Academic literature on the topic 'Ercole d'Este'

This study explores the motivations that lie behind three polyphonic works by musicians active at Ferrara and Mantua in the first half of the sixteenth century: a motet by Maistre Jhan, and a motet and mass by Jacquet. The background that links all three is the intense campaign that was waged between reform and orthodoxy. Music and visual art were sometimes put to use as propaganda. The Este and Gonzaga families who ruled the two states were related by blood and political alliances. They had strong reasons to defend the orthodox religion; they were also deeply persuaded of music's communicative power. Not surprisingly, their court musicians were often called on for music with a political message. The three works chosen here, each in its own way, reflect the religious convictions and personal ambitions of leading members of the two families caught up in crises: duke Ercole II D'Este, uneasy vassal of the pope; his wife Renée de France, habitual protector of religious rebels; and Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, a career diplomat hopeful of wearing the triple crown.

In late spring of 1473 an elaborate wooden building was constructed in the piazza before the Roman church of Ss. Apostoli. This structure was to provide the setting for entertainments offered in honor of the marriage of Eleonora of Aragon, daughter of Ferrante, king of Naples, to Ercole d'Este, duke of Ferrara. The bride and her Neapolitan retinue, together with the Ferrarese contingent sent to Naples to fetch her, stayed in Rome for five days, from 5 June to 9 June. They were the guests of nephews of Sixtus IV: Pietro Riario, the cardinal of San Sisto, and Giuliano della Rovere, the cardinal of San Pietro in Vincoli.

Modena, Biblioteca Estense, MS α.M.1.13 (ModD) is a collection of masses compiled in Ferrara around 1480 for the court of Ercole I d'Este. Although several scholars have argued that the changes in ModD were the result of composers reworking their own music or intervention by the scribe, the situation is far more complex. Through a careful examination of the textual and musical changes in ModD, this essay substantiates three hypotheses: that ModD had a separate and independent editor (Johannes Martini) apart from the scribe who copied it (Fra Filippo), and that both tampered with the music to a different extent; that the reasons behind the changes were in part politically and religiously motivated; and finally that several of the masses in ModD contain sections written by someone other than their original composer, a practice that may have been more common than we currently believe.

Texte remanié de: Ph.D.--London--Warburg institute, 1982. Titre de soutenance : Studies in domestic expenditure at the Court of Ferrara, 1471-1505 : artistic patronage and princely magnificence.
Contient, en annexes, des documents en italien. Arbre généalogique des Este. Bibliogr. p. 508-526. Index.

xiii Abstract By the second half of the fifteenth century marriage had become a fundamental part of the process by which political alliances were forged between the ruling families of the Italian peninsula. Such marriages were impersonal affairs in which the bride had little or no input and no thought was given to the compatibility of the couple or the possibility that they might be happy. Such a marriage was that to which Eleonora d’Aragona (1450–1493) was committed by her father, Ferrante I, king of Naples, in 1465, when she was married to Sforza Maria Sforza of Milan. In 1472, when that still unconsummated marriage ceased to be expedient, a divorce was negotiated and a new marriage arranged. This time her husband was to be the warrior-prince, Ercole d’Este (1431–1505), who had spent time in the Neapolitan court and who a year earlier, had succeeded his half-brother, Borso, as duke of Ferrara. The magnificence of the events which accompanied Eleonora’s proxy marriage to Ercole in Naples, her bridal journey to Ferrara and her triumphal entry into that city were an indication of the importance which both Ferrara and Naples had attached to the marriage as a symbol of the friendship between them. Eleonora proved a remarkable bride. She bore Ercole five children, she acted as his regent during his absences on military campaigns, she endured separation from two of her children who remained with her father in Naples during the Pazzi War (1478–79). When her husband took a condotta with the League of Florence and Milan, to wage war against Pope Sixtus IV and Ferrante whose army was led by her brother the duke of Calabria, Eleonora juggled conjugal loyalty and filial duty to emerge unscathed, retrieve xiv her children, and lay the groundwork for peace negotiations. In this dissertation, however, I look beyond court ceremonial and public display and attempt to put a more human face on the marriage of the duke and duchess of Ferrara by focussing on the lives that they shared in private, as lovers, friends, parents and colleagues in the great enterprise of governing their small state. Using both the letters that they wrote to each other and the observations of others, I construct a picture of their marriage as a happy and successful partnership, in which mutual affection, loyalty and respect had replaced political expediency as the main driving force. I believe that it was the intimacy and trust which the couple shared in their marriage that enabled them to support each through the terrible events of the Pazzi War.

