/357722. Met, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935: 35.75.3(1–55) 147 Pellegrino, Francesco di. Livre de Moresques (Paris: Hiérosme de Gormont, 1546). www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/351013. Met, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926, 26.71.8(1–34). 148 Carmen Bambach, ‘Leonardo, Tagliente, and Dürer: “la scienza del far di groppi”’, Achademia Leonardi Vinci: Journal of Leonardo Studies and Bibliography of Vinciana 4 (1991): 77. 149 Bambach’s translation, Bambach, ‘la scienza del far di groppi’, 77. ‘Peroche la uera bellezza del groppeggiare e cauaIcare uno do sotto l’altro di sopra, perche chi non osseruasse tali ordini, & groppi, nulla gratia hauerebbeno. Vedisi adunque che Ii detti groppi uengono a starbenissimo, & sono groppi uariati’. Tagliente, 27r. 150 These pattern books then spread across Europe, see Susanne Thürigen, ‘The Commodification of Ornament: Jacob Marquart’s Table Clocks’, in Typical Venice? The Art of Commodities 13th–16th Centuries, eds. Philippe Cordez and Ella Beaucamp (Turnhout/ London: Brepols/Harvey Miller Publishers, 2020), 121–41. 151 Maestro Giorgio Andreadi of Gubbio, plate with knotwork pattern, tin-glazed earthenware, 1537, Italy (probably Gubbio), Victoria & Albert Museum, 6864–1860. https:// collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O112752/plate-andreoli-giorgio/ 152 Piccolpasso, Arte del vasaio, 70R. 153 Ibid., 71R. 154 ASMo G114 116R. 155 BH Ms. 0947: 207V, 209R. This inventory is discussed in Chapter3, see also Appendix II. 156 Bambach, ‘la scienza del far di groppi’, 75. 157 Beatrice d’Este and Isabella d’Aragona are both recorded wearing clothing with knot details, and it also appears on caps and clothing in portraits. See Patrizia Costa, ‘The Sala delle Asse In The Sforza Castle In Milan’, PhD Thesis (University of Pittsburgh, 2006), 157–8. 158 Bambach, ‘la scienza del far di groppi’, 75; Costa, ‘Salla delle Asse’, 145–85. 159 Ibid., 148–52. 160 A good example is a detailed ‘still life’ from a Modenese Annunciation scene by Francesco Bianchi Ferrari and Giovanni Antonio Scacceri from the early sixteenth century displaying a repertoire of motifs showcased on leather, wood, ceramics and textiles (made for the oratory of the Confraternity of Santissima Annunciata, Modena, now in the Galleria Estense, Modena, inv. 476). 161 Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557. Victoria & Albert Museum: MSL/1861/7446, 16R: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1321808/li-tre-libri-dellartedel-manuscript-piccolpasso-cipriano/?carousel-image=2006AY2134 162 Richard Ettinghausen, ‘The Taming of the Horror Vacui in Islamic Art’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 123, no. 1 (1979): 15–28. 163 Marks, ‘Taming Haptic Space’, 255–6. 164 Ibid., 253–78. 165 www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/471774 166 Igor Kopytoff, ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 90.

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CHAPTER THREE

THE PEREGRINATIONS OF PORCELAIN From Mobility to Frames

INTRO DUCTION

Chinese porcelain was transported along the Silk Roads accompanied by other precious items, sought by global consumers, such as diamonds, gems, silks and spices.1 A functionary of the Ming dynasty describes the complex procedure to pack porcelain: In the capital of the Ming Empire, Peking, carts from Mongolia, Manchuria, Persia and Arabic countries were fully packed with Chinese goods to carry back to the countries from which the tributaries had come. Goods were stacked as high as thirty feet, including great quantities of porcelain loaded on dozens of carts. Each piece of porcelain for the long journey was filled with soil and beans. Then the pieces of porcelain were tied together with string. They were carefully placed in damp conditions and sprayed with water, until the beans grew and their roots spread around the porcelain to maintain the tight packing. Porcelain sent in this way to inner Asia was sold at ten times its original price.2

In this description, when mobile, Chinese porcelain became a frame for the natural ingredients – beans and soil – inserted into its cavities to protect it during travel. As the beans grew, their roots spread around the porcelain, mimicking the expensive gilt frames that would later be commissioned to decorate the ceramic as it made its way into princely collections around the world (Figure 16). Whether this indeed was the way porcelain was shipped, 104

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fig 16 Trenchard bowl, painted in underglaze blue, Ming dynasty, Jiajing reign (1522–66), Jingdezhen, China; silver-gilt mounts, London, England, 1599–1600. © Victoria & Albert Museum, M.945-1983.

this process offers an evocative metaphor for the peregrinations of porcelain and the multiple ways porcelain was framed and reframed, arresting it temporarily in time and space until it was made mobile again, sometimes through additional covers such as leather etui (cases) (see Plate IV). One of the earliest representations of Chinese porcelain in a European painting appears in a work by Andrea Mantegna, who worked at the court of Mantua, nearby to Ferrara (Plate III).3 Delicately held by the eldest Magus, the porcelain cup is framed by his hands, drawing the viewer’s attention to the material and sensorial qualities of porcelain for which it was prized, notably its translucency and smoothness as well as its blue and white motifs. Indeed, Mantegna has paid particular attention to rendering the blue and white motifs, with a framing band of foliate design and the use of multiple shades of blue to depict the floral patterns. In his right hand, the Magus holds the lid of the cup revealing the gold coins, one of the well-known gifts the Magi were famous for, along with frankincense and myrrh. Mantegna has captured the moment of the act of unveiling, underscoring the performative gesture of gift and reveal, while also drawing our attention (as well as the Christ child’s) to the porcelain cup as both receptacle and frame for the gold coins. It is not easy to tell from the painting, but the lid might not be porcelain but a metal mount, similar to the one on the Ottoman censer directly above the porcelain cup. It is rendered in a silvery tone, greyer than the translucent white of the ceramic.

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With an accentuated white line, Mantegna indicates the reflection of light at the top of its rim, suggesting the shimmery effect of metal rather than ceramic. The context of gifting practices provides another framework in which to situate this porcelain cup, as the ceramic was one of the prized artefacts along with aromatics gifted to Italian courts, from the Mamluk and Ottoman sultans, and in turn, regifted between Italian or European courts, often as political mediators. The porcelain cup might reference an actual porcelain piece in the collections of Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua or her mother Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara who had one of the largest recorded collections of Chinese porcelain in the fifteenth century, likely obtained through her natal family in Naples, the focus of this chapter. Eleonora had an incredibly large collection including hardstone vases, paintings by artists such as Bellini and Mantegna, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and metalwork.4 Her inventories are hundreds of pages long and yet, her collections have largely been neglected. Those scholars who have consulted her inventories have quickly passed by the pages recording porcelain for the few paintings by Mantegna and Bellini, revealing a hierarchy within Art History that has now only recently been overturned.5 Mantegna’s painting brings together crucial aspects of the reception of Chinese porcelain in fifteenth-century Italy, addressing key themes for this chapter. Porcelain is first considered in its mobility as a diplomatic gift and how its status as a gift was bound up in its reception and interpretation in Europe. The chapter then turns to the documentation of porcelain in inventories and on rare occasions in paintings of the time, to consider what the inventory of Eleonora d’Aragona can reveal in terms of how the material was described and how it was collected. Framing devices of porcelain were used as particular mediating strategies, which made this global commodity local, halting its mobility temporarily in customised surroundings. Framing devices such as mounts or etui point to the layering of frames and draws attention to how individuals would have encountered these objects – sometimes as decorative pieces in collecting spaces, while at other times taken out for use with aromatic substances. Attention is also paid to the sensorial conditions of porcelain, how contemporaries would have engaged in handling porcelain, such as its play with light. Finally, the chapter ends with a later inventory from 1527 of the Duke of Calabria who fled to Ferrara after the demise of the Aragonese in Naples, demonstrating how there was a portable pathway for porcelain from Naples to Ferrara. PORCELAIN AS GIFT

Much of the recorded Chinese porcelain coming into Italy in the fifteenth century was sent from the Mamluk sultans, as detailed in Chapter 1. Lists of

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lavish gifts from textiles to ceramics, and enslaved peoples to camels were frequently compiled to track the numerous objects the Mamluks gave and received from courts all over the world. From Yemen, the Mamluks received Chinese porcelain (400 or 500 in some lists) and yet when regifted to European courts, the Mamluks rarely exceeded thirty pieces at a time.6 Placed in perspective, European access to these goods was fairly limited and reflected a global distribution of luxury goods, whereby ‘Eastern’ courts had much better access to sought-after porcelain, spices and gems. These types of objects then, such as Chinese porcelain received from afar, spurred further interests in these materials and designs, as they were viewed and reported by ambassadors, diplomats and collectors. As noted in Chapter 1, the importance of porcelain as a gift is underlined in Giovanni Pontano’s De magnificentia, where the well-known Neapolitan humanist notes that ‘some that prefer the tiniest little vase of that material which they call porcelain to vases of silver and of gold even though the latter are of higher cost’. As Pontano attests, it is the beauty, rarity and elegance that can demonstrate the excellence of a gift.7 Pontano proceeds to remark on the rarity of a giraffe given to King Ferrante d’Aragona by the ‘Sultan of Syria’ (Mamluk), which points to how porcelain was often one of many rare gifts – accompanied by ceremony, ritual and embassy, and carried these associations with it, as it made its way into a collection. Porcelain could also be regifted within Italy. A fellow humanist at the Neapolitan court, Diomede Carafa, Count of Maddaloni wrote to Eleonora d’Aragona in November 1479, gifting a porcelain bowl to his former pupil (he had been Eleonora’s tutor). Carafa described it as a ‘scotellina di porcellana che porrà servire alla gumma’, likely referring to a small scudella or basin/bowl for specific use for an aromatic (as opposed to just display).8 According to Giovanni Florio’s 1611 dictionary, gumma is tree gum or resin used for aromatics (frankincense and myrrh, for example, are both resins).9 The bowl might relate to the entry for a small celadon basin in Eleonora’s inventory (uno scotellino di porzellana verde).10 Diomede was a wellknown collector and a key councillor to King Ferrante of Naples with a reputation as a ‘second king’, who may have received porcelain himself as a diplomatic gift to showcase in his palazzo or to regift.11 His palace was the site of his well-known collection, which included an antiquities garden and courtyard and a studiolo and was decorated with blue and white tiled floors.12 Paintings from the fifteenth century of the Magi – the ultimate example of gift-givers – have long been studied as evidence of the cross- and transcultural associations with gifts. This is underscored in Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi (Plate III), which offers a close-up example of this ritual of gift-giving, where the artist combines his interest in materials with his antiquarian pursuits, to deliver an image that allows the viewer to feel as if a privileged member of this intimate ceremony. Access to the Christ child thus also allows access to

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privileged viewership of these precious objects. In addition to the porcelain cup, the black Magus on the right holds an agate or alabaster vessel, while the other turbaned king holds a brightly orange-hued vessel, possibly made out of jasper and is likely an incense burner (although some art historians have described it as tombak ware, Ottoman metalwork). The attention to touch and the act of holding these objects is pronounced in the painting, reminding the viewer of the cycle of ceramics, from production to circulation to consumption. On the production side, it recalls the later treatise by Cipriano Piccolpasso where the craftsperson’s hands are intimately connected to the formation of the bowl (Figure 17). In terms of circulation, the work speaks to the travels of the Magi and the vocabulary of the gift. On the consumption side, the painting signals the opportunities afforded to touch such precious and rare pieces in the collections of the princely elite, such as those of the Gonzaga, Este or Aragonese. The porcelain cup’s scrollwork border and the floral pattern resemble surviving Ming ware, such as a cup now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 18; see also the similarity of the scrollwork to the scrolls appearing on the base of Figure 25, Chapter 4),

fig 17 Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557. © Victoria & Albert Museum: MSL/1861/7446, f. 55R.

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fig 18 Cup with stylised lotuses on a continuous stem of foliage and scrollwork border, porcelain, Ming dynasty, Jingdezhen, China, fifteenth–sixteenth century. © Victoria & Albert Museum, C.466-1923.

while its shape resembles one now held in the British Museum.13 Mantegna also highlights the different shapes of the vessels on display, through the way in which two of the Magi’s hands interact with the objects, and the play of light on the different material surfaces. The objects held by the Magi in Mantegna’s Adoration would have found a suitable home in the Marchioness of Mantua, Isabella d’Este’s collections and certainly her mother, Eleonora d’Aragona’s studioli. Indeed, the objects painstakingly portrayed in the painting may even be showcasing Isabella’s collections, as her inventory of 1542 reveals she owned porcelain as well as precious hardstones, similar to those on show in the painting.14 Two porcelain pieces were in a cabinet in her grotta and are described as in the shape of cups placed in mounts with feet and with rings for handles. Another was placed in a cabinet on the right of the antedetta grotta, also in a gold mount with feet described as being in the shape of a bell. A fourth vessel in a third cabinet is described as porcelain ‘of various colours alla moresca’, also placed in a gold mount with feet and handles. Eleonora d’Aragona was also a patron of Mantegna’s, owning at least two paintings by him, and relations between Mantua and Ferrara were very close through marriage and shared collecting interests, as well as geographical proximity.15 The details of the painting’s commission are unknown but it is generally dated to the late 1490s or early 1500s. Eleonora died in 1493 and the porcelain cup in the painting might even be a piece that her daughter Isabella had recently inherited from her mother.

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Porcelain was a unique gift between Europeans with mounts often added as a form of personalising the gift further. Documentary evidence survives for mounts from the fifteenth century while there are limited extant examples, as metal mounts were often melted down, although more survive from the sixteenth century. A blue and white bowl dating from the Jiajing period (1522–66) bears European silver mounts dated to 1554 and is also accompanied by an incised leather case, now in Bologna (Plate IV).16 The mounts include a dedicatory inscription in Latin on the central band that encircles the bowl: Pompeius Zambecarius Sulmonensis-Nuntius-Ad Regem-Lusitan. M-D.L. IIII (‘Pompeo Zambeccari from Sulmona Nuncio to the Kingdom of Portugal, 1554’). The bowl was gifted either by John III or Catherine of Austria to Pompeo Zambeccari, an Italian originally from Bologna, who served as papal nuncio in Portugal from 1550 to 1553. For Annemarie Jordan Gschwend, this inscription situates the porcelain ‘literally within a classical frame of reference’ but also marks the object forever as a gift. Sulmona is the birthplace of Ovid and thus, for Jordan Gschwend, it is a deliberate classical reference, making local and classical a ‘foreign’ artefact, referencing both the papal and Portuguese presence overseas. For the Portuguese, their growing power around the world would have been projected onto the bowl, as rulers of a new Roman Empire that stretched from India to Brazil.17 Yet, I would argue the mounts have made the porcelain into a transcultural or composite object, not simply a classical incorporation of a Chinese object. Indeed, the reference to Ovid might conjure up other notions of ‘in-betweenness’ and liminal states as an object undergoes a metamorphosis. The attempt to confine the object through mounts and make it classical underscores the inability to do so completely. The mounted bowl’s value lay in its ability to sit at the margins of the local and the global, the past and the present. This porcelain piece with its mounts thus asks us to consider how these objects pushed back against attempts to confine them within their European frames, and how they may have altered their new settings and the existing cultures of collecting. The inscription that emphasises the object as a gift was not uncommon and was an efficient way to prolong the act of gift-giving. In another surviving example from the sixteenth century, a bowl has been transformed into a goblet through the addition of silver-gilt mounts which bear the German inscription: Count Eberhard von Manderschedit brought this bowl as a suitable gift back from Turkey in the year 1583 and had it mounted subsequently in honour of his brother, Count Herman, to remain in the house of Blankenheim.18

As Anna Grasskamp has articulated, the inscription clearly states the cultural biography and social life of the object: where it came from, how it was exchanged, for what purpose and its projected destiny.19 The count had

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bought it in Turkey during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Geography here is specified twice: not in terms of manufacture but at point of purchase (Turkey) and clearly where the giver hopes it should remain (in the house of Blankenheim). As Grasskamp notes, Count Eberhard von Manderscheidt is making a ‘genealogical contribution . . . inserting himself into a material family heritage by means of a gift’.20 The point of purchase is key – we do not get a reference here to China, but one that situates the itinerary of the object within the biography of the count, as he made the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the theoretical framework of gift-giving from Marcel Mauss to Annette Weiner, the act of giving turns objects into ‘inalienable possessions’.21 The inalienability in the context of the Count Eberhard cup is the ‘investment of material culture with a genealogical meaning’, imbuing the porcelain cup with historical significance as it enters as an inheritable item into the ‘house of Blankenheim’.22 Remarkably, this shares parallels with the myths about how porcelain was made, particularly Marco Polo’s accounts. It was believed that one generation had to put the ceramic into the ground in order for the next to profit from it, so that the man who buries it ‘cannot hope to derive any personal profit from it, or make use of it himself; his son, who comes after him, will obtain profit therefrom’.23 The act of the gift for Count Eberhard was indeed a ‘keeping while giving’, a hope that by offering the porcelain with his inscription, it would be cherished and thus, he would be remembered for generations to come. History however tells us that this mounted bowl did not stay in the family long as it changed hands numerous times and was most recently sold at Sotheby’s in 1970.24 In this case, it is not the porcelain cup or even the mount itself that keeps the gift alive, but the presence of the inscription. Indeed, the Sotheby’s sale included another porcelain bowl with a very similar stem bearing lion masks and festoons, but with no inscription, yet having the same provenance as the gifted cup now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 19).25 The bowl was likely acquired at the same time in Turkey, brought home and sent to the same goldsmith commissioned with matching stems as ‘twin cups’, one with the inscription memorialising the gift and sent to the count’s brother, while the other a memento for Count Eberhard of his pilgrimage. DOCUMENTING PORCELAIN

Innovative approaches to inventories have given new insight into how individuals engaged with objects, the range of people who had access to collectable material, and the social and cultural significance (apart from the monetary worth) of things.26 Inventories can also raise more questions than can be answered, as they sometimes tell us only half the story, recording objects at a particular moment in time, without necessarily revealing their varied lives.

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fig 19 Bowl made into cup with mounts, porcelain decorated with underglaze blue (interior), enamel and gilding (exterior), Chia Ching export porcelain, Jingdezhen, China, Ming (1522–66), German gilt silver mounts, 1583. © Victoria & Albert Museum, M.16-1970.

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Looking more closely at Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory, we can begin to get a better understanding of how contemporaries described these objects and how they fit within a larger assembly of goods. As Eleonora d’Aragona’s collections have been dispersed and her porcelain has not been traced, this chapter pieces together the evidence that does exist, recorded in the inventory of 1493 (see Appendix I). Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara was the daughter of King Ferrante d’Aragona of Naples. Eleonora moved to Ferrara in 1473, when she married Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara and soon after began renovating her apartments in the Castel Vecchio and building new ones in the gardens of the castle. These spaces included two studioli, two chapels, as well as various rooms, which served multiple functions, from bedrooms to entertaining spaces.27 As mentioned, Eleonora had an impressively large and varied collection including hardstone vases, sculpture, ceramics and paintings by artists such as Bellini and Mantegna. Her porcelain collections amounted to over 170 pieces, which surpassed the Medici collections in Florence, long thought to be the largest in Italy (and perhaps Europe) at this time. The Archivio di Stato in Modena contains inventories and account books belonging to the household of Eleonora during her tenure as duchess, from 1473 to 1493.28 The only complete inventory was taken at her death in 1493 (Guardaroba (G) 114) and this is the only book that lists her collections of porcelain and provides a detailed record of her art collection. This 1493 inventory is organised around categories of goods, rather than by room and thus, provides no information on how her collections were displayed.29 The inventory begins with textiles and tapestries and progresses to ceramics (including the list of porcelain), then liturgical-related objects (altar frontals, ancone, vessels for the Eucharist), works of art (paintings and sculpture), books (she had an extensive library) and finally silverware, among numerous other items. Eleonora’s inventories and account books were mostly written by her guardorabiere, Gironimo Zigliolo, a courtier belonging to a family who was well ensconced within the Este court in Ferrara. Gironimo was renowned as being knowledgeable about materials and objects and was often used as a buying agent by the Este.30 The list of Eleonora’s collection of porcelain in the 1493 inventory is organised largely by colour, beginning with green porcelain (porzellana verde), amounting to seventeen pieces. This probably refers to a celadon glaze that gave the ceramic its green colour and was highly prized in China for its similarity to jade and its subtle decoration.31 Vases with celadon glaze were also listed among Lorenzo de’ Medici’s collection, with a surviving example in the Bargello in Florence.32 Descriptions of Eleonora’s vessels tend to be limited to shapes, ranging from vases to plates to water jars. One vase was described as a pumpkin (zucca), probably referring to its shape as there is a blue and white vessel described in the same

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manner.33 A sixteenth-century document related to the Medici household also lists a green porcelain vessel for use as a pumpkin (vaso di porcellana verde a uso di zucca) for the duchess.34 The use of zucca also appears in the list of gifts proffered from Qaitbay to Venice, which was filled with balsam, suggesting the shape might have had a particular function for aromatics.35 Although celadon is often monochrome, a surprising amount of decoration could be applied through low relief. While blue and white porcelain is often more discussed, the evidence of celadon suggests that porcelain was prized in Italy not only for its decoration but also for the way the material felt when touched and how it looked, an element that would be important in the viewing and handling practices of the studiolo where attention to materials played a role.36 Other pieces were indicated to be all white (schieta), while a few items have no identifying colour. The ‘white’ porcelain might be describing qingbai, a glaze carrying a light tinge that ranged from bluish grey to bluish green, produced during the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1206–1368) dynasties. The famous Gaignières-Fonthill vase is an example of this type, first belonging to the King of Hungary who added the now-lost silver-gilt and enamelled mounts when he gifted the piece to Charles III of Anjou, upon his accession to the throne of the Kingdom of Naples in 1381 (Figure 20, see also Figure 22).37 Although these wares date earlier than Eleonora’s time, it was not uncommon for vessels to make their way into European collections at a much later date, because of the circuitous routes they took as (often recycled) diplomatic gifts. The blue and white porcelain in Eleonora’s inventory is more varied and in some cases the compiler has provided further information on the decoration, the casing, the shape or the function: one small blue and white porcelain vase, for instance, is described as being used for rose water. This could simply indicate the shape of the vessel, but it also suggests that porcelain served a functional role, rather than being confined only to display, as is often assumed. An inventory relating to a Venetian merchant who died in Damascus in the fifteenth century confirms the use of porcelain as a receptacle for ginger, for example, and evidence from the sixteenth century in Ferrara indicates that some porcelain pieces were indeed moved from one room to another to serve the duke or used for confectionaries.38 In 1499, the porcelain vessels brought back to Portugal for King Manuel from the ‘King of Calicut’ were described in terms of their capacity to hold spices and liquids: ‘a porcelain pot [with] fifty pouches of musk, six porcelain bowls as large as large drinking vessels . . . and six deep porcelain containers, each of which can hold ten canadas [approximately 15 litres] of water’.39 In the Asian and Middle Eastern contexts, vessels’ shapes were altered to accommodate new dining practices.40 It is likely that in Europe the perceived magical properties of porcelain worked in tandem with the beliefs in the medicinal properties of the spices it held, alluded to in contemporary images of the Magi who often carry their gold, frankincense and myrrh in receptacles in a range of materials (including Chinese

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fig 20 Gaignières-Fonthill vase, porcelain with bluish-white glaze. China, Yuan Dynasty (1300–30). © National Museum of Ireland.

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porcelain (Plate III)). Porcelain was also used to hold aromatic perfumes in Naples, where a certain Paola della Pietra who produced odiferous waters and essences, maintained a perfume room, which held a number of costly receptacles. Paolo is recorded using five blue porcelain bowls (scodelle) as well as a porcelain plate for perfumes.41 The relationship between aromatics and their receptacles is addressed further in Chapter 5. Numerous vases, flasks and bowls in blue and white porcelain are mentioned in Eleonora’s inventory – 156 pieces in all. Some vessels appear to have been stored, stacked on top or within each other, such as eighteen small bowls ‘inside each other’.42 The inventory indicates how stacking solicited a physical engagement with the material as the compiler had, in one instance, initially written down one soup bowl, only to cross out the ‘one’ and replace it with a ‘four’, as he would have picked up the largest bowl only to reveal three inside it.43 This stacking was also used as a means to pack porcelain when shipping, as one Chinese source from the twelfth century notes ‘the small pieces are packed in the larger till there is not a crevice left’.44 Stacking also underlines another form of framing, as larger porcelain pieces were used to frame the smaller ones. Indeed, the layering process of ceramics was well known to Renaissance consumers. Ceramics often fit inside each other to make composite vessels, such as those for new mothers, as illustrated in Piccolpasso’s treatise (Figure 21).45 In Piccolpasso’s words, ‘all together they make one vessel . . . a thing of no small ingenuity’.46

fig 21 Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio. c. 1557. © Victoria & Albert Museum: MSL/1861/7446, f. 10V–11R.

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Little attention is paid in Eleonora’s inventory to describing the patterns on the porcelain, except for one piece which is singled out for its iconography; a vase with two lion heads on either side.47 The recording of the iconography here might indicate that the animals were easily describable and familiar – at least within the compiler’s cultural framework. It might also have been perceived as relevant in light of the patron, since the word ‘lione’ plays on the name ‘Lionora’. Descriptions of motifs are given greater attention and detail in a later Ferrarese document discussed at the end of this chapter, demonstrating a difference between compilers and changes over time. As evidenced in Chapter 2, the words used to describe porcelain and other blue and white ceramics can pose problems. Scholars have been right to assume that some early references to porcelain may not be referring to Chinese porcelain, but rather to materials that looked similar to porcelain. In Eleonora’s case, the compiler has made sure to distinguish porcellana from other ceramics, such as maiolica and damascene ware. While the list of porcelain in her inventory is mostly divided and categorised, so that the long list of porcelain is then followed by maiolica and other ceramics; there is some mixing. For instance, at what appears to be the end of the list of porcelain, we move on to maiolica, yet, the compiler has stumbled over some more porcelain and thus, we have three large pieces (Tre piadene grande di porzellana azura) sandwiched in between two entries for maiolica.48 Following the maiolica are ceramics da Pesaro, such as albarelli, but again, inserted in this list, we find one large porcelain vessel. It is crucial to note that the compiler, Gironimo Zigliolo, was an accomplished guardarobiere and was relied upon as a shrewd agent to procure goods by the Ferrarese court as well as discerning patrons such as Isabella d’Este. This contrasts with some compilers of inventories who may only be called in to fulfil that one purpose, rather than officiate regularly on the comings and goings of particular items. Indeed, throughout the Este accounts, Gironimo’s name appears as an individual eager to have his name associated with his responsibilities in maintaining and tracking the Este’s treasures, from counting and recording every pearl on individual jewels to weighing the silverware. It is thus essential to take a specific approach to understanding inventories and interpreting vocabulary and terms, which might reflect quite different levels of knowledge depending on the compiler and the reader, as explored in the previous chapter. Errors of transcription have appeared in the secondary sources publishing Lorenzo de’ Medici’s inventory of porcelain, which was taken after his death in 1492 (although known only from a 1512 transcription). The inventory describes a cupboard with seven shelves, where his porcelain was kept. In the literature, these items are often all recorded as porcelain, while a closer look reveals there was actually a mix of porcelain and non-porcelain items. This is partly due to the imprecise way in which it is recorded in the inventory as the compiler has listed the items on the shelves and then written

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in the right margin a curly bracket with the words di porcellana tutte (all of porcelain). However, among the named porcellana, are bowls made out of cane, clay vessels and earthenware jugs.49 As argued further below, this range of materials was part of the appeal in collections, used as a source of comparison. The unknown or confused provenances of certain types of objects, as Elizabeth Rodini suggests, reveals a paradigm of cultural composites, objects that ‘defy association with a particular site of production’ within a culture that placed emphasis on mobility and ‘material circulation’ rather than fixed categories.50 For example, in Eleonora’s inventory, four pieces of blue and white ‘damascene porcelain’ (dasmaschino di porzellani) is a similar term we find referenced in other sources of the time. Is this damascene pottery that looks like porcelain? It is likely that the reference to dasmaschino di porzellani is some form of blue and white ware, and likely referring to decoration and material rather than provenance. As described in Chapter 2, damascene was used to refer to a motif or pattern not always connected to a Syrian site of production. Eleonora’s ‘damascene porcelain’ might have looked similar to a blue and white Syrian drug jar (see Figure 2, Introduction) or a ceramic with blue and white patterns manufactured locally in Italy or even Spain (see Figure 41, Chapter 5). Damascus was of course not the only place producing blue and white ware. Ottoman pottery produced in Iznik and ceramics produced under the Timurids in Iran came in a variety of shapes and sizes, often displaying adapted chinoiserie motifs to suit local tastes, demonstrating the interlacing of cultural styles (Figure 9, Chapter 2).51 It is probable that Ottoman and Timurid wares were also described as ‘damascene’ or alla damascina. Within Europe, Spain was producing lustreware and blue and white ceramics that were inspired by Middle Eastern and Chinese products, often referred to as alla moresca (Figure 3, Introduction).52 As noted in Chapter 1, the porcelain that Lorenzo de’ Medici received from the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay was described by some contemporaries as alla moresca, which has generally been translated as ‘Valencian vases’ although Piero Dovizi da Bibbiena described these same gifts in a letter to Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice Orsini, as porcelain, underlining the problems of primary sources but also the uncertainty of Renaissance viewers.53 The motifs on Isabella d’Este’s porcelain were also described as alla moresca, likely referring to the decoration rather than any ‘Moorish’ origin. In one 1440 inventory compiled by a Niccolò di Donato, apothecary for Guasparre del maestro Cecchino di Arezzo, dishes placed in two forzieri were described as piattelli da Maiolicha, overo da Tunisi, demonstrating a confusion whether they were from Tunisia or were maiolica (presumably at this date from Spain).54 In any case, in Eleonora’s inventory, Gironimo has paid attention in distinguishing the different types of ceramics, revealing Eleonora had a wide range of ceramics in her collections.

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FRAMING: ARR ESTI NG MO BI LITY AND CAPTURI NG LIMINALITY (THE ‘IN-BETWEEN’)

Two vases belonging to Eleonora were set in gold mounts, while another had gold (gilt copper) embellishments around the mouth and added feet.55 Mounting porcelain was a common practice in Europe, dating back to the fourteenth century at least, although mounting other types of objects dates much earlier. Many porcelain pieces were mounted in frames, prompting us to consider what these frames did to the original object, but also in what ways did they alter the beholder’s interaction with the porcelain piece? Descriptions and surviving frames suggest that these revealed complex ‘surfacescapes’ and ‘objectscapes’ to use Jonathan Hay’s term.56 The addition of mounts and other forms of framing devices drew attention to shapes, forms and motifs, for both artists and beholders. Surviving mounts from before the sixteenth century are extremely rare but the descriptions in inventories and other documents provide us with the evidence on how porcelain was mounted at this time. In 1365, Louis, Duc d’Anjou, had a blue and white Yuan dynasty porcelain bowl richly mounted with silver gilt and enamel; the footed mount included six busts of apostles, while the silver rim was enamelled with hunting scenes, with gilt knobs set with pearls, garnets and even serpents’ tongues (probably fossilised shark’s teeth).57 The mounting at this early date suggests a combination of additions to the piece that served varied functions: a Christianising one through the presence of apostles, a courtly one through the hunting scenes, while the jewels augmented its status as worthy of display on a dressoir. The presence of serpent tongues also alludes to the belief in the apotropaic qualities of porcelain, as attested by a text, Libellus de notitia orbis (On Knowledge of the World) from 1402, which noted that porcelain ‘absorbs all the impurities, etc. of the poison and purifies it entirely’.58 Porcelain’s material and even its magical qualities were also described in an inventory of 1532 of Florimon Robertet as ‘so sound that if some evil people should soil it with poison to harm anybody it would instantly break of itself and fall into pieces rather than tolerate the evil beverage which was meant to injure our inside’.59 Such vessels could be displayed on the credenza, its name deriving from its function as a table where food was tasted and tested for poison so it could be ‘believed’ or ‘credited’ but that also displayed the wealth of the owner (literally how much credit an owner might have).60 In the late fourteenth century, in the will of Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of Navarre, a water pot of porcelain is recorded as having a silver lid and mount (couvercle d’argent et bordée d’argent).61 The 1465 inventory of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici lists a porcelain cup decorated in gold, while Isabella d’Este’s porcelain was all mounted.62 The well-known Gaignières-Fonthill vase, already mentioned, is an important example of an early mount, now lost, but recorded in an eighteenth-century drawing (Figure 22) and nineteenth-century prints.63

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fig 22 Drawing showing the Gaignières-Fonthill vase (Figure 20) transformed into an ewer with silver-gilt and enamelled mounts, watercolour on paper, France, 1713, Recueil de dessins, gravures et aquarelles, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Français 20070, f. 8r.

The drawing and prints attest to the framing and reframing throughout the various biographies of the object. In the nineteenth-century print, the neogothic architecture frames the mounted porcelain vessel in a niche, whereby the quatrefoil motifs on its body are accentuated to match those of the neogothic

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decorations that surround it.64 The drawing (Figure 22) has an accompanying description, which runs over three pages and explains and records the mounts in detail as well the object’s biography. The drawing demonstrates the difficulty in rendering a three-dimensional object and its mounts on a page. Here, the artist has provided additional drawings of the arms and the decorations of the vase’s handle as stand-alone studies. In addition, on the circular foot base the letters fly off the object and into the air, in order to record the entire inscription. We are reminded again of Hay’s surfacescapes and the multidimensionality of ornament and here, it is as if the object is trying to resist the flattening boundedness of the page, a reminder too how the mounts could be sites of interaction and resistance, such as in the Bolognese example (Plate IV). The Gaignières-Fonthill vase today is housed in the National Museum of Ireland; bereft of its mounts, it still bears the pockmarked scars of where the handle and spout were once attached (Figure 20). The addition of mounts was certainly not exclusively a European practice. Metallic mounts were prevalent in Iran, the Ottoman and Mughal Empires in the early modern period, where porcelain was collected in large quantities and was often exchanged in diplomacy (also often represented in contemporary miniatures).65 The addition of mounts could transform an object’s shape, form and function and could also serve to repair a broken piece, such as a maiolica dish mentioned in Eleonora’s inventory, repaired with copper.66 In some cases, precious and semi-precious stones were inlaid on the sides of the vessel to enhance value. Examples of this type can be found in the collections formed at the Topkapı palace in Istanbul.67 Some of the examples from the Topkapı collections, now in the British Museum, show shallow grooves added by (presumably Ottoman) jewellers, providing the means to mount jewels on the sides of the bowl (Figure 1, Introduction).68 In this case, the object has undergone not only a visual transformation but also a material one. It is practices such as these that have led Stacey Pierson to argue that these objects undergo a shift in cultural identity. In the case of Figure 1, the object is no longer only a Chinese bowl, but also an Ottoman one and therefore, becomes part of the local material culture of that region.69 Such mounts provide new ways to consider and reconsider the reception of Chinese porcelain. By enhancing these pieces with expensive mounts, as was the case with other rare objects such as hardstones, ostrich eggs and coconuts, a further sense of ownership and value was added to the object.70 In the case of porcelain, it fused local metalwork with a rare material made somewhere else. These mounts also encourage us to find new interpretive frameworks to understand transcultural objects. Grasskamp has used the frame as a theoretical tool to move beyond a Western paradigm and to offer new transcultural perspectives on collecting.71 While the frame has traditionally been associated with European collecting practices and in particular pictures in frames, framing as an activity in relation to material culture, paintings or architecture is one that

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is employed across cultures.72 In the case of metal mounts on porcelain, Grasskamp argues that these should be studied in relation to the parergon, a term today probably most associated with the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, but its use, especially in the art historical context, dates back to Pliny the Elder.73 It is in his discussion of the painter Protogenes that Pliny uses the term: some say that he was only a ship-decorator down to his fiftieth year; a proof of which, it is asserted, is the fact, that in decorating the Propylæum of the Temple of Minerva, situated in one of the most celebrated spots in Athens, where he has painted the fine picture of Paralus and Hammonias, known by some as the Nausicaa, he has added in the side pieces of the picture, by painters called “parerga”, several small ships of war; wishing thereby to show in what department that skill had first manifested itself which had thus reached the citadel of Athens, the scene of his glory.74

In this case, the parergon of the ship becomes a significant sign, underscoring the artist’s presence, acting as a pictorial signature. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the parergon featured in art historical writing, and importantly for this study, in publications on collecting and the kunstkammer, from Samuel Quiccheberg to Franciscus Junius. For these two authors, it was discussed in terms of material culture, such as foliage applied to things like ‘sword hilts and drinking pots’ or as ‘embellishment’ and thus, can be connected to ornament as discussed in Chapter 2.75 Immanuel Kant extended the parergon to the three-dimensional realm of sculpture, architecture and painting, moving beyond the pictorial to a physical structure, such as colonnades around temples. For Derrida, the parergon posits itself outside or against the work, yet is also integral to it, never being wholly inside or outside it.76 Pliny’s use of parergon has often been translated as ‘extra ornament’, although the philosophical understandings of the term suggest an ‘in-betweenness’. In terms of ornament as ‘embellishment’ on material culture, this is particularly relevant in the ways that motifs become key mediators and agents in transcultural transfer as argued in Chapter 2. For Grasskamp, the metal frames on porcelain are parerga because they both frame and constrain, ‘simultaneously open[ing] them to the outside, mediating between foreign artifact and the European framework of display, in between object and collector’.77 The metal frames operate as a form of double parerga, both as sites of motifs/ornament and as physical additions. For example, the Trenchard Bowl is of blue and white porcelain from the Jiajing period (1522–66) with German silver-gilt mounts from 1583 (Figure 16). The exterior floral pattern of the ceramic mingles and is obscured by the figures that form the four straps and two handles that reshape the contours of

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the bowl. The handles, in the form of genii undulate and twist, with their wings terminating below the hinge and their tails entwined to create a delicate pattern that interacts with the space around the bowl.78 These figures occupy an area of their own, belonging to the space between the ceramic bowl and the viewer. Similarly, the serpentine mounts on the bowl belonging to Pompeo Zambeccari (Plate IV) previously discussed not only bear the inscription that frames the object within a classical paradigm, but also give a new silhouette to the object. An additional textual ‘frame’ is present through the mark on the base, which translates as ‘long life, riches and honour’ (Ch’ang Ming Fu Kuei).79 Here the original object – the ornamented porcelain bowl – bears markings and texts that mingle with the later frames. The Chinese inscription was likely illegible to Zambeccari, and the Latin would have been legible only to those who knew Latin, thus offering layers of meaning and translations. The metal frames were also a marker of taste and style as well as a way to ‘modernise’ a piece, as another gift from the Portuguese for Zambeccari was a coconut shell, whose mounts in 1573 were deemed ‘too Gothic’.80 In Piccolpasso’s treatise, handles stand alone, depicted as the object of focus, not the frame (Figure 21). Here, Piccolpasso offers three handles with their S shapes: the serpent at the left and the fish/dolphin handle on the right both push the boundaries of the functional handle, with the snake’s tongue and tail extending beyond the S shape, acting as a sort of meta-parerga. The emphasis on shadow made evident by Piccolpasso’s shading also underscores the area around the handle. Here, Piccolpasso’s representations allude to the capabilities of frames to play with light and the space between the handle and the vessel, as well as between the handle and the space of display. Metal frames found on vessels shimmer and shine, offering a different material reaction to light, thus also producing a multimedia object, emphasising further the ‘in-betweenness’ in material qualities. This is particularly effective in this photograph of the porcelain mounted Trenchard Bowl (Figure 16), where the light has been picked up by the camera at the centre of the interior of the bowl. Here, the ceramic becomes more translucent, while the metal seems to reflect the light back at the viewer, with the effect differing depending on how one held the bowl. The porcelain vessel has now become both a ceramic and a metallic object. This produces a layering of sensorial experiences, while the handle would give access to the object for the beholder. Drawing upon the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel, Grasskamp has eloquently argued that this mediation between subject and object can be located in the handle. For Simmel, the handle of a vase enables that vase to be a touchable artefact, unlike other sorts of frames which alienate the object from handling, such as the picture frame.81 However, as Avinoam Shalem has also remarked, handles sometimes offer an extra aesthetic element, particularly those that seem to resist their utilitarian purpose, added as an embellishment

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with flourish by the artist. Handles appear as a ‘mediatory space between the human subject and the object’, which also underlines the ‘in-between space amid stability and movement’, as in many cases they enable the object to become mobile by the human actor, even if only facilitating the cup to move from table to mouth.82 For Hay, handles provide the means to get to know an object and ‘what it wants from us’, where particular handles will ask us to lift the object in a particular way.83 The mediating function of the mounted frame on porcelain differs from other sorts of frames, and in the European context, the metal mount can both be a tool for display and to enable use. The frames in the form of handles thus become mediating objects in themselves, transforming a bowl into a drinking cup, for example (Figure 19), or mediating between the outside and the inside, between the subject and object, between the global and the local, and sometimes between the past and the present. As the frame engenders an inbetweenness, it acts as a metaphor for many of the types of objects examined in this book, which do not sit neatly into nineteenth-century art historical categories, which defined art in terms of geographic origin or high versus low. Instead, mounted porcelain is both local and global, art object and ‘decorative’ material culture, porcelain and metal. The mount, through the act of layering, reflects the palimpsests that are created because of transcultural dialogues, objects that feature motifs and technologies that have been circulated, recycled and transformed, becoming objets croisés.84 A focus on framing devices and palimpsests is evident in a well-known drawing by Albrecht Dürer of two columns which incorporate a piece of blue and white porcelain (Figure 23). Various ceramics appear here, but the central blue and white piece on the left column resembles Ming porcelain with mounted handles. Dürer received three porcelain dishes in 1520 while in Antwerp from a Portuguese factor, and this drawing might have been inspired by these pieces or ones he saw elsewhere on his travels.85 Dürer pays particular attention throughout the drawing to various textures of materials. The two columns offer a concatenation of wood, stone, metal, ceramic, hair, cloth, flesh, animal and human, providing a provocative statement on the role of ornament, framing and fusion. An inscription placed to the left of the porcelain vase has often been assumed to belong to a drawing on the left side of the sheet, but which was at some point cut away and reads das sind Schtörch (these are storks). However, recently this inscription has been interpreted as a deliberate statement by Dürer on the creative possibilities of line reflected in this drawing.86 In this sense, ornament and framing devices have the ability to metamorphosise from one thing into another, where the simple lines of the handles can become anamorphic in the form of storks, which indeed appear in another of Dürer’s drawings for ornamental designs for a scabbard now also in the British

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fig 23 Albrecht Dürer, two designs for columns, pen and brown ink, with watercolour, 1515–18. © The Trustees of the British Museum, SL, 5218.82.

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Museum.87 Regardless of whether the inscription is referring to the columns or not, the drawing is attentive to the transformative capabilities of line, further evident in the grapevine tendrils, which form the base of the porcelain dish and frame the metal vessel below (Figure 23) and also recall the framing devices found on his knotwork print (Figure 12, Chapter 2). The left tendril forms an outline that seems to ask the viewer to compare it with the lion’s profile that forms the mount of the blue vase below. The handles of the porcelain vase although painted in a similar blue to the porcelain vessel are formed in a way that seems more suitable to metal than a ceramic, also drawing our attention to the different expressive lines of materials. Dürer’s columns thus seem to be an exercise in drawing similarities between forms and shapes in contrasting materials. On the right column, the man’s missing leg is suggestively replaced by the long bottle whose shape intimates the form of a leg’s calf, repeated again in the large vessel the man is supporting. This again contrasts with the very detailed ornament of the framing handles, drawing attention to the mount rather than the ceramic. It has been suggested that the two columns represent a contrast between the happy, sanguine temperament, indicated by the column on the left with its musical instrument, vines and putti, and the dark, melancholic temperament in the column on the right (a bat and a crippled peasant).88 As explored in Chapter 5, these concerns around the humours of the body were not unfamiliar to collectors, and particular materials were often recommended as remedies for certain conditions, often used in tandem with ceramics like porcelain. The differences in representational motifs in many examples – the classicising ‘European’ decorations of the metal mounts that abut the Chinese porcelain floral designs – recall the contrast drawn by Piccolpasso in his Trofei vs rabeshe (Figure 5, Chapter 2). It was the coming together of different traditions that provided the impetus for the creation of new modes and styles. In some contexts, the metal mounts become so central, they obscure the ceramic, thus blurring the boundaries between mount and cover, transforming the frame into the conspicuous object of focus. While it has often been claimed that the blue and white motif provided the main appeal of Chinese porcelain in Europe, as well as in Ottoman and Mamluk contexts, the addition of mounts and in the case of Ottoman interventions attaching jewels that would alter the smooth surface, signals an interest in transforming the object into something else. In so doing, the pattern and imagery were often obscured. Outside the Italian peninsula, in the Ottoman context, Chinese porcelain cups, dishes and stools were transformed into incense burners through mounts.89 One particularly instructive example is a Ming blue and white porcelain garden seat from the sixteenth century that was transformed into a stationary censer to be used in a mausoleum in the Ottoman context.90 The garden seat was mounted on a square base with lions’ paws and topped by a canopy that supports

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an openwork dome, with dragon handles attached to the bottom rim of the canopy. In the metal base is a drawer for the fumigatory, and the craftspeople have drilled holes into the sides of the porcelain seat, covered with metal bosses to provide the necessary openings for ventilation. The metal frame contains an inscription identifying the donor (the pilgrim Mustafa Aga), who endowed it to the tomb of Sultan Ahmed Khan in 1617/18. The porcelain is further manipulated by the addition of sprayed golden flowers obscuring the blue and white dragon motif in some parts. This object demonstrates an extreme manipulation of the material and design of the piece of porcelain. In such instances we are reminded not only of the mobility of these objects, but also their mutability. Something as hard, yet delicate as porcelain, can still be transformed and made into something new, which was relevant to the local, while simultaneously carrying associations of the ‘foreign’, becoming a transcultural object. The frame can also contribute to the process of unveiling, where plain exterior vessels only reveal decoration upon opening, such as in an example in the British Museum where gilt silver mounts, provide a layering effect to viewership. When seen from afar, the piece appears to be a simple white bowl, but when the lid is lifted, it reveals a blue motif of an eagle perched on a rock in a roundel in the centre.91 Similarly, leather cases for porcelain provided a staged setting for engagement with the object. A document from 1516 notes a payment to a ‘Bernardo da San Miniato’ for two leather coverings for two porcelain vases for the credenza for Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino.92 In the inventory of the King of Portugal’s wardrobe from 3 February 1522, four Chinese porcelain vessels were mounted in ‘white silver and coated with woven cane’ suggesting multiple materials were used at times to frame and protect porcelain.93 Leather cases made in Europe operated as a metaframe, as exemplified in the rare surviving example of the leather case and mount from the Portuguese/Italian context already mentioned (Plate IV). Such leather cases in cuir bouilli (boiled leather) were fairly common in early modern Europe, often incised and embossed with geometric or floral motifs and used as protectors for a variety of objects. For example, the inventory of Ippolito d’Este from 1507/08 mentions three flasks in leather alla turchesca.94 Such cases, known as etui, as Alison Steilau has argued sit ‘in an undefined interstice between received categories’, not an artwork in their own right nor just functional objects.95 Similar to metal mounts, these are not generic cases but made to form around the contours of an individual object, such as the porcelain case mentioned. In many instances, the intricate details and shapes of the object being contained are transferred onto the etui, underscoring the leather cases as something more than just a case – not an imprint of the object but mimicking its shape and form, a sort of glove or even skin. These etuis encouraged a reflexivity on material and categories of art by artists who worked across media, such as goldsmiths who might design a nef through drawing, execute it

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through their goldsmith craft, and design or commission a case, while also representing that same object in prints or drawings.96 This working across media and attentiveness to frames is particularly evident in Dürer’s column drawings, for example, and suggests an ‘intellectual hand’ at work (Figure 23). In the case of porcelain, these ready-made objects prompted new ways to think about the relationship between frames and objects (Plate IV). Artists’ attentiveness to these etuis as things in their own right is evident in the depiction of a case as well as its primary object in an engraving of the Adoration of the Magi by Martin Schongauer from the 1470s.97 While the third younger Magus holds a metal chalice, his attendant to the lower right closes up the etui from which the vessel came. Like the porcelain cup in Mantegna’s Adoration, Schongauer was expanding the inventory of objects on show, extending the repertoire to reflect contemporary collecting and gifting practices. In both images, central to the narrative are the vessels and their contents on display and the act of revealing. Moving away from the more familiar repertoire of metal receptacles, Mantegna has deliberately chosen to depict objects that represent a wider global scope. Similar to the porcelain cup, which hinted at the global scale of these gifts, the leather cases also underscore the mobility of these objects – their transportability and their integral function to protect the precious store inside. Such representations also highlight the multiple framing devices that occur like a set of Russian dolls: the leather etui that covers a receptacle with mounts, which holds a precious substance; gold, frankincense or myrrh. Such complex objects when encountered all at once reveal a layered effect of materials and a palimpsest of surfaces and textures, not dissimilar to the range we find on Dürer’s columns. A further layer is added when we consider the motifs embossed on these etuis. A leather coconut cup case with gilt tooling dating from sixteenth-century Italy, now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, displays motifs that look to both ceramics and metalwork. Like the surviving etui used for the porcelain bowl (Plate IV), the leaf patterns resemble blue and white motifs borrowed from ceramics, while the gilt patterns of interlacing motifs on the coconut cup case resemble damascene metalware.98 Such cases reveal a complex relationship between outside and inside, and the layering of motifs across media. The leather case on the porcelain example has perpendicular lines running down its sides framing floral motifs, mimicking the metal mounts inside, which in turn frame the porcelain floral patterns. The exterior leather case is made locally but translates the motifs found on the interior ceramic, while the metal mounts inside intentionally claim a local style, with the central ‘primary’ object revealed through these multiple layers of styles, motifs and materials. The leather case in Bologna also reveals small, rounded devices on the lid as well as the body’s cover that suggest a rope or chain was looped through and around to carry or hang the piece, further highlighting the mobility inherent in the case.

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MATERIALS AND H UMANIST CULTURE: SITU ATI NG PO RCELAI N IN THE STUDIOLO

Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory reveals the connections collectors pursued between porcelain, hardstones and glass, suggesting materials could be an organising factor rather than the object’s supposed origins. Following Eleonora’s list of porcelain, there appears a long list of hardstones, followed by a list of vessels made out of glass including chalcedony glass (vedro di calzedonio). This corresponds to other archival sources of the time, where porcelain is often listed as being displayed among hardstones, maiolica, glass, metalware and gems.99 Such an array of materials suggests viewers would have viewed porcelain in contrast, and in comparison to, other materials on display. The enjoyment of discussing and engaging with such materials was well known to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga who, in 1472, wrote to Marchese Ludovico Gonzaga to request Mantegna be sent to Bologna so that they could study and discuss his collection of cameos/gems, bronze figures and other ‘lovely antique things’ together.100 Mantegna was well versed in different types of stones – from marble to precious gemstones – which he employed in a number of his works, often in an erudite way.101 Alfonso d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria according to the chronicler, Leostello, also liked to look at ceramics. On 18 October 1489, Leostello reports that Alfonso that evening looked at creta that had arrived from Pesaro.102 In the next chapter, I pursue what it meant for a prince such as Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara to engage with ceramics, and indeed manufacture them himself. Many contemporaries associated porcelain with precious hardstones, particularly because how it was made was uncertain and its material make up was rumoured to consist of shells and mother-of-pearl.103 Early French inventories suggest porcelain was understood to be a type of stone, such as the 1372 inventory of Jeanne d’Evreux, which describes it as pierre de pourcelaine.104 As evidenced from the accounts of visits to the Aragonese palaces in Naples described in Chapter 1, one room in the Castel Capuano had three long tables displaying crystal, porcelain, alabaster and marble.105 In 1492, visitors to Milan noted that porcelain was found in the treasury amidst gems, pearls, jewels and hardstones.106 In the 1470s, the Ferrarese ambassador in Venice, Galeazzo Strozzi, wrote to Duke Ercole d’Este concerning things he could procure there for him, including a damascene silver incense burner and a head of a Saracen, in addition to items Domenico di Piero had obtained from Pope Paul II: ‘porphyry, chalcedony, porcelain, and alabaster worked into vases and dishes’.107 From contemporary accounts, the material properties of porcelain were both an important part of display and engagement but also consumption. According to Vespasiano da Bisticci, Niccolo Niccolì dined with ‘vases of porcelain or other ornate vases’ and drank out of crystal cups.108

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As mentioned in Chapter 2, numerous European texts from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries attempted to describe how porcelain was made. The most common assumption was an assortment of shells mixed with water, shaped as vessels and buried underground for an entire generation, the secret of their whereabouts communicated through genealogical knowledge.109 Marco Polo recounted that the Chinese mined a type of earth, leaving it to age in the open air for a generation and then formed it into bowls.110 He explained: the inhabitants of this city [Tiunju] collect a certain mud or putrid earth, making great heaps of it, and leaving them for thirty or forty years, exposed to the wind, the rain, and the sun. All those years they do not touch it, and during this time, this earth becomes refined, so that the dishes made with it are blue, shine wonderfully, and are exceedingly beautiful. They cover them with such colours as they wish, and then bake them in ovens. And you must know that when a man makes heaps of earth, he does so for his children, for, on account of the long time that it must lie idle to become refined, he cannot hope to derive any personal profit from it, or make use of it himself; his son, who comes after him, will obtain profit therefrom.111

The Portuguese Duarte Barbarosa, writing in the early sixteenth century, claimed porcelain was made from ‘fish ground fine, from eggshells and the white of eggs and other materials’.112 An Italian scholar of the 1550s identified the myrrhine vases discussed by Pliny as porcelain: ‘Who does not see that these were the pottery and of that kind which we today usually . . . call porcelain? For it is certain that porcelain is likewise made of a certain juice which coalesces underground, and is brought from the East’.113 Long into the seventeenth century, it was still considered to be linked to agate, seashells, mother-of-pearl and other precious materials. In Pontano’s De splendore, porcelain is mentioned as one of the materials that brings splendour, where value is placed on ‘the variety of the work, the artistry (dell’arte) and the material of a series of objects of the same category’: It is not necessary, indeed, that there should be many cups (tazze) resplendent on the dresser, but these should be of various types, some should be in gold, silver or porcelain, and in the same way, they should always be in different forms: a chalice, a crater [bowls for mixing wine] some in the form of a jug, or as plates, with long or short handles. Of these some should seem to be acquired for use and for ornament, and others for ornament and elegance alone; some should be made precious by their cost and size, others exclusively by the refinement and rarity which comes either from the hand of the artist or from some other merit.114

For Pontano, it was thus not only variety in materials but also shapes, value, use and in manufacture. In 1563, a Portuguese cleric dining at the Vatican

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pontificated on the merits of porcelain to Pope Pius IV, noting that this kind of tableware made of clay: may be compared advantageously to silver both in its elegance and its cleanliness, and I would counsel all princes to use it in preference to any other service and to banish silver from their tables. In Portugal we call it porcelain. The clay is so fine and transparent that the whites outshine crystal and alabaster, and the pieces which are decorated in blue dumbfound the eyes, seeming a combination of alabaster and sapphires . . .. They may be esteemed by the greatest princes for their delight and curiosity, and this is why we have them in Portugal.115

Noteworthy here is the comparison with other materials that were prized, such as crystal and alabaster, and the suggestion to replace silver with porcelain (the new appeal of ceramics over precious metalware was a controversial subject explored further in Chapter 4). Here, the fineness and transparency of porcelain is said to ‘outshine’ crystal and alabaster, an attention to its reaction to light, while the colour of blue evokes the contrast of sapphires against alabaster. Finally, it is for the delight it brings and the curiosity it arouses that it is prized by princes, underscoring the multifaceted reasons for interest in the material, which ranged from the sensorial – touch and vision – to intellectual stimulation and pleasure. Attention to the sensorial conditions of these objects also emphasises how contemporaries interacted with the material. A Chinese ambassador to Herat in 1414 also noted that the ceramics made there were ‘extremely fine’ and ‘beautiful’ but they ‘do not match the light, blue, clear and sparkling ones of China. If such a vessel is hit, it makes no sound. The nature of clay is like this’.116 It was also noted by a contemporary that ‘the color and translucence were not as they should have been’.117 Translucency was thus not only about sight but a sensorial interaction with the object through sound and touch in addition to sight. Indeed, in some European contexts ceramics were used in churches to help with acoustics.118 The attention by contemporaries to the material make up of porcelain, its apotropaic qualities, as well as the sound it made, underlines the emphasis on a close material engagement with the ceramic. Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory also reveals the transmateriality of collections, how certain materials mimicked or were made to resemble other materials, such as the vedro di calzedonio listed. Venetian glass blowers produced vessels that often mimicked other materials, such as lattimo, a milky translucent glass that resembled porcelain, and some scholars have suggested this might have been the porcellana contrefacta that collectors such as Alfonso I d’Este purchased in Venice.119 The imitation in glass of veined hardstones was known as vetri calcedoni or chalcedony glass and was a specialty of Venice, appealing to collectors as a technological marvel (reproduced by Bellini in his Feast of the

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Gods for Alfonso’s camerino, see Plate V, Chapter 4). This type of glass fascinated those who also enjoyed the materials of porcelain, as Filippo Strozzi, in 1475, had an agent in Venice buy vetri calcedonii e porcielane.120 In May 1493, Eleonora wrote home to her husband, Duke Ercole d’Este from Venice, reporting on her visit to the glass factories, and must have been taken with the technique of their making, in addition to admiring the completed vases.121 Her children Isabella and Alfonso d’Este were also keenly interested in the production of ceramics and glass, and Alfonso sought vessels for his spezieria from Murano in Venice through none other than Titian, further discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.122 The association between glass and porcelain is evident in Portuguese homes, where both porcelain and glass were displayed alongside medicine, fruit preserves and scented waters in special rooms, primarily used by women, which were called Casa de Vidros or das Porcelanas.123 In addition to porcelain and ceramics, Eleonora d’Aragona actively purchased paternostri or rosary beads made out of amber, coral, gold, silver and other precious materials. Such beads appealed to collectors, as they were not only used for religious devotion, but could also be strung with medals or coins as a form of decoration for the studiolo, as they appear in representations of studioli (see Figure 38, Chapter 5 and Plate IX, Chapter 5).124 A purchase on 22 December 1486 for silver and gold paternoster beads ala morescha points to the importance of motifs as well as materials for Eleonora d’Aragona.125 Throughout Eleonora’s accounts there are also numerous purchases of balassi¸ rubies, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and other precious stones. While these would have certainly been worn, gems and jewels also had a role to play within the collecting culture of the Quattrocento, where such items were highly sought by collectors and given names, sometimes understood to carry magical properties, and shown off as prized goods when visitors came to view collections.126 Eleonora also owned objects associated with the extraordinary works of nature, such as ostrich eggs, numerous strings of coral and elephant ‘teeth’, presumably tusks (which were subsequently divided between Alfonso and Isabella).127 It is clear from Eleonora’s collection that variety, as Pontano stressed, was key. It was not enough to have a large collection of Chinese porcelain, but it was necessary to have vessels that reflected a broad spectrum of decoration, motifs and materials. Her inventory includes various forms of enamels (enamelled glass and copper), glass, ivory, cane, marble, hardstones and maiolica. As was the case with artists who ‘imitated’ other artists to create a new work of art, the mimicry of materials and motifs was bound up in Renaissance conceptions of imitation. While there were diverse ideas on the subject, the notion of imitation was linked to citing textual sources, either directly or indirectly, and it carried a wide range of metaphors, including artistic references.128 ‘Copies’

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were common in Renaissance collections, whereby antique gems or sculpture might be emulated by contemporary artists across media, creating a field of visual citations, which inspired creative dialogues for viewers and artists alike. This gave rise to a system of value that placed importance not only on ownership (which was still a crucial part), but also on the replication, invention and translation of artistic forms.129 Eleonora’s collecting spaces have been interpreted as textual and visual mechanisms, prompting viewers with visual cues that could spark rhetorical and pictorial invention.130 ‘Imitation’ in the production of ceramics has often been studied to determine a source of ‘influence’ with Chinese porcelain as the prime model with ‘copies’ moving westward, but this approach denies the interest in transmateriality for its own sake. The metaphoric capacity of objects has often been ignored, but the emphasis on variety by humanists and a study of the objects themselves suggests that this played a crucial role in manufacture, viewing and collecting practices. Looking at blue and white ceramics solely in terms of their motifs as flat ornament, or as imagescapes to use Hay’s word, will tell us a straightforward story of motifs being copied across media. Rather than flattened motifs however, the surfacescapes of these objects ask us to consider how contemporaries might have engaged in their transmaterial witticisms.131 These witticisms can only be discerned when these objects are handled, brought up to the light and engaged with. The gold lustre on Valencian ceramics for example might mimic gold, but it is not an object that pretends to be gold (see Plate II, Chapter 2 for example). Transmateriality thus refers to a translation of one material into another. Like an artist’s rendition of a gold vessel in a painting, the viewer does not think the painting is a gold vessel, instead it points to the artist’s mimetic capabilities. Similarly, the famous intarsia panels in the Montefeltro studioli depict the very objects found in such spaces, offering an illusionistic play between representation and the real. This illusion and play were deliberate, linked to other forms of word play and visual puns in the space that signalled other larger cultural and political games at court.132 Unlike a painting representing a gold vessel, however, material culture pushes the mimetic and the transmaterial into the metamorphic. The earthen pot decorated in gold lustre converts the mundane clay into a sensuous surface.133 These sorts of allusions to other materials operates within what Margaret Graves calls ‘a system of indirect reference’, whereby the ‘conceit of resemblance’ allows for a form of poetics; it is a rhetorical enterprise not a simple counterfeiting.134 The fascination with a range of materials was also connected to intellectual investigations about the world, alluded to in humanist treatises and evident in the types of artefacts found in the studiolo. In a section of Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria (On Literary Refinement) dating from the 1450s, learned courtiers and humanists discuss with Leonello d’Este, the Marquis of Ferrara,

