Wars of love and beauty

by Anna Alberati

Tournaments, jousts and ballets on horseback

We will talk about tournaments, jousts and ballets on horseback fought and staged in the period from 1561 to 1690 in various Italian and foreign cities: Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Mantua, Milan, Modena, Munich, Naples, Paris, Parma, Piacenza, Rome, Turin, Vicenza, Vienna, that is, the most sumptuous princely courts of the time.

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These events, generally defined as military festivals, are some of the forms of entertainment in use in the period called the late Renaissance and Baroque (the period in which the Court festival reaches its highest level of splendor): they imply a whole series of experiences from the past increased and enriched by the expansion of three elements: recited poetry, music and above all the scenographic apparatus. “It has always been a most noble custom of all the most civilized nations to entertain the multitude in the idleness of peace with public shows, among which… those games, which having the appearance of war, infinitely cheer the soul of those who see them, and make the body of those who practice them more vigorous and agile for true military enterprises… Above all the others, the most beautiful and noble are those that are done on horseback…”.

The tournament (team combat) and the joust (single combat), among the most typical manifestations of the feudal era, were born in the Middle Ages, precisely as chivalric and warlike exercises to be done in times of peace. The aristocratic class participated in them in front of the population of the city to show all their power. They spread throughout Europe thanks to the Franks, and for centuries they had the character of a violent exercise with bloody consequences, until the dramatic death of the king of France Henry II in a tournament in Paris in 1559 caused the decision to definitively establish the “courtly” character of these manifestations. Thus they became exclusively exhibitions of knights, gathered in teams, with the retinue of squires and pages, who after having done the “show” by walking in procession in the field met and clashed in mock battles and various armories.

Jousts and tournaments could be fought on horseback and on foot, at the barrier (when a list or barrier or bar was built in the middle of the field) and in the open field. Jousts could be of various types: at the meeting, at the ring, at the Saracen or at the Moor, quintana, and included fights with swords, rapiers, javelins, axes, clubs, daggers, and later also with pistols.
The ceremony was as follows: messengers and heralds published the announcement of the tournament, in which the motto of the challenge appeared, called uniform or cartel.
The challenge was symbolic: one could fight for the beauty, intelligence or virtue of a lady, for the glory of one’s own house, or for questions and controversies relating to love. The tournament participants were divided into maintainers (those who represented the lord who announced the tournament) and adventurers (those who opposed the motto of the challenge): the location of the event was usually the main square of the city, more rarely a courtyard, enclosed by a rectangular or circular fence with two doors (sometimes triumphal arches).
A stage was erected for the judges and a gallery for the guests of honour, decorated with carpets and tapestries and covered by a canopy or awning. The steps welcomed the public of spectators.
Each tourneyman with his squadron and other companions had to choose a single combination of colours (to be recognisable), armour, petticoats of fine fabrics embroidered in gold and silver with precious stones, cloaks, plumed crests and equally precious caparisons for the horses formed the pomp of the tournament.
Throughout the first half of the sixteenth century, tournaments called subject or theme-based were fought, in which each fight was reduced to almost a choreographic spectacle: the true aim was to exalt the Prince or Lord of the city and make him the centre of every legend.
But on March 3, 1561, an exceptional event took place: a special tournament (also called chivalry or cosa d’arme) was set up in Ferrara at the Gorgoferusa Castle, which represented the prototype of the true baroque chivalric festival, in which all the elements described above converged with the addition of a series of new and original elements, which were gradually perfected but which remained substantially the same until the end of the seventeenth century.
This tournament-festival, in particular, was born from a challenge: to free the husband of an Arab queen taken and held prisoner by a fairy, Gorgoferusa, in her enchanted castle, defended by two giants and a dragon. In the space of the main courtyard, in front of the square, a theater with three steps was built; on the fourth side there was the stage, on which appeared a castle painted in perspective with some parts accessible to the musicians and actors who accompanied with verses and songs the appearances of the knights on chariots and monstrous animals. The scenographic apparatus was very complex and well-finished, as was the succession of the various actions. The adventurers also had to make a kind of quintana in which the target was represented by an automaton, depicting a golden Victory, who offered a garland of silk and gold flowers, with her arms tied to a device.

