Armeggerie, Wedding Chests and Battles in Fifteenth-century Florence

Battles constituted a wider category of Florentine cultural production during the

fifteenth century than is sometimes realised. Staged battles and actual war inspired

poets. Armeggerie, that is festive representations of battles, were recorded in terze

rime, a form with elevated poetic aspirations, and the jousts of Lorenzo and Giuliano

de’ Medici were immortalised by Luigi Pulci and Angelo Poliziano respectively. The

sack of Volterra by Federigo da Montefeltro was described in a poem by Naldo Naldi,

which was probably set to music when it was first heard at the installation of Federigo

as Florentine capitano on 29 June 1472.1 Indeed, the period saw the rise of a new

musical genre – the so-called ‘battle piece’ – that would remain popular into its

heyday during the seventeenth century. Heinrich Isaac, a German composer resident

in Florence, wrote a four-part work ‘alla battaglia’ that was likely first performed

during carnival in 1488.2 Battles of various forms engaged poets, musicians and

festaiuoli.

Painters of wedding chests also gave form to battles, ancient and modern,

much like the organisers of armeggerie. Indeed, the two forms were sometimes

closely related to one another. The marriage of Bernardo Rucellai to Nannina de’

Medici in 1466, for example, included a display of war-like prowess, as young men

pretended to fight in the streets. Bernardo’s father recorded that they battled

(‘armeggierono’) their way from the Palazzo Rucellai to the Palazzo Medici.3 A pair

of battle cassoni was also commissioned at the time to decorate their nuptial chamber,

1

showing the Battle of Zama and the Triumph of Scipio (figs. 1 & 2).4 Now variously

attributed to the workshops of Apollonio di Giovanni or Paolo Uccello, the two

frontals depict the Roman defeat of the Carthaginians under Hannibal in 202 BCE and

the subsequent triumphal entry of Scipio Africanus Major into Rome. Perhaps

surprising, the festivities surrounding the union of the Rucellai and Medici households

included two battles, one staged on the street and the other represented in paint.

Whether as art historians, literary critics or musicologists, we tend to consider

recurrent themes, such as battles, in relation to the medium with which we are most

familiar, despite the representational qualities that are common to image, text and

sound that might suggest links between them. As historians, we sometimes miss

structural similarities between actual events and represented ones by maintaining a

strict division between the realms of experience and depiction. But, as a case in point,

the word ‘battaglia’ in the fifteenth century could refer to both festive stagings of

battles and war itself.5 My purpose, here, is to consider battles as a single,

representational type by examining two case studies, an armeggeria related to the

Benci and Strozzi families and a pair of cassone frontals commissioned on the

occasion of a wedding that joined the Vettori and the Rucellai. Images on Florentine

cassoni have long been associated with the city’s festival culture, but the nature of

their relationship remains murky. Battle frontals themselves remain understudied,

despite recent interest in cassoni more generally.6 A mock battle and an image on a

piece of furniture are clearly different endeavours and they were viewed in distinct

contexts. But the very fact that the Benci-Strozzi armeggeria and the Vettori-Rucellai

cassoni were entirely unrelated to one another makes them useful in exposing

underlying structural and functional similarities between the two types. They were

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both battles of a sort and, as will become apparent, they had related socio-political

motivations.

The Benci-Strozzi Armeggeria

On the night of the 14 February 1464, Bartolomeo Benci asked eight of his young

companions to arrange a festa, in order that he might ‘acquire more grace’ from

Marietta di Lorenzo degli Strozzi, granddaughter of Messer Palla di Nofri.7 It was

carnival, which unlike the popular festivities of San Giovanni, had come to see feudal

forms enacted for the advancement of old, established families.8 Each noble giovane

was accompanied by at least thirty pages bearing torches and wearing hose below

gonellini – short, ruffled garments – which bore the heraldic devices of their master.

Banded into groups, the young men left separately from their respective homes and

converged on the Palazzo Benci, where they conferred a baton on Bartolomeo as lord

and captain of the company, following the process of conferring command onto a

condottiere. They dined together, before escorting Bartolomeo to the house of

Marietta, in the company of many hundred pageboys. She was, in all likelihood,

living in one of Strozzi houses around the area of the old Piazza degli Strozzi, which

is where the armeggeria probably occurred.9 Accompanying Bartolomeo and his

entourage was a ‘triumph of love’, presumably a type of festival float that required

many men to carry. Twenty braccia high, it was decorated with spiritelli d’amore,

together with the arms of the Benci and the device of Lorenzo di Palla Strozzi, who

was the father of Marietta. Crowning the entire construction was an enflamed,

sanguineous heart. Those who saw it, were ‘dazzled [abagliato]’. The elaborate visual

display was matched by an aural one: the edifice was hung with bells, while the young

3

noblemen were accompanied by shawm players, which might suggest that the music

had a sophisticated polyphonic texture.

Once below the window of Marietta, the armeggiatori performed the mostra,

in which each paraded in the saddle with a gilded arrow. Then followed the

armeggeria proper. They broke their gilded lances at the foot of the palace in the

customary display of skill or dexterity in the handling of the lance (on other

occasions, the lance might be broken before a so-called saracino or quintain). The

gesture was chivalric. Although the Florentine elite were merchants living in a

republic without a standing army, they nonetheless adopted the conventions and

trappings of knightly behaviour codified elsewhere in Europe at an earlier date.

Marietta watched the proceedings from a window above the point at which

they broke their lances. Lit by four torches, she showed such ‘gracious dignity’ that

she was like Lucretia. Detaching some wings and throwing them on the trionfo,

Bartolomeo caused it to burst into flames and explode with fireworks, so that the

spiritelli d’amore seemed to fire their arrows through the air and into the heart of the

lover. The armeggiatori departed riding backwards, shoulders never turned to

Marietta. Each individual armeggiatore then went to break his lance below the

window of his respective beloved.

The anonymous account from which the passage above is derived, replete with

detailed descriptions of clothing and repeated emphasis on the magnificence of the

occasion, is preserved in a book of family papers bound together by Carlo Strozzi in

1670.10 Judging from the folds in the paper and a fly note in the same hand that fits the

folded space, it was probably kept in the fifteenth century as a personal record of the

event, possibly by the Strozzi themselves given its provenance. If, indeed, this is the

4

case, then the event must have been of some importance to the family for them to

have preserved a written memory.