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the properties of stones, demonstrating the meaningful interplay between intellectual discussions and engagement with material culture: Many different kinds of engraved stones and rings had been brought to Leonello from Venice . . . as well as splendid gems and great pearls; for Leonello had it in mind to have a ring made for himself and a necklace for his consort, King Alfonso’s daughter. Someone soon raised the subject of griffins, which are said to hoard their precious pearls like those dragons in the poets’ tales . . . but while some claimed griffins existed in the mountains of the North, others maintained they were in Upper India where the pygmies live.135

The conversation then moves on to determine whether griffins are indeed real, the authors relying on Guarino Veronese, Virgil and Pliny to uphold their opinions, which then leads to the discussion of other strange creatures, such as witches and vampires.136 Next, the link between these stories with mythology and classical authors leads them to discuss exotic animals such as rhinoceroses. The humanists then return to the gems, and it is these objects that are the source of their discussion and debate. What might seem to twenty-firstcentury readers as disconnected subjects – gems, griffins, India, rhinoceroses, artistic invention and the display of knowledge – are all brought together, underlining how these types of objects acted as a starting point to discuss the larger world, both real and imagined. Decembrio set the treatise at the court of Ferrara, but most likely composed it at the Aragonese court in Naples.137 Both courts sought and collected gems, cameos, porcelain, jewels and hardstones from afar and both had direct and indirect encounters with foreign powers, resulting in the exchange of rare animals and luxury goods. Part of the appeal of collections was the interest in comparison – whether it was painting to sculpture, or in the case of porcelain and hardstones, the comparison of materials – the way they looked and felt, and the craftsperson’s manipulation of the material. The interest in materials, the artifice of nature and the artworks that nature produced – hardstones, nautilus shells, ostrich eggs – were also connected to the interest in porcelain, and the mystery as to whether it was wrought by human hand or by nature. Gems may not initially make us think of foreign places, but their presence in collections had a role to play in the studiolo culture of the fifteenth century, as they pointed towards other avenues for discussion and the larger world, as demonstrated by Angelo Decembrio’s De politia litteraria. Decembrio’s mentioning of Pliny and Eleonora’s own possession of his works, suggests she and other viewers of these spaces and objects would have been particularly attentive to Pliny’s discussion of the properties of stones, his description of strange animals and peoples, and the connections between musaeum, the muses, art and nature.138 The question of sources, artistic invention and the artifice of nature are all themes addressed in the painting programme for

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Isabella d’Este’s studiolo and this notion of nature and art was also to be found in Isabella’s commissioning of not just a studiolo but also her grotta.139 The attention to materials – alabaster and marble – and the interest in the seasons and transformative power of nature, were also themes taken up in Alfonso d’Este’s camerini, not to mention the famous depiction of porcelain in Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, examined in the next chapter.140 The presence of these objects with such fascinating properties – whether they were highly expensive diamonds brought from India, or materials that had little monetary value but were rich in symbolic value such as porcelain – were the cause of tales and interest. The allure of stones and gems in the medieval spiritual context is well known in writings by Abbot Suger, Albertus Magnus and in medieval lapidaries, many of which were inspired by Pliny.141 New antiquarian interests not only combined these older ideas with the collecting culture of the fifteenth century but also with the quest for knowledge of the larger world and its material cultures. The spaces of collection also acted as a metaframe and remind us that objects are made meaningful when they interact and encounter other objects and materials. MAKING WORLDS: GLOBAL AND LOCAL

To what extent was China understood as a knowable, identifiable place for most viewers of Chinese porcelain in fifteenth-century Europe? Did beholders of these vessels make associations with the markets and courts of the Ottomans and Mamluks, that is in Turkey, North Africa and Syria, rather than a specific point in Asia? Documentary evidence suggests that in the fifteenth century, the origins of porcelain were much less known, while there was a shift in the sixteenth century, once the sea routes were opened by Vasco da Gama and Portuguese hands-on knowledge of Asia had increased. However, it is clear that knowledge was still patchy and varied and depended on the individual. In a guide for merchants dating from 1438 (a copy of an earlier document), Damascus is mentioned as a place to acquire spices, textiles, rose water, porcelain and ‘painted vases’ (vaxella di porcillana, e vaxella di terra e invetriate e dipinte). Tunisia is also referenced in this guide as a place to obtain a variety of goods including vessels of terra dipinte e invetriate, suggesting colourful ceramics and glassware were traded here.142 Even in the seventeenth century, porcelain appeared in the context of Africa rather than Asia, depicted in the painting of Africa from Jan van Kessel’s Four Continents (1661–6).143 This likely referenced an important node in the itinerary of porcelain, as large quantities of porcelain have been found across Africa.144 This confusion over geographic provenance is evident in descriptions of the Katzenelnbogen Bowl, a celadon piece, which still has its original fifteenthcentury mounts, housed in Kassel. In a 1483 inventory, it was recorded as an

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‘Indian’ ceramic, while in 1594 it was noted that it was ‘brought back from the orient’ by Count von Katzenelnbogen.145 The Portuguese referred to porcelain as louça da India, but a sixteenth-century Portuguese cleric clarified that it ‘comes from India and is made in China’.146 A rare primary source from 1447 reveals that the three pieces of porcelain presented to Charles VII of France by a foreign ruler were described as de Sinant meaning China.147 A Venetian ambassador to Florence in 1575 referred to porcelain as ‘Indian’ when he noted that the Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici had ‘found the way of making Indian porcelain, and in his experiments has succeeded in equalling its quality – its transparency, hardness, lightness, and delicacy; it has taken him ten years to discover the secret, but a Levantine showed him the way to success’.148 Fifteenth-century viewers of porcelain might have recalled tales from Marco Polo who discussed ‘the most beautiful vessels and plates of porcelain . . . made in great quantity in a city . . . called Tingiu’ (Tongan, near Quanzhou), but it is not likely that many would have known where this was precisely.149 By the later sixteenth century, European cultural understandings of China were becoming more articulated, reflected in cartographic representations of Asia as well as in Jesuit and other missionary material which had clear descriptions of Asia, circulating in print.150 The Cantino Planisphere made in Portugal for Duke Ercole d’Este in 1502, Eleonora’s husband, is a statement about the different forms of knowledge circulating at this crucial and transformative moment. It was smuggled out of Portugal by Alberto Cantino, an envoy of the Duke of Ferrara, with some of the most up to date cartographic information, yet it also shows inaccuracies.151 At this time, it was still unknown whether the New World was part of Asia or an entirely new continent, yet this map shows a body of water between the Asian coastline and that of America called Oceanus occideroriêtalis.152 The planisphere brings together various cartographic models and forms of knowledge: the areas around the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, northern Europe and the Caribbean relied on the portolan-chart type, based on estimated distances and compass directions; Africa and Brazil drew upon the most recent discoveries utilising a ‘latitude-chart’ type; the eastern areas such as India likely relied on more oral sources obtained through Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral.153 The Cantino Planisphere highlights the ways in which knowledge of geographic regions, just like knowledge of materials and their provenance, was a combination of different standards and degrees of accuracy. While the regions closest to Europe and the newly discovered lands of the Americas were accurate and detailed, drawing upon recently acquired Portuguese knowledge, further, more distant lands such as China were based on Portuguese exploration. The Portuguese had not yet sailed East of India, yet had acquired some knowledge of where goods such as porcelain came from. For example, a caption on the Cantino Planisphere next to the Malay Peninsula notes:

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Malacca, in this city are all the goods that come to Calicut, such as cloves and benzoin and agarwood and sandalwood; styrax and rhubarb and ivory and very valuable precious stones; and pearls and musk and fine porcelains; and many other goods. All or most of them come from abroad, from the land of the Chinese.154

Here, the association between China and porcelain is clear but via somewhere else and also reinforces the link between the ceramic and aromatics, medicine, precious stones and pearls. A very similar account appears in a letter from 6 January 1515 (1516) to Giuliano de’ Medici by the Florentine merchantnavigator, Andrea Corsali, who had sailed with the Portuguese. From ‘Malacha’, merchants from ‘Cina’ obtained spices from those lands, which included musk, rhubarb, pearls, tin, porcelain and silks, and textiles of all sorts: ‘Damaschi, Rasi, Broccati worked to perfection, because the men there are very industrious and of our quality, but with more brutish faces, with tiny eyes. They dress like us, with tights and shoes, and “calzamenti” like us’.155 Maps and letters worked to create particular understandings of the ‘East’, articulating the desires and fears of princely rulers. For Corsali, like the Milanese ambassador describing the Ottoman ambassadors encountered in Chapters 1 and 2, there is both a desire for similarity and difference; an articulation of an Other that legitimises local and global claims for both greatness and inferiority. To admit to the wealth, power and high quality of goods of other states was also to admit one’s own inferiority. Florence, while often seen as an important player in the Italian peninsula, was a small player in comparison to the Mamluk, Ottoman and Chinese courts. Transcultural objects – and the maps and globes representing their itineraries – thus spoke to both the anxieties and aspirations of rulers. POR TABLE POR CELAIN PATHW AYS: FRO M NAPLES TO FERRARA

As is evident from the visitors to Aragonese castles, detailed in Chapter 1, the Aragonese had porcelain at their disposal, which they likely received through various means including trade and diplomacy. The sheer amount of porcelain in Eleonora’s collections also suggests it was built up over time and was likely received through mercantile and diplomatic means as well as inherited and gifted between friends and family. Eleonora d’Aragona’s account books are full of payments for a wide range of goods, but I have yet to find any record of purchasing porcelain. As mentioned, Eleonora received one piece of porcelain from her former tutor and councillor to her father, Diomede Carafa. Eleonora kept close ties with Naples, attested by regular correspondence. She travelled down to Naples in 1477 to attend her father’s second marriage to Giovanna d’Aragona, a veiled political move in

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hopes of repairing diplomatic ties between Ferrara and Naples.156 While she was there Eleonora bore her son Ferrante d’Este, and she remained in Naples for around five months.157 While Eleonora was in Naples, the Aragonese court received a number of foreign embassies, including one from Tunisia to mark the coronation of her father’s wife, the new Queen of Naples.158 Eleonora may have easily been the recipient of diplomatic gifts, not only as daughter of the king but Duchess of Ferrara in her own right. When she returned to Ferrara, she left her children Beatrice and Ferrante d’Este in Naples in the care of the Duchess of Calabria, Ippolita Sforza (herself a collector) and thus, the channels of communication were fairly open during this period, as she kept abreast of news of her children in the south. Many of the letters between Eleonora and the Aragonese court centre on the purchasing or commissioning of objects, suggesting goods circulated frequently between these courts as did knowledge. In the early 1480s, Alfonso d’Aragona wrote to his sister, Eleonora, about the war with the Turks in Otranto and sent her earthenware jugs from there.159 Porcelain could also be acquired in Naples, as in August 1487, when a payment was made to Giuliano de Mazo for five ‘porcelain bowls in a celestial [blue] colour’ (scodelle di porcellana di color celeste) and in 1488, he received a generic payment for a porcelain piece in the shape of a plate (porcellana a modo di piatto) for four ducati.160

Flight from Naples: Don Ferrante d’Aragona Eleonora’s porcelain was not the only collection in Ferrara to have likely had a Neapolitan provenance. An inventory from 1527 of goods belonging to Don Ferrante d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria is significant for the detailed descriptions of porcelain and the ways in which it was packed and brought to Ferrara. Queen Isabella del Balzo of Naples fled to Ferrara in May 1508 with her son Don Ferrante d’Aragona on invitation of her nephew Duke Alfonso d’Este, following a tumultuous period. In November 1487, Isabella married Federico d’Aragona, the son of King Ferrante of Naples and the brother of Eleonora d’Aragona. The subsequent decade would result in the slow demise of the Aragonese dynasty in Naples with the abdication of Alfonso II and the conquest of Naples by King Charles VIII in 1495. The death of Ferrante II in 1496, followed by the short reign of Federico d’Aragona (Isabella’s husband) from 1496 to 1501, resulted in Isabella’s exile as the kingdom was eventually overtaken by the Spanish in 1503.161 A circuitous route via Genoa and France brought Isabella and Don Ferrante to Ferrara. Isabella ordered an inventory of Don Ferrante’s goods, which was taken in Ferrara on 1 October 1527, presumably in the Palazzo Gavassini, where they were said to have lived; the accommodation provided by Alfonso d’Este.162 Just under 350 porcelain dishes are mentioned in this inventory, held in eleven chests (see Appendix II).163 This porcelain must have been packed up in

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Naples and followed Isabella and her son Don Ferrante on their roundabout route to Ferrara.164 It is likely, as the last Aragonese to flee Naples, that this collection represents a portion of the dynasty’s collection, as recorded in visits to Aragonese palaces.165 The sheer number of porcelain pieces indicates there was a portable porcelain pathway from Naples to Ferrara through the Aragonese. The inventory also provides us with another example of vocabulary used by a guardarobiere. This is particularly important as it provides us with a comparison with Eleonora’s inventory to gauge the shifts in vocabulary from 1493 to 1527. The author of the inventory was Magnifico Messer Rinadlo Ottavante, identified as Florentine and the scrivano di ratione of the Queen, while the goods were under the control of Magnifico Messer Federico del Tufo, the guaradarrobba magiore. These two men were thus involved in going through the chests filled with these objects, taking them out, counting them and describing them together. The inventory provides some rich descriptions of the design and motifs on the porcelain, not always found in contemporary documents, in addition to specific vocabulary related to the form of the vessels. The first pieces of porcelain appear on folio 183, identified as seven spoons with gilded silver handles, followed by two non-porcelain entries: thirteen serpent tongues and two small scutettj with Aragonese arms.166 The presence of serpent tongues stored with the porcelain further underscores the close association of both materials as apotropaics, and that they may have been displayed together such as in the porcelain mount of Louis, Duc d’Anjou. As other porcelain items are not mentioned until later on, it is likely these spoons were used for dining, perhaps in conjunction with the serpents’ tongue to ward off poison. Another thirty folios follow, mostly dedicated to textiles and collars for animals including dogs and falcons, but also mirrors and over 500 portrait medals. The collection of porcelain begins on 198R, housed in eleven numbered chests, including blue and white porcelain as well as celadon, ranging from green to white. Each piece was measured and many decorations are described. The first chest (cassa [i]taliana de n. 68) contained twenty-two pieces including a large vase in blue and white porcelain, nine green bowls as well as five tasette in green porcelain, two of which were noted in the margin as having been given to the Infante Ferrante. The numerous chests are identified by number and colour (such as ‘bianca rustica, ligname rustico and cassa taliana), underscoring the multiple frames of interaction, from chests to mounts. Descriptions of the porcelain are fairly detailed, but it is not always easy to discern whether the compiler is describing the shape of the vessel or the painted motifs. Descriptions include colour (blue and white, variations of celadon and a few pieces with gold), shape, mounts and some with bas relief. A large quantity of the porcelain is identified as having floral and vegetal motifs, described as generic fiuri, foglie and fogliami.167 In some cases, particular

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flowers are described, such as a roses (rosette), or more specific parts of foliage such as tronchj de fogliagi et con 4 poste de herbe et de fora (foliage stalks and four groups/sprays of herbs and flowers).168 Descriptions of animals also appear throughout and these vary from generic ‘animaly’ to specific creatures, such as a dragon on the interior of a blue and white taccette; a ‘tree that forms into two animals’; four fish in the interior of a celadon plate; and a blue and white baciletto with ‘two eagles with their wings open’.169 Other entries that include animals provide further details on shape and use (although the designs are not always easy to translate). These include entries for large dishes in the chest Taliana n. 37 such as: And first a large fisina of white porcelain to hold confectionaries, with feet and lid, and made with eight faces [sides?] and body and there are seven serpents and flying birds and two lions’ heads around the rim, all decorated with blue floral motifs.170

In another Italian chest (n. 53) two other large fissine are described, one with flying animals and a serpent; the other with a serpent that meandered around the entire lip, a motif that points to the compiler having to turn the bowl around to follow the serpent’s path.171 The particular reference to these fissine as being used for confectionaries gives us insight into the shapes and the uses of porcelain. The term fissina comes from Latin, referring to the baskets that held produce in the forum (forum derives from the Latin ferre, to carry).172 In other entries we find a vase described as in the shape of a navetta, while others are described as in the antique style in terms of shape. One green porcelain vase was fatto alantica without feet and with some leaf designs in bas relief with a long neck, while another large green porcelain vase a modo de vaso antiquo, with the body in the form of a lancella with a high neck, also with some decorations in bas relief.173 It is very likely that all’antica here is referencing classicising shapes rather than antique Chinese vessels. These linguistic conventions of trying to find words for things that relate to the familiar, parallel the sort of translation occurring in practices such as the adoption of ceramics for confectionaries or as navette, which originally would have been the purview of expensive bejewelled locally-made metalware. CONCLUSION

Materials were meaningful on a sensorial level as well as an intellectual one. Engaging with porcelain in collecting spaces was made more meaningful when viewed in comparison with other materials, such as hardstones, gems and glass. Carefully crafted framing devices not only worked to enhance display, but provided a new form of engagement with porcelain, turning the ceramic into both a local and global object, and transformed the material into an interstice

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between two states; being both metal and porcelain. Such framing devices gave rise to new creative possibilities as artists designed and made mounts and etuis for the vessels or provided a new inventory of symbolic objects to include in representations, such as those in Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi. Framing devices also both enabled movement and halted it. Etuis protected the fragile ceramic when stored or when moved from palace to villa, while mounts enabled the viewer to hold the object, moving it from table to mouth. These forms of parerga also arrested the global circulation of the object, framing them within local practices and collections. Rather than simply an incorporation into existing collecting practices, however, the introduction of porcelain created new possibilities, at times pushing back on prevailing rituals and setting unexpected ones into play. NOTES 1 2 3

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Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (London: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2016). Quoted and translated in Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art. Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010), 110. An earlier representation dates from the late 1460s of a blue and white porcelain bowl in a painting of a Madonna and Child by Francesco Benaglio now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1183.html, Anne Gerritsen, The City of Blue and White: Chinese Porcelain and the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 131–3. For the inventory of her art collections see Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), Appendix I. Her inventories have often been amalgamated into a general survey of the Este guardaroba rather than giving ownership to Eleonora. Exceptions include a chapter dedicated to her collections in Clark, Collecting Art. See also Gundersheimer’s early study of her as a patron, Werner Gundersheimer, ‘Women, Learning, and Power: Eleonora of Aragon and the Court of Ferrara’, in Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia H. Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1980), 43–65. Lists of gifts are discussed in Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate. Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2014); Sandy Prita Meier, ‘Chinese Porcelain and Muslim Port Cities: Mercantile Materiality in Coastal East Africa’, Art History 38 (2015): 702–17. For across Asia see Gerritsen, City of Blue and White; John Carswell, Blue and White. Chinese Porcelain Around the World (London: British Museum Press, 2000); John Carswell, ‘More about the Mongols: Chinese Porcelain from Asia to Europe’, Asian Affairs 36, no. 2 (2005): 158–68; Lin Meicun and Ran Zhang, ‘A Chinese Porcelain Jar Associated with Marco Polo: A Discussion from an Archaeological Perspective’, European Journal of Archaeology 21, no. 1 (2018): 39–56; Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 23. Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1999), 213. For a discussion on Pontano and the decorative arts, see Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Public Magnificence and Private Display. Giovanni Pontano’s De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts’, Journal of Design History 15, no. 4 (2002): 211–12.

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18 19 20 21

22 23 24

ASMo CPE 1248.4 (Maddaloni). John D. Moores, ‘Diomede Carafa and His Unpublished Correspondence’, PhD Thesis (University College London, 1967), 434–5, Letter XLIII. Giovanni Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words of the Italian and English Tongues (London: Melch Bradwood, 1611). ASMO G114 105R. John D. Moores, ‘New Light on Diomede Carafa and his “Perfect Loyalty” to Ferrante of Aragon’, Italian Studies 26 (1971): 14–15. Letters between Eleonora and Diomede Carafa can be found in ASMo CPE 1248.4 (Maddaloni). For Diomede as collector also see Clark, Collecting Art, 22–56; Bianca de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza nella Napoli del Quattrocento (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007). For the tiles, see the conclusion of this book. BM 1947,0712.186: www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1947-0712-186 ‘E più dui vasetti di porcelana piccolo in foggia di coppe forniti d’oro l’ordello et piedi con dui anellini per uno per manichi’ ‘E più un vasetto di porcelana in foggia di campanella col piede et ordello d’oro’ ‘E più uno vaso de porzelana di varii colori alla moresca fornito d’oro, cioe ordello, manichi et piedi con li manichi fatti a bissi’. Quoted in Alessandro Luzio, Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma (Milan: Cogliati, 1908), 416–18. Ronald Lightbown, Mantegna. With a Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, and Prints (Oxford: Phaidon and Christie’s Ltd, 1986), 477, cat. 166. Anna Grasskamp, Objects in Frames: Displaying Foreign Collectibles in Early Modern China and Europe (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2019), 27. Annemarie Jordan-Gschwend, ‘The Marvels of the East: Renaissance Curiosity Collections in Portugal’, in The Heritage of Rauluchantim/A Herança de Rauluchantim, ed. Nuno Vassallo e Silva (Lisbon: Museu de São Roque, 1996), 112–13. Quoted and translated in Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 29. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 29. The gift literature is vast; seminal anthropological texts include Marcel Mauss, The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnison (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 1967); Annette B. Weiner, Inalienable Possessions. The Paradox of Keeping-While-Giving (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992). Recent early modern studies on gifting include Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy; Anthony Cutler, ‘Gifts and Gift Exchange as Aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and Related Economies’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 247–78; Anthony Cutler, ‘Significant Gifts: Patterns of Exchange in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Early Islamic Diplomacy’, Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 79–101; Valentin Groebner, Liquid Assets, Dangerous Gifts. Presents and Politics at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Pamela E. Selwyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift Exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Natalie Zemon Davis, The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000); Gadi Algazi, Valentin Groebner and Bernhard Jussen, eds., Negotiating the Gift. PreModern Figurations of Exchange (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003); Cecily J. Hilsdale, Byzantine Art and Diplomacy in an Age of Decline (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Nancy Um and Leah R. Clark, ‘Special Issue: The Art of Embassy: Situating Objects and Images in the Early Modern Diplomatic Encounter’, Journal of Early Modern History 20.1 (2016); Giorgio Riello, Anne Gerritsen and Zoltán Biedermann, eds., Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 29–30. L. F. Benedetto, The Travels of Marco Polo (London: Routledge, 2014), 265. Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 29.

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25

26

27

28 29 30

31 32 33 34

35 36

37 38

Both cups were sold at Sotheby’s London on 5 February 1970, lots 169 and 170. The cup without inscription appears in the auction catalogue as ‘the property of Countess Benckendorff’. For the provenance see the V&A’s catalogue: https://collections.vam.ac. uk/item/O109106/cup-unknown/ Francesco Freddolini and Anne Helmreich, ‘Inventories, Catalogues and Art Historiography: Exploring Lists against the Grain’, Journal of Art Historiography 11 (2014) 1–14; Lia Markey and Jessica Keating, ‘Introduction: Captured Objects. Inventories of Early Modern Collections’, Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 2 (2010): 283–300. See also Katherine Anne Wilson, ‘The Household Inventory as Urban “Theatre” in Late Medieval Burgundy’, Social History 40, no. 3 (2015): 335–59; Giorgio Riello, ‘Things Seen and Unseen: The Material Culture of Early Modern Inventories and Their Representation of Domestic Interiors’, in Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories, 1500–1800, ed. Paula Findlen (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013), 125–50. For a discussion of her renovating projects see Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este, 1471–1505, and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 98–114; Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d’Este: The ‘De triumphus religionis’ of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, ed. Werner L Gundersheimer (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972). Eleonora’s account books survive and demonstrate that she was in charge of all the commissions and payments for the renovations of both the Castel Vecchio and the building of her garden apartments. See ASMo AP 633, 634, 637, 639, 640. Some of these accounts are published in Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.I (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1995); Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.II (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1997); Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara. Such as ASMo AP 638 and AP 639. For more on these account books see Clark, Collecting Art, 1–11, 123–5. Also written ‘Girolamo’. The Zigliolo family were closely connected to the court, many of them serving as guardarobieri for the Este; Clark, Collecting Art, 1–12. There are numerous letters and documents belonging to the Zigliolo family in ASMo Particolari 631, 632, 633 and 634. The secondary sources on the family are limited but see Walther Ludwig and Maristella De Panizza Lorch, Zilioli Ferrariensis comediola Michaelida (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1975); Danilo Aguzzi-Barbagli, ‘Review. Zilioli Ferrariensis Comediola Michaelida’, Renaissance Quarterly 30, no. 2 (1977): 217–19. For a discussion of celadon see Finlay, Pilgrim Art, especially 133–5. Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 78–9. ASMo G114 105R. 31 October 1555, and also again on 15 January 1555 ‘uno vasso di porcelana, alto uno bracio, a suso di zucha’ quoted in Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1978), 191–2. Sylvia Auld, Renaissance Venice, Islam and Mahmud the Kurd: A Metalworking Enigma (London: Altajir World Of Islam Trust, 2004), 49. Geraldine A Johnson, ‘In the Hand of the Beholder: Isabella d’Este and the Sensual Allure of Sculpture’, in Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice, eds. Alice Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 183–97. Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer, eds., Encounters: The Meeting of Asia and Europe, 1500–1800 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2004), 46–7. Deborah Howard, ‘Death in Damascus: Venetians in Syria in the Mid-Fiffteenth Century’, Muqarnas 20, no. 1 (2003): 354. For Ferrara see Bib Arist Giuseppe Antonelli, 963, VI. See also Andrea Marchesi, ‘“Robe che si trovano nello studio overo camerino di marmo, et nel adorato di sua Excellentia”: Presenze e assenze di oggetti d’arte nell’inventario Antonelli del

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45 46

47

48 49

50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57

58

59 60

61 62

1559’, in Il regno e l’arte: i camerini di Alfonso I d’Este, terzo duca di Ferrara (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2012), 229–30. See also discussion in the next chapter. Quoted and translated in Jean Michel Massing, Studies in Imagery (London: Pindar Press, 2003), 397. Carswell, ‘More about the Mongols’, 156–8; John Carswell, ‘Free for All: Blue-and-White in 1500’, Oriental Art 48, no. 5 (2003): 10–11. Guido Donatone, Maioliche napoletane della spezieria aragonese di Castelnuovo (Naples: L. Regina, 1970), 10. ASMo G114 105V. ASMo G114 105R. Zhu You in Pingzhou ketan quoted in Lisa Golombek, Robert B. Mason and Gauvin A. Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware: A New Approach to Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Iran (Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers in association with Royal Ontario Museum, 1996), 10; Massing, Studies in Imagery, 398. Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2001), 217–18. Ibid., 218; Cipriano Piccolpasso, Li tre libri dell’arte del vasaio MSL/1861/7446, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1557, 11R. See for example the birth set that still survives with depictions of birth scenes from c1530s by Nicola da Urbino in the V&A, C.2258&A-1910, https:// collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O122034/trencher-and-bowl-nicola-da-urbino/ ASMo G114 105R. It is not clear whether these were motifs in the blue and white pattern or if they were sculptural lions’ heads similar to an ink and water pot in porcelain now in the V&A, FE.22-1983, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O461346/ink-stand-unknown/ ASMo G114 105V. For the English transcription, see Richard Stapleford, Lorenzo de’ Medici at Home. The Inventory of the Palazzo Medici in 1492 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 74–5. For the Italian see Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 378, doc 293. For the 1512 copy, ASF MAP 165. Elizabeth Rodini, ‘Mobile Things: On the Origins and the Meanings of Levantine Objects in Early Modern Venice’, Art History 41, no. 2 (2018): 2–3. See for example the adaptation of motifs in Iran, Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware. Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 201–15; Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, chapter 5. Patrizia Meli, ‘Firenze di fronte al mondo islamico. Documenti su due ambasciate (1487–1489)’, Annali di Storia di Firenze IV (2009): 244. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 78, 302, doc 87; Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 113, 203, fn 77. Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 44. ASMo G114 105R. For the discussion of these terms see Chapter 2. Francis Watson, ‘Introduction’, in Mounted Porcelain in the J. Paul Getty Museum, ed. Gillian Wilson (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust, 1999), 3, 20; David Whitehouse, ‘Chinese Porcelain in Medieval Europe’, Medieval Archaeology 16, no. 1 (1972): 74. Quoted in Thijs Weststeijn, ‘Cultural Reflections on Porcelain in the SeventeenthCentury Netherlands’, in Chinese and Japanese Porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age, eds. Jan van Campen and Titus Eliëns (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2014), 222. Massing, Studies in Imagery, 395. Luke Syson, ‘Italian Maiolica Painting: Composing for Context’ in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Timothy Wilson (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 21. For credit as a concept in relation to collecting see Clark, Collecting Art, chapter 2. ‘Un pot a eaux de pierre de purcelleine a un couvercle d’argent et bordée d’argent pesant un marc iiii onces, prisiee iiij francs d’or’. Quoted in Watson, ‘Introduction’, 3. Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 378.

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63

64 65

66 67

68

69 70

71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Jackson and Jaffer, Encounters, 46–7; Watson, ‘Introduction’, 4; Arthur Lane, ‘The Gaignières-Fonthill Vase; A Chinese Porcelain of about 1300’, The Burlington Magazine 103, no. 697 (1961): 124–33. Frontispiece featuring the Gaignières-Fonthill vase from John Britton, Graphical and Literary Illustrations of Fonthill Abbey (Wiltshire, 1823). Stacey Pierson, From Object to Concept: Global Consumption and the Transformation of Ming Porcelain (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 38. Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware; Mehreen Chida-Razvi, ‘From Function to Form: Chini-khana in Safavid and Mughal Architecture’, South Asian Studies 35, no. 1 (2019): 82–106. ASMo G114 105V. Pierson, Object to Concept, 40–1; Leah R. Clark, ‘The Peregrinations of Porcelain: The Collections of Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona of Ferrara’, Journal of the History of Collections 32, no. 2 (2020): Figure 2. Some were transformed into incense burners, see Beyza Uzun and Nina Macaraig, ‘Scenting the Imperial Residence: Objects from the Topkapı Palace Museum Collections’, The Senses and Society 17, no. 1 (2022): 78. See also the porcelain bowls from 1522 to 1566, with Ottoman semi-precious stones mounted in gold and silver to form floral designs, The British Museum, PDF, A.793 and A.794: www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_PDF-A-794 Pierson, Object to Concept, 41. Bezoar stones were often put into mounts and also carried talismanic properties, Beate Fricke, ‘Making Marvels-Faking Matter: Mediating Virtus between the Bezoar and Goa Stones and Their Containers’, in The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, eds. Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Boston: Brill, 2017). Grasskamp, Objects in Frames. Ibid., 9–10. Framing in Islamic tradition can be found in the architectural use of the Mihrab or the floral marginalia in Mughal miniatures, for example. For the frame in Western cultural traditions, see the seminal text, Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image. An Insight Into Early Modern Meta-Painting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 39–42; Stoichita, Self-Aware Image; Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Pliny, Natural History, ed. H. Rackham (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann), Book 35, chapter 36. Quoted in Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 40. Derrida, Truth in Painting. Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 42. Very similar mounts attributed to a British goldsmith appear on two Chinese porcelain bowls associated with Lord Burghley, advisor to Elizabeth I, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (44.14.5 and 44.14.3), www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/ 199407 and www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/199405 Jordan-Gschwend, ‘Marvels of the East’, 112. Ibid., fn.111. Grasskamp, Objects in Frames, 42. For the frame see also Georg Simmel, ‘The Picture Frame: An Aesthetic Study [1902]’, Theory, Culture & Society 11, no. 11–17 (1994): 11–17s. Avinoam Shalem, ‘The Poetics of Portability’, in Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 256. Jonathan Hay, Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2020), 62–3. Leah R. Clark, ‘Objets croisés: Albarelli as Vessels of Mediation within and beyond the Spezieria’, Études Épistémè 36, no. 29 (2019): 1–25. His diary records porcelain, see Diana Newall, ed., Art and Its Global Histories: A Reader (Manchester: Manchester University Press in association with The Open University, 2017), 58.

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86

87 88 89 90

91

92 93 94 95 96 97

98

99

100 101 102 103 104 105

106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

See the catalogue entry www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_SL-5218-82; J. Rowlands, Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German-Speaking Regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum: The Fifteenth Century, and the Sixteenth Century by Artists Born before 1530 (London: British Museum Press, 1993). BM SL,5218.73, www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_SL-5218-73 Rowlands, German Artists. Uzun and Macaraig, ‘Scenting the Imperial Residence’, 78–9. Stationary censer, late sixteenth century and 1617/18, porcelain and gilt silver, total height 373/s in. (95 cm). Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul, no. 29. Nina Ergin, ‘The Fragrance of the Divine: Ottoman Incense Burners and Their Context’, The Art Bulletin 96, no. 1 (2014): 79–80, Figure 13. Bowl with mounts, porcelain, Jingdezhen, China, Ming, Jiajing reign (1522–66); German silver-gilt mounts, Augsburg with hallmark, 1720–80, BM PDF,A.691 www.britishmu seum.org/collection/object/A_PDF-A-691 ‘dua chasse di chuoio fatte a dua vaxi di porcellana, per la credenza’. Quoted in Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 180, Doc 40. Maria Antonia Pinto de Matos, ‘Chinese Porcelain in Portuguese Written Sources’, Oriental Art 5 (2002/3): 38. ‘tri fiaschi de curame gra’di ala turch/sca’, ASMo AP 770 3V. Allison Stielau, ‘The Case for the Case for Early Modern Objects and Images’, Kritische Berichte 3 (2011): 5. Ibid., 8–9. Ibid., 8–9. Martin Schongauer, Adoration of the Magi, engraving, 1470s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932, 32.78.1. www.metmuseum.org/art/ collection/search/366983 Case (etui) for a coconut cup, leather, velvet and gilt tooling, Italy, 1503, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Alastair Bradley Martin, 1949, 49.61.2a, b. www.metmuseum.org/ art/collection/search/200618 This is evidenced in Eleonora’s inventories, as well as her children, Isabella, Alfonso and Ippolito d’Este. For Isabella, see below; for Alfonso, see Chapter 4; for Ippolito see ASMo AP 770 24R. Paul Kristeller, Andrea Mantegna (London and New York: Longmans, 1901). 527, doc 45 Roger Jones, ‘Mantegna and Materials’, I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 2 (1987): 71–90. Guido Donatone, La maiolica napoletana del rinascimento (Napoli: Gemini Arte, 1993), 62. Robert Finlay, ‘The Pilgrim Art: The Culture of Porcelain in World History’, Journal of World History 9, no. 2 (1998): 174; Ibid., 65–7. Quoted in Whitehouse, ‘Chinese Porcelain’, 73. The sources are compiled as an appendix in Bianca de Divitiis, ‘Castel Nuovo and Castel Capuano in Naples: The Transformation of Two Medieval Castles into “all’antica” Residences for the Aragonese Royals’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 76, no. 4 (2013): 441–74.s Paola Venturelli, Esmaillée à la façon de Milan: smalti nel Ducato di Milano da Bernabò Visconti a Ludovico il Moro (Venice: Marsilio, 2008), 93. Adolfo Venturi, ‘L’arte Ferrarese nel periodo d’Ercole I d’Este’, Atti e memorie della Regia deputazione di storia patria per l’Emilia e la Romagna III, no. VI (1888): 114, fn. 1. Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 49. Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 65. Gerritsen, City of Blue and White, 58. Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 174. Benedetto, Marco Polo, 265. Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 174. Ronald Lightbown, ‘Oriental Art and the Orient in Late Renaissance and Baroque Italy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 32 (1969): 230.

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114 Pontano, Virtù sociali, 232–3. See also Welch, ‘Public Magnificence’, 215. 115 From Vida de Frei Bartolomeu dos Martires, quoted and translated in Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 70; Pinto de Matos, ‘Chinese Porcelain in Portuguese Written Sources’, 39. 116 Ch’en Ch’eng quoted and translated in Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, 126. 117 Khvandamir from the Habib al-Siyar, quoted and translated in Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, 133. 118 Jean-Christophe Valière et al., ‘Acoustic Pots in Ancient and Medieval Buildings: Literary Analysis of Ancient Texts and Comparison with Recent Observations in French Churches’, Acta Acustica United with Acustica 99, no. 1 (2013): 70–81. 119 Catherine Hess, ‘Brilliant Achievements: The Journey of Islamic Glass and Ceramics to Renaissance Italy’, in The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance, ed. Catherine Hess (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), 19. 120 Paul Hills, Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250–1550 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 118. 121 There are numerous letters from Venice. See ASMo C&S 132, in particular the letter of 29 May 1493, 1683 xi–19. 122 Venturi, ‘Arte Ferrarese I’, 106–8. For Venetian glass at the courts of Ferrara and Mantua, see Leah R. Clark, ‘The View from Ferrara: “Venetian” Objects in Este/Aragonese Collections’, in Typical Venice? Venetian Commodities, 13th–16th Centuries, eds. Philippe Cordez and Ella Beaucamp (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 185–99. For enamel, see Rosa Barovier Mentasti and Cristina Tonini, ‘Tra rami smaltati, maioliche e vetri Firenze or Venezia?’, in I rami smaltati detti veneziani del Rinascimento italiano/Les cuivres émaillés dits vénitiens de la Renaissance italienne, eds. Françoise Barbe et al. (Milan: Silvana editoriale, 2018), 23–49. 123 Hugo Miguel Crespo, ‘Global Interiors on the Rua Nova in Renaissance Lisbon’, in The Global City: On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon, eds. Annemarie Jordan-Gschwend and Kate Lowe (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2015), 121–39. 124 Marika Leino, Fashion, Devotion and Contemplation: The Status and Functions of Italian Renaissance Plaquettes (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013), 254. For a representation see, Matteo di Giovanni, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1482, Harvard Art Museums, 1966.3 https://hvrd. art/o/228297 125 ASMo AP 633 56v. 126 For the social nature of these gems see Leah R. Clark, ‘Transient Possessions: Circulation, Replication, and Transmission of Gems and Jewels in Quattrocento Italy’, Journal of Early Modern History 15, no. 3 (2011): 185–211. 127 ASMo G117, 60R and AP 638, 101R; ASMo G114, 75r; 76r. See also Clark, Collecting Art, 7–8. 128 On literary imitation see, Jean-Claude Carron, ‘Imitation and Intertextuality in the Renaissance’, New Literary History 19, no. 3 (1988); George Pigman, ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1980): 1–32. For copying and imitation in artistic practice, see Andrea Bolland, ‘Art and Humanism in Early Renaissance Padua: Cennini, Vergeria and Petrarch on Imitation’, Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 3 (1996): 469–87. 129 Clark, ‘Transient Possessions’, 185–221; Leah R. Clark, ‘Replication, Quotation, and the “Original” in Quattrocento Collecting Practices’, in The Challenge of the Object/Die Herausforderung des Objekts, eds. Georg Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch (Nuremberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum Press, 2014), 126–40; Leah R. Clark, ‘Collecting and Replicating Antiquities: Casts, Substitutions, and the Culture of the Copy in the Quattrocento’, Journal of the History of Collections 28, no. 1 (2016): 1–13. 130 Clark, Collecting Art, 112–56. 131 Hay, Sensuous Surfaces, 79–83. Gerhard Wolf, ‘Vesting Walls, Displaying Structure, Crossing Cultures: Transmedial and Transmaterial Dynamics of Ornament’, in Histories of

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132 133

134

135

136

137

138

139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148

149

Ornament: From Global to Local, eds. Gülru Necipo˘glu and Alina Payne (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 104–5. Jennifer D. Webb, ‘All Is Not Fun and Games: Conversation, Play, and Surveillance at the Montefeltro Court in Urbino’, Renaissance Studies 26, no. 3 (2012): 417–40. Hay discusses this in detail for Chinese objects, Hay, Sensuous Surfaces, 91–4. For material mimesis, see Marta Ajmar, ‘Looking INTO the Transcultural Object’, in EurAsian Matters: China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object, 1600–1800, eds. Anna Grasskamp and Monica Juneja (Cham: Springer, 2018), 247–53. Graves, Arts of Allusion. Of course ceramics were not only engaged with in the studiolo but also at meals, particularly the later istoriato wares that revealed mythological stories as one ate the food off the plate, and one’s knowledge could be tested by the revelation of the written reference on the reverse. Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 13. Michael Baxandall, ‘A Dialogue on Art from the Court of Leonello d’Este. Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Pars LXVIII’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26, no. 3/4 (1963): 310–11. Pliny’s description of fantastic peoples often referred to as ‘Plinian peoples’ influenced numerous medieval and Renaissance representations, see Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the ‘Natural History’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 3–5, 29–31. For Pliny’s influence on Leonello’s patronage, 132–4. The Latin text has never been fully translated. For translated sections and commentaries see Michael Baxandall, ‘Angelo Decembrio’s De Politia Litteraria Part LXVIII’, in Words for Pictures. Seven Papers on Renaissance Art and Criticism, ed. Michael Baxandall (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 39–67; Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 11–52; Jon Pearson Perry, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Dialogue on Literary Taste: Angelo Decembrio’s Account of Playwright Ugolino Pisani at the Court of Leonello d’Este’, Renaissance Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1986): 613–35; Christopher S. Celenza, ‘Creating Canons in Fifteenth-Century Ferrara: Angelo Decembrio’s “De politia litteraria”’, Renaissance Quarterly 1, no. 10 (2004): 43–98. Paula Findlen, ‘The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy’, Journal of the History of Collections 1, no. 1 (1989): 59–78. For Pliny’s wider reception in the Renaissance see, McHam, Pliny and Artistic Culture; Peter Fane-Saunders, Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Stephen Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Anthony Colantuono, Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation. Equicola’s Seasons of Desire (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010). McHam, Pliny and Artistic Culture, 33–42, 55–69. Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 43. Weststeijn, ‘Cultural Reflections’, 216–17. Meier, ‘Mercantile Materiality’. For porcelain’s circulations see Gerritsen, City of Blue and White, 114–33. Massing, Studies in Imagery, 391–2; Whitehouse, ‘Chinese Porcelain’, 71. Quoted in Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 70. Massing, Studies in Imagery, 391–2; Whitehouse, ‘Chinese Porcelain’, 74. Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics: A Catalogue of the British Museum Collection (London: British Museum Press, 2009), 694. For the problem with the term India in early modern sources see Lia Markey and Jessica Keating, ‘“Indian” Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inventories: A Case-Study of the Sixteenth-Century Term’, Journal of the History of Collections 23, no. 2 (2010): 283–300. Massing, Studies in Imagery, 390.

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150 James Clifton, ‘Journeys, Real and Imaginary, in China and Europe: Cartography, Landscape, and Travel around 1600’, in The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, eds. Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Boston: Brill, 2017), 547–70. 151 Joaquim Alves Gaspar, ‘Blunders, Errors and Entanglements: Scrutinizing the Cantino Planisphere with a Cartometric Eye’, Imago Mundi 64, no. 2 (2012): 181–200; Joaquim Alves Gaspar, ‘From the Portolan Chart of the Mediterranean to the Latitude Chart of the Atlantic. Cartometric Analysis and Modeling’, PhD Thesis (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2010), especially chapter 5. 152 The literature on European conceptions of the ‘New World’ is vast and rapidly expanding, but for the collections and reception of ‘Amerindian’ artefacts in Europe see Lia Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016); Christian Feest, ‘European Collecting of American Indian Artefacts and Art’, Journal of the History of Collections 5 (1993): 1–11; Alexander Nagel, Some Discoveries of 1492: Eastern Antiquities and Renaissance Europe (Groningen: The University of Groningen Lectures, 2013), 25–7. 153 Gaspar, ‘Cantino Planisphere’, 184. 154 Quoted and translated in Rui Manuel Loureiro, ‘Chinese Commodities on the India Route in the Late 16th – Early 17th Centuries’, Bulletin of Portuguese–Japanese Studies 20 (2010): 82–3. 155 Quoted in Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 25. 156 Moores, ‘Diomede Carafa’, 303–7. 157 Giuseppe Pardi, ‘Diario ferrarese dell’anno 1409 sino al 1502 di autori incerti’, Rerum italicarum scriptores 24.7, no. vi (1928): indice cronologico, 344. 158 Giuliano Passero, Giornale del Regno di Napoli, BNN B Branc 93.D.29 (Presso Vincenzo Orsino: Naples, 1785), 38. 159 ‘pignatellj et pignate de terra dotranto’. ASMo CPE 1246.2. Letter from Alfonso to Eleonora of 9 January 1481. 160 Gaetano Filangieri, Documenti per la storia, le arte e industrie per le provincie napoletane raccolti e pubblicati. Indici degli artefici delle arti maggiori e minori. Dalla Lettera H alla Lettera Z, vol. 6 (Naples: Tipografia dell’Accademia Reale delle Scienze, 1891), 101; Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 62. 161 Ronald G. Musto, ‘Introduction: Naples in Myth and History’, in Naples, eds. Marcia B. Hall and Thomas Willette (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 6–7; Arturo Bascetta, L’ultima Regina di Puglia, Donna Sabella da Lecce a Ferrara: Isabelle de Baucio, 1465– 1533 (Avellino: Arturo Bascetta Edizioni, 2014), 99. 162 BHV Ms. 947, 198R-217V. 163 Labelled as ‘cassa italiana’, 37, 46, 49, 53, 56, 60, 61, 64, 68, 69, 71. 164 We know that Isabella sold a large portion of the Aragonese library, which ended up at the Palazzo di Blois, the residence of the nephew of the King of France, which in 1544 was transferred to Fontainebleau for Francois I. Bascetta, Isabelle de Baucio, 99. 165 See Chapter 1 for these descriptions. 166 BHV Ms. 947, 182R-V. 167 BHV Ms. 947, 200V, see Appendix II. 168 BHV Ms. 947, 203V. 169 BHV Ms. 947, 204V, 199V, 207R. 170 BHV Ms. 947, 210R. 171 BHV Ms. 947, 211V. 172 Rosemary Trippe, ‘Art of Memory: Recollecting Rome in Giovanni Marcanova’s Collectio antiquitatum’, Art History 33, no. 5 (2010): 784. 173 BHV Ms. 947, 201R.

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CHAPTER FOUR

FIT FOR THE GODS Porcelain in Alfonso d’Este’s Camerini

INTRO DUCTION

Swaths of blue paint contrasted with white form the lotus motifs on a porcelain bowl placed prominently in Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods from 1514 (Plate V). This material translation – ultramarine blue and white pigments on a canvas parading as a ceramic vessel in the visual codes of mimesis – parallels the sorts of cultural translation and material metamorphosis that took place when Chinese porcelain made its way into the collections of the Italian princely elite. In the painting, attention is also drawn to other materials, such as the crystal jug being filled with water by the young Bacchus, highlighting the glass blower’s virtuosity as much as the painter’s ability to render its translucency. Bellini’s painting allows the viewer to contemplate the paragone, the comparison of the arts, drawing attention to the technical skills that are required to make works of art – whether ceramic vessels, crystal vases or the mimetic possibilities of painting. Indeed, once one notices the various vessels littering the scene, it is hard to ignore them. They range from the more mundane such as the terracotta water jug on top of the head of a nymph, to the latest invention of chalcedony glass and the highly prized three porcelain pieces that the painting is famous for. As is well known, this work was part of a series of paintings made for the collections of Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara. Taking in all the paintings made for the space, one becomes overwhelmed at the material culture that floods the scenes. The physical ceramics, glasses and other 150

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vessels that were on display throughout Alfonso’s camerini, as this chapter argues, are central to understanding the function of these collecting spaces and in turn, transform our interpretation of the purpose of these paintings. Bellini’s Feast of the Gods is well known as one of the earliest representations of Chinese porcelain in Italy, executed only a decade or so later than his brother-in-law Mantegna’s rendition in his Adoration of the Magi discussed in the previous chapter (Plate III, Chapter 3). The painting was executed for one of the famed camerini of Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara and later repainted by a compatriot, Titian, and the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi and it is often assumed that the artist copied Chinese porcelain he had seen in his native city of Venice.1 Yet this chapter argues that even if Bellini used porcelain he saw in Venice as models, the insertion of these pieces into the painting referenced the large porcelain collection held by the Este, housed in spaces such as the previously unknown ‘Stanza delle Porcellane’. The painting’s location in the suite of rooms known as the camerini showcasing Alfonso’s collections follows a long tradition of collecting in the Ferrarese court. The Belfiore Muses of Leonello d’Este’s time are often singled out as one of the first literary programmes for a studiolo, while Alfonso’s parents, Ercole d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona, were great patrons of the arts. Little discussed until recently, Eleonora d’Aragona’s collections were noteworthy, rivalling many of the more famous men of her time, including a vast collection of porcelain which surpassed the contemporary Medici collections, as established in the previous chapter.2 Visitors to these spaces viewed these works not in a single fixed location or in isolation, but often as they moved between a variety of spaces.3 Indeed, visitors who were being shown such collections beheld them as part of a tour that connected disparate spaces in a form of programmatic display, as discussed in Chapter 1. Alfonso’s paintings are now dispersed and viewed in museums across the globe, which not only alienates them from their original contexts of the camerini, but also away from the meaningful interchanges they engendered with objects housed in the rooms. For example, in 1517 when Federico Gonzaga visited his uncle in Ferrara, Stazio Gadio reported on the visit in a letter to Isabella d’Este describing a ‘beautiful camerino made out of Carrara and Meschi marble, with beautiful figures and decoration well executed, adorned with vases and marble and metal antique and modern statues’.4 Scholars have become fixated on sorting out the iconographic programme of the camerini and their display, which could certainly lead to a better understanding of these rooms, but this fixation obscures the flexibility and mutability of these spaces, as objects often moved.5 The confusion around the separate rooms in the primary sources is perhaps indicative of an ambiguity of space and a sense of fluidity. Unlike today’s museum displays, objects were mobile, speaking to one another as they were moved from room to room. Spaces too were more flexible, and rooms could be transformed by textiles and other objects, which

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were relocated and used for a particular temporary purpose. Indeed, the confusion over the camerini is also due to the fact that they were changed and altered a number of times within a short span of time. Rather as a problem to be solved, this transformation indicates the fluidity of these spaces and objects, and challenges a fixed, static meaning and function. Like the representations on cabinets, such as the intarsia in the Montefeltro studioli or the later alchemical paintings in Francesco de’ Medici’s stanzino, these paintings were to frame the objects housed in such spaces, asking the viewer to contemplate the relationship between fiction and reality. In a reversal of normal hierarchies, the paintings can be seen as the frame or parergon for the sculpture, vessels and other materials on display. This chapter begins with a consideration of why the porcelain bowls have often been neglected in the literature and why they are important to return to when looking at the camerini. It then moves on to a brief overview of Alfonso’s project for the camerini, but with an emphasis on Alfonso’s commissions and considerations for the material culture in these spaces. In addition, it looks anew at later inventories, including a previously unpublished inventory of the Stanza delle Porcellane, arguing that the material culture such as porcelain and glass depicted in the paintings destined for the camerini were to showcase Alfonso’s collections. Rather than simply representations, the chapter argues that these pictorial translations spoke to complex intersensorial, intermedial and intertextual dialogues in the apartments of Alfonso d’Este. By considering the material culture within these spaces, this chapter concludes that the collections were showcasing Alfonso’s interests in alternative approaches to disegno, which placed emphasis on technical innovation and that the camerini were exercises in the interplay between reality and fiction, material mimesis and counterfeiting. ON THINGS AND H EIDEGGER’S JUG

In his classic essay on the thing, Martin Heidegger takes the example of a jug in order to stop and take stock of an object we use every day to reveal how it can become a ‘thing’.6 In other words, it is only upon close reflection and contemplation that a simple object can reveal to us its proper reality, which for Heidegger is linked to a concept of ‘nearness’. Heidegger takes us through various steps, some more opaque than others to arrive at his conclusion. To begin with, he discusses how the jug is both something that provides water and brings mortals together, and as such can be seen as a gift; it outpours water or wine as well as enlivening conviviality and elevating the celebration of the feast. Heidegger traces the etymology of the word thing (dinc), which means a gathering, ‘specifically a gathering to deliberate on a matter under discussion, a contested matter’, which reflects the very nature of the jug as something that

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brings people together (‘nearing is the presencing of nearness’).7 In the final remarks, Heidegger concludes his discussion by linking the jug with the fourfold; whereby the jug’s ‘thingness’ lies in its ability to gather the fourfold: ‘earth and sky, divinities and mortals’. In the vocabulary of the Italian Renaissance, and in particular in treatises such as the ceramicist Cipriano Piccolpasso’s, the term vasi was related to the art of making vases or the ‘potter’s art’ (arte del vasaio). The etymology of the word in Latin (vas or vasum from the Sanskrit vas) refers to the ability to contain, enclose or even wrap or cover something.8 This is not limited to ceramics but indeed any object that exemplifies this trait and resonates with the sorts of frames or parerga discussed in the previous chapter: a house, a garment, a box, an etui, a mount or a pot, even a camerino or studiolo that contains other objects. Bellini’s Feast of the Gods has all the components of Heidegger’s thing: the jug filled with water (or wine) brings together both mortals and gods to feast and delight (Plate V). Like the jug, the porcelain vase (vas) holds fruit, and was probably itself a gift exchanged between rulers. The philosophical conundrum of the thing also raises questions around technology and space. The simple earthenware jug made from the earth for Heidegger is representative of a particular type of thing. Disheartened by the technological advances that allowed for nuclear disasters like Hiroshima to take place, Heidegger begins his essay remarking on how planes and radios have allowed for distances in time and space to shrink. This, for Heidegger, however, is not a positive thing, but rather provides us with a miscomprehension of how close we are to things and a false sense of nearness. Subsequent object-oriented philosophies are indebted to Heidegger but have approached objects in divergent ways. Heidegger’s tool-analysis has been extremely instrumental in recent approaches to objects, from Bill Brown to Lorraine Daston.9 In this approach, objects are often invisible when they are serving their function as ‘equipment’, however it is only when they fail to do what they should do, or when they are in the wrong place, that they proclaim their reality.10 For Bruno Latour, objects can be the sources of association and assembly. Latour suggests that we may get at the very importance of politics and social relations when we examine things, not as matters-of-fact, but as complicated, paradoxical, entangled matters of concern.11 Latour, however, is far more interested in all sorts of objects; those very ones related to science and technology that Heidegger was eager to reject. According to his Actor Network Theory (ANT), an emphasis on networks and the agency of objects underlines how things, like humans can be actors (or actants).12 As articulated in the Introduction, a particularly fruitful approach takes thing theory and the material turn in the humanities and combines them with new sensorial approaches, to think more critically about the varied multisensorial and multidimensional experience of objects, but also the vibrancy of matter and the natural materials the earth provides.13

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Often mentioned in the literature, the Chinese porcelain bowls that grace Bellini’s painting are usually taken for granted, glossed over in iconographical attempts to find the literary interpretations for the painting and the identification of the figures. Rarely are the questions asked: why are they there? How did they come to be there? What purpose did they serve in the collecting culture and Alfonso’s larger designs for the camerini?14 Heidegger’s questions about time and space as well as technology also have a role to play here and provide a starting point to stop and consider the presence of the porcelain bowls and even the glass vessels in the painting. These bowls and vessels were not shipped by planes in a modern global economy, but they were part of early modern globalising processes, entangled in complex trade and diplomatic networks, and their presence in this painting and in the Este palace is certainly linked to their role as actors/actants in larger cross-cultural networks. While Ferrara was a court in Northern Italy and can be considered to be fairly isolated when compared to a global city like Naples, the presence of these porcelain vessels asks us to think about larger global connections. They point to a rapidly expanding world, where new trade routes were being explored and even socalled ‘new worlds’ were being discovered and pillaged for their natural and human-made resources (and their peoples). Furthermore, their depiction in the painting and their association with Alfonso d’Este and the space of the studiolo are also linked to technological experiments, as Alfonso himself partook in ceramic making and had interests in manufacture, as will be addressed later in this chapter. By bringing phenomenological, sociological and anthropological concerns to the collecting culture of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, objects of collection can be studied not merely in terms of the tastes of a particular patron, but the ways in which they pointed to the larger world. Anthropologists have long been attentive to the ways things can be both meaningful and material – that is they not only reflect the social but also constitute it.15 A porcelain bowl (or ‘jug’ to remain with Heidegger’s vocabulary), sitting on the shelf in the ducal palace in Ferrara, was more than just a bowl. It was produced in China, using ingredients only present in Chinese soil, while its blue decorations were applied with cobalt ore imported from Persia, with patterns that represented a circuit of global motifs.16 Already, the bowl is the result of years of transcultural interactions in Asia and the Middle East, and can be seen to have played a central role in transmissions of artistic designs.17 The object then reached Ferrara through a circuitous route – from China, it probably made its way via Persia, to be then gifted to Alfonso’s mother or perhaps his grandfather in Naples via an Ottoman or Mamluk sultan. This gift would have been the product of intense negotiations over a series of years, and most likely did not represent peace, but indeed, was used as a political tool, a material mediator to ease tensions. The vessel would have also been

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accompanied by a series of ambassadors whose stay required much pomp and circumstance – ritualised processions through the streets and lavish receptions at court (Figure 4, Chapter 1), not only involving the local court, but ambassadors sent from other states who were there to report on the negotiations, as described in Chapter 1. If not a gift or inherited from Alfonso’s Aragonese predecessors, Chinese porcelain still took a circuitous route in the early sixteenth century to arrive in Italy and would have involved negotiations with a number of intermediaries. The jug/vas becomes a source for assembly – of people, of things, of ideas – and a source of inspiration. Yet, its mobility and the appropriation of its designs do not make the thing or its reception and appropriation passive. As a volume on the power of things in cross-cultural flows articulates, ‘things get entangled in altered “stories” but in turn alter the stories of their new environment’.18 The collecting culture of Renaissance Italy, while certainly closely tied to humanistic enterprises more traditionally associated with the ‘Italian’ nature of the Renaissance, was also connected to the larger circulation of goods. This culture was fascinated with rare and precious materials, stories and narratives of the provenance and circulation of these goods and thus, connected to diplomatic and mercantile activities. By starting with the object, we can begin to tell an alternative story that places Italy not at the centre of the world, but as a node in a larger global meshwork of economics, trade, manufacture, technology and diplomacy. Alfonso’s porcelain bowls became part of his prized possessions, but they also became part of his eagerness to reproduce this sought-after material at the court of Ferrara. The porcelain vases depicted in The Feast of the Gods are often mentioned in passing, neglected for the humanist interpretations of the cycle of paintings planned for Alfonso’s camerino, but this book considers the wider implications of these vessels in collecting practices in addition to their material and technological value, and this chapter is particularly attentive to how this approach allows us to tell new stories of these collections. SHOWCASING A COLLECTION: ALFONSO’S CAMERI NI

Alfonso I d’Este’s collecting pursuits have traditionally been reduced to frivolity compared to his sibling Isabella d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua. Evaluations of Alfonso’s personality have had a bearing on his reputation in the assessment of his role as a cultural figure and a ruler. Edmund Gardner characterised him in 1904 as having ‘none of his wife’s culture’ (Lucrezia Borgia) as he was ‘brusque in manners, negligent in attire’. Instead, he ‘devoted himself to his favourite mechanical pursuits, casting guns, working in metal, manufacturing majolica vessels and the like in his own private bottega. Rough artisans and men of low birth surrounded him jesting freely with him, frequently admitted to his table, and even sharing in his coarser pleasures’.19

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The story of Alfonso dabbling in artistic adventures or even ‘mechanical’ ones is not a twentieth-century invention, but is owed to contemporary biographies of Alfonso, including Paolo Giovio’s from 1553. The sixteenth-century narrative and its interpretations have figured into subsequent literature and provided a slanted view of Alfonso and his collecting practices, comparable to the way in which Vasari’s Lives has shaped our (mis)understandings of Renaissance art, and indeed is bound up in the same single understanding of disegno, a point to which I will return. There is a juxtaposition in the literature that posits Alfonso either as a negligent duke and craftsperson who dabbled in making ceramics or an erudite prince who collected works of ‘high’ art and took care of his state. A similar interpretation of Francesco I de’ Medici has also recently been questioned, where his interests in alchemy and medicine have long been presented as hobbies distracting him from his political duties.20 It is a problem of modern historiography that makes these two identities incompatible, which has a direct bearing on our interpretation of the works collected and the spaces housing those works. In a 1998 exhibition catalogue on Dosso Dossi, Andreas Bayer duly dedicates some discussion to Alfonso’s artistic predilections and his collections of a range of works of art, yet suggests these might be at odds with the figure of an intellectual ruler who chooses the vita contemplativa over the vita activa: ‘The renown of Alfonso’s practical pursuits – turning wood, casting bronzes, making and painting pottery – sometimes masks his equally strong contemplative side and his predilection for collecting’.21 This reflects a general tendency in studies on collecting in the Renaissance, which posits the ideal space of the quiet studiolo meant for contemplation with that of the studiolo as a social space, where objects on display are engaged with not only for their aesthetic and intellectual contents, but also as economic stores of value, to show off to visiting dignitaries and fellow rulers.22 Traditionally, Isabella d’Este’s paintings are often contrasted with her brother Alfonso’s as allegories that require an erudite, literate viewer who is able to interpret their ambiguities, while her brother’s commissions represented clearly discernible images that appealed to the senses rather than a humanist’s intellect. Female rulers, however had to work harder at ensuring that their collecting pursuits were seen as moral, chaste and educational, and these interpretations may have been largely informed by the way in which these collections were framed by Isabella at the time, in order to balance and negotiate a female identity within the courts.23 Isabella’s own taste for antiquities and material culture have also been subject to modern hierarchies that privileged paintings over the ‘lesser arts’. Recent reappraisals of collecting practices in the Italian Renaissance courts have revealed the anachronism of this hierarchy, indicating that many ‘decorative’ objects were worth far more than a canvas by a ‘famous master’ and that a focus on things like the invention of perspective and representation neglects many other critical contributions of looking and

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experiencing art that such studioli engendered.24 As scholars have increasingly argued, Alfonso’s paintings do engage in complex relationships with poetry and myth, and the antique tradition, and as I contend here, they also participated in multifaceted dialogues with the objects displayed in tandem with them and the larger activities of the patron.25 An emphasis on the senses, rather than responding to base desires, can instead be interpreted within the anthropology of the senses that understands sensorial engagement to be meaningful, and more importantly, situates it alongside contemporary approaches to the senses.26 The variations in historical characterisations of Alfonso are also very much tied to the tensions between manual and liberal practices, a debate dating back to Alfonso’s own time, but also misconstrued in the historiography. I return to this debate towards the end of the chapter, but first I will briefly address the history of the camerini. The Renaissance studiolo had its genesis in the notion of musaeum, the place where the Muses dwell, explicitly referenced in the cycle of Muses designed by Guarino for Leonello d’Este’s study that was inherited by Ercole d’Este, Alfonso’s father.27 There are numerous scholarly speculations on the literary sources and interpretations of the Bacchanals painted for Alfonso d’Este in Ferrara, as well as the organisation of the camerino where they were displayed, and the larger suite of rooms known as the camerini.28 Bellini’s Feast of the Gods was the first painting executed as part of a larger programme of paintings for Alfonso’s camerino. It was finished in 1514, but the project encountered numerous adaptations over the course of several years, resulting in alterations to the subject matter of the paintings, as well as a change of artists who contributed, but also substantial changes to the rooms themselves. A summary of how this painting fits within the larger programme and building works is necessary, but the goal here is not to provide a new interpretation of the iconographical programme or placement of the paintings. The following history of Alfonso’s commission and building work will be familiar to many scholars and thus, only a brief outline is provided here. While we have limited primary source evidence in relation to Bellini’s commission, there is a fair amount of information related to the building renovations for the suite of rooms undertaken by Alfonso d’Este. Unfortunately, the primary sources are often confusing, where contemporaries use different words to describe the same rooms, which have left scholars perplexed and in conflict with the actual arrangement, position and display of the rooms. It is generally understood that Alfonso’s renovation project comprised a section known as the Via Coperta, or covered way, which was a passageway between the castle (Castel Vecchio) and the palace (Palazzo del Corte). This area had been renovated by Alfonso’s parents, Ercole d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona (it was indeed to this passageway that Eleonora fled with the young Alfonso during an attempted coup led by Niccolò di Leonello).

