Armeggerie, Wedding Chests and Battles in Fifteenth-century Florence

Battles constituted a wider category of Florentine cultural production during the fifteenth century than is sometimes realised. Staged battles and actual war inspired poets. Armeggerie, that is festive representations of battles, were recorded in terze rime, a form with elevated poetic aspirations, and the jousts of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici were immortalised by Luigi Pulci and Angelo Poliziano respectively. The sack of Volterra by Federigo da Montefeltro was described in a poem by Naldo Naldi, which was probably set to music when it was first heard at the installation of Federigo as Florentine capitano on 29 June 1472.[endnoteRef:1] Indeed, the period saw the rise of a new musical genre – the so-called ‘battle piece’ – that would remain popular into its heyday during the seventeenth century. Heinrich Isaac, a German composer resident in Florence, wrote a four-part work ‘alla battaglia’ that was likely first performed during carnival in 1488.[endnoteRef:2] Battles of various forms engaged poets, musicians and festaiuoli. [1: Timothy J. McGee, 'Alla Battaglia: Music and Ceremony in Fifteenth-Century Florence', Journal of the American Musicological Society, XXXVI (1983), 298.] [2: Francis W. Kent, 'Heinrich Isaac's Music in Laurentian Florence: New Documents', in H. Heinze, et al., eds, Die Lektüre der Welt (Frankfurt: Lang, 2004), 367-71; Blake Wilson, 'Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines', Journal of Musicology, 23 (2006), 97-152.]

Painters of wedding chests also gave form to battles, ancient and modern, much like the organisers of armeggerie. Indeed, the two forms were sometimes closely related to one another. The marriage of Bernardo Rucellai to Nannina de’ Medici in 1466, for example, included a display of war-like prowess, as young men pretended to fight in the streets. Bernardo’s father recorded that they battled (‘armeggierono’) their way from the Palazzo Rucellai to the Palazzo Medici.[endnoteRef:3] A pair of battle cassoni was also commissioned at the time to decorate their nuptial chamber, showing the Battle of Zama and the Triumph of Scipio (figs. 1 & 2).[endnoteRef:4] Now variously attributed to the workshops of Apollonio di Giovanni or Paolo Uccello, the two frontals depict the Roman defeat of the Carthaginians under Hannibal in 202 BCE and the subsequent triumphal entry of Scipio Africanus Major into Rome. Perhaps surprising, the festivities surrounding the union of the Rucellai and Medici households included two battles, one staged on the street and the other represented in paint. [3: Alessandro Perosa, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo zibaldone - I (London: Warburg Institute, 1960), 28-29. ] [4: Laurence B. Kanter, 'The 'cose piccole' of Paolo Uccello', Apollo, 152 (2000), 15, 20 n. 6. ]

Whether as art historians, literary critics or musicologists, we tend to consider recurrent themes, such as battles, in relation to the medium with which we are most familiar, despite the representational qualities that are common to image, text and sound that might suggest links between them. As historians, we sometimes miss structural similarities between actual events and represented ones by maintaining a strict division between the realms of experience and depiction. But, as a case in point, the word ‘battaglia’ in the fifteenth century could refer to both festive stagings of battles and war itself.[endnoteRef:5] My purpose, here, is to consider battles as a single, representational type by examining two case studies, an armeggeria related to the Benci and Strozzi families and a pair of cassone frontals commissioned on the occasion of a wedding that joined the Vettori and the Rucellai. Images on Florentine cassoni have long been associated with the city’s festival culture, but the nature of their relationship remains murky. Battle frontals themselves remain understudied, despite recent interest in cassoni more generally.[endnoteRef:6] A mock battle and an image on a piece of furniture are clearly different endeavours and they were viewed in distinct contexts. But the very fact that the Benci-Strozzi armeggeria and the Vettori-Rucellai cassoni were entirely unrelated to one another makes them useful in exposing underlying structural and functional similarities between the two types. They were both battles of a sort and, as will become apparent, they had related socio-political motivations. [5: The statutes of the Guelph Party, written in 1420, describe the joust that they sponsored on the feast of Saint Dionysius as a ‘battle’ in both Latin and the vernacular (‘pugna’ and ‘bataglia’); Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Capitani di Parte Guelfa, rosso, 3, 29r (Latin statutes); 4, 41v (vernacular). Similarly, the violent contests between young men held at carnival were described as ‘battaglie di sassi’; see Giovanni Ciappelli, Carnevale e quaresima: comportamenti sociali e cultura a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997), 123-36. The word ‘battle’ was, of course, also used to describe actual war: the dispatch sent back to the Florentine government by their commissari the day after the battle of Anghiari uses the words ‘batagle [sic]’ and ‘zuffa’, skirmish; see Barbara Hochstetler Meyer, 'Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari: Proposals for Some Sources and a Reflection', Art Bulletin, 66 (1984), 370.] [6: Between 2008 and 2010, for example, no fewer than four exhibitions were dedicated to cassoni, in part or in whole: A. Bayer, ed., Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (exh. cat. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008); Cristelle Baskins et al., The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2008); Caroline Campbell, Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence: The Courtauld Wedding Chests (exh. cat. London, The Courtauld Gallery, 2009); Claudio Paolini et al., eds., Virtù d'amore: pittura nuziale nel quattrocento fiorentino (exh. cat. Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia, 2010). ]