This dissertation presents a previously unedited text by one of the most distinguished- yet neglected-Latin writers of the Italian Renaissance, Ercole Strozzi (1471-1508), a poet and administrator in the court of Ferrara. Under the Este Dukes, Ferrara became a major center of literary and artistic patronage. The Latin literary output of the court, however, has received insufficient scholarly scrutiny. The text is a verse funeral elegy of Eleonora of Aragon (1450-1493), the first Duchess of Ferrara. Eleonora was a remarkable woman whose talents and indefatigable efforts on behalf of her husband, her children, and her state, won her accolades both at home and abroad. She also served as a prototype for the remarkable careers of her two daughters, Isabella d'Este, and Beatrice d'Este, who are celebrated for their erudition and patronage of arts and letters. The text is a mirror of the Estense court and reveals to us how its members no doubt saw themselves, at the very peak of its temporal power and the height of its prestige as a center of cultural creativity. It is also important for the striking portrait it presents of Eleonora. Ercole Strozzi chose to call his poem an epicedium, an ancient minor literary genre that had received attention in the two decades prior to its composition, due to the discovery and printing of the silver age Roman poet Statius, whose text includes several epicedia. Strozzi deftly adapts and transcends both his ancient and contemporary models (especially Poliziano), and in the process, creates a new Latin literary genre, the Renaissance epicedium. It is a fine poem, full of both erudition and creativity, and as such is the first fruits of what would be Ercole Strozzi's illustrious poetic career. The work is genuinely worthy of study on both esthetic and historical grounds.

Throughout his reign, Duke Ercole I d'Este (1431--1505) modeled his image as a ruler after those of classical antiquity. This determined and focused agenda was the driving force behind the artistic outpouring of late fifteenth-century Ferrara. By drawing parallels between the music of his most prominent court composer, Johannes Martini, and the classical architecture of Ferrara, I will demonstrate that Ercole's aspirations brought artistic unity to the city. Ercole's musical, architectural, and physical enhancements to Ferrara were unprecedented, and scholars have long admired them as individual accomplishments. Yet a close examination of Ercole's endeavors as a whole reveals a city unified by a specific, imitative technique. This technique relied on extensive quotation, and it is found throughout all of Ferrara's artistic media, reflecting Ercole's efforts to magnify and immortalize his imperial image.