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The Via Coperta had been renovated by Ercole in 1499, but Alfonso when taking up the reins of power obviously felt this was a space he wanted to make his own and it needed updating to suit his tastes. Renovations began in 1505 and in 1508 documents record payment for construction of a study in stone or marble (studio di prede vive or studio di marmori fini) and a chapel.29 The War of the League of Cambrai in 1509 put a temporary hold on works, and the scaffolding was not removed until 1511. From 1508 to 1515, the sculptor Antonio Lombardo’s name appears throughout the registers, confirming he was working for the duke during this time. In 1515, work began on a gallery, described as being close to both a camerino and studio, and payments were made for the cost of transporting marble from Antonio Lombardo’s house.30 The inscriptions on the reliefs for this space indicate the function of these works within what is now a well-established concept of the studiolo: A PARTU VIRG./M.D. VIII ALF.D/III’ HOC SIBI OCII/ET QUIETIS/ERGO COND, (‘In 1508 Alfonso, third duke of Ferrara, established this for his leisure and tranquillity’). Another draws on Cicero’s De officiis referencing Scipio Africanus: HIC NUNQUA/MINUS SOLUS/QUAM CUM/SOLUS ALF.D, (‘Here never less alone then when alone, Duke Alfonso’). Viewers would have related this inscription to the extract in Cicero: ‘Scipio used to say he was never less idle than when he was idle, and never less alone than when he was alone. . .. A magnificent saying in truth and worthy of a great man, showing that even in leisure his thoughts were occupied with public business’.31 This quotation underscores the relationship between work and leisure, and alludes to the activities of a ruler that required both intellectual prowess and an active hand in the running of the state – from ensuring a functioning economy to physically protecting his territories in times of war. This held particular resonance for Alfonso and the specific location of the space, positioned above the business of the marketplace below and it could have also alluded to the physical labour of artistic manufacture, in which he was involved. Indeed, one of Lombardo’s reliefs depicted Vulcan’s forge, which engaged with Alfonso’s interests in cannon manufacture.32 The camerini were located specifically above the fish market, which was overseen by the chief fishmonger tax-collector, who in turn would have bought the fish from around 200 individual fishermen.33 The importance the role the court played in the economy of the state is evident in the 800 to 900 merchants and shopkeepers who were required to supply the food, wine, spices, firewood, hardware, barrels, pottery, leather goods, weapons, clothing, candles etc. for the ducal court. In 1515, work was begun on a new galleria, probably a room somewhere between the Via Coperta and the Torre Marchesana in the Castel Vecchio (the tower/suite of rooms of the castle that belonged previously to Eleonora d’Aragona). It has been suggested that this gallery related to Alfonso’s purchase of numerous medals and statues in 1517, which were recorded in relation to

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Alfonso’s wish to form a collection of small bronzes in the antique style.34 From 1518 to 1519, Alfonso’s major building programme was referred to as the fabbrica de camerini, which involved a suite of rooms that were newly constructed or renovated, magnificently fitted with marble floors, glass and crystal windows, gilded ceilings as well as a balcony and a staircase.35 Alongside the physical renovations and construction, Alfonso was also involved in the decorations of these rooms by commissioning some of the most famous artists of his time. In 1511, the humanist Mario Equicola wrote to Isabella d’Este noting he had been delayed in Ferrara by Alfonso: ‘the Lord Duke wants me to stay eight days: the reason is the painting of a room in which will go six fables or histories; I have already found them and written them down’.36 In December 1515, Isabella d’Este wrote to Girolamo Zigliolo in Ferrara asking for her translation of Philostratus that she had lent her brother Alfonso, but who had had it for a few years already. She noted that ‘Mario [Equicola] says that he saw it in the Duke’s studio, and in his own hands’.37 It is generally accepted that the fabulae that Mario Equicola was devising were those for Alfonso’s camerino, today known as the Bacchanals. While the specific literary sources are varied, they are largely modelled on the ekphrases recounted in the Imagines of Philostratus. Such ekphrases, as has been shown in Chapter 1, were fundamental to the viewing experiences of these spaces, which went beyond textual paradigms or mimetic representations. Philostratus’s Imagines and the ekphrastic tradition more broadly was about the experience of viewing multiple rooms and material and visual culture together. The camerino with the Bacchanals is generally understood to have been in the Via Coperta, probably the first room when leaving the ravelin, a section of the castle that was directly over the moat and reached from one of the corner towers of the castle by a drawbridge. Dana Goodgal has argued that the camerino and the studio di marmo were located in the ravelin, although Charles Hope and others have argued that it was indeed in the Via Coperta.38 Later sources refer to the camerini d’Alabastro suggesting there was more than one room: one with the marble reliefs by Antonio Lombardo and another with reliefs with the Bacchanals.39 In 1598, the ducal agent, Annibale Roncaglia, wrote to Cesare d’Este noting that five paintings were missing from the primo camerino d’alabastro, removed by the occupying legate, Cardinal Pietro Aldrobandini, and he specifically mentions three by Titian, one by Dossi and one by Bellini depicting a ‘puttino taking wine from a barrel, with other figures, and a paese done by the hand of Titian’.40 A later document from 1600, when a valuation of the rooms was taken by Bartolomeo Coletta (an agent for Cesare d’Este), noted camerini in the plural, clarifying they were ‘called d’alabastro’ and that they were made from Carrara marble, as well as fitted with tavolete of alabaster, porphyry, serpentine and other stones.41

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Alfonso’s investment in these fabulae came at a time of intense political and diplomatic negotiations for him, as the fate of Modena and Reggio were in the hands of the Pope, and Alfonso found himself in diplomatic entanglements with the papacy and the Medici. In July 1512, Alfonso went to Rome where his nephew Federico Gonzaga took him on a tour, including a visit to the Sistine chapel, where he climbed onto the scaffolding to see what Michelangelo was painting, and more or less secured a promise of a painting by the artist for his camerino.42 The following March, he returned to Rome and it might have been on this visit that he also secured a commission from Raphael for his camerino, which was to be an Indian Triumph of Bacchus. However, the first painting to be completed for the cycle was Bellini’s Feast of the Gods in 1514 with a final payment made to Bellini on 14 November of that year. A month later in December 1514, Alfonso’s brother, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, was in Rome and Alfonso wrote to him, asking if Raphael had started the painting and suggested giving fifty ducats to the artist to encourage him to start.43 As is clear from the building documents, it was precisely at this time that Alfonso was renovating his suite of rooms and that changes were continuously being made to them. It was the same for his painting cycle: if at first the vision for the rooms was to be a collection of paintings by Titian, Michelangelo, Raphael and Bellini, showcasing a variety of hands and styles, the end result was drastically different. His competition with the papacy’s artists meant that Alfonso never received a work by Michelangelo nor did Raphael’s Indian Triumph come to fruition, although John Shearman suggests that Raphael may have indeed produced the Hunt of Meleager for the space.44 Titian was to prove to be the most reliable artist for the job, spending weeks at a time in Ferrara, and making alterations to paintings such as Bellini’s in order to bring coherence rather than variety to the painting programme. Bellini’s painting thus acted as the starting point for the invention of the room, which in the final scheme, included three by Titian and one by Dosso Dossi. Alfonso would have to find varietà in another form; through the materials and objects on display. ALFONSO’S CAMERINI AND MATER IAL CULTUR E

The larger programme in which Alfonso was involved reveals that the camerini showcased his greater interests and needs to be seen as a collaborative whole, rather than individual works of art meant for singular viewing in isolation. The correspondence between Titian and the court of Ferrara is particularly revealing. Throughout 1518, Titian maintained correspondence with Gironimo Zigliolo, a Ferrarese courtier and member of a well-known family long ensconced at the Este court, many of whom served as guardarobieri. Titian was sent instructions, a sketch with notes and a canvas with stretcher.45 The

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fact that Gironimo was in contact with Titian, suggests he may have played a role in helping with the execution of the camerini, or at least was an intermediary. Gironimo was likely well acquainted with the Este guardaroba, presumably a relative of his namesake Gironimo Zigliolo who was responsible for meticulously writing Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventories and account books, keeping track of all her goods, including her collection of Chinese porcelain.46 Such a guardarobiere could have played an important role in suggesting what kind of objects were in the collections and what might go well on display with the paintings or the marble reliefs across the rooms, or simply granting access to the objects and being privy to the conversations. Other correspondence with Titian also reveals the artist’s involvement in ceramic making and the acquisition of vessels for Alfonso’s other rooms. In 1520, Titian was involved in making designs for maiolica and was also involved in procuring glass vases in Murano and jars for Alfonso’s spezieria.47 It was not rare to have artists as the designers for the decorative arts – Cosmè Tura and Dosso Dossi at Ferrara and Giuliano Romano at the nearby court of Mantua are well known.48 However, why Alfonso would have asked Titian might have had particular significance for the larger project of the camerini. A closer look at the accounts provides a better understanding of the central role ceramics and material culture more broadly played here and how these letters reveal a close engagement with the various material processes involved. On 5 February 1520, a letter from Venice attests to Titian’s involvement in procuring ceramics from a maestro delli vasi de petra for Alfonso and provides details on this commission and the stages of production.49 Alfonso was informed that the twenty-two large vessels he wanted had just been made but the others had to have their handles attached, then they needed to be painted and then fired. The smaller ones, as Alfonso was informed, would be ready within three months.50 Such a letter not only attests to the close involvement of Titian in the manufacture of these vessels, but is also an articulation of the processes of ceramic making and reveals the forms of knowledge that were at stake in commissioning, acquiring and collecting objects at this time.51 Patrons did not necessarily buy ready-made goods but were often involved in the commissioning of objects that served customised tastes. This was less often the case when items were coming from abroad, such as Chinese porcelain, but even then, framing devices such as mounts could be commissioned. Knowledge about quality, materials and new styles was central to collecting practices; thus, consumption is not studied here as something passive but an active and engaged relationship between people and things. Matter was often manipulated, interrogated and even pushed to its limits by consumers and producers.52 A few days later, on 11 February 1520, Jacopo Tebaldi explains that he and Titian had gone to Murano to procure the glass items Alfonso had requested

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but that these were not ready yet. On 20 February, Tebaldi wrote again to say that Titian had checked up on the vasi de terra and that these should be ready soon. On 28 May 1520, letters move away from the vases and back to the canvas, detailing the problems of Titian applying varnish to his canvas which has discoloured some of the paint and that he needed to apply some fine blue paint. The following day, Alfonso writes that he has heard that there is a gazelle at the Palazzo Cornaro and he wants Titian sent off immediately to paint its portrait, an indication of Alfonso’s well-known interests in rare animals. On 1 June, Alfonso is informed that the gazelle is dead and cannot be depicted because it was thrown into the canal, however, Giovanni Bellini had depicted a small gazelle and Titian could copy this painting, if Alfonso would like. Alfonso is also updated on the vessels for his speciaria, which are being sent by Joani Tressa, nochiero (ship hand), which comprise eleven large, eleven medium and twenty small items in maiolica with lids.53 The discussion of rare animals (and their portraits) alludes to the kinds of connections collectors pursued between artifice and nature, subjects that seem in the twenty-first century disconnected. As evidenced in the previous chapter, discussions often moved from mythical and ‘exotic’ animals to gems, ceramics and aromatics. The presence of rare animals in the camerino paintings – both executed and conceived – also connect to Alfonso’s interests in procuring animals and portraits of them.54 Alfonso, as was expected of a court ruler, had a menagerie of various animals often obtained through diplomacy; another facet of the paintings that underscored the larger collections of the duke.55 It is evident that while Alfonso was commissioning the paintings by Titian for the camerino, he was also actively planning either changes to a spezieria or an entirely new suite of rooms to house the contents of his pharmacy. Titian’s designs for the maiolica and his visits to the Murano glass works demonstrate he also had a keen investment in the pharmacy’s programme. Dosso, it seems, was also involved in designing some of these vessels as well as painting the room. An account from 5 November 1527 mentions Dosso painting a camerino nella spezieria where the vaxi de terra were stored, and again a few weeks later on 23 November, Dosso is paid for finishing the room that holds the vases (da tenir vaxi da depingere).56 The contents of the spezieria, and its role at court, will be detailed further in the next chapter, but it is clear that the vessels commissioned and designed for these rooms need to be considered alongside Alfonso’s commissions for the camerini, pointing to the connections across these spaces and their contents, for the artists and patron involved. It is also a reminder of how court artists were not only employed to paint canvases, but often involved in larger decorations and decorative programmes, from painting walls to designing cups. Primary sources also provide us with contemporary vocabulary used to describe the camerini and the contents. When Federico Gonzaga visited

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Ferrara, Stazio Gadio and Bernardino de’ Prosperi both provide details on the visit, where they were shown the camerini with Alfonso and Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. In a letter dated 1 June 1517, Stazio Gaddio describes being brought to the camerini, including rooms which were beautifully decorated (bellissimi apparementi) with one ‘beautiful camerino’ made all out of Carrara and Meschi marble with ‘beautiful figures and foliage’ (figure et fogliamenti) excellently worked, adorned with small vessels and figurines, both antique and modern, out of marble and metal.57 It is generally assumed this is the room with Lombardo’s reliefs. In a letter from Bernardino to Isabella d’Este dated the same day, he describes how the duke and Cardinal d’Este were brought to the camere dorate in the camerini above the Via Coperta.58 Almost a year later, in April 1518, Bernardino discusses work being done in the camerini, and that they ate in the camera prima dorata and again in November 1518, he mentioned they went to the camera dorata verso il Castello to eat.59 In October 1518, Bernardino notes that the fabrica de li camerini was being finished with various work to windows, so that from the camerini the duke, according to Bernardino, would find solace in the view, where he could see what was being sold below in the Piazza Grande. He also notes that in these rooms were ‘various antique and modern busts’ (teste).60 Accounts also suggest chests, cabinets and other framing devices were made to hold a variety of objects, such as on 8 November 1508 when payments were made for a chest for the porphyry in the studio.61 These primary sources are particularly revealing for a number of reasons. First, the rooms and collections were shown off to visitors as part of ekphrastic tours of the palace, even at an early date, when some works were not yet complete (there is mention of some of the floors not yet finished). Secondly, it is clear that a variety of objects were on display – the marble reliefs and the paintings did not stand alone but interacted with statues and vases. Finally, the rooms were not only used as spaces for display, but visitors also ate in them, becoming part of the spectacle. It is likely that the vessels and plates used for dining were carefully selected from the duke’s collections, possibly even similar to the porcelain and glass that were on display in the paintings, creating a dialogue between fictive representations of feasts by the gods and the sensorial reality of dining by courtiers and princes. Descriptions of Alfonso’s collections and his interests reveal material culture was just as important as the paintings he commissioned. In his Historie, Gasparo Sardi noted that in 1505 Alfonso took pleasure in beautiful gardens, pictures and lavori di mano (literally manual labour), such as wood inlay, making gold and stone vases, and that these interests were part of the larger renovations of the rooms in the via secreta.62 Philip Fehl, in 1973, suggested that shelves and tabletops likely displayed vases, and that built-in cabinets probably housed hardstones, gems and coins.63 This assumption is now corroborated with primary sources from the time of Alfonso and his successors. One room at this

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date had a display of vases in various materials, which later inventories attest, as described below. In conjunction with what we know of Antonio Lombardo’s reliefs, in addition to the title given to the rooms (camerini d’alabastro and dorate), it must be assumed that attention to materials was important. The alabaster certainly would have provided a provocative background to not only the paintings but the objects on display, and in particular, ceramics like blue and white porcelain would have been striking against alabaster, while the play of light across material surfaces such as marble would have heightened the sensorial experience and complex objectscapes. Lighting was particularly crucial, as attested by Titian who wrote in 1516 concerned about light sources.64 In 1559, inventories were taken of several of the important rooms in the Castel Vecchio at the death of Alfonso’s son, Duke Ercole II d’Este.65 These inventories, among other documents from the late sixteenth century, were partially published by Luigi N. Cittadella in 1875 but were presumed to be lost, as they were not in the Archivio di Stato in Modena where the rest of the Este archives were kept.66 However, Andrea Marchesi recently located them among the papers of Giuseppe Antonelli, housed in the Biblioteca Ariostea in Ferrara and published the inventories related to the camerini. One key inventory was taken on 11 December 1559 by Hercole Tassone, recording goods consigned to him by Alessandro de’ Fiascho on behalf of the duke. The inventory is introduced as detailing goods consigned to Alessandro de’ Fiaschi found in ‘the studio, that is the marble room and the gilded [room]’ of the duke (studio overo camerino di marmo: et nel adorato). Among the long list of magnificent objects found here, from bronze statues to medals, there was a significant amount of vessels ranging in materials from hardstones to crystal and crucially, a blue and white porcelain piece.67 Certainly the rooms would have been altered by Ercole II and the collections also added to or removed according to Ercole’s tastes and yet, the presence of certain items such as Titian’s Christ with the Coin commissioned by Alfonso and the associative medals and coins, as well as Alfonso’s will, suggests some carry-over, and they are worth considering in the absence of a detailed inventory from Alfonso’s time. The inventory gives us clear insight into how these objects were displayed and contributes to our understanding of collecting culture, particularly around display and handling. It starts with the camerino minor. It is not particularly clear to which room this is referring but presumably the marble room as the adorato is specified as separate. Above the cornice in this room, were around twenty metal sculptures including a few statues of Hercules, one of Mercury, the head of a ‘beautiful black woman’, a satyr and other figures. Above the cornice near to the ‘exit, when entering from the right’, there were four metal statues as well as a green earthenware vessel and one in white. Then, what follows is the description of items found in seven quadri probably cabinets, because of the size and number of objects housed in them. Most of these cabinets contained

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numerous metal sculptures and vessels in a range of materials including hardstones, glass, ivory, earthenware and porcelain, in addition to a stucco portrait of Ercole I d’Este and a gold and silk purse. Descriptions of the vessels include some made of hardstone, gilded or decorated in jewels, an antique vase, glass cups, two maiolica tazzette in blue (turchina) and white, and two very small porcelain vases, one white and one schietti or transparent. Objects displayed on a banca (probably a form of display chest) included a book containing some sort of remedy (con un remedio contra la metrice error), an antique marble cupid, two porphyry vases (one antique, the other modern), a small box made in Germany, an antique marble Venus and Cupid, an alabaster vase and a modern Hercules and Caucus in marble. Attached to the two columns near the window were a crystal mirror and a hunting horn (corno da cacciatore) with gilded silver. On a table that must have been more like a studiolo desk, were various vases in gold and silver for drinking water, clocks and numerous boxes containing portraits, including two of ‘Sua Excellentia’, one in silver ‘by the hand of Leone’ and the other in stucco by Benvenuto Fiorentino, four portraits of the Queen and King of Poland in metal, and another box housing the portrait of the ‘Signore Principe’ by the hand of Foligno. Placed under the desk, presumably on a shelf, are more containers: some full of medals and cameos and three boxes with various portraits of signori. In another drawer or shelf under the desk were goods received from a certain Messer Piero Moro, which include various boxes, medals and portraits (including two of Borso and one of Ercole I d’Este). Finally, a cameo, eightyseven bronze medals in a case, the first edition of a book by ‘Fioroso’ and a pair of balances, are recorded in the table in the camerino (presumably in a drawer). The description suggests pieces of furniture with drawers and shelves, allowing for varying levels of display and concealment, similar to those depicted in representations of studies (see Plate I, Introduction and Plate IX, Chapter 5). Under the heading ‘goods that are in the primo camerino adorato’ we find some vases, sculpture, as well as a studio (a piece of furniture in the shape of a desk, rather than another room) and a significant number of medals. The first item listed is Titian’s Christ with the Coin, described as ‘an effigy of Jesus in the hand of Titiano’ (also now known as the Tribute Money). The presence of Titian’s Christ with the Coin here suggests that some of the contents or categories of goods would have likely stayed the same from the time of Alfonso. Significantly, a Venetian wooden box held the will of Duke Alfonso and a ‘small’ will of the Marchesana of Mantua. A number of vases in silver and gold are described as containing aromatics, including civet and musk, accompanied by the instruments needed, including a balance, spatulas and spoons, most of which were in silver. This suggests there were a few items made in expensive materials taken from the spezieria for personal use by the duke or the royal family. There was also a box with a chameleon (presumably

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taxidermy but perhaps a sculpture in low relief ), two sacks of coral and turchino ‘to paint with’.68 An odd description of a piece of furniture made of alabaster and wood is hard to discern. It is noted that above the said cascetta (presumably the one with Alfonso’s will), there is a quadro of alabaster, with wooden cornices, with a painted cover and a velvet cushion. This gives the impression of an alabaster spalliera, with a bench with pillow, presumably used as a place to sit. The room additionally contained four small wooden benches as well as a wooden studio, which held a book on cosmography and one on architecture in the top compartment. This is also where they held the keys for the ‘other rooms’.69 Finally, this room held a cabinet that housed storage containers for more than 3,000 medals. One set of containers held gold medals, the quality and quantity of which the compiler informs the reader, can be found detailed in the book by Monsignore Messer Celio Calcagnino, bound in green silk with satin cords. These inventories reveal the broad range of works of art housed in these spaces, beyond paintings, and underscore the importance of taking a holistic view of the concatenation of images, objects, materials, surfacescapes, even tastes and sounds that visitors would have been confronted with. A book on architecture and the Cosmografia met with vases in a range of materials, sculpture and alabaster, as well as medals, aromatics and even turchino to paint with. However, what about other rooms and objects on display around the palace? Significant for this study is the evidence of porcelain collections in a Stanza delle Porcellane at the court of Ferrara in the sixteenth century.

Porcelain at Ferrara: The Stanza delle Porcellane The previous chapter has shown that Alfonso’s mother, Eleonora d’Aragona, had one of the largest collections of Chinese porcelain in Italy in the fifteenth century, surpassing the Medici collections at that time. It is likely that Eleonora’s porcelain collection was inherited by her children, distributed and divided amongst them, with the majority likely staying in the Este guardaroba, and inherited by Alfonso d’Este and his successors. Porcelain was still a highly prized collectable in the sixteenth century but by this time, porcelain collections had increased in Europe due to expanding markets and trade routes. The King of Spain, Philip II for example had over 3,000 pieces of porcelain in his collections reflecting Spain’s vast empire. By the end of the sixteenth century, Philip had Peruvian and Mexican silver mines to plunder, as well as control over a significant maritime trade, which brought pepper and spices from India, silk, porcelain and silver from China and Japan, and enslaved peoples from Africa.70 A smaller state like Ferrara, which had not managed to directly participate in colonial expansion such as Spain or Portugal, might have hoped that its porcelain collections would show Alfonso d’Este’s global aspirations.

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The collections in his camerini enabled Alfonso to engage with a rapidly expanding world if limited to his camerini, but it also spoke to the ambitions of his ancestors, the Aragonese who, in the previous century, had established a significant global capital from Naples. The decorative programmes and paintings belonging to Alfonso’s camerino, in particular, suggest that Eleonora’s collections became an important part of his collecting pursuits, or at least the beginnings of a larger collection, as well as fuelling his interests in supporting attempts at local manufacture. Inventories of Alfonso’s siblings also attest to some porcelain in their collections. In an inventory of 1507–8 of Cardinal Ipollito d’Este, two pieces of porcelain are recorded: a scudela and a piaedeola with flowers and animals.71 Isabella d’Este’s inventory of 1542, as mentioned in the previous chapter, records small porcelain vessels. Two were in a cabinet in her grotta and are described as in the shape of cups placed in mounts with feet and with rings for handles. Another was placed in a cabinet on the right of the antedetta grotto, also in a gold mount with feet described in the shape of a bell. A fourth vase, in a third cabinet, is described as porcelain ‘of various colours alla moresca’ also placed in a gold mount with feet and handles. Isabella is well known for her collections of antiquities and hardstone vases and her porcelain would have been appreciated alongside these other collectables, spread out across her various rooms.72 Significant is the evidence of a whole porcelain room (Stanza delle Porcellane) in Ferrara, the contents of which were recorded in an inventory on 15 December 1559.73 There is no information on where this room was, but presumably it was in the Castel Vecchio or in the adjoining Palazzo. It is part of the series of inventories that were taken by Hercole Tassone in 1559 after the death of Duke Ercole II d’Este. A small portion of the inventory was first published in 1875 by Cittadella as an Appendix to his book on the Castel Vecchio, in a section on porcelain, maiolica and glass.74 The entry however was abridged and did not include the entire inventory with its description of display, and it largely summarised the goods within. As mentioned, Andrea Marchesi rediscovered the inventories from 1559 in the Antonelli papers and he published the inventories that were related to the camerini of Alfonso in 2012, but not those detailing the porcelain room.75 This is the first publication in English to address this inventory, with Appendix III providing a full transcription. The Stanza delle Porcellane included shelves displaying a range of vessels in diverse materials, a table, cupboards and wardrobes, containing a diversity of goods beyond porcelain. No evidence so far has revealed when this room was created, but the presence of porcelain and a room dedicated to it suggests that the collection was built up over time and some of the objects housed here may have been the result of a culmination of ceramics owned by Alfonso and Ercole II. It is likely this also included porcelain from Aragonese collections in Naples, comprising those of the exiled Duke of Calabria, whose inventory was

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taken in 1527 (discussed in the previous chapter) and Eleonora d’Aragona’s collection recorded in the 1493 inventory (see Appendices I and II). A document from October 1543 already attests to the room’s existence at this time, written by Hieronymo (Gironimo) Zigliolo. Only a few pages long, this earlier account dates from 1528 to 1543 (spanning both Alfonso and Ercole II’s reigns) and like some of Eleonora’s account books, traces the movement of objects around the palace. It records various items in a neat hand, with additions in a messier hand, which note where these items were taken to, including objects such as carpets moved to the camerino secreto in the giardino del’ pavaglione or a list of medals and artworks moved to the studio dorato. Of significance is this entry for October 1543: two Tazzete of porcelain stone to be held in the ‘camerino de sopra’ for the use of the Signor Duke, one of which has a slightly broken nozzle, in the Stanza delle Porcellane, consigned to Messer Hercole.76

The document thus confirms items moved from room to room, and two small porcelain cups were used in one of the camerini (on the previous page, it refers to a camaro sopra il studio del s. duca as well as a camara di sopra la camara Marchesana). In the same month and year, other items were moved to a room referred to as the studio dorato of the duke, including a porcelain bowl (scutela di porcellana) described as cracked or broken with a large nozzle.77 Even broken, such a piece was still worthy of display or of interest for the duke to be placed in the studio dorato. The presence of porcelain throughout the Castel Vecchio implies that not all of the Este/Aragonese porcelain was kept in the porcelain room. Instead, the Stanza delle Porcellane may have served as both a store and display room, where items came and went, placed on temporary display elsewhere or used when needs arose.78 Unlike Eleonora d’Aragona’s 1493 inventory of porcelain or the 1527 inventory of the Duke of Calabria, the 1559 inventory taken of the Stanza delle Porcellane by Hercole Tassone is not as specific or meticulous. It begins with some shelves: on the lowest shelf there were fifty small and large scudelle or bowls; seventy-seven vessels on the middle shelf; and on the top shelf, fifty-five pieces. Sixty-five vessels were specified as porcelain diversi, listed in ‘another area’, perhaps a passageway. Diversi here might mean different styles or shapes or types of porcelain, for example celadon or blue and white. These were displayed with forty-six various copper and brass vessels. On top of a wardrobe near the exit were five vessels lavorate alla damaschina, white candle holders and various other vessels: three white, three various (diversati) and two in blue (turchini). Could these damascene porcelain vessels correspond to Eleonora’s dasmaschino di porzellani? Inside a wardrobe, we find a pestle and mortar, a silver vase for making perfume water, a large piece of balzonio (probably benzoin), eight recipe books, four wood cabinets to hold medals, three stone vases (one

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green and two varied), two wooden cabinets and a vase for perfume, more benzoin and eight large copper vases for water. In addition, two textiles for cushions, an oil dispenser and a chest for shirts. Confectionaries in vases were placed in two wardrobes, which included myrobalan, ginger and musk, as well as two flasks for cinnamon water. On top of one of the wardrobes near the window we find a long list of vases varying in colours and shapes, including one white and blue (turchino), two blue (turchino) with a bit of gold, a maiolica vessel, as well as an antique urn and a large green porcelain vase (presumably celadon). Inside the wardrobe near the window, glass vases, cups and tazze are mentioned ‘of various types’ but not counted. There are also copper vessels for holding odiferous waters. More items specified as porcelain include four scudelle, three tazze and another three tazze identified as green and large (presumably celadon). Nineteen plates in blue (turchini) and white and other bowls in the same colours are also listed. A number of storage benches are mentioned with one near the window containing a pestle and mortar and paternoster beads. In another bench, we find forty ampoules and albarelli described as di maiolica faientina. In four other benches, there were small glass vases, oil dispensers, a box with damascene (damaschino) soap, as well as a credenza with a chain and lock. One bench is full of antique and modern drawings, with no further description of artists or subject matter. Another bench near the exit held brass spoons for odiferous water and an albarello for soap. On top of one of the benches, a serpentine fountain is mentioned as well as a large vase in reticella glass. Finally, on top and underneath a table we find three new keys, an ivory inkwell, a balance, a carpet and some boxes, as well as an instrument to stamp perfumed pastilli. It is clear that Hercole Tassone was not asked (or decided not to) give as detailed description of the contents of this room as he did for the camerini and the studio adorato. Compared to Eleonora’s inventory, there is less attention to the specificity of the materials here. In some cases, such as the maiolica faientina, it seems Hercole knew with precision the type of material and possibly the centre of production. He is attentive in his description of the reticella glass – the use of fine canes to reveal a net-like pattern – or the use of turchino for a specific blue. However, in other cases, very little detail is given on the specific materials of the vessels on display and in some instances, we get the feeling he just opened the wardrobe had a peak and mentioned ‘various vessels of different sizes’ with scant regard for attention to detail. What it does reveal is the room served as a space that held a range of vessels beyond porcelain to hold and carry aromatics, underscoring the association between porcelain and aromatics. Although resembling a spezieria, it could not have served as the court pharmacy, as this is detailed in another inventory discussed in the next chapter. The Ferrarese Stanza delle Porcellane resonates with the Ottoman court’s çı¯nı¯ anba¯ ri at the Topkapı, which was located near the kitchens in the

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sixteenth century. From here Chinese ceramics were brought out from the kitchens to serve food at banquets, while in 1582 Iznik and Chinese ceramics were loaned out from this room to serve circumcision ceremonies of princes at the Hippodrome. These vessels were also used by Topkapı palace doctors to prepare drugs.79 In both cases, these storerooms shifted and changed according to the needs of the court, where vessels were removed temporarily or sometimes more permanently, perhaps even gifted to other states. The 1579 and 1580 inventories of Alfonso’s son, Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, record numerous pieces of porcelain, many of which resemble items listed in Eleonora’s inventory, which Ippolito may have inherited, via Alfonso.80 These include over sixty scudelle, tazette, vases and plates. One scudella is singled out for its decoration, which consisted of roses and ‘pictures of fish’ (con filitti rosi e con pitture da pesce). Others are described in terms of their use, for example, one piece was used for ‘washing hands’, some for fruit, two ewers for oil and vinegar, and four scodellini for sapore, likely aromatics. On 4 September 1563, a document also records two chests of porcelain being transported to Rome for the cardinal’s use.81 In 1565, at the wedding of Alfonso II d’Este to Barbara of Austria, a list of the credenza included 150 porcelain dishes (piatti di porcellana) and fifty plates (tondi) specifically for use for confectionaries.82 While Carmen Ravanelli Guidotti assumes these to be of Italian manufacture (perhaps Medicean) rather than authentic Chinese, the vast amount of porcelain in the inventories noted here suggest that this could have been authentic Chinese porcelain. Finally, the collections in Modena of Cesare d’Este recorded in 1629 note numerous pieces of porcelain.83 What the documents reveal therefore is that by the mid-sixteenth century, at the death of Ercole II d’Este in Ferrara, there was a room dedicated to porcelain and objects that held similar appeal, and that porcelain can be found throughout the inventories of the guardaroba all through the generations, suggesting that some of these could trace their provenance back to Aragonese collections of the fifteenth century. The inventories at large also underscore the fluid nature of these spaces and the items on display and in use. No longer the fifteenth-century small studiolo, the collections of porcelain, glass, hardstone vases, marble, aromatics, spices, sculpture and paintings, now spilled out amidst interconnecting rooms. FIT FOR THE GODS: PICTORI AL TRANSLATIONS

By the start of the sixteenth century, the tradition of the studiolo had been transformed through humanist poetics, and now coupled with the new spaces of collection and artistic invention, the artist’s ability to provide pictorial metaphors gained further ground. Literary paintings that play with fabula, such as those by Bellini, Titian and Mantegna commissioned for the studioli of Isabella and Alfonso d’Este have been interpreted as works that solicit the

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viewer’s participation, not only by matching the painting with a text or a textual programme, but also engaging with interpretation, intertextuality and citation.84 These paintings were to function as a means to engage the viewer in assembling together different narratives or texts to understand the composition. The density of texts, objects, materials and images found within spaces such as the studiolo were not meant to be finite, but rather opened endless assemblages and thus, various routes to arrive at meaning. Rather than a single coherent internal programme for one room, visitors to the camerini arrived at meaning and new forms of knowledge through their interaction with the range of goods displayed and handled, and the complex pictorial programmes found in the paintings and in the reliefs on the walls. These collections served intertextual and intermedial relationships: this involved the connection of texts with images as well as objects. One could say intersensorial as well, when musical instruments, food, aromatics, incense and rose water are taken into consideration with the touch of the various artefacts in the spaces. Indeed, contemporaries also noted eating in these rooms, likely washing their hands with rose water before the meal from special vessels for that purpose and thus, far more varied experiences of these spaces are revealed. Scholars who have been interested in the iconography and symbolic meaning of the camerino paintings have also, although with varied and often conflicting interpretations, stressed the role that texts such as Pliny, Ovid and Albertus Magnus played in interpretation. For instance, Anthony Colantuono has noted that Titian’s Andrians picks up the myth that amber originated from the Po, produced by the tears of the Heliades, which was discussed by humanists of the previous generation as well as in Alfonso’s time.85 Others have underlined the theme of seasonal changes, as Bellini’s Feast of the Gods takes its cue from Ovid’s Fasti, which relates to the constellations, the months and the rituals that punctuate the Roman year. There is also an emphasis on metamorphoses and the conversion of materials, such as water into wine.86 This emphasis on materials and their transformative qualities was thus a theme running throughout the paintings but also in the objects of display, and of course in the larger interest in ceramics and their manufacture by Duke Alfonso. The three pieces of porcelain depicted in Bellini’s painting are all different in shape and decoration, suggesting Bellini clearly intended to make them appear as unique pieces and perhaps used three different examples as models. John Carswell has noted that the pieces in Bellini’s painting resemble those that have been found in large quantities in Damascus and Istanbul, indicating these were particular export ware made for that market.87 This of course confirms what we already know of how porcelain made its way into Italy – either as diplomatic gifts from the Mamluks or the Ottomans, or from markets in Damascus or Istanbul. If reading the painting from left to right, the first bowl

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is held up by a satyr, who grabs on to the rim of the bowl, not making use of the single handle on the far side (Plate V, Figure 24). Perhaps this was a deliberate commentary on the handling of the fine object, a gesture that would have likely been understood as brutish in the courtly etiquette that viewers would have (or should have) been trained in. The satyr’s juxtaposition against the delicate pattern recalls the juxtaposition of classical trofei with rabesche found in Piccolpasso’s treatise (Figure 5, Chapter 2). In the rendering of the porcelain motifs, Bellini faced a challenge between his broad brushstrokes in the medium of oil and the finer ones required for the detailed finessing of the motifs. He has chosen to render the rim with quick dabs of blue brushstrokes that mimic a more geometric pattern than a floral one. The bowl’s shape and decoration resemble a Chinese dish in the British Museum (Figure 24), but its decoration and form also bear a semblance to bowls produced in Iznik in the fifteenth century, which would have been inspired by Chinese porcelain.88 The next piece is held with both hands by a Cybele, as if displaying it for the viewer, and it appears to be empty. The shape resembles numerous surviving examples from the fifteenth century while the exterior design nods towards a continuous design of scrolling stylised lotus blooms, often found on Chinese porcelain from the same century. The interior rendition demonstrates the difficulties the artist had in conveying the delicate motifs with a quick brush, such as the odd design found at the centre of the interior rim, where the blue pigment has been used to outline two decorative circles. The final piece filled with fruit is found at the feet of Neptune and a Cybele he is trying to seduce. This representation sports a similar pattern of stylised flowers, if a tighter pattern, with a rim and a small footed base, similar to Ming examples that survive (Figure 25). The scene points to the functional use of porcelain but also its display; some are held up, underscoring the handling of these objects, while one is full of fruit. The painting is also scattered with other material culture, with pieces that run the gamut of what would have been understood at the time as highly refined, such as Chinese porcelain to the more mundane such as pignati or earthenware jugs. A clear glass jug, which the young Bacchus replenishes, appears at the centre left of the painting, the subject to which Cesare d’Este referred in his description of the painting. On the far right corner, a unique vessel is depicted – what appears to be chalcedony or coloured glass finished with clear glass, executed in a similar way to extant examples.89 Glassware is also on display in one of Titian’s paintings for the room, The Bacchanal of the Adrians, where at the centre a clear glass jug advertises the glassmaker’s skill as well as the painter’s dexterity in depicting its translucency. Scattered too on the ground are glass beakers, recognisably Venetian in design and manufacture.90 The procurement and manufacture of these objects – from glass to porcelain –

plate i. Antonello da Messina, Saint Jerome in His Study, c. 1475, National Gallery of Art, London. Bridgeman Images.

plate ii. Deep dish with Aragonese arms, Manises, Valencia, Spain, tin-glazed earthenware, 1430. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1956, 56.171.113.

plate iii. Andrea Mantegna, Adoration of the Magi, distemper on linen 48.6  65.6 cm, about 1495–1505, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 85.PA.417. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

plate iv. Bowl with mounts and case, porcelain, China, Ming, Jiajing reign (1522–66); Portuguese silver gilt mounts, with inscription, 1554; incised leather case. Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna, Inv 3309. Photograph by Marco Pintacorona

plate v. Giovanni Bellini with Titian and Dosso Dossi, Feast of the Gods, oil on canvas, Venice/ Ferrara, 1514–29. The National Gallery, Washington, DC, Widener Collection 1942.9.1.

plate vi. Haïder Turkigouï, depiction of a pharmacy, Tabriz, 1501–55. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, (Supplément turc 978), f. 40R.

plate vii. Domingo and Leonardo Crespí, Obsequies of King Ferdinand I d’Aragona, Alfonso I d’Aragona’s prayer book, completed early 1440s. © British Library Board, Add Ms 28962 f. 383v.

plate viii. Benvenuto di Giovanni, Birth of the Virgin, predella, 1460s. Museo Diocesano, Volterra. Photograph by Irene Taddei. By concession of the Ufficio Beni Culturali Ecclesiastici – Diocesi di Volterra.

plate ix. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1480 (fresco), Ognissanti, Florence, Italy. Creative commons/public domain.

plate x. Domingo and Leonardo Crespí, Annunciation (detail of ), Alfonso I d’Aragona’s prayer book, completed early 1440s. © British Library Board, Add Ms 28962 f. 336v.

plate xi. Domingo and Leonardo Crespí, Alfonso at Prayer (detail of ), Alfonso I d’Aragona’s prayer book, completed early 1440s. © British Library Board, Add Ms 28962 f. 213R.

plate xii. Aragonese tiles from Castel dell’Ovo, Naples with Aragonese arms and imprese, Manises, Valencia, Spain, 1440s–1450s. On long term loan to the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. By concession of the Ministero dei Beni e le Attività Culturali and Tourism – Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte.

plate xiii. Floor tiles, Caracciolo chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples, Italy, midfifteenth century. Neapolitan or Italian manufacture (?) Photograph by author.

plate xiv. Floor tiles with ‘PONTANVS FECIT’ inscription, Cappella Pontano, Neapolitan (?), 1490s, Naples, Italy, Photograph by author.

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fig 24 Porcelain detail of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (Plate V); bowl, blue and white porcelain, Jingdezhen, China, Ming dynasty (1436–64). © The Trustees of the British Museum, 1940,1214.262 (below).

was itself a skill, one which a patron like Alfonso could allude to in these representations and in the objects on display. As mentioned, contemporary reports from Alfonso’s times attest to a range of vases, sculptures and materials on display across the camerini.91 This appreciation for the multitude of things also helps us understand the role of the paintings in the camerino. Indeed, one might argue that the paintings placed on the walls acted as the frames or the parerga for the real focus of display: the vases and other material culture that ranged from metalwork to Chinese porcelain. In this case, the painters’ act of rendering these vessels puts their

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fig 25 Porcelain details of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods (Plate V); bowl, blue and white porcelain, Jingdezhen, China, Ming dynasty (1426–35). © The Trustees of the British Museum, 1973,0726.360 (centre).

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art in direct paragone with the real objects on display. The celebrated mythological paintings were not to be an isolated affair but were to work together with the larger collections of Alfonso spread across the camerini. An indication of this is Titian’s Christ with the Coin located in the adjacent camerino adorato and, as mentioned, which served as the cover to the coins and medals cabinet. Titian’s painting however is not so obvious or as banal as one might think at first sight, rather the picture takes a biblical icon as a means to transform numismatic collecting into a spiritual exercise that spoke to both classical virtue as well as Christian grace, as Christopher Nygren has argued.92 The painting has been read as a political statement in relation to taxes, as it references the doppione, the coin minted early in Alfonso’s reign and thus, also speaks to the subject of the painting, an excerpt from Matthew ‘Render unto Caesar’.93 Equally the painting referenced the numismatic collections of which the Este had a long tradition, whereby the profiles of famous men found on the coins served as exemplars of behaviour. Alfonso’s interaction with the coins behind Titian’s image would have taken the form of ‘performative imitatio of ancient exemplars’.94 The painting as parergon, both as frame and as subject, conditions the viewer’s physical engagement with the objects inside. For Nygren, this collapses ‘the distinction between Alfonso the collector and Christ the teacher, the image converts beholding into a philosophical and spiritual exercise’.95 This is a particularly important consideration for the other paintings destined for these spaces; they do not simply represent the objects housed there, they condition the viewer’s engagement with them. However, it must be remembered that Alfonso was not the only one beholding these objects, and the dialogue between painted imitation and objects on display may have differed depending on the knowledge and engagement of the viewer. This play on representation and mimesis with actual artefacts on display brings to mind two other examples of studioli, one a precursor and one a predecessor to Alfonso’s camerini. An early example of cabinets displaying the objects housed inside can be found in the well-known intarsia panels of the Montefeltro studioli in Urbino and Gubbio. Far from a simple organising system, the representations playfully set up complex relationships between reality and fiction, between the viewer and the space. The spatial construction of the intarsia panels allows the representations of the objects to shift as the viewer moves around the room, not only offering another form of ‘beholding’ of objects, but as Jennifer Webb has argued, draws our attention to the multiple gazes at play within the space, and the court at large.96 Far from simply a visual game, just like the portraits of Federigo da Montefeltro on the wall, the play on multiple gazes reminds the courtier of the panoptic system of the court; one in which individuals were constantly being watched and judged.97 The relationship between representations of objects and those on display thus opened up numerous complex and sometimes fraught experiences

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of those spaces. Like Federigo da Montefeltro, Alfonso’s camerino paintings and the objects on display pointed to his interests in, and knowledge of, technological and artistic production that served as a means to demonstrate his political authority and the health of his state. In the later example of Francesco I de’ Medici’s stanzino in the Palazzo Vecchio, carefully chosen paintings act as themed cabinet doors to the collection of natural materials stored behind including metals, corals, stones, glass and marble.98 The thirty-six painted panels include nineteen that could be opened to access the objects behind.99 Two paintings depict portraits of Francesco I at work in alchemy and metallurgy, attesting to the studiolo as a thoughtful reference to not only his interests and knowledge but his active participation in these fields. The four walls are organised according to the four elements, and the iconography here is deliberate: nature’s resources are transformed through human hands, either in the guise of mythological stories or in the depiction of factories and laboratories. Many of the activities depicted in the harvesting of nature’s resources are also derived from Plinian anecdotes which described the manufacture, mining or metaphysical properties of materials.100 Constructed between 1570 and 1575, the Medici stanzino reflected Francesco’s interests, which were remarkably similar to Alfonso’s, from alchemy to the invention of Medici porcelain. An inventory of the stanzino from 1574 attests to similar objects housed in the camerini. Ten armarii or cabinets were largely organised around materials, such as stones, metals, texts, arms and coral. In addition, there were glass flasks, albarelli and other vessels containing aromatics housed in the space.101 Although Francesco’s studiolo was reportedly private, the Venetian ambassador to Florence, Andrea Gussoni in 1576 described entering ‘two of his small rooms’, one of which held ‘far-fetched oils and waters’ while the other ‘a great amount of very excellent artificial things, or natural rarities, or noble and famous antiquities such as works of sculpture, painting, and miniatures, rare stones, medals and similar things’. Of particular importance is how, as it was remarked, Francesco ‘picks up the objects with his own hand from where they are placed and hands them to me so that I can see them – we laboured as such for over an hour’.102 Display was always temporary, while engagement was a priority and the physical interaction with the range of materials was key. To understand the paintings and objects in these spaces is also to understand how they engender particular forms of engagement from beholders – intellectual, spiritual, philosophical, mnemonic, as well as physical. Different times of the day would have provided different lighting effects on objects, but so would the activities within those spaces: dining might have engendered a different experience than reading a book or listening to a musical performance.103 Beholding objects was not just about sight, but multisensorial experiences, enhanced through incense, sound and touch. For Jonathan Hay, the different surfacescapes of individual objects give rise to what he calls

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‘objectscapes’, which are by their very definition, ephemeral.104 Similarly, Bissera Pentcheva has used the term ‘object-space’ to denote a performative paradigm, where there is a complex relationship between the real, the perceived and the imagined through materials. Shimmering surfaces of marble, for example, can become animated in the shifting light and such ‘transient manifestations trigger the spectator’s memory and imagination to conjure up images’ in their own right, giving rise to what Dario Gamboni has termed ‘potential images’.105 While Pentcheva’s work focusses on Byzantine aesthetics, similar sensorial experiences could have been achieved by Alfonso’s contemporaries through, for example, holding up a hardstone or the play of light on the alabaster walls of his camerino. Hardstones made into cameos, were often remarked at the time in terms of nature’s own art, a trope borrowed from antiquity. The play of light could enliven depictions found on carved objects, such as gems, something contemporaries were aware of. Ciriaco d’Ancona remarked on the intaglio depicting Alexander the Great and how the limbs came alive when ‘one holds the solid part of the gem to the light’.106 The weather, it seems, could also play a role in the viewing of gems. Domenico di Piero, the collector and trader of gems in Venice, was recorded as not wanting ‘to show them in weather that makes them look different from what they actually are’ and waited until a clear day appeared. In order to view them, Paolo Antonio Soderini had to ‘keep watching the weather’ and reported he would have to act upon a sunny day ‘as soon as possible’.107 Stones’ colour sensitivities to light thus played a role not only in their display but also in their engagement, requiring a close handling of the jewels, gems, hardstones and porcelain, as the viewer held them in their hands, brought them up to the light, even twirled them, closely scrutinising their material qualities and sheen. Marble appears in many Renaissance paintings, and it has been argued that these depictions, particularly in Mantegna’s work, are linked to the artist’s emphasis on inventione, erudition and the origins of art.108 The delight collectors and humanists took in collecting ancient cameos wrought in diverse and expensive hardstones was influenced by Pliny’s discussion of precious materials. Pliny’s examination of simulated marble immediately precedes his dialogue on portraiture, thus creating a link between artifice and nature, and it is no surprise that fictive marble appears on the versi of many portraits of the fifteenth century.109 When considering the numerous types of marble in the camerini, as well as the variety of materials made into vessels, in addition to the representations within the paintings, an emphasis was placed on the real, the perceived and the imagined. Metamorphosis thus could be activated through the viewer, when stones revealed images or ceramics glistened like gold.110 These intellectual stimulations were not restricted to paintings, but the material culture that was collected, celebrated and engaged with, within these spaces.

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The physical engagement with the vessels on display – whether glasswork or Chinese porcelain – would have also prompted the viewer to consider the technology that went into the creation of those materials, a particular interest of Alfonso’s, and might have prompted viewers to consider the duke’s role in producing such objects. METAMORPHO SIS, TRANSMATER IALITY AND DISEGNO

Collectors’ interests in the materials on display (such as those rendered in the camerino paintings) often led them to be informed and actively engaged in the production of these objects, as part of their acquisition. For example, the Este court oversaw 2,500 individuals who worked in the mint as well as in factories that produced wool and silk textiles, metal goods, glassware, soap and building materials, with an additional 700–800 men working in salt and metal mines. Direct involvement in the production and success of these industries was overseen by the Este. Ippolito I d’Este owned factories producing woollen and silk cloth and Sigismondo d’Este held a monopoly over paper production, printing and bookselling in Ferrara.111 These interests could go beyond the confines of one’s state, with the purchase of materials from other centres of production, with collectors and rulers investing an interest in technologies and craft. Customisation of personal pieces also led to protracted involvement by buyers. This is exemplified in the purchasing of glass by Isabella and Alfonso d’Este, who did not simply buy off the shelves, but whose concerted efforts involved sending samples and sketches and careful timing was necessary to buy the best pieces before other competitors. Numerous letters from Isabella, specifying exactly the kind of glassware she desired, indicate how customers outside of Venice ordered particular types of glassware to suit their needs. For instance, in 1496 she advised her correspondent in Venice that she was not pleased with the glasses that were sent because their length was not to her taste. In November of 1500, she sent a drinking glass to Venice, which was to serve as a model for ten others, while in 1503 her agent, Lorenzo da Pavia, returned another model that she provided, along with eight drinking glasses with gold handles. In 1505, Isabella was in protracted negotiations with the glassmaker Maestro Anzelotti Barovier of Murano over an order for crystal vases and sent two sets of designs to Venice for him to copy. In 1507, Lorenzo da Pavia was sent a silver soup dish, which Isabella wanted copied in five different types of glass. Lorenzo, however, was only able to send her ones made of green and crystal, since those in other colours had not yet been put in the furnace.112 Isabella d’Este’s correspondence demonstrates that she was eager to procure Venetian glass but felt that the style often needed updating or customising to suit her taste. In February of 1496, she ordered two to three crystal beakers, however she specified they be made without gold trim – the absence of gold

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was a new style. In 1510, Isabella ordered and received six large water glasses with handles and covers, however she was not pleased with them, noting that the glass was not white enough, either referring to its transparency or to a type of glass that was attempting to mimic porcelain. At the same time, she made sure her agents were on the lookout for new vases that non ho veduto la simile (I have not seen before).113 In 1534, she was eager for the Mantuan ambassador to select various drinking glasses among the new designs that she assumed would be on show during La Sensa, although she did not give him free rein. She specifically wanted those decorated with the lattimo design and, again, no gold (lattimo referencing the opaque white vessels that were decorated with designs often drawn from well-known works by contemporary artists).114 Her letters to her agent in Venice also underscore how a discerning patron paid attention to form as much as decoration, and how she was introduced to novel goods through her own visits to Murano, where she saw a credenza that was being made for the Ottoman Sultan.115 The high demand for Murano glass and the rules around production and retail often meant that availability was limited, a scarcity that added value to these items. In September 1491, Isabella’s agent was unable to fulfil her request for the acquisition of various glasses and cups, as their stock was not to be replenished until November – the feast of Ognissanti – when the vacation period ended. Lorenzo da Pavia faced the same problem in 1505 because of the feast. In February of 1534, one agent was obliged to apologise for the inferior quality of four small vessels (ampolline) and two beakers that had been purchased, because the shops of Murano had been ‘pillaged’ by Alfonso d’Este and Reverendissimo Monsignore Cardinale nostro (presumably Ippolito d’Este).116 Glass was a technological feat and part of the admiration for it was its ability to parade as something else. Originally an art of Islamic glassblowers, glassmaking eventually made its way into Venice.117 The metallurgist Vanuccio Biringuccio noted that glass’s material was ‘transparent and lustrous’, it conveyed the ‘beauty of gems’ so much so ‘it deceives the judgement of the eyes of very experienced men’.118 Biringuccio suggests that it thus requires a physical, sensorial engagement to discern its true material make up, but also it is prized for the skill required in manufacturing it. The chalcedony glass placed closely to Bellini’s own signature on the cartellino in the painting demands comparison between the arts; the techne of glass production with the virtuosity of the painter (Plate V). Alfonso d’Este’s interests however extended beyond simply acquisition and, like Francesco I de’ Medici, he was keen on actively engaging in the manufacture of certain materials, according to contemporary biographers. Paolo Giovio, in his biography of Alfonso from 1553, noted that not only did he admire ceramics he was also keen on making them himself, dabbling in the potter’s art:

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One would find Alfonso most of the time in his secret room [stanza segreta], made by him in the form of a workshop and factory, where he would flee boredom by dedicating himself to pleasantries and delights, working away on flutes, cabinets/tables, chess pieces, vessels, and many other things all artificial and beautiful. He also made other things like beautiful earthenware vessels, used as household utensils . . . He also founded metal . . . and made things in bronze, and he succeeded very well and delighted in this art, with his superb ingegno.119

Alfonso’s reputation for active participation in material making – and as a direct contrast to his appetite for studies – is evident in the next century, when Gasparo Sardi describes his interests as follows: The Duke, not having much interest in studies, dedicated himself to the delights of his beautiful gardens, to pictures, and manual labour [molti lavori di mano] like carving wood, making gold or stone vessels: he also dedicated himself to making large pieces of artillery. He also gave himself [l’animo] to building work, enlarging the via secreta, where he made some camere adorned [ornatissime] with gold, and covered them with various marbles.120

The Este had a tradition of keeping resident potters and as Campori suggested long ago, ceramic factories, producing a unique green and yellow ceramic with sgraffito. The manufacture of ceramics at the Este court in Ferrara dated back to at least the early fifteenth century when ceramicists/potters are mentioned in the account books as well as the materials to make vessels and tiles.121 Renovations to a loggetta above the ravelin in the Castello belonging to Duchess Lucrezia in 1505 included payments to a ducal bocchalaro or potter, Maestro Cristoforo da Modena, who made maiolica tiles. In 1494, Isabella d’Este sent a maiolica plate, which had broken in three places, to Ferrara to be repaired there by the maistri that were working in the castle. Francesco Bagnacavallo, who was dealing with the request, returned the plate along with another that the Duchess of Ferrara, Anna Sforza (Alfonso’s first wife), was sending as a gift. In a letter written on 14 July 1494 by Bagnacavallo advising on the transport of the ceramic, he notes that it is not maiolica but something ‘more gallant, more supple, and lighter’ (più galante, più subtille, et più legiere), all white and worked from white on white (tutti bianchi lavorati di biancho sopra biancho).122 The words used here such as ‘gallant’, suggest something refined, suitable to a courtly setting, while the term biancho sopra biancho is the same phrase used and illustrated by Piccolpasso, attributing the invention of a special type of white ceramic with subtle white decorations to Alfonso d’Este (Figure 14, Chapter 2).123 It is worth considering to what extent Alfonso was concerned with the decoration of these vessels, and not just the material. As discussed in Chapter 2,

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ornament and motifs were increasingly scrutinised and seen as an intellectual engagement. Leonardo’s gruppi or knot patterns, for example, have been interpreted as a serious intellectual and mathematical game, a form of exercise to encourage dexterity, imagination and memory.124 Designs for these vessels by artists such as Titian and Dosso likely extended beyond just shape to motifs. Surviving examples of biancho sopra biancho ceramics show white scrollwork on a white background, with undulating lines that give the impression of translucency associated with Chinese porcelain and require a close engagement with the object, placing it against the light to discern the delicate white patterns. The decorations are not an imitation of porcelain but instead a new form of decorative motif in their own right, which in Piccolpasso’s depiction (and in some surviving examples) are framed by motifs in blue associated with those found on Chinese porcelain. On the reverse of one example in the British Museum, the blue and white sprays resemble examples found on porcelain or Middle Eastern imports.125 On 26 November 1523, Alfonso wrote to Isabella sending her some vessels and ‘other delightful things’ accompanied by his ceramicist who made them, Maestro Antonio (mio boccalaro). These were made, as Alfonso informs Isabella, in our ‘secret locations’ from ‘those stones [pietre]’, suggesting it was the material that was of particular interest to Alfonso. He recommends that if she likes what she sees she should commission some pieces from him. The letter corresponds to payments in the Este account books for an Antonio da Faenza who received a monthly stipend of twelve Lire in addition to accommodation for two people and living expenses.126 Others throughout the 1520s and 1530s were also employed (including a Sicilian), who were making vasi di terra for the duke and firing them to make them white (per fare il color bianco). Another maestro, Biagio de’ Biasini from Faenza, is also recorded along with the necessary ingredients such as manganese. Experimentation was likely part of this process as in 1520 Biagio is paid for a ‘bizarre’ watercooling vase (il vaso di terra bizarro da metter acqua da tener la state in fresco).127 Dosso Dossi’s brother, Battista Dossi, is also recorded making handle designs for the bocchalaro for vessels intended for the spezieria in February 1529.128 Whether Alfonso’s biographers were stretching the truth in his actual manufacture of ceramics, it points to a particular image that Alfonso was projecting of himself. By engaging with technology, Alfonso was underscoring his interest and knowledge of the natural sciences as well as supporting a local pottery industry that would be beneficial financially as well as put Ferrara on the map for what had become a global commodity. As such, Alfonso was also eager to learn from other ceramicists. In May 1519, Iacopo Tebaldo wrote from Venice, sending Alfonso a pietelletto and a scudella of ‘fictive porcelain’ (Porcellana ficta) from a ceramicist there. Tebaldo notes that the ceramicist says they did not come out as he had hoped because he fired them too high (dato troppo foco). This letter

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attests to the knowledge that was conveyed through epistolary exchanges, whereby Alfonso learned of the trial-and-error process that went into firing. Tebaldo also notes he invited the ceramicist on behalf of Alfonso to come and work in Ferrara but he did not want to leave Venice.129 Alfonso did purchase, however, in September 1504 seven schudelle of porcellana contrafacta and a bochale a la chatalana (perhaps Valencian?) in Venice.130 It is clear Alfonso took a keen interest in the materiality of the works he commissioned, from sending the canvases to Titian to contracting the artist to be actively involved in the glass and ceramic making process. In a letter from 1 April 1518 to Alfonso, Titian’s assessment of Alfonso’s involvement is noteworthy for this discussion. He states that he had ‘received your letter with the stretcher and canvas that you sent me . . . and when I read the information included with it, it seemed to be so beautiful and ingenious (bella et ingegnosa)’.131 Titian continues to praise Alfonso for commissioning such a painting (the Feast of Venus), noting that if God grants him the ability to satisfy Alfonso’s expectations, he will be praised for the painting he will make. The metaphor that Titian employs is particularly important here: ‘And nonetheless in this painting I shall have contributed only the body (corpo) and Your Excellency shall have contributed the soul (anima), which is the most worthy part there is in a painting’.132 As Colantuono has noted, this metaphor draws upon Alberti’s understanding of invention as worthy in itself. Although the metaphor is very likely to be Titian’s attempt to flatter his patron, it is worth considering further in relation to humanist discourses around the paragone and the matter of making art. If Equicola came up with the scheme (presented them in writing) then Titian is attributing the spirit of the design, one might say, disegno to Alfonso.133 Tebaldi’s letters reveal that the invention designed by Equicola (and it can be surmised with Alfonso’s involvement) along with sketches were sent to the artists of the Bacchanals in the form of clear instructions. Tebaldi clarified to Alfonso in a letter from 23 April 1518 that he ‘explained the whole thing to [Titian] at length, and gave him the paper on which the little figure was sketched and where the words were written for his instruction’.134 It is clear that Alfonso, Equicola and his agents were involved in the details of execution; from the specific canvas used to the sketches and instructions they sent. We unfortunately do not have similar evidence for Bellini’s painting and execution. There is also no indication that Bellini ever came to Ferrara, but as Titian was known to have stayed weeks in Ferrara during his execution of his paintings, including checking the light in the room, Bellini may have done the same, particularly if he were to sketch the porcelain vessels included in his work. Alfonso may have also sent pieces of porcelain to Bellini: while this seems risky due to breakage, we know that patrons like Isabella d’Este sent fragile items like bowls to Venice to be copied there by glassmakers, as mentioned.

