This fourth volume in the European Festival Studies, 1450–1700 series breaks with precedent in stemming from a joint conference (Venice, 2013) between the Society for European Festivals Research and the PALATIUM project supported by the European Science Foundation. The volume draws on up-to-date research by a Europe-wide group of academic scholars and museum and gallery curators to provide a unique, intellectually-stimulating and beautifully-illustrated account of temporary architecture created for festivals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, together with permanent architecture pressed into service for festival occasions across major European locations including Italian, French, Austrian, Scottish and German. Appealing and vigorous in style, the essays look towards classical sources while evoking political and practical circumstances and intellectual concerns – from re-shaping and re-conceptualizing early sixteenth-century Rome, through providing for the well-being and political allegiance of Medici-era Florentines and exploring the teasing aesthetics of performance at Versailles to accommodating players and spectators in seventeenth-century Paris and at royal and ducal events for the Habsburg, French and English crowns. The volume is unique in its field in the diversity of its topics and the range of its scholarship and fascinating in its account of the intellectual and political life of Early Modern Europe.

This fourth volume in the European Festival Studies, 1450-1700 series breaks with precedent in stemming from a joint conference (Venice, 2013) between the Society for European Festivals Research and the PALATIUM project supported by the European Science Foundation. The volume draws on up-to-date research by a Europe-wide group of academic scholars and museum and gallery curators to provide a unique, intellectually-stimulating and beautifully-illustrated account of temporary architecture created for festivals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, together with permanent architecture pressed into service for festival occasions across major European locations including Italian, French, Austrian, Scottish and German. Appealing and vigorous in style, the essays look towards classical sources while evoking political and practical circumstances and intellectual concerns - from re-shaping and re-conceptualizing early sixteenth-century Rome, through providing for the well-being and political allegiance of Medici-era Florentines and exploring the teasing aesthetics of performance at Versailles to accommodating players and spectators in seventeenth-century Paris and at royal and ducal events for the Habsburg, French and English crowns. The volume is unique in its field in the diversity of its topics and the range of its scholarship and fascinating in its account of the intellectual and political life of Early Modern Europe.

The fourteen essays that comprise this volume concentrate on festival iconography, the visual and written languages, including ephemeral and permanent structures, costume, dramatic performance, inscriptions and published festival books that ’voiced’ the social, political and cultural messages incorporated in processional entries in the countries of early modern Europe. The volume also includes a transcript of the newly-discovered Register of Lionardo di Zanobi Bartholini, a Florentine merchant, which sets out in detail the expenses for each worker for the possesso (or Entry) of Pope Leo X to Rome in April 1513.

Festivities such as those exalting the court of Louis XIV, the celebration of James II's London coronation, and the commemoration of the peace celebrations of 1749 at The Hague culminated in dazzling pyrotechnical displays. These were in turn reproduced as prints, paintings, and narrative descriptions. This unique book examines the propagandistic and rhetorical functions these printed records came to serve as vehicles of aesthetic, cultural, and emotional significance.

Based on a comprehensive interpretation and comparison of the existing sources - including city records and expenses, chronicles, official booklets, letters, collections of poems and speeches - this book offers a detailed analysis of triumphal entries in early-modern Scotland. It examines Scottish triumphal entries as politicised events taking place in the urban scenario, where the relationship between urban authorities and rulers was represented and negotiated both visually and through the use of space. In particular these events are viewed in relation to the urban space where they took place, and each other. The book argues that the significance of triumphal entries becomes clearer when they are seen as a sequence of interconnected events; contextualising them helps understanding the organisersâe(tm) desire to follow or separate from tradition, incorporating or refusing to acknowledge foreign flavours. The study also looks at the broader context of courtly events staged in parallel with triumphal entries, including the uses of spaces, the iconography, speeches, and pageants, in order to compare the urban authoritiesâe(tm) idealised view of the world presented in the entry with the rulerâe(tm)s own version staged at court. This is then further contextualised through comparisons with similar events taking place elsewhere in Europe. This underlines the fine balance achieved between retaining Scotlandâe(tm)s individual characters and adopting fashionable themes inspired by foreign cultures, and contextualise the reasons behind individual choices - both in an urban and a courtly environment. Italian Renaissance, Dutch, French, and English influences will be particularly considered.

Bringing together contributions from art history, architectural history, historiography and history of law, this volume is the first comprehensive exploration of the manifold meanings of foundation, dedication and consecration rituals and narratives in early modern culture.

From oaths and hand-kissing to coronations and baptisms, Power and Ceremony in European History considers the governing practices, courtly rituals, and expressions of power prevalent in Europe and the Ottoman Empire from the medieval age to the modern era. Bringing together political and art historical approaches to the study of power, this book reveals how ceremonies and rituals - far from simply being ostentatious displays of wealth - served as a primary means of communication between different participants in political and courtly life. It explores how ceremonial culture changed over time and in different regions to provide readers with a nuanced comparative understanding of rituals and ceremonies since the middle ages, showing how such performances were integral to the evolution of the state in Europe. This collection of essays is of immense value to both historians and art historians interested in representations of power and the political culture of Europe from 1450 onwards.