The names of Bartolomeo’s companions are recorded: Andrea di Paolo

Carnesecchi, Jacopo di Messer Carlo Marsuppini, Bartolomeo Bartolini, Lodovico

Pucci, Piero di Giuliano Vespucci, Francesco Altoviti, Andrea di Bono Boni and

Francesco di Zanobi Girolami. They hailed from some of the most influential families

in the city and appear to have been ardent Medici supporters. Andrea Carnesecchi’s

father was included in the Medicean balìa of 1480, for example.11 Five of

Bartolomeo’s eight companions would reappear at Lorenzo’s joust in 1469 and

Jacopo Marsuppini appears as a character in Lorenzo’s Simposio.12

A century ago, Aby Warburg associated one of the so-called Otto prints with

Lorenzo’s giostra (fig. 3).13 It includes the two idealised figures that he identified as

Lorenzo and his beloved, Lucrezia Donati, an identification confirmed more recently

by Charles Dempsey.14 It is of some significance, then, that another print from the

series seems to portray Marietta (fig. 4). It shows a well-dressed young woman seated

in profile with her eyes modestly lowered to the ground. She caresses a leonine

unicorn pressed-up against her breast and is approached by an ermine. Both are

standard symbols of virginity. Her sleeve is embroidered with the name ‘Marietta’.

Arthur Hind mistakenly identified her as Madonna Marietta, that is Maria di Carlo

Strozzi, wife of Messer Palla.15 However, the print would seem to portray Marietta di

Lorenzo, given that Madonna Marietta died in 1459 and the print cannot predate 1460

on stylistic grounds. That she is a Strozzi is suggested by the curious detail of a leash

or collar, which she clutches in one hand. She appears to have released the unicorn

from its throttling grasp: the Italian verb strozzare, which obviously puns on the

Strozzi name, means to choke or strangle. The print has two empty shields, awaiting

5

coats of arms, which were probably to be completed in pen-and-ink. They recall the

devices of both the Benci and Strozzi families that were borne by the trionfo d’amore

during Bartolomeo’s armeggeria. Both are tied to trees, one of which has prominent

pinecones, a possible allusion to her virtue. Dempsey has argued that the imagery of

the Otto prints is closely aligned to the ‘earthy escapades of Lorenzo’s brigata’,

which lends support to the idea of a relationship between Lorenzo’s giostra and

Bartolomeo’s armeggeria.16

The armeggeria seems to be related to Lorenzo’s joust, if only through

common participants, the members of Lorenzo’s brigade. But it also needs to be seen

in the light of Lorenzo’s own armeggeria, when he had tilted outside his family home

in April 1459. He, too, had been accompanied by a trionfo d’amore.17 Lorenzo was

only ten years old at the time and the armeggeria marked a rite of passage, as he was

presented to the city and to visiting dignitaries, most notably Pope Pius II and the son

of the duke of Milan.18 The Medici were certainly aware, then, if not actually involved

in, the Benci-Strozzi armeggeria. It was not the only occasion on which the Medici

watched symbolic and bellicose exchanges between them. Filippo Corsini wrote to

Lorenzo to record a snow fight between Marietta and Bartolomeo, along with Lottieri

Neroni and Priore Pandolfini, during the same month.19 The Signoria, too, was aware

of the festive advances made by Bartolomeo towards Marietta. They had issued two

edicts the day before the armeggeria, discouraging extraneous people from attending

and absolving the individuals involved of responsibility should anyone come to harm

or be killed.20 Moreover, Bartolomeo gave the hose, which carried the colours of his

family, to the ministri of the priors on the conclusion of the night’s festivities. What,

then, was the socio-political position of the Benci and Strozzi, such that the regime

should be so interested in an armeggeria?

6

Bartolomeo would seem to have had a relatively close relationship to the

Medici family. He was the third son of Giovanni d’Amerigo, who had made his

wealth thanks to Cosimo de’ Medici, having held the position of general manager of

the Medici bank from 1435 until his death, twenty years later.21 However, by the

1460s, with Giovanni recently deceased, a new generation of the Benci family was

asserting their pre-eminence. If architectural expansion can be taken as a sign of

family ambition, then the acquisition by Amerigo (Bartolomeo’s brother) of two

houses along Via degli Alberti in 1462 (present day Via de’ Benci), and their

conversion into a single, imposing structure, survives as a testament to the family’s

self-promotion during this decade.22 By 1480, Bartolomeo was sufficiently wealthy to

declare a fiscal worth of 7,260 florins, making him the thirteenth richest man in

Florence at that date, after those such as Lorenzo and Francesco di Luca degli Albizzi,

but significantly short of the 30,045 florins declared by his father in 1457/8.23

While it would appear that Bartolomeo was in essence a Medici ‘client’, his

relationship to the de facto rulers of Florence should not be oversimplified. After the

death of his father, relations between Cosimo and the Benci soured. Amerigo was

taken on as a partner in the Medici bank in place of his father and he eventually took

over the management of the Geneva branch from Francesco Sassetti, four years after

his father’s death in 1459. But within two years he had left. The extent to which his

resignation was a voluntary decision is unknown. De Roover speculates that the

simultaneous departure of his brother Francesco from the Avignon branch indicates

that they were forced out – a decision which might have been behind Amerigo’s

involvement in a plot to overthrow the Medici in 1466, two years after his brother’s

armeggeria.24 So in 1464, the position of the Benci family in relation to the regime

was ambiguous, although of the three eldest brothers, Bartolomeo, was probably the

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most neutral. In light of their past favour with Florence’s leading family, and without

the benefit of hindsight, it seems likely that Bartolomeo would be interested in

ingratiating himself with Cosimo, or would at least be willing to pursue Medici

interests.