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Titian’s reference to Alfonso’s invention as the soul of the painting alludes to the well-known debate around the hierarchy of the arts and the paragone tradition. Although eager to advise Alfonso on the fabulae, Equicola’s short discourse on the art of painting, written around 1508–15, reveals Equicola’s thoughts on the inferiority of painting to poetry.135 The debates around manual versus liberal practices were not new, but they were particularly resonant at the court of Ferrara, and actively engaged with by court artists of the previous generation, particularly Cosmè Tura and Ercole de’ Roberti.136 Here, the debate centred around pictura and scriptura, and artists such as Tura and Roberti actively engaged with the sensorial, mechanical and even laboured nature of their work, using their artistic outputs as rhetorical tools to probe and paradoxically negotiate with humanist treatises that defamed them. Similarly, as I argue here, Alfonso who was well acquainted with these debates (reportedly a close friend of Ercole de’ Roberti),137 utilised the material, sensorial and pictorial aspects of the camerini to explore a broader understanding of disegno. It is worth quoting a passage of Equicola’s treatise at length as it touches upon numerous aspects that Alfonso and other proponents of alternative understandings of disegno were attempting to address and counteract, as patrons and artists: To whatever extent painting, plastice, and sculpture, may be worthy of praise, nonetheless they are judged to be quite inferior to poetry both in authority and in dignity. Painting is more an activity or labor of the body than of the soul, most often performed by idiots, and it is content with only one of the four mathematical disciplines; it is concerned with no form of knowledge other than the imitation of nature with variously appropriate colors, with lines, shadows, and perspectives. Its purpose is to make the truth accessible to the visual sense. The poet desires [to use] all of the disciplines, with figures, tropes, and meters to amaze the learned, and to induce admiration in the unlearned. The poet’s intellect works with appropriate words to preserve the decorum of the personae who are introduced. Painting perishes with time, while the fame of the good poet increases. Therefore just as the soul is superior to the body, and just as immortality must be preferred to mortality, so too poetry exceeds painting in excellence.138

Equicola’s take on the competition between the arts largely repeats the wellknown debate, positing physical labour (attached to artistic production) against intellectual endeavours (attached to literary works). The vocabulary used here is important to consider within the larger discourses around disegno taking place in the sixteenth century. As Marta Ajmar has persuasively argued, there were competing understandings of disegno at this time but the narrative, we are often told, only tells one side of the story, privileging the notion of individual

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authorship to support a myth of the Renaissance, which gave rise to new professional identities and a hierarchy of the arts.139 This has resulted in a tendency that defines disegno as ‘primarily an occupation of the mind, placing the corporeal and material dimensions of production in second place, while being oblivious to the interconnectedness between mind, body, materials and the environment which they inhabit’.140 Instead Ajmar proposes ‘mechanical’ or ‘technological’ disegno, which challenges the ‘polarity between hand and mind’. Instead of disjoining ‘disegno from the materiality of the things that it supposedly designs’, it brings the agency of making into the creative process, integrating the so-called ‘minor arts’ into ‘broader frameworks of contemporary artisanal practice and knowledge’.141 The ability to bring shape to the material of the earth was also often a trope used by artists to refer to their divine craft, just as God shaped Adam from the earth. Scholars have also pointed to the relationship between the ‘plastic arts’ and the ‘intellectual hand’, whereby material culture such as ceramics could often be playful, witty and displayed a concerted intellectual engagement for the maker as well as the beholder.142 Disegno is best known from Vasari’s articulation throughout his Lives, where it is described as the father of the three arts of architecture, sculpture and painting. For Vasari, it is the ‘expression and declaration of the concept that we have in our mind’ and through the careful practice of the hand, can render that idea: ‘when the intellect sends out the concepts purified and selected, the hands that have for many years practiced disegno make known the perfection and excellence of the arts’.143 For Vasari, while disegno is a hands-on activity, the hand plays a secondary role to the intellect, setting up a dichotomy between manual and mental capacities. However, there is also a second problem around disegno in the Lives for the so-called decorative arts, with Vasari’s emphasis on the imitation of nature through figuration.144 This excludes imitation outside figural mimesis, such as material mimesis: chalcedony glass that mimics chalcedony stone or lustreware that imitates metalware. Yet it is clear that the mimicry of materials was not simply a ceramic parading as a gold vessel, but a witty dialogue.145 ‘Minor arts’ such as ceramics that do not fall into the category of maiolica istoriato, are thus treated as inferior, yet other treatises of the time allude to alternative approaches to disegno.146 The preciousness of materials or the difficulty of workmanship of a material can also be connected to ingegno. For example, the famous glassmaker Angelo Barovier, who made glass appear like precious stones, was described by the humanist, Ludovico Carbone active in Ferrara, as ‘endowed with angelic powers of ingegno’.147 It is indeed in the area of ceramics that other understandings of disegno emerge that are not limited to the narrow definition that posits intellect against manual practice, but instead draws upon Christian and Arabic frameworks of

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knowledge and technological transfer as well as ornament. In Vannuccio Biringuccio’s Pirotechnia (Arts of Fire), we find alternative definitions: The art of the potter has two sources as its principal basis. One comes from the art of disegno, the other from various alchemical secrets and elemental mixtures. In regards to these, I find that, in my opinion, all this art depends in the last analysis on four things: on good judgement in general, and on the art of disegno, so as to be able to make the vessels beautiful and of good shape, as well as to ornament them with painting; after firing them well the first and second time, the next thing is to know how to make and apply the glaze well and to paint them with varied and appropriate colours. The fourth is to see that you have good, fine clay without small stones or lumps – indeed this is to be considered the first thing.148

Biringuccio was a metallurgist who travelled to a number of courts, including Alfonso’s in Ferrara at the start of the sixteenth century (around 1504–8) and in 1531–5 he was employed to cast arms and construct fortresses for rulers including Ercole II d’Este.149 Although his treatise was only published posthumously in 1540, it is not improbable that his ideas around pottery making were not unknown to Alfonso, who took great interest in this art. It is noteworthy that disegno here is specifically linked to the beauty, shape and ornament of vessels. However, there is another form of knowledge, which is linked to the technological processes that go into firing, glazing and finishing of ceramics, something Piccolpasso dedicates considerable time to in his treatise. It is also important to pay attention to the specific vocabulary employed throughout these treatises and other primary sources. In Equicola’s text, he specifically uses plastice when referring to three arts (painting, plastice and sculpture). Sculpture and painting could be held in higher regard in an approach that privileges the figurative arts, but technological treatises saw a close relationship between sculpture and pottery. In Pomponius Gauricus’ De sculptura, first published in 1504 in Florence (written in 1503 in Padua), sculpture is classified into five strands according to material and process. He explains that the term plastiké (πλαστική) is used ‘when one works with clay’, ‘because it is the art of those that mould and model the material, the potters or figuli’.150 The treatise takes the form of a dialogue, where Gauricus instructs two learned men, the Latinist Raffaele Regio and the philosopher and collector Leonico Tomeo, on the noble art of sculpture. Gauricus is presented not only as an erudite man but also as an amateur sculptor himself as well as a friend of Tullio Lombardo, Andrea Riccio and Severo da Ravenna, alluding to an elevated status for makers. The term figuli was often employed to refer to the potter’s art, its etymology coming from the Latin figulus or potter, deriving itself from fingere, which is to give form or to model and thus, connecting pottery making with the liberal art

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of sculpture.151 Biringuccio uses the term arte figulina to refer to pottery, with an illustration of a potter at the wheel, yet his description of the production of pottery extends beyond pots to include ‘clay statues, painted with enamels’.152 A section of Ferrante Imperato’s Historia naturale is also dedicated to plastica, where he references Pliny. The key here is that the processes that lead to the production of vases, statues and bricks are foregrounded by their common materiality and the circulation of technologies. The vocabulary of the time points to a hierarchy of ceramics but primary sources also hint that this was not as straightforward as it might seem at first. A Bolognese humanist, Antonio Urceo, composed an epigram to accompany a gift of a ceramic: We are called pots, we exist everywhere And we ask a lower price. Glassware is more expensive, and so is crystalware, And all metalware surpass us for price. . . However, neither King Agathocles was ashamed of dining off us, Nor King Numa of making offerings off us. . . We are not manufactured by foreign hands, and yet We are not inferior artistically to any of the foreign arts. . . And if it wasn’t for the fact that self-praise reeks, We would say we deserve the first prize.153

Urceo is pointing to the lower cost of pots in comparison to glass or crystal and is also indicating that greater value was placed on items being made abroad by ‘foreign hands’. In 1585, Tommaso Garzoni published his ‘encyclopaedia’ on the professions of the world, dedicated to Alfonso II d’Este, he entitled the chapter on the art of pottery as follows: De’ figuli o vasari o pignattari o boccalari (Of potters, Cooking Pot Makers and Beaker Makers).154 Piccolpasso also dedicated a section to pignatte or cooking pots, as he explains, to allow for inclusiveness, suggesting pignatte belong at the lower end. Although they certainly had a practical function, they were also suitable as gifts between rulers, such as in the early 1480s, when Alfonso d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria sent his sister Eleonora d’Aragona earthenware jugs from Otranto (pignatellj et pignate de terra dotranto).155 Pignatte also appear in the Este documents, including one pignata that held chamomile oil in 1514 or a pignatella da profumo from 1496 in the guardaroba, probably belonging to Anna Sforza or Alfonso d’Este.156 The archaeological excavations around the Palazzo del Corte in Ferrara reveal a wide range of ceramics consistent with what one might expect were needed to run a court. These ranged from simple earthenware jugs to vessels made locally, such as the green and incised decorations (sgraffito) associated with Ferrarese manufacture. The excavations also found more delicately painted items such as a maiolica jug with the arms of Pope Paul II and albarelli with lustre details and blue and white motifs.157

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Earthenware was a controversial issue in relation to status: the value could lie in what Pontano called ‘rarity’ or ‘elegance’ or even ingenuity, but others were less convinced. The Florentine poet and scholar Poliziano complained about having to devise an impresa for a client, not for his ‘silver but for his household crockery (cocci)’.158 The use of this earthenware by the nobility could be a source of unease. For example, the early sixteenth-century writer, Benedetto di Falco, noted that princes and barons in the kingdom of Naples had lost their desire for eating off silver and drinking from golden goblets and were now using tableware made by cretari (clayworkers/potters) ‘in the place of the goldsmiths’.159 For Paolo Giovio, Alfonso’s biographer, the duke’s use of earthenware at table was a sign of a good and just prince. Instead of levying taxes, he pawned his precious antiquities and the jewels of his wife Lucrezia Borgia, ‘taking away all the ornaments [ornamenti] of the credenze and the table [mensa], he started using earthenware vessels and dishes [piatti di terra], that were even more honourable because they were made by the hand and industry [per la mano & industria] of the prince’.160 There was a certain level of contradiction in conspicuous parsimony, as valuing a poorer material over gold or silver showed erudition rather than greed, taste over pomp. As the Ferrarese ambassador in 1486 remarked to Eleonora d’Aragona, who was to send maiolica from Faenza to her sister Beatrice d’Aragona, Queen of Hungary, ‘she would rejoice in them more than if they were of silver’.161 Earthenware was also associated with the countryside and dining out of doors and was related to the knowledge of the suitability of certain materials for different occasions. Borso d’Este was criticised by Pope Pius II for being flashy in his use of ‘gold and silver dishes . . . even in the country’.162 Numerous primary sources refer to maiolica being commissioned especially for country villas, such as in 1478 when Donato Giannarino sent a gift to Lorenzo de’ Medici of a whole service of maiolica from Pesaro for Lorenzo’s use for when he is ‘at Careggi in the summer’. Earthenware was commissioned by Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino in 1524 to be used at Porto ‘since it is something for the countryside’.163 Dining in the countryside or out of doors was not necessarily less sophisticated, just a different set of parameters, as Pontano explained in a dinner invitation to a friend, composed in the form of a Latin poem: If you like a dinner with pottery . . . the dinner is prepared for you, and our countryside is open to you . . .. Let the table and the maplewood credenza glow with pottery for you; the house will be wiped clean and nothing in it will be unpleasurable.164

As Pontano explores in De splendore, it was about appropriate use; one type of object ‘should be adopted in the hall, another for the women’s apartments; some are destined for everyday use; others kept for Holy days and for solemn

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feasts’.165 Bellini’s Feast evokes a bucolic setting with an array of ceramic and glass vessels on display for the gods not dissimilar to the delizie or delights the Este princes and courtiers would have experienced in their rural properties. The act of giving form and the relationship between the body of the artisan and the body of the ceramic vessel, provides another angle in relation to the close physical relationship between maker/shaper and material, as evidenced by one of Piccolpasso’s illustrations (Figure 17, Chapter 3).166 The manual labour required to make and shape pots had to be well-timed, graceful and articulate. As anyone knows who has tried to throw a pot on a wheel, any sudden movement can misshape the bowl. A parallel can be made with a courtier who had to know how to comport and control one’s body, whether dancing or holding one’s glass at table. Alfonso’s interest in ceramics – and their representation in The Feast of the Gods – was thus a statement about the intellectual and technological capabilities of the manual arts. CONCLUSION

Although much later than Alfonso’s camerini, the apothecary Ferrante Imperato’s well-known collection in Naples was envisioned as a ‘theatre of nature’.167 In seventeenth-century catalogues of such apothecary museums the relationship between nature and myth was raised. For example, coral was cited not only for its medical uses but its relationship to mythology and etymology – was it the origin of Ovid’s tale of the Gorgon or the result of this fable?168 Questions around poetry imitating nature or vice versa echo much earlier discussions around the relationship between artifice and nature, mimesis and reality, painting and poetry. Alfonso could be seen as an aspirational precursor in a sense, bringing together the natural world in his interests in the spezieria (further explored in the next chapter) with a wide range of materials in his camerini, and in his attentiveness to the multiple technologies that were shared across all the arts. Ovid’s stories act as a backdrop to the materials and objects on display, but the paintings did not take precedence, rather they prompted conversations around the paragone and the complex relationships between counterfeiting, mimesis, metamorphosis and disegno. Considering the role of technical disegno and material culture across Alfonso’s camerini has provided a new interpretation of these spaces and their significance for Alfonso. As scholars have noted, the Bacchanals represented and indeed celebrated Alfonso’s ‘tastes and occupations’, which included collecting and making ceramics as well as the cultivation of exotic animals.169 These interests, of course were connected to transcultural currents that were a result of previous ties, instigated by the generation of Eleonora d’Aragona and her familial links with Naples.

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This appreciation for the multitude of things reassesses the paintings in the camerino. The Bacchanals placed on the walls acted as parerga for the real focus of display: the vases and other material culture that ranged from metalwork to Chinese porcelain. These vessels were engaged with as intellectual and technological marvels, taken off the shelves, they may have prompted conversations about manufacture and Alfonso’s own ceramic industries and inventions, and situated Ferrara within the global circulation of ceramics. NOTES 1

John Carswell, ‘“The Feast of the Gods”: The Porcelain Trade between China, Istanbul and Venice’, Asian Affairs 24, no. 2 (1993): 180–5. 2 Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), chapter 3 and appendix for transcription of Eleonora’s collections; Leah R. Clark, ‘The Peregrinations of Porcelain: The Collections of Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona of Ferrara’, Journal of the History of Collections 32, no. 2 (2020): 275–88. 3 For movement in relation to the senses and architecture, see David E. Karmon, Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance: The Varieties of Architectural Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 63–105. 4 ‘bellissimo camerino fatto tutto di marmoro da carrara et di meschi [sic] con figure et fogliamenti molto belli excellentemente lavorati, adornato de vassetti et figurine antiqua et modern i di marmor i di mettal’. Quoted in Charles Hope, ‘The “Camerini d’Alabastro” of Alfonso d’Este-I’, The Burlington Magazine 113, no. 824 (1971): 649. 5 The literature is vast. Key publications include Jadranka Bentini, ‘From Ercole I to Alfonso I: New Discoveries about the Camerini in the Castello Estense of Ferrara’, in Dosso’s Fate: Painting and Court Culture in Renaissance Italy, eds. Luisa Ciammitti, Steven F. Ostrow and Salvatore Settis (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1998), 359–65; Hope, ‘Camerini I’, 641–50; Charles Hope, ‘The “Camerini d’Alabastro” of Alfonso d’Este-II’, The Burlington Magazine 113, no. 825 (1971): 712–21; Charles Hope, Il regno e l’arte: i camerini di Alfonso I d’Este, terzo duca di Ferrara (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2012); Alessandro Ballarin, Il camerino delle pitture di Alfonso I, vol. I (Padua: Bertoncello, 2002); Alessandro Ballarin, Il camerino delle pitture di Alfonso I, vol. II (Padua: Bertoncello, 2002); Susan Nalezyty, ‘Giovanni Bellini’s “Feast of the Gods” and Banquets of the Ancient Ritual Calendar’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 40, no. 3 (2009): 749–68; Anthony Colantuono, Titian, Colonna and the Renaissance Science of Procreation. Equicola’s Seasons of Desire (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010). 6 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Thing’, in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1971), 165–82, especially 172. 7 Ibid., 177. 8 Marta Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, RIHA Journal 84, Special Issue ‘When Art History Meets Design History’ (2014): 19. 9 Bill Brown, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (2001): 1–22; Lorraine Daston, ‘Introduction. Speechless’, in Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, ed. Lorraine Daston (New York: Zone Books, 2004), 9–24; Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800 (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2013). 10 Graham Harman, Heidegger Explained: From Phenomenon to Thing (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 2007), especially 61–3. 11 Bruno Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik. Or How to Make Things Public’, in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, eds. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge and Karlsruhe: The MIT Press and ZKM Center for Art and Media, 2005),

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14–41. See also Bruno Latour, ‘The Berlin Key or How to Do Words with Things’, in Matter, Materiality, and Modern Culture, ed. Paul Graves-Brown (London: Routledge, 2000), 10–21; Bruno Latour, ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry 20 (2004): 225–48; Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Ibid. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). A recent study on Lotto’s carpets has also demanded new questions be asked about materiality and the presence of these carpets in the artist’s work, David Young Kim, ‘Lotto’s Carpets: Materiality, Textiles, and Composition in Renaissance Painting’, The Art Bulletin 98, no. 2 (2016): 181–212. Brown, ‘Thing Theory’, 7; Julian Yates, ‘What Are “Things” Saying in Renaissance Studies?’, Literature Compass 3, no. 5 (2006): 992–1010; Daston, ‘Speechless’, 9–24; Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass, ‘Introduction’, in Subject and Object in Renaissance Culture, eds. Margreta de Grazia, Maureen Quilligan and Peter Stallybrass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–13. Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art. Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2010), 11–21. Ibid., 178. Lieselotte E. Saurma-Jeltsch and Anja Eisenbess, eds., The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations. Art and Culture between Europe and Asia (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 17. Edmund Garratt Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara: A Study of the Poetry, Religion and Politics of the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (London: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd, 1904), 495. See also Andrea Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public: The Este Court at Ferrara’, in Dosso Dossi: Court Painter in Renaissance Ferrara, eds. Peter Humfrey, Mauro Lucco and Andrea Bayer (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Distributed by H.N. Abrams, 1998), 27. Lindsay Alberts, ‘Francesco I’s Museum: Cultural Politics at the Galleria degli Uffizi’, Journal of the History of Collections 30, no. 2 (2017): 203. Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public’, 29. Leah R. Clark, ‘Collecting, Exchange, and Sociability in the Renaissance Studiolo’, Journal of the History of Collections 25, no. 2 (2013): 171–84. Stephen Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006); Rose Marie San Juan, ‘The Court Lady’s Dilemma: Isabella d’Este and Art Collection in the Renaissance’, Oxford Art Journal, no. 14 (1991): 67–78. Geraldine A. Johnson, ‘In the Hand of the Beholder: Isabella d’Este and the Sensual Allure of Sculpture’, in Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice, eds. Alice Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 183–97; Clark, Collecting Art. Campbell, Cabinet of Eros; Anthony Colantuono, ‘Dies Alcyoniae: The Invention of Bellini’s Feast of the Gods’, Art Bulletin 73, no. 2 (1991): 237–56. Martina Bagnoli, A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2016); Johnson, ‘Hand of the Beholder’; Zuzanna Sarnecka and Wojciech Szymański, ‘Introduction, Special Issue on the Senses’, Ikonotheka 29 (2019): 5–9. For the larger senses bibliography see the Introduction. Paula Findlen, ‘The Museum: Its Classical Etymology and Renaissance Genealogy’, Journal of the History of Collections 1, no. 1 (1989): 59–78. For the Muses see Stephen Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450–1495 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997).

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28

29

30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47

48

49 50 51

52

Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, I; Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, II; Hope, ‘Camerini I’; Hope, ‘Camerini II’; Hope, Regno e l’arte; John Shearman, ‘Alfonso d’Este’s Camerino’, in “Il se rendit en Italie”: études offertes à André Chastel, ed. André Chastel (Rome and Paris: Edizioni dell’elefante; Flammarion, 1987), 209–29; Vincenzo Farinella, Alfonso I d’Este: le immagini e il potere, da Ercole de’ Roberti a Michelangelo (Milano: Officina Libraria, 2014). This corresponds to payments to Antonio Lombardo for marmori fini and marmori fini azuri. Dana Goodgal, ‘The Camerino of Alfonso I d’Este’, Art History 1, no. 2 (1978): 165, and Appendix I for transcriptions of ducal registers. ‘Spesa de la galaria del signore nostro dove fa fare il camerino apreso il studio’. Quoted in Goodgal, ‘Camerino of Alfonso’, 163–6. See also Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public’, 32. Quoted in Goodgal, ‘Camerino of Alfonso’, 165. For fire as a creative force see Paul Hills, ‘Titian’s Fire: Pyrotechnics and Representations in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, Oxford Art Journal 30, no. 2 (2007): 185–204. Guido Guerzoni and Guido Alfani, ‘Court History and Career Analysis: A Prosopographic Approach to the Court of Renaissance Ferrara’, The Court Historian 12, no. 1 (2007): 11; Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’, 217. Bentini, ‘New Discoveries’, 361–2. Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public’, 32; Goodgal, ‘Camerino of Alfonso’, 167; Hope, Regno e l’arte. Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’, 213, 221 fn. 35. Quoted and translated in Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’, 213. Goodgal, ‘Camerino of Alfonso’; Hope, ‘Camerini I’; Hope, ‘Camerini II’; Hope, Regno e l’arte; Bentini, ‘New Discoveries’. Hope, Regno e l’arte, 55. Ibid., 45; Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’, 217. ‘Item, Camerini diti d’alabastro ch’è de marmoro da Carrara a intagliamenti de figure e animali e tavolete d’alabastro e porfido e serpentin e selce de parangon et altre prede, con sofità adorato e intagliato e tavolete de pitura, che tuti è stimati de novo lire 48.000’. Quoted in Hope, Regno e l’arte, 55. Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’, 213. Ibid., 212. Ibid., 213–14. Goodgal, ‘Camerino of Alfonso’, 167. For the Zigliolo family see Clark, Collecting Art, 10–11. For transcriptions of the documents see Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte Italiana, vol. IX.3 (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1928), 103–10; C. Drury and E. Fortnum, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Maiolica, Hispano-Moresco, Persian, Damascus and Rhodian Wares, in the South Kensington Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1873), 573. Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue: Art in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2001), 159–69; Stephen Campbell and Alan Chong, eds., Cosmè Tura: Painting and Design in Renaissance Ferrara, Exhibition Catalogue, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, January 30–May 12, 2002 (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Electa, 2002). Venturi, Storia dell’arte Italiana, IX.3, 109. Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, I, 448. This sort of knowledge exchange relates to what Pamela Long has termed ‘trading zones’, the development of arenas where artisans and other practitioners and learned people communicate to share expertise. Pamela O. Long, ‘Trading Zones in Early Modern Europe’, Isis 106, no. 4 (2015): 841–2. Ulinka Rublack, ‘Matter in the Material Renaissance’, Past and Present 219, no. 1 (2013): 43–5. Rublack’s discussion draws on a number of seminal studies in the field of early modern materiality including Caroline Walker Bynum. See also Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn S. Welch, eds., The Material Renaissance (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007).

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53 Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, I, 450. 54 Raphael was originally meant to paint a Triumph of Bacchus portraying an elephant. Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’. 55 This was evident in the previous generation where Ercole d’Este had an elephant depicted in a fresco that he had bought from Cypriot merchants, and Eleonora had a giraffe depicted in the mural of Naples on her balcony. 56 Giuseppe Campori, Notizie storiche e artistiche della maiolica e della porcellana di Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI (Modena: Carlo Vincenzi, 1871), 23, fn. 1. 57 Hope, ‘Camerini I’, 649; Farinella, Alfonso I d’Este, 200–12. The original is in ASMa, Gonzaga, busta 1246. 58 ‘camere dorate cum li Camerini supra la Via Coperta’. Quoted in Hope, ‘Camerini I’, 649–50 (Appendix II). 59 Ibid., ‘649–50 (Appendix VII). 60 Quoted in ibid., 650 (Appendix VI). 61 Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, II, 90. 62 Gasparo Sardi, Historie Ferraresi di Guasparo Sardi allo Illustriss. et eccelletiss. S. Il Signore Don Hercole Secondo di Esti Duca Quarto di Ferrara, BL: 175.a.10. (Ferrara: Francesco Rossi da Valenza, 1556), 204–5. Also quoted in Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, II, 19. 63 Philipp Fehl, ‘The Worship of Bacchus and Venus in Bellini’s and Titian’s Bacchanals for Alfonso d’Este’, Studies in the History of Art 6 (1973): 40. 64 Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public’, 35. 65 Andrea Marchesi, ‘“Robe che si trovano nello studio overo camerino di marmo, et nel adorato di sua Excellentia”: Presenze e assenze di oggetti d’arte nell’inventario Antonelli del 1559’, in Il regno e l’arte: i camerini di Alfonso I d’Este, terzo duca di Ferrara (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 2012), 203–34. The originals are held in Biblioteca Ariostea Giuseppe Antonelli, 963, VI (hereafter Bib Ariost Antonelli); the pages are not numbered. 66 Luigi N. Cittadella, Il castello di Ferrara. Descrizione storico-artistica (Ferrara: Stab. Tip. Libr. di D. Taddei e Figli, 1875). 67 Bib Arist Antonelli, 963, VI. Marchesi, ‘Inventario Antonelli’, 209. 68 It is tempting to think that this could have been a remainder of the pigments Alfonso had ordered in Venice for painting, Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public’, 28. 69 The camerino as a place to store keys is confirmed in a letter from Alessandro Fiaschi to Ercole II from 1559, who specifies that he has left a key ‘where hangs a portrait of Our Lord, by the hand of Titian’. Quoted and translated in Christopher J. Nygren, ‘Titian’s Christ with the Coin: Recovering the Spiritual Currency of Numismatics in Renaissance Ferrara’, Renaissance Quarterly LXIX, no. 2 (2016): 455. 70 Finlay, Pilgrim Art, 1–5. 71 ASMo AP 770 24R. 72 Alessandro Luzio, Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma (Milan: Cogliati, 1908), 416–18; Johnson, ‘Hand of the Beholder’. 73 Bib Arist Antonelli, 963, VI. 74 Cittadella, Castello di Ferrara, 91. 75 Marchesi, ‘Inventario Antonelli’. 76 ‘Tazzete doe d[i] preda di porcellana p[er] tenire nel camarino d[e] sopra p[er] bisogno d[e]l S[ignor] D[ucha] n[ost]ro, d[e]lle q[u]ali una ha il nodello un poco sbecato’ then in different writing beside ‘nella Stanza delle Porcellane co’signate a M/ Hercole’. Bib Arist Giuseppe Antonelli, 963, I 4R. Cittadella, Castello di Ferrara, 91. 77 Bib Arist Giuseppe Antonelli, 963, VI. Also see Marchesi, ‘Inventario Antonelli’, 229–30. 78 For these accounts see Clark, Collecting Art, 1–8, and chapter 3. 79 Gülru Necipo˘glu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York and Cambridge: Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press, 1991), 72.

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80 A selection is published in Lidia Righi Guerzoni, ‘“Vostra Altezza vedrá cose assai belle”. Collezionismo ceramico estense tra Ferrara e Modena’, in Le ceramiche dei Duchi d’Este. Dalla Guardaroba al collezionismo, ed. Filippo Trevisani (Milan: Federico Motta Editore, 2000), 74. The inventories are located in ASMo AP, Reg. 928 and 192. 81 Righi Guerzoni, ‘Collezionismo ceramico’, 88, fn32. The original document is in ASMo, AP Reg. 928. 82 Claudio Benporat, Cucina e convivialità italiana del Cinquecento, Biblioteca dell’“Archivum Romanicum”. Serie I, Storia, letteratura, paleografia (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 2007), 80, 285. 83 Righi Guerzoni, ‘Collezionismo ceramico’, 89, fn. 42. The original is in ASMo, AP, b. 308. 84 Campbell, Cabinet of Eros, 11–12. 85 Anthony Colantuono, ‘Tears of Amber: Titian’s Andrians, the River Po, and the Iconology of Difference’, in Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and Its Culture in Early Modern Ferrara, eds. Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), 225–52. 86 Nalezyty, ‘Feast of the Gods’; Colantuono, ‘Dies Alcyoniae’; Colantuono, Titian and Science of Procreation; Maggie Kilgour, ‘The Poetics of Time’, in A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, eds. John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2014). 87 John Carswell, ‘Free for All: Blue-and-White in 1500’, Oriental Art 48, no. 5 (2003): 10–16. 88 For example, see the ceramic bowl with cobalt blue, Iznik, Turkey (Bursa region), 1470–90, BM OA+.678. www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_OA-678 89 Although the painting might simply be depicting a cup full of wine, there is evidence of similar chalcedony glass vessels, such as examples in the British Museum, 1878,1230.266, www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1878-1230-266 and a later bowl now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Edward C. Moore Collection, Bequest of Edward C. Moore, 1891, 91.1.1440, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/187332 90 Leah R. Clark, ‘The View from Ferrara: “Venetian” Objects in Este/Aragonese Collections’, in Typical Venice? Venetian Commodities, 13th–16th Centuries, eds. Philippe Cordez and Ella Beaucamp (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 185–99. Titian’s Bacchanal is now in the Prado. 91 Ballarin, Camerino di Alfonso, II, 90. 92 Nygren, ‘Numismatics in Ferrara’, 451–5. 93 Ibid., 465–70. 94 Ibid., 477. 95 Ibid., 482. 96 Jennifer D. Webb, ‘All Is Not Fun and Games: Conversation, Play, and Surveillance at the Montefeltro Court in Urbino’, Renaissance Studies 26, no. 3 (2012): 435. 97 Ibid., 437–9. 98 Alberts, ‘Francesco I’s Museum’; Lindsay Alberts, ‘The studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici: A Recently-Found Inventory’, Art Histories Supplement 2 (2015): 6–23. 99 Karen Victoria Edwards, ‘Rethinking the Reinstallation of the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio’, PhD Thesis (Case Western Reserve University, 2007), 17–18. 100 Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the ‘Natural History’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 19–21, 208–11. 101 For the inventory of the cabinets see, Alberts, ‘A Recently-Found Inventory’, 6–23. 102 Quoted in Alberts, ‘Francesco I’s Museum’, 206. 103 For musical performances in these spaces see the collections of essays in Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). 104 Jonathan Hay, Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China (London: Reaktion Books, Limited, 2020), 341. 105 Bissera V. Pentcheva, ‘Hagia Sophia and Multisensory Aesthetics’, Gesta 50, no. 2 (2011): 93; Dario Gamboni, Potential Images: Ambiguity and Indeterminacy in Modern Art, trans. Mark Treharne (London: Reaktion Books, 2002).

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106 Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 119. 107 Ibid., 120. 108 Roger Jones, ‘Mantegna and Materials’, I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 2 (1987): 71–90; Georges Didi-Huberman, Fra Angelico. Dissemblance and Figuration, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995). 109 James Mundy, ‘Porphyry and the “Posthumous” Fifteenth Century Portrait’, Pantheon 46 (1988): 39; Pliny, Natural History, ed. H. Rackham (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann), chapter 35, I, 261–5. See also McHam, Pliny and Artistic Culture. 110 For a thoughtful consideration of potential images in manuscripts see Nina Ergin, ‘Rock Faces, Opium and Wine: Speculations on the Original Viewing Context of Persianate Manuscripts’, Islam 90, no. 1 (2013): 65–105. 111 Guerzoni and Alfani, ‘Court History and Career Analysis’, 11. 112 Clifford M. Brown, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia: Documents for the History of Art and Culture in Renaissance Mantua (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1982), 215–16. 113 Ibid., 215–16. 114 Patrick McCray, Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 73. 115 Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 183–90; Brown, Isabella d’Este, 209–11, 214. 116 Ibid., 213. 117 Catherine Hess, ‘Brilliant Achievements: The Journey of Islamic Glass and Ceramics to Renaissance Italy’, in The Arts of Fire: Islamic Influences on Glass and Ceramics of the Italian Renaissance, ed. Catherine Hess (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2004), 1–34. 118 Quoted in Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 183. 119 Paolo Giovio, La vita di Alfonso da Este, Duca di Ferrara (Florence: Giovan Battista Gelli, 1553), 18–19. 120 Sardi, Historie, 204–5. Also quoted in Hope, ‘Camerini I’, 646, fn. 40. 121 Campori, Notizie storiche, 8–11. 122 Quoted in ibid., 13. 123 Ibid., 12–13. 124 Carmen Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice, 1300–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 125 Broad-rimmed bowl/plate, with ‘bianco sopra bianco’ and arms on face, with blue and white sprays on reverse, ?Ferrara, Italy, 1510–25, BM 1878,1230.414. www.britishmuseum.org/ collection/object/H_1878-1230-414 126 Campori, Notizie storiche, 20–1. 127 Ibid., 25. 128 Luke Syson, ‘Italian Maiolica Painting: Composing for Context’ in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Timothy Wilson (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 35. 129 Campori, Notizie storiche, 24. 130 Ibid., 24. 131 Quoted and translated in Colantuono, ‘Dies Alcyoniae’, 239, fn 11. 132 Ibid., 239, fn 12. 133 Ibid., 239, fn 11. 134 Ibid., 239, fn 10. 135 The short discourse appears in his Istitutioni al comporre in ogni sorte di rima della lingua volgare. Colantuono, ‘Dies Alcyoniae’, 240. 136 Stephen Campbell, ‘Pictura and Scriptura: Cosmè Tura and Style as Courtly Performance’, Art History 19, no. 2 (1996); Clark, Collecting Art, chapter 3. 137 Bayer, ‘Dosso’s Public’, 27, 29. 138 Quoted and translated in Colantuono, ‘Dies Alcyoniae’, 240.

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139 Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’; Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Looking INTO the Transcultural Object’. In EurAsian Matters: China, Europe, and the Transcultural Object, 1600–1800, eds. Anna Grasskamp and Monica Juneja (Cham: Springer, 2018), 247–53. See also discussion in Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 136–9. 140 Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, 3. 141 Ibid., 3. For artisanal knowledge and the body see Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 142 Margaret S. Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Hay, Sensuous Surfaces. 143 Giorgio Vasari, Vasari on Technique: Being the Introduction to the Three Arts of Design, Architecture, Sculpture and Painting, Prefixed to the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Louisa S. Maclehose (London: J.M. Dent & Company, 1907), 263; Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, 4–5. 144 Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, 5–6. 145 See examples in Graves, Arts of Allusion; Hay, Sensuous Surfaces. 146 Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, 7. 147 Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 141, 194. 148 Quoted and translated in Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’; Vannuccio Biringuccio, Pirotechnia (Venice: P. Gironimo Giglio, 1559), Libro IX, 301. 149 Vannoccio Biringucci, Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi, The Pirotechnia of Vannoccio Biringuccio: The Classic Sixteenth-Century Treatise on Metals and Metallurgy (New York: Dover Publications, 1990), x. 150 Quoted and translated in Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, 16. 151 Ibid., 20. 152 Ibid., 20; Biringuccio, Pirotechnia, Libro IX, 303. 153 Quoted and translated in Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 15. 154 Tomaso Garzoni, La Piazza Vniversale di tutti le professione del mondo (Venice: Giovanni Battista Somascho, 1585), 465. 155 ‘pignatellj et pignate de terra dotranto’. ASMo CPE 1246.2. Letter from Alfonso to Eleonora of 9 January 1481. 156 ASMo SPEZ 1; G1218v. Other ‘pignata’ are listed in Eleonora’s inventory but these are of metal, G114. 157 Sites US 1050 and US 1006, Chiara Guarnieri, ed. Ferrara al tempo di Ercole I d’Este: scavi archeologici, restauri e riqualificazione urbana nel centro storico della città (Florence: All’insegna del Giglio, 2018) (see especially Giacomo Cesaretti’s chapter: ‘Le ceramiche depurate, invetriate, ingobbiate, smaltite e pietra ollare e alter unità stratigrafiche’, 187–265). 158 Quoted and translated in Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 14. 159 Ibid., 14–15; Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 222. 160 Paolo Giovio, La vita di Alfonso da Este, Duca di Ferrara (Florence: Rossi, Giovanni de’, 1557), 69. 161 Quoted and translated in Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 201. 162 Quoted and translated in Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 23. 163 Ibid., 23; Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 223. 164 Quoted in Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 11. See also Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 223. 165 Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1999), 232–3; Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, 29. 166 Ajmar-Wollheim, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, 15. 167 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994), 37–40, 226–7. 168 Ibid., 38. 169 Shearman, ‘Alfonso’s Camerino’.

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CHAPTER FIVE

FROM THE SILK ROADS TO THE COURT APOTHECARY Aromatics and Receptacles

INTRO DUCTION

A profile of a man outlined in blue stands out in contrast to a burst of yellow background (Figure 26). The contours of his face, such as the smile lines on his cheeks, are softly detailed by a lighter blue. His hair is stylistically delineated with more blue paint, with clouds of tendrils framing his face, while clear strokes of the paintbrush give us the impression of a youthful head, full of hair. If we move the drug jar slightly, or we switch views, the pointed brim of his hat works to create a further dramatic outline, while the back of his hat, his hair and his neck follow the swooping contour of the drug jar he is so carefully depicted on (not visible from the photographic angle featured in Figure 26). If we move again, we are confronted with a banderole of writing, shaping the contours of his face, as if giving this man a voice. However, there is difficulty in reading and making meaning of the inscription ‘AENBEININRIA•’. If we move the drug jar 180 degrees, an entirely new image appears. The backs of such jars were often painted with abstract vegetal forms that fill the spaces with blobs of paint, undulating lines of colour, that twist and swirl, compelling the holder to rotate the drug jar to enliven the patterns (see the examples in Figure 27). Such description of form draws the viewer’s attention to the very form of the object one is beholding. Cylindrical, these drug jars are ergonomically made to be held. Most well known for their vibrant colours and their display in apothecary shops, they would have frequently been taken off the 196

FROM THE SILK ROADS TO THE COURT APOTHECARY

fig 26 View of Aragonese drug jars housed in the De Ciccio Collection, including an albarello with a portrait of a young man with a hat (Federico d’Aragona?) accompanied by the inscription AENBEININRIA•, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples fifteenth century. By concession of the Ministero dei Beni e le Attività Culturali and Tourism – Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte. Photograph by author.

shelf to use the contents within. The ergonomic shape aided in removing the vessel from the pharmacy’s shelves, as well as transporting it for whomever needed the contents, often medicinal. The fact that these vessels were used to transport spices from the ‘East’, and the patterns and motifs decorating them incorporated designs from Middle Eastern and Spanish ceramics, also underlined their connections to trade and their geographic origins from ‘somewhere else’, with mobility an inherent part of the albarello’s identity. This drug jar or albarello is one of a group of albarelli that bear Aragonese arms or portraits, in the Cicco collections at the Capodimonte Museum (Figure 26) as well as scattered in other museums across the world (Figures 27 and 39). The literature on these particular Aragonese drug jars generally focuses on their provenance and their place of manufacture. Guido Donatone has dedicated a number of publications on the jars and other ceramics such as tiles to a Neapolitan manufacture.1 This chapter’s aim is not to debate questions of workshop attribution, but rather to situate these jars within their social contexts at court in relation to other objects used in tandem with aromatics, medicine and spices. How were such jars used? What can they tell us about the everyday sensorial practices of men and women at court? How were these courtly practices adaptations of olfactic practices from across the Mediterranean? How

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fig 27 Albarelli with arms of the Duke and Duchess of Calabria (Alfonso d’Aragona and Ippolita Sforza), tin-glazed earthenware, Naples, 1465, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photograph by author.

did albarelli interact with other objects, materials and people within the spaces of the palace? Building on anthropological studies that understand objects to have social lives,2 this chapter highlights the very sociability of these jars and other aromatic vessels, as they were taken off the shelf in the palace’s spezieria

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(or pharmacy), mobilised through the carrying of the vessels to another room, which in turn activated other social and medical practices at court. Such vessels are frequently found in paintings of interiors of the time, not only in representations of apothecary shops, but they can also be found in depictions of bedchambers (often in religious scenes of the Birth of the Virgin or Christ), and of studioli (see Figures 29 and 38, and Plate I, Introduction, Plates VI and IX). The ubiquitous presence of these albarelli within the domestic context suggests they were frequently used for a variety of purposes in the home. This chapter begins by examining the court spezierie of Ferrara and Naples, to consider how they resembled and differed from urban apothecaries. The social, cultural, medical and religious functions of incense and aromatics demonstrates a ‘shared culture’ across the Mediterranean, while it is also important to highlight the unique traditions associated with individual cultures. The chapter then turns to the physical objects – the receptacles, instruments and implements – employed in the use of aromatics. These objects (bacili and bronzini, water buckets, flasks, water sprinklers, incense/perfume burners and ceramic vessels) were often those listed amongst the diplomatic gifts received from the Mamluk and Ottoman sultans and thus, are studied here as transcultural objects which carried with them associated practices. The apothecary shop and the associated jars became signs of news and knowledge and this chapter concludes with how the spezieria in the courtly setting worked in conversation with the other rooms of display and collecting. The spezieria’s association with the art of memory indicates how spaces like the studiolo and the spezieria were considered knowledge machines, with sensorial and visual stimulations enabling perambulations in the mind. The princely studiolo and spezieria thus brought together various strands of knowledge, where the collector presided over art and nature, mind and body, spiritual and physical well-being.

The Court Apothecary A fifteenth-century manuscript of a pharmacy implies a courtly setting, where a royal figure speaks to two men, one grinding substances in a mortar, while another sits writing in a manuscript (Figure 28). On the shelves are the ubiquitous jars associated with apothecaries, some with spouts for liquids, others in the albarello form in blue and white, interspersed with bronze or copper vessels. Drug jars took a variety of forms depending on the contents: liquid syrups and electuaries (honey mixed with medicinal powders) would be stored in ovoid shapes with long spouts, while solids and ointments were often kept in ociuoli (ovoid) or cylindrical (albarello) receptacles. While traditional literature on pharmacies has often approached them within the history of medicine, focussing on the drugs used or providing

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fig 28 Miniature from fifteenth-century manuscript on Galen (181v) from Miniaturen der lateinischen Galenos-Handschrift der Kgl. Oeffentl. Bibliothek in Dresden Db 92 – 93. Public domain.

transcriptions of documentary material without much contextual analysis, recent attention has turned to the sociability of apothecary shops in Renaissance cities such as Venice and Florence.3 Pharmacies or spezierie in cities were known as sites of communication, where individuals went to not only purchase spices, but to socialise (including gambling), and they were also understood as a place where spies and foreigners could convey news from distant lands.4 Such spaces were the Renaissance version of the eighteenthcentury coffee house, identified famously in the work of Jürgen Habermas as central to the emergence of the modern public sphere.5 As Filippo de Vivo has argued, an apothecary shop’s value could lie in its identity as a place for ‘information exchange’ where ambassadors frequented to obtain news, locals met to exchange gossip and various social classes intersected, providing a crosspollination of knowledge in the ‘protracted conversation of strangers’.6 As a site where foreign spices and other commerce from the far corners of the world were traded and bought, it is no surprise that the pharmacy, and the associated jars, became signs of news and knowledge. Apothecaries can thus also be seen as spaces of convergence, not unlike the port cities such as Naples where a form of cosmopolitanism emerged. Pharmacists varied of course, but it is clear

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that some apothecary shops were places of intellectual and literary activities, such as that of the Florentine, Luca Landucci, who was described as a ‘diarist and a man of letters’ and his pharmacy in the fifteenth century was ‘where he met with other literary figures’.7 The interiors responded to the needs of socialising, and could be fairly well furnished and comfortable, particularly because some customers could be patients, who would need to sit down to receive diagnosis or treatments such as bloodletting, a job also overseen by barbers. Larger apothecaries had various rooms to serve different functions, including one for confectioneries and another to distil waters.8 Apothecaries sold many things and were not restricted to just selling medicines, sometimes operating similarly to local grocers. Most commonly, people could buy wax (used for candles and votives), sugar, confectionaries, artists’ pigments, perfumes, spices, as well as the variety of medicines that came in diverse forms, from pills to distilled waters. The apothecary’s attention to the furnishing of his or her shop reflected the practical necessities as well as the associative connotations of a place for news and knowledge. Inventories of urban apothecary shops reflect the importance contemporaries placed on the receptacles to display or house their products, as evident in a miniature depicting an apothecary shop from the Canon Medicinae of Avicenna, which shows a variety of containers, including blue and white vessels placed on shelves with floral motifs with some jars sporting pseudoscript (Figure 29).9 The miniature was executed in Ferrara for a Jewish pharmacist and reflects the activities of its owner and reader. In a manuscript from the first half of the sixteenth century, probably executed in Tabriz, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris (Supplément turc 978), blue and white vessels, probably a mix of Chinese porcelain and Middle Eastern wares, are on display as one of the many types of receptacles on shelves in an apothecary’s shop (Plate VI). Here, it appears cups are used as lids for some of the vessels, suggesting they may have been employed as instruments to measure and extract the contents. An Italian apothecary jar from 1543 for mostardo (a spicy pickle, Figure 30) shows on its reverse the number of instruments and ingredients used to make its contents (an early modern equivalent of recipes one might find on modern tinned goods). At the top left are two jars, one labelled mele (honey) in a blue and white pattern and one labelled ‘ccemino’ (aceminio). Other vessels include a glass flask and pitcher, a pestle and mortar, a piece of parchment (to seal it or for a label) and a book. This panoply of things reflects the standard instruments one needed, many of which could be found in contemporary homes, but materials and contents varied depending on status. For example, some functional instruments like mortars could be made in fine materials, such as one that survives in agate bearing Medici arms or an example in porphyry still held at the hospital of Santa Fina in San Gimignano, underscoring how such vessels

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fig 29 Avicenna, Canon of Medicine, fifteenth century, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, ms. 2197. GRANGER – Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.

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fig 30 Albarello for mostardo, maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware), obverse and reverse, Italy, 1543, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941, 41.190.71.

were more than merely functional.10 As revealed in inventories of apothecary shops in Italy, albarelli in the hundreds are often mentioned, as well as a range of other vessels such as bronze mortars, ceramic oil flasks, glass flasks for distilled water, syrup jars, wooden boxes and more.11 The attention to the specific material of the vessels is evident in an early seventeenth-century manual: ‘It will be useful as Democrates says, referring to Galen . . . if they are of glass, silver, horn, pewter or terracotta as all these are dense and hard materials, amongst which glass and gold are to be praised as nothing can mix with them that can be damaging’.12 By the end of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century, as is well known, many apothecary spaces became theatrical displays of naturalia and artificialia, cabinets of curiosities made famous by printed illustrations, such as the collections of Francesco Calzolari in Verona or Ferrante Imperato in Naples.13 In illustrating Imperato’s space, the albarelli, vases and incense burners have now been relegated to the lower cupboards, to make way for the books, natural specimens and other wonders of nature on display, which now form his museo. Fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century court pharmacies were certainly not the equivalent of these later collections, but the connection between collecting, knowledge and display is evident. This is perhaps most clearly

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articulated in the close spatial relationships between different rooms one might find in a Renaissance courtly palace, as indicated by primary sources at the courts of Naples and Ferrara. It is also important to underline here that a courtly pharmacy did not perform the same social function as a public one in a city, but it is possible that the sociable connotations of the space and its multifarious functions may well have applied to the courtly setting, as illustrated in an illumination (Figure 28). Indeed, the approach taken by scholars such as James Shaw and Evelyn Welch, who have sought to investigate how the ‘theoretical precepts of social, medical, and economic behaviour were put into practice’, needs to be applied to the court spezieria to reach a better understanding of how such a space – and its associated objects and material culture – functioned within the larger courtly setting.14 Towards the end of this chapter, I will return to the intellectual dimensions of the court apothecary, but at present, I want to turn to the physical spaces and activities of the court apothecary. In the Aragonese context, in Naples, even in King Alfonso I d’Aragona’s time there is evidence of speziali or pharmacists being paid and records show there were various individuals involved in activities related to this profession, which ranged from providing gilding for decorations and perfuming rooms to ensuring medicines and wax were in stock.15 Under King Ferrante d’Aragona, there was a ‘perfume room’ (camera dei profumi) overseen by a Paola della Pietra, who produced odiferous waters and essences. This room held a number of costly receptacles including painted ivory jars, carafes, albarelli, boxes made out of gold, silver and some decorated alla moresca and others in ‘fine colours’ as well as soap, oils and dried roses.16 In the records, Paolo is documented using five bowls or scodelle in blue and white porcelain as well as one in the shape of a plate for perfumes.17 Two registers, dated from 1462 to 1465 for the Neapolitan court under Ferrante, confirm a court pharmacist (farmacista), three speziali, one medici, three surgeons and three barbers (professions that were often interrelated).18 Other records mention a spezieria del Re, where various speziali prepared the ‘syrups and aromatic things for the king’.19 In 1465, the Milanese ambassador provided a list of gifts that Ferrante was sending to the Florentine ambassadors, including confectionaries, wine, wax, spices and altre cose.20 Presumably this was a way to demonstrates Ferrante’s access to such goods through his diplomatic and mercantile networks, but also the confectionaries might have been showcasing a Neapolitan speciality using ingredients that came from further afield. Records show that the Neapolitan camera dei profumi was painted by the court painter, Agnello dell’Abate, in 1472. In January 1488, there are payments recorded for renovations to the Castel Capuano in Naples for Alfonso d’Aragona, Duke of Calabria, which mention a spezieria. A variety of painters were paid for painting a room ‘in front of the spezieria’, and there are payments

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too for work carried out in the spezieria, as well as in the nearby bath, a canmara de vascio dela teracza and a camera de zibecto.21 Baths at this time were taken for cleanliness as well as to serve medicinal purposes, and the bath’s close proximity to the pharmacy would have facilitated the use of aromatic waters and scents (baths are also recognised and featured as a medicinal treatment in Avicenna’s illumination, Figure 29). The camera de zibecto refers to a civet, an animal whose musk was used to make perfume and aromatics and was often gifted from the Mamluks (as mentioned in Chapter 1, not only was the musk gifted but also sometimes the animal itself ). Civet came from Yemen, but made its way into Italy via the Mamluks, although they might have been bred in Cairo as well.22 Alfonso d’Este’s renovation projects in Ferrara, which included his camerini, as explored in the previous chapter, as well as a spezieria, may have been inspired by his uncle’s architectural precedents in Naples. We are fortunate to have another mention of the spezieria in Marin Sanudo’s discussion of the Castel Capuano in Naples as mentioned in Chapter 1, which was in close proximity to the studioli, underscoring the need to examine the courtly spezieria in conjunction with the other rooms of the palace and their contents. The pharmacy’s proximity to the studiolo emphasises a close relationship between nature and art, medicine and knowledge, and the value of spices. Unlike city pharmacies, the court spezieria worked in close proximity to other rooms and objects within the palace, shown off to visitors as part of a larger display of wealth, power and knowledge. Archival records from the court of Ferrara provide more concrete information about the courtly spezieria. Under Ercole d’Este, a French perfumer was employed to scent pastiglia boxes, a sort of bas relief scented stucco that was often decorated with courtly scenes.23 Guido Guerzoni’s research has shown that from 1494 to 1534, twelve individuals are listed as working in the spezieria.24 There are an additional 130 individuals listed as camerieri–scalchi– scudieri–medici–barbieri, professions that could overlap with the pharmacist’s work. In 1487, a spezieria was built in the Torre San Michele in the Castel Vecchio, which is described as belonging to Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona.25 Eleonora moved to Ferrara from Naples in 1473, after which she oversaw a number of large renovation projects, including one suite of apartments in the Castel Vecchio and another in her garden complex. Having grown up in Naples and returning to her natal city in 1477 she may have built her pharmacy based on Neapolitan precedent. Eleonora was a regent and her apartments reflected her status not only as a mother and consort but also as a collector who pursued similar activities to her male counterparts, such as renovating her two sets of apartments and building two studioli to house her extensive art collections and library. Eleonora’s spezieria and her studioli underscore how women participated in what have traditionally been coined ‘male pursuits’ but it also raises future research questions on the role of women in the health of the

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family and the court. We know that women ran pharmacies in convents and occasionally in cities, but there is also evidence that women oversaw the health of the family within the home, following recipes to concoct remedies for ailments as well as cosmetics.26 Recipes for medicine were certainly a topic of conversation in letters between Isabella d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia, when in 1517 Lucrezia wrote to Isabella thanking her for the julip (syrup) recipe she had sent her.27 In 1466, Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria wrote to her mother, Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan, thanking her for ‘your Ladyship’s civet ointment’, indicating it was produced under the purview of Bianca Maria.28 There is not much more information about the Este spezieria that I have found until the sixteenth century, when a number of surviving account books were written. The first book from the Este spezieria in the archives in Modena dates from 1514.29 Entries include medicines for both humans and animals, from horses and dogs to remedies in albarelli to be used by members of the court or gifted to other courts. By 1535, an inventory of the pharmacy was recorded, which gives us a clearer picture of its layout and organisation (Appendix IV). It begins in a room with a fireplace (Ne la stancia dove se fa fuogo) and starts with a list of pestles and mortars in various sizes in materials ranging from bronze to stone. Some are specified for particular uses, such as a very small mortar for musk or a larger one for marzipan. A long list of other items includes glass vases, some described as long and others as round (tondi), various boxes, stone vessels, a balance and a large cabinet with 151 containers and boxes (not described as albarelli).30 Another room dedicated to wax and the tools for making candles corroborates with Este wax accounts, where lists of candles are given as alms to the local churches, used for illumination in transporting the ruling family at night across the city and for general use in the palace (from serving the cappella to lighting up rooms).31 The spezieria inventory then proceeds to mention some textiles at the entrance to the spezieria (perhaps door or wall hangings?) and then moves on to list contents of another room that had some form of bath (Stancia della stuva), and numerous vessels for storing herbs and medicines. The vessels listed range from blue (lavorati de turchino) and white (schieto as well as biancho) to copper and one very large glass zuccha vase as well as albarelli and flasks. Their contents include rose water, citrus sugar, oil and honey.32 In another room (Ne la stancia dal Chanbicho a bagno Maria), we find a table and various chests, mostly filled with wax and candles, as well as an instrument to grind herbs, and a chest full of glass vessels.33 The inventory then moves to the ‘large room’, which lists a variety of big containers for confectionaries, including a large tray with lid with confectionaries from Spain. One final room is described as the ‘large room de la capeli de piombo’ (lead), which suggests this is where the apothecary may have done some of the more physical labour of mixing and making. Thirteen capeli

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de piombo (some sort of lead instrument or cauldron?) are listed with their padele (pans), in addition to various large metal chests, a few cauldrons and a stone vase for ‘making white wax’ with two copper cauldrons attached to the wall.34 Other vessels are again specified for manufacturing goods, including two copper vessels for making aqua de vitta attached to the wall (presumably large vats), as well as six large stone vases ‘to make various things’. Two ‘benches for sitting’ suggest the pharmacist may have attended to patients here, as is evident from apothecary shops in cities, or simply they may have been used by those working there.35 The number of rooms, the range of materials prepared/used here and the diversity of instruments suggests this may have even been used by Duke Alfonso d’Este to serve his various interests in manufacture as detailed by biographers in the previous chapter, not unlike Francesco de’ Medici’s factories. Or, it simply might have been the purview of court apothecaries; regardless, Alfonso was certainly invested in its decoration and the activities taking place here as is clear from the previous chapter. From the inventory we can surmise that there were at least five rooms of varying size, and roughly organised around contents and specific tasks. One with a fireplace, where pestles and mortars were kept. One space that had a number of vessels mostly with scented water and honey, one room for candles, one room for confectionaries, and another one with large tubs and cauldrons where the mixing and compounding of ingredients occurred and where candles were made (and possibly scented wax). It also suggests some sort of bath, but it is not clear whether this was indeed meant for bathing or used as a distillery. This layout suggests this courtly pharmacy was fairly similar to others in cities at the time, if indeed bigger than some. Renaissance pharmacies normally featured a few separate rooms: the dispensary for displaying and selling products; the ‘kitchen’ where herbs were distilled, medicines compounded and where other production took place; and an adjacent storage area, while some also had a terrace or an outside space where they might dry some of the herbs.36 The Ottoman court pharmacy at the Topkapı Palace shows a similarity to the Ferrarese spezieria, albeit with many more individuals involved. According to Domenico Hieroslimitano, who went there in the sixteenth century with other palace doctors to prepare drugs, it was: A very beautiful thing to see, being of great width and length. In it are thirty vases full of various kinds of liqueurs, syrups, electuaries, oils, ointments, and waters, and it is assisted by 300 youngsters, some of who go each year to search for herbs, there being 18 masters and 4 leaders called priors, who govern it. . . . At the right-hand side of the said commissariat are four large rooms full of diverse drugs, and at the left are two other rooms where they are distilled.37

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Depictions of apothecary shops (Plate VI) provide visual accompaniments to textual ones found in inventories and descriptions. In the illumination of Avicenna’s manuscript (Figure 29), circular wooden boxes appear similar to ones depicted in domestic interiors that often held confectionaries, such as an open circular box represented in the intarsia in the Urbino studiolo that holds candied fruit or those depicted in studies and interiors (see Figure 38 and Plate IX).38 In a manuscript illumination depicting Christ as apothecary from the sixteenth century, different vessels are on display, from ceramics to wood to metalware.39 In a fifteenth-century manuscript of Platearius’ Livre des simples médecines, the activities related to a distillery are on show. In the marginalia, the labour required in procuring the raw materials is evident through the harvesting of plants. In two square illuminations, the viewer is confronted with the active and contemplative aspects; the knowledge of the individual sitting at his desk is contrasted with a man and woman working in the distillery, both spaces joined by the same floor tiles, evoking a courtly palace.40 Largely absent from the Este inventory are the actual spices or contents of the various vessels. These however appear regularly in the account books of the spezieria; presumably the purpose of the inventory was primarily for the vessels, furniture, storage containers and tools. While the sizes and shapes of the vases are described, they are not detailed; like in many inventories of apothecary shops, the documents deny the complexities of designs we find on surviving albarelli. Other documents however reveal that these may have been rather elaborate. In 1519, the Ferrarese court pharmacy was described in correspondence from Mantua as ‘certainly a beautiful spetiaria’.41 As discussed in the previous chapter, between 1518 and 1520, the artist Titian was commissioned to work on paintings for Duke Alfonso d’Este’s camerini, but he was also was involved in making designs for maiolica and procured glass vases in Murano and jars for Alfonso’s spezieria.42 Seven years after Titian was commissioned to purchase the glass for the spezieria, Dosso Dossi was in charge of painting the pharmacy. On 9 November 1527, Dosso Dossi was paid over five Lire for painting ‘a room in the spetiaria where there are terra cotta vases’. He is then paid again on 23 November 1527, over four Lire, for having finished painting the room.43 It is unclear from the primary sources what this painting consisted of. It is tantalising to think of Dosso painting an iconographic programme to coincide with the albarelli in the rooms, but it was not uncommon to have court painters being hired to simply paint walls in monochrome colours. In entries that follow, in November and December of 1527, references are made to Dosso for the painting of cornices and the designs for a camara nova and for four paintings or cabinets (quadri). Whether these are in connection with the spezieria, the camerini or entirely separate rooms, it is not clear. The location of the court pharmacy is not indicated in the account books (unless it was the same one Eleonora had built in the Torre San Michele), but recent archaeological excavations around the Palazzo del Corte in Ferrara

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confirm the presence of a spezieria in the fifteenth century, with findings of albarelli and glass receptacles, such as those used for urine, dating from this time.44 It is also not surprising that there is evidence of spezierie in the other Este palaces. An inventory from 1587 mentions a spezieria in the ‘Palazzo dell’Isola’ at Belvedere, which stored containers in blue maiolica, some with arms.45 As detailed in the previous chapter, a room recorded in 1559 as the Stanza della Porcellane at the court of Ferrara evokes a studiolo cum pharmacy with its shelves displaying a range of vessels in diverse materials, a table, cupboards and wardrobes all containing a diversity of goods including account books, medals, vases, perfume burners and an ivory inkwell, among other things.46 Sixty-five blue and white porcelain vessels were placed alongside forty-six brass and copper receptacles. Among numerous porcelain vessels, five vases ‘worked in the damascene style’ were displayed on top of a wardrobe close to the door. Deposited in wardrobes and placed on shelves were numerous other items including forty albarelli, a variety of maiolica, glass beakers, metal vessels and hardstones. The evidence from Ferrara and Naples thus suggests the fluid nature of palace spaces, and that objects moved between rooms when they were needed. Particularly in the case of medicine, special ointments or liquids would only have been used in times of need. Inventories of individual court family members suggest that a small number of aromatics, incense, perfume and receptacles for individual use would be found within bedrooms or in personal effects. For example, in an inventory of goods belonging to Ippolito I d’Este from 23 December 1507, we find a small list of items supplied by apothecaries, such as spices/aromatics, including two sacks of cinnamon, musk, starch, sugar and wax candles.47 It is important to underline the omnipresence of aromatics in everyday life, not just for medical purposes when sick and it is to the social as well as medical functions of aromatics that I now turn. AROMATICS: THE SOCIAL AND MEDICAL FUNCTIONS

The documentary evidence from Ferrara provides us with a clearer picture of what these spaces looked like, how they were organised and what could be found in them. However, they do not tell us a great deal of the social and cultural contexts in which the aromatics and the albarelli were used. Account books of the Este pharmacy, however, reveal the uses, and in some cases, the beliefs in the efficacy of the medicines. Read with other primary source evidence alongside medical treatises and advice, in addition to the vessels themselves, we can begin to understand the material and cultural contexts of spices and aromatics within the courtly sphere. Inventories and account books from the court of Ferrara attest to the knowledge of, and interest in, the efficacy of certain herbs and spices and their daily uses, taken from the courtly spezieria. Such a pharmacy, as we have seen from

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Sanudo’s account of the Castel Capuano, might be shown to visitors, where the vessels and their contents reflected the wealth and prominence of the ruling family. However, these aromatics were also central to everyday life at court, from serving medicinal purposes to ensuring the palace and its inhabitants smelled pleasant. Rose water in Ferrara, for example, was provided in a green albarello for Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, while aromatics were also made into wax medallions to perfume the air.48 The account books belonging to the spezieria in Ferrara reveal that while the pharmacist treated palace inhabitants, they also sent remedies to nearby courts, while some were shipped further afield, such as four albarelli in 1517 sent to Hungary, a court that had close ties to Ferrara as Eleonora d’Aragona’s sister, Beatrice, was married to the King of Hungary.49 Other spices, such as cinnamon are recorded as assembled for a perfume burner for Isabella d’Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, presumably sent to Mantua for her use.50 In some instances, it is a credenziero ‘El Todeschino’ (the little German), that is consigned albarelli full of tonics, presumably to be placed in the camere of the royal family or even on display on a credenza at meals.51 On 27 December 1491, Pellegrino Prisciano wrote to Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara from Venice reporting on numerous gifts exchanged between the ambassadors of Milan, Mantua and Monferato on behalf of their rulers. These included textiles (zambeloto), albarelli filled with ‘confections from Damascus’, spices and wax, underscoring the importance of these as princely gifts.52 A significant amount of money was spent in the Este spezieria accounts with a substantial quantity spent for the care of the horses as well as dogs. These costs increased substantially between 1515 and 1535. In 1515, the total expenses for the spezieria in the surviving account books came to just over 122 Lire marchesani with the stables costing thirty-seven Lire and the dogs costing sixteen Lire, although this seems quite low and likely this was not the full cost.53 In 1535, spezieria expenses had gone up to just over 5,921 and in 1536, just over 6,864 Lire.54 To put the costs of the spezieria into perspective, Isabella d’Este budgeted 600 ducats (roughly 1,800 Lire) for the six pictures for her studiolo (not including materials and transport), with Bellini agreeing to 100 ducats (approximately 300 Lire) for a painting he would complete in a year (a painting that was never realised).55 The accounts reveal that a large amount of money went into the spezieria, as well as the furnishing of the pharmacy, and while this occurred concurrently with the decoration of Alfonso d’Este’s camerini, the investment in the spezieria was significant. Not all the costs associated with the spezieria were medicinal or for aromatics, and we must be reminded too that wax was often under the purview of the apothecary, something needed to light the many rooms of the palace in a time before electricity. Gold for gilding also fell under the spezieria, such as in 1505 when Alfonso paid almost three and a half Lire to Maistro Ludovico di Giuelmo speziale for 160 pieces of gold to gild the camerini and another one

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Lira to Maiestro Domenego de Mercà, painter, to gild the same room.56 As one room was called the camerino adorato, gold was clearly one of the themed materials, in addition to the rooms decorated in marble.

