When on 9 January 1537, the 48 senators of the city of Florence elected the 18-year old Cosimo de’ Medici as ‘head and leader of the city of Florence’, perhaps some of these elder patricians thought they could control the young man in political affairs, at least during the first years of his government. But Cosimo soon appeared to be independent and sufficiently high-handed to refuse to share the power he had received. Thirty years later, he had radically changed the political structures of the state: having become one of the most influential rulers of the Italian peninsula, he eventually obtained in 1569 the title of grand duke, and was crowned like a king by the pope in Rome.Footnote ¹

This 30-year period certainly represents the most radical change in Florence's political history from the middle ages to the middle of the eighteenth century.Footnote ² During that period, Cosimo created the administrative, military, cultural and symbolic conditions necessary to be considered a monarch. Among others, he founded a dynasty, numbering among his children a crown prince, a cardinal and the wives of the dukes of Ferrara and Mantua; and a chivalric order, the Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, intended as a means for reorganizing the network of the Tuscan nobility.Footnote ³ These three decades thus saw the birth and development of Cosimo's court, a phenomenon which has not yet been accurately studied in itself, although individual products of the court, either artistic or cultural, are well treated in the literature.Footnote ⁴ This article will focus on the people who constituted this court, namely, Cosimo's courtiers, insofar as they form a completely new social group in Renaissance Florence.

If we try to consider this group as a particular community, two questions immediately arise. The first regards chronology: when did the courtiers start to form such a self-conscious social group? As a matter of fact, we can take it for granted that Cosimo's court did not form itself suddenly, but was the result of a long and complex process. The second question concerns identity and self-fashioning: if the courtiers do constitute a particular community, how did they represent themselves as such to the Florentine people?

Using evidence pertaining to the theatrical use of public space, and in particular the performance of music in the streets of Florence, this article will offer an answer to both of these questions, and show that, in some respects at least, they are closely related to each other. I will briefly demonstrate that, between the beginning of Cosimo's reign (1537) and the creation of the Granducato (1569), the progressive change that can be observed in the Florentine public performance of carnival songs parallels and embodies the birth and development of the court. Specifically this process will be illustrated through an analysis of the mascherata, a genre in which the importance of poetry and music is challenged by the visual effect produced by its staging. Moreover, while it would be logical to consider the court in its natural location, the palazzo, we will see that during the carnival season, the mascherata allowed Cosimo's courtiers to take possession of the streets of Florence, communicating power of their duke with masks, horses and music throughout the city.Footnote ⁵

In 1516 Ludovico Alamanni could write of his fellow citizens that ‘they are so alien to the manners of the court that I think that few others are as much so’; evidently, then, the situation described above changed gradually but dramatically during the course of Cosimo's reign.Footnote ⁶ To create a court in such unusual conditions, Cosimo relied on two categories of people: not only did he favour members of those patrician families who had remained faithful to the Medici, but he also promoted members of provincial families, who came from nearby territories and were therefore less attached to the city's long-held republican traditions.Footnote ⁷ This careful selection of curial staff was accompanied by some symbolic gestures and careful cultural politics which were intended to legitimate the new regime and its personnel. Thus, the Medici move from their ancestral family palace near San Lorenzo to the Palazzo della Signoria – the former town hall – in 1540 had an obvious symbolical meaning, as did the iconographic programmes and architectural transformations commissioned from various court artists (Giorgio Vasari, Baccio Bandinelli, Francesco Salviati or Agnolo Bronzino) inside the same palace.Footnote ⁸ It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find a similar role entrusted to the musical intermedi created for the wedding of Cosimo in July 1539. Along the same lines, this article will investigate how carnival songs during Cosimo's reign were transformed into courtly masquerades.