The Benci-Strozzi Armeggeria

On the night of the 14 February 1464, Bartolomeo Benci asked eight of his young companions to arrange a festa, in order that he might ‘acquire more grace’ from Marietta di Lorenzo degli Strozzi, granddaughter of Messer Palla di Nofri.[endnoteRef:7] It was carnival, which unlike the popular festivities of San Giovanni, had come to see feudal forms enacted for the advancement of old, established families.[endnoteRef:8] Each noble giovane was accompanied by at least thirty pages bearing torches and wearing hose below gonellini – short, ruffled garments – which bore the heraldic devices of their master. Banded into groups, the young men left separately from their respective homes and converged on the Palazzo Benci, where they conferred a baton on Bartolomeo as lord and captain of the company, following the process of conferring command onto a condottiere. They dined together, before escorting Bartolomeo to the house of Marietta, in the company of many hundred pageboys. She was, in all likelihood, living in one of Strozzi houses around the area of the old Piazza degli Strozzi, which is where the armeggeria probably occurred.[endnoteRef:9] Accompanying Bartolomeo and his entourage was a ‘triumph of love’, presumably a type of festival float that required many men to carry. Twenty braccia high, it was decorated with spiritelli d’amore, together with the arms of the Benci and the device of Lorenzo di Palla Strozzi, who was the father of Marietta. Crowning the entire construction was an enflamed, sanguineous heart. Those who saw it, were ‘dazzled [abagliato]’. The elaborate visual display was matched by an aural one: the edifice was hung with bells, while the young noblemen were accompanied by shawm players, which might suggest that the music had a sophisticated polyphonic texture. [7: The following description is derived from an account preserved at ASF, Carte strozziane, ser. 3, 106. It was partially transcribed by Pietro Fanfani, Ricordo di una giostra fatta in Firenze a dì 7 di febbrajo del 1468 sulla Piazza di Santa Croce (Florence: G. Polverini, 1864), 25-8 and Pietro Gori, Le feste fiorentine attraverso i secoli: le feste per San Giovanni (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1926), 41-4. A full transcription can be found in Scott Nethersole, 'The Representation of Violence in Fifteenth-Century Florence', PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art (2009), 261-2.] [8: Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, New York & London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 224; Ciappelli, Carnevale e quaresima, 137-47.] [9: Leonardo Ginori Lisci, I palazzi di Firenze nella storia e nell' arte (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1972), Vol. 1, 249-51; Caroline Elam, 'Palazzo Strozzi nel contesto urbano', in D. Lamberini, ed., Palazzo Strozzi metà millennio 1489-1989 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991), 183-94. ]

Once below the window of Marietta, the armeggiatori performed the mostra, in which each paraded in the saddle with a gilded arrow. Then followed the armeggeria proper. They broke their gilded lances at the foot of the palace in the customary display of skill or dexterity in the handling of the lance (on other occasions, the lance might be broken before a so-called saracino or quintain). The gesture was chivalric. Although the Florentine elite were merchants living in a republic without a standing army, they nonetheless adopted the conventions and trappings of knightly behaviour codified elsewhere in Europe at an earlier date.

Marietta watched the proceedings from a window above the point at which they broke their lances. Lit by four torches, she showed such ‘gracious dignity’ that she was like Lucretia. Detaching some wings and throwing them on the trionfo, Bartolomeo caused it to burst into flames and explode with fireworks, so that the spiritelli d’amore seemed to fire their arrows through the air and into the heart of the lover. The armeggiatori departed riding backwards, shoulders never turned to Marietta. Each individual armeggiatore then went to break his lance below the window of his respective beloved.

The anonymous account from which the passage above is derived, replete with detailed descriptions of clothing and repeated emphasis on the magnificence of the occasion, is preserved in a book of family papers bound together by Carlo Strozzi in 1670.[endnoteRef:10] Judging from the folds in the paper and a fly note in the same hand that fits the folded space, it was probably kept in the fifteenth century as a personal record of the event, possibly by the Strozzi themselves given its provenance. If, indeed, this is the case, then the event must have been of some importance to the family for them to have preserved a written memory. [10: See n. 7 above.]

The names of Bartolomeo’s companions are recorded: Andrea di Paolo Carnesecchi, Jacopo di Messer Carlo Marsuppini, Bartolomeo Bartolini, Lodovico Pucci, Piero di Giuliano Vespucci, Francesco Altoviti, Andrea di Bono Boni and Francesco di Zanobi Girolami. They hailed from some of the most influential families in the city and appear to have been ardent Medici supporters. Andrea Carnesecchi’s father was included in the Medicean balìa of 1480, for example.[endnoteRef:11] Five of Bartolomeo’s eight companions would reappear at Lorenzo’s joust in 1469 and Jacopo Marsuppini appears as a character in Lorenzo’s Simposio.[endnoteRef:12] [11: Michele Luzzati, 'Carnesecchi, Andrea' Dizionario biografico degli italiani (DBI) (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1977), 465.] [12: Luigi Pulci, 'La giostra', in P. Orvieto, ed., Opere minori (Milan: U. Mursia, 1986), 52-120; Lorenzo de’ Medici ‘Simposio’ in Tutte le opere, ed. P. Orvieto (Rome: Salerno, 1992), 3.69, 622.]

A century ago, Aby Warburg associated one of the so-called Otto prints with Lorenzo’s giostra (fig. 3).[endnoteRef:13] It includes the two idealised figures that he identified as Lorenzo and his beloved, Lucrezia Donati, an identification confirmed more recently by Charles Dempsey.[endnoteRef:14] It is of some significance, then, that another print from the series seems to portray Marietta (fig. 4). It shows a well-dressed young woman seated in profile with her eyes modestly lowered to the ground. She caresses a leonine unicorn pressed-up against her breast and is approached by an ermine. Both are standard symbols of virginity. Her sleeve is embroidered with the name ‘Marietta’. Arthur Hind mistakenly identified her as Madonna Marietta, that is Maria di Carlo Strozzi, wife of Messer Palla.[endnoteRef:15] However, the print would seem to portray Marietta di Lorenzo, given that Madonna Marietta died in 1459 and the print cannot predate 1460 on stylistic grounds. That she is a Strozzi is suggested by the curious detail of a leash or collar, which she clutches in one hand. She appears to have released the unicorn from its throttling grasp: the Italian verb strozzare, which obviously puns on the Strozzi name, means to choke or strangle. The print has two empty shields, awaiting coats of arms, which were probably to be completed in pen-and-ink. They recall the devices of both the Benci and Strozzi families that were borne by the trionfo d’amore during Bartolomeo’s armeggeria. Both are tied to trees, one of which has prominent pinecones, a possible allusion to her virtue. Dempsey has argued that the imagery of the Otto prints is closely aligned to the ‘earthy escapades of Lorenzo’s brigata’, which lends support to the idea of a relationship between Lorenzo’s giostra and Bartolomeo’s armeggeria.[endnoteRef:16] [13: Aby Warburg, 'On Imprese Amorose in the Earliest Florentine Engravings', in K. W. Forster, ed., The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999), 169-83.] [14: Charles Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli's Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 111-12.] [15: Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1938), A.IV.4, Vol. 1, 88; Pompeo Litta, Famiglie celebri in Italia (Milan: Giusti, 1819), pl. IX.] [16: Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 111.]