Each knight who went to be crowned pressed a plate which raised the arms of the automaton which thus imprisoned him.
Only at the end was the device adjusted to crown the last knight and immediately afterwards there was a burst of fireworks followed by an earthquake and the collapse of the entire castle, which uncovered the troop of enchanted knights, each of whom displayed the pomp of his person.
The new elements that appear and that will then be, expanded, characteristic of the baroque chivalric festival, are therefore: the recited and sung introduction, the combat prefigured with a specially studied choreography, the appearances of triumphal or allegorical chariots and stage machinery, the theatre or space of the tournament that changes appearance and that is enriched with a stage and a changing scene, the singing that appears at various moments, and finally the music, inserted as an accompaniment and commentary to the various actions.
The apparatus became increasingly complex and surprising, increasingly spectacularly “baroque”. Changes were also made to the space used: while until that moment the tournament had been held in lists or within a temporary fence, surrounded by amphitheatres made of steps, in those same spaces (squares and courtyards, and also gardens, but then always within the closed area of the Prince’s palace), stands with superimposed bridges began to be erected, thus exploiting the space in height (and creating the inspiration from which the idea of the closed theatre made of boxes originated, an idea that was later so successful). All ephemeral constructions until the creation of a permanent theatre built specifically for tournaments, the Teatro Farnese in Parma, inaugurated in 1628.
At the two ends of the field, usually a large temporary open-air amphitheatre, with an oval or polygonal or more rarely rectangular plan, there were two doors, with a triumphal arch, which served as separate entrances for the maintainer and the adventurers, while on the long sides there were other small doors for the exit of the squadrons.
The various appearances on the field were made on chariots and machines of extreme scenographic refinement, in which all the spectacular taste of the time flowed: “marine killer whales, infernal dragons, monsters with their laps filled with armed men, miraculous fountains, winged horses, figures of exotic animals appeared”, real stages were built where scenographic tricks and surprising mechanisms could be used such as flights, disappearances, changes of all kinds. If the tournaments were held at night, the richest solutions for lighting were used, and often the conclusion of the party was marked by a fireworks display.

The costumes and clothes were very rich, both those created according to the subject of the tournament and those of the knights of the tournament who respected the armaments and colors of their houses. The most precious materials were used for their making, “incarnate velvet with very rich gold tassels…, blue ribbon with bands of purple velvet with silver lace and blue satin stockings…, dry pink cloth trimmed with purple satin leaves…, black velvet lined with gold cloth…, ormesino with jewel buckle and frogs with pearl and gold embroidery in the shape of a palm tree and the fruit a ruby…”. Here for example is the description of a tourneyman (1607): “… he was armed with armour all gilded with fire, wearing a very high crest of five arms, which had a natural cypress at the tip, all adorned with red feathers down to the trunk…, his girdle was very pompous with brocade on a red background, with some large fringes, vermilion and gold, lined with gold cloth…, he rode a very large grey horse…, the horse’s trappings and the girdle were also of red silk cloth, with many tassels and many bows all crimson… holding the horse with a very beautiful plume on its head, three and a half arms very large with gold flowers and all the feathers full of gold tremaruole and a gilded forehead…”.
The combat could be of two types: a real sporting competition such as wrestling in the various specialties typical of the tournament, or the pre-arranged combat, in which no one could emerge winner or loser. The action generally involved, during the mock battles and bloodless brawls, the decisive intervention of a particular deus ex machina, who forced all the combatants to peace. It is probably from the pre-arranged combat and the cultured desire “to renew the spectacles of Athens and Rome” that the ballet on horseback was born, a genre of show that merges some characteristics of theatrical ballet with the tournament-show, mixing dance, music, poetry, scenography, fencing, horse riding, and which is an exquisitely Florentine creation.