Our knowledge and understanding of the mascherata relies greatly on the book that Antonfrancesco Grazzini ‘Il Lasca’ published in 1559: entitled Tutti i trionfi, carri, mascherate, o canti carnascialeschi (All the triumphs, processional carts, masquerades or carnival songs), it contains most of the repertory that Florentines used to sing to celebrate carnival since the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici ‘the Magnificent’ (d. 1492). In Grazzini's opinion, this repertory as a whole represented a continuous tradition, beginning with the very first example of the genre, the Canzona de’ confortini written by Lorenzo himself, until the time of the book's publication, a fact recalled by its title in which four terms (trionfi, carri, mascherate, canti carnascialeschi) refer to a single genre. But when he tried to organize the material he had gathered chronologically, Grazzini was unable to succeed, as he admitted in the dedication letter: ‘I had at first thought it wise in editing the poems to pay close attention to when they were written and to arrange them chronologically, but I found this an impossible task since they were all mixed up and carelessly transcribed.’Footnote ⁹

What was considered an impossible task for a well-informed Florentine in 1559 cannot have become any easier for a historian nowadays: the difficulty of getting a comprehensive view of the genre is largely due to the lack of documentation, which is at best only partial. Chronology is the most tantalizing matter, since so few canti are dated in the literary sources. One has to leaf through a variety of scattered sources and cross check them carefully to obtain a tentative and by no means definitive or complete list. I nevertheless have made such an undertaking for Cosimo's reign, but the conclusions I draw from this reconstruction are to be confirmed by further research. Be this as it may, it clearly appears that, despite the fact that Grazzini seems to appraise the repertory as belonging to a single genre, we have to distinguish between two different categories of songs: on the one hand, the traditional canti di mestieri, which start from the time of Lorenzo and last until the end of the 1550s; on the other hand, another sort of canti, which progressively replaced the former ones, although both co-exist from the end of the 1540s. I will call this last genre mascherate, to avoid confusion with the trade songs usually called canti carnascialeschi, although such a clear semantic distinction was not obvious at that time.Footnote ¹⁰

The canti di mestieri, or trade songs, of which so many examples survive from the beginning of the sixteenth century, did not disappear suddenly with Cosimo's accession to the duchy. During the 1540s, we can find documentation testifying to the continuation of this tradition. Actually, it seems that Grazzini himself and some of his friends had an active role as promoters of carnival songs. His canto de magnani, or song of the locksmiths was written in 1544 (modern style), and surely a majority of those he ascribed to himself in his 1559 book can be associated with Cosimo's period. Alongside Grazzini we should mention another important figure of the Florentine cultural scene, Alfonso de’ Pazzi, who seems to have specialized in the writing and production of canti until his death in 1555. Both Grazzini and Pazzi had strong ties with a confraternity named Compagnia della Cicilia, to which a number of the carnival songs written by the two men can be linked. In this respect, the Compagnia della Cicilia played the same role held by the compagnie and brigate of the former period.Footnote ¹¹ These associations were often characterized by a strong social mixture, counting among their members patricians and middle-class males. What we know of the membership of the Cicilia reflects a comparable social structure. If we focus only on the two poets already mentioned, Alfonso de’ Pazzi was one of the wealthiest citizens of his times, originating from a well-known and influential family, while Grazzini, the son of a notary, typically represents the literary middle class of Renaissance Florence. Moreover, if some of its members had ties with the court, the Cicilia community as a whole was a completely private and independent organization, unrelated to Cosimo's establishment.

Around Cosimo, however, not all the courtiers appreciated this trade song tradition, as can be deduced from an exchange of letters dating from 1543. On 20 January, one of Cosimo's secretaries wrote from the villa di Poggio a Caiano to Pier Francesco Riccio, the duke's magiordomo who had remained in Florence: ‘the duke had your letter yesterday, along with the song and the music of the Mattacini, which pleased him. He asked me to let you know he has received it safely.’ But another secretary, writing the day after to the same Pier Francesco Riccio, asked him to send new music, ‘so that all these Monsignori will be satisfied, because they scorned the Mattacini as a thing not worthy of them’.Footnote ¹²