Marietta’s position was equally complicated. She had been living in Florence

since the early 1460s, where her family hoped to find her a husband. She presumably

resided with her mother, as her father had been murdered in Gubbio in 1451 while in

exile.25 Not only was she the granddaughter of Messer Palla – once the richest man in

Florence until he was exiled by the supporters of the incoming Cosimo in 1434 – but

she was also the daughter of Alessandra de’ Bardi, whose natal family was currently

banished to Bologna.26 Marrying a Strozzi of this line could dampen any political

aspirations, as Giovanni Rucellai had discovered. Marietta came with a considerable

dowry and she was famously beautiful. 27 She was sculpted by Desiderio da

Settignano, a bust whose beauty Vasari claimed was a true reflection of her own.28

The situation of the Strozzi consorteria is complicated by its prodigious size

and their diaspora across the Italian peninsula. For my purposes, the activities of the

two main lines exiled in 1434 are of primary interest. They were those of Messer Palla

di Nofri and Matteo di Simone. Marietta was the granddaughter of the wealthy Messer

Palla, who remained in Padua until his death two years before the armeggeria, while

Matteo di Simone had ended up in Pesaro. Both branches actively sought to be

reconciled to their city of origin.29 Such activity reached a head in the 1450s and ‘60s

around the time of the armeggeria, especially after 1458 when the ban of 1434 was

officially extended to their sons. Matteo’s line was successful. Filippo and Lorenzo

were allowed to return to Florence only two years after the armeggeria by currying

favour with Piero de’ Medici through the agency of the Neapolitan King.30 Messer

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Palla’s descendants were less lucky and were allowed to return to the city until after

the expulsion of Piero de’ Medici in 1494.31 The unpublished correspondence of

Giovanfrancesco di Palla during the 1450s and ‘60s demonstrates the hope of Palla’s

son for a change in the family’s fortune around the time of the armeggeria.32 It would

seem that Giovanfrancesco’s involvement in an anti-Medicean plot in 1467, and his

subsequent condemnation as a rebel, caused their continued exile.33 However, these

unfortunate events still lay in the future in 1464. The armeggeria should, therefore, be

seen against the backdrop of Strozzi attempts to end their exile, rather than the

subsequent failure of the agnates of Messer Palla.

The preceding discussion of the Benci-Strozzi armeggeria was derived in

large part from an anonymous prose account, which was owned by the Strozzi family

by at least the seventeenth century (and probably from the fifteenth century). A

second account has also survived. It was composed in terza rima by Filippo di

Lorenzo Lapaccini almost ten years after the event.34 The author places a high

emphasis on spectatorship; he frequently mentions ‘occhi’ and repeatedly uses the

verb ‘vedere’.35 L’armeggeria di Tommaso [sic] Benci is Lapaccini’s first surviving

literary work. Its patron remains unknown, but Lorenzo de’ Medici is a likely

candidate: a year after writing the poem, Lapaccini would write from Rome to

Lorenzo requesting financial assistance and must already have had previous contact

with the magnifico to have made such an audacious request.36 And, as suggested

above, the Medici had good reasons to be interested in the event.

If Lorenzo did commission the poem, it might explain the complete omission

of Marietta’s name, given the decline in fortune of Messer Palla’s descendants after

1467 (the poem dates to around 1473). Although couched in the conventions of

courtly love, the donna described in the verse remains abstract and unidentified,

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except for one brief, passing mention that she was of Strozzi blood.37 By contrast, all

the members of Bartolomeo’s company are mentioned by name on several occasions,

as are many, seemingly unimportant, onlookers and participants. Unlike the prose

account, which mentions the mostra and armeggeria in a single sentence, Lapaccini

described separately each participant’s action across five chapters, yet failed to

mention Marietta. Lorenzo is unlikely to have promoted the Strozzi association by the

early 1470s. Rather, the account would seem to record the chivalric virtue of

Lorenzo’s friends, written at a time when the fate of Palla’s agnates had already been

decided.

The armeggeria of 1464 was politically motivated. The staged ‘battle’ was not

intended to bring about a union between Bartolomeo and Marietta, any more than

Lorenzo intended to marry the beloved of his joust, Lucrezia Donati (who was, in

fact, already married to Niccolò Ardinghelli when Lorenzo first pledged a tournament

in her name in 1465). Marriage was a bond negotiated in extreme secrecy for fear of

spoiling a bride’s chance should it came to naught. Bartolomeo married Lisabetta di

Filippo Tornabuoni in 1472, the year after Marietta had wed Teofilo Calcagnini from

Ferrara. As Lorenzo Fabbri has observed, although Calcagnini was one of the most

illustrious members of the Este court at Ferrara, Marietta’s wedding was only

negotiated once all hope of a reconciliation to Florence through marriage had been

exhausted.38 That other members of the consorteria were involved in the armeggeria

might suggest that the wider family were watching the fortune of Marietta – they

would later watch the construction of Filippo Strozzi’s palace with the same interest –

as she became a pawn in the attempted reconciliation between the Medici and the

Strozzi, through the mediation of the Benci.39 That the attempt failed, at least for the

descendants of Messer Palla, is unimportant. Giovanfrancesco’s ill-fated actions had

10

yet to transpire when Bartolomeo came to Marietta’s window. The display of

chivalric violence made visible an attempt at familial alliance. A staged battle

encoded a social relationship.

The Vettori-Rucellai Cassoni

Messer Palla’s son-in-law, Giovanni Rucellai, found himself in a similar predicament

to Marietta around 1460. His fortunes would only change, when he strategically

betrothed his son, Bernardo, to Nannina de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s sister.40 As we have

seen, it would take five years before they actually married in 1466, a marriage that

was celebrated with an armeggeria and sealed with a pair of battle cassoni (figs. 1 &

2). The display of battle depictions in Florentine homes was not uncommon by the

second half of the fifteenth century. Ghirlandaio’s preparatory drawing for the Birth

of the Virgin shows a battle scene in the spalliera (fig. 5), which would be changed

into a frieze of putti for the final fresco; his Judith in Berlin similarly contains a battle

frieze in an interior (fig. 6). From the 1440s, images of battles became increasing

common on pairs of marriage chests too. Typically one chest would be painted with

an ancient scene of war – the battles of Issus, Zama and Pharsalus, among others,

were especially well liked – and its pair would illustrate the subsequent triumphal

entry into a city. Chests might also show more amorous themes, often derived from

vernacular literature such as Boccaccio, which were prevalent earlier in the century

(even if they were not entirely superseded by bellicose subjects).41 Cassone imagery

after mid-century was not wholly given over to battle subjects either, but also

included a wide variety of exemplary istorie, often including female protagonists

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(Sabines, Amazons, Lucretia, Camilla etc.) involved in acts of violence against

themselves or others.42 Scenes of rape proved particularly popular.