The armeggeria seems to be related to Lorenzo’s joust, if only through common participants, the members of Lorenzo’s brigade. But it also needs to be seen in the light of Lorenzo’s own armeggeria, when he had tilted outside his family home in April 1459. He, too, had been accompanied by a trionfo d’amore.[endnoteRef:17] Lorenzo was only ten years old at the time and the armeggeria marked a rite of passage, as he was presented to the city and to visiting dignitaries, most notably Pope Pius II and the son of the duke of Milan.[endnoteRef:18] The Medici were certainly aware, then, if not actually involved in, the Benci-Strozzi armeggeria. It was not the only occasion on which the Medici watched symbolic and bellicose exchanges between them. Filippo Corsini wrote to Lorenzo to record a snow fight between Marietta and Bartolomeo, along with Lottieri Neroni and Priore Pandolfini, during the same month.[endnoteRef:19] The Signoria, too, was aware of the festive advances made by Bartolomeo towards Marietta. They had issued two edicts the day before the armeggeria, discouraging extraneous people from attending and absolving the individuals involved of responsibility should anyone come to harm or be killed.[endnoteRef:20] Moreover, Bartolomeo gave the hose, which carried the colours of his family, to the ministri of the priors on the conclusion of the night’s festivities. What, then, was the socio-political position of the Benci and Strozzi, such that the regime should be so interested in an armeggeria? [17: Anon., Ricordi di Firenze dell'anno 1459, ed. G. Volpi (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1907), Vol. 27.1, 27-33. ] [18: Guerriero, Cronaca di Ser Guerriero da Gubbio dall'anno MCCCL all'anno MCCCCLXXII, ed. G. Mazzatinti ibid.1902), Vol. XXI, pt. IV, 59.] [19: ASF, Carte strozziane, ser. 3, 103, fol. 72. See Isidoro del Lungo, La donna fiorentina del buon tempo antico (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1906), 201, 237-238; Trexler, Public Life, 230.] [20: Gori, Feste fiorentine, 40-1 (but without archival references). They are also mentioned in the account at n. 11, but not included in Gori or Fanfani’s transcriptions. ]

Bartolomeo would seem to have had a relatively close relationship to the Medici family. He was the third son of Giovanni d’Amerigo, who had made his wealth thanks to Cosimo de’ Medici, having held the position of general manager of the Medici bank from 1435 until his death, twenty years later.[endnoteRef:21] However, by the 1460s, with Giovanni recently deceased, a new generation of the Benci family was asserting their pre-eminence. If architectural expansion can be taken as a sign of family ambition, then the acquisition by Amerigo (Bartolomeo’s brother) of two houses along Via degli Alberti in 1462 (present day Via de’ Benci), and their conversion into a single, imposing structure, survives as a testament to the family’s self-promotion during this decade.[endnoteRef:22] By 1480, Bartolomeo was sufficiently wealthy to declare a fiscal worth of 7,260 florins, making him the thirteenth richest man in Florence at that date, after those such as Lorenzo and Francesco di Luca degli Albizzi, but significantly short of the 30,045 florins declared by his father in 1457/8.[endnoteRef:23] [21: Raymond De Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 50, 57-8, 71.] [22: Emil Möller, 'Leonardos Bildnis der Ginevra dei Benci', Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, XII (1937-8), 196; Claudio Paolini, Lungo le mura del secondo cerchio: case e palazzi di via de' Benci (Florence: 2008).] [23: Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliances in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), Appendix 3, 375-410.]

While it would appear that Bartolomeo was in essence a Medici ‘client’, his relationship to the de facto rulers of Florence should not be oversimplified. After the death of his father, relations between Cosimo and the Benci soured. Amerigo was taken on as a partner in the Medici bank in place of his father and he eventually took over the management of the Geneva branch from Francesco Sassetti, four years after his father’s death in 1459. But within two years he had left. The extent to which his resignation was a voluntary decision is unknown. De Roover speculates that the simultaneous departure of his brother Francesco from the Avignon branch indicates that they were forced out – a decision which might have been behind Amerigo’s involvement in a plot to overthrow the Medici in 1466, two years after his brother’s armeggeria.[endnoteRef:24] So in 1464, the position of the Benci family in relation to the regime was ambiguous, although of the three eldest brothers, Bartolomeo, was probably the most neutral. In light of their past favour with Florence’s leading family, and without the benefit of hindsight, it seems likely that Bartolomeo would be interested in ingratiating himself with Cosimo, or would at least be willing to pursue Medici interests. [24: De Roover, Rise and Decline, 282-8; Jacopo Pitti, Istoria fiorentina, ed. A. Mauriello (Naples: Liguori, 2007), 1.84, 43. ]

Marietta’s position was equally complicated. She had been living in Florence since the early 1460s, where her family hoped to find her a husband. She presumably resided with her mother, as her father had been murdered in Gubbio in 1451 while in exile.[endnoteRef:25] Not only was she the granddaughter of Messer Palla – once the richest man in Florence until he was exiled by the supporters of the incoming Cosimo in 1434 – but she was also the daughter of Alessandra de’ Bardi, whose natal family was currently banished to Bologna.[endnoteRef:26] Marrying a Strozzi of this line could dampen any political aspirations, as Giovanni Rucellai had discovered. Marietta came with a considerable dowry and she was famously beautiful. [endnoteRef:27] She was sculpted by Desiderio da Settignano, a bust whose beauty Vasari claimed was a true reflection of her own.[endnoteRef:28] [25: Vespasiano da Bisticci, The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century, trans. W. George and E. Waters (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 458.] [26: Litta, Famiglie celebri, Vol. 5, pl. ix.] [27: Ann Crabb, The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 198-203; Lungo, Donna fiorentina, p. 238.] [28: Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1500 e 1568, eds. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966-87), Vol. 3, 401. On the bust, see Francesco Caglioti in Keith Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann, eds., The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2011), Cat. 12, 107-9, with further bibliography.]