Thus, while Cosimo was satisfied with the canto de Mattacini (of which only the text has survived) which took the form of a typical canto carnascialesco involving jugglers and acrobats, it seems that part of his entourage was looking for more refined music. This isolated document cannot be sufficient to prove that the interest in a new genre of carnival songs began from that date, but mascherate departing from the canti di mestieri began to appear just a few years later. In a Mascherata degli astrologi performed in 1546, the court composer Francesco Corteccia sets the poem in a musical style which departs from the rhythmically simple versions which have survived from earlier decades. With its sincopated style influenced by the fashionable note nere madrigals, Corteccia's mascherata was clearly intended to be sung by professional singers.Footnote ¹³ Some descriptions confirm this tendency: that same year 1546, in the Mascherata delle cento arti, according to a witness, ‘the music started with four voices, then it continued with eight, then with twelve, and finally with fifteen voices, with the instruments’.Footnote ¹⁴ Not only did the composition acquire more refinement and become more complex, so did its performance, since the musicians involved belonged to the court. The descriptions often testify to the presence of cornets and trombones normally associated with official outdoor music-making, and we know that the professional singers employed either at court or at the baptistery chapel (which functioned as the actual ducal chapel) were involved in the performance. The chapel singer Agostino Lapini wrote in his diary, under the year 1566: ‘on the 21st of February, the duke Cosimo sponsored 21 trionfi . . . with various sounds and voices. I saw the whole thing, and I sang therein.’Footnote ¹⁵ The sound produced by these mascherate, that is to say, the association of the musical style with the vocal and instrumental sonorities, functions like a social tag, which helps to identify the mascherate with the court and its music and, at the same time, reinforces their distinction from the unpretentious and easily sung canti di mestieri promoted by the city compagnie.

Another substantial difference, even more significant than the musical ones, lies in the chosen themes. Whereas the canti carnascialeschi represent tradesmen, country folk and so forth, the new mascherate gradually changed the subjects to adapt them to a courtly taste, removing at the same time the sexual allusions typical of the former genre. Two successive phases in this process can be identified: the first, lasting from the end of the 1540s to around 1560, shows a gradual change of the classical trade songs towards more elevated themes. This can be deduced from the few datable canti and mascherate performed during that period, from which the following five exhibit this new trend: Mostri innamorati (1547), Cavalieri erranti (1549), Pellegrini d'amore (1551), Caccia di lupi (1552) and Cacciatori (1555).Footnote ¹⁶ This list calls for two comments: first, the concrete themes of the locksmiths or oil sellers which characterize the typical social inversion of the canto carnascialesco are missing here, and are replaced by allegorical or symbolic topics that can be related to court culture. Second, three of these five titles refer to hunting and riding horses: these are activities appropriate to nobles, which reveals a need for self-identification and self-representation in the choice of subjects.

The second phase, beginning around 1560, intensifies the change, with a trend towards mythological and obscure themes, invented by a new generation of courtiers living around Cosimo's children. That these men were perfectly aware of what they were doing, namely substituting the canti carnascialeschi tradition by a new genre, is revealed by the controversy provoked by Lionardo Salviati's Mascherata degli Ermafroditi, performed in February 1562. Born in 1540, Salviati embodies the new generation of Florentine patricians who had grown up under the reign of Cosimo. His invention seemed so obscure to some people that it prompted an exchange of letters between the young courtier and his opponents. In his answer, Salviati refers to the canti di mestieri in the following way: ‘Just as I do not blame those who followed the custom current in that time, so I praise those others who have dared to ennoble this thing from such a low place and bring it into a far more honourable state, even if some have perhaps taken aim too far in this direction.’Footnote ¹⁷

Not only does his answer make it clear that the traditional trade songs had gone in 1562, but it also shows that the process of ennoblement of the genre was a conscious one.

Up to this point, I have tried to show briefly how the carnival songs that were performed since the time of Lorenzo il Magnifico were taken over and transformed by Cosimo's courtiers. The changes that affect subjects, poetic style, musical composition and performance were intended to facilitate the identification of the mascherate with their sponsors. We now have to investigate the reasons that underlie this change. I would suggest that they are political, in the broadest sense of the word: the duke and his circle tried through these means to move the court outside the palazzo in order to acquire more visibility. It is here that location becomes the important point. A court is as much a community of people as a specific place where this community lives. In Florence, this place was the Palazzo della Signoria, where Duke Cosimo had moved from 1540. This palace, ‘accordingly renamed palazzo Ducale’, became the centre of an entire architectural complex designed to embody the ducal power.Footnote ¹⁸ The most famous extension to the palace was the Uffizi, first conceived in 1546, but only built from 1560. According to Hank Van Veen, ‘the new building, which housed the guilds and magistracies scattered around the city, was designed to concentrate power near the Palazzo della Signoria’.Footnote ¹⁹

In this context, it is relevant to note that during carnival, each year since 1540, a play was performed at the Palazzo della Signoria.Footnote ²⁰ At that time, a play involved a large part of the court in its production and performance: the courtiers themselves served as the actors and stage directors (and sometimes as authors); the court musicians were involved in the performance of intermedi, while their fellow artists had to design the scenery. For the court, therefore, moving these comedies from the palazzo into the streets through the creation of elaborate mascherate was a way of achieving greater visibility. In other words, the mascherata transferred into public space what had formerly been represented in the private sphere.