Although of classical origin, these subjects were often known through late

medieval sources rather than the Greek or Roman originals. Since the 1970s, scholars

have studied vernacular retellings of ancient tales to explain the many inconsistencies

between classical texts and fifteenth-century domestic imagery.43 Contemporary (or

near contemporary) vernacular culture had as much of an influence on the ‘look’ of

cassone panels as the ancient cultures from which their stories were ultimately

derived. Cassone panels, and domestic imagery more generally, did not show ancient

wars exclusively. Representation of contemporary battles or events, rather than

ancient history, constituted a wider category of cassone imagery than is sometimes

thought. Occasionally, domestic imagery drew its subjects from recent wars, such as

the Uccello’s panels showing the Battle of San Romano, or the Siege of Pisa and

Battle of Anghiari in Dublin (figs. 7 & 8).

While these general comments define cassone imagery by iconographic

category, they do not speak to the concerns reflected in domestic battle imagery. Why

would nuptial chambers be decorated with images of war? Again, a case study

suggests some answers. A few years before Bernardo Rucellai betrothed Nannina, his

sister Caterina had married Piero di Francesco Vettori. On that occasion, too, a pair of

‘battle’ cassoni was ordered, this time from the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni

and Marco del Buono. The Vettori were in a similar political position to Giovanni

Rucellai, but for different reasons. As consorti of the Capponi, their chance for

holding public office was limited by the divieto that prohibited the members of the

same clan or consorteria from holding office simultaneously. In his life of Piero

Vettori published in 1583, the canon Antonio Benivieni was at some pains to explain

12

the position of the family in the 1450s.44 In 1452, they were formally separated from

the Capponi, with whom they had been associated since at least the fourteenth

century.45 The move to have the government recognise their division was politically

motivated, with the intention of affording both families greater chance of holding

governmental office.46 In this endeavour, however, they had to overcome the problem

that, as Benivieni observed, the relationship between the Capponi and Vettori ‘was

common knowledge in our city’.47 Even in the fourteenth century, Giovanni Villani

had observed their close association, which continued to be reinforced, as Benivieni

again noted, by the extreme similarity of their arms.48 The Vettori stemma included

fleur-de-lys (awarded by the French king to Neri di Andrea Vettori in 1410) in a coat

of arms that was otherwise identical to that of the Capponi.

The Vettori went about solving the problem by a concerted campaign to

promote their own illustrious and independent origins. They posted, for instance, a

provision from the Priors of 1311 for the award of privileges to them by the Guelph

Party. Ugolino Verino composed a Latin verse that implied their descent from the

Counts of Gangalandi.49 In these attempts, they were obviously successful.50 In the

years leading up to the marriage of Piero and Caterina, therefore, the independent

origins of the Vettori were being actively publicised, as they tried to separate

themselves from the Capponi.

The imagery chosen for the cassoni commissioned at the time of Vettori-

Rucellai wedding seems to have participated in this campaign, although as domestic

imagery it would have functioned at a more private level. Both chests had frontal

panels that included battles. One showed Xerxes’ Invasion of Greece (fig. 9). The

Persian leader is clearly labelled (‘SERSES’) astride a horse on the famous pontoon

bridge across the Hellespont. He clutches his baton of command in the manner of a

13

Renaissance condottiere (probably similar to the baton presented to Bartolomeo Benci

for his armeggeria). Behind him is a city, unlabelled, but recognisable as

Constantinople from the column of Theodosius. Before him, on the left bank, rages a

battle of cavalry and foot soldiers. In the general mêlée, Xerxes is again identifiable,

although he is without inscription. Other protagonists are inscribed within the battle,

including ‘CYMON’ (receiving Persian prisoners before an encampment),

‘PERICLES’ on the left and ‘TEMI[stocles]’ even further to the left. The exact

identification of the battle has puzzled scholars (Pericles, Cimon and Themistocles

never fought together), although in all likelihood it was intended to represent Plataia

(479 BCE).51

The second frontal shows a naval battle and the invented entrance of

Themistocles, Cimon and Pericles into Athens (fig. 10). Triumphal entries after

battles were a Roman, not a Greek, practice. The first two figures are named, while

Pericles is identified through visual similarity with the inscribed figure on the first

panel. The victors are accompanied by a dog, possibly the loyal companion of

Pericles’ father, Xanthippus, that Plutarch tells us, died following his master’s galley

to the battle of Salamis (480 BCE), depicted to the right. The ship whose bridge

carries a tower-like structure might also refer to the line in Plutarch, where he

recounts that Xerxes’ admiral, Ariamenes, ‘was seen throwing darts and shooting

arrows from his huge galley, as from the walls of a castle’.52 The inclusion of a second

battle, and a naval battle at that, is unusual. Normally, cassoni pair an ancient battle

with a triumph, rather than depicting two battles.

These two cassoni were dismantled in the nineteenth century and the Triumph

panel was destroyed during the World War II.53 The lost framing elements of the

chests would almost certainly have carried the two families’ coats of arms, much like

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the trionfo d’amore that bore both the Strozzi and Benci heraldic devices. However,

the symbolic union of the two families is still visible in the panels themselves. The

boats on the Oberlin panel carry both the Vettori and Rucellai arms (the former is

more frequent, occurring five times, relative to three appearances of the latter), while

only the Vettori arms are depicted on the destroyed Triumph. The diamond ring and

feather motif probably refers to both the Vettori and Rucellai, rather than the Medici,

as sometimes thought. The feathers feature in the Vettori crest, while the diamond

ring was as much a device of the Rucellai as the Medici (both families are likely to

have been granted the use of it by the Este family).54 As such, this motif visually links

the Vettori and Rucellai, rather than stressing Medicean patronage, which, in fact, still

lay in the future for both families.