The situation of the Strozzi consorteria is complicated by its prodigious size and their diaspora across the Italian peninsula. For my purposes, the activities of the two main lines exiled in 1434 are of primary interest. They were those of Messer Palla di Nofri and Matteo di Simone. Marietta was the granddaughter of the wealthy Messer Palla, who remained in Padua until his death two years before the armeggeria, while Matteo di Simone had ended up in Pesaro. Both branches actively sought to be reconciled to their city of origin.[endnoteRef:29] Such activity reached a head in the 1450s and ‘60s around the time of the armeggeria, especially after 1458 when the ban of 1434 was officially extended to their sons. Matteo’s line was successful. Filippo and Lorenzo were allowed to return to Florence only two years after the armeggeria by currying favour with Piero de’ Medici through the agency of the Neapolitan King.[endnoteRef:30] Messer Palla’s descendants were less lucky and were allowed to return to the city until after the expulsion of Piero de’ Medici in 1494.[endnoteRef:31] The unpublished correspondence of Giovanfrancesco di Palla during the 1450s and ‘60s demonstrates the hope of Palla’s son for a change in the family’s fortune around the time of the armeggeria.[endnoteRef:32] It would seem that Giovanfrancesco’s involvement in an anti-Medicean plot in 1467, and his subsequent condemnation as a rebel, caused their continued exile.[endnoteRef:33] However, these unfortunate events still lay in the future in 1464. The armeggeria should, therefore, be seen against the backdrop of Strozzi attempts to end their exile, rather than the subsequent failure of the agnates of Messer Palla. [29: Lorenzo Fabbri, 'The Memory of Exiled Families: The Case of the Strozzi', in G. Ciappelli and P. L. Rubin, eds, Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 256.] [30: Crabb, Strozzi of Florence, 149-79; Heather Gregory, 'The Return of the Native: Filippo Strozzi and Medicean Politics', Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1985), 3, 8-10.] [31: Lorenzo Fabbri, 'Da Firenze a Ferrara. Gli Strozzi tra casa d'Este e antichi legami di sangue', in M. Bertozzi, ed., Alla corte degli Estensi. Filosofia, arte e cultura a Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI (Ferrara: Università di Studi di Ferrara, 1994), 97-100; Gregory, ‘The Return of the Native’, 10-11.] [32: Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze (hereafter BRF), 4009.] [33: Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, 1434 to 1494 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 136. ]

The preceding discussion of the Benci-Strozzi armeggeria was derived in large part from an anonymous prose account, which was owned by the Strozzi family by at least the seventeenth century (and probably from the fifteenth century). A second account has also survived. It was composed in terza rima by Filippo di Lorenzo Lapaccini almost ten years after the event.[endnoteRef:34] The author places a high emphasis on spectatorship; he frequently mentions ‘occhi’ and repeatedly uses the verb ‘vedere’.[endnoteRef:35] L’armeggeria di Tommaso [sic] Benci is Lapaccini’s first surviving literary work. Its patron remains unknown, but Lorenzo de’ Medici is a likely candidate: a year after writing the poem, Lapaccini would write from Rome to Lorenzo requesting financial assistance and must already have had previous contact with the magnifico to have made such an audacious request.[endnoteRef:36] And, as suggested above, the Medici had good reasons to be interested in the event. [34: Filippo Lapaccini, 'L'armeggeria di Tommaso [sic] Benci', in A. Lanza, ed., Lirici toscani del Quattrocento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1975), 1-16.] [35: Ibid., 1.100-1, 3.] [36: P. Flazone, 'Lapaccini', DBI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2004), p. 693.]

If Lorenzo did commission the poem, it might explain the complete omission of Marietta’s name, given the decline in fortune of Messer Palla’s descendants after 1467 (the poem dates to around 1473). Although couched in the conventions of courtly love, the donna described in the verse remains abstract and unidentified, except for one brief, passing mention that she was of Strozzi blood.[endnoteRef:37] By contrast, all the members of Bartolomeo’s company are mentioned by name on several occasions, as are many, seemingly unimportant, onlookers and participants. Unlike the prose account, which mentions the mostra and armeggeria in a single sentence, Lapaccini described separately each participant’s action across five chapters, yet failed to mention Marietta. Lorenzo is unlikely to have promoted the Strozzi association by the early 1470s. Rather, the account would seem to record the chivalric virtue of Lorenzo’s friends, written at a time when the fate of Palla’s agnates had already been decided. [37: Lapaccini, 'Armeggeria', 1.49-51, p. 2.]

The armeggeria of 1464 was politically motivated. The staged ‘battle’ was not intended to bring about a union between Bartolomeo and Marietta, any more than Lorenzo intended to marry the beloved of his joust, Lucrezia Donati (who was, in fact, already married to Niccolò Ardinghelli when Lorenzo first pledged a tournament in her name in 1465). Marriage was a bond negotiated in extreme secrecy for fear of spoiling a bride’s chance should it came to naught. Bartolomeo married Lisabetta di Filippo Tornabuoni in 1472, the year after Marietta had wed Teofilo Calcagnini from Ferrara. As Lorenzo Fabbri has observed, although Calcagnini was one of the most illustrious members of the Este court at Ferrara, Marietta’s wedding was only negotiated once all hope of a reconciliation to Florence through marriage had been exhausted.[endnoteRef:38] That other members of the consorteria were involved in the armeggeria might suggest that the wider family were watching the fortune of Marietta – they would later watch the construction of Filippo Strozzi’s palace with the same interest – as she became a pawn in the attempted reconciliation between the Medici and the Strozzi, through the mediation of the Benci.[endnoteRef:39] That the attempt failed, at least for the descendants of Messer Palla, is unimportant. Giovanfrancesco’s ill-fated actions had yet to transpire when Bartolomeo came to Marietta’s window. The display of chivalric violence made visible an attempt at familial alliance. A staged battle encoded a social relationship. [38: Fabbri, 'Da Firenze a Ferrara', 98.] [39: Francis W. Kent, ''Più superba de quella de Lorenzo': Courtly and Family Interest in the Building of Filippo Strozzi's Palace', Renaissance Quarterly, 30 (1977), 318 n. 28.]