In this process, the already quoted Mascherata delle cento arti of 1546 (also called Trionfo de’ Pazzi or Trionfo di tutto il mondo) represents a decisive step: it is the first widely documented carnival event in which the court was deeply involved. To begin with, the archives record that Cosimo appointed someone to co-ordinate the whole event, since we find a Giovanni Scolari with the title of ‘commissario della piazza e delle feste’ (‘official in charge of the piazza and festivities’), who gave orders of payment to court artists like Bacchiaca for ‘masks of paper and board’, or Bronzino, Giambattista Tasso and Johann Roost.Footnote ²¹

A hitherto unnoticed diary gives us a precious insight into the making of this official public entertainment. Preserved at the Biblioteca Marucelliana, it was written by Ristoro di Lorenzo Machiavelli between 1538 and 1553. It appears that Machiavelli was involved in the 1546 carnival events, as his text explains:

This interesting document sheds a new light on Cosimo's strategy: it seems clear that neither Machiavelli nor de’ Nerli or Segni can be considered Cosimo's courtiers, although they represent important and powerful families. Nevertheless, they were requested to take part in the official mascherata. In doing this, the duke could associate them with the court, and in the meantime, he also prevented these patricians from organizing their own private canto. In this instance, the court functioned as a substitute for the usual compagnie.

An important point made by Machiavelli is that the mascherata took place on the piazza Santa Croce, a fact confirmed by other descriptions. Another important detail is that Machiavelli and his companions had to ride horses. From that date, we read that all the official masquerades were mounted, and that they were all performed in piazza Santa Croce. The two facts are clearly related, since this piazza was the traditional place where tournaments and equestrian games like giostre and armeggierie had been organized since the middle ages.Footnote ²³ That this square was chosen by Cosimo to stage his official festivals should be related to the fact that it had always been associated with the idea of power through the presence of horses. With the horses, the physical impact of the mascherate on the Florentine population would have been much more impressive than the one produced by the traditional canti.Footnote ²⁴ Symbolically, the figures of ducal power, with their horses, their elaborate themes and sounds, started from Santa Croce, the natural place of power, and then went through the streets of Florence to spread their musical message throughout the city.

The transformations that altered the canti carnascialeschi were not always well received, especially by those who were trying to keep alive the traditions of the canti di mestieri. In a famous sonnet, Alfonso de’ Pazzi violently criticized one of the most spectacular of these new mascherate, entitled canto delle Furie, which went through the streets of Florence during the carnival of 1550. His main reproach was that the theme was so obscure that the people did not understand it at all. Ten years later, Antonfrancesco Grazzini reacted in the same way to the new trend with a poem entitled ‘Sopra il compor de canti moderni’ (‘On the composition of modern songs’). The second stanza quotes Pazzi's incipit in the following way:

The ‘Batista’ cited by Alfonso de’ Pazzi in 1550, that is to say the inventor of the Canto delle Furie, was Giovanbattista Strozzi, the official court poet and stage director of the comedies and intermedi performed at court since 1539, when he had been put in charge of all the festivals intended to celebrate Cosimo's wedding with Eleonora of Toledo.Footnote ²⁶ This reinforces the idea that with the mascherate, the court theatre was moving from the palazzo into the streets of the city: we have seen that the inventors (Strozzi), artists (Bacchiaca or Bronzino) and musicians (Corteccia) were the same in both situations.

The political goals are thus clearly established: by progressively substituting the private initiatives of the compagnie with an official event, in which not only the courtiers, but all the Florentine aristocracy was associated, Cosimo and his court made sure that they could control the streets, which were no longer the shared space they had once been, where various canti originating from various compagnie could circulate and deliver their sung message, but rather a reserved one, where the only sounds that could be heard were those originating from the palazzo and its court. The cultural variety that had been fostered by the fragmented communities of trade groupings thus gave way to a form of homogenization from the centre, as the cultural politics of the court spread to control the city as a whole, even during the time of the carnival.