Medicine and Confectionaries The most important part of the apothecary’s job was arguably to maintain a healthy court. The health of the body was largely understood to be dependent on the proper balance of the four humours (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm), which could be offset by things as varied as the weather, time of year, food and drink, and the air of one’s particular environment. Staying healthy could be aided by consuming specific medicines to balance the humours, but also by scenting the air of one’s home, decorating interiors with particular colours, wearing certain fabrics, using drinking vessels made from specific materials and so on. Certain times of the year necessitated particular interventions, such as an annual bloodletting in spring, when the weather began to get warmer and the body risked fever.57 Medicines came in different forms, from purges to electuaries to pills. Purges (medicinia) for example, were made from a combination of simples and other ingredients according to a doctor’s prescription. The most common came in liquid form, where the active ingredient was tempered with a liquid, usually an herbal extract and served in a small drinking glass. Alternatively, these could be combined with sugar, into a sort of candy; sugar featured in the gifts from the Mamluk sultans but it was also a local Italian product.58 Sweet electuaries used store shelf drugs mixed with other sweet ingredients, to create a sort of aromatic confection. At the Speziale del Giglio in Florence in the fifteenth century, a bestseller was the Dieradon Abbatis, which was composed of sandalwood, red roses and sugar candy, along with a range of gums, spices, pearls, camphor and musk, ground together in a mortar and then combined with a syrup of red roses.59 A favourite for headaches, these sorts of sweet electuaries could also be combined with pearls, coral, sandalwood, powdered gemstones and silver, with the prices increasing depending on how much gems, gold leaf and other costly ingredients were included. These could also be made into pills known as aromatic rosato. Chicken was sometimes also added, known to be particularly restorative. Another two examples from the Giglio in Florence underscore how such medicines could be packaged and turned into beautiful items for special occasions, such as the ‘confected chicken made with fine sugar and rose water, the flesh of the capon washed several times in rose water, made with “common seeds” and almonds and pine nuts’, covered with powdered spices and gems and packaged in a gilded box or the cordial electuary made from powdered gemstones and presented in a gilded albarello.60 Certainly the receptacles would have made the substances inside more appealing.

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In the Galenic medical framework, fruit conserves and sugar-based delicacies were understood to have medicinal properties, and it is no surprise these sorts of sweets were often gifted between elites. Gilded sugar sculptures were often central features of banquets and wedding festivities and at the court of Ferrara it was indeed the speziali who were employed for this work, with specialists brought in from Mantua, Padua and Venice, costing an exorbitant sum. In 1473, for the wedding celebrations of Eleonora d’Aragona and Ercole d’Este, the total account for the spezieria came to over 14,5000 Lire, with 1,000 speziali listed.61 At the wedding of Costanza Sforza and Camilla Marzano d’Aragona in 1475, such sweets were displayed in a ‘beautiful antique-style vase, full of finely gilded cloves, made of sugar and confettiere full of confits; coriander, aniseed, almonds, hazelnuts, cinnamon, oranges, pine seeds, musk confits and armorials and, lastly, quince marmalade made with sugar and without spices’.62 Other sugar at the wedding had been gilded and painted to look like ceramics from ‘Majorca or Damascus’, an interesting play on the apothecary’s art and the associated jars.63 The decorations for these confections could be done by court artists, such as 250 banderoles made in 1481 by the Ferrarese court painter, Giovanni Trullo, for a feast in honour of the Marquis of Mantua.64 The Ferrarese chronicler, Ugo Calleffini, describes in detail the 103 confections made for a wedding feast in 1491 weighing 4,000 pounds, with each confection made for particular individuals including tigers, unicorns, camels, lions, castles, Saracens, elephants, angels, large lilies, cats, horses, vases and men at arms as well as Hercules.65 These decorations often coincided with the theme of mythological performances to entertain guests at meals, and were thus part of a larger coherent programme. Other medicines were not consumed but applied externally to the body, such as ointments or epithems made from spices and mixed with liquid (often musk, amber, cordial flowers or vinegar) and then applied to the body with a sponge or a cloth. The colour of these was often linked to the malady, such as red epithems made from roses, coral or red sandalwood applied to the body with a scarlet cloth to aid a heart condition.66 ‘Baths’ were a mixture of dried herbs and flowers that were meant to be put into a bath for the patient to immerse themselves in. A bath, as we have seen, was constructed close to the spezieria in the Castel Capuano in Naples, and there was some sort of bath in the spezieria at Ferrara. Baths were also sometimes built close to a studiolo, underscoring the link between mental and physical nourishment.67 In fifteenth-century Ferrara, documents attest to elaborate water courses being built for a suite of bathrooms with warming rooms and a necessarium in a passage leading to the Castel Vecchio.68 Tapestries were sometimes hung in the bathing rooms and they were sites of courtly entertainment, such as in 1475 when fourteen costumes described as turchi were given to courtiers to wear when performing for the duke during his ablutions.69 Albarelli were used

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to transport such aromatics to the baths, and the primary evidence here suggests that bathing could be a larger courtly affair, underscoring the sociability of an activity we would now consider to be private and intimate. Other remedies could involve the prized gems and stones collected by the elite.70 The allure of stones and gems and their chromatic qualities in the medieval spiritual context is well known in writings by Abbot Suger, Albertus Magnus and in lapidaries.71 New antiquarian interests combined these older ideas with the collecting culture of the Renaissance and also with the quest for knowledge of the larger world. The chromatic qualities of stones were part of their efficacy, connected to the belief in the humours. Aristotle’s pupil, Theophrastus’ treatise On Stones argued that gems obtained their ‘special excellence’ from variations in ‘colour, hardness, softness [and] smoothness’.72 Green chalcedony flecked with red jasper, for example is described as a calorific. Red stones could function as styptics and wine-coloured stones, such as amethysts prevented drunkenness.73 Lapidaries discuss the importance of images and inscriptions in increasing the powers of the stones or gems, many of which spoke directly to the fears and hazards that rulers were particularly susceptible to, such as allowing the beholder to be bold or timid, and protecting him or her from disease, poison, enemies, demons and other evils. Medieval inventories, particularly from the Burgundian court, reveal knowledge of the magical properties of these gems.74 The inventory of the artist, Lorenzo Lotto, reveals a chromatic range but also the symbolic interpretation of jewels and their representations. His will mentions ‘twelve cameos of naturally multi-coloured stones, with the twelve astrological signs carved on them’ as well as ‘a gold ring inset with a beautiful antique cornelian, with a crane taking off and a yoke at its feet, and in its beak the sign of Mercury; this signifies the active and contemplative life, and the possibility of rising above earthly matters through spiritual meditation’.75 The Picatrix, an eleventh-century Arabic work on astral magic, which influenced fifteenth-century Italian treatises and thought, discusses the use of gems for medicinal purposes, including incantations and fumigations for dealing with demons and drawing planetary influences into engraved stones.76 In Marsilio Ficino’s Books on Life, colour plays a key role in the health of a scholarly individual. In his classification of the planets and the spirit, he relates odours to colours as well as stones: Watery colors, or white, green and sometimes saffron, violet, rose, and lily colors are colors that refer to Venus, the Moon and Mercury, while sapphire colors, which are even called airy, much fuller of purple, mixed with gold and silver, and perpetually green, belong to Jove. The more ardent colors of saffron, pure golds, and clearer purples, belong to the Sun. If the colors are even more alive or like silks, they belong to the stars.77

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For Ficino, colour and stone combinations could have particular effects, such as using gold and coral for illuminating the spirit. Specific stones, spices and colours associated with ‘Jovial’ qualities could also help an ailing belly such as ‘silver, jacinth, topaz, coral, crystal . . . sapphire, green and aery colors’ while one should at the same time ‘entertain thoughts and feelings which are especially Jovial, that is steadfast, composed, religious and law-abiding’.78 The medicinal qualities of stones were put to use on the bodies of the very people who collected them. When Lorenzo de’ Medici was on his deathbed, his doctor, Pier Leone, placed the heliotrope stone onto his skin in hopes of reducing his fever. This was insufficient and instead, the Duke of Milan’s physician was brought in, Lazzaro of Pavia, who disagreed with the heliotrope technique insisting that Lorenzo needed a cooling rather than a calorific treatment and prepared a poultice from crushed pearls (as instructed by the Picatrix pearls are lunar, cold and moist).79 The wearing of certain gems or colours on certain days was recommended by Ficino as a way to counteract bad astral influences, or to encourage good ones, and to inspire harmonisation of dissonance in the soul. In Giorgius Agricola’s sixteenth-century treatise on mineralogy, he noted emeralds were not to be worn during ‘dangerous or lewd’ acts, such as ‘cohabitation’ for if worn by either man or woman and ‘it touches the flesh, even when set in a ring, it will be shattered’. Equally, the colour of emeralds could also prove a useful tool in determining infidelity, because ‘the stone will turn white’ if a wife’s ‘husband is unfaithful’.80 In the art of memory, certain gems were used as aides memoires. In the Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae published in 1579, Paradise is envisioned as a ‘wall sparkling with gems’ whereby the reader is asked to ‘imagine the orders of spirits as painters paint them’, creating memory places in abbeys and churches known to them.81 The important role of the pharmacy as a metaphor for the art of memory will be addressed at the end of this chapter.

Incense and Perfume Fragrances, to purify and sanctify religious spaces, have been used for millennia in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Incense has also been used in secular contexts for medicinal purposes, to hide body odours and to evoke opulence. The history of the use of incense is thus a long one and its uses underscore transcultural practices.82 Mediterranean religious practices were permeated with olfaction, from Greco-Roman ritual to Judaism. While early Christianity rejected most ritual incense (many early saints were martyred for refusing to sacrifice incense to Roman gods and the emperor), by the late fourth and early fifth century, incense was part of purificatory, festive and honorific rites.83 Constantine, for example, donated two large gold incense

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burners and vast amounts of spices and aromatics (balsam, storax, saffron, cassia and spikenard oil for lamps) to the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint John the Lateran in Rome. Early Christian writers also commented on the efficacy of sensory experience in gaining knowledge of the divine and by the seventh centuries, the Syrian church had adopted incense offerings and the use of incense in devotional practices.84 The close proximity of multiple religions that used incense in places like Jerusalem or Istanbul gave rise to a ‘shared culture’ of fragrance.85 That is, while Judaic, Muslim and Christian rites might all use incense and associated material culture, the meaning for each religion and culture might differ, adopting and adapting sensory practices to serve specific theological and hagiographical purposes, thus attention to particular practices is important. In the Christian context, priests used (and still use in some denominations) censers to purify the church before the Eucharist by censing the area around the altar and the nave, then again during Mass to mark crucial moments in the liturgy, as well as censing the Gospel book before readings. As such, it demarcated and purified religious space, but it also blessed and marked important moments in the liturgy, while also activating the believer’s senses, and by doing so, activated the human/divine encounter.86 Incense also came to perform complex metaphoric roles. In the case of naviculae, containers that took their form as boats, incense came to be associated with travel and transport. In the thirteenth century, the Bishop of Mende interpreted the rising smoke as a means to chart the faithful’s pilgrimage across the sea towards a heavenly home, thus evoking a sense of communication between the sacred and earthly realms, as in Psalm 141, which begins as ‘Let my prayer arise in thy sight as incense’.87 Incense could serve as a synecdoche for the larger framework of prayer; the memory of its scent as belonging to a spiritual space – physically, mentally and emotionally.88 While numerous theological texts refer to incense, the Old and New Testaments are full of references to the importance of olfactory practices, which Renaissance users would have remembered as they partook in their own olfactory rituals. For example, in John 12: 3-8, Mary of Bethany anoints Christ’s feet with perfume and Mary Magdalene and other women bring spices to Christ’s tomb to anoint him (Mark 16:1 and others), which played an important role in contemporary funerary practices.89 In the Syrian church, hymns were dedicated to the theme of oil and anointing the sick with oil in the name of the Lord for healing and delivering them from sin.90 Oil was seen as a protective substance but also evidence of God’s presence. Skin, coated with oil, fused the substance and thus God with flesh, offering a physical metamorphosis as evidence of a spiritual transformation.91 Sanctified fragrant oil also made its way back from the Holy Land, where pilgrims would sanctify oil by placing it on or simply near relics while some would collect the oil from

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lamps and wax from fragrant candles at sanctuaries. This practice was also adopted by Muslims, where the lamps in shrines were considered small containers for the pious souls of the saints, a more ephemeral form of relic symbolising their spiritual being.92 The gendered dimension in funerary rites as evoked by the Marys at the tomb was referenced on Holy Saturday and Easter at the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem where women served as thurifers (overseers of censing), an activity usually only performed by male priests and deacons.93 This may not have been adopted elsewhere, but as mentioned, the association between women and the oversight of the health of the family was, and this was further underscored by numerous representations of the women at the tomb holding albarelli or ointment jars (Figure 31). In Jan van Eyck’s rendition, two of the women hold metal vessels, while one appears to be a Syrian blue and white albarello.94 The anointment of the body also served a practical function in reducing odours. In both Muslim and Christian cultures, sweet smells were often equated with the presence of God or divinity and Paradise was often held up as the seat of perfume perfection.95 In the Explanation of the Divine Temple, incense is described as ‘the sweet odour of the [Holy] Spirit’ and for Saint Augustine, Heaven was full of a ‘fragrance which no breeze can disperse’.96 The body of early martyrs, such as Polycarp’s (c. 155CE) refused to burn and instead emitted a ‘delightful fragrance as though it were smoking incense or some other costly perfume’.97 The association of sweet smelling flesh and a saintly body was prevalent in Renaissance Italy. Holiness or saintliness was often substantiated through the pleasant smell of a body or its resistance to decay. For example, Caterina Vegri, a saint closely associated with the Ferrarese court, had caused a sensation when her body remained miraculously animate after her death in 1463, exuding fragrant oil, and displaying radiant facial expressions in the presence of the Eucharist.98 Paradise in both Christian and Islamic belief was a wonderfully fragrant place. Frankincense and myrrh, of course, also appear in a variety of vessels in Renaissance depictions of the Magi, a story that often played on contemporary diplomatic gift practices, such as Mantegna’s Adoration of the Magi as discussed in Chapter 3 (Plate III). As a diplomatic gift from Islamic sultans to Christian rulers, aromatics and their containers made the biblical stories present and real through multisensorial memory. The relationship between the particular vessels used to house these materials and the biblical passage of the Magi is evocatively foregrounded in the well-known illuminations in a Book of Hours made for Engelbert II of Nassau in the 1470s or 1480s, now in the Bodleian library (MS. Douce 219, Figure 32). On folios 145v–146r, we see two central images showing the three Magi bearing their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh and their consequent retreat. On folio 145v, the gifts the Magi hold take the form of metal receptacles that appear ‘European’, however placed on the

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fig 31 Detail of Jan van Eyck, The Three Marys at the Tomb, oil on panel, 1425–35. Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

fictive shelves ‘framing’ the narrative are familiar apothecary wares: Valencian ceramics including an IHS jug and plate, two glass cups and a glass jug full of flowers, two bowls full of fruit and an albarello (similar to Figure 33). The framing vessels are large, taking up more room than the narrative itself, suggesting their role here as frames operate on a symbolic level.

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fig 32 The Adoration of the Magi and The Retreat of the Magi, Book of Hours made for Engelbert II of Nassau, 1470s or 1480s, Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 219, f. 145v–146r.

The Magi’s story is one of three wise men from the East whose astrological knowledge predicted Christ’s birth. As Ficino notes, ‘the Magi, observers of the stars, came to Christ, the guide of life, under the guidance of a star; they offered a precious treasury of life – gold, frankincense, and myrrh; they dedicated three gifts representing the lords of the planets to the Lord of the stars’.99 Ficino goes on to note that gold represents the temperedness of Jupiter because it is a temperate substance; frankincense represents the Sun, because it glows with ‘Phoebean heat as well as odor’; and myrrh, firms up the body and preserves it, representing Saturn, the most stable of all planets. The contents of the Magi’s gifts – and the associated olfactory, medical and astrological practices – are certainly linked to what one would find in the apothecary’s jars on display, but knowledge is also evoked through the reference to what the pharmacy symbolised. The depictions in Mantegna’s painting and the Book of Hours may have even conjured for the reader/viewer sensorial memories of sweet smells and medicine, underscoring the divinity of the Christ child and the associations with Paradise and the Magi’s gifts of frankincense and myrrh. Incense might have been burned in front of such images, creating a tangible

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fig 33 Drug jar (albarello) with content sign, tin-glazed earthenware, sixteenth century, Manises, Valencia, Spain. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of George Blumenthal, 1941, 41.190.225.

link between the vessels and incense represented in the images and real olfactory experience. The association of sweet scents with Paradise was linked to the eastern provenances of many spices and beliefs that the heavenly Jerusalem might be

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found by going East.100 However, gardens were also associated with good health, recommended, for example, by the physician, Ibn Khatimah, where a fragrant garden with ‘cool’ plants like myrtle and eastern aspen could protect a household from plague, while Albertus Magnus recommended a garden full of perfumes not only for the smell but also to refresh eyesight.101 Gardens of course could grow the very herbs necessary for some remedies, and it is no surprise that they are an important part of the architectural features in courtly palaces, including those of the Este and Aragonese. Eleonora d’Aragona’s gardens were particularly well known, including an entire garden complex as well as a hanging garden in the Castel Vecchio.102 Indeed, in Sabadino degli Arienti’s ekphrastic treatise describing the numerous Este residences, he comments frequently on the herbs and ‘odiferous’ plants, which gave off pleasant odours in the gardens. For Sabadino, these gardens not only characterised magnificence but also evoked Paradise.103 The medicinal purposes of fragrance are recorded in Arabic writings such as those of Avicenna as well as antique authors such as Pliny and Galen.104 In the domestic environment, scattering flowers and fragrant herbs on tables and floors as well as burning aromatic substances was recommended during periods of epidemics.105 Specific fragrances were recommended for different seasons, different times of day or different types of air. For example, if air was too cold, herbs such as mint, sage, laurel, rosemary and marjoram were recommended because they had a hot humoral composition.106 In Dioscorides De materia medica, frankincense was a remedy for a number of ills, and burning it was particularly good for the eyes, lungs and skin.107 Perfuming the air was also recommended for the scholar and collector in his or her study. In Angelo Decembrio’s De politia literraria, dating from the 1450s, learned courtiers and humanists discuss with Leonello d’Este, the Marquis of Ferrara, the decoration of a library. In the text, scholars are encouraged to scent the study with ‘sweet odors – though not those that hurt the brain, such as white lilies and cypress planks’. In addition, ‘twigs of rosemary and myrrh or bouquets of roses and violets and sweet apples’ are also said not only to delight but also prevent against insects and thus, maintain the books and other possessions found in the study.108 This is evidenced by contemporary images of saints in their studies, where glass vials of odiferous waters and pots of herbs on windowsills are on display (see Plate I, Introduction and Plate IX), underlining the attention to the religious, intellectual and physical well-being of the scholar in his or her study. It was also an Ottoman custom to perfume spaces where intellectual labour was taking place, including the practice of placing amber on writing desks.109 The use of aromatics by the collecting elite is evident in Isabella d’Este’s correspondence with her agent Lorenzo da Pavia, discussing the purchase of various perfumes and waters, including acqua damaschina and vials, some of

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which were given as diplomatic gifts to fellow rulers.110 Scented waters were also commonly used, such as rose water provided in a green albarello for Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, recorded in the Este spezieria accounts.111 Rosewater had been used across the Mediterranean world for millennia, valued for its medicinal, luxurious and purificatory properties. Pliny the Elder described twelve rose types and their diuretic and astringent properties.112 In the late medieval period, a special type of distillation process in a village near Damascus gave rise to the production of the famous Rosa damascena. Isabella’s inventory also mentions various flasks meant to hold scented water as well as a metal perfume burner perforated with arabesque designs, possibly of Mamluk manufacture, which would have incensed the air.113 As mentioned, the pharmacy records from the court of Ferrara also mention cinnamon being assembled for a perfume burner for Isabella.114 Isabella’s inventory of 1542 points to the presence of ceramic and metal vessels, in addition to her well-known collection of antiquities and paintings, such as a small metal vase alla moresca worked in gold and silver, as well as mounted porcelain. Building on the evidence from the previous chapter, these vessels and their contents were thus part of collecting practices as well as integral to the experience of collecting spaces, where the smells of incense, perfumed waters and other aromatics would have permeated the air while the colourful lustred ceramics and the metallic vessels would have played with the candlelight, offering a multisensorial experience. Aromatics were also central to more public festivities and were a marker of taste. Neapolitan scents seem to have been particularly refined, as they are described as perfuming the Rheims linen at the wedding of Constanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano d’Aragona. The ‘sweet smell of perfumes’ as they were described, were ‘placed so skilfully around the hall that no one could tell whence they came, all the senses of those at table were so caressed’.115 Presumably these were made in the camera dei profumi in the Castel Nuovo. In 1481, Ippolita Sforza, Duchess of Calabria sent Lorenzo de’ Medici perfumed goods because he had ‘run out of the fragrances and perfumes brought from here [Naples]’. These included ‘three flasks of scented water, fifty little soaps, one hundred little containers and one hundred small carafes’.116 In Christoforo di Messisbugo’s treatise on dining and etiquette, dedicated to Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, references are made repeatedly to perfuming tablecloths as well as to the odiferous waters for the hands and the receptacles required, including a list of things needed to maintain a spezieria.117 Aromatics were also made into wax medallions to perfume the air as recorded in the Este spezieria records.118 Made into small balls, incense like musk could be carried on the body in small containers or pomanders, such as the small gilded silver ball alla venetiana with musk paste inside, mentioned in an Italian inventory of 1474.119 Necklaces and paternosters were also scented, emitting fragrance when worn on the body or handled in prayer.

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At the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, the Ottoman sultan employed perfumers (buhurcu or anberineci) who compiled special recipes for fumigatories that were produced in the palace’s pharmacy.120 Perfume and incense were part of everyday ritual life at the Ottoman court, where the sultan, at the end of a meal, was ‘incensed with amber and aloeswood, the fumes of which give a soft and agreeable odor’.121 Other activities throughout the day at the Ottoman court were punctuated with olfactory experiences, from burning perfumed candles before bed to incense that accompanied musical performances and religious ritual.122 Specific scents also had symbolic meaning, such as aloeswood, myrtle, jasmine and marjoram, which were considered suitable for men and had associations with liberality and magnanimity, while jasmine was specifically associated with lords.123 The aromatic industry was a flourishing one in early modern Istanbul, which not only sold spices and aromatics but also produced a variety of receptacles, fumigatories, candlesticks and censers.124 The silverware repeatedly mentioned in the gifts from the Ottoman sultans to Naples suggests these were for scented waters and aromatics and decorated with ‘arabesque’ or ‘damascene’ patterns including bacili, bronzini and tazze as discussed further in the next section. The use of aromatics could extend to the merchant sphere as well. Although much later, in the early eighteenth century, aromatics were central to merchant initiation rites in Mocha, where new merchants would be received in residences through a staged ceremony that would include the burning of incense and the sprinkling of rosewater.125 As Nancy Um has eloquently argued, such ceremonies and the vessels and aromatics they held, need to be carefully studied within ‘particular commercial environments’ rather than in ‘broad transregional terms that occlude their specific effects upon the merchants who carried and traded them’.126 Equally, the reception and use of these vessels within courtly contexts also need to be examined with particular geographical and cultural sensitivities of location, production and manufacture. Italian pharmacists, doctors and barbers were amongst those who travelled and lived abroad in fondaci, indicating how medical and social practices around certain aromatics might have also been transmitted through the movement of people.127 Incense used in the liturgical context was made up of a resin or gum, either a single product or a compound, which came from trees. These resins burned slowly when placed above coals, excreting smoke. Recipes varied, but preferred scents included storax, frankincense, balsam and myrrh. Storax comes from various plants in the Altingiacae and Styracacae families from Anatolia and Syria; balsam, frankincense and myrrh are all taken from the bark of trees (from the Burseraceae family) native to Egypt and Palestine and the southern Arabian Peninsula. Balsam, as mentioned in Chapter 1, was often gifted from the Mamluks to the Italian courts, and Egyptian balsam was reported to be of a

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particular superior quality, grown from a shrub in a guarded garden at Matariyya/’Ayn Shams (Heliopolist) on the outskirts of Cairo, irrigated by a particular well.128 Pilgrims often visited here as it was said to be the place where the Holy Family rested on the flight into Egypt and where Mary bathed Christ, and balsam from here was sometimes regarded as a relic, at least in the fourteenth century.129 The roots of the balsam tree were said to have originally been brought from Arabia by the Queen of Sheba as a gift to King Solomon. Egyptians used balsam as a universal drug against anything from migraines and fevers to asthma, eye disease and sterility. More common in the Ottoman and Mamluk worlds, but still used in the Italian context more for fragrance than religious incense, musk and ambergris both come from animals. Musk is a secretion from the anal glands of the male Siberian musk deer and ambergris is secreted in the gall bladder of the sperm whale, which had to be imported from the Indian ocean.130 All these ingredients were thus not locally available in Europe, and their associations with the Middle East and further East were connected both to their provenance and their uses in that part of the world. Two pages from the Livre des simples médecines from the 1480s, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, show raw materials on their own as still life objects on shelves with labels.131 On one folio, we are presented with small brown substances on the top shelf including nutmeg, mastic, myrobalan, and on the next shelf, we find various stones as well as a sponge and myrrh, followed by the third shelf depicting laudanum, lapis-lazuli and pearls. Finally, the lowest register shows a pot full of vinegar, a kiln structure for making vessels and ‘butter’ placed on an upside-down jug. On the verso, we find a variety of materials including hematite, asphalt, ammoniac, coral, vitriol, silver (shaped as a footed cup), a squid and a mummy in a coffin. The inclusion of the kiln and some of the ready-made vessels on display highlights the relationship between these raw materials and the knowledge and equipment needed to complete their metamorphosis. The organisation of these raw materials corresponds to certain Galenic elements (water and earth) and may have been a form or organising contents in shops and interiors, where they were stored with hardstones, coral, shells and sponges.132 THE OBJECTS AND THEIR USES

Aromatics and spices may have come from far-flung places, arriving in receptacles that were also from abroad, but the reception of these goods could vary according to context, giving rise to cultural transfer and translation. Drawing upon existing sources, it is possible to paint a picture of the types of vessels and their uses within the Italian courts. It is also important to underline that cultural transfer not only occurred on site in Naples, but through merchant communities and ambassadors abroad. Colonies of merchants from the Neapolitan

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kingdom lived in the cities of Cairo, Alexandria and Damascus throughout the fifteenth century.133 There was a Neapolitan fondaco with a changing resident consul in Alexandria recorded throughout the fifteenth century and notarial documents attest to merchants from Amalfi, Gaeta and Naples living for considerable time in the Levant, demonstrating a prolonged presence of Neapolitan merchants overseas.134 Neapolitan barons were also involved in trade of these goods, such as the Count of Sarno, Francesco Coppola, who had large quantities of pepper and cinnamon in his possession through his mercantile activities.135 King Ferrante’s own illegitimate son lived in Cairo for over ten years, where visitors remarked that he had been incorporated into the Mamluk court, to the extent that he wore Mamluk clothing and other practices might have also been learned and adopted.136 Florentine merchants in Naples may have also brought some practices into Italy with them. For example, at a banquet given in honour of Alfonso d’Aragona in Naples by the Florentine banker, Benedetto di Antonio Salutati, in 1477, carpets covered the raised platform on which the tables were placed, and near to where Duke Alfonso sat, a large basin containing various aromatics was placed on another rug.137 A Neapolitan inventory from 1561 belonging to a member of the Caracciolo family attests to the range of objects in a Neapolitan household. Amongst the objects listed are four perfume burners (two in copper and two in bronze) along with other metalwork (likely damascene), as well as four porcelain pieces and various crystal vessels.138 As is evident in the wills of Venetian merchants who lived and died abroad, many of their possessions included albarelli and aromatics, which suggests these goods and their associated practices could be brought back home and incorporated into existing traditions.139 ‘Foreign’ incense burners or albarelli would have been used in tandem with locally produced wares, such as gothic censers and Murano glass receptacles, and aromatics in basins were placed on top of Mamluk or Ottoman carpets, underscoring further the fusion of material culture and sensory practices. As discussed in Chapter 1, aromatics and their receptacles – ranging from glass flasks and metal incense burners to albarelli and porcelain – were regularly given as gifts between princely elites within the Italian peninsula, often initially received as gifts from Ottoman and Mamluk sultans.140 The gifts proffered to Lorenzo de’ Medici by the Mamluk sultan included ‘a large flask of balsam; two civet horns’ (likely holding civet musk); aloeswood; ‘big vases of porcelain’; ‘large vases of confectionaries, mirabelle prunes’ and ginger.141 In 1489, Luigi dalla Stufa wrote to Lorenzo de’ Medici from Corfù noting that the Mamluk sultan was sending Lorenzo a number of flasks containing balsam oil, powder for the eyes, musk, aloe, among other aromatics.142 In 1473, the gifts from Qaitbay to the Signoria of Venice noted a zuccha de balsamo or a pot of balsam.143

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Aragonese documents reveal traces of use. In March 1493, the Cedole di Tesoreria noted the acquisition of eighteen maiolica pharmacy vessels for syrups. In 1482, the aromatario provided various perfumes for the Duke of Calabria including musk, medicinal oil and a vessel full of perfume.144 Assembling this primary evidence, along with the surviving objects, we begin to get a clearer picture of the sociable nature of these types of objects. These entries placed in the context of the guardaroba accounts of Eleonora d’Aragona, for example, which detail the movement of objects in her collections, give us an idea of how these objects were removed from their shelves, filled with medicinal contents and used in other rooms of the palace. Mobility was a key factor in these objects’ function. Numerous entries note that objects such as water buckets with their accompanying sprinklers were removed from the stores to ‘serve Madama in her room’, while at other times, comparable items were released to her chaplain to be used in her chapel or in an oratory.145 Similarly, the spezieria accounts demonstrate albarelli were filled up with necessary concoctions and then distributed throughout the palace, sometimes even gifted to nearby courts. Such archival descriptions elucidate the sociable nature of these objects, whether in their movement – removed by the guardarobiere and passed on to the priest – or in their participation in religious rituals or everyday usages. Evidence from the court of Naples also reveals the close association between ruler and speziali, particularly at times of peril, such as in 1493 when pestilence infected the city and King Ferrante fled to Torre del Greco with Daniele Uvis, the head pharmacist. Daniele treated him with a medicine made up of rose water infused with chicory, celery and orange flowers to help combat disease, while two of his assistants remained behind to cure those sick in the castle.146 There was a material culture that went along with the cultural, social and religious practices of aromatics and odiferous waters, and surviving examples as well as depictions in contemporary paintings and textual accounts can provide us with a better understanding of how these substances were used in tandem with the vessels.

Incense/Perfume Burners Incense and perfume burners, which could come in a variety of shapes, were commonly found in many elite Italian households as well as being used in religious contexts. These could vary from those that were hung from a chain (often spherical or architectural) to those that were flat, intended to sit on a table or the ground, while some could be both mobile and stationary with a flat base but equipped with a handle.147 Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventories reveal she had a number of vessels for aromatics or perfumes. Amongst her perfume or incense burners (perfumeri) were two in maiolica, a circular silver one with enamel and niello with Eleonora’s arms in gold, as well as a silver box

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for perfume.148 The two maiolica burners might have resembled two blue and white ones depicted in a prayer book belonging to King Alfonso I d’Aragona, illuminated in Valencia (Plate VII). Here, for the Office of the Dead, we find a representation of the Obsequies of King Ferdinand I d’Aragona, Alfonso’s father and Eleonora d’Aragona’s great grandfather, with the accompanying sensorial practices. On the floor on either side of the open coffin, placed on the tiled floor, are two blue and white ceramic incense burners with pseudoscript. In front of the coffin are also burning candles (or possibly incense sticks) in a row, while a man in a cardinal’s hat above, uses an aspergillum to anoint the princely body.149 This illustration is important not only because it shows the multisensorial experiences such a space engendered (textiles, tiles, incense burning, speech/song, etc.) but also how practices and their material culture may have been adopted and translated at the Aragonese court in Naples, and perhaps then brought to Ferrara with Eleonora when she moved there in 1473. The collections in Modena, which house many objects once belonging to the Ferrarese court, also contain a number of perfume burners made under the Mamluks in Syria or possibly Egypt, and it is likely these were received as gifts with their contents as well as purchased (Figure 11, Chapter 2). Similarly, it has been suggested that the damascene incense burner at the Museo Civico in Asolo might have been given to Caterina Cornaro from the Mamluk sultan as a diplomatic gift.150 These types of objects could serve multiple purposes, as they were used for burning incense in the Islamic world, and in Italy they could serve this function by being hung up, but they were also used as handwarmers and as decorative pieces.151 Such incense burners show changes in uses over time and illuminate how these objects adapted to changing practices. In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French inventories, incense burners are described as pomme d’argent doré (gilded silver ‘apples’) and are described as being hung on chains to warm the hands. Many of these early examples would have been manufactured in Europe, as is evident from a request from 1397 sent to the goldsmith, Jehan Clerbourg, working in Paris from 1386 to 1401 for an order of two pommes d’argent dorées all round for oisellés de Chippre baillées for the queen to keep her hands warm and to give her pleasure.152 These oisellés de Chippre are mentioned in other documents and suggest they were perfumed birds made out of musk or amber to be burned as incense, perhaps originating from Cyprus or bought there. Once Mamluk spherical burners entered into European collections, it is likely that their function as handwarmers was adapted to local use. In a letter from Nofri Tornabuoni to Lorenzo de’ Medici from 1490, he noted he was sending a ‘gold ball with niello work which is fitted together’ (palla d’oro inielata, che si chommette) once belonging to Cardinal Pierre de Foix, who used it ‘to hold in his hands with perfume’ (per tenerla in mano chon odori).153 One incense burner was found in the schrittoio or studiolo of Lorenzo in the Palazzo Medici, recorded as being used for musk.154

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A well-known painting by Hans Holbein the Younger of Georg Gisze (a Hanse merchant from Danzig, now Poland), demonstrates that metalwork incense burners were suitably placed in a study, where a European translation of the Mamluk spherical burners hangs near books and papers.155 In Europe, priests would often use handwarmers to warm their fingers to enable dexterity when celebrating Mass.156 Indeed, European handwarmers suggest a close association with the beliefs related to the work of hands – as agents of faith such as those used to enable the performance of the Mass, but also reflections of knowledge and education. For example, a thirteenthcentury handwarmer in the Musée du Cluny is decorated with the Seven Liberal Arts; it symbolised that skilful hands were markers of sapientia and that the holder held all knowledge in his or her hands.157 Within the religious context, censers could be metaphors for the transformational effects of charity, good works and devotion, but also the Holy Spirit. Durandus, Bishop of Mende in the thirteenth century noted that a censer: should be open to what is above and closed to what is below and retain what is given. It should contain the fire of charity and the incense of devotion, or a most sweet prayer and a good example leading to what is above, thus showing the sweet odor which rises from the censer. Just as the incense exhales a sweet scent which is put forth from the fire in the censer and which ascends on high, so our good works and prayers on earth, which proceed from charity, are more scented than all other perfumes. The censer filled with incense also represents the body of Christ so full of sweetness. The burning coal represents the Holy Spirit, and the incense and scent, good works.158

In the Islamic world, there is little evidence they were used as handwarmers but rather to burn substances for the purpose of thurification. The Sicilian poet, Ibn Hamdis (1056–1121), referred to the use of the spherical burner in relation to princely virtues in his poem praising his patron, the Tunisian Prince ‘Ali ibn Yahya, ruler of al-Mahdiyya. Ibn Hamdis refers to a sphere which hid three circles ‘from the eyes of the vulgar’, where incense burned to produce aromatic scents, and he describes the burner being rolled across a silken carpet in front of the prince. By symbolic association, Ibn Hamdis tells us the prince emitted sweetness and light from the centre of the globe.159 It is clear then that the globe-like shape of the spherical burner as well as the aromatics used could have princely associations with power and knowledge.160 Ales (‘ud) and sandalwood (sandal) were often burned in the cavities, both of which were often items gifted from the Mamluk sultans. In Arabic, incense burners were called mijmar, in Persia ‘ud-suz and in the Ottoman context bukhurdan as well as mubakhara. These derived from the contents and their functions, for example, bukhar in Arabic and Persian means a vapour specifically for something that

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fig 34 Perfume burner, brass, pierced, engraved and silver damascened with black lacquer infill, c. 1450–1500, Venice or Syria?. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, M.58-1952.

rises like smoke from something hot or damp, while bakhur refers to the substance that gives off the vapour of incense and is also synonymous with aloeswood.161 Mujmir is associated with braiding or knotting, and may refer to the knotwork patterns on burners, or simply the spiralling effects of smoke in the air. The sort of metamorphosis that takes place as resin is burned and turned into smoke, is also due to the complex gimbled mechanism found in some examples, particularly those of Mamluk manufacture. This mechanism allows for whatever is being burned to stay upright and thus continue to scent the air (Figures 34 and 35). The object defies gravity during mobility, whether it is swung or even rolled, as mentioned by Ibn Hamdis. The ability of the interior to always stay upright despite whatever the human actor might do to it highlights its agency. It could be said that this object thus provides a mediating agency between the subject and object, between the contents and the heat exchange which allows it to burn. A drawing from the Settalla collections (Figure 35) shows the complexity of this object, but also an eagerness of the artist to depict the damascene patterns and the holes that allow for aeration. The accompanying text mentions how the equilibrating mechanism allows it to stay lit with the decorations worked ala gemina or in the damascene manner.162 While the burner might be a Mamluk object, the design and technology behind it is much more complex and also demonstrates centuries of transcultural permeation. Perforated metal balls strung from the ceiling were used in China to burn incense as early as the seventh century. By the twelfth century, they were being used in the Islamic world but had been adapted, now with the introduction of the two compartments

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fig 35 Incense burner, from the catalogue of the Settalla collections, drawing, seventeenth century, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Gamma H.1.21 (Campori 338), f. 46R. Creative commons: https://gallerie-estensi.beniculturali.it/biblioteca-estense-universitaria/

that fit together and with an interior gimbal mechanism, so they could be swung or rolled on carpets to perfume the air.163 Gimbals had a number of early applications, including in incense burners, and later came to be used in navigational devices. European artists and engineers were fascinated with the gimbal and the possibilities it could offer. The earliest gimbals were described by the Greek inventor, Philo of Byzantium, in a treatise in the late third century BCE, and were in use in China from 140BCE. It is likely that their technology was preserved in Asia and the Middle East throughout the Middle Ages.164 In 1237, the gimbal appears amongst the thirteenth-century French artist Villard de Honnecourt’s sketchbook. Villard explains ‘when you want to make a handwarmer, you also make it like a copper apple closed by two halves’ and he then details the copper rings with pivots. Villard also remarks that ‘these contraptions are good for a bishop’ because his hands will never get cold, as long as the Mass lasts.165 Similarly, the gimbal appears in Leonardo da Vinci’s sketchbooks from the 1490s, where he refers to the gimbal in relation to a device used to hold compasses for mariners (gimbals are still employed on boats today to stabilise anything from tables to stoves to compasses).166

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These incense burners might have made their way into courtly collections as gifts, displayed in ceremonies, where their value was closely related to their role in diplomatic negotiations. Soon after, however, their status changes from mediators in diplomatic exchange to functional and aesthetic objects within local courtly ritual. Their connection to the ‘East’ might not be entirely lost once put on display at the Aragonese court, particularly if they contained or were used in tandem with aromatics. However, they do undergo a shift, a sort of metamorphosis, becoming objects that now serve local practices, or which incorporate local and ‘foreign’ customs, contributing to new sets of composite practices.167 They served as symbols of knowledge: in the religious context of God’s omnipresence, in the courtly context of princely power and in the technological context of ingenuity. The perfume burner is an apt metaphor for translation and metamorphosis: an object whose shape and function derive from Mamluk and Ottoman practices, yet originating in China, and it soon becomes a common item in the homes of the Italian elite. The damascene motifs found on this sort of metalwork are soon incorporated, adapted and translated into Italian design, fused with all’antica patterns. These burners hold aromatics that are gifted from global courts, scenting the air and the body with aromas that might conjure up associations of faraway places. The air such aromatics perfume is still Italian, yet it has been transformed, with vestiges of smell that stay long after the incense has been burned. The functions of perfume burners also shift, according to the spaces of the court within which they are used, just as they underwent a form of metamorphosis when they moved from the Ottoman or Mamluk setting into an Italian one. Used within the studiolo, they served a medicinal and intellectual purpose for the scholarly individual to refresh and clear the mind, while used in the chapel, their incense conveyed religious symbolism and while held in the hand, they kept the beholder warm. This mutability reflects the constant shifting status of objects in a world that was learning to adapt to increasing global connections.

Bacili and Bronzini The flourishing aromatic industry in Istanbul gave rise to the production of a variety of fumigatories, candlesticks and censers and thus, a particular material culture of fumigatory and olfactory objects.168 The silverware repeatedly mentioned in the gifts from the Ottoman sultans to Naples suggests these were for scented waters and aromatics. Branda da Castilione, the Milanese ambassador who reported on the gifts from the Ottoman sultan to the Aragonese court in 1483, specified two bacili with two bronzini, as well as six tazze (footed bowls) that were all gilded.169 Bacili were dishes shaped as salvers, used in tandem with ewers or vessels that were specifically used for washing

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hands. The gilding suggests that these may have appeared similar to later Tombak ware (gilt copper), with patterns that would have been described by contemporaries as damascene or alla moresca.170 From descriptions in inventories and wills, it is clear that these sorts of vessels were ubiquitous in the homes of the Italian elite and could also be esteemed as precious objects passed down in wills. For example, such items appear in the will of Giovan Tomaso Carafa from 1520, the son of Diomede Carafa, who had been the secretary and counsellor to King Ferrante of Naples. To the Countess of Maddaloni, Tomaso left a silver bacile amongst other silverware (including a salt cellar) and precious jewels, and to Roberto Carafa, he also left a silver bacile and a ship-shaped censer.171 Bacili are among the items that were listed to furnish the room of the Neapolitan ambassador, Francesco della Monte, when he visited Ferrara, underlining such vessels were essential items for the elite camera. Numerous bacili are listed amongst the possessions of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara, some decorated with the arms of the King of Naples.172 Similar vessels were also portrayed in paintings, frequently appearing in representations of Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet or the ritual washing at the Last Supper.173 The ceremonial washing of the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday publicly by a member of the royal family was a tradition well known at the Neapolitan court and was transported to Ferrara with Eleonora d’Aragona and Ercole d’Este. Paupers were dressed in new clothes and washed, and such an occasion would have drawn attention to the vessels being used.174 However, such rituals were not only reserved for special occasions in the liturgical calendar. Handwashing took place before and after dining in many Italian homes and before and after each course at banquets, not dissimilar to ablutions in the Islamic world, which explains why these vessels were popular across the Mediterranean. They appear in religious images of births where the mother (usually Saint Anne) has her hands washed before the serving of food, such as in a predella image of the Birth of the Virgin by Benvenuto di Giovanni from the 1460s (Plate VIII).175 Here, one attendant uses the bacili and bronzini combination to wash Anne’s hands, while another attendee behind holds a cloth to dry her hands, in addition to blue and white ceramics bearing food and drink, illustrating how a variety of vessels in different materials and styles were used together. In the 1460s, Filarete described an elaborate imaginary courtly ceremony involving six servants, where ‘each had a silver basin in one hand and an ewer in the other’.176 Attention was also often paid to the ritual of handwashing in descriptions of courtly feasts, such as the wedding celebrations for Eleonora d’Aragona in Rome, where ‘water [for washing the hands] scented with citron blossom’ was served and then after a later course, ‘perfumed water was poured over the hands’.177 Servants who were required to dare lacqua had to be skilled at

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pouring the water over the guests’ hands into the basins beneath, as visible in the painting by Benvenuto di Giovanni, and also carefully prescribed in courtly household instructions of the time.178 Cristoforo Messisbugo, a chef at the court of Ferrara, recommended that silver ewers and basins were reserved for the most important tables while less expensive tableware could be used for less important guests, suggesting a clear hierarchy of materials.179 Other types of metalwork such as Mamluk metal basins could be used as barber’s basins, which had close associations with apothecaries, such as the bowl depicted in Antonello da Messina’s painting, described by Marcantonio Michiel specifically as a barber’s basin (Plate I).180

Water Buckets, Flasks and Sprinklers Buckets with water sprinklers (aspergilla (pl.) or aspergillum (sing.)) also appear regularly in inventories. Often used for Holy Water, buckets could also be used in secular contexts of washing one’s hands or simply used to carry water within the palace. Surviving examples are often decorated with damascene motifs, many of which were likely made in Syria (Figure 36), although some later ones were probably of Venetian manufacture.181 The frequency of these items in inventories implies these were used in religious rituals in the elite household. Vittore Carpaccio’s painting of the Dream of Saint Ursula, now in the Accademia in Venice, suggests they may have been used in tandem with religious images, as the bucket with sprinkler appears hanging below a painting, while a candle burns in front of it, evoking the multisensorial experiences of the elite bedchamber.182 Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventories reveal the variety of water buckets an elite patron and collector might have. She had a number of buckets for Holy Water in silver, including a small one that was being used by her daughter, Isabella d’Este, in her room, when she was still living in Ferrara.183 Others were made from a variety of materials including copper, white glass, blue glass and brass. One brass bucket is identified as ‘with two mouths for pouring water on the hands’.184 At least three were of gilded silver alla francese, one with putti in relief and another with the arms of Eleonora and the ‘house of Este’.185 Her account books record buying one silver bucket for Holy Water from a Neapolitan in 1485 and another in copper from a German in 1487.186 A bucket from the collections of the Ferrarese court in Modena, dating from the fifteenth century, is of Mamluk manufacture, made in brass with silver decoration and may easily have been one of those listed in Eleonora’s inventory (Figure 36). Many sprinklers or aspergilla accompanying water buckets came in the form of long thin handles with a round sprinkler at the end and are often depicted being held by priests at the altar or at funerals anointing recently departed bodies (Plate VII). Flasks or bottles could also serve as rosewater sprinklers.187

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fig 36 Water bucket, brass and damascened with silver, Mamluk (Egypt or Syria), fifteenth century. Galleria Estense, Modena. Photograph by author.

Following Middle Eastern shapes, production in glass in Murano began to imitate these vessels, and porcelain examples can also be found.188 Indeed, in Eleonora d’Aragona’s inventory, we find a small blue and white porcelain vessel as well as a gilded copper flask, both of which were described as being used for rose water.189 Eleonora’s porcelain flask might have looked similar to a blue and white example from the middle of the fifteenth century and may have been mounted with a metal spout or sprinkler to facilitate sprinkling (Figure 37). Isabella d’Este’s inventory listed three small silver flasks in her grotta, one specifically described to serve the purpose of ‘holding water and perfumes’.190 Glass flasks for perfume or odiferous waters often appear in depictions of studies of the time. In Ghirlandaio’s rendition of Saint Jerome, a number appear on the top right shelf beside albarelli and a confectionary box (Plate IX). In Matteo di Giovanni’s Saint Jerome, now in the Harvard Museum collections, a flask stands on the windowsill beside a candle and an hourglass.191 Commissioned by Siena’s Arte dei Notai, or notaries’ guild, Matteo di Giovanni’s painting was placed in a reception room of the guild’s headquarters and might have reflected practices associated with the members’ own studies. A now faded albarello appears on a pile of books on the shelf directly left of the hourglass, and other vessels litter the wooden studiolo. A flask can also be spotted on the top shelf in Filippino Lippi’s interior of an Annunciation, also beside an albarello and a confectionary box (see Figure 38). Placed below the word benedictus, an allusion to the Virgin Mary’s benediction, the flask may have also been making specific reference

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fig 37 Porcelain bottle, porcelain with cobalt blue, Jingdezhen, China, second half of the fifteenth century. © Victoria and Albert Museum, C.79-1928.

to the use of Holy Water. In 1492, visitors to the Medici palace would have encountered a wall fountain or acquaoi with three shelves that displayed ‘two large coolers worked alla dommaschina . . . two large maiolica vases [quartoni], two earthenware coolers and other pottery and glass’ suggesting some of these vessels were used in tandem with water features.192

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fig 38 Shelf still life, detail from Filippino Lippi, The Annunciation, painting on canvas, 1483, Loggia del Battistero, San Gimignano, Siena. Luisa Ricciarini/Bridgeman Images.

Porcelain and Ceramics Ceramics were used to hold spices and medicines and were often featured as the ubiquitous sign of the apothecary in the form of the albarello. Their associations with Mamluk and Ottoman practices is evident from merchant, ambassador and traveller reports. In 1545, the Genoese traveller, Giovanni Antonio Menavino, noted the use of porcelain in Ottoman dining and sensorial practices of the ‘Grand Turk’, where the tables were furnished with: Many silver vases, filled with various beverages alla Turchesca; which are, julep, sugars, and other purged waters with mastic: and similarly adorning another credenza many plates of porcelain and other sapori made from mint, viole, and other herbs, and fruit made out of sugar al modo loro, and all of this was brought into the room, where the king wants to eat . . . and from the kitchens the food is brought on a big plate of porcelain with a silver cover.193

Large porcelain vessels were also used to prepare drugs and potions at the commissary in the Topkapı Palace, according to Domenico Hieroslimitano who went there with other palace doctors to prepare drugs and potions.194 As detailed in Chapter 1, one of the most highly prized gifts from the Mamluks

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and Ottomans and featuring in the descriptions of the Aragonese palaces and Este inventories was porcelain, which could serve aesthetic functions in terms of display as well as being used to serve food and hold spices. The association between the use of porcelain for fine dining and spices by the cultures who gifted porcelain is underscored by Menavino’s description of Ottoman practices. In a sixteenth-century procession of guilds at the Ottoman court, members of the herbalists’ guild were recorded as carrying ‘porcelain dishes containing camphor, ambergris, Damascene ambergris, and aloeswood’, underlining that contemporaries associated porcelain as a vessel to contain aromatics.195 As discussed in Chapter 3, porcelain was seen as an apotropaic, often used in tandem with aromatics, and might have been seen to carry medicinal value or at least be connected to cleanliness as Portuguese patients in a hospital in Goa ate off plates of porcelain.196 Ubiquitous in homes as well as on pharmacy shelves were albarelli, which will be discussed in detail in the next section, but ceramicists also made alfabeguers/ alfabichieri to house herbs and plants in the home (Figure 3, Introduction). As discussed in this book’s introduction, these vessels took their name from the Arabic for basil (such a basil pot famously appears in Boccaccio’s tragic story of Lisabetta da’ Messina (fourth day, fifth story)), but they were not restricted to just basil. Alfabeguers feature in paintings of domestic interiors placed on windowsills or ledges where open windows would circulate the air and thus, release the fragrance throughout the house while also keeping insects at bay (Plate I). In a prayer book belonging to Alfonso I d’Aragona, an Annunciation scene shows a double-handled Spanish blue and white jar with the symbolic lily of purity (also the symbol of the Aragonese Order of the Jar) accompanied by two blue and white alfabeguers on the right (Plate X). The artist has paid attention in rendering the specific construction of the alfabeguers, which included a watercourse system with ‘turrets’ that allowed for the plant to be watered from the sides, and many were left unglazed in the interiors to aid moisture retention in hot climates (see Figure 3).197 ALBARELLI: O BJ ECT S O N THE MO VE

The apothecary’s attention to the furnishing of his or her shop reflected the practical necessities as well as the associative connotations of a place for news and knowledge. Inventories of apothecary shops reflect the importance contemporaries placed on the receptacles to display or house their products, as evident in miniatures of the time (Figure 29 and Plate VI). Albarelli in the hundreds are often mentioned, as well as a range of other vessels such as bronze mortars, ceramic oil flasks, glass flasks for distilled water, syrup jars and more. As we have seen, the court’s pharmacy was not much different. What was distinctive was its close proximity to other rooms of the palace: where one

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bathed, ate, entertained, studied and slept, thus it was likely more integrated into the social, cultural, and medical contexts of the court. This also meant that these receptacles interacted with the broader material and visual culture of the court – from the paintings on the walls, such as Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, to the gems and hardstones in the studiolo. Albarelli derive their name from the Persian al barani, meaning a container, modelled on the shape of a bamboo stalk section but the term became used to refer to a vessel for spices.198 Albarelli’s linguistic roots are derived from their routes: albarelli were in use in Egypt, Samarkand and Persia from as early as the ninth century. By the fourteenth century, they start appearing in Italian homes, the majority of which were made in Spain.199 In France, albarelli were sometimes referred to as magdaléon, referencing a cylindrical form, but also because of the association to Mary Magdalene who is frequently represented with ointment jars, including albarelli in contemporary paintings and illuminations (Figure 31).200 Apothecary jars were often commissioned in sets which created a sense of cohesion for the decoration of the pharmacy, such as the well-known jars of the Sienese hospital of Santa Maria della Scala that bear the symbol of the ladder (scala). The inventories of the Este spezieria and the glimpses we get of the vessels in the documents pertaining to the Aragonese court suggest there were many vessels, but it is not easy to understand their decorative programme, if there was one. The surviving Aragonese albarelli found in the Capodimonte Museum as well as in other museums (Figures 26, 27 and 39) all bear a resemblance, modelled on similar designs from Pesaro and Faenza but identified by most scholars as having been produced in Naples.201 However, they still raise questions that have yet to be answered. The presence of portraits of the Aragonese on many of these suggests they were made in close association with the ruling family. A portrait of Eleonora d’Aragona appears on one now housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, for example, and resembles closely a miniature attributed to Cosmè Tura (Figure 39).202 Others in the Louvre depict the portrait of Alfonso d’Aragona, the Duke of Calabria accompanied by his coat of arms on the reverse and on another, the arms of his wife Ippolita Sforza, the Duchess of Calabria, suggesting these may have been made to commemorate their marriage in 1465 (Figure 27). Others survive, however with portraits of other courtly rulers such as Duke Borso d’Este of Ferrara and Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan, many of which bear a resemblance to their portraits circulating on medals and these political figures had diplomatic links (if at times fraught) with the Aragonese.203 Were these drug jars then made specifically for these individuals’ use? Were they given as gifts by the Aragonese as medals might have been? Could they have been given as ‘party favours’ as armorial plates were on some occasions, perhaps even used by visitors to a palace and taken with them on their departure?204 Or were they used at court to show one’s acquaintances and

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fig 39 Albarello with a portrait of a woman (Eleonora d’Aragona), Naples, c. 1475. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 245-1894.

political alliances as other portraits might function, displayed in the court spezieria as Donatone has suggested? A more controversial question to ask is whether these were used by the royal courts at all, and instead used by the aspiring middle classes to become acquainted with the faces of the ruling elite,

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or to commemorate particular events, just as today one might buy a cup or plate celebrating a royal wedding, birth or jubilee.205 What is clear from the documentary evidence is the frequent use of such receptacles within the courtly context, and specifically in the Aragonese context, demonstrating a predilection for a variety of ceramics. Albarelli were inherently mobile, whether being taken off the shelf in a court pharmacy and transported to another room of the palace or transported from Damascus with a merchant who was importing the spices into Italy. The mobility of these objects is evident in contemporary paintings of the three Marys (or just Mary Magdalene depending on the biblical passage) at the tomb of Christ, where they carry ointments in their vessels to anoint the body of Christ (Figure 31). The Syrian drug jar in van Eyck’s depiction might have been a particular way to evoke the geography of the painting. Albarelli and associated vessels were mobile messengers of wellness or in the case of death, passages to salvation and a clean body for the hoped-for path to Heaven. The famous representation of a Spanish lustreware albarello that appears in the Portinari altarpiece underscores the symbolic function of albarelli. The painting was commissioned for the high altar of the church of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, where it symbolised the potential for healing – both spiritual and physical.206 The Aragonese albarelli incorporate designs and framing devices loosely inspired by Middle Eastern and Spanish wares. Swirly lines incorporate an ivy motif mimicking the manganese lustreware vases associated with Spain. The albarello with the portrait of Eleonora d’Aragona fuses artistic styles (Figure 39); here the ‘foreign’ motifs have become localised in an Italian profile portrait of Eleonora that schematises her delicate veil and the pomegranate design of her dress. Like most of the Neapolitan portrait albarelli, Eleonora’s profile is framed by an outline in blue, sometimes called a ‘contour panel’, demarcating the portrait from the rest of the jar. Jars with Aragonese arms similarly demarcate the armorial from the decorative, such as examples in the Louvre, with the same dotted pattern to fill the blank space, a motif borrowed from Spanish wares (Figure 27). In the profile portrait of a male youth (possibly Federico d’Aragona) introduced at the start of this chapter (Figure 26), the ceramic painter added yellow to draw a greater contrast between the white flesh of the face and the background on the jar, yet the back of the youth – his hat and hairline – are dramatically accentuated through the framing device. These stark contour panels are often seen on jars from Faenza (c. 1480–1515) where prancing animals dance across the jar and yet are suspended in space by the white framing devices.207 Flowers too, a simplified version of palmettes found in Middle Eastern and Chinese blue and white ceramics, are often framed in blank white spaces, with the negative spaces being filled with blue curlicues, creating a surface of undulating decoration.