Why were battles chosen to decorate a pair of marriage chests? The answer to

this question is two-fold. The first is generic and relates to battle and victory imagery

generally; the second explains the choice of this particular historical moment, the

Persian wars. The forzieri were almost certainly intended to decorate the nuptial

chamber of the Vettori family palace. Piero’s palace was situated among other Vettori

homes in the Oltrarno, on the Fondacio, the old name for Borgo Santo Spirito, near

the Ponte Santa Trinita and in the parish of San Jacopo sopr’Arno, with which the

family had traditional ties.55 In 1480, Piero and Caterina were living there with two

sons, Francesco and Paolo (Giovanni was yet to be born). Piero had a half share in

the building with his brother.56 So although the heraldry of the chests celebrates a

union between two families, the continued viewing of them took place within the

Vettori home and, as such, would seem to reflect the familial, social and economic

alliances of Piero di Francesco and the Vettori clan more generally. While recent

scholarship in this field has rightly stressed the importance of the bride’s gaze – often

15

‘against the grain’ of more overt meanings – the increasing popularity of battle

subjects from mid-century would seem to reflect relationships important to the groom

and his family.57

A fair amount is known about the Vettori and Piero in particular. They were

an ottimati family, whose money derived from the wool and cloth trade.58 Benedetto

Dei included them in his list of 365 ‘chasati’ that in 1472 were the ‘groriosissimo e

potentissimo popolo fiorentino’.59 Francesco, Piero’s son, would grow up to become a

noted historian, a friend of Machiavelli and would leave a biography of his father in

manuscript (the other biography of Piero, ‘l’antico, gentil’huomo fiorentino’, was

published by Antonio Benivieni, as mentioned above).60

At around the date of marriage, the humanist Verino dedicated his Flametta to

Piero (circa 1460). Long known to art historians for its praise of Apollonio di

Giovanni as the ‘Tuscan Apelles’, it is Verino’s friendship with Piero that is more

significant here, for it testifies to his learning, a fact reiterated by both his son and

Benivieni.61 Piero apparently composed both Latin and Tuscan poetry. He also read

Greek, a fact of no small consequence given this unusual commission. Some years

later, in the early 1490s and towards the end of Piero’s life, Verino completed a Latin

work, the De illustratione urbis Florentiae, in which he punned on the Vettori name

(Vettori – vittorie) suggesting that it derived from the military victories of their

ancestors.62 Piero himself was given to devising mottoes. The word game evidently

predates Verino’s work, though. It is implied in a comment of Lorenzo’s during the

1480s and in a portrait medal of the same decade.63 Piero would, subsequent to his

marriage, have considerable success in the military and it could be that it was in this

context that such a play-on-words developed. However, given Piero’s early friendship

with Verino and the Vettori family’s concurrent interest in proving a separate and

16

distinguished origin, it would seem that the conceit is more likely to date to the 1450s.

Within a cultural milieu that loved visual word games, the battles depicted on his

marriage chests could hardly be more apt. More than just a Renaissance joke, or even

a felicitous concord between name and representation, these battles embodied the

entire family’s socio-political aspirations. An armeggeria made visible Strozzi, Benci

and Medici aspirations in 1464 in the same way that a painted, fictional vittoria after

the Greek battles of Plataia and Salamis stressed the independence of the Vettori.

Battle representations encoded socio-political alliances.

But what of the specific battles painted on this pair of cassoni? At the time of

Piero’s marriage, his father Francesco di Paolo was still alive. In fact, he would

probably have been involved in negotiating it. The Rucellai alliance was evidently

important to the family, for Francesco also married his daughter Costanza to

Francesco di Filippo di Vanni Rucellai (on which occasion another battle cassone

showing The Siege of Carthage and the Continence of Scipio might have been

commissioned, fig. 11), whose brother, Girolamo, would later be in business with

Piero.64 Although less is known about Francesco Vettori, some information has

emerged over his involvement with the Consoli del mare. Despite the incomplete

survival of their papers, Michael Mallett was able to build up a picture of the activities

of the Florentine state galleys between 1422 (the year after Florence acquired the

Pisan ports of Porto Pisano and Livorno from Genoa) and 1480, when they were

dissolved.65 The consuls formed an institution of central importance, for not only did

they coordinate and supervise trade and shipping, but they were expected to watch

over the guilds and thus over the entire Florentine economy. The positions were both

lucrative and prestigious, indicated by the fact that on two occasions the Guelph party

took over control. Francesco Vettori is recorded as captaining three voyages in 1458,

17

1460 and 1465. During this final expedition, he died on board at Lisbon, in tribute to

which his heirs were granted the right to use the crest of the Sea Consuls.66

His two former journeys had been to Constantinople, where since its fall to the

Turks in 1453, Florentine merchants had been making considerable headway in

ousting Venice as the major trading presence. In 1456, a single galley had been hired

by the wool guild for the distribution of cloth to the East, an economic enterprise that

must have interested the Vettori, as well as many other prominent Florentine families.

Two years later, Francesco was dispatched with a fleet to try to gain further trading

concessions; a year after that, Pucci sailed the first Florentine ships into the Black

Sea, while acquiring new agreements from the Emperor of Trebizond. Francesco

returned the following May, a year before the arrangement of his son’s marriage to

Caterina Rucellai. Benedetto Dei accompanied him on these two Florentine galleys.

It was on this occasion that Francesco had the singular honour of entertaining the

conquering Sultan Mehmet II on board, as Dei was to record. He would also note that

Mehmet had told him that being young, rich and favoured by fortune, he would

‘surpass Caesar, Alexander the Great and Xerxes’.67 Dei’s mention of Xerxes

indicates the extent to which certain historical figures might be bound up with specific

locations. Xerxes would seem an obvious parallel for Mehmet given that he was then

in Constantinople. So too would the Persian wars be a natural subject for a family

involved in the general area.

Depictions of this region are not unique. A representation of the Battle of

Trebizond is preserved on a chest in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, for

example.68 If the meaning contained within these panels for a fifteenth-century viewer

might have evoked events in the eastern Mediterranean, then it was not necessarily

accompanied by anxiety over the fall of Constantinople. Like the papacy’s attempt to

18

mount a crusade to relieve the city, which was defeated by the mercantile interests of

the various Italian states, these panels would seem to make visible Vettori concerns in

the area, rather than moralise over its fall to the infidel. Francesco Vettori was

actively engaged in the Turkish city on Florentine state business, had both met and

entertained il gran turco, and ultimately these forzieri were to beautify his home.

