Teatro civile e sacra rappresentazione a Firenze nel Rinascimento

In republican Florence, between 1382 and 1530, the ruling classes, from the Albizzi to the Medici, planned a complex theatrical system expertly elaborated to legitimize their power. This book illustrates the variety of theatrical experiences and of dramatic performances developed, moving from the first experimentations of the communal age, to arrive at the radical changes of the princely period. The plurality of scenic and communication techniques is analyzed through some key cores: the feasts for the 1439 Council, with Brunelleschi’s air machines and heavens; the ‘invention’ of sacra rappresentazione (sacred play) at the time of Cosimo the Elder and Antoninus of Florence; the classicist turning of Lorenzo the Magnificent; the ritual revolution of Savonarola; the renewal brought by the return to the city of the Medici with pope Leo X. The underlying theme of the historical narration is offered by the patron celebration of St. John the Baptist, that was the mirror of the institutional and cultural changes occurred in the “longue durée”, but also the emphasis of the myth of a city that its leaders intended to represent as ideally perfect. The history of feasts, entertainment and performances is told through the interweaving of the lives of the men who devised them and released them (patrons, intellectuals, artists, architects, associations) and the reasons that caused its creation. The interest of this study goes beyond the borders of theatre history. In fact the exemplary experience of Florence shows how important was the role played by theatrical language in the construction of political communication and in the organization of pre-modern society