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These details are only observed though, when a viewer moves around the object (as one has to, today in a museum) or when the object was picked up and turned in the hand. When one did pick up these jars, abstract leaves (sometimes referred to in modern scholarship as ‘Gothic foliage’) or stylised peacock feathers are found on many of the versi of these Aragonese jars (Figure 27). In other cases, the reverses provided a self-reflection of the activities involved in using them, such as the mostardo pot with the instruments and ingredients on display to make spicy pickle (Figure 30). Like most albarelli, the central body of the pot was distinguished from the neck and foot by horizontal lines and decorative motifs. The albarello with Eleonora’s portrait for example, uses S motifs, which we also find on the frames on tiles (see Figure 42 and Plate XIII, next chapter), and which also vaguely resemble script. These horizontal bands are the only things that remain the same as the object is twirled in the hand, while the undulating lines of the decorative motifs change on the circular object, activated by movement. While the addition of illustrations such as portraits or narratives have been understood to ‘tame’ the haptic space on ceramics in general, on albarelli, they resist complete taming, as the glimpse of something illegible to the side asks the viewer to move the object to discover more, or to move their body around the albarello to see more (see the differences between Figures 26 and 27 for example).208 Photographs cannot replicate that experience, unless in multiple shots from different angles, underscoring the types of ephemeral surfacescapes that such objects engender when viewed in real time and space. Multiples of these objects together might encourage the viewer (or tempt them) to interact with the albarelli, taking each one off the shelf or to move around the space so as to see their numerous designs and ‘faces’ metaphorically and literally. These objects also interacted with other objects as they moved around a palace. For example, the numerous albarelli we see depicted in studies served both a functional purpose and an aesthetic one (Plates I and IX). These may have been compared to other ceramics in the space, while the portraits on some may have been compared to those found on medals or in manuscripts also housed in the same space.209 Taking such objects off shelves would have also emitted the scent of their contents, also giving rise to multisensorial experiences. In representations of interiors from the time, we often find a variety of albarelli and receptacles, suggesting that interior spaces were not all fitted with vessels with the same style or decorative motif. Take for example Filippino Lippi’s ‘still life’ at the back of an Annunciation now in the Museo Civico in San Gimignano dating from 1482. On the top shelf we see an albarello with a parchment seal, resembling ceramics made in Valencia, with ivy leaf patterns (Figure 38). Beside it, to the right, sits a flask often used for perfumed waters and a confectionary box with a fruit. Finally, on the left, a scroll of paper and a leather pen box sit, while dangling from the right is a string of rosary beads,

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probably in coral and marble, also indicating the variety of materials that interacted with one another. Below, on the left we find a green albarello vessel with pseudo-Arabic in gold with a parchment cover, and beside it a highly lustred double-handled Valencian vessel, while on the right a blue and manganese Valencian footed ewer with vine leaf pattern. The central vessel is similar in shape to the well-known wing-handled Medici jar sporting Medici heraldry now held in the British Museum.210 The dark background of the cupboard puts into relief the lustre and emphasises the play of light on surfaces. The literate contemporary viewer might have made out the parchment attached at the top of the cupboard, ‘Benedictis don[a]’, while the writing on the green albarello would have remained a mystery, pointing to the use of script as a form of esoteric knowledge. WO RDS ON THINGS/WORDS AS THINGS

Albarelli could be fitted with a parchment cover around the flanged rim, sometimes also used to write the expiry date or contents but also to seal it. Some inscriptions were fired onto pots or empty spaces were left for a piece of paper to be attached for expiry dates and/or contents.211 In the fourteenth century, regulations stipulated that the month and year should appear on pharmacy vessels so that buyers knew when they would expire.212 The addition of horizontal bands, even if not left blank, provided a spot for the apothecary to paste the parchment. This is also visible in images of apothecary shops, where some appear as loose pieces of parchment attached to the vessels.213 By the sixteenth century, the inscriptions found on apothecary jars were complex shortened forms of words for contents. For example, ROP or IROP was used to refer to syrops (from the Latin sirupus) and eventually single letters could stand in for whole words such as Zo for zucchero (or sugar simples).214 While some were clearly standard, many jars contain inscriptions that are unintelligible today (Figure 33). Others might not refer to contents at all but bear the signs of the hospital or apothecary they were made for. The ‘AENBEININRIA•’ on the Aragonese albarello is certainly not easy to decipher and the N is written backwards suggesting an unfamiliarity with lettering (Figure 26). A similar inscription appears on another Neapolitan albarello now in the Louvre, suggested to be of Ferdinando d’Aragona (Figure 27).215 Donatone has tentatively suggested this might be deciphered as ‘AragonENsis AbsEntium’ and may be referring to absinthe.216 As Alexandre-Bidon has shown, sometimes the letters could play on homonyms.217 The appearance of similar inscriptions on other Aragonese jars suggests that albarelli within the court context may have figured into erudite games of deciphering, comparable to the textual and visual puns found on medals.

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On a more general level, it is likely there was a deliberate attempt to keep some of these inscriptions mysterious and hard to read. The presence of illegible inscriptions could work to create the aura of specialised knowledge of the apothecary, either through content signs, still registered on some jars or in the form of pseudoscript (Figure 40) or abstracted Kufic (Figure 41), underlining the connections to Arabic knowledge and the origin of the spices from the ‘East’. The fascination with foreign scripts, as noted in Chapter 2, points to an interest in other cultures, and was also connected to the knowledge associated with Arabic learning, particularly in the realms of medicine.218 The procurement of spices was fabled to be dangerous, such as the recurring stories of pepper guarded by poisonous serpents and such representations appeared in manuscripts of the time. The allure thus lay in the complexity of acquisition and the specialised knowledge of their properties and efficacious use.219 The ordered and beautifully presented jars housing merchandise in apothecary shops could both complicate and clarify. Such carefully showcased drugs could emphasise highly specialised skills and knowledge but just as easily operate as a manufactured disguise of incompetency.220 Impressive packaging contributed to the value of raw goods but could equally disguise counterfeit medicines. Inscriptions on jars became the subject of scrutiny, as instruments of ‘frauds and tricks’ as Tomaso Garzoni remarked in 1585: ‘those jars and boxes with large capital letters, which tell of a thousand unguents or confections or precious aromatics – but they are empty inside, carrying these ridiculous inscriptions outside’.221 The knowledge of an apothecary also depended on their literacy, as Ulisse Aldrovandi remarked that the ‘majority of apothecaries who ought to be knowledgeable in this material, are, nonetheless, completely ignorant and often barely know how to read. From time to time, they mistake one simple for its opposite with poisonous qualities’. Proper experts, instead, ‘as a minimum . . . know Latin and make a knowledge of simples their professions rather than selling groceries such as wax, oil, soap and a thousand other impertinent things’.222 Writing became a decorative motif in its own right, as seen with the ‘s’ motifs on the horizontal bands of albarelli (Figure 39) or the tughra motifs on vessels that used the circular forms of Arabic signatures of sultans to become stand-alone decorations (Figure 9, Chapter 2). Depending on context, they could be meaningful in their own right, even if they did not actually convey language. This emphasis on knowledge – and conveying knowledge – became a key association with the symbol of the apothecary. SPEZIERI A/STUDIOLO: INTELLECTUAL MACHINES

In Hugh of Saint Victor’s ‘moral ark’, he uses the metaphor of the apothecary’s shop as a place that brings all knowledge together:

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fig 40 Drug jar (albarello) with pseudo-Kufic script, tin-glazed earthenware, Manises, Valencia, Spain, 1375–1400. © Victoria and Albert Museum, 488-1864.

This ark is like to an apothecary’s shop, filled with a variety of all delights. You will seek nothing in it which you will not find, and when you find one thing, you will see many more disclosed to you. . .. Here the narrative of historical events is woven together, here the mysteries of the sacraments are found, here are laid out the successive stages of responses, judgments, meditations, contemplations, of good works, virtues, and rewards. —Hugh of St. Victor, ‘De arca Noe morali’, 4.9.680B223

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fig 41 Drug jar (albarello) with Kufic pattern, tin-glazed earthenware, Montelupo, Italy, midfifteenth century. The Getty Museum, 84.DE.96. Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

As a repository for medicines, aromatics and receptacles from local and global contexts, sometimes located near to a studiolo in courtly spaces, the court pharmacy could be seen as a repository of knowledge. Court apothecaries could have associations with the practices of medicine itself, an intellectual pursuit that was on the rise, in particular in the area of medical humanism in cities like Ferrara from the end of the fifteenth century and into the middle of

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the sixteenth. Three successive professors of medicine in Ferrara, Nicolò Leoniceno, Giovanni Manardi and Antonio Musa Brasavola, are all hallmarks of medical humanism, but their interests were not restricted to the university.224 Leoniceno is probably most famous for his 1490 publication of On the Errors of Pliny and Other Doctors in Medicine, which among other things criticised Pliny for confusing some plant species.225 A close friend of Poliziano and Erasmus, and a court physician as well as Greek translator for the Este, Leoniceno’s ideas were certainly not confined just to his pupils. Indeed, Leoniceno’s 1497 publication on syphilis, De morbo gallico, was derived from discussions at court and another treatise on a poisonous snake was dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia, Alfonso d’Este’s wife and Duchess of Ferrara.226 Manardi and Brasavola also worked as court physicians, both appearing in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso 46:14, and Manardi served as royal doctor to the Hungarian court from 1513 to 1518 (a court that had familial ties to the Aragonese). A close relationship between Brasavola and the ducal family is evidenced by his treatment of Alfonso d’Este and Queen Isabella d’Aragona (who had fled to Ferrara from Naples) and his oversight of the health of the prized menagerie of Alfonso, from ponies to ostriches.227 The numerous entries for medicines for the care of Alfonso’s animals in the spezieria account books and the depictions of these animals in the camerino paintings, demonstrates a close connection between these rooms, the collecting activities and the larger interests of Alfonso that happened both indoors and out of doors, as explored in the previous chapter. In one of his texts, Brasavola recalls a boat trip on the Venetian lagoon with Ariosto, Alfonso d’Este and the Venetian patrician, Catarino Zeno, when they got caught in a storm.228 Such an outing would have provided a venue for possible discussions on remedies and health. Brasavola had after all reviewed all the remedies available in the pharmacies of Ferrara, emphasising a need for both doctors and pharmacists to be aware of the plants that they grew and those that they purchased.229 Disputes by these medical humanists now known through publications, would have had a more public dimension to them, staged as a spectacle, similar to the religious debates held at the court of Ferrara under Ercole d’Este and Eleonora d’Aragona.230 For example, as mentioned, the best way to treat the French Disease (syphilis) was publicly debated in the ducal palace. Such debates also took place at the court of Milan under Ludovico Sforza referred to as a duello scientifico.231 The mathematician, Luca Pacioli, was invited to Milan by Ludovico Sforza in 1496 to offer public lectures in the city. Mathematicians at this time could cover arithmetic and geometry as well as astrology and astronomy, which in turn were associated with the practice of medicine and natural philosophy. In Pacioli’s writings, he recalls the public disputes but also the various men at court who were present, including ‘eminent orators, expert in the noble arts of medicine and astrology’. These included Ambrogio Varesi

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da Rosate (‘famous scholar of Serapion and Avicenna, expert investigator of the celestial bodies and interpreter of future events’), Aloisio Marliani (‘learned man who can cure any ailment’), Gabriele Pirovano (‘keen observer of all matters related to medicine’) among others. One of the participants he signals out is Leonardo da Vinci, describing his skills as a sculptor and painter.232 The men mentioned here were well ensconced in the Sforza court. Varesi and Marliani, for example, were court physicians who treated Ludovico Sforza and Beatrice d’Este, but also conducted astrological predictions. Such public ‘academic’ debates were experienced as a form of court spectacle, which brought in a variety of individuals, including courtiers, intellectuals, physicians and artists/engineers. As we have seen in Leonardo’s adoption of gruppi or complex knot patterns in Chapter 2, the intellectual angle of such works were seen in parallel to other forms of mathematical knowledge. So too were the spices and aromatics and their vessels on display; not merely ‘decorative’, the technology that went into firing ceramics was a form of knowledge as was the efficacious use of the aromatics inside. However, there is another level of knowledge linked to the apothecary shelves and the forms of learning enacted within the spaces of the studiolo: the art of memory. The multiple shelves with multiple receptacles bearing specific colours or signs to denote contents indicate a certain ability of the pharmacist to remember what sign signified what medicine. Knowledge here is one accumulated over time but also memorised. Such images conjure up memory games as well as the art of memory, particularly for a culture that depended so much on visual memory and aides memoires.233 As mentioned, certain colours were connected to remedies for particular humoral conditions, and such associations would have also helped remember remedies, but they were also linked to the larger organisation of knowledge. The division of materials into the associative Galenic principles, such as water, fire, earth and air, was a way to organise knowledge and thus, remember it. So too would the use of certain materials of containers for varying forms of medicines: glass for odiferous waters, ceramics for unguents, sirops and oils etc.234 Arranging these on the shelves in a particular order would also help organise knowledge as well as trigger the mnemonics of what medicines would perform what cures. Studioli and the paintings destined for those spaces also acted as forms of organising knowledge and contents. Particularly in the case of Francesco de’ Medici’s stanzino in Florence, where the iconographic programme served to organise its contents and was linked to Pliny’s anecdotes.235 In letters written in 1570–1, from Vincenzio Borghini to Vasari, the link between inventory, object, knowledge and representation is clear:

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It should serve in part as a sign and sort of inventory for finding these things by making the figures and paintings that will be on top of and around the cupboards allude in a certain way to what is preserved inside.236

The stanzino thus links closely to the art of memory, which seeks to make meaning through embodying both unity and multiplicity, creating an order. Giovanbattista Strozzi in his Dell’unità della favola, a lecture delivered in Florence in 1599, notes how the multiplicity of actions in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso could be reduced to a ‘true unity’ by comparing it to a space of collection: The mind is pleased [by unity]; when the mind sees different and dissimilar things, it always seeks to find the similarity between them, and, if you will, it seeks to shape them with a form that it produces; in the same way, when in some study or chamber there are paintings, statues, minerals, petrified things, and other objects of this kind, if they are not organized among themselves, the mind organizes and arranges them on its own, and if they are organized, it is pleased by this, and however different they may be, the mind considers them as similar and assembled to make the unity that it desires, and it includes them under the category decoration and marvels.237

Strozzi underscores the need of collecting spaces to order the diversity of the world to make meaning, but while this suggests the work is done by the organising mechanism of the collection, it was much more complex than that. If we look to humanist pedagogy around memory training, we see a world where links between unrelated things were certainly essential but that such links could take multiple routes and involve multiple strands, and our interpretation of collecting spaces and even those rooms nearby, such as the court pharmacy, need to be seen within this broader and more entangled approach to knowledge. Hugh of Saint Victoire’s ‘ark’ for example, was an arca (a chest containing books and personal belongings) but also an arca sapientia, a coffer of wisdom, built into the memory. Within this ‘mental image’ of the arca, Hugh was able to embed other related properties and references: a storage chest, an apothecary’s shop, the Ark of the Convent, the Ark of Noah and a walled city, which also resonates with other sorts of frames or parerga.238 These connections were achieved through complex visual, textual, spiritual and mental plays. For example, the heart/boat/sanctuary theme plays on arca as mentioned but also naus/naos/nous. From this, navis also relates to navigation/boat as well as the nave of a cathedral, while naos is the central-most sanctuary of Greek temples and the ‘heart’ of the Temple of Solomon. Additionally, according to Plotinus, nous is the highest sphere accessible to the human mind, the objective of contemplation and meditation.239 The relationship between knowledge and

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the image of a building/temple/church was also linked to the topos of Deus artifex, that is God as architect and writer of the world.240 In the context here, it could be linked to God/Christ as apothecary – who heals our souls – but also God as creator of the earth, a master craftsperson forming things out of matter.241 These sorts of varied and complex connotations (visual, mental, textual, material) from one word or concept were central to the art of memory. We have already seen how contemporaries envisioned navigation in the form of a material object – the navicella or incense boat – and its metaphorical references to pilgrimage and the Christian soul. Memory training was deeply embedded in humanist pedagogy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, informed not only by classical texts but also medieval practices of meditation. The prevalence of the art of memory was wide ranging in its use from the education of children to courtly games.242 Kirkbride has convincingly argued the link between the art of memory and studioli programmes and interactions with architecture, as well as objects and images within the space, particularly for the Montefeltro studioli.243 It was the cultural practices around memory and education that would shape the activities taking place within these spaces and the pedagogical programmes they engendered. Significant for this study is the emphasis on turning knowledge into images and the encouragement of a sensorial relationship to things, in order to stimulate memory. The whole body experience of memory – visual and multisensorial stimulation – was central to numerous memory texts.244 This was linked to the concept of harmony, which in the fifteenth century was influenced by Arabic texts, particularly brought in by Greek scholars who fled Byzantium after Sultan Mehmed II conquered Istanbul.245 The micro- and macrocosm concept of harmony was wide ranging from architecture and oration to meditation and the humours. A sense of harmony, where it was not only the active and contemplative life but the balance of one’s health, could also be evoked by the pharmacy close to the studiolo, just as the chapel was often situated close to the studiolo for both spiritual and mental health. Jacobus Publicius (or Iacobo Publicio) who wrote a number of treatises on the art of memory published in the fifteenth century, used a double metaphor of the chess board, evoking the apothecary. The queen’s pawn represented physicians, spicers and apothecaries, who were understood to be responsible for the queen’s health and were said to know the harmony of the pulses like the harmony of music. Their base learning included the ‘proportions of letters of grammar’, as well as the arts of cosmology and cosmetics.246 To play at the game of chess and to protect the queen one needed apothecaries who knew the balances of the world. In relation to the body, humanist educators understood the physical conditions of scholars to have a direct effect on memory and the mind’s workings. Slouching at the school of Vittorino da Feltre, for example, was reprimanded

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while physical exercise was encouraged, including dancing.247 Certain foods and herbs, as mentioned, were seen to help or ail the scholarly mind. Memorisation was seen as a form of exercise for the brain, but those who were less witty or less able to memorise reflected a physical condition of ‘slower minds’. Ibn al-Jazzar (via Constantinus Africanus) noted that ‘with some people [pneuma] goes fast and because of that these people are sharpwitted and quick at repartee’. However, if the pneuma was too cold, Publicius informs us, it cannot cross over to the posterior ventricle, which renders the memory ‘dull and languid’.248 To remedy this, doctors and educators recommended a variety of activities as well as medicines, including washing feet, fumigating rooms with odiferous smells, applying ointments to the head and the digestion of specific pills. Publicius, for example, notes Constantinus Africanus recommended a sneezing powder made from the gall of a crane and elder oil as well as baths to help with memory. Ficino suggested incense, myrrh and gold leaf could be made into an elixir for the elderly to sharpen the mind and strengthen memory.249 Filippo Gesualdo, a Franciscan friar, writing a century later (1592) in Plutosofia noted these ‘medications . . . are usually dangerous, especially the ointments applied to the aft of the brain . . . in order to invigorate memory’. He explains these substances are too hot and dry, whereby the ‘heat ignites the spirit of the brain’ resulting in those who use such ‘ointments often to become agitated and go mad’.250 A rich repertoire of iconological associations also emerged, primarily in relation to the use of images to aid memory. As Giovanni Fontano wrote in his fifteenth-century treatise, ‘there is no art of science that is more similar to painting than artificial memory. Both need places and images’.251 Remembering divisions of time was a common feature in memory treatises, such as an image of grapes for the month of August, associating days of the week with corresponding metals or the months could be memorised through descriptions by the poets, such as Virgil and Ovid.252 Animals also had associated moral and psychological characteristics and Egyptian hieroglyphics were also adopted to link these associations. Turning letters into things to help with memory also led writers to link the art of memory with ciphers, a familiar art for ambassadors and courtly rulers who used ciphers to send coded diplomatic messages. In Giovan Battista Palatino’s sixteenth-century treatise, nel qual s’insegna à Scriuer ogni sorte lettera, we see squared ciphers along with a wide range of diverse lettering (including sonnets written in images).253 Some examples correspond to the type of squared letters appearing on apothecary jars, which could consolidate entire words into the space of one letter.254 For example, the mostardo apothecary jar combines T and A (Figure 30). As mentioned, these illegible scripts, from pseudo-Arabic to coded Roman lettering, gave a certain aura of knowledge to the apothecary’s art. The excitement at deciphering such writing – as might have happened in a courtly

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context on courtly albarelli – underscored what Bolzoni has called the ‘beauty’ of the ‘play between the visible and the legible’.255 For Giovan Battista delle Porta, the ability to read ciphers and decipher other complex scripts was part of a sapienza riposta or secret knowledge that was in itself part of a much larger ability to interpret ‘codes’ within social situations. This secret knowledge included mythology, hieroglyphics, ancient poetry and the works of alchemists. Hidden meanings and one’s ability to decipher them was a type of cultural performance in courtly spheres. For sixteenth-century scholars, ciphers were like divine secrets that were hidden behind a simple appearance and were likened to the image of Silenus, who invited the intellectual to move from the exterior to the interior, the paradox of the low and ugly. The cipher becomes a metaphor for the transformation of the self. The metamorphosis from human to divine, from exterior to interior knowledge, was also taken up as symbols in texts on metallurgy and alchemy.256 The figure of Silenus is interesting here as he features in Bellini’s Feast of the Gods, demonstrating how easily a programme like the Bacchanals could serve as knowledge machines, creating numerous links to mythology (both visual and textual repertoires) and the calendrical cycle, in addition to the other objects, images, materials and sensory stimuli that filled the spaces of the camerini. As argued in the previous chapter, metamorphosis was a key theme working across mythological subject matter in the paintings on display and the technologies apparent in the objects of display. Stimulating intertextual connections were popular games for the elite, formulised into books called libri de la sorte or libri de la ventura/fortuna. Such games were played during feasts as a form of dining entertainment, sometimes in conjunction with words or images on ceramics.257 These games were common to play during Epiphany, when a line of poetry or a book was opened at random and the passage assigned to a participant who is arbitrarily chosen. This was played in Ferrara, where on one occasion Isabella d’Este drew a verse from Petrarch (Fior di virtù, fontana di beltade/Flower of virtue, fountain of beauty), a fortunate lot both for Isabella and the courtier who would have had to interpret and gloss the match.258 In a similar vein, wheels of rhetoric were devised in order to assist composing, a device Giulio Camillo admits to using when trying to find the materia or subject matter for a sonnet to celebrate Ercole II d’Este’s bestowal of the dukedom of Ferrara.259 Based on a play of continuity and difference, expectations and surprises, memory games might use puns or onomatopoeia to arrive at an unexpected result.260 In the textual versions of these games, readers would often have to know not only the classics but also the cultural codes where words and images interact. The knowledge required of mythography and iconography in these games thus paralleled the same types of knowledge viewers were expected to possess when viewing

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camerini and studioli. Imagination, according to Avicenna functioned through similarity, opposition or contiguity.261 The idea of surprises and unexpected connections were thus eagerly sought by owners of these spaces as they attempted to collect rare and interesting objects that might complement or add a new dimension to the ensemble. CONCLUSION

The practical applications of the art of memory were key to the success of a prince and a courtier alike: the ability to remember messages and speeches and decipher code in addition to the courtly expectations of quoting a classical author or referencing a famous painting or image.262 The employment of the metaphor of the pharmacy in the art of memory texts as well as in other cultural references as a place of knowledge had close ties to the concept of the studiolo and the later spaces of collecting such as Alfonso d’Este’s camerini. These spaces with their concatenation of images, sounds, sights, colours and smells had ties to forms of knowledge and their organisation, but like the art of memory, meaning was made through the different routes one took, which would never be the same every time. In the art of memory, such multisensorial experiences, often activated by visual stimulation, were thought to provoke perambulations in the mind and were likened to a pilgrimage.263 Comparable to the ekphrastic tours described in Chapter 1, the close proximity of the studiolo to the spezieria might have served as a stimulus for the mind and encouraged both a mental and physical pilgrimage. For the prince, the spezieria and the studiolo brought together all strands of knowledge. Like the model of God/Christ as apothecary, architect and maker, the prince could control art and nature, mind and body, and spiritual and physical well-being. Knowledge was thus like Russian nesting dolls, with the spezieria offering a perfect metaphor: a medicinal substance within an albarello, which is painted with cryptic writing on a shelf inside a cabinet in a room within a palace. These multiple framing devices worked to both organise as well as delight, while also providing sites to create new knowledge. The objects studied in this chapter, while receptacles for aromatics, were not merely receptacles of meaning, but instead were agents, activating the senses and the daily rituals of life at court, many of which became the starting point for social exchanges, from the incense burned at communal devotion before a religious painting, to the washing of one’s hands before a meal. They could also take on the symbolism of knowledge – both metaphorical and literal. As carefully packaged items with coded text, they represented the knowledge of medicine and healing: within the art of memory the apothecary came to represent all strands of knowledge, a place or repository to store knowledge.

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The pharmacy also came to symbolise a place of news but also the fear of assimilation of the Other. Thus, the adoption of new practices had to be carefully played out, adapted to suit the needs and expectations of courtly life within the Italian courts. Yet the objects used with aromatics could be sources of mediation themselves. Such as the incense burner, operating as a mediator, it could cross boundaries that were cultural, religious, geographic and spatial, but through that passage it might morph into a new composite, its function and symbolism changing in its new surroundings and in turn changing its surroundings. NOTES 1

Guido Donatone, Maioliche napoletane della spezieria aragonese di Castelnuovo (Naples: L. Regina, 1970); Guido Donatone, ‘La maiolica napoletana dalle origini al secolo xv’, in Storia di Napoli. Napoli Aragonese Vol. IV tomo I, eds. Atanasio Mozzilo and Giuseppe Galasso (Torino e Firenze: Arti Grafiche, 1974), 577–612; Guido Donatone, La maiolica napoletana del rinascimento (Napoli: Gemini Arte, 1993). 2 Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 3 James E. Shaw and Evelyn S. Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011); Filippo de Vivo, ‘Pharmacies as Centres of Communication in Early Modern Venice’, Renaissance Studies 21, no. 4 (2007): 505–21; Sharon T. Strocchia, ‘The Nun Apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: Marketing Medicines in the Convent’, Renaissance Studies 25 (2011): 627–47; Patrick Wallis, ‘Consumption, Retailing, and Medicine in Early-Modern London’, The Economic History Review 61, no. 1 (2008): 26–53; Sandra Cavallo and David Gentilcore, eds., Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). 4 Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Space and Spectacle in the Renaissance Pharmacy’, Medicina e Storia 15 (2008): 127–58; de Vivo, ‘Pharmacies and Communication’, 505–21. 5 Jürgen Habermas, ‘The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1992). For early modern publics see Bronwen Wilson and Paul Yachnin, eds., Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge (New York: Routledge, 2009); Angela Vanhaelen and Joseph Ward, eds., Making Space Public in Early Modern Europe: Geography, Performance, Privacy (New York: Routledge, 2013). 6 de Vivo, ‘Pharmacies and Communication’, 511. 7 Quoted in Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing, 38. 8 Danièle Alexandre-Bidon, Dans l’atelier de l’apothicaire: histoire et archéologie des pots de pharmacie: XIIIe–XVIe siècle (Paris: ePicard, 2013), 89. 9 Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, ms. 2197, 492. Michelle A. Laughran, ‘Medicating With or Without “Scruples”: The “Professionalization” of the Apothecary in SixteenthCentury Venice’, Pharmacy in History 45, no. 3 (2003): 95–107. 10 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 98. 11 Welch, ‘Space and Spectacle’; Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1978); Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing. 12 Quoted and translated in Welch, ‘Space and Spectacle’, 137.

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13 Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994); Paula Findlen, ‘Inventing Nature: Commodities, Art, and Science in the Early Modern Cabinets of Curiosities’, in Merchants and Marvels. Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe, eds. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 297–323; Paula Findlen, ‘Why Put a Museum in a Book? Ferrante Imperato and the Image of Natural History in Sixteenth-Century Naples’, Journal of the History of Collections 33, no. 3 (2021): 419–33. 14 Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing, 22. 15 Andrea Russo, L’arte degli speziali in Napoli (Naples: A.E. Vitolo, 1966), 18–19. 16 ‘bossolecte de osso pintate, carrafelle, albarelli, saponi, olii de più sorte, pinecti, rose secche, cassette lavorate d’oro, argento e colori fini, cassette alla moresca’. Donatone, Maioliche della spezieria, 9–10, fn.4. 17 Ibid., 10. 18 Enza Russo, ‘La corte del re di Napoli Ferrante I d’Aragona (1458–1494): tradizione e innovazioni’, e-Spania 20 (2015): 3–4. 19 Pharmacists listed under King Ferrante include Daniele Uvis, Pietro Cortese and Masello di Giffoni, Russo, L’arte degli speziali in Napoli 19; Donatone, Maioliche della spezieria, 35. For the history of pharmacies in Naples see Luca Chichierchia and Simona Papa, Storia della farmacia a Napoli: dalla ‘Spetiaria’ conventuale alle botteghe dell’Ottocento (Naples: Electa Napoli, 1998). 20 ASMi SPE 214, 19 April 1465, letter from Antonio de Trucio to the Duke of Milan: ‘adel dono ch/ vele fare la Mta del S. Re ali ambascatori fiorentin Primolibre cento de cera Libre cento de confecti Para cento de Galine Tumuli cento de orezo Botte quatro de vino & Specie et altre cose’. 21 Franco Strazzzullo, ‘Lavori eseguiti in Castelcapuano nell’anno 1488 per conto del Duca di Calabria’, Napoli Nobilissima 14, no. 4 (1975): 143–50. 22 Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate. Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World (London and New York: I.B. Taurus, 2014), 137. 23 Peter Thornton, The Italian Renaissance Interior. 1400–1600 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1991), 251. 24 Guido Guerzoni and Guido Alfani, ‘Court History and Career Analysis: A Prosopographic Approach to the Court of Renaissance Ferrara’, The Court Historian 12, no. 1 (2007): 18, 22–3. There may have been some social mobility in this career. Guerzoni notes a Leonardo Coiana who was known as Il Greco who worked for Cardinal Luigi d’Este in 1576 as an assistant to the Cardinal’s apothecary but who rose to speziale and then eventually valet to Alfonso II. 25 ‘asse 6 mezana portati in l Torre di S. Michele per fare una speciaria de Madama’, ASMo M&F 19.121. Thomas Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara: Ercole d’Este, 1471–1505, and the Invention of a Ducal Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 98. 26 Strocchia, ‘Nun Apothecaries’; Montserrat Cabré, ‘Women or Healers? Household Practices and the Categories of Health Care in Late Medieval Iberia’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 1 (2008): 18–51; Elaine Leong, ‘Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82, no. 1 (2008): 145–68; Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 45. 27 Patrizia Cremonini, ‘Il rabarbaro di Lucrezia Borgia e la lettera di fra’ Nicolò da Tossignano, custode di Terra Santa. Questioni d’Oriente, spezie, medici e commerci’, Quaderni Estensi II (2010), www.archivi.beniculturali.it/ASMO/QE,2,2010.

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28

29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38

39

40 41 42

43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Diana Maury Robin and Lynn Lara Westwater, eds., Duchess and Hostage in Renaissance Naples: Letters and Orations (Toronto and Tempe: Iter Press and Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017), 82–3, Letter 24. ASMo SPEZ 1 2R. From the years 1513–39 four men are recorded as overlapping in their duties as speziali for parts of this time, and all shared the same last name: Giacomo, Gerolamo, Alberto and Francesco Da Signa. Guerzoni and Alfani, ‘Court History and Career Analysis’, 28. Seven vases are described as vaxi daxedo de vedro longi, which suggests some silver decoration. ASMo SPEZ 2 2V. ASMo AP 636. ASMo SPEZ 2 2V–3R. ASMo SPEZ 2 3R. ASMo SPEZ 2 3R. ASMo SPEZ 2 3V. Strocchia, ‘Nun Apothecaries’, 637; Welch, ‘Space and Spectacle’, 136. Quoted in Gülru Necipo˘glu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York and Cambridge: Architectural History Foundation and MIT Press, 1991), 72. Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano, Candied fruit on bench, north wall, intarsia (wood), Federigo da Montefeltro’s studiolo, Urbino, see Robert Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory. The Renaissance Studioli of Federico de Montefeltro (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), chapter 2, figure 2.13. www.gutenberg-e.org/kirkbride/detail/us_candied_fruit .html At the right of Adam and Eve, we see a mortar with pestles stored below, and behind it albarelli bear pieces of parchment signalling their contents, such as cloue (cloves). On the left counter near Christ, boxes display loose contents, while a bundle of candles sit to the far left. Chants royaux sur la conception couronnès au puy de Rouen, France, 1519–1528, Paris, BnF, ms. Français 1537, f. 82v, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8539706t/f170.item Platearius, Livre des simples médecines, France, early fifteenth century, Paris, BnF, ms. Français 623, f 23r, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6000422n/f53.item ‘è certo una bella spetiaria’. Quoted in Cremonini, ‘rabarbaro di Lucrezia Borgia’. 297. Dana Goodgal, ‘The Camerino of Alfonso I d’Este’, Art History 1, no. 2 (1978): 167. For transcriptions of the documents see Adolfo Venturi, Storia dell’arte Italiana, vol. IX.3 (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1928), 103–10; C. Drury and E. Fortnum, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Maiolica, Hispano-Moresco, Persian, Damascus and Rhodian Wares, in the South Kensington Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1873), 573. Venturi, Storia dell’arte Italiana, IX.3, 53. Chiara Guarnieri, ed., Ferrara al tempo di Ercole I d’Este: scavi archeologici, restauri e riqualificazione urbana nel centro storico della città (Florence: All’insegna del Giglio, 2018). Lidia Righi Guerzoni, ‘“Vostra Altezza vedrá cose assai belle”. Collezionismo ceramico estense tra Ferrara e Modena’, in Le ceramiche dei Duchi d’Este. Dalla Guardaroba al collezionismo, ed. Filippo Trevisani (Milan: Federico Motta Editore, 2000), 74. Bib Arist Giuseppe Antonelli, 963, VI. ASMo AP 770. ASMo SPEZ 1 16V, 46V. ASMo SPEZ 1 46V. There are a number of entries for Isabella d’Este, see, ASMo SPEZ 3, 14R, 19R, 20R. ASMo SPEZ 1 17R–18V. ASMo AMB VEN 10 55.II. A similar list of apothecary specialities such as confectionaries and wax were given by the Serenissima to Isabella d’Este, which she sent on to her husband, see Evelyn S. Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400–1600 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 260.

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53 54 55

56 57

58 59 60 61 62

63 64

65 66 67 68 69

70 71

72

73

74 75

Although the first spezieria account book to survive (or to be written) dates from 1517, on 49V a list of totals for a series of years begins at 1515. ASMo SPEZ 1. ASMo SPEZ 2 81V, 164R. Stephen Campbell, The Cabinet of Eros. Renaissance Mythological Painting and the Studiolo of Isabella d’Este (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 282, 287. Currency exchange varied and fluctuated, but around this time, 3 Lire marchesani equalled about 1 ducati. See Diane Yvonne Ghirardo, ‘Lucrezia Borgia as Entrepreneur’, Renaissance Quarterly 61, no. 1 (2008): fn. 93. Alessandro Ballarin, Il camerino delle pitture di Alfonso I, vol. I (Padua: Bertoncello, 2002), 22. Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing, 35–8; Anya King, ‘Medieval Islamicate Aromatherapy: Medical Perspectives on Aromatics and Perfumes’, The Senses and Society 17, no. 1 (2022): 37–51. For an overview of health and the medieval body, see Jack Hartnell, Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages (London: Profile Books and the Wellcome Collection, 2019). Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing, 237. Ibid., 248. Ibid., 249. Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 275. Documents can be found in ASMo CG 17.91 and MEM 25. I36. Jane Bridgeman and Alan Griffiths, A Renaissance Wedding: The Celebrations at Pesaro for the Marriage of Costanzo Sforza and Camilla Marzano d’Aragona 26–30 May 1475 (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2013), 90–2, see also descriptions on 115. Ibid., 96, 120. ASMo M&F 15. Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche., vol. II.I (Ferrara: Corbo Editore e Gabriele Corbo Editore, 1995), 270, Doc 368c. Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 273–4; Roy C. Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating (London: Jonathan Cape, 2002), 133–4. Shaw and Welch, Making and Marketing, 252. Dora Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 27–8. Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 105. Ibid., 84. Hemingway, an apothecary to Queen Elizabeth I undertook the preparation of the ‘bane’ or bath, which included ‘bagges with herbis, sponges, muske, cyvet’. Leslie G. Matthews, The Royal Apothecaries, vol. XIII (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1967), 73. Leah R. Clark, ‘Artifacts’, in A Cultural History of Color in the Renaissance, eds. Sven Dupré and Amy Buono (Bloomsbury, 2021), 187–203. Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York: Dover Publications, 1922); John M. Riddle, ed. Marbode of Rennes’ (1035–1123) De Lapidibus (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1977); James A. Weisheipl, ed., Albertus Magnus and the Sciences. Commemorative Essays, 1980 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980). Blake De Maria, ‘Multifaceted Endeavors: Jewelry and Gemstones in Renaissance Venice’, in Reflections on Renaissance Venice: A Celebration of Patricia Fortini Brown, eds. Blake De Maria and Mary E. Frank (Milan and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2013), 121. Brigitte Buettner, ‘Precious Stones, Mineral Beings: Performative Materiality in FifteenthCentury Northern Art’, in The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250–1750, eds. Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop and Pamela H. Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 215. Evans, Magical Jewels. De Maria, ‘Multifaceted Endeavors’, 124.

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76 77

78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95

96 97 98 99 100

Patricia Aakhus, ‘Astral Magic in the Renaissance: Gems, Poetry, and Patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici’, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 3, no. 2 (2008): 187. Marsilio Ficino, Three Books on Life. A Critical Edition and Translation with Introduction and Notes, eds. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1989), 120. Ibid., 249. Aakhus, ‘Astral Magic’, 191. De Maria, ‘Multifaceted Endeavors’, 129. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London: Pimlico, 1992), 122. Nina Ergin, ‘The Fragrance of the Divine: Ottoman Incense Burners and Their Context’, The Art Bulletin 96, no. 1 (2014): 70–97; Tera Lee Hedrick and Ergin Nina, ‘A Shared Culture of Heavenly Fragrance: A Comparison of Late Byzantine and Ottoman Incense Burners and Censing Practices in Religious Contexts’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 69 (2015): 331–54; Timothy Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents: Health Affordances of Sacred Materiality’, in Medical Materialities: Toward a Material Culture of Medical Anthropology, eds. Aaron Parkhurst and Timothy Caroll (London: Routledge, 2019); Béatrice Caseau, ‘The Senses in Religion: Liturgy, Devotion, and Deprivation’, in A Cultural History of the Senses in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard Newhauser (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 89–110; King, ‘Medieval Islamicate Aromatherapy’. Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 71; Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents’, 184–5. Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 71. Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’. Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents’, 184. Jeffrey L. Collins and Meredith Martin, ‘Early Modern Incense Boats: Commerce, Christianity, and Cultural Exchange’, in The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, eds. Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Boston: Brill, 2017), 513–18; Martina Bagnoli, A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2016), 23–6. Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents’, 186. Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’, 333. B. Neunheuser and P. de Navascués, ‘Anointing’, in Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity, ed. Angelo di Berardino (2014). Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents’, 184. Avinoam Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996), 19–21. In the Islamic context in Istanbul, this was only performed by the buhurcu, professional censers, Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’, 346, fn52. Alexandra van Dongen, ‘Jan van Eyck’s Syrian Apothecary Jar. The Earliest Known Depiction of Middle Eastern Ceramics in Medieval European Art’, in Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries 1000–1700, eds. Leah R. Clark and Katherine Anne Wilson (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022), chapter 6. For an overview of smells and saints see Hartnell, Medieval Bodies, 60–5. For the Muslim context see King, ‘Medieval Islamicate Aromatherapy’; Beyza Uzun and Nina Macaraig, ‘Scenting the Imperial Residence: Objects from the Topkapı Palace Museum Collections’, The Senses and Society 17, no. 1 (2022): 75–6. Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’, 333; Hartnell, Medieval Bodies, 63. Quoted in Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents’, 180. Stephen Campbell, Cosmè Tura of Ferrara: Style, Politics and the Renaissance City, 1450–1495 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 77. Ficino, Three Books, 229–30 (Book 2, ch. xix). Stefan Halikowski Smith, ‘The Mystification of Spices in the Western Tradition’, European Review of History/Revue européenne d’Histoire 8, no. 2 (2001): 119–36.

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101 Carole Rawcliffe, ‘‘‘Delectable Sightes and Fragrant Smelles”: Gardens and Health in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’, Garden History 36, no. 1 (2008): 3–21. 102 Tuohy, Herculean Ferrara, 104–15, 98–114; Marco Folin, ‘La corte della duchessa: Eleonora d’Aragona a Ferrara’, in Donne di potere nel Rinascimento, eds. Letizia Arcangeli and Susanna Peyronel (Rome: Viella, 2008), 481–512. There is some confusion in the literature between the garden of the Corte (Ercole’s) and the garden of the Castello (Eleonora’s). For clarification, see Thomas Tuohy, ‘Rescuing Ferrara. Ercole de’ Roberti and Art Historians’, Apollo 137 (1993): 199–200. 103 Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Art and Life at the Court of Ercole I d’Este: The ‘De triumphus religionis’ of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, ed. Werner L. Gundersheimer (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1972), 55. See also Rupert Shepherd, ‘Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Ercole I d’Este and the Decoration of the Italian Renaissance Court’, Renaissance Studies 9, no. 1 (1995): 18–57. 104 Joachim Meyer, Sensual Delights: Incense Burners and Rosewater Sprinklers from the World of Islam, trans. Martha Gaber Abrahamsen (Copenhagen: The David Collection, 2015), 6. 105 Sandra Cavallo, ‘Health, Air and Material Culture in the Early Modern Italian Domestic Environment’, Social History of Medicine 29, no. 4 (2016): 710. 106 Ibid., 711. See also King, ‘Medieval Islamicate Aromatherapy’. 107 Caroll, ‘Of Smoke and Unguents’, 179–80. 108 Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), ß254. 109 Uzun and Macaraig, ‘Scenting the Imperial Residence’, 69. 110 Clifford M. Brown, Isabella d’Este and Lorenzo da Pavia: Documents for the History of Art and Culture in Renaissance Mantua (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1982), 247–50. 111 ASMo SPEZ 1 16V. 112 Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’, 345, fn 43. 113 Alessandro Luzio, Isabella d’Este e il sacco di Roma (Milan: Cogliati, 1908), 416–21. See also Geraldine A. Johnson, ‘In the Hand of the Beholder: Isabella d’Este and the Sensual Allure of Sculpture’, in Sense and the Senses in Early Modern Art and Cultural Practice, eds. Alice Sanger and Siv Tove Kulbrandstad Walker (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 189. 114 There are a number of entries for Isabella d’Este, see, ASMo SPEZ 3, 14R, 19R, 20R. 115 Bridgeman and Griffiths, Renaissance Wedding, 96. For banquets see François Quiviger, The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art (London: Reaktion, 2010), 153–63. 116 Quoted and translated in Robin and Westwater, Duchess and Hostage, 154–5, Letter 92. The letter suggests that these were to aid Lorenzo in a love affair, but it is unclear whether they were simply to make him smell nice or used as aphrodisiacs. 117 Christoforo di Messisbugo, Banchetti compositioni di vivande, et apparecchio generale, etc BL: 1037.c.7, Giovanni Alberti: Venice, 1585, 3R, 6R, 7V, 10R, for the spezieria see 7R–7V. The British Library 1585 copy contains a recipe at the back. 118 ASMo SPEZ 1 46V. 119 ‘balla de argento dorado alla venetiana con pasta di muschio dentro’ quoted in Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 251. 120 Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 74; Meyer, Sensual Delights, 8–10. 121 Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 74. 122 Uzun and Macaraig, ‘Scenting the Imperial Residence’, 68–89. 123 King, ‘Medieval Islamicate Aromatherapy’, 45–6. 124 Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 87. 125 Nancy Um, ‘Aromatics, Stimulants, and Their Vessels: The Material Culture and Rites of Merchant Interaction in Eighteenth-Century Mocha’, in The Mercantile Effect: On Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World during the 17th and 18th Centuries, eds. Sussan Babaie and Melanie Gibson (London: Gingko Library, 2017), 63–73. 126 Um, ‘Aromatics’, 72.

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127 Deborah Howard, Venice and the East. The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100–1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 34–5. 128 Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 146–7. For pharmacies and medicinal practices more broadly in Mamluk Egypt see Leigh Chipman, The World of Pharmacy and Pharmacists in Mamlu¯ k Cairo (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010). 129 Shalem, Islam Christianized, 22–3. 130 Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’, 345–6. 131 BNF, Manuscrits occidentaux, Français 12322, fol. 191R-V: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/ 12148/btv1b90610505/f181.item and https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90610505/ f182.item 132 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 297–300. 133 Irma Schiappoli, Napoli Aragonese: traffici e attivita marinare (Naples: Giannini Editore, 1972), 65; Eliyahu Ashtor, Levant Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 134 Ibid., 503. 135 Schiappoli, Napoli Aragonese, Part II; Ashtor, Levant Trade, 501–3. 136 Francesco Forcellini, ‘Strane peripezie d’un bastardo di Casa d’Aragona’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane XXXIX (1914): 180–1, 270, 459–61; Holly S. Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice: Caterina Corner, Queen of Cyprus and Woman of the Renaissance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 62; Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 180; Alfred de Reumont, ‘Ricordi di Philippe Gérard de Vigneulles, intorno al soggiorno da lui fatto nel regno di Napoli al tempo di Ferrante I d’Aragona’, Archivio storico italiano 9 (1853): 10; Notar Giacomo, Cronica di Napoli, ed. Paolo Garzilli (Naples: Stamperia Reale, 1845), 165. For further discussion see above, Chapter 1. 137 Marco Spallanzani, Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence (Florence: S.P.E.S, 2007), 107–8, Doc 83. 138 ASNa, Archivio Caracciolo di Villa, 125, II.45. 139 Deborah Howard, ‘Death in Damascus: Venetians in Syria in the Mid-fifteenth Century’, Muqarnas 20, no. 1 (2003): 143–57. 140 Harold J. Cook and Timothy D. Walker, ‘Circulation of Medicine in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, Social History of Medicine 26, no. 3 (2013): 337–51. 141 Laurie Fusco and Gino Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 78, 302, doc 87; Behrens-Abouseif, Practising Diplomacy, 113, 203, fn 77. 142 Letter from Corfu, 29 December 1489, transcribed in Patrizia Meli, ‘Il mondo musulmano e gli ebrei nelle corrispondenze fiorentine da Napoli’, in Poteri, relazioni, guerra nel regno di Ferrante D’Aragona. Studi sulle corrispondenze diplomatiche, eds. Francesco Senatore and Francesco Storti (Naples: Clio Press, Univeristà degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 2011), 268. 143 Sylvia Auld, Renaissance Venice, Islam and Mahmud the Kurd: A Metalworking Enigma (London: Altajir World Of Islam Trust, 2004), 49. 144 Russo, L’arte degli speziali in Napoli, 19. 145 ASMo AP638. For a discussion of these books, see Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), Introduction. 146 ‘bevande preservatrici del contagion a base di rose, cicorie, sedani e fiori di cedrangoli’. Quoted in Russo, L’arte degli speziali in Napoli, 19. See also Donatone, Maioliche della spezieria, 35–6. 147 Hedrick and Ergin, ‘Shared Culture of Fragrance’; Meyer, Sensual Delights. 148 ASMo G 114 105V-R; AP 638 18R. 149 BL Add Ms 28962 f 383v. 150 Hurlburt, Daughter of Venice, 94–6. 151 Anna Contadini, ‘Middle-Eastern Objects’, in At Home in Renaissance Italy, eds. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006), 308–9.

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152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162

163 164

165 166

167 168 169 170

171

172 173

174 175 176 177 178 179

180

Quoted in Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 111. Quoted and translated in Fusco and Corti, Lorenzo de’ Medici, 82, Doc.145. Ibid., 382, Doc. 292. Hans Holbein the Younger, The Merchant Georg Gisze, 1532, Gemäldegalerie, National Museums, Berlin. Bagnoli, Feast for the Senses, 20. Musée du Cluny, Cl.17703, Bagnoli, Feast for the Senses, 20. Quoted in ibid., 35. Quoted in Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 111. For the connotations of certain aromatics with magnificence and princely virtue see King, ‘Medieval Islamicate Aromatherapy’, 45–6. Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 112. Catalogue of the Settalla collections, drawing, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Gamma H.1.21 (Campori 338), 46R. For the use of gemina to refer to damascene patterns see the discussion in Chapter 2. Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza. Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 144. George Sarton, A History of Science: Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press and Oxford University Press, 1965); Auld, Mahmud the Kurd, 109. Quoted and translated in ibid., 109. Leonardo da Vinci’s codex Madrid I, f. 13v; Villard de Honnecourt, drawing of a gimbal mechanism, Paris, BNF, MS fr. 19093, 9r, https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10509412z/ f19.item Jessica Keating, ‘Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court’, Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 732–47. Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 87. ASMi SPE 241. 39, letter of 17 April 1483. See for example an ewer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art dating from the sixteenth century, gift of Ruth Blumka, 1975.4, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/452729 and a Mamluk salver in the Victoria and Albert Museum dating from the fourteenth century, 7801-1862, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O65753/dish-unknown/ ‘ad essa S.re Contessa uno bacile, uno bocale e tre tasse d’argento et uno saleretta d’argento, et uno diamantj zaffiro et uno anello con uno smiraldo quale dono’ essa sig.re contessa ad esso sig. re Testatore, et tuttel altre anelle et ornamenti de sua p/sona, tanto de ora, come de argento [. . .] uno incentiero de argento con una navetta’. ASNa, Archivio Caraccioli di Brienza 4, 11R, 7V. ASMo G 99 37R. For Eleonora d’Aragona’s collections see ASMo AP 638 7v–13r. For example, Cosimo Roselli’s Last Supper from 1481 to 1482 in the Sistine Chapel or a much earlier representation of a specific Mamluk vessel in Giovanni da Milano’s, Story of Mary Magdalene from c. 1365 in Florence, Santa Croce, Rinuccini Chapel. Marco Spallanzani, Metalli islamici a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: SPES, 2010), 53–6. Camillo Minieri Riccio, ‘Alcuni fatti di Alfonso I di Aragona dal 15 aprile 1437 al 31 maggio 1458’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane VI (1881), 237. Spallanzani, Metalli islamici, 54. For more representations in paintings see Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 242–5. Contadini, ‘Middle-Eastern Objects’, 310–11. Also quoted in Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 244. Translated in Meg Licht, ‘Elysium: A Prelude to Renaissance Theater’, Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 1 (1996): 25–6. Thornton, Italian Renaissance Interior, 244. Paula Hohti, ‘Domestic Space and Identity: Artisans, Shopkeepers and Traders in Sixteenth-Century Siena’, Urban History 37, no. 3 (2010): 383, fn 40. Strong, Feast: A History of Grand Eating, 129–35. Marcantonio Michiel, ‘Notes of a Connoisseur’, in Italian Art, 1500–1600: Sources and Documents, eds. Robert Klein and Henry Zerner (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall,

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181 182

183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192

193 194 195 196

197 198

199 200

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1966), 33–5. Barber’s basins also came to be crafted in blue and white ceramics with a special semi-circular gap on the lip to facilitate bloodletting or accommodate the neck in shaving. See for example a later Delft basin in the V&A, C.7-1944, https://collections.vam. ac.uk/item/O163107/shaving-basin-unknown/ Contadini, ‘Middle-Eastern Objects’, 313–14; Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, 144–5. Contadini, ‘Middle-Eastern Objects’, 315. Another good example of a bucket and salver used in the home can be found in Joos van Cleve’s Saint Jerome, from 1521, Harvard Art Museum/Fogg, https://hvrd.art/o/228385 ASMo AP 638 16R–16V. ‘Uno sechielo da ottone cum dui pipij per dare laqua ale mano’, ASMo G 114 127V. ASMo G 114 149R–151V. ASMo AP 638 7V, 97V. Um, ‘Aromatics’, 63, Figure 2. For a porcelain example from the eighteenth century, V&A,390–1884, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O33662/bottle-unknown/ See for example the glass vessel dating from the first half of the sixteenth century in the V&A, 1851–1855, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O458/flask/ ASMo G114 105R, 107R, 149R. Johnson, ‘Hand of the Beholder’, 189. Matteo di Giovanni, Saint Jerome in His Study, 1482, Harvard Art Museums, 1966.3, https://hvrd.art/o/228297 Luke Syson, ‘Italian Maiolica Painting: Composing for Context’ in Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Timothy Wilson (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 15. An early example by Cennino Cennini shows an assembly of these objects used together. Inserted into the wall at the foot of the bed is a sink with bacile and bronzino and water bucket, and above, glass and ceramic flasks, jugs and bowls: Cennino Cennini, Birth of the Virgin, 1390–1400, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena. Quoted in Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali, 29. Necipo˘glu, Topkapi Palace, 72. Quoted in Ergin, ‘Fragrance of the Divine’, 87. William Atwell, ‘Ming China and the Emerging World Economy, c. 1470–1650’, in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8: The Ming Dynasty, eds. Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 395. Anthony Ray, ‘The Rothschild “Alfabeguer” and Other Fifteenth-Century Spanish Lustred “Basil-Pots”’, The Burlington Magazine 142, no. 1167 (2000): 371. David Harris Cohen and Catherine Hess, Looking at European Ceramics. A Guide to Technical Terms (Malibu and London: J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the British Museum Press, 1993), 27. Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 49. Ibid., 52–3. A unique blue and white albarello is held by Mary Magdalene in an illumination by Jean Boudichon of a Lamentation, from the Hours of Louis XII, 1498, now in a private collection in France. For a reproduction see Nick Herman, ‘A Masterpiece Rediscovered: Jean Boudichon’s Lamentation from the Hours of Louis XII’, Conalghi Studies Journal 8 (2021): Figure 1. Luciana Arbace, ed., Valenza-Napoli Rotte mediterranee della ceramica/València-Nàpols, les rutes mediterrànies de la ceràmica (Valencia and Naples: Generalitat Valenciana and Commune di Napoli, 1997); Donatone, Maioliche della spezieria; Donatone, ‘Maiolica’; Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento; Luciana Arbace, ‘Albarelli rinascimenti della collezione De Ciccio: Napoli, dalle raccolte di ceramiche del Museo di Capodimonte’, CeramicAntica 1, no. 8 (1991): 48–59. The miniature is from the frontispiece of a work by Antonio Cornazzano (Del modo di regere e di regnare) now in the Morgan Library, New York, MS M.731: www.themorgan. org/manuscript/145173

FROM THE SILK ROADS TO THE COURT APOTHECARY

203 Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 32–44. 204 Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 14. 205 A Sicilian provenance (from an unidentified convent) for many of the Aragonese albarelli in the Louvre has led Donatone to suggest that they may have been brought by Alfonso II to Sicily when he abdicated in 1495, but they might just as easily been used in Sicily by individuals associated with the Neapolitan Aragonese court. Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 35. 206 Julia I. Miller, ‘Miraculous Childbirth and the Portinari Altarpiece’, The Art Bulletin 77, no. 2 (1995): 249–61. 207 Contours are also evident on some jars, probably made in Florence, where the palette is restricted to blue and white. See for example pharmacy jars made in Florence, (tin-glazed earthenware, 1400s), in the Met, 46.85.10-11, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/468159 208 For the taming of haptic space see the discussion in Chapter 2. 209 The accounts for the Aragonese, for example, mention glass albarelli decorated in pasta dambra with the devices of the king. Such devices were also found on a range of material culture and architecture. Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 31. 210 BM, G.619, www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_G-619 211 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 110, 127–52. 212 Ibid., 110–11. 213 See for example Christ as apothecary with Adam and Eve, Chants royaux sur la conception couronnès au puy de Rouen, France, 1519–1528, Paris, BnF, ms. Français 1537, f. 82 https:// gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8539706t 214 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 153–200. For a glossary of terms for inscriptions, see Rudolf E. A. Drey, Apothecary Jars: Pharmaceutical Pottery and Porcelain in Europe and the East, 1150–1850 (London: Faber, 1978). 215 A similar inscription appears on an albarello thought to be of Beatrice d’Aragona, ‘AB.ENIREABIAE’. Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, tav 17. 216 Ibid., 42. 217 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 153–200. 218 The Tacuinum Sanitatis, for example, derived from a work in Arabic by Ibn Butlan el Bagdadi, translated into Latin in the thirteenth century in Naples or Sicily. Representations of apothecary shops figure in illuminations of this work. Brucia Witthoft, ‘The Tacuinum Sanitatis: A Lombard Panorama’, Gesta 17, no. 1 (1978): 49–60. For the practices of apothecaries and the combination of both modern and ancient practices, see Valentina Pugliano, ‘Pharmacy, Testing, and the Language of Truth in Renaissance Italy’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (2017): 233–73. 219 Paul Freedman, ‘Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value’, Speculum 80, no. 4 (2005): 1209–27. 220 Wallis, ‘Medicine in Early-Modern London’, 45; Smith, ‘Mystification of Spices’, 119–36. 221 Quoted and translated in Welch, ‘Space and Spectacle’, 146. 222 Quoted in ibid., 145. For early modern pharmacies and their practices see Jean-Pierre Bénézet and Jean Flahaut, Pharmacie et médicament en Méditerranée occidentale (XIIIe-XVIe siècles) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999); David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998); Cavallo and Gentilcore, Spaces, Objects and Identities. 223 Quoted in Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, 2.1. 224 Vivian Nutton, ‘The Rise of Medical Humanism: Ferrara, 1464–1555’, Renaissance Studies 11, no. 1 (1997): 3. 225 Giovanni Cristofolini, ‘The Role of Plant Taxonomy and Nomenclature in Leoniceno’s Break with Plinius’, Journal of Plant Taxonomy and Geography 74 (2019): 1–14. Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the ‘Natural History’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 10.