These panels project his, his family and his son’s interests.

The Persian war offered the opportunity to depict a particular location – the

point where Europe meets Asia and the city of Constantinople – and a narrative full of

maritime concerns: the battle of Salamis is one of the few naval battles depicted on

cassoni. Both of these were of great social and economic importance to the Vettori.

The depiction of two battles themselves would have been a witty allusion to the

family name, whilst recalling their illustrious origins. Piero Vettori’s distinguished

career as a soldier – as Florentine capitano and as a commissario of military

operations – would ensure that the imagery of these panels continued to resonate well

after the events surrounding his marriage. The relation of Piero to battling imagery

would seem to have held some currency even into the late sixteenth century, when

Benivieni’s biography of Piero had its incipits decorated with battle scenes. This

orchestrated use of imagery, coupled with the ever-important outcome of social

alliances, paid off. Within a few years of his marriage, letters from both Giovanni and

Bernardo Rucellai to Lorenzo witness the support that Piero was receiving from them;

quite an achievement considering that the Medici had until the early 1460s kept

Giovanni himself from public office. Piero would go on to hold several important

positions, often through Medici patronage: from Podestà in subject cities, to

ambassador to Ferdinand of Naples, to a member of the Dieci of the Republican

regime after 1494.69 The foundation of his achievements, and of this family’s fame,

19

was laid in the years around his marriage; a foundation which was achieved through

the type of social alliances made manifest through battaglie.

Representation

The comparison of a festival battle with a painting of a battle might seem far fetched

even when their joint social ambitions are acknowledged, until it is realised that they

were both understood in similar terms. They were both representational. While there

can be little doubt that cassone frontals were understood as representations,

armeggerie are perhaps more surprising. But Niccolò Machiavelli was explicit on the

point, describing the festivals staged under Lorenzo as ‘rappresentazioni di fatti’.70 He

wrote that a ‘tournament’ was that which ‘represents a skirmish [zuffa] of men on

horseback’.71 He might have used the word ‘zuffa’ rather than ‘battaglia’, but the

point is the same. It was a representation and it was, therefore, dependent on, but

distant from, a battle fought in the field. Much the same could be said of cassone

imagery.

During the festivities of San Giovanni in 1470, the condottiere Roberto da

Sanseverino staged three days of bellicose festivities on Piazza Santa Croce. Both Ser

Giusto Giusti d’Anghiari and Matteo Palmieri witnessed the events and described

them in terms that reveal their representational qualities. According to Giusti, there

was ‘a battle [battaglia] of men-of-arms with lances without iron tips and with

batons’ the day after the feast of Saint John, Monday 25 June. The day thereafter, he

organised a joust, followed on Wednesday 27 June by a battle in which ‘he fought,

with his men-at-arms, for a wooden castle that the aforesaid Lord had had made in

Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. Some of his said men-at-arms were inside, and others

20

outside, [creating] two battles [battaglie]’.72 For Giusti, the festivities functioned to

honour Saint John, whilst giving pleasure to the Florentine people. They were

intended ‘to give a festa to the people of Florence and to show his soldiers’, or ‘to

show the people that he had many soldiers under his command’.73 Palmieri similarly

observed in his Annales that the activities were designed to exhibit Roberto’s army to

the people.74 He stressed that the games were ‘ludos publicos’ and that were staged

‘before the eyes of the people’.75 The real motive, however, was probably to instil

public order after the disruption caused by an uprising in Prato several months

previously.76 The Prato rebellion had been invisible to Florentines, but it had

nonetheless come as a ‘great fright to all of the people’, in the words of Alessandra

Strozzi.77 Roberto’s army might not have seen active service at Prato, but they did

make a very public appearance within the city walls, staging battles during peace

time.

Both Giusti and Palmieri emphasized the spectacular, visual nature of the

events. Giusto used the verbs ‘mostrare’ and ‘vedere’ – the latter on three occasions –

whilst Palmieri actually mentioned the ‘eyes’ of the public. Unlike the violence of

war that was fought by mercenaries at a distance from the urban populace, the staged

violence of jousts and similar knightly activities was clearly on view. Giusto even

used the word ‘battle [battaglia]’ to describe the spectacles of the first and third days.

Coming from a family of blacksmiths, who had supplied the city council of Anghiari

with arms, Giusto was well placed to have heard what actual battles were like.78 His

description of a tournament as a ‘battle’ is not insignificant.

Palmieri’s prose was subtler. Rather than call the equestrian tournament a

‘battle’ straightforwardly, he observed that it was a ‘representation of a mounted

battle [representationem scilicet equestris prelij]’. Similarly, the storming of the

21

wooden castle on the third day was a ‘true simulation of a siege [vere expugnationis

similitudinem]’.79 Palmieri stressed that both events represented or simulated

something beyond themselves. As a representation, the ‘equitum torniamentum’

(Palmieri) or ‘battaglia d’huomini d’Arme’ (Giusto) on Piazza Santa Croce were not

entirely unlike a picture, like those battles painted on marriage chests that have been

the subject of this article. Nor, for that matter, were they unlike programmatic music.

Isaac’s battle piece includes several military motifs, such as repeated-note patterns or

open fifths suggesting militaristic trumpet calls. It too was representational.80 And

although it is now generally heard as an instrumental work, it was originally set to a

text by ‘Gentile Aretino’ (most likely Gentile Becchi), which describe a speculative

Florentine attempt to take the castle of Sarzana, a strategic position contested with

Genoa. The poem’s description of a battle finds a close parallel in the painted scenes

on cassoni or the staged battaglie performed in Florentine squares. The opening

couplet, which is repeated as a refrain, involves the listener in the action: ‘To the

battle, quickly to the battle / Everyone must arm himself with armour and chain mail’.

