Stupire e meravigliare l’imperatore durante l’apparato festivo fiorentino del 1536: da invittissimo cavaliere a indomito destriero

Triumphal entries undoubtedly constitute one of the most tangible moments of representation of power in the cities. The organisation of the festive decorations often mobilised, as Giorgio Vasari points out, «tutti gl’artefici, buoni e cattivi», namely all the artists active at this time, and sometimes with the help of teams of foreigners. The lack of surviving works, because they were not conceived for lasting fruition, is partially compensated for by textual sources of fundamental descriptive value in order to reconstruct the physiognomy of such events. This contribution aims to emphasise the reception of these festivities, relying, as a starting point, on the words with which Vasari records the Mantuan entry of Charles V on 25 March 1530 in the Vita di Giulio Romano: «Nella venuta di Carlo quinto imperatore a Mantova, per ordine del Duca fe’ Giulio molti bellissimi apparati d’archi, prospettive per commedie e molte altre cose; nelle quali invenzioni non aveva Giulio pari, e non fu mai il più capriccioso nelle mascherate e nel fare stravaganti abiti per giostre, feste e torneamenti, come allora si vide, con stupore e maraviglia di Carlo imperadore e di quanti v’intervennero». A significant passage in which the receptive aspect stands out, providing the point of view of both the beneficiary of the events and the creators involved. Due to the abundance of descriptive material, this essay focuses on Charles V’s triumphs in 1536, in the Florence of Alessandro I de’ Medici still wounded by the construction of the fortress of San Giovanni and where the ugly memory of the siege of 1530 certainly hovered. Giorgio Vasari’s rich experience in this field allows to consider a paradigmatic case of discrepancy to be found among the descriptions of the equestrian monument in Piazza Santa Trinita entrusted to Tribolo, left unfinished. And in a context of such high diplomatic tension, I propose to analyse how much this incompleteness may have mattered.