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226 Nutton, ‘Rise of Medical Humanism’, 5. Leoniceno’s close association with the court is also evidenced in Alfonso d’Este gifting a portrait of Leoniceno in June 1521 to Paolo Giovio, Linda Klinger Aleci, ‘Images of Identity. Italian Portrait Collections of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, in The Image of the Individual. Portraits in the Renaissance, eds. Luke Syson and Nicholas Mann (London: British Museum Press, 1998), 67–79. 227 Nutton, ‘Rise of Medical Humanism’, 12. 228 Ibid., 12; Cristofolini, ‘Plant Taxonomy’, 1. 229 Nutton, ‘Rise of Medical Humanism’, 15. 230 Clark, Collecting Art, 134. 231 Monica Azzolini, ‘Anatomy of a Dispute: Leonardo, Pacioli and Scientific Courtly Entertainment in Renaissance Milan’, Early Science and Medicine 9, no. 2 (2004): 115–35. 232 Ibid., 119. 233 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 275–309. Yates, The Art of Memory. 234 Alexandre-Bidon, L’atelier de l’apothicaire, 292, 207–300. 235 McHam, Pliny and Artistic Culture, 207–11. 236 Quoted and translated in Lina Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory. Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press, trans. Jeremy Parzen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 246. 237 Quoted and translated in ibid., 211. 238 Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, 51. 239 Ibid., chapter 4, fn 150. 240 Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory, 195. 241 Mia M. Mochizuki, ‘Connected Worlds: An Introduction’, in The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, eds. Christine Göttler and Mia M. Mochizuki (Boston: Brill, 2017), 17–19. 242 Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory. Yates, The Art of Memory. 243 Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory. 244 Ibid., chapter 3, 17–18; Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory, 131–78. 245 Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, chapter 3, 20–2. 246 Ibid., 6.10. 247 Ibid., chapter 4, 12–15. 248 Quoted in ibid., chapter 4, 22–3. 249 Ibid., chapter 4, 24; Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory, 137. 250 Quoted in ibid., 137. 251 Quoted and translated in ibid., 184. 252 Ibid., 187. 253 Giovan Battista Palatino, Nel qual s’insegna à Scriuer ogni sorte lettera (Rome: Antonio Blado 1550). 254 Palatino, Scriuer, 94v. 255 Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory, 91. 256 Ibid., 104–5. 257 Syson, ‘Maiolica Painting’, 25–6. 258 Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory, 119. 259 Ibid., 44. 260 Ibid., 84. 261 Ibid., 132. 262 Ibid., 87–90. 263 Kirkbride, Architecture and Memory, chapter 3, 17.

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A

prayer book belonging to King Alfonso I d’Aragona of Naples completed in the early 1440s contains numerous miniatures of interior spaces showcasing blue and white tiles bearing Aragonese arms and devices (Plates VII, Chapter 5 and XI).1 The manuscript illumination was begun by Domingo Crespí in Valencia and completed by his son, Leonardo.2 Throughout the illuminations we find careful attention to the rendering of the luxurious materials on walls, altars, bodies and floors. Of special interest for this concluding chapter is the consideration paid to the tiles underfoot: the motifs of blue and white bars which form the Aragonese arms, sometimes accompanied by quick paint strokes to indicate the eagle emblem, interspersed between plain tiles. In some cases, less decorated tiles resemble terracotta (Plate XI), while others are splattered with greens and reds mimicking marble (Plate VII, Chapter 5). In one of the depictions of King Alfonso at prayer (Plate VII), the smaller terracotta tiles are divided with long bands of blue and white with a decorative S motif, with larger tiles bearing Aragonese arms punctuating the floor. Similar tiles can be found in other paintings of the time (Plate I, Introduction) and are linked to extant tiles once on the floors of the Aragonese palaces in Catalonia as well as across the kingdom of Naples (Plate XII).3 The prayer book corresponds to an entry for a Book of Hours that was shipped from Valencia to Alfonso I d’Aragona in Italy in May 1447.4 This book, like the Valencian tiles it depicts, was part of a larger transcultural exchange between Valencia and Naples, and eventually Ferrara. In 1527, the 263

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Book of Hours was recorded in the inventory taken in Ferrara of possessions of the Duke of Calabria, Don Ferrante d’Aragona (King Alfonso’s great grandson), who had fled from Naples carrying with him some of the Aragonese collections including Chinese porcelain.5 The prayer book and the tiles it depicts represent the entangled nature of Renaissance material culture encountered repeatedly throughout this book – the tiles’ production was a result of a ceramic trade that stretched from Jingdezhen to Valencia, and the shipment into Naples would go on to inspire local Neapolitan production. In 1495, King Charles VIII of France wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law Peter II, Duke of Bourbon, describing Naples as an ‘earthly paradise’ where the beautiful gardens evoked those inhabited by Adam and Eve. What was more, he had found the ‘best painters’ who he was going to send back to France to make the most beautiful planchiers possible, to equal those of Naples. He remarked that ‘the planchiers of Beaux, Lyon and other locations in France do not come close to the beauty and richness of those found here’, insisting he would bring them back with him to decorate Amboise. Similarly Cardinal Briçonnet, writing to Queen Anne, Charles’ consort, noted that he wished she could see the city and all the belles choses here, as it is an ‘earthly paradise’.6 While Guido Donatone has translated planchiers as floors and therefore, assumed Charles was referring to the tiles, other scholars have interpreted them as painted wooden ceilings or tableaux and thus, possibly paintings.7 It is tantalising to think Charles VIII singled out the tiles as a hallmark of Naples and that the fusion of motifs and technologies found underfoot had now become synonymous with Neapolitan beauty. Whether floors, walls or ceilings, the characterisation of Naples as an earthly paradise by both the French King and the Cardinal shows an articulation of Naples as an Other for the French. Paradise was often characterised by contemporaries as a place of beautiful gardens, sweet smelling odours, glittering gems, vibrant colours, a source of spices and a location somewhere east of Europe, as articulated in the previous chapter. The Venetian, Domenico Trevisan, had also employed the same trope when describing the gardens of the Mamluk Sultan in Cairo as an earthly paradise, in the early sixteenth century.8 The frequent embassies from Tunisia, the Ottoman and Mamluk empires, as well as the cosmopolitan nature of the court itself suggests that Naples had adopted and translated local and global material and visual cultures, which evoked an ‘other’ worldly earthly paradise for French visitors. This concluding chapter examines tiles in the Neapolitan context to underscore how this incorporation of an entangled visual culture into the very fabric of local buildings exemplifies the translations and transmutations of courtly mediators and mediations. The first chapter of this book began with encounters occasioned by diplomacy and trade and the ways in which other material and visual cultures were introduced into the Italian courts. The chapters that

CONCLUSION: ARRESTING MOBILITY

followed articulated how motifs and objects circulated, were framed and often moved again within the spaces of the courtly palazzo or between courts. In this final chapter, this mobility of motifs and technologies becomes literally embedded into the very fabric of the court, locked into the masonry of the floors underfoot. This chapter begins with the arrival of Valencian tiles in Naples (transfer) and then moves to an examination of how individuals associated with the Neapolitan court commissioned local Neapolitan tiles to adorn their palaces and chapels (translation). The tiles in the Caracciolo, Pontano and Carafa chapels are examined to show how these transfers and translations might have given rise to new approaches to the material world in humanist writings and in the decoration of interiors. This reading reassesses previous interpretations of these spaces as simply revivals of antique precedents and highlights the role other cultures played in the Italian Renaissance. This transfer took place, not only through artists and patrons, but through other mechanisms whereby cultural translation is an entangled, complex process activated by everyday activities within the spaces of the court. TRANSFER: VALENCIAN TILES FOR NAPLES

On 14 October 1446, Alfonso I d’Aragona ordered 13,458 rajoletas pintades de obra de Manises or painted tiles from Manises from the Valencian ceramicist Johan Almurcì (or Murci), as recorded by the king’s treasurer, Don Pedro Garro.9 Another document reveals that an intermediary, Friar Luis Despuig, knight of the Order of Montesa, was to accompany the tiles. He was instructed that the tiles were to be ‘made in the most beautiful way that is possible’, and with minimal delay, to be sent to Naples, along with the ceramicist, ‘to be placed on the floors in the rooms chosen by the king’.10 In January 1447, Friar Luis Despuig boarded the galley of Thomas Tomas destined for Naples, along with Almurcì who was accompanied by another ceramicist from Manises, Joan Nadal. The tiles on board were to be installed in the Castel Nuovo in Naples as well as at a castle in Gaeta, north of Naples. The shipment did not go according to plan, revealing the complexities of shipping at this time. Contagion aboard meant that the ship had to stop in Barcelona, where Almurcì and Nadal disembarked along with the tiles. It was not until the spring of that year that a Florentine merchant records the payments for transport to Italy for the maestro and his azulejos.11 In 1449, an additional 30,000 tiles were ordered. In 1456, an emissary, Don Pedro Vicente Velardó, was sent to Valencia to order another 200,000 tiles with the king’s arms and devices for the Sala dei Baroni and other rooms in the Castel Nuovo.12 These came in multiple batches: the first 20,000 arrived in the caravel of Johan Rul in May 1457, with another set arriving in June and another 12,600 tiles arrived later in 1458, on a boat belonging to the Venetian, Marino Malipiero.13

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Primary sources differ but it seems that the king’s death in June 1458 might have put a halt to the final shipments to Naples. Regardless, a substantial amount had been shipped by that time; the main hall at the Castel Nuovo was certainly finished for the celebrations held there in honour of Alfonso’s nephew, Charles of Navarre, Prince of Viana on 15 April 1457.14 The documents and surviving tiles provide an evocative picture of what these floor decorations looked like (Plate XII). The primary sources specified that some tiles were to include the inscription DOMINUS MIHI ADJUTOR ET EGO DESPICIAM INIMICOS MEOS. The Latin motto derived from Psalm 117, 7, which roughly translates as ‘The Lord is my helper: and I will look over my enemies’; it also appeared on gold coins in Naples during Alfonso’s reign.15 The decorations included the blue and white striped Aragonese arms with those of Sicily and Naples, alongside the imprese of the book, the flaming throne and millet. In the decades that followed, these emblems would become well-established icons of Aragonese hegemony in Naples, found carved on architectural elements, illuminated in books, embroidered on clothes and emblazoned on standards, confectionaries and horse saddles.16 The emblems conveyed messages of a just ruler, such as the siti perillós or flaming throne, which according to the Arthurian legend, is displaced by the righteous ruler. This theme was one of the imprese connected to the Order of the Lily or Jar, instituted by the Aragonese. In Alfonso’s triumphal entry into Naples, the Catalan float carried the flaming throne and Alfonso wore the Order’s devices (as is shown on the triumphal arch on the Castel Nuovo). These emblems dispersed across media and encountered daily by those at court – from the king to barons to servants – worked to underscore the legitimacy of the Aragonese and their omnipresence. Extant examples in the National Museum of Ceramics in Valencia bear blue and white pigments with Aragonese emblems that match those ordered by Alfonso for his palace in Valencia and the Castel Nuovo in Naples.17 In one example, a hexagonal tile (known as an alfardòn) shows a frame of Sshaped lines with the emblem of the millet at the centre, stretched to fit the elongated hexagon.18 Tiles discovered during restoration work elsewhere in Naples, such as in the Castel dell’Ovo as well as in the oratory of Diomede Carafa’s palace, indicate these too were likely imports from Valencia, suggesting a wider usage across the kingdom.19 A set of tiles from the Castel dell’Ovo, now housed in the Capodimonte Museum (Plate XII), depicts the emblems of the book and burning throne on hexagonal tiles (alfardones), with the Aragonese blue and white bands and eagle on a square, similar to those rendered in Alfonso’s prayer book (Plate XI). The hexagonal tiles are framed by S-shaped lines similar to those found on tiles once in the palace of the Duke of Maddaloni, Diomede Carafa and now housed in the Museo Civico Filangieri in Naples (Figure 42).

CONCLUSION: ARRESTING MOBILITY

fig 42 Carafa tiles with Carafa imprese, Manises, Valencia, Spain, or Naples, Italy, mid-fifteenth century. Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri, Naples. Photograph credit: Museo Civico Gaetano Filangieri – Napoli

Carafa’s extant tiles display his emblem of the stadera and another emblem, not previously identified, of bound documents (Figure 42), likely referencing his role as secretary and councillor to the kings of Naples. Framed by a banderole and acanthus leaves is a motto in gothic letters, Tems espenedír (tempo di pentirsi or ‘time to repent’).20 The central square bears the stripes of the Carafa arms, in manganese rather than in blue, which when newly fired, would have provided a distinct contrast to the blue and white alfardones that framed it. These tiles closely resemble those made for Alfonso, and while there is no documentary evidence, it is very likely these are of Valencian manufacture. Carafa’s tiles are significant for a number of reasons: first, they show how tastes for these tiles quickly flourished outside the ruling family; secondly, Carafa was a well-known tastemaker and his palace was often the site of informal diplomatic negotiations, underscoring how tastes for these tiles might have spread; and finally, as a humanist and collector, Carafa’s palace exemplifies how an edifice and

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collection, which has often been seen as a quintessential example of a Renaissance revival of a local antiquity, needs to be resituated within larger global visual cultures. Diomede Carafa, first Count of Maddaloni is well known in the world of fifteenth-century Italian politics, having had a close relationship with the Aragonese (including tutoring Eleonora d’Aragona and serving both Alfonso I and Ferrante d’Aragona). He was also renowned as a famous collector and antiquarian, as well as the author of numerous Memoriali, a series of humanist texts dedicated to the Aragonese.21 His palace is probably most famous for the site of the colossal bronze horse’s head gifted to Diomede by Lorenzo de’ Medici.22 Diomede served numerous roles at the Aragonese court, including scrivano di razione, treasurer, guardarobiere, counsellor, as well as general secretary and administrator and was even described as a ‘second king’ by ambassadors.23 In 1466, Diomede was granted the title of Count of Maddaloni, and in this year he also finished construction on his famous palazzo in the Seggio di Nido, where he moved the office of scrivano di razione. The palace was host to visiting dignitaries and illustrious people such as Sigismondo d’Este, Antonio of Burgundy and Matteo Maria Boiardo, and was frequently noted in diplomatic documents as a place where ambassadors often went to confer.24 The palace itself was an extraordinary statement of Diomede’s power: ancient busts were built into the exterior walls; spoliated columns supported the cortile; busts of pagan emperors, ancient sculpture, epigraphs and the famous horse’s head occupied prominent places in the courtyard (including a hanging garden); and sculpture, medals, gems, ceramics, modern art objects and paintings filled the interior rooms and studiolo.25 The collection was discussed in texts throughout the centuries as being one of the most remarkable in Italy.26 Diomede’s collection was formed of varied items he received as gifts, while many of the antiquities were taken from the Temple of Neptune in nearby Pozzuoli.27 While none of Carafa’s account books or inventories survive, other evidence suggests he made a concerted effort to decorate his palace with unique artefacts and commission the latest styles, as well as foster relationships that would provide him access to rare goods through trade and gifts. When designing his studiolo in 1468, Diomede paid the Florentine merchant banker, Filippo Strozzi, for a painted copy of Piero de’ Medici’s scrittoio.28 In the previous year, he had Filippo Strozzi commission a lettuccio from Giuliano da Maiano, which inspired a taste for lettucci at the Neapolitan court.29 In 1473, Strozzi gifted Carafa two ‘marble heads’, presumably antiquities, two painted Flemish cloths, as well as a painting of Saint Francis by ‘Rugiero’, generally accepted to be by Rogier van der Weyden.30 Gifts between Duchess Eleonora d’Aragona of Ferrara and Carafa were fairly frequent, referred to in their correspondence, including portraits, a tablecloth, an altar cloth, leather gloves from Spain and as

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mentioned in Chapter 3, a Chinese porcelain basin. To Ercole d’Este via Eleonora, Carafa gifted a Turkish sword (scimitar) and a horse from his stables, and to his goddaughter, Isabella d’Este, he gave paternoster beads, a cup and a miniature ‘Moorish’ castle (casteluzo morisco).31 The inscription on the cornice of the entrance portal to Carafa’s palazzo declares his wish to honour Ferrante and his patria, followed by the title of Count of Maddaloni.32 In addition to other inscriptions, the palace is adorned with the Carafa arms and imprese, including the stadera as well as the Aragonese arms and Ferrante’s own devices on the façade, courtyard and doors.33 The impresa of the stadera found on the floor tiles thus spoke to the other devices found throughout the palace. A Valencian plate in the Louvre bears the arms of the Carafa with the typical bryony pattern, underscoring how the blue and white tiles on floors would have spoken to other ceramics in these spaces (as is evident in contemporary representations such as Antonello’s painting, Plate I).34 Carafa’s chapel in the palazzo, where the surviving tiles are reported to have come from, was next to his studiolo, not an uncommon arrangement in fifteenth-century palaces.35 Carafa’s office of scrivano di razione in the Castel dell’Ovo had been relocated to his own palace in 1466 and the studiolo was built in 1468 or shortly afterwards and the chapel was soon to follow.36 As mentioned, blue and white Aragonese tiles have been recovered from the Castel dell’Ovo (Plate XII) very similar to Diomede’s tiles, and letters from Diomede to Eleonora were often signed from the Castel dell’Ovo, suggesting that working daily with these tiles underfoot, Carafa might have been inspired to commission his own set for his palace. As scrivano di razione he would have been familiar with the accounts and contacts in Valencia, facilitating acquisition of his own customised tiles. The commissioning of Valencian tiles for his palace might have also been an overt political reference to his support of the Aragonese. In the eighteenth century, De Dominici noted visiting the Carafa palace and recalled an altarpiece with Saint John the Baptist in the centre, and Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic on either side, which has been attributed to Antonio Solario.37 Plates VI (Chapter 5) and XI from Alfonso’s prayer book give us an idea of how these tiles might have looked in place in the chapel, where they encountered textiles, paintings, incense burners and candles. Diomede’s knowledge of and interest in ceramics is evident in his gifting of a porcelain basin to Eleonora d’Aragona in Ferrara.38 Carafa was well acquainted with the importance of gifts as a reflection of the status of both giver and receiver, as is evident from his gift exchanges with Lorenzo de’ Medici. He would have known that Eleonora had a substantial collection of porcelain and would have chosen an important piece, perhaps from his own collections for her. Eleonora would have been acquainted with his palace, having grown up in Naples and significantly, gifted a textile for his chapel.39

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Carafa’s palace offers an example of the first known commission of Valencian tiles outside the ruling family, but it is clear these tiles soon became embedded into a local visual culture. In Niccolò Antonio Colantonio’s painting of Saint Francis Consigns the Rule to his Followers from 1445, we see evidence of the trend of Valencian floor tiles already in place at this early date.40 The painting was commissioned for the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples and showcases blue and white square tiles with Aragonese arms and eagles, interspersed with marble tiles. Francis’ bare stigmatised feet evoke the cool sensation of the tiles on flesh underfoot. Similar tiles also appear in a painting, now in the Capodimonte Museum, by an anonymous artist from the 1450s of Saint Bernardino Adored by Angels. Although the painting is damaged, traces of Aragonese arms can be found on the tile behind the male donor portrait (possibly a court official), interspersed with similar marbled tiles to those in Colantonio’s, perhaps a sign of fidelity and allegiance to the Aragonese.41 As these tiles made their way into paintings, copied by artists to evoke the splendour of Aragonese interiors, local ceramicists were soon inspired by their designs, manufacturing tiles within the kingdom to serve Neapolitan consumers. TRANSLATION: NEAPO LITAN TILES

Surviving floor tiles can still be seen in a number of churches in Naples as well as in the Cappella Pontano, suggesting local production and indicating the ways in which the Valencian floor tiles introduced by Alfonso I, in addition to the motifs found on Valencian ceramics more broadly, were translated by Neapolitan ceramicists. Naples is certainly not the only place where these translations took place as there are floor tiles produced by local craftspeople found in other locations across Italy and Europe, such as those made for Isabella d’Este in Mantua and Beatrice d’Aragona and Matthias Corvinus in Hungary, while traces have been found in excavations at Ferrara.42 Yet perhaps uncoincidentally, many of these patrons also had familial ties to the Aragonese. The question of dating and place of manufacture for many tiles in Naples is a complicated matter, with little documentation and some have been removed from their original sites. It is not my intention here to resolve these issues, but it is clear there are likely a number of hands at work – either within a large workshop or workshops, and the question remains whether these were all made locally in Naples or shipped from other sites in Italy, and potentially even in Spain. For example, a document from 1488 shows that Giuliano da Maiano, who was working for Alfonso d’Aragona Duke of Calabria, requested 20,000 tiles to be sent from Florence through Benedetto da Maiano.43

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Caracciolo Chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara At first sight upon entering the Caracciolo chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara, the floor appears to be a carpet of blue (Figure 43). It is only when standing directly on the floor, that the viewer can make out the intricate details of the tiles underfoot (Plate XIII). Covering the entire surface of the floor with these decorated tiles provides a very different visual experience than, for example, the fewer blue and white tiles that punctuate the terracotta floors as seen depicted in the illuminations of Alfonso’s prayer book (Plate XI) or in Colantonio’s painting. The effect is indeed like that of a carpet or a tapestry on a wall: it provides a blanket statement from afar, but an intricate one at closer glance (Antonella da Messina captures this ‘carpet’ effect in his painting of Saint Jerome (Plate I)). The motifs that ran rampant on the dishes as seen in Chapter 1, are now stabilised and anchored onto the floor underneath the viewer’s feet. On most of the tiles, there is very little unadorned space: curly cue motifs, diaper and bryony patterns fill up the compositions, except in the case of the arms of the Caracciolo del Sole, where the wavy lines of the sun, the three gothic strokes and the lion, stand out against their white backgrounds (Plate XIII). The alfardones vary from floral motifs to profiles of people; their frames are also mixed, varying from simple double bands to the larger frames of S motifs, found also, for example, on the Carafa tiles (Figure 42). The Caracciolo del Sole chapel was commissioned as a funerary chapel for Sergianni Caracciolo del Sole and was begun in 1427 in the church of San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples.44 Sergianni was raised at the Angevin court in Naples, became the consort of Queen Giovanna II and rapidly rose to prominence in the court, receiving the titles of Grand Seneschal (1417), Count of Avellino (1418), Duke of Venosa, Prince of Capua and Grand Constable (all in 1425). He was soon playing the role of king, even if he did not officially hold the title. The site of the church was particularly important as it was also the burial site of Ladislas, the previous King of Naples. However, Sergianni fell from Giovanna’s favour, resulting in his execution in 1432 and his subsequent burial in this chapel (Figure 43). The chapel is circular with the entire walls frescoed by Leonardo da Besozzo and Perinetto da Benevento, illustrating the life of the Virgin Mary, to whom the chapel is dedicated.45 Portraits of Sergianni Caracciolo and his family appear throughout the frescoes, dressed in fine textiles, while his tomb is a grand one, with an effigy of Sergianni in military dress. The exact dates are unknown for the work, but it has been determined that the tomb was erected posthumously by his son Troiano, sometime after 1432. The commissioning of the tiles is unknown, although in the eighteenth century, Isabella Morra claimed they were commissioned by Sergianni, but this would indeed be very early for these tiles if they were in place before his death.46 Donatone has argued that the tiles were commissioned by his son Troiano and

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fig 43 Floor tiles, Caracciolo chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples, Neapolitan manufacture (?), mid-fifteenth century. Photograph by author.

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realised in the late 1440s, probably made in Naples but perhaps in connection with the Valencian ceramicists who had come to Naples with the shipment of tiles for Alfonso.47 In addition to the Caracciolo tiles, the survival of numerous other tiles highlights their omnipresence and growing popularity in Naples in the latter half of the fifteenth century.48 These include tiles in the Cappella Gaetani once in the duomo of Capua as well as a group of tiles that are said to have been executed by the ‘master of the Cappella Brancaccio’ based on the tiles found in the Brancaccio chapel in San Angelo a Nilo in Naples. This group also includes a large number of tiles that survive from the chapel of the Crucifix (Cappella del Crocifisso) still in situ in the church of San Pietro a Maiella in Naples and those of the Cappella Mazzatosta (1470–2) in the church of Santa Maria della Verità.49 In addition, there are a series of tiles attributed to the ‘Bozzuto Master’ from the Bozzuto chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara (the same church where the Caracciolo chapel is located) and those once in the church of San Eligio.50 Cesare Bozzuto was the likely commissioner of the Bozzuto tiles. Closely associated with the Aragonese, he is depicted in Ferraiolo’s Cronaca with Tristano Caracciolo during the triumphal entry of Alessandro Borgia in 1494 who was there to crown King Alfonso II. He was also key in 1486 as a witness for the trial against the rebellious barons. Donatone has linked these tiles to Neapolitan albarelli where the rendition of the profile portraits, and in particular the triangular eye, is very similar on tiles and albarelli (Figure 26, Chapter 5). The peacock feathers and other vegetal motifs also bear resemblance to the versi of the Neapolitan albarelli. Bozzuto’s commissioning of these tiles shows a stylistic trend amongst those individuals closely associated with the Aragonese court. Whether an overtly political statement or simply a form of conspicuous consumption, these tiles on display in the public spaces of churches but within the confines of private family chapels, spoke to these men and their families’ connections to the Aragonese. It may have been these very same men too, who showcased albarelli with portraits of the Aragonese on their shelves at home.

Cappella Pontano The tiles in the Pontano memorial chapel bring the notion of translation to its zenith, for throughout the chapel, inscriptions point to an emphasis on the written word (Figure 44 and Plate XIV). This monument was a translation of the past into the present, as Bianca de Divitiis has argued, it served as a ‘written building’, with all’antica lettering in the interior and exterior, which work as an autobiographical notebook.51 The chapel has always been interpreted as a quintessential example of all’antica architecture and an expression of the humanist’s re-creation of an antique culture.52 The inscriptions on the interior

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fig 44 Cappella Pontano, interior with floor tiles and inscriptions, Neapolitan manufacture (?) 1490s, Naples. Photograph by author.

and exterior and the chapel’s placement as a standalone building on the ancient road of Naples rather than an interior chapel, all point to a concerted effort by Pontano to have the chapel resemble an antique mausoleum. The presence of the tiles, however, seems at odds with the more sombre, even austere epitaphs that frame the exterior of the building and the interior walls. And yet, they have always been interpreted as part of the entire ensemble which are based

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solely on ancient models; a nod to the revival of a local antiquity. Indeed, the inscriptions on the tiles, and in particular, Pontanus fecit, has been understood to be an ‘explicit recreation of an ancient funerary dedication’.53 I am not arguing that this interpretation is wrong, but I think it only tells half the story. The tiles underfoot, instead reference the cosmopolitanism that is so central to Naples as a port city and a flourishing court. As Bianca de Divitiis has argued, the polychromy of the tiles along with the iconography and epigraphy gives rise to the effect of magnificence, but how so?54 How might this magnificence reflect Pontano’s own writings on this virtue and its associated ‘splendore’? Can this be read solely as a Christianized version of a pagan antique culture? Or did Pontano’s time in Naples, where the constant embassies from the Mamluks and Ottomans that brought in a more global range of material and visual cultural traditions, mixed with the Catalan court, expand and influence his own understandings of what a magnificent court and its splendid courtiers should commission? Are these tiles a sort of parergon, a frame underfoot that works against the main work to unsettle a clear antique interpretation, yet integral to the chapel? As mentioned, the exterior of the chapel is minimally decorated, with all’antica moralising inscriptions on white marble plaques, which frame the windows and form a contrast to the grey stone of the building. Above the central door on the main façade, a dedicatory inscription with Pontano’s arms appears, while the lateral portal plaque bears both the arms of Pontano and his wife, Adriana Sassone, for whom the chapel was dedicated. Upon entering the chapel, the tiles at first appear like a carpet, similar to the Caracciolo del Sole chapel, although in the smaller space of this chapel, with its lower ceiling and unfrescoed surrounding walls (save for the image behind the altar), the colourful tiles below are more noticeable, if now dull with use (Figure 44). The emblems of Pontano and Adriana are repeated in the central square tiles on the floor, enlivened with colour, accompanied by beasts, floral designs and the odd profile (Plate XIV). The interior also includes ancient inscriptions (five in Latin and two in Greek) in addition to contemporary inscriptions composed by Pontano that carry an autobiographical message, which tell the story of the construction of the chapel and its contents. In an inscription now lost, Pontano recounted the preservation of a pagan relic of Livy’s arm, which was placed in the chapel. It was presented to him during his first diplomatic mission with Antonio Beccadelli (il Panormita) from Padua, as a gift for the King of Naples. The relic was a memory of his relationship with the famous humanist but also a marker of his career at court, as a diplomat as much as a humanist.55 Indeed, it underlines the important role that diplomacy played at the Aragonese court, and the material conditions of these relationships often manifested in the form of gifts, a subject that also permeates his writings on the virtues of magnificence and splendour.

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The particular language used to declare himself the patron and the author of the chapel warrants further scrutiny, in particular because one of these inscriptions appears repeatedly on the tiles. On the exterior of the chapel, Pontano makes it clear he is the patron of the chapel, while in the interior ‘PONTANVS FECIT’ on the tiles suggests an ‘artistic function as author’ (Plate XIV).56 The use of Pontano’s name as patron on the two exterior inscriptions follows ancient precedent – for example, the Pantheon in Rome, but also closer to home on the Temple of Castor and Pollux nearby to Pontano’s chapel as well as on the Temple of August in Pozzuoli. Renaissance architectural examples include the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, Giovanni Rucellai’s frieze on the façade of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and in Naples, the inscription on the triumphal arch at the Castel Nuovo.57 On the interior however, the frame shifts from patron to author and artist. Of interest is the inscription Pontanus fecit, not uncommonly found on works of art at the time, but rare on ceramics. As de Divitiis has argued, its use here is an ‘explicit recreation of an ancient funerary dedication, but also the signature of an artist who is proudly responsible for the work of art he has created’.58 The presence of the tiles for de Divitiis creates a sense of magnificence, suitable for the humanist, as mentioned, but the medium of that message needs to be considered more in depth. The interior context of the chapel is one of a more familiar, intimate viewer; these interior inscriptions were visible to select guests that had access to the chapel, in contrast to the public exterior. Drawn from the select courtly circle around Pontano, some viewers certainly would have been well-versed in ancient models and would understand the specific classical references being made. Indeed, the chapel is referred to in Pontano’s works as a place where the Academy came to meet, particularly around conversations on prudence and happiness.59 Dedicatory inscriptions that employ the term fecit are found on ancient monuments, as mentioned, but it was also a reference to the practice of artists signing works, something Pontano had studied in relation to ancient signatures.60 There was of course also a tradition of signing all’antica works of art by contemporary artists, such as Mantegna, Donatello, Mino da Fiesole and Pisanello.61 Closer to home, Guglielmo Monaco signed the great bronze doors at the Castel Nuovo with the phrase ‘GULIERMUS MONACUS ME FECIT MILES’, while Pisanello signed his medal of Alfonso I d’Aragona ‘PISANI • PICTORIS • OPVS’. As noted previously, a signature also appeared on an inlaid coffer decorated with ‘Europeanised’ arabesques, PAULUS AGEMINUS FACIEBAT, pointing to the variety of material and visual culture sporting signatures. The deliberate use of fecit employed in the chapel, however functions differently. Pliny had specifically made references to ancient signatures using fecit in his passage on artists’ signatures in the preface to Natural History. Fecit in the rare perfect tense suggests an artist whose work was not in progress, but a

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completed achievement, while the nominative faciebat began being employed by artists in the 1480s to signal the artist had not finished a work, alluding to a continuous association with a work of art and evoking the artist’s presence in the work for eternity.62 Although Michelangelo’s faciebat signature on the Pietà in Saint Peter’s is one of the most well known, he was not the first to employ it. Indeed, artists associated with courts and patrons connected to both Ferrara and Naples had begun using it earlier, such as the Ferrarese painter, Lorenzo Costa, in the Bentivoglio chapel in Bologna and Filippino Lippi’s fresco for Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella in Florence (a patron who was well connected to the Aragonese in Naples).63 Pontano’s use of fecit and not faciebat thus seems deliberate. Appearing on the tiles, it also suggests these might have been the last things to add to the chapel, completing this monument and thus, indicating not something in progress but finished. Similar to artist signatures often found on the bottom of busts, on the frames of paintings, or on the back of medals and ceramic plates, fecit is placed in a subordinate position on the floor, similar to the parerga of the ships mentioned by Pliny as discussed in Chapter 2. As de Divitiis notes, fecit makes apparent the ‘dialectical relationship’ between the roles of artist and patron, where the patron as the author of a work of art draws on his knowledge of architecture, sculpture and history to show the artist how they can achieve magnificence through carrying out the work on the patron’s behalf.64 In De magnificentia, Pontano draws on Pliny’s idea of signatures by arguing that the principal aim of a building is to be admired, and in turn the maker is admired. Pontano notes that great expense spent on ‘great works made from excellent and rare materials, decorated with art, variety and polish, placed in elevated locations, made solidly and to last a long time, do not only solicit admiration in themselves, but also for the makers/authors (autori), and humanity justly lauds them with extraordinary praise’.65 He continues that such edifices thus attract visitors from remote lands, inspiring poets and historians to sing praises.66 The global nature of fame seems to be key here, drawing in visitors from beyond the local, while pointing to the longevity of fame in text. It suggests too then that such a building was not only built for the intimate circles of Pontano but was envisioned as a more public monument with varying viewers in mind. Pontano is conscious to underline the need for variety in his treatise on magnificence, but it is further explored in De splendore, particularly in relation to ornament, as noted in Chapter 2: ‘ornamental objects . . . should be as magnificent and various as possible’.67 Variety was a humanist trope, employed by orators in their speeches, and by Alberti and others in relation to art and architecture. For Alberti, historia gives pleasure because it is full of ‘plentiful variety’. ‘Just as with food and music’, Alberti tells us, ‘novel and extraordinary things delight us for various reasons but especially because they are different

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from the old ones we are used to, so with everything the mind takes great pleasure in variety and abundance’.68 Pontano notes that it is ‘the work, the artistry and the material’ that is key and that objects are made ‘precious by their cost and size, others exclusively by the refinement and rarity which comes either from the hand of the artist or from some other merit’.69 Emphasis here on artistic contribution is made explicit on the tiles by Pontano’s own artistic ‘signature’, while artistic variety is evident in the stylistic contrast of colourful tiles against the austerity of white marble. The placement of the tiles and their decorative function also alludes to their role as ornamental. As explored in Chapter 2, ornament is repeated throughout Pontano’s treatises on virtues, with a section on splendour dedicated specifically to ornamental objects including ‘seals, paintings, tapestries, divans, ivory seats, cloth woven with gems, cases and caskets variously painted in the Arabic manner, [and] little vases of crystal’.70 The emphasis on embellishment and ‘polish’ as well as ‘painted in the Arabic manner’ certainly speaks to the tiles; their motifs might have been understood to be ‘arabesque’ (Pontano uses the Latin Arabicis), while their glossy fired surfaces would have appeared ‘polished’ and ‘splendid’ (something difficult to notice now as the tiles have dulled over time with use). The tiles in contrast to the austere classical architecture and marble inscriptions surely offered this variety, but the skill of the artist would have also spoken to the ‘artistry’ he refers to. Inscribed with Pontano’s signature, the tiles become a medium through which Pontano articulates his social virtues in textual, material and visual form, forging a complex relationship between patron, author, artist and creator. The dialectic between patron and author also points to the humanist debates around the paragone and raises larger concerns about the relationship between manual and liberal practices. As examined in Chapter 4, ceramics were awkwardly positioned as an art that spoke to physical labour, technological virtuosity and disegno. Such an ‘art’ by the sixteenth century at least, could be a suitable pastime for a prince, such as Alfonso d’Este. The inscription points to the paradox of the tiles themselves: they are inscribed with a statement that claims the artist to actually be the patron, Pontano, and yet today we do not know who actually made them. Considering princes dabbled in the potter’s art, it is perhaps not completely preposterous to suggest that Pontano may have had a hand in their creation – at least in their design – but it is not my intention to argue that case here. Pontano did note, however, that an auctor/patron of a building should be an expert in architecture as well as sculpture.71 Certainly authorship, as we have seen in the example of Alfonso d’Este’s suggestions for the paintings for his camerino, was seen to manifest itself in terms of disegno and ingegno and the idea behind the programme. Pontano is surely asserting authorship over the chapel and its design, which extended down to the ‘ornaments’ of decoration, including the tiles.

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Attribution of these tiles has been debated, but the consensus suggests local Neapolitan manufacture, linked to existing tiles in other churches.72 It appears that there might indeed be at least two hands at work. Those in the central part of the chapel bear some resemblance to those in the Caracciolo and Bozzuto chapels, yet the brush strokes seem to be much thicker especially on the beasts. There is also much more uniformity to the entire composition with repeated motifs rather than the irregular ones we find elsewhere. This may have been a deliberate choice by Pontano, as a way to render these brightly coloured tiles somewhat more subdued to fit with the rest of the chapel. The profile figure seems to be rendered in a different style as well. For example, the eyes are not the triangular shapes we have seen on some of the Neapolitan albarelli (Figure 26) and yet, the fine outlines bear some similarity with the Caracciolo tiles (Plate XIII).

Hungary and Belgium Surviving maiolica tiles found in the Buda Palace are connected to the patronage of Matthias Corvinus and his wife, Beatrice d’Aragona, the daughter of King Ferrante. These too show Aragonese heraldic devices and emblems in addition to those of Matthias. Gabriella Fenyés has divided these tiles into different groups according to decorative motifs, which perhaps suggest different workshops.73 Some with animal figures bear a resemblance to those of the Brancaccio chapel in Naples, while others bear the emblems of the Aragonese: the open book, the burning throne, the millet stalk and the mountain of diamonds, and follow the hexagonal format associated with Neapolitan production. Some of the tiles bear decorations that are similar to bowls decorated with Matthias’ arms and have been identified as from Pesaro. Scholarship has generally assumed it improbable that the tiles were transported overland from Italy, but it has been thought Italian potters may have moved to Buda, using local clay yet glazes brought with them. In some instances, a fair number of mistakes in the firing process indicates a local craftsperson still experimenting with the technique, such as tiles showing traces they were stuck together during firing as well as glaze drips. There is documentation that an Italian potter named Francesco, belonging to the De Figulis family who were well known as potters from Pesaro, set off to Hungary in 1488.74 The range of styles in Buda suggest these may have been executed by different workshops, and perhaps like the Neapolitan case, they began with a ‘foreign’ importation with an initial shipment accompanied by their makers, which over time gave rise to translations by local craftspeople. Beatrice d’Aragona of course had familial ties to Naples. Similar to the rest of her family, she was a great patron and continued to commission luxury objects in Italy for her court in Buda.75 Her brother, Cardinal Giovanni d’Aragona also

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spent time in Hungary. In the early 1480s, he was appointed the archbishop of Esztergom, where he undertook architectural renovations while still travelling between Italy and Hungary.76 The close diplomatic and familial ties between the courts of Ferrara, Naples and Buda thus facilitated the movement of objects and likely technologies too. In 2002, excavations revealed Valencian floor tiles at Middelburg Castle in Belgium, built by Pieter Bladelin, a senior official of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.77 These tiles are mostly blue and white decorated with Pieter’s initials and the Burgundian fire-steel, and date between 1451 and 1472. Chemical and mineralogical tests compared the Middelburg tiles with those of Alfonso d’Aragona’s tiles in Valencia, made in the Manises workshop of Juan Almurcì, and showed a petrographical and chemical similarity.78 Stylistically, the tiles sporting banderoles and inscriptions also bear a resemblance to those of Alfonso’s palaces in Valencia and Naples. While these tiles may have been shipped as part of the merchandise traded in Valencian–Flemish commercial relations, it has recently been argued that these may have played a role in diplomatic negotiations between the Aragonese and the Burgundian courts. In 1440, Bruges had levied a special tax on merchandise from Aragon in retribution for the hijacking of two Hanseatic ships by Aragonese pirates. As ducal commissioner, Pieter Bladelin was in charge of dealing with the problem and consequently the tax was revoked in 1450, at the same time that Philip the Good was negotiating an alliance with Alfonso I d’Aragona as an attempt to counter the rising military power of the Ottoman empire.79 In 1444, Alfonso sent Felipe Boyl as ambassador to Philip the Good as part of a larger campaign to convince fellow monarchs to provide ships and troops for a crusade to liberate Jerusalem. The Boyls had served the Aragonese for years: as lords of Manises, they operated as middlemen in the pottery trade, taking ten per cent, and were thus clearly imbricated in the Aragonese kingdom-politically, economically and socially. As part of these larger European diplomatic and economic negotiations, Philip bestowed the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1445 on Alfonso and in 1451 other high-ranking Aragonese nobles entered the Order as well. These relationships were politically and economically motivated as the Burgundian campaign against the Mamluks in 1444–5 failed and Alfonso’s empire was looking ready to expand across the Mediterranean, in addition to a growing Catalan mercantile presence.80 Bladelin, as treasurer of the Order, oversaw these bestowals, and it is likely he was in close contact with his Aragonese counterpart, Boyl, on trade negotiations as well. It has been suggested these tiles may have been offered as a diplomatic gift to thank Bladelin for his role in smoothing over trade negotiations and facilitating the bestowal of the Order of the Golden Fleece.81 Whether they were purchased by Bladelin or gifted, it is clear the tiles were part of material exchanges taking place across nodes in the

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Mediterranean and further north, bringing together the courtly traditions of the bestowal of Orders and the decoration of palaces with concerns over taxes, crusades, wars and piracy. The tiles also demonstrate how motifs, materials and technologies criss-crossed, circulated and were translated. CONCLUSION

In the fragments that survive from the Aragonese era in the Archivio di Stato in Naples, there are a series of buste that contain documents related to the customs registers, mostly from ports outside of Naples, but still within the confines of the Neapolitan kingdom.82 On the covers of a few booklets dating from the 1480s, there appear doodles, presumably by the customs agent who in his boredom decided to draw images beside his random notes and calculations (Figure 45 shows only a selection).83 The sketches bear a resemblance to the images we find on Neapolitan floor tiles, with profiles of men and women as well as animals (Figure 46). One can imagine a bored agent waiting for a boat to arrive so he could record the customs duties levied on grain, wine, silks, pignate, metalwork, slaves and other things that appear registered in such books. However, in a moment of quiet, he looks around and starts sketching the images he sees on the tiles underfoot, not dissimilar to a setting staged by Antonello in his depiction of Saint Jerome (Plate I). Dissatisfied with just the profile heads, he makes up new combinations of bodies and motifs: a man on a horse bears a horse’s head while the horse takes on a human face; the vegetal patterns and motifs on the tiles become the undulating lines of a bird’s feathers or the patterns on a girl’s dress; and knights proffer flowers to young maidens (Figures 45 and 46). These customs accounts are not given a location, but other documents found in these buste come from Gaeta, and it is tantalising to think that the agent may have even been based in one of the Aragonese castles where Valencian or Neapolitan tiles grazed the floors. We will never be sure whether these doodles were indeed inspired by tiles the customs agent saw. However, the iconographic similarity is striking and suggests that the ubiquitous presence of floor tiles and ceramics within the Neapolitan kingdom by the 1480s had permeated the mentalities of those connected with the Aragonese – from the ruling family and barons to the courtiers, humanists and others in the service of the court.84 The doodles here underscore just how far motifs could circulate, operating beyond obvious artistic pathways. Customs agents would have also encountered the vast range of goods entering into the Neapolitan kingdom on galleys carrying goods from the Levant and further afield.85 These doodles emphasise the creative possibilities for a range of people, facilitated by the circulation of goods. We are reminded of the ways in which the sultan’s tughra found on letters may have inspired circular patterns on pottery (Figures 7 and 8, Chapter 2) or how knot patterns found on metalwork

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fig 45 Doodles on customs registers, fifteenth century, ASNa Dipendenze della sommaria, I 580. By concession of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e per il Turismo. Photograph by author.

fig 46 Doodles on customs registers compared with Caracciolo tiles, fifteenth century. Photograph by author.

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led artists such as Leonardo da Vinci to interpret them into fresco decoration and textile patterns, and eventually cerebral games (Figures 10–13, Chapter 2). However, in these customs registers we also find records of enslaved peoples, underscoring a need to not only celebrate the circulation of goods, but also to emphasise what looking at the Italian Renaissance court from a global perspective can reveal.86 Similar to the apothecary shops that were celebrated as centres of knowledge exchange, they were also feared as places rife with spies and illicit news, revealing cosmopolitan places are both centres of confluence and conflict. Like the blue and white Chinese porcelain bowls in Bellini’s painting, the presence of a global material culture asks us to stop and think, not only to consider how such transcultural objects were received within collecting practices of the Italian Renaissance courts, but also to place emphasis on the power struggles and inequalities perpetuated by such global exchanges. NOTES 1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8

9

BL Add MS 28962. Josefina Planas, ‘Valence, Naples et les routes artistiques de la Méditerranée: le PsautierLivre d’Heures d’Alphonse le Magnanime’, Cahier du Léopard d’Or 17 (2014): 65–102. Examples in paintings include Niccolò Antonio Colantonio, St. Francis Consigns the Rule to his Followers, 1445 Museo di Capodimonte, Naples and Anonymous, Saint Bernardino Adored by Angels, 1450s, oil on panel, Capodimonte Museum, Naples. See also reproduction in Leah R. Clark, ‘Objects of Exchange: Diplomatic Entanglements in Fifteenth-Century Naples’, Predella 43, no. 44 (2018): Figure 14. Nuria Ramón Marques, La iluminación de manoscritos en la Valencia gótica (1290–1458) (Valencia: Conselleria de Cultura, Educació i Esport, 2007), 98. Planas, ‘Valence, Naples’, 65. For the inventory see BH Ms. 0947 and the above discussion in Chapter 3, as well as the transcription in Appendix II. ‘vous ne pourriez croire les beaulx jardins que j’ay en ceste ville. Car, sur ma foy, il semble qu’il n’y faille que Adam et Ève pour en faire ung paradis terrestre. Et avecques ce, j’ay trouvé en ce pays des meilleurs paintres, et auxditz vous envoyerés, pour faire aussi beaulx planchiers qu’il est possible, et ne sont des planchiers de Bauxe, de Lyon et d’autres lieux de France en riens approchans de beaulté et richesse ceux d’icy; pourquoi je m’en fourniray et les meneray avecques moy pour en faire à Amboise [. . .] Madame, je vouldroye que vous eussiez veu ceste ville et les belles choses qui y sont, car c’est ung paradis terrestre’. Quoted in Louis Courajod, Les origines de la renaissance en France au XIVe et au XVe siècle (Paris: H Champion, 1888), 38–9. Also partly quoted in Guido Donatone, La maiolica napoletana del rinascimento (Napoli: Gemini Arte, 1993), 53. Timothy Wilson, Maiolica: Italian Renaissance Ceramics in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), 348. Deborah Howard, ‘Death in Damascus: Venetians in Syria in the Mid-fifteenth Century’, Muqarnas 20, no. 1 (2003): 85. For the original, see Marino Sanuto, La Spedizione di Carlo VIII in Italia, ed. Rinaldo Fulin (Estratto dall’Archivio Veneto, Serie I) (Venice: Tipografia del Commercio di Marco Visentini, 1883), 15, October 1512, col. 111. ‘Item post en data los quals per mi liura lo dit en Pere Garro an Johan Murcí Mestre de fer rajoletes pintades vehi del loch de Manizes, IIIMaDCCLXVI sous reyals de Valencia per lo preu de xii millers e CCCLVIII rajoletes pintades de obra de Manizes ab senyal reyal e les armes d’Arago e de Sicilia e d’Arago e del realme de Napols e ad la diuisa del dit Senyor de

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10

11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18

19 20 21

libres e mills e lo siti perillos e ab un titol que diu dominus michi adiutor et ego despiciam inimicos meos les quals dites raioletes d’aquell he comprades per ops de trametre aquelles al dit Senyor en lo realme de Napols segons per lo dit senyor me era stat manat. E les quals dites raioles unes ab altres yo compri del dit en Johan Murci a for de CCLXXX sous lo miller que a la dita raho los dits XII milers e CCCCLVIII rajoles pujen als dits IIIMaDCCLXVI sous e haui apoca closa per lo scriua de la mia cort a XIII d’octubre del any present MCCCCXXXXVI. En Apres lo senyor Rey Ab. . .’. For the original see AVA, Maestre Racional. Cuentas de la Bailia General, 1446, fol. 306. Quoted in Guillermo J. de Osma, Las Divisas del Rey en los pavimentos de “Obra de Manises” del Castillo de Nápoles: años 1446–1458 (Madrid: de Fortanet, 1909), 22. See also Donatone, ‘Maiolica’, 18; Riccardo Filangieri, ‘Rassegna critica delle fonti per la storia di Castel Nuovo – parte seconda: il castello aragonese’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 62/23 (1937): 311–12. ‘de obra de Manises, de la más hermosa labor que hacerse pudiera, y que á la mayor brevedad se le enviasen á Nápoles, yendo á la vez el maestro que los hubiera labrado, á fin de que se colocasen en los pavimentos de las estancias que designaria el Rey, por quien fuera más perito en tales trabajos’, Quoted in Osma, Pavimentos de Napoles, 23. See also Luciana Arbace, ed. Valenza-Napoli Rotte mediterranee della ceramica/València-Nàpols, les rutes mediterrànies de la ceràmica (Valencia and Naples: Generalitat Valenciana and Commune di Napoli, 1997), 116. Osma, Pavimentos de Napoles, 28. Ibid., 31; Arbace, Valenza-Napoli, 117. Filangieri, ‘fonti di Castel Nuovo’, 312. Arbace, Valenza-Napoli, 118. Ibid., 118. For these emblems and the Order of the Ermine as a binding force see Leah R. Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), chapter 4. 1,700 were ordered by Alfonso from Johan Almurcì as documented in the Libro Contabile del Baliaggio (AVA). Arbace, Valenza-Napoli, 240, cat. 57. Other examples survive with alternate inscriptions: a square tile shows the same emblem, if less elongated, with the frame taken up with gothic lettering ‘iusticiam: serv et: fove: pauperem’. Another square tile, meant to be viewed on an angle as a diamond, contains the flaming throne motif with the framing text in capital letters of ‘VIRTUT APURAR NOM FRETURA SOLA’. The flaming throne motif is oddly executed and does not resemble the motif as it is often found on other objects, suggesting that Almurcì may not have been as familiar with this device and on one tile, the flames have been added with a later colour, Arbace, Valenza-Napoli, 242, cat. 58, 244–5, cat 59. These differ from the flaming throne motifs found in surviving tiles in Naples (Plate XII), Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, Figure 4. Others bearing the striped Aragonese bands are framed by lustre decoration of floral motifs, headed by a crown. Arbace, Valenza-Napoli, 246–7, cat. 60. Valencian tiles were also commissioned for the Vatican by Pope Alessandro VI, for the Beccadelli family of Bologna, and Saint Elena in Venice. Arbace, Valenza-Napoli. Ibid., 260–1, cat. 67. The most comprehensive biographies on Diomede are still Persico’s nineteenth-century study and Moore’s 1967 thesis: Tommaso Persico, Diomede Carafa. Uomo di stato e scrittore del secolo XV (Naples: Luigi Pierro, 1899); John D. Moores, ‘Diomede Carafa and His Unpublished Correspondence’, PhD Thesis (University College London, 1967). More recent studies include Bianca de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza nella Napoli del Quattrocento (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2007); Bianca de Divitiis, ‘New Evidence on Diomede Carafa’s Collection of Antiquities’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70 (2007): 99–117; Bianca de Divitiis, ‘Building in Local All’antica Style: The Palace of Diomede Carafa in Naples’, Art History 31, no. 4 (2008): 505–22; Bianca de Divitiis, ‘New Evidence on Diomede Carafa’s Collection of Antiquities II’, Journal of the Warburg and

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22 23

24

25 26 27

28

29 30

31

32 33

34 35 36 37 38

Courtauld Institutes 73 (2010): 335–53; Italo M. Iasiello, Il collezionismo di antichità nella Napoli dei Viceré (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2003), 110–18; Clark, Collecting Art, chapter 1. For his palace, in addition to de Divitiis, see Georgia Clarke, Roman House-Renaissance Palaces, Inventing Antiquity in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 36–8; Gaetano Filangieri, ‘La testa di cavallo di bronzo già di casa Maddaloni in via Sedile di Nido’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 7 (1882): 407–20; Giuseppe Ceci, ‘Il Palazzo Carafa di Maddaloni, poi di Colubrano’, Napoli Nobilissima 2, no. 9 (1893): 149–52, 168–70. Clark, Collecting Art, chapter 1. Franca Petrucci Nardelli, ‘Per un’edizione critica dei Memoriali di Diomede Carafa, problemi e metodo’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 15 (1976): 525; Persico, Carafa, 66–74. Gioacchino Paparelli, Diomede Carafa: Dello Optimo Cortesano (Salerno: Beta, 1971), 17–18. The expenses for the office move were paid for on 5 March 1466, Nicola Barone, ‘Le Cedole di Tesoreria dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli dal 1460 al 1504’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 9 (1884): 207. The Venetian ambassador often discussed visiting Diomede in his palace, Gigi Corazzol, ed. Dispacci di Zaccaria Barbaro (1 novembre 1471–7 settembre 1473), Corrispondenze diplomatiche veneziane da Napoli (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1994), 130, Letter 60, from 7 January 1472 and 225, letter 104, 31 March 1472. The Milanese ambassador also reported a visit of the Venetian ambassador to Diomede’s garden on 8 April 1475, ASMi SPE 227. de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 95–127; Iasiello, Collezionismo di antichità, 110–18. Georgia Clarke, Roman House-Renaissance Palaces, Inventing Antiquity in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 226. de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 102. Pozzuoli was a frequented destination for the Aragonese and nobility, not only for its restorative baths, but also as a site to visit antiquities and ruins. Nicola Barone, ‘Le Cedole di Tesoreria dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli dall’anno 1460 al 1504’, Archivio storico per le province napoletane 10 (1885): 6. In 1466, Ippolita Sforza wrote to her mother, Bianca Maria, about going to Pozzuoli for the baths and to look at antiquities there, ASMi SPE 215, 101, 6 January 1466. ASF Carteggio Strozziane (CS) V-17, 77R, 85V, 86R. For the scrittoio, ASF CS V, 17, 149v. Eve Borsook, ‘A Florentine Scrittoio for Diomede Carafa’, in Art, the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H.W. Janson, eds. Mosche Barash and Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981). For the taste for lettucci in Naples see Clark, Collecting Art, 74–84. Clark, Collecting Art, 67. ASF, CS V.22 95R. See also Mario del Treppo, ‘Le avventure storiografiche della Tavola Strozzi’, in Fra storia e storiografia. Scritti in onore di pasquale villani, eds. P. Marcy and A. Massafra (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 1994), 511. Moores, ‘Diomede Carafa’, 121, 175, 307, 320. See also the transcription of letters in the Appendix: XXXIX, XL, XLIII, XLIV. For the originals see ASMo CPE 1248.4 (Maddaloni). Clarke, Roman House, 243; Roberto Pane, Architettura del rinascimento in Napoli (Naples: E.P.S.A., 1937), 107; de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 48–9. A large marble slab with Ferrante’s stemma with the inscription FIDELITAS ET AMOR is still visible today in the centre wall of the courtyard. This inscription is also repeated in the frontispiece in two of Diomede’s memoriali written for Beatrice and Eleonora d’Aragona, de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 48. Although the arms might belong to another family as such a simple device may have easily been adopted by others. de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 93–4. Paparelli, Diomede Carafa, 18; Barone, ‘Cedole ASPN IX’, 207. de Divitiis, Architettura e committenza, 94. ASMo CPE 1248.4 (Maddaloni).

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39 ASMo CPE 1248.4 (Maddaloni). Moores, ‘Diomede Carafa’, 121, 175, 307, 320. See also the transcription of letters in the Appendix: XXXIX, XL, XLIII, XLIV. 40 For a close reproduction of the tiles, see Clark, ‘Objects of Exchange’, Figure 14. 41 Serena Romano, ‘Patrons and Paintings from the Angevins to the Spanish Hapsburgs’, in Naples, eds. Marcia B. Hall and Thomas Willette (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 199. 42 Chiara Guarnieri, ed., Ferrara al tempo di Ercole I d’Este: scavi archeologici, restauri e riqualificazione urbana nel centro storico della città (Florence: All’insegna del Giglio, 2018), 404; Gabriella Fényes, ‘Maiolica Floor Tiles from Buda Palace’, in Matthias Corvinus, the King. Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court, 1458–1490. Exhibition Catalogue, eds. Péter Farbaky et al. (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008); Gabriella Fényes, ‘Le mattonelle maioliche del Castello di Buda e le loro origini italiane’, Nuova Corvina 20 (2008): 212–21. 43 Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 26. 44 Charlotte F. Nichols, ‘The Caracciolo di Vico Chapel in Naples and Early Cinquecento Architecture,’ PhD Thesis (New York University, 1988), 4–5; Luigi Tufano, ‘Linguaggi politici e rappresentazioni del potere nella nobiltà regnicola tra Trecento e Quattrocento: il mausoleo di Sergianni Caracciolo in S. Giovanni a Carbonara e I caratteri trionfalistici del sepolcro nobiliare’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Moyen Âge (2015): 1–37. 45 Nichols, ‘Caracciolo di Vico Chapel’, 5. 46 Isabella di Morra, Cronologia della famiglia de’ signori Caraccioli del Sole compendiosamente ordinata, e stesa (Naples: Nella stamperia Simoniana, 1758), 36. 47 Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 23. 48 The discussion here is not exhaustive. For an overview of Neapolitan tiles see Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento. In addition to those mentioned here, it is worth noting that in the church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, tiles have been found bearing the motif of an open book, which is framed by floral motifs not found in other tiles in the Neapolitan context, which suggests it might be of Valencian origin or based closely on Valencian models in Naples. Outside of Naples, but still within the confines of the Neapolitan Kingdom, tiles have been found in the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione a Villanova and in the convent of San Francesco a Giffoni Valle Piana, Salerno; the latter, Donatone attributes to the Brancaccio chapel master. 49 Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, 48, 54, tav. 6. Very similar tiles appear in a collection in the Boymans Museum in Rotterdam; here various arms point to multiple families, but the chequered motifs and hares are similarly executed. Donatone, Maiolica del rinascimento, Tav. 8. 50 Ibid., 51–2, tav 95. 51 Bianca de Divitiis, ‘PONTANVS FECIT: Inscriptions and Artistic Authorship in the Pontano Chapel’, California Italian Studies Journal 3 (2012): 3. 52 For earlier literature see bibliographies in Maria Teresa Como, ‘Nuove acquisizioni sulla Cappella Pontano. Il contesto originario e l’architettura’, Rinascimento Meridionale VII (2016): 35–47; Bianca de Divitiis, ‘Giovanni Pontano and His Idea of Patronage’, in Some Degree of Happiness: Studi di storia dell’architettura in onore di Howard Burns, eds. Caroline Elam and Maria Beltramini (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010), 107–21; de Divitiis, ‘PONTANVS FECIT’. 53 Ibid., 14. 54 Ibid., 13. 55 Ibid., 4. 56 Ibid., 6. 57 Ibid., 7. 58 Ibid., 12. 59 Ibid., 28, fn 50. 60 Ibid., 21–2.