La tesi indaga la civiltà dello spettacolo ferrarese sotto Ercole I d’Este, un sovrano che controlla, promuove e dirige la vita festiva e cerimoniale con fermezza secondo un preciso disegno politico. Con il sussidio di un’ampia gamma di fonti cronistiche, epistolari, archivistiche, letterarie e iconografiche, il lavoro tenta di ricostruire le fonti di ispirazione, la trama simbolica e allegorica del progetto teatrale erculeo e le realizzazioni materiali di alcuni spettacoli. Il focus si concentra su un aspetto ancora non indagato in profondità, perché dato per scontato o ingiustamente ritenuto estraneo all’ambito delle discipline dello spettacolo: la ricezione attiva di Plauto e Terenzio ma anche di Luciano o Ovidio e il loro specifico riuso nei volgarizzamenti commissionati dal Duca agli intellettuali della sua corte. Intrecciando le prospettive tradizionali della filologia classica con quelle teatrologiche si indagano, cioè, i modi attraverso i quali si assimila a più livelli e si attualizza espressivamente il patrimonio ritrovato della cultura classica identificando in questo passaggio la cifra costitutiva della scena erculea, l’aspetto che, in altre parole, maggiormente la definisce e la distingue da altre realtà coeve. Il lavoro è articolato in due parti precedute da un’introduzione, nella quale si fissano alcuni punti nodali relativi al contesto ferrarese tardo-quattrocentesco. Ai nastri di partenza si colloca l’illustre umanista Guarino Veronese, decisivo protagonista, con il suo magistero, nell’esegesi e nella diffusione dei capolavori comici latini, che imprime un forte impulso riformista alla vita culturale estense, arrivando a rivoluzionare il concetto stesso di princeps e di corte. Dallo Studio alla città: un Apologo di Pandolfo Collenuccio è il punto di avvio di una riflessione teorica intorno alla categoria estetica di comico e di commedia; quindi, si guarda al laboratorio teatrale erculeo nei suoi tratti ibridi e polimorfi, quale spazio privilegiato di incontro tra l’eredità romanza della cultura volgare e i classici da poco riscoperti dagli umanisti. L’indagine è condotta attraverso una campionatura di episodi festivi e di documenti estrapolati come più significativi. La prima sezione esplora la festa per le nozze di Alfonso d’Este, primogenito di Ercole ed erede al soglio ducale, e Anna Sforza, nipote di Ludovico il Moro e sorella del duca nominale di Milano Gian Galeazzo Maria Sforza, ricostruita alla luce di evidenze documentarie inedite. Il confronto tra l’ingresso trionfale della sposa a Ferrara, avvenuto il 12 febbraio 1491, e la speculare entrata processionale degli Este a Milano del 22 gennaio dello stesso anno, rivela con chiarezza le differenze tra le rispettive tattiche promozionali di Ercole I e Ludovico il Moro. Il complesso cerimoniale architettato da Ercole per la giornata conclusiva dei festeggiamenti costituisce da questo punto di vista una sorta di prototipo delle sue strategie mitopoietiche con cui l’immagine del principe e della corte vengono trasfigurate tra teatro, iconografia e letteratura. L’Amphitrione di Pandolfo Collenuccio, andato in scena con tutta probabilità proprio in quella circostanza, funge da ponte con la seconda sezione della ricerca, dedicata ai volgarizzamenti plautini. La scelta è ricaduta su quelli di sicura provenienza ferrarese: oltre al volgarizzamento collenucciano dell’Amphitruo, rientrano nel gruppo la Cassina e la Mustellaria di Girolamo Berardo e l’Asinaria finora ritenuta anonima e della quale si tenta un’attribuzione. A questo insieme si è aggiunta la Vita de Iosep andata in scena a Ferrara nel 1504, un singolare esperimento di “commedia religiosa” ascrivibile a Collenuccio che assimila il duca estense alla figura del patriarca biblico Giuseppe. L’indagine sui singoli testi si svolge lungo due principali direttrici: A. L’analisi dei motivi tematici. Il filtro culturale imposto dalla scrittura in volgare condiziona le originarie tematiche plautine, di cui naturalmente il volgarizzamento fornisce una declinazione sua propria. L’obiettivo è valutare l’originale apporto dell’autore, che non si limita a ricevere e rielaborare attivamente gli spunti plautini, ma ne aggiunge anche di nuovi, provenienti dal repertorio novellistico-popolare. B. L’interpretazione delle modifiche “strutturali” apportate dai volgarizzatori al dettato plautino. In questa fase si cercano di individuare e analizzare i moduli del testo che ricorrono spesso in corrispondenza di situazioni in cui venga alterato significativamente il testo di Plauto, come ad esempio laddove viene inserita una fine d’atto diversa da quella dell’originale (reimpostando di conseguenza la sequenza fine di atto–inizio del successivo secondo una serie di schemi che hanno tutta l’aria di essere considerati dai traduttori come “canonici”) o in corrispondenza delle sequenze testuali lacunose, mutile o molto problematiche dell’originale. Si tratta di passi che per forza di cose richiedevano un considerevole lavoro di rimaneggiamento (quando non di scrittura ex novo) per poter essere adattati alle esigenze della rappresentazione. In gran conto è tenuta l’eventuale presenza di un codice formulare che descriva il movimento e le forme di interazione dei personaggi sul palco, per noi potenzialmente utilissimo in qualità di porta di (parziale) accesso all’azione scenica.