The Vettori-Rucellai Cassoni

Messer Palla’s son-in-law, Giovanni Rucellai, found himself in a similar predicament to Marietta around 1460. His fortunes would only change, when he strategically betrothed his son, Bernardo, to Nannina de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s sister.[endnoteRef:40] As we have seen, it would take five years before they actually married in 1466, a marriage that was celebrated with an armeggeria and sealed with a pair of battle cassoni (figs. 1 & 2). The display of battle depictions in Florentine homes was not uncommon by the second half of the fifteenth century. Ghirlandaio’s preparatory drawing for the Birth of the Virgin shows a battle scene in the spalliera (fig. 5), which would be changed into a frieze of putti for the final fresco; his Judith in Berlin similarly contains a battle frieze in an interior (fig. 6). From the 1440s, images of battles became increasing common on pairs of marriage chests too. Typically one chest would be painted with an ancient scene of war – the battles of Issus, Zama and Pharsalus, among others, were especially well liked – and its pair would illustrate the subsequent triumphal entry into a city. Chests might also show more amorous themes, often derived from vernacular literature such as Boccaccio, which were prevalent earlier in the century (even if they were not entirely superseded by bellicose subjects).[endnoteRef:41] Cassone imagery after mid-century was not wholly given over to battle subjects either, but also included a wide variety of exemplary istorie, often including female protagonists (Sabines, Amazons, Lucretia, Camilla etc.) involved in acts of violence against themselves or others.[endnoteRef:42] Scenes of rape proved particularly popular. [40: Francis W. Kent et al., Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone - II (London: Warburg Institute, 1981), 66-68. ] [41: Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage, & Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008), 149, with further bibliography; Ellen Callmann, 'Subjects from Boccaccio in Italian Painting', Studi sul Boccaccio, 23 (1995), 19-78.] [42: Cristelle Baskins, Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gender in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).]

Although of classical origin, these subjects were often known through late medieval sources rather than the Greek or Roman originals. Since the 1970s, scholars have studied vernacular retellings of ancient tales to explain the many inconsistencies between classical texts and fifteenth-century domestic imagery.[endnoteRef:43] Contemporary (or near contemporary) vernacular culture had as much of an influence on the ‘look’ of cassone panels as the ancient cultures from which their stories were ultimately derived. Cassone panels, and domestic imagery more generally, did not show ancient wars exclusively. Representation of contemporary battles or events, rather than ancient history, constituted a wider category of cassone imagery than is sometimes thought. Occasionally, domestic imagery drew its subjects from recent wars, such as the Uccello’s panels showing the Battle of San Romano, or the Siege of Pisa and Battle of Anghiari in Dublin (figs. 7 & 8). [43: Paul F. Watson, 'Virtù and Voluptas in Cassone Painting', PhD, Yale University (1970); Caroline Campbell, 'Re-visioning Antiquity: Domestic Paintings, Manuscript Compendia and the Experience of the Ancient Past in Fifteenth Century Florence', PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art (2000); Caroline Campbell, 'Lorenzo Tornabuoni's History of Jason and Medea Series: Chivalry and Classicism in 1480s Florence', Renaissance Studies, 21 (2007), 1-19; Campbell, Love and Marriage, 30-47; Alessandra Malquori in Paolini et al., Virtù d'amore, 79-87.]

While these general comments define cassone imagery by iconographic category, they do not speak to the concerns reflected in domestic battle imagery. Why would nuptial chambers be decorated with images of war? Again, a case study suggests some answers. A few years before Bernardo Rucellai betrothed Nannina, his sister Caterina had married Piero di Francesco Vettori. On that occasion, too, a pair of ‘battle’ cassoni was ordered, this time from the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono. The Vettori were in a similar political position to Giovanni Rucellai, but for different reasons. As consorti of the Capponi, their chance for holding public office was limited by the divieto that prohibited the members of the same clan or consorteria from holding office simultaneously. In his life of Piero Vettori published in 1583, the canon Antonio Benivieni was at some pains to explain the position of the family in the 1450s.[endnoteRef:44] In 1452, they were formally separated from the Capponi, with whom they had been associated since at least the fourteenth century.[endnoteRef:45] The move to have the government recognise their division was politically motivated, with the intention of affording both families greater chance of holding governmental office.[endnoteRef:46] In this endeavour, however, they had to overcome the problem that, as Benivieni observed, the relationship between the Capponi and Vettori ‘was common knowledge in our city’.[endnoteRef:47] Even in the fourteenth century, Giovanni Villani had observed their close association, which continued to be reinforced, as Benivieni again noted, by the extreme similarity of their arms.[endnoteRef:48] The Vettori stemma included fleur-de-lys (awarded by the French king to Neri di Andrea Vettori in 1410) in a coat of arms that was otherwise identical to that of the Capponi. [44: Antonio Benivieni, Vita di Piero Vettori, L'antico, gentil'huomo fiorentino (Florence: Giunti, 1583).] [45: As well as Benivieni, see Borghini’s note ‘Della Consorteria de Capponi e Vettori 1452’, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (hereafter BNCF), Magl. XXV, 44, fols. 388v-399r. ] [46: Benivieni, Vita, 4.] [47: Ibid., 2] [48: Vicenzio Borghini, Annotazioni sopra Giovanni Villani (Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 2001), 560.]

The Vettori went about solving the problem by a concerted campaign to promote their own illustrious and independent origins. They posted, for instance, a provision from the Priors of 1311 for the award of privileges to them by the Guelph Party. Ugolino Verino composed a Latin verse that implied their descent from the Counts of Gangalandi.[endnoteRef:49] In these attempts, they were obviously successful.[endnoteRef:50] In the years leading up to the marriage of Piero and Caterina, therefore, the independent origins of the Vettori were being actively publicised, as they tried to separate themselves from the Capponi. [49: Benivieni, Vita, 6-7. ] [50: Francis W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 203-4; Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: University of London, 1972), 2 n. 7.]

The imagery chosen for the cassoni commissioned at the time of Vettori-Rucellai wedding seems to have participated in this campaign, although as domestic imagery it would have functioned at a more private level. Both chests had frontal panels that included battles. One showed Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (fig. 9). The Persian leader is clearly labelled (‘SERSES’) astride a horse on the famous pontoon bridge across the Hellespont. He clutches his baton of command in the manner of a Renaissance condottiere (probably similar to the baton presented to Bartolomeo Benci for his armeggeria). Behind him is a city, unlabelled, but recognisable as Constantinople from the column of Theodosius. Before him, on the left bank, rages a battle of cavalry and foot soldiers. In the general mêlée, Xerxes is again identifiable, although he is without inscription. Other protagonists are inscribed within the battle, including ‘CYMON’ (receiving Persian prisoners before an encampment), ‘PERICLES’ on the left and ‘TEMI[stocles]’ even further to the left. The exact identification of the battle has puzzled scholars (Pericles, Cimon and Themistocles never fought together), although in all likelihood it was intended to represent Plataia (479 BCE).[endnoteRef:51] [51: Paul F. Watson, 'Apollonio di Giovanni and Ancient Athens', Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, XXVII (1979-80), 8.]