They are acknowledged as complicit, in the same way as were the viewers of other

battaglie, yet their distance is recognised by such lines as ‘Here are the Genoese’, as

if they were being pointed out.81

Battaglie, whether painted on cassoni or performed in public squares as

armeggerie, displayed related concerns. They encoded a socio-political alliance. As a

consequence, they might be thought of as a single genre in their own right. Music and

poetry, too, formed part of this genus, even if they warrant further investigation

beyond the confines of this article. All these images of war were linked by the fact

that they referred to battles fought in reality, but nonetheless found mechanisms to

22

distance themselves from that reality. They were, in the words of Machiavelli,

‘rappresentazioni di fatti’ whose real motivation lay a long way from the battlefield.

23

1 Timothy J. McGee, 'Alla Battaglia: Music and Ceremony in Fifteenth-Century Florence', Journal of the American

Musicological Society, XXXVI (1983), 298.

2 Francis W. Kent, 'Heinrich Isaac's Music in Laurentian Florence: New Documents', in H. Heinze, et al., eds, Die

Lektüre der Welt (Frankfurt: Lang, 2004), 367-71; Blake Wilson, 'Heinrich Isaac among the Florentines', Journal of

Musicology, 23 (2006), 97-152.

3 Alessandro Perosa, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo zibaldone - I (London: Warburg Institute, 1960), 28-29.

4 Laurence B. Kanter, 'The 'cose piccole' of Paolo Uccello', Apollo, 152 (2000), 15, 20 n. 6.

5 The statutes of the Guelph Party, written in 1420, describe the joust that they sponsored on the feast of Saint

Dionysius as a ‘battle’ in both Latin and the vernacular (‘pugna’ and ‘bataglia’); Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter

ASF), Capitani di Parte Guelfa, rosso, 3, 29r (Latin statutes); 4, 41v (vernacular). Similarly, the violent contests

between young men held at carnival were described as ‘battaglie di sassi’; see Giovanni Ciappelli, Carnevale e

quaresima: comportamenti sociali e cultura a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1997),

123-36. The word ‘battle’ was, of course, also used to describe actual war: the dispatch sent back to the Florentine

government by their commissari the day after the battle of Anghiari uses the words ‘batagle [sic]’ and ‘zuffa’, skirmish;

see Barbara Hochstetler Meyer, 'Leonardo's Battle of Anghiari: Proposals for Some Sources and a Reflection', Art

Bulletin, 66 (1984), 370.

6 Between 2008 and 2010, for example, no fewer than four exhibitions were dedicated to cassoni, in part or in whole: A.

Bayer, ed., Art and Love in Renaissance Italy (exh. cat. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008); Cristelle

Baskins et al., The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the Renaissance (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner

Museum, 2008); Caroline Campbell, Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence: The Courtauld Wedding Chests

(exh. cat. London, The Courtauld Gallery, 2009); Claudio Paolini et al., eds., Virtù d'amore: pittura nuziale nel

quattrocento fiorentino (exh. cat. Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia, 2010).

7 The following description is derived from an account preserved at ASF, Carte strozziane, ser. 3, 106. It was partially

transcribed by Pietro Fanfani, Ricordo di una giostra fatta in Firenze a dì 7 di febbrajo del 1468 sulla Piazza di Santa

Croce (Florence: G. Polverini, 1864), 25-8 and Pietro Gori, Le feste fiorentine attraverso i secoli: le feste per San

Giovanni (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1926), 41-4. A full transcription can be found in Scott Nethersole, 'The

Representation of Violence in Fifteenth-Century Florence', PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art (2009), 261-2.

8 Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, New York & London: Cornell University Press,

1991), 224; Ciappelli, Carnevale e quaresima, 137-47.

9 Leonardo Ginori Lisci, I palazzi di Firenze nella storia e nell' arte (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1972),

Vol. 1, 249-51; Caroline Elam, 'Palazzo Strozzi nel contesto urbano', in D. Lamberini, ed., Palazzo Strozzi metà

millennio 1489-1989 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991), 183-94.

10 See n. 7 above.

11 Michele Luzzati, 'Carnesecchi, Andrea' Dizionario biografico degli italiani (DBI) (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia

Italiana, 1977), 465.

12 Luigi Pulci, 'La giostra', in P. Orvieto, ed., Opere minori (Milan: U. Mursia, 1986), 52-120; Lorenzo de’ Medici

‘Simposio’ in Tutte le opere, ed. P. Orvieto (Rome: Salerno, 1992), 3.69, 622.

13 Aby Warburg, 'On Imprese Amorose in the Earliest Florentine Engravings', in K. W. Forster, ed., The Renewal of

Pagan Antiquity (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 1999), 169-83.

14 Charles Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli's Primavera and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the

Magnificent (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 111-12.

15 Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1938), A.IV.4, Vol. 1, 88; Pompeo Litta,

Famiglie celebri in Italia (Milan: Giusti, 1819), pl. IX.

16 Dempsey, Portrayal of Love, 111.

17 Anon., Ricordi di Firenze dell'anno 1459, ed. G. Volpi (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1907), Vol. 27.1, 27-33.

18 Guerriero, Cronaca di Ser Guerriero da Gubbio dall'anno MCCCL all'anno MCCCCLXXII, ed. G. Mazzatinti

ibid.1902), Vol. XXI, pt. IV, 59.

19 ASF, Carte strozziane, ser. 3, 103, fol. 72. See Isidoro del Lungo, La donna fiorentina del buon tempo antico

(Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1906), 201, 237-238; Trexler, Public Life, 230.

20 Gori, Feste fiorentine, 40-1 (but without archival references). They are also mentioned in the account at n. 11, but not

included in Gori or Fanfani’s transcriptions.

21 Raymond De Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1963), 50, 57-8, 71.

22 Emil Möller, 'Leonardos Bildnis der Ginevra dei Benci', Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, XII (1937-8), 196;

Claudio Paolini, Lungo le mura del secondo cerchio: case e palazzi di via de' Benci (Florence: 2008).

23 Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliances in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University

Press, 1994), Appendix 3, 375-410.

24 De Roover, Rise and Decline, 282-8; Jacopo Pitti, Istoria fiorentina, ed. A. Mauriello (Naples: Liguori, 2007), 1.84,

43.