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61 62

63

64 65 66 67

68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86

Ibid., 22; Patricia Rubin, ‘Signposts of Invention: Artists’ Signatures in Italian Renaissance Art’, Art History 29, no. 4 (2006): 563–99. Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance: The Legacy of the ‘Natural History’ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 183–4; de Divitiis, ‘PONTANVS FECIT’, 27. Strozzi was a well-known merchant-banker active at the Neapolitan court and an acquaintance of Pontano, while Lippi also worked for the Carafa family in Rome. Strozzi’s connection to Pliny is also well known in his enterprise of printing the Natural History in the vernacular. McHam, Pliny and Artistic Culture, 149–50, 186–99. de Divitiis, ‘PONTANVS FECIT’, 29. Giovanni Pontano, I libri delle virtù sociali, ed. Francesco Tateo (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1999), 184–5. See also de Divitiis, ‘Pontano and Patronage’, 109. Pontano, Virtù sociali, 185; de Divitiis, ‘PONTANVS FECIT’, 28. Translated in Evelyn S. Welch, ‘Public Magnificence and Private Display. Giovanni Pontano’s De Splendore (1498) and the Domestic Arts’, Journal of Design History 15, no. 4 (2002): 215; Pontano, Virtù sociali, 232–3. Welch, ‘Public Magnificence’, 215; Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 75; Anthony Grafton, Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 46–8; John R. Spencer, ‘Ut Rhetorica Pictura: A Study in Quattrocento Theory of Painting’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20, no. 1/2 (1957): 26–44. Pontano, Virtù sociali, 233. See also Welch, ‘Public Magnificence’, 215. See Chapter 1 for the full quote. de Divitiis, ‘Pontano and Patronage’, 109. de Divitiis, ‘PONTANVS FECIT’, 12. Fényes, ‘Maiolica Floor Tiles’, 355; Fényes, ‘mattonelle maioliche’, 356. Fényes, ‘Maiolica Floor Tiles’, 356. Péter Farbaky et al. eds., Matthias Corvinus, the King. Tradition and Renewal in the Hungarian Royal Court, 1458–1490. Exhibition Catalogue (Budapest: Budapest History Museum, 2008), 23–31. Ibid., 26. Wim De Clercq et al., ‘Aragonese Tiles in a Flemish Castle: A Chivalric Gift-Exchange Network in Fifteenth-Century Europe’, Al-Masaq 27, no. 2 (2015): 153–71. Ibid., 159. Ibid., 165. Ibid., 166. Ibid., 170. ASNa DIP SOM, I. ASNa DIP SOM I, 580. Curiously, the sketches also bear some semblance to the marginalia in Ferraiolo’s chronicle (see Figure 4), Morgan Library, MS M.801. While the Neapolitan customs registers are not very detailed, Roman customs registers are and suggest that some agents had to take things out of boxes and describe them. Arnold Esch, ‘Roman Customs Registers 1470–80: Items of Interest to Historians of Art and Material Culture’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42, no. 1 (1995): 72–87. Numerous entries for black and ‘Turkish’ enslaved peoples as well as clothing for them, including turbans are mentioned. See entries in ASNa DIP SOM I, 556 and 587.

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APPENDICES

Transcriptions maintain original spelling with minimal additions in brackets to facilitate reading and understanding. I INVENTORY OF ELEONORA D’AR AGONA, DU CH ESS OF FERRARA, 14 93. ASMo, GUARDAROBA 114

Eleonora’s inventory is long and detailed. This focuses solely on her porcelain collection and particular transcultural objects of interest to this study. For her larger inventory see Clark, Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court, 2018, Appendix I. 105R Doe orne de porzellana verde Tri Doe frescatori d[i] porzellana verde Tri piatelli d[i] porzellana verde una ingustara d[i] porzellana verde uno vase facto d[i] una zucha di porzellana verde uno vasseto a modo d[i] una ampollina d[i] põzellana v/[er]de una ornella picola picola d[i] porzellana verde Una scutelle Quatro d[i] porzenella [porzellana] verde d[i] luna in laltra Uno scotellino d[i] porzellana verde Doe anzelle picole d[i] põzellana schiete Diece vasi d[i] porzellana biancha e azura facti a fogia d[i] ingustar[e] Dui fiaschi cu’[m]li manichi d[i] porzellana azuri e bianchi Uno fiascho d[i] porzellana azura cu’[m] il manicho e pipio Dui vasi d[i] porzellana biancha e azura dorati a foghia d[i] ingustara Uno vaso amodo una Zucha d[i] porzellana biancha e azura uno vaseto d[i] porzellana biancha e azura cu’[m] busi da meter’ [mettere] aqua rosa Uno vaseto picolo amodo bochaleta biancho e azuro d[i] porzellana Uno vaseto cu[m] una po bocha e uno pipio a modo una pignata Una ancella d[i] porzellana biancha e azura

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Uno vaso d[i] porzellana biancha e azura cu[m] due teste d[i] lione dali Lati Due ancelle grande d[i] porzellana biancha e azuro Una urna d[i] porzellana biancha e azura lavorata d[i] straforo Uno vaso d[i] porzellana biancha e azura fornita il pede e la boca d[i] Ramo dorato Quindese pi Sedese piadene biancho e azuro d[i] porzellana in lequale sono due Lavorati d[i] bretino de biancho 105V Sedese piadene piu picole d[i] porzellina biancha e azura Desedotto scudelloti d[i] porzellana biancha e azura d[i] luna in laltro Dui frescatogli picoli d[i] porzellana biancha e azura uno ffeso: lalt[ro] roto e e biretine Quatro scudelloti bianchi e azuri lavorati d[i] dasmaschino d[i] porzellani d[i] li quali ge ni e uno incolata[?] Sesanta doe scutelle d[i] porzellana biancha e azura Due scutelle bianche d[i] porzellana schieta Dodese busolli picoli d[i] porzellana biancha e azura Uno bambino Cinq’ piadene d/ maioliche in lequale ge ne e una rotta a puntata cum lo ramo Tre piadene grand[e] d[i] porzellana azura [followed by a long list of maiolica] (fol. 106r) [list of ceramics ‘d[i] lavoriero da Pesaro’ and ‘d[i] Carrara’] Uno vaso d[i] porzellana gran[de] [followed by more vessels from Pesaro and Carrara and four glass flasks] (106v) [Blank] 107R-V [Boxes made from cane, including some boxes ala morescha and an ivory chess box; list of various vessels made out of metals, glass and crystal] [This is followed by pages full of various textiles including tapestries, bed and window coverings, triumphal cart coverings, altar frontals, carpets, velvets, cushions and other materials] 127V [A list of various metal vessels and candlesticks] 128R [glass, metal and chalcedony vessels] Uno v fiascho di porzellana cum dui maniche col suo coperto [The inventory continues with Eleonora’s art collection and library as well as textiles, altar crosses and a variety of vessels]

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APPENDICES

II INVENTORY OF DON FERRANTE D’ARAGONA, DUKE OF CALABRIA, TAKEN IN FERRARA, 1 OCTOBER 1527. VALENCIA: BH MS. 0947

This inventory was taken in Ferrara, ordered by Don Ferrante d’Aragona’s mother, the Queen regent of Naples, Isabella del Balzo. The inventory is long and detailed and includes items ranging from tapestries and textiles to ivory, porcelain and incense burners. The transcription below is only partial, including the items germane to this study. The porcelain collection is noteworthy for its size: 343 dishes (+7 spoons)= 350 pieces + 134 broken pieces spread out across 11 chests. Note that the sixteenth-century page numbering differs from the contemporary archival numbering (presumably because there was a mistake in the original numbering). I indicate here the numbering according to the modern conventions, with a note to begin with on where this differs. 1R Inventario de robbe de la guardarrobba de lo illustrissimo signore Don Ferrante de Aragona Duca de Callabria, le quale per ordine de la serenissima signora Regina Ysabella, matre de lo preditto illustrissimo signore, et per ordine de lo preditto illustrissimo signore ordinando al magnifico Messer Hieronimo Furnari creato de sua signoria, lo quale lo have mandato da Valencia alla predetta signora Regina con ordine et instructione la quale guardarrobba per servitio de sua signoria sia consignata ad Cola de Gervasiis, guardarrobba de la predetta signora Regina. Le quale robbe se comenzano a consignare in [Fer]rara a me Cola preditto con interventione et per mano del magnifico Messer Rinaldo Ottavante fiorentino, scrivano de ratione de casa de la preditta signora Regina. Le quale robbe erano in potere del magnifico Messer Federico del Tufo guardarrobba magiore. Incomenzado al primo de ottobre 1527 183V. Comune Robbe cocchiari [in margin] Sette cocchiari di coquiglie de porcellana con le maniche de ditta porcellana ingastatj inargento dorato compreso uno cocchiaro, che have il suo manico fatto de argento indorato, quale .5. ne sono piccolj et doi grandi, delj qualj duj ne sono ruttj nti a pp[er]38 par.ta 4.a lingue de serpe [in margin] Tridici lingue de serpe, quattro grande, et nove piccole n.te alo Imball.ro app/ 34 par.ta 3.a 198R [199 in the original numbering] Porcellana

una cassa Taliana de n.0 68

En primo uno vaso grande de porcellana bianca lavorato de frasche azure ad modo de cocome con doi ventri luno sopra laltro quello de basso piu grosso, quello de sopra piu piccolo fatto ad otto faccie con la bocca stretta un Terzo de pL/ scarso de alteza pL 2 1/3 Una fissina de porcellana bianca con fogliagi et animaly azuri con due manichette a lacertonj con 4 teste de mezzo relevo al ventre alta pL/ 2 manco uno dito, larga in la bocca pL/ ¾

292

APPENDICES

Unaltro bocale de porcellana bianca lavorato de azuro con sua manica et lo piso uno poco rotto alto ¾ 198V Porcellana cassa Taliana n. 68 Una scafarea de porcellana che tra al verde fatta dentro a cana lettj et al fondo piano ombrezato con alcunj fogliagi, et de for a e piana con fine[?] labro largo de traverso pL/ 1 1/3 Unaltra scafarea de porcellana che tra al verde che fatta dentro a canalettj et de fora piana con suo fondo piano con una frasca et con suo labro larga pL/ 1 1/3 Una altra scafarea de porcellana che tra al verde che fatta dento a chanalettj et fuora piano con suo fondo piano con una frasca et con sue labre larghe pL/ 1 1/8 Una altra scafarea de porcellana che tra al verde che e fatta dentro a cavalettj et de fora piano che sua fondo piano co una frasca et ocn suo orlo intorno scavato con alcunj pezi larga pL/ 1 1/8 199R Porcellana

cassa taliana n. 68

Nove scudelle de porcellana coppute con uno poco de pede verde He [?11e] larghe ciascuna da luno labro a laltro cioe 1a [una] ¾: 1a ¾ scarse: 1a ¾; 1.a ¾ scarsi 1.a pL/ ½ scarso una pL/ ½ scarso: 1.a pL ½ scarso; 1.a pL ½ scarso che sono tutte nove [in margin: Date ale Illm.e s.re Infante doi tassette] Cinq tasette de porcellana verde con uno poco de pede ciascuna larga/ una pL/ 2/3/unaltra simile unaltra pL/ ½ et unaltra de pL/ ½ scarso unaltra puro de pL/ ½ Uno coperchio de porcellana bianca de bocale tondo con uno bottone in testa lavorato de azuro 199v Porcellana

unatra cassa taliana de n. 49

Et primo una scafarea de porcellana perde piena detro et de fora senza labri con certj segni al fondo a modo de fogliagi larga in mezo pL/ 1 2/3 scarsi Una scafarea grande verde de porcellana con uno labro cavato voltato dentro con lavori de fogliazi largo pL/ 1 2/3 scarsi Una scafarea de porcellana bianca piana larga in lo mezo pL/ 1 2/3 scarse Una scafarea bianca de porcellana grande sparsa bianca con li lavori azuri con uno labro alo intorno due dita largo in mezo pL/ 1 ¾ con una frasca de foglie alo intorno Uno piatto de porcellana verde con uno labro intorno uno dito con uno drago in mezo con certj fogliagi alo intorno largo co’preso lo labro pL/ 1 2/3 et uno dito: 200R

Porcellana cassa talian n. 49

Unaltro piatto de porcellana verde simile al sopraditto et de lavoro con lo labro incavato largo pL/ 1 2/3

293

APPENDICES

Unaltro piatto verde de porcellana con uno labro largo uno dito con 4 pesci in fundo largo pL/ 1 2/3 scarsi Unaltro piatto de porcellana verde senza lavoro con lo labro largo due dita largo pL/ 1 2/3 Uno refrescaturo senza pede bianco de porcellana lavoratj de azuro de fogliagie tutto et de fora lavorato de azuro a modo de vasi con certj partinmentj senza orlo largo al traverso pL/ 1 7/8 dj bona mesura Una scafarea bianca de porcellana a modo de tazone senza pede tutto piano senza labro largo per traverso pL/ 1 ½ de bona mes.ra 200v Porcellana

cassa taliana n. 49

Uno piatto mezano bianco de porcellana piano con suo labro largo uno dito et largo per traverso pl/ 1 1/8 Unaltro piatto grande bianco de porcellana piano co’ suo labro largo uno dito, et largo per traverso pL/ 1 1/3 Uno piatto grande con suo fondo piano bianco de porcellana co’ suo orlo largo 2 dita lavorato tuto dentro cio e il fondo con certj fiuri azuri et foglie et alo intorno de sopra con otto fiorunj bianchj perfilatj de azuro et alcune foglie bianchj et alo intorno ce e una vita alba largo al traverso pL/ 1 7/8 de bona mesura Uno bacile bianco de porcellana lavorato tutto dentro de azuro de una vita alba et in lo fondo nce e uno mazo de piarunj ligatj azuri, et al de fora [fera?] alo intorno una vita alba co’ sua labra larga dua dita largo per traverso pL/ 1 2/3 a bona mesura. 201R Porcellana cassa taliana n. 49

Uno vaso fatto alantica de porcellana verde senza piede con certe foglie de mezo relievo con uno collo longo fatto a vita con la bocca larga et sparsa et rotta da una banda alto pL/ 1 2/3 Uno bottazo tondo de porcellana verde con duj manichj picolj alto mezo pL de bona mesura Unaltra cassa taliana de n. 61

Uno vaso grande de porcellana verde a modo de vaso antiquo lo corpo a modo de lancella con lo collo alto la bocca molto sparsa alto lo vaso pL/ 2 2/3 la bocca larga in lo mezo pL/ 1 ¼ scarso con certe frasche de mezo relievo Una fisina per tenere confectione de porcellana bianca con frasche et altri lavori azuri grossa in lo mezo et stretta in piede et in capo co’ doe teste alle bande larga la bocca 2/3 de pL/ meno uno dito seseta un poco et scontonata alo labro alta pL/ 1 ½ 201V Porcellana

cassa taliana de n. 61

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APPENDICES

Una scafarea piccola con uno labretto intorno largo un dito co’ certj foglagi lavoratj intorno et uno tondo in mezo de fogliagi larga in mezo compresi lj labri pL/ 1 ¼ Uno bocale de porcellana azura con sua maniera et piso co’ uno poco de oro strizato con la sua bocca rotta da due bande con suoi coperchio alto pL/ 7/8 Uno fiasco de porcellana bianca con lavori azuri tutto piatto co’ doi maniche alo collo de ditto fiasco alto compreso lo pede et lo collo pL/ 1 1/3 con suo coperchio piccolo Unaltro simile fiasco con manco [sic manico?] lavori azuri alto pL 1 1/3 co’ suo coperchio: 202R Porcellana

cassa taliana n. 61

Uno vaso a modo de Carrafa de porcellana bianca senza pede con suo collo lavorato co’ alcunj fiori et foglie de azuro alto pL/ 2/3 Uno coperchio de fiasco de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro Unaltra cassa taliana de n. 56

Et Primo una fissina de porcellana bianca de otto faze con due teste lavorata tutto de azuro de fogliazi et frasche stretta alo piede et in capo larga la bocca 2/ 3 de paL ala bocca et rotta al pL 1 ½ de bona mesura Unaltra fisina piccola piana de porcellana bianca tutta lavorata de azuro con certj fogliagi con due teste stretta da basso et da capo et ala bocca larga pL/ ½ la quale bocca e rotta che nce manca uno pezo largo pL/ ½ alta pL/ 1 ¼ de bona mesura 202V Porcellana

Cassa taliana n. 56

Uno bocale de porcellana azura con sua manica et piso cio e la manica e dispiccata et ditto bocale e lavorato dehora alto 7/8 de pL/ Uno vaso fatto à modo de carrafa de porcellana bianca lavorata de strafori con certj animalj et fogliamj senza boccaglio alto 7/8 de pL/ Una tazza de porcellana bianca senza piede lavorata tutta de azuro dentro et de fora, la quale e rotta uno poco alo labro et lj pezi sono dentro la taza in uno poco de carta larga pL/ 1 ½ Unaltra tazetta piccola de porcellana bianca lavorata dentro de azuro rotta alo labro che ne manca lo pezo largo 2/3 de pL/ 203R Porcellana

cassa taliana n. 56

Ottantacinq/ pezi de porcellana tuttj rottj fra grandj et piccolj de piu colori cio e pezi 40 che sono verdj et 40 altri bianchj lavoratj de azuro et 5 altri bianchj senza lavorj Unaltra cassa taliana de n. 60

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APPENDICES

Et primo uno refrescaturo de porcellana bianca con uno poco de pede lavorato dentro et de fora de certj fogliagi et rose de oro et azuro largo uno pL/ 2/3 et alto pL/ ½ Uno Tazone grande senza pede de porcellana bianca lavorata dentro et de fora de oro et azuro de certj tronchj et fogliagi et una vita a torno larga pL/ 1 ¼ Uno vaso fatto a modo de lancella senza manica et tondo de porcellana bianca con suo coperchio lavorato tutto de fogliagi verdj et rossi altor pL/ 1 203V Porcellana

Cassa Taliana n. 60

Uno refrescaturo de Porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro tutto dentro et de fora alo fondo lavoratj de certj tronchj de fogliagi et con 4 poste de herbe et de fora de una vita alba larga pL/ 1 1/8 Unaltro refrescaturo de porcellana bianca lavorato de azuro tutto dentro et de fora de fogliagi lo quale e rotto alo labro che nce manca lo pezo longo pl/ 2/3 largo lo vaso pL/ 1 ¼ Unaltro refrescaturo grande de porcellana verde lavorata a canalettj dentro et de fora et de fora et in lo fondo nce una rosa largo pl/ 1 2/3 scarso Unaltro refrescaturo de porcellana verde lavorata puro a cavallette dentro et de fora, et al fondo nce e una rosa largo pL/ 1 1/3 Unaltro refrescaturo de porcellana verde piona lavorato ondezato largo pL/ 1 et due deta 204R Porcellana

cassa taliana n. 60

Uno piatto dj porcellana verde fatto à canalettj con suo labro lo quale e rotto et incollato de duj pezi et ce ne manca uno pezetto piccolo à triangolo largo al traverso pL/ 1 1/3 Unaltro piattetto piccolo dj porcellana verde con suo labro rotto in duj pezetti et incollatj largo allo traverso pL/ 7/8 Uno piatto de porcellana bianca lavorata de colore azuro et oro de fogliagi et vite per tutto dentro et fora in lo fondo si e uno cervo de dittj colorj et oro, lo quale piatto se e rott in nove pezi Una cassa bianca rustica de n. 64

Uno scodellotto tondo senza labro de porcellana verde dentro sie piano et fora sotto anellettj largo el traverso di sopra pL/ 7/8 204V Porcellana

cassa bianca rustica de n. 64

Uno piattello piccolo de porcellana verde con uno labro piccolo co’ uno poco de lavoro dentro et fora piano senza lavoro larga alla bocca pL/ 7/8 de bona mesura Duj altri piattellettj piccolj de porcellana verde con loro labri fattj a canalettj larga allo traverso pL/ 7/8 ciascuno

296

APPENDICES

Duj altri piattellettj piccolj de porcellana verde con loro labri strettj fattj a canalettj largo ciascuno pL 2/3 Duj altri piattj piu grandj de porcellana verde luno fatto a canalettj et larghi et laltro unbrato de uno lavoro de una vita dentro largo ciascuno de loro pL/ 7/8 Una scafarea de porcellana bianco lavorata dentro et de fore de azuro nel fondo nce uno alboro che fa dj dattolj con duj animalj cio e uno mostro et uno cavallo largo al traverso pL/ 1 1/3 205R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana bianca rustica n. 64

Unalatra scafarea porcellana bianca lavorata dentro et de fora de azuro et alo fondo nce uno animale ditto pavone con certj animalj de fora largo pL/ 1 1/3 Unaltra scafarea de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro de fora et dentro et alo fondo nce son duj pavonj pL/ 1 ¼ Unaltra scafarea de porcellana bianca lavorata tutto de azuro de fora et dentro de fogliagi et al fondo nce son doi caparonj larga pL/ 1 ¼ Uno piatto de porcellana bianca con lo labro lavorato de fogliagi de azuro dentro et de fora et in mezo nce sono certa frasche con uno fiorone largo pL/ 1 ¼ Unaltro piatto de porcellana bianca con suo labro lavorato de foglazi de azuro dentro et de fora et in lo fondo nce uno pesse largo pL/ 1 ¼ 205V Porcellana

Cassa taliana bianca rustica n. 64

Unaltro piatto de porcellana bianca con suo labro tutto lavorato de azuro dentro et de fora et in mezo del fondo nce e uno animale colorato co’ 4 poste de herbe largo pL/ 1 ¼ Unaltro piatto de porcellana bianca con suo labro tutto lavorato de azuro dento et de fora fatto a fogliazi et in mezo nce sono duj ponj che mostano essere granatj et de fora nce sono sei poste de fogliagi largo pL/ 1 ½ Una scafarea de porcellana bianca lavorata de frasche azure dentro et de fora et in mezo nce e uno fiorone con certe fogle large pL/ 1 1/3 scarso Una scafarea simile de porcellana bianca et de simile lavorj large pL/ 1 1/3 scarso 206R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana bianca rustica n. 64

Cinq/ tazette spase de porcellana bianca lavoratj alj fondj de azuro con certj animalj a modo de lacertonj et una e lavorata de fora et le 4 senza lavorj 4 larghe ciascuna 2/3 et laltra larga ¾ de bona mesura Due altre tassette simile de porcellana bianca lavorate dentro de azuro con uno lacertone in lo fondo et de fora tutta schetta large ciascuna ¾ Unaltra tazetta de porcellanca bianca lavorata alo fondo co’ una vita alba con una rosa in mezo et de fora e schietta larga ¾ Unaltra taccetta de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro dentro et de fora de foglie menute larga ¾

297

APPENDICES

Unaltra taccetta simile de porcellanca bianca lavorata de azuro tutta de foglie dentro et de fora et alo labor e uno poco sconto nata large 2/3 de pL/ 206V Porcellana

cassa Taliana bianca rustica n 64

Unaltra taccetta de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro alo fondo nce e uno lacertone et de fora et tutta schetta large 2/3 de pL/ Una taccetta de porcellana bianca tutta lavorata de azura dentro et de fora la quale e rotta alo labro de tre pezi largo 2/3 de pL/ Una scudella de porcellana bianca tonda lavorata de fora de azuro rotta in duj pezi larga mezo pL/ Una scudella grande de porcellana bianca lavorata dentro et de fora de fogliamj piccolj et grandj et in fondo nce tre frasche con una rosa la quale e rotta in tre pezi large pL/ 1 manco uno dito Due taze de porcellana bianca lavorate tutte dentro et de fora de azuro con certe rose alo fondo con uno monte ciascuno larga 7/8 de pL/ le quale sono rotte alj labrj 207R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana bianca Rustica de n. 64

Due tazette de porcellana bianca lavorate tutte de azuro dentro et de fora de fogliagi rotte ciascuna alo labro large ciascuna 2/3 Tre altre tazette de porcellana bianca tutte lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora tutte rotte larghe ciascuna ¾ Unaltro tazone grande de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato de azuro dentro et de fora de fogliagi et in mezo del fondo nce sono dej animalj largo pL/ 1 rotto alo labro Unaltro tazone senza piede de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro de fora de una vita et dentro al fondo uno schisso de azuro rotta alo labro largo pL/ 1

Uno baciletto de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato de azuro dentro et de fora de fogliagi con suo labro, et alo fondo nce son due aguile con le ale aperte large pL/ 1 ¼ 207V Porcellana

cassa taliana bianca rustica n. 64

Unaltra taza de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro rotta da due bande alj labri larga pL/ 1 Due latre taccette de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora a luna vi e uno drago nel fondo et a laltro nce e uno animale colcato che volta la testa ale groppe tutte due rotte alj labri assaj larghe ciascuna ¾ de pL/ Uno bacile de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato de azuro tutto rotto in sei pezi largo pL/ 1 ¾ Quarantanove pezi de porcellana bianca fra grandj et piccolj tuttj lavoratj de azuro che erano tutte taccette grande et piccole 208R Porcellana

una altra casse de n. 46

298

APPENDICES

Et primo uno piatto grande de porcellana verde con suo labro retorto in su incanellato dentro et de fora tutto lisso largo de traverso pL/ 1 2/3 Un altro piatto piu grande de porcellana verde con suo labro uno poco torto in su incanellato dentro et dintorno et al fondo piano dove ce sono alcunj fogliagi et de fora lisso largo pL/ 1 ¾ Unaltro piatto grande de porcellana verde con suo labro uno poco torto in su incanalato dentro et al fondo et piano ombrato co’ alcunj fogliagi et de fora tutto piano largo pL 1 2/3 de bona mesura Unaltro piatto grande de porcellana verde con suo labro uno poco torto in su incanalato alo intorno et al fondo et piano et de fora tutto piano largo pL 1 2/3 Un altro piatto piu piccolo de porcellana verde con suo orlo et dentro accanellato et al fondo certj lavori et tutto schietto de fora largo pL/ 1 1/3 de bona mesura. 208v Porcellana

cassa taliana de n 46

Unaltro piatto mezano de porcellana verde con suo orlo et dentro incanellata alo intorno al fondo fatto de lavori à modo de frasche ligate insieme et alo intorno de fora et incanellato largo pL/ 1 1/3 de bona mesura Unaltro piatto grande de porcellana verde con suo orlo et alo intorno dentro tutto acanellato et al simile de fora et alo fondo lavorato de fogliagi largo pL/ 1 ¾ Una scafarea grande de porcellana verde piana et alo fondo et ombrata de fogliamj largo pL/ 1 2/3 Unaltra scafarea grande de porcellana verde tutta lavorata dentro alo intorno de fogliamj et al fondo fattj ad guadrettj et de fora e piano largo pL/ 2 manco uno dito Unaltra scafarea grande de porcellana verde tutta lavorata dentro alo intorno de fogliagi et al fondo fatta ad guadrettj et de fora e piano largo pL/ 1 7/8 209R Porcellana

cassa taliana n. 46

Uno piatto piccolo con suo labro torto alo in su de porcellana verde dentro a incanellato alo intorno et al fondo con una rosa large pL 1 1/8 Unaltro piatto piccolo de porcellana verde con suo orlo piano et de’tro e canellato alo intorno et al fondo in una rosa largo pL/ 1 Unaltro piattellletto piccolo de porcellana verde con suo orlo a cannallato lavorato alo intorno dentro de fogliamj et in mezo alo fondo lavoratj de certj guadrettj largo pL/1 Uno tianello de porcellana verde con suo labro tutto lavorato dentro et alo intorno a modo de uno groppo et al fondo co’ una rosa largo pL/ 7/8 Uno bacile de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato dentro et de fora de fogliamj de oro con suo orlo lo quale bacile e rotto da una banda con suo pezo largo pL/ 1 ½ de bona mesura 209V Porcellana

Cassa Taliana de n. 46

299

APPENDICES

Unaltro bacile simile de porcellana bianca de simile lavore con labra lo quale si e rotto da una banda et con soi pezi de simile largheza Unaltro bacile de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato dentro et de fora de fogliagi de azuro et oro con suo labro rotto in tre pezi largj pL/ ½ con soi pezi. Uno vaso de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato de fogliamj de azuro stretto dalo fondo et ala testa e grosso tondo alto pL/ 1 ¼ rotto incollato Uno fiasco de porcellana verde con sue maniche et duj anellj dentro ale maniche lavorate de opera de relevo de una vida con suo pede alto pL/ 1 ¼ scarso Unaltro fiasco de porcellana bianca con sua manica et collo et pede tutto lavorato de azuro de certj fogliamj con suo coperchio pL/ 1 1/8 con tutto el piede 210R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana de n. 46

Uno bocale de porcellana azura con lo manico rotto in duj pezi et puzo ombrezato con oro altro pL/ Uno fiaschetto quadro de porcellana azura con suo puzo rotto con suo pede alto pL/ ¾ Unaltra cassa Taliana de n. 37

Et primo una fisina grande de porcellana bianca per tenere confetione, da pie, et da capo, e fatto de otto faze et al corpo et sono certj serpentj et ocellj voltanj et doi teste dale bande de lione tutta lavorata de fogliamj azuri largo ala bocca pL/ 2/3 Alto 1 2/3 scarso Unaltra fissina tonda de porcellana bianca da tenore confetione aldabasso e stretta et ala testa et anchora stretta tutta lavorata de fiorunj et frasche co’ certj ocelj volantj co’ due teste dale bande tutto lavorata de azuro et ala boccaglia e la vita [mita?] scomtonata co’ soi pezi che sono sette li qualj stan’o dentro al vaso largo ala bocca p/L ½ alto pL/ 1 ½ de bona mesura 210V Porcellana

Cassa Taliana de n. 37

Uno vaso grande de porcellana verde a lantigua lo corpo a modo de lancella lo collo alto la bocca molto sparsa et scontorata antiguamente alto lo vaso p/L 2 et uno dito largo ala bocca pL/ 7/8 et aldabasso a canellato Uno piatto grande de porcellana verde con suo labro steso piano lavorato in lo fondo de certe fogliagi largo pL/ 1 7/8 Uno piatto mezano de porcellana verde con suo labro torto alo in su lavorate dentro alo intorno a canalettj et alo fondo et piano et similmente da fore largo pL/ 1/3 Unaltro piatto de porcellana verde con suo labro steso con dece rosette de sopra ditto labro con certj lavori dentro de fogliagi et de fora piano largo pL/ 1 1/3 Unaltro piatto piu piccolo de porcellana verde con suo labro a canalettj dentro et de fora alo fondo e piano largo pL/ 1 et uno dito 211R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana de n. 37

300

APPENDICES

Una scafarea copputo de porcellana fatta a canalettj de fora et dentro con una rosetta alo fondo larga pL/ 1 ¼ Unaltra scafarea copputa de porcellana verde senza labra lavorata dentro de certe frasche con una rosa alo fondo larga pL/ 1 ¼ Uno refrescaturo de porcellana bianca con suo pede lavorata de fora et dentro de azuro de fogliame e fatto a trunchj largo pL/ 1 et uno dito Tri coperchj de porcellana bianca duj grandj de fiscina et uno piccolo che serve per uno altro vaso tuttj lavoratj de azuro 211V

Porcellana

Una cassa Taliana de n. 53

Et primo una fissina grande de porcellana bianca con due maniche fatte a modo de lacertone con 4 teste alo ventre stretta aldabasso et in testa tutta lavorata de azuro de fogliagi de piu sorte con certj animalj velenatj et serpi larga la bocca tre quartj de pL/ et alta con tutto il piede pL 2 et uno dito. Unaltra fissina grade de porcellana bianca stretta al dabasso et in testa senza maniche et senza teste lavorata tutta de azuro dove e depinto in lo vedro uno serpente che piglia quasi tutto il corpo larga de bocca pL/ 1 manco uno dito alto co’ tutto il pede pL/ 2 et uno dito. Uno bocale de porcellana azura con suo manica et pizo tutto lavorato de oro con certe fogliagi con suo coperchio tutto azuro senza oro Unaltro bocale de porcellana azura con sua manica et puzo lavorato de oro con certj fogliagi el quale e uno poco guasto loro con suo coperchio alto pL/ 1 212R porcellana Cassa Taliana de n. 53

Unoaltro bocale simile de porcellana azura con suo pizo et la manica rotta el quale nce ne manca uno pezo lato pL/ 1 senza coperchio Duj bocalj piu piccolj de porcellana azura con sue maniche et piza con uno poco de oro, el quale e gustato alto ¾ ciascuno uno have el coperchio, et laltro no’ Due taze de porcellana bianca senza pede con uno poco de lavoro alo fondo bianco sopra bianco largo pL/ 1 ciascuno scarso Tre piatttellatj de porcellana verde con suo orlo piano ombraztj dentro de certj lavorj verdj largo ciascuno 7/8 Unoaltro piattelletto piccolo de porcellana verde de otto faze ombrazato dentro largo ¾ Una scafarea de porcellana verde tutta rotta in pezi li qualj pezi sono pi essere che sono tuttj insieme fra grandj et piccolj 16 pezi 212V Porcellana

Cassa Taliana de n. 53

Uno bacile de porcellana verde tutto rotto in pezi qualj peziosano tuttj insieme fra grandj et piccolj pezi 12 Unaltra cassa de ligname rustico de n. 71 Et primo duj carrafunj de porcellana uno tutto bianco et laltro bianco lavorato de azuro de fogliagi alta pL/ 1 ¼ ciascuna co’ la bocca sparsa large ¼ de pL/ ciascuna de loro con suo pede

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APPENDICES

Due altre carrafe piccole de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro de certj fogliamj alto pL/ 1 scarso ciascuna con uno poco de pede Due altre carrafe de porcellana bianca con loro pede alta ciascaduno pL/ 1 et uno dito tutte lisse. 213 R Porcellana

Cassa rustica de n. 71

Duj bocalj de porcellana con loro maniche et pizo attaccatj al collo cio e uno tutto bianco et labro lavorato de azuro de fogliame alto lo bia’co pL/ 1 et due dita et laltro alto P/l 1 et uno dito Cinq/ bocalj de porcellana bianca con loro maniche et pizo attaccatj al collo tutte lavorate de azuro de certj fogliamj et altri lavori in tra lj qualj nce e uno rotto cio e lo pizo lo guale e in essere alto ciascuno pL/ ¾ Unaltro bocaletto picccolo de porcellana bianca con sua manica et pizo con alcune machie de oro alto pL/ ¾ Unaltro bocale de porcellana bianca con sua manica el quale nce manca lo pizo et uno poco amacchato lo corpo con uno poco de lavoro azuro con suo pede alto pL/ 1 scarso Uno bocale de porcellana verde con suo pezo et rotta la manica alto pL/ 7/8 con la bocca tonda con suo pede con lo corpo tondo 213V Porcellana

Cassa Taliana rustica de n. 71

Unaltra bocale de porcellana verde con sua manica et piso co’ certj lavori al corpo con uno poco de relevo de fogliamy alto pL/ 7/8 co’ sua bocca sparsa larga pL/ ¼ Unaltro bocale de porcellana verde con sua manica et piso amaccato [?] co’ lo corpo et la bocca guadra alto pL/ ¾ con suo pede Una carrafa con lo corpo tondo de porcellana bianca con suo collo lavorato de azuro de fogliazo alto co’ suo pede pL 1

Uno ingestara de porcellana bianca fatta a ferettj de tre sorte tutta lavorata de azuro de piu fogliamj co’ sua bocca sparsa de otto faze uno poco rotta alto pL/ 1 ¼ con suo pede et la bocca larga pL/ ¼ Unaltra ingestara de porcellana bianca con lo corpo tondo tutta lavorata de azuro de piu fogliamj con suo pede et la bocca sparsa alta pL 1 1/8 larga la bocca pL ¼ 214R Porcellana

casa Taliana rustica de n. 71

Unaltra ingestara de porcellana bianca co’ lo corpo tondo co’ suo pede et la bocca sparsa tutta lavorata de azuro alto pL/1 et la bocca large pL ¼ Unaltra carrafetta piccola de porcellana bianca tutta lavorata de azuro de piu fogliamj co’ la bocca sparsa uno poco rotta da una banda alta pL/ 2/3 larga la bocca pL 1/6 Unaltra carrafella con lo corpo tondo et lo collo longo de porcellana bianca tutta lavorata de azuro de piu fogliamj alto pL/ 2/3

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APPENDICES

Una ingestera ventruta fatta a modo de una croza de porcellana bianca con tutta lavorata de azuro de piu fogliamj co’ suo collo alto 3 dita alto pL/ 2/3 Uno coperchio de bocale de porcellana bianca tutto lavorato de azuro co’uno manico de uno vaso rotto de ditta porcellana 214V Porcellana

Cassa rustica de n. 71

Uno vaso a modo de navetta de porcellana bianca lavorata de’tro et de fora tutta de azuro longa pL/ ¾ Tre tastonj [tazonj?] senza pede de porcellana bianca lavoratj tuttj dentro et da fora de azura de piu fogliamj et ad uno nce e uno animale largo ciascuno pL/ 1 Due altri tastonj [tazonj?]de porcellana bianca tutte lavorate de azuro de’tro et de fora dentro nce e uno pavone ciascuno con certj fogliamj largo pL/ 1 scarso ciascuna Uno Tazone de porcellanca bianca lavorato de azuro con uno tro’co al fondo co’ certj fogliagi et de fora et dentro alo intorno nce e una vita large pL/ 1 de bona mesura Unaltro tazone de porcellana bianca lavorato dentro et de fora de certj fogliagi et in lo fondo nce duj animalj largo pl/ e scarso 215R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana rustica de n. 71

Unaltro tazone de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro raro in lo fondo nce e poco lavoro a modo de herbe et de fora una vita largo pL/ 1 manco uno dito Cinq/ tazette piccole de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro larga ciascuna mazo pL/ con lorolo giallo allo intorno Sette tazette de porcellana bianca senza pede tutte lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora cinq/ larghe ciascuna mezo pL/ et le altre due larghe pL/ 2/3 Tre altre taccette de porcellana bianca con uno poco de lavoro de azuro dentro et de fora larga le due mezo pL/ laltra larga mezo pL/ scarso Unaltra cassa taliana rustica de n. 69

Et primo doi tazonj de porcellana bianca tuttj lavoratj de azuro de fogliame dentro et de fora larghi de traverso pL/ 1 scarsetto 215V Porcellana

Cassa Taliana Rustica de n. 69

Quindice taze mezane de porcellana bianca tutte lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora de piu fogliagi larghe per traverso ciascheduna pL/ 5/6 in circa Quindice altre tazette mezano de porcellana bianca tutte lavoratj de azuro dentro et de fora de piu fogliame larghe per lo traverso pL/ 5/6 d/le guale nce ne e una rotta in duj pezi et incollata [in margin of entry below:] levate tre taze una per la s.re Regina et due per la S.re Infante che resta n. 12

Quindece altre tazette piu piccole de porcellana bianca tutte lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora de piu fogliamj larghe ciascuna pL/ ¾

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APPENDICES

Tre altre taze piu piccole de porcellana bianca tutte lavoratj de azuro dentro et de fora large ciascuna pL/ ¾ Tre altre taze piu piccole de porcellana bianca con lj labri tuttj in fora tutte lavorate de azuro de piu fogliamj larga pL/ 2/3 de bona mesura 216R Porcellana

Cassa taliana rustica de n. 69

Otto altre tazette de porcellana bianca con lj labri tortj in fora lavoratj de azuro de fogliamj et animalj de piu sorte tra le guale nce ne e due che hano lorlo giallo large ciascuna pL/ ¾ Cinq altre taze co’ lj labri voltj in fora de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro de piu fogliamj et animalj larghe ciascuna pL/ 2/3 le’tre et laltre pL/ 3/5 Quattro scutelle senza labri dj porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro de fora et de dentro larghe due pL/ ¾ et latlre due pL/ 2/3 intra le guale nce ne e una uno poco rotta alo labro co’ loro pezi Due altre scutelle piu grande de porcellana bianca tutte lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora de piu fogliamj large per lo traverso pL/ 7/8 con loro pede 216V Porcellana

Cassa taliana Rustica de n. 69

Due altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro luna fornita dentro et de fora et laltra no’ tutta fornita large pL/ 2/3 ciascuna con loro pede Quattro scutelle de porcellana bianca senza lavoro larghe ciascuna pL/ 2/3 la una et le altre tre larghe pL/ 2/3 scarsi Cinq/ scotelle senza labro de porcellana bianca lavorate tutte de azuro dentro et de fora larghe ciascuna pL/ ½ Sei altre scutelle simile de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro de fora et dentro c’ alcunj schietj con suo pede largo ciascuno pL/ ½ Tre altre scutelle simile de porcellana bianca de simile lavoro et de simile largheza 217R Porcellana

Cassa Taliana Rustica de n. 69

Tre altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavorata de fora fornite tutte de lavore de azuro et dentro al fondo a modo de una rosa larghe ciascuna pL /2/3 de bona mesura Tre altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora larghe ciascuna pL/ 2/3 co’ loro pede Quatro altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro dentro et de fora larghe pL/ ½ de bona mesura de ele guale nce ne e una un poco scomtonata Due altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro dentor et de fora con loro pede larga ciascheduna pL/ ½ al bona mesura Tre altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro de fogliame et vite, et dentro con alcunj beschizi larghe ciascuna pL/ ½

304

APPENDICES

217V Porcellana

Cassa taliana Rustica de n.69

Due scotelle de porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro de piu fogliamj L’una piu fonda de laltra, larga ciascuna pL/ ½ de Bona mesura Quatro altre scotelle de porcellana bianca lavorata de azuro de fora et dentro larga ciascuna pL/ ½ Sei altre scotelle porcellana bianca lavorate de azuro dentro de certe vite larghe ciascuna pL ½ de bona mesura co’ loro pede Cinq/ scutelle de porcellana bianca tute lavorate de azuro de’tro et de fora larghe ciasuna pL/ ½ con loro pede Cinq/ altre scutelle de porcellana bianca lavora de azuro dentro et de fora de certj fogliagi larga ciasuna pL/ ½ con suo pede III INVENTORY OF TH E STANZA DELLE POR CELLANE, FERRARA, 155 9. BIB AR IST ANTO NELLI, 96 3, VI

1R. Robbe ch/ sono nella Stanza dalle Porcellane Sula scaffa piu bassa scudelle fra grande et piccolo n. 50 Sula scaffa di mezzo fra vasi, scudelle et piatti n. 77 Sula scaffa piu alta pezzi. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . ..n. 55

Robbe in sciate da fodro de lpasso r[?] zu[?] Como p/ l saracho Vasi di porcelana diversi. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . . n. 65 Vasi di rami et ottone varij inf. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .n. 46

Sopral’armaro vicino all’uscio Vasi lavorate alla damaschina. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .n. 5 Cadinelle bianchi. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .n. 7[?] Vasi bianchi. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . . n. 3 Vasi diversati. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . . n. 3

Vasi turchini. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. n.2 Dintro l’amaro suditto Uno mortaio col pistelle Uno vaso di argento p[er] far’ acqua d’agneli a bagnomania Tre vasi di piombo vuoti Un gra’ pezzo de balzoino Libri di ricete n. 8

Quatro tavolete de noci p[er] mettersi medaglie de’tro Tre vasetti di pietra, uno verdi et duo variati Due tavolette de legno, et uno vaso p[er] mettere p[er]fumo da Bruscia Beszoino trido Una casciata

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APPENDICES

Otto vasi di rame da acqua grandi 1V Duo corteli da cusina Una boccatina co’ olio di citrabene grand e quasi vuota Et nella cassa delle camisce Robbe ch’ sono fra li duo armorij Quatro vaseti co’ co’fecti di fructi cioe zinzaro, miradolani, cetrini, mira chedeli, ebolanit nuci moscati nelle quali cioe poca quantita d’ogni sorte Un vaso maggior’ co’ mirabolani chedel Due guastade ad acqua di canella verde Sopra l’armario co’signo alla fenestra Duo vasi bianchi Uno tezzoni bianco e turchino Duo vasi divisati [diversi?] grandi e lunghezza Duo vasi turchino uno di quale e poco d’orato Uno vaso nigro et uno berretino Uno vaso di maiolica Uno vasetto rosso variato Una lurna antica Uno vaso grandi de porcelana verde Uno piccolo de mamesa [?marmoro] Uno scudellino curali Dentro l’armario co’signo alla finestra Vasi di vetro coppi et tazze de piu sorte Vasi de rame p[er] metter’ acqua di odori 2r Dui Tucti di vetro coerti de cuici [?cuoio] negro Quattro scudelle Tre tazze discquali

di porcellana

Tri tazze verde maggiori Piatellati bianchi et turchini n. 19 Duo simili maggiori Tri scudelloti bianchi Dui scudelli turchini et bianche Nel p[rim]o banco presso la finestra Uno martaio di metallo, un pestello di ferro ch’ la spatola de ferro Uno paro di forma [?] de paternostre Nel banco co’ligno Bossolli et albarelli di maiolica faeintina n.40 Nel banco co’ligno Piu vasatti di vetro di poco valor’

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APPENDICES

Nel banco co’ligno Boccalini da olio di piu sorte vuoti Un improzo di uno piro b/ ganotti [?] Banco co’ligno al p.to Uno scatellane [scudellani?] co’ sapone damaschino Una ampola di vetro cop[er]ta di vinci[?] nova Una credenza co’ catena de ferro et duo desi da co’gliale [?conciglia] Una zigatta [?] de rame 2v un banco di cipresso lavorate Uno vasi di uno bossole de ligno Banco conlegno Dessegni di piu sorte antique et moderne Banco vicino all’uscia Cucchiar’ d’ottone n. 4 co’ ciachi d’acqua d’odore et sendalle co’ caponiati n. 20, uno albarello de saponi Sopra il banco ad canton’ della stanza Una fontana de serpentino ed la cassa de ligno et uno gra’ vaso di vetro di sopra facto a reticella Robbe che sono disotto et disopra d’lla tavola Una testola di ferro Chiavadure nove n. 3

Uno calamaro d’osso di piu colori Una macina col macimater de porfido Una casscita d’argento de noce co’ bilanzo d’argento et pese d’ottone Uno Tapieto tarmazo Una scatolla co’ sette mazzole et una rama di mes sella di seta Dui bancheti et duo strumento de legno Uno strume’ [to] e stampar pastilli di profumo Ebei [?] tutti d’ottone Io Hercole Tassone confesso di havere recevuto dal M.go S.r Alessandro Fiascho le sopre scritte robe di com[mis]s[ion]e di S[ua] ecc[lenz]ia p[er] farne la sua volontade Adi 15 x/bre 1559 IV INVENTOR Y O F THE ESTE COU RT SPEZI ER IA, FER RAR A, 1535. ASMo, SPEZIERIA 2

[ripped at top] Dio adi .5. de feveraro 1535 2r Inventario dele robbe ch/ se trovano ne la speciaria d/l nro’ Illmo Sig.re i cap’[ripped] gubernata p[er] m.ro Iac[am]o da Signa speciale v3 se alui consignate

APPENDICES

Ne la stancia dove se fa fuogo le robbe in/pte v3 Uno morthale de bronzo grande novo il Mazore da P.xi s. Insuxo come il suo Pistone de ferro Duj morthali de bronzo mezani de lib/ 22 luno co’ li soi pistoni de ferro Uno morthalino picolo da Muschio de otto’ de lib/ 3 onz 6 co’ i suo pestone de otto’ Uno morthale di preda co’ il suo pe/ de legno e pistone dopio grande p[er] fare Marzapani Quatro caldiere di Ramo poste ne li soi forneli de tenuta de Map/le ½ In fina i’ 4 murate nel murro Cinque caze de otto[ne] de diverse grandeze in manegate Doe caze da le maneze di ramo di una gra’deza egualle Tre caze forade de ramo picole et una forada grande Quatro caze de otto[ne] forade due grande et due picole Doe cazole de otto[ne] picole in manegate Doe cazole de ramo co’ soi Manegi Tri cadineli de ramo picoli Duj zestolhoni da fuogo uno gra’de et uno picolo Una spediera picola Uno paro de Balanze picole cu’ uno marcho de lb/ 3

Tri Dischi uno grande aserat i’torno, uno mezano di nogara, uno picolo co’ uno buxo i’ mezo Doe asse di nogara da itiai’re copeta e citornato Una Piffarola Uno malmoro di preda de piedi j ½ p[er] quadro Doe ceste da pexare co’ il suo fuxo. Centanari e pixi Quatro criveli de legno Duj sedaci da codognada Sei sedaci da coprire cadinele Uno thapedo de bixelo Tre capse vode Septe vaxi daxedo de vedro longi et duj tondi Una spartura picola Duj vaxi de vedro tondi et una bozza de vedro Duj pirriotti de lhata uno grande et uno picolo Doe capsete una da specie et lalatra da farina 2v continauta ditto robe Tre orne de preda de tenuda de lib/ [ripped] 200 luna piene de cidri fatti i questo anno Tri cadini b[ian]c[h]i de preda et uno forado Auatro vaxi de preda biancha vodi

307

308

APPENDICES

Uno armario grande co’ codegna e cudug’ zeladia e marinata In tutto tra mastelete e schatole n.ro 151

Uno cadino b[ian]co grande pieno de Codug’ in zeladia Uno cadino b[ian]co piu de mezo de persege confete i. zuc[ccher]o Dodese cirele de codognada ala zenovese i’ uno crivello Uno cadino de codug.l asutti i’ mielle Uno cadino de codug.l asutti i’ zuc[cher]o Duj piateli pieni de gnochi de nespole Una stadiera co’ la sua balanza Una massa de pionbo ch’ va al torchiolo da li vermexeli Tri tripiedi grandi Uno ferro ala stada Due spatole di ferro et due de legno Uno parro di cexare Una paleta. Uno paro di moiete uno mantexe Tri Triangolo grandi Hove tri’pie de picoli Duj fieri da fare cetornato Uno cadino de legno grande da ronpere zuc[cher]o co’ il cortelo e mazo Tut[t]o fino panni 20 detto e luno il quali ne carchata ala intrata de la Spezieria Nela stancia dela stuva le robe infrte// v3 Vasi b[ian]c[h]i da condeti grandi n.ro 34 co’ lib. 200 de cidri I’ zuc[cher]o Vasi g[ran]di de tenuta de uno Map/lo da conditi. Tri.b.l.et uno Turchino Vasi g[ran]di Bianchi da aqua n. 32 ne li quali se ge ritrova aque m[ie]le ch/ 200 nel circha Vasi b[ian]ca Lavorati de Turchino mezani n. 21 Vasi b[ian]ca lavorati de turchino picoli n. 19 Vasi b[ian]ca schieti n. 10

Tre cuogeme grande da aqua roxa de ramo Tri vaxi de ramo de le mita de uno Map/lo da aqua roxa Tri alb[are]lli pieni de Zuc[cher]o roxa de lib/ 4 luno virdi Tri fiaschi de ramo grandi co/ lib. 25 de aq.a roxa velcircha Uno cantaro de ramo Duj pirrioti de ramo 3R Continua su [ripped] Quatro bozo [ripped] da preda piene de aqua m[iel]a Tri alb.li grandi bianchi uno deli quali scie mezo de cidri i’ Zuc[cher]o Una zucha de vedro gra’de gra’de

APPENDICES

Una orna grande co’ lib/ 25 de nuxe i’ zuc[cher]o Dentro Uno Descho aserato in torno Una capsa co’ maste lete de vedro n. 400

Uno vaxo de preda de tenuta de lib. 1200 de Miele nelo qualle Se ge ritrova da lib. 200 de Miele Nela stancia dal chanbicho abagno maria’ v3 le robe infr/ v3 Uno torchiolo da olio fornito co’ il suo bastone di ferro Una asse gra’de da pestare herbe co’ li soi cavaleti Una thavola grande co’ li soi cavaleti Quatro capse vode et una piena de ochij doe fenestre Tre alter capse co’ Dup.ri b[ianc]a n. 501 et torciti b[ianc]a n. 260

Cirche de cirra biancha lb/ 70 nel circah de le quale ne cargato la speciaria Senza vero lb/ 12 nel c’ircha e gome rabieri lib./ 30 Uno casone da vedrame pieno de bozze de vedro e bochalire da chanbicare Duj banchoni da metere a capelo Una zerla da spale Nela stancia grande le robe in[fraschrite] v3 Uno Descho co’ capsete 14 di confectione venute de spagna et ultr le capsete schatole 17 piene di Confecione Uno cadino grande piu de mezo de persege confete i’ Miele Sie sedaci grandi da meter confecione al solle co’ le sue asse Una bala de vedro athachata i’ mezo la stuva Assse da metere suxo persege Nela stancia gra’de de la capseli De piombo el robe infte/ v3 Tredese capeli de piombo co’ le sue padele n. 13

Uno torchiolo grande da fare vermexeli Uno caldarone grande di ramo co’ tre cuogeme dentro a bagno maria Uno Map/lo de preda grande ala bolognese Quatro testole di ferro picole da fuogo Quatro fieri da serare fornaxele Uno vaxo da fare cira b[ian]ca de preda co’ dui caldari de ramo muradi nel murro Quatro cazoni gra’de gra’de de ramo Duj cazoni mezani de ramo Quatro cazone picoli de ramo Doe cae forade gra’de de ramo

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INDEX

albarello, 1, 3, 7, 84, 95, 117, 169, 196, 199, 201, 206, 210, 216, 224, 233, 250, 273 Alberti, Leon Battista, 1, 65, 182, 277 alfabeguer, 17, 20, 78, 236 alla damaschina. See damascene Antonello da Messina, 1–3, 17, 221, 232, 236, 271 apothecary. See spezieria arabesque, 48, 59, 61–4, 74–6, 86, 90, 96, 221–2, 276, 278. See also ornament Aragona, Alfonso I d’, 12, 204, 226, 236, 263, 265, 280 Aragona, Alfonso II d’, 30, 40, 46, 138, 186, 204, 237, 270 Aragona, Beatrice d’, 187, 210, 270, 279 Aragona, Don Alfonso d’, 37 Aragona, Don Ferrante d’, 93, 138, 291 Aragona, Eleonora d’, 6, 48, 72, 77, 87, 106, 158, 168, 186, 205, 212, 225, 233, 237, 239, 268 inventories, 72, 77, 93, 111, 129, 161 Aragona, Federico d’, 239 Aragona, Ferrante d’, 33, 36–7, 44, 46, 107, 204 aromatics, 3, 7, 22, 37, 44, 94, 106–7, 114, 116, 137, 165, 170, 176, 197, 199, 205, 209–51 frankincense, 105, 107, 114, 128, 216, 218, 220, 222 myrrh, 105, 107, 114, 128, 216, 218, 220, 222–3, 249 Balzo, Isabella del, 138 Bellini, Giovanni 6, 131, 150, 155, 159–60, 171, 182, 188, 250 Feast of the Gods, 150, 157 Cappella Pontano. See Naples Caracciolo del Sole, Sergianni. See Naples, Caracciolo chapel Carafa, Diomede, 8, 47, 107, 137, 231, 266–71. See also Naples, Palazzo Carafa censers. See incense Chinese porcelain. See porcelain Corvinus, Matthias, 77, 210, 270, 279 cowries, 10, 80 cultural transfer, 17, 21, 71, 122, 223 cultural translation, 17, 66, 150, 265 Cyprus, 36–8, 226

damascene, 17, 37, 48, 74–8, 86, 90–1, 94, 118, 129, 168, 209, 222, 224, 226, 228, 230–2. See also Mamluks, metalware damaschina. See damascene Decembrio, Angelo, 133, 220 disegno, 6, 91, 156, 178–88, 278 Dürer, Albrecht, 87, 89, 124–8 ekphrasis, 45, 50–1, 159 Equicola, Mario, 159, 182–3 Este Ercole d’, 41, 76, 129, 136 Este, Alfonso d’, 6, 77, 129, 131, 150, 207–8, 245, 278 Este, Ercole II d’, 167 Este, Ippolito d’, 167, 178, 209 Este, Isabella d’, 81, 109, 156, 159, 167, 178, 181, 210, 220, 233 Este, Leonello d’, 133–4, 157, 220 Ferrara, 11, 40–1, 45, 48–9, 72, 77, 79, 93, 113, 134, 138, 151, 154, 158, 166, 178, 180–2, 205, 210, 220, 231, 237, 245, 250, 264, 270 camerini, 3, 6–7, 135, 151–88, 205, 208, 250–2 spezieria, 6, 162, 199, 210, 242, 251 Stanza delle Porcellane, 6, 151, 166–9, 209, 304 Florence, 11–12, 33, 35, 39, 73, 113, 137, 211, 239. See also Medici fragrances. See aromatics, incense framing. See mounts; parergon Gaignières-Fonthill vase, 119, 121 Galen, 203, 212, 220, 223, 246 glassware, 46, 71, 132, 135, 161, 172, 178–9 Global Renaissance, 8 Hay, Jonathan, 3, 66, 72, 119, 121, 124, 133, 176 hybridity, 19. See also objects croisés Imperato, Ferrante, 186, 188, 203 incense, 94, 171, 176, 199, 209, 214–30, 248–9, 251 burners, 3, 75, 86–91, 126, 129, 199, 203, 208–10, 215, 221, 224–30, 252, 269 ingegno, 72, 90, 184, 278 Islamic art, 9, 61–4, 87 knot patterns (gruppi), 87, 92–4, 181, 246

335

336

INDEX

lapidaries, 135, 213 Latour, Bruno, 153 leather cases (etui), 92, 124 Leonardo da Vinci, 87, 93 Lippi, Filippino, 233, 240, 277 Lorenzo da Pavia, 73, 82, 178, 220 lustreware, 17, 22, 68–9, 78, 184, 239 maiolica, 74, 78, 117–18, 129, 161–2, 165, 169, 180, 184, 187, 209, 225 Mamluks, 10, 16, 32–9, 71, 107, 205, 226, 280 metalware, 75, 91, 226, 232. See also damascene, incense burners Qaitbay, 32–5, 38–9, 67, 73, 82, 118, 224 Mantegna, Andrea, 72, 105–9, 128–9, 151, 177, 216, 276 mediators, 3, 23, 31, 80, 106, 122, 230, 264 Medici, Francesco de’, 136, 152, 176, 246 Medici, Lorenzo de’, 34, 73, 117–18, 221, 224, 226 memory, 177, 181, 214–16, 246, 248 metalware. See Mamluks, metalware Milan, 33–4, 38, 41, 43, 47, 83, 87, 94, 129, 204, 206, 214, 230, 237, 245 Sala delle Asse, 87, 93–4 Montefeltro, Federigo da, 133, 152, 175–6, 248 moresca/o, 17, 35, 48, 74, 82, 91, 109, 118 mounts, 14, 20, 22, 66, 110–11, 118 Murano. See glassware Naples, 2, 8–14, 31–3, 40–1, 65, 137–79, 167, 204, 221, 237, 263–89 Brancaccio chapel, 273, 279 Cappella Pontano, 7, 273–9 Caracciolo chapel, San Giovanni a Carbonara, 7, 271–3 Castel Capuano, 45–7, 129, 204–5, 210, 212 Castel Nuovo, 30, 33, 40, 42, 45–8, 221, 265–6, 276 customs registers, 85, 281–3 historiography, 2, 10–11, 14, 272 Palazzo Carafa, 7, 267–70 spezieria, 47, 204–5, 212, 238 objets croisés, 19, 70, 75–6, 84, 124 ornament, 5, 68–9, 277–8 Ottoman Empire, 32–3, 40–6, 65, 83, 280 Bayezed II, 42 Iznik, 84, 118, 170, 172 Mehmed II, 32, 40, 46, 64, 248 Süleiman, 84, 64 Topkapı Palace, 14, 36, 121, 169–70, 207, 222, 235 tughra, 83–5, 242, 281

parergon, 14, 65, 122, 152, 175, 275 perfume. See aromatics; incense perfume burner. See incense pharmacy. See spezieria Philip the Good, 280 Piccolpasso, Cipriano, 59, 94, 108, 116, 123, 153, 185–6, 188 Pliny, 122, 130, 134, 171, 177, 186, 220–1, 245–6, 276 Polo, Marco, 80, 111, 130, 136 Pontano, Giovanni, 7, 29, 39, 68, 72, 107, 130, 187, 273. See also Naples, Cappella Pontano porcelain alla porcellana, 77 biancho sopra biancho, 77, 180–1, 299 celadon, 93, 107, 113–14, 135, 139–40, 168–9 Chinese, 3, 6, 10, 14–16, 20, 22, 34–7, 46, 55, 73, 79–82, 85, 93, 104–45, 150–5, 164, 166–9, 181, 204, 209, 221, 224, 233, 235–6, 264, 269 counterfeit, 131, 181 damascene, 118, 168 manufacture, 10, 80–1, 111, 129–30 mounts. See mounts pseudoscript, 81, 201, 242 senses, 153–7, 164, 176–7, 183, 197, 199, 215, 221, 226, 235, 248, 251 Sforza, Ippolita, 46–7, 138, 198, 206, 221, 237 Sforza, Ludovico, 41, 83, 94, 245–6 spezieria, 6–7, 198–210, 212, 222, 237–8, 242–51, 281. See also Naples, Ferrara spices. See aromatics; incense Strozzi, Filippo, 77, 132, 268, 277 studiolo, 2–3, 46, 50, 67, 107, 132, 134, 151, 156–8, 170, 175–6, 205, 210, 226, 233, 237, 246, 268 Tagliente, Giovanni Antonio, 90, 94 textiles, 34, 37, 39–40, 49, 72, 77, 94, 113, 137, 206 tiles, 1, 7–8, 20, 78, 180, 240, 263–81 Neapolitan, 20, 197, 270–83 Valencian, 20, 78, 263–70 Titian, 159–60, 164–5, 171, 182, 208 tughra. See Ottoman Empire Tunisia, 11, 12, 32–4, 39, 128, 135, 138, 227 turchesca (alla), 42–3, 60, 127, 235 Urbino, 50, 74, 95, 175, 187, 208. See also Montefeltro Vasari, Giorgio, 2, 11, 50, 86–7, 156, 184, 246 Vasco da Gama, 81, 135–6 Veneto-Saracenic. See Mamluks, metalware