The second frontal shows a naval battle and the invented entrance of Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles into Athens (fig. 10). Triumphal entries after battles were a Roman, not a Greek, practice. The first two figures are named, while Pericles is identified through visual similarity with the inscribed figure on the first panel. The victors are accompanied by a dog, possibly the loyal companion of Pericles’ father, Xanthippus, that Plutarch tells us, died following his master’s galley to the battle of Salamis (480 BCE), depicted to the right. The ship whose bridge carries a tower-like structure might also refer to the line in Plutarch, where he recounts that Xerxes’ admiral, Ariamenes, ‘was seen throwing darts and shooting arrows from his huge galley, as from the walls of a castle’.[endnoteRef:52] The inclusion of a second battle, and a naval battle at that, is unusual. Normally, cassoni pair an ancient battle with a triumph, rather than depicting two battles. [52: Plutarch, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (London & Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), Life of Themistocles, XII; Watson, 'Apollonio', pp. 8-12.]

These two cassoni were dismantled in the nineteenth century and the Triumph panel was destroyed during the World War II.[endnoteRef:53] The lost framing elements of the chests would almost certainly have carried the two families’ coats of arms, much like the trionfo d’amore that bore both the Strozzi and Benci heraldic devices. However, the symbolic union of the two families is still visible in the panels themselves. The boats on the Oberlin panel carry both the Vettori and Rucellai arms (the former is more frequent, occurring five times, relative to three appearances of the latter), while only the Vettori arms are depicted on the destroyed Triumph. The diamond ring and feather motif probably refers to both the Vettori and Rucellai, rather than the Medici, as sometimes thought. The feathers feature in the Vettori crest, while the diamond ring was as much a device of the Rucellai as the Medici (both families are likely to have been granted the use of it by the Este family).[endnoteRef:54] As such, this motif visually links the Vettori and Rucellai, rather than stressing Medicean patronage, which, in fact, still lay in the future for both families. [53: Wolfgang Stechow, 'Marco del Buono and Apollonio di Giovanni: Cassone Painters', Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, 1 (1944), 5-21; Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 61-2; Watson, 'Apollonio', 3-25; Alessandra Maquori in Paolini et al., Virtù d'amore, pp. 79-87. ] [54: Brenda Preyer in Kent et al., Giovanni Rucellai, 198-201. ]

Why were battles chosen to decorate a pair of marriage chests? The answer to this question is two-fold. The first is generic and relates to battle and victory imagery generally; the second explains the choice of this particular historical moment, the Persian wars. The forzieri were almost certainly intended to decorate the nuptial chamber of the Vettori family palace. Piero’s palace was situated among other Vettori homes in the Oltrarno, on the Fondacio, the old name for Borgo Santo Spirito, near the Ponte Santa Trinita and in the parish of San Jacopo sopr’Arno, with which the family had traditional ties.[endnoteRef:55] In 1480, Piero and Caterina were living there with two sons, Francesco and Paolo (Giovanni was yet to be born). Piero had a half share in the building with his brother.[endnoteRef:56] So although the heraldry of the chests celebrates a union between two families, the continued viewing of them took place within the Vettori home and, as such, would seem to reflect the familial, social and economic alliances of Piero di Francesco and the Vettori clan more generally. While recent scholarship in this field has rightly stressed the importance of the bride’s gaze – often ‘against the grain’ of more overt meanings – the increasing popularity of battle subjects from mid-century would seem to reflect relationships important to the groom and his family.[endnoteRef:57] [55: ASF, Catasto, 1480, S. Spirito, Nicchio, 995, fol. 185r. On the palace, see Ginori Lisci, Palazzi, vol. 2, 743-7; Marcello Vannucci, Splendidi palazzi di Firenze (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995), 83-5; Litta Maria Medri and Stefania Vasetti, Palazzo Capponi sul lungarno Guicciardini e gli affreschi restaurati di Bernardino Poccetti (Florence: Centro Di, 2001).] [56: ASF, Catasto, 1480, S. Spirito, Nicchio, 995, fol. 187r.] [57: Baskins, Cassone Painting. ]

A fair amount is known about the Vettori and Piero in particular. They were an ottimati family, whose money derived from the wool and cloth trade.[endnoteRef:58] Benedetto Dei included them in his list of 365 ‘chasati’ that in 1472 were the ‘groriosissimo e potentissimo popolo fiorentino’.[endnoteRef:59] Francesco, Piero’s son, would grow up to become a noted historian, a friend of Machiavelli and would leave a biography of his father in manuscript (the other biography of Piero, ‘l’antico, gentil’huomo fiorentino’, was published by Antonio Benivieni, as mentioned above).[endnoteRef:60] [58: Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, 1-4.] [59: Benedetto Dei, La cronica dall'anno 1400 all' anno 1500, eds. R. Barducci and A. Molho (Florence: Francesco Papafava, 1984), 80-1.] [60: Francesco Vettori, 'Vita di Piero Vettori l'antico', in E. Niccolini, ed., Scritti storici e politici (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli, 1972).]

At around the date of marriage, the humanist Verino dedicated his Flametta to Piero (circa 1460). Long known to art historians for its praise of Apollonio di Giovanni as the ‘Tuscan Apelles’, it is Verino’s friendship with Piero that is more significant here, for it testifies to his learning, a fact reiterated by both his son and Benivieni.[endnoteRef:61] Piero apparently composed both Latin and Tuscan poetry. He also read Greek, a fact of no small consequence given this unusual commission. Some years later, in the early 1490s and towards the end of Piero’s life, Verino completed a Latin work, the De illustratione urbis Florentiae, in which he punned on the Vettori name (Vettori – vittorie) suggesting that it derived from the military victories of their ancestors.[endnoteRef:62] Piero himself was given to devising mottoes. The word game evidently predates Verino’s work, though. It is implied in a comment of Lorenzo’s during the 1480s and in a portrait medal of the same decade.[endnoteRef:63] Piero would, subsequent to his marriage, have considerable success in the military and it could be that it was in this context that such a play-on-words developed. However, given Piero’s early friendship with Verino and the Vettori family’s concurrent interest in proving a separate and distinguished origin, it would seem that the conceit is more likely to date to the 1450s. Within a cultural milieu that loved visual word games, the battles depicted on his marriage chests could hardly be more apt. More than just a Renaissance joke, or even a felicitous concord between name and representation, these battles embodied the entire family’s socio-political aspirations. An armeggeria made visible Strozzi, Benci and Medici aspirations in 1464 in the same way that a painted, fictional vittoria after the Greek battles of Plataia and Salamis stressed the independence of the Vettori. Battle representations encoded socio-political alliances. [61: E. H. Gombrich, 'Apollonio di Giovanni: A Florentine Cassone Workshop seen throught the Eyes of a Humanist Poet', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 18 (1955), 16-34.] [62: Ugolino Verino, De illustratione urbis Florentiae (Paris: 1790), Book 3, 8-9. ] [63: Vettori, 'Vita', 252; Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, 1; Watson, 'Apollonio', 22.]