The first example of this show, in fact, is the Ballo a Giostra de’ venti “a game of horses in the manner of a ballet” (as the writer of the description, Camillo Rinuccini, says) performed in Florence in Piazza Santa Croce on 27 October 1608: the thirty-two knights who simulated the winds “in the changes of corvettes forward, in a turn of braid, and with passes, and invited now in twos, now in fours, now in eights, and to give breath to the horses, the eight traversals took over, jumping four in a turn, and four with passes, and the fourths they exchanged among themselves always at a gallop, with doubles, and braids, locked together, sometimes in twos, sometimes in fours, when all, and at the end they shared the caracolli, with which, having swept across the whole square several times, they came to pay homage to the Most Serene Bride…: this show was as magnificent as it was for horses, and as bizarre invention to make animals dance, admired by all the people, with great attention”.
As for the music, which always accompanied the different moments of the show, very few traces remain (musical recording being very expensive and in reality often considered inappropriate for an art whose value was considered listening): it is only in the descriptions of the librettos and reports of the equestrian tournaments and ballets that suggestions can be deduced to identify the forms of music used, which was essentially of two types, one sweet and gentle (with string and wind instruments, such as violins, violas, flutes, bagpipes) and one warlike (with the use of trumpets, drums and fifes mainly), while the recitatives, arias and vocal parts for the choirs can be found by similarity in the music of the interludes and in the first dramas for music, and furthermore for the ballets on horseback the composers certainly drew on the contemporary repertoire of instrumental dances, such as galliards, pavans, Correntes, jigs, allemandes, sarabandes.

In all the courts of Northern Italy, and in the cities of Ferrara, Florence, Parma and Turin, above all, tournaments and horse festivals based on Renaissance and Baroque tastes were very fashionable, also due to the will of the Lords and Princes of the respective courts who, with their personal participation in these marvellous spectacles, tended to confirm and at the same time celebrate their own power.
The chivalric tournaments, very different in substance (and then also in form) from those fought in the medieval world, brought about a radical change in the court celebrations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries throughout Europe, and represented one of the consequences of the general trend towards a dynastic political power of an autocratic type: this sort of “rebirth of chivalry”, which also revealed itself with the fashion for chivalric poems and novels (Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme Liberatin particular), although the feudal reality was far away, brings a series of attitudes that want to re-propose the behavioral models of the feudal chivalric society, together with its mythology, adapted and revitalized in the new court life, especially Italian, in which “the attitudes and values inherited from chivalry were covered with an elegant neoplatonic varnish”.
In France, in Paris, it was the ballet on horseback that had the greatest diffusion, taking the name of carousel and the presence of Louis XIV in the spectacular tournament of 1662 gives an idea of the vitality of this form of entertainment, while in Germany and Austria the tournament and the horse festival were perfectly modelled on the Italian examples, also because, especially in Vienna, a large number of librettists, musicians and architects from Italy converged, thanks to whom, in 1667, one of the most fabulous shows of the genre was staged: The contest of air and water. Only at the end of the seventeenth century did the tournament, the joust and the ballet on horseback, with very few exceptions, lose their splendour and their charm, both for the patrons and for the spectators, leaving the field to other genres of entertainment.

The editorial is an extract from the article Wars of Love and Beauty, by Anna Alberati published in the catalogue of the Exhibition Chivalry and Orders of Chivalry in Casanatense set up in the Library in 1995.

The images illustrating the editorial are taken from
– R. Gualterotti, Celebrations at the wedding of the Most Serene Don Francesco Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany... In Florence, in the Giunti printing house, 1579 K.VII.19.1 CCC
– The Triumph of Virtue. Celebration of arms on horseback, represented at the birth of the Most Serene Lord Prince of Modana in the year MDCLX. In Modana, in the printing house of Bartolomeo Soliani, [1660]