But what of the specific battles painted on this pair of cassoni? At the time of Piero’s marriage, his father Francesco di Paolo was still alive. In fact, he would probably have been involved in negotiating it. The Rucellai alliance was evidently important to the family, for Francesco also married his daughter Costanza to Francesco di Filippo di Vanni Rucellai (on which occasion another battle cassone showing The Siege of Carthage and the Continence of Scipio might have been commissioned, fig. 11), whose brother, Girolamo, would later be in business with Piero.[endnoteRef:64] Although less is known about Francesco Vettori, some information has emerged over his involvement with the Consoli del mare. Despite the incomplete survival of their papers, Michael Mallett was able to build up a picture of the activities of the Florentine state galleys between 1422 (the year after Florence acquired the Pisan ports of Porto Pisano and Livorno from Genoa) and 1480, when they were dissolved.[endnoteRef:65] The consuls formed an institution of central importance, for not only did they coordinate and supervise trade and shipping, but they were expected to watch over the guilds and thus over the entire Florentine economy. The positions were both lucrative and prestigious, indicated by the fact that on two occasions the Guelph party took over control. Francesco Vettori is recorded as captaining three voyages in 1458, 1460 and 1465. During this final expedition, he died on board at Lisbon, in tribute to which his heirs were granted the right to use the crest of the Sea Consuls.[endnoteRef:66] [64: The Siege of Carthage and the Continence of Scipio, which is now in The Courtauld Gallery, bears both the Rucellai and the Vettori coats of arms at the very centre and is thus likely to celebrate a marriage between these two families. On the frontal, see Campbell, Love and Marriage, cat. 7, pp. 92-95, although she does not speculate on the likely marriage.] [65: Michael Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century, with the Diary of Luca di Maso degli Albizzi, Captain of the Galleys 1429-1430 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).] [66: Ibid., 95 n. 4. ]

His two former journeys had been to Constantinople, where since its fall to the Turks in 1453, Florentine merchants had been making considerable headway in ousting Venice as the major trading presence. In 1456, a single galley had been hired by the wool guild for the distribution of cloth to the East, an economic enterprise that must have interested the Vettori, as well as many other prominent Florentine families. Two years later, Francesco was dispatched with a fleet to try to gain further trading concessions; a year after that, Pucci sailed the first Florentine ships into the Black Sea, while acquiring new agreements from the Emperor of Trebizond. Francesco returned the following May, a year before the arrangement of his son’s marriage to Caterina Rucellai. Benedetto Dei accompanied him on these two Florentine galleys. It was on this occasion that Francesco had the singular honour of entertaining the conquering Sultan Mehmet II on board, as Dei was to record. He would also note that Mehmet had told him that being young, rich and favoured by fortune, he would ‘surpass Caesar, Alexander the Great and Xerxes’.[endnoteRef:67] Dei’s mention of Xerxes indicates the extent to which certain historical figures might be bound up with specific locations. Xerxes would seem an obvious parallel for Mehmet given that he was then in Constantinople. So too would the Persian wars be a natural subject for a family involved in the general area. [67: M. Pisani, Benedetto Dei: Un avventuriero del Quattrocento. La vita e opere di Benedetto Dei (Genoa, Naples, Città di Castello & Florence: 1923), 14.]

Depictions of this region are not unique. A representation of the Battle of Trebizond is preserved on a chest in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, for example.[endnoteRef:68] If the meaning contained within these panels for a fifteenth-century viewer might have evoked events in the eastern Mediterranean, then it was not necessarily accompanied by anxiety over the fall of Constantinople. Like the papacy’s attempt to mount a crusade to relieve the city, which was defeated by the mercantile interests of the various Italian states, these panels would seem to make visible Vettori concerns in the area, rather than moralise over its fall to the infidel. Francesco Vettori was actively engaged in the Turkish city on Florentine state business, had both met and entertained il gran turco, and ultimately these forzieri were to beautify his home. These panels project his, his family and his son’s interests. [68: Deborah L. Krohn in Bayer, Art and Love,, cat. 56, 129-132 with further bibliography. For another frontal that perhaps shows Constantinople, see Roberta Bartoli in Paolini et al., Virtù d'amore,, cat. IV, 270-271. ]

The Persian war offered the opportunity to depict a particular location – the point where Europe meets Asia and the city of Constantinople – and a narrative full of maritime concerns: the battle of Salamis is one of the few naval battles depicted on cassoni. Both of these were of great social and economic importance to the Vettori. The depiction of two battles themselves would have been a witty allusion to the family name, whilst recalling their illustrious origins. Piero Vettori’s distinguished career as a soldier – as Florentine capitano and as a commissario of military operations – would ensure that the imagery of these panels continued to resonate well after the events surrounding his marriage. The relation of Piero to battling imagery would seem to have held some currency even into the late sixteenth century, when Benivieni’s biography of Piero had its incipits decorated with battle scenes. This orchestrated use of imagery, coupled with the ever-important outcome of social alliances, paid off. Within a few years of his marriage, letters from both Giovanni and Bernardo Rucellai to Lorenzo witness the support that Piero was receiving from them; quite an achievement considering that the Medici had until the early 1460s kept Giovanni himself from public office. Piero would go on to hold several important positions, often through Medici patronage: from Podestà in subject cities, to ambassador to Ferdinand of Naples, to a member of the Dieci of the Republican regime after 1494.[endnoteRef:69] The foundation of his achievements, and of this family’s fame, was laid in the years around his marriage; a foundation which was achieved through the type of social alliances made manifest through battaglie. [69: Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, 5.]

Representation

The comparison of a festival battle with a painting of a battle might seem far fetched even when their joint social ambitions are acknowledged, until it is realised that they were both understood in similar terms. They were both representational. While there can be little doubt that cassone frontals were understood as representations, armeggerie are perhaps more surprising. But Niccolò Machiavelli was explicit on the point, describing the festivals staged under Lorenzo as ‘rappresentazioni di fatti’.[endnoteRef:70] He wrote that a ‘tournament’ was that which ‘represents a skirmish [zuffa] of men on horseback’.[endnoteRef:71] He might have used the word ‘zuffa’ rather than ‘battaglia’, but the point is the same. It was a representation and it was, therefore, dependent on, but distant from, a battle fought in the field. Much the same could be said of cassone imagery. [70: Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. F. Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), Book 8, Chapter 36, 575.] [71: Ibid., Book 7, Chapter 12, p. 471.]

During the festivities of San Giovanni in 1470, the condottiere Roberto da Sanseverino staged three days of bellicose festivities on Piazza Santa Croce. Both Ser Giusto Giusti d’Anghiari and Matteo Palmieri witnessed the events and described them in terms that reveal their representational qualities. According to Giusti, there was ‘a battle [battaglia] of men-of-arms with lances without iron tips and with batons’ the day after the feast of Saint John, Monday 25 June. The day thereafter, he organised a joust, followed on Wednesday 27 June by a battle in which ‘he fought, with his men-at-arms, for a wooden castle that the aforesaid Lord had had made in Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. Some of his said men-at-arms were inside, and others outside, [creating] two battles [battaglie]’.[endnoteRef:72] For Giusti, the festivities functioned to honour Saint John, whilst giving pleasure to the Florentine people. They were intended ‘to give a festa to the people of Florence and to show his soldiers’, or ‘to show the people that he had many soldiers under his command’.[endnoteRef:73] Palmieri similarly observed in his Annales that the activities were designed to exhibit Roberto’s army to the people.[endnoteRef:74] He stressed that the games were ‘ludos publicos’ and that were staged ‘before the eyes of the people’.[endnoteRef:75] The real motive, however, was probably to instil public order after the disruption caused by an uprising in Prato several months previously.[endnoteRef:76] The Prato rebellion had been invisible to Florentines, but it had nonetheless come as a ‘great fright to all of the people’, in the words of Alessandra Strozzi.[endnoteRef:77] Roberto’s army might not have seen active service at Prato, but they did make a very public appearance within the city walls, staging battles during peace time. [72: Nerida Newbigin, 'I giornali di Ser Giusto Giusti d'Anghiari (1437-1482)', 3 (2002), 160. ] [73: Ibid., 160.] [74: Matteo Palmieri, Annales [historia florentina], ed. G. Scaramella (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1906), Vol. XXVI, pt. I, p. 189.] [75: Ibid., p. 189.] [76: Francis W. Kent, 'Prato and Lorenzo de' Medici', in J. E. Law and B. Paton, eds, Communes and Despots in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 193-208.] [77: Macinghi Strozzi, Lettere, 605-606.]

Both Giusti and Palmieri emphasized the spectacular, visual nature of the events. Giusto used the verbs ‘mostrare’ and ‘vedere’ – the latter on three occasions – whilst Palmieri actually mentioned the ‘eyes’ of the public. Unlike the violence of war that was fought by mercenaries at a distance from the urban populace, the staged violence of jousts and similar knightly activities was clearly on view. Giusto even used the word ‘battle [battaglia]’ to describe the spectacles of the first and third days. Coming from a family of blacksmiths, who had supplied the city council of Anghiari with arms, Giusto was well placed to have heard what actual battles were like.[endnoteRef:78] His description of a tournament as a ‘battle’ is not insignificant. [78: R. M. Comanducci, 'Giusto, Giusti' DBI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2001), 182.]

Palmieri’s prose was subtler. Rather than call the equestrian tournament a ‘battle’ straightforwardly, he observed that it was a ‘representation of a mounted battle [representationem scilicet equestris prelij]’. Similarly, the storming of the wooden castle on the third day was a ‘true simulation of a siege [vere expugnationis similitudinem]’.[endnoteRef:79] Palmieri stressed that both events represented or simulated something beyond themselves. As a representation, the ‘equitum torniamentum’ (Palmieri) or ‘battaglia d’huomini d’Arme’ (Giusto) on Piazza Santa Croce were not entirely unlike a picture, like those battles painted on marriage chests that have been the subject of this article. Nor, for that matter, were they unlike programmatic music. Isaac’s battle piece includes several military motifs, such as repeated-note patterns or open fifths suggesting militaristic trumpet calls. It too was representational.[endnoteRef:80] And although it is now generally heard as an instrumental work, it was originally set to a text by ‘Gentile Aretino’ (most likely Gentile Becchi), which describe a speculative Florentine attempt to take the castle of Sarzana, a strategic position contested with Genoa. The poem’s description of a battle finds a close parallel in the painted scenes on cassoni or the staged battaglie performed in Florentine squares. The opening couplet, which is repeated as a refrain, involves the listener in the action: ‘To the battle, quickly to the battle / Everyone must arm himself with armour and chain mail’. They are acknowledged as complicit, in the same way as were the viewers of other battaglie, yet their distance is recognised by such lines as ‘Here are the Genoese’, as if they were being pointed out.[endnoteRef:81] [79: Palmieri, Annales, 189. ] [80: McGee, 'Alla Battaglia', 289-90; Kent, 'Isaac's Music'; Wilson, 'Isaac among the Florentines'.] [81: McGee, 'Alla Battaglia', 299-300.]

Battaglie, whether painted on cassoni or performed in public squares as armeggerie, displayed related concerns. They encoded a socio-political alliance. As a consequence, they might be thought of as a single genre in their own right. Music and poetry, too, formed part of this genus, even if they warrant further investigation beyond the confines of this article. All these images of war were linked by the fact that they referred to battles fought in reality, but nonetheless found mechanisms to distance themselves from that reality. They were, in the words of Machiavelli, ‘rappresentazioni di fatti’ whose real motivation lay a long way from the battlefield.

1