25 Vespasiano da Bisticci, The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century, trans. W. George and

E. Waters (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 458.

26 Litta, Famiglie celebri, Vol. 5, pl. ix.

27 Ann Crabb, The Strozzi of Florence: Widowhood and Family Solidarity in the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 2000), 198-203; Lungo, Donna fiorentina, p. 238.

28 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1500 e 1568, eds. R.

Bettarini and P. Barocchi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966-87), Vol. 3, 401. On the bust, see Francesco Caglioti in Keith

Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann, eds., The Renaissance Portrait: From Donatello to Bellini (New Haven &

London: Yale University Press, 2011), Cat. 12, 107-9, with further bibliography.

29 Lorenzo Fabbri, 'The Memory of Exiled Families: The Case of the Strozzi', in G. Ciappelli and P. L. Rubin, eds, Art,

Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 256.

30 Crabb, Strozzi of Florence, 149-79; Heather Gregory, 'The Return of the Native: Filippo Strozzi and Medicean

Politics', Renaissance Quarterly, 38 (1985), 3, 8-10.

31 Lorenzo Fabbri, 'Da Firenze a Ferrara. Gli Strozzi tra casa d'Este e antichi legami di sangue', in M. Bertozzi, ed., Alla

corte degli Estensi. Filosofia, arte e cultura a Ferrara nei secoli XV e XVI (Ferrara: Università di Studi di Ferrara,

1994), 97-100; Gregory, ‘The Return of the Native’, 10-11.

32 Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze (hereafter BRF), 4009.

33 Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici, 1434 to 1494 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1968), 136.

34 Filippo Lapaccini, 'L'armeggeria di Tommaso [sic] Benci', in A. Lanza, ed., Lirici toscani del Quattrocento (Rome:

Bulzoni, 1975), 1-16.

35 Ibid., 1.100-1, 3.

36 P. Flazone, 'Lapaccini', DBI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2004), p. 693.

37 Lapaccini, 'Armeggeria', 1.49-51, p. 2.

38 Fabbri, 'Da Firenze a Ferrara', 98.

39 Francis W. Kent, ''Più superba de quella de Lorenzo': Courtly and Family Interest in the Building of Filippo Strozzi's

Palace', Renaissance Quarterly, 30 (1977), 318 n. 28.

40 Francis W. Kent et al., Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone - II (London: Warburg Institute, 1981), 66-68.

41 Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage, & Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace (New Haven & London:

Yale University Press, 2008), 149, with further bibliography; Ellen Callmann, 'Subjects from Boccaccio in Italian

Painting', Studi sul Boccaccio, 23 (1995), 19-78.

42 Cristelle Baskins, Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gender in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998).

43 Paul F. Watson, 'Virtù and Voluptas in Cassone Painting', PhD, Yale University (1970); Caroline Campbell, 'Re-

visioning Antiquity: Domestic Paintings, Manuscript Compendia and the Experience of the Ancient Past in Fifteenth

Century Florence', PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art (2000); Caroline Campbell, 'Lorenzo Tornabuoni's History of Jason

and Medea Series: Chivalry and Classicism in 1480s Florence', Renaissance Studies, 21 (2007), 1-19; Campbell, Love

and Marriage, 30-47; Alessandra Malquori in Paolini et al., Virtù d'amore, 79-87.

44 Antonio Benivieni, Vita di Piero Vettori, L'antico, gentil'huomo fiorentino (Florence: Giunti, 1583).

45 As well as Benivieni, see Borghini’s note ‘Della Consorteria de Capponi e Vettori 1452’, Biblioteca Nazionale

Centrale di Firenze (hereafter BNCF), Magl. XXV, 44, fols. 388v-399r.

46 Benivieni, Vita, 4.

47 Ibid., 2

48 Vicenzio Borghini, Annotazioni sopra Giovanni Villani (Florence: Accademia della Crusca, 2001), 560.

49 Benivieni, Vita, 6-7.

50 Francis W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and

Rucellai (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 203-4; Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori:

Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: University of London, 1972), 2 n. 7.

51 Paul F. Watson, 'Apollonio di Giovanni and Ancient Athens', Bulletin of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, XXVII

(1979-80), 8.

52 Plutarch, Lives, trans. B. Perrin (London & Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), Life of Themistocles,

XII; Watson, 'Apollonio', pp. 8-12.

53 Wolfgang Stechow, 'Marco del Buono and Apollonio di Giovanni: Cassone Painters', Bulletin of the Allen Memorial

Art Museum, 1 (1944), 5-21; Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 61-2; Watson,

'Apollonio', 3-25; Alessandra Maquori in Paolini et al., Virtù d'amore, pp. 79-87.

54 Brenda Preyer in Kent et al., Giovanni Rucellai, 198-201.

55 ASF, Catasto, 1480, S. Spirito, Nicchio, 995, fol. 185r. On the palace, see Ginori Lisci, Palazzi, vol. 2, 743-7;

Marcello Vannucci, Splendidi palazzi di Firenze (Florence: Le Lettere, 1995), 83-5; Litta Maria Medri and Stefania

Vasetti, Palazzo Capponi sul lungarno Guicciardini e gli affreschi restaurati di Bernardino Poccetti (Florence: Centro

Di, 2001).

56 ASF, Catasto, 1480, S. Spirito, Nicchio, 995, fol. 187r.

57 Baskins, Cassone Painting.

58 Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, 1-4.

59 Benedetto Dei, La cronica dall'anno 1400 all' anno 1500, eds. R. Barducci and A. Molho (Florence: Francesco

Papafava, 1984), 80-1.

60 Francesco Vettori, 'Vita di Piero Vettori l'antico', in E. Niccolini, ed., Scritti storici e politici (Bari: Gius. Laterza &

Figli, 1972).

61 E. H. Gombrich, 'Apollonio di Giovanni: A Florentine Cassone Workshop seen throught the Eyes of a Humanist

Poet', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 18 (1955), 16-34.

62 Ugolino Verino, De illustratione urbis Florentiae (Paris: 1790), Book 3, 8-9.

63 Vettori, 'Vita', 252; Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, 1; Watson, 'Apollonio', 22.

64 The Siege of Carthage and the Continence of Scipio, which is now in The Courtauld Gallery, bears both the Rucellai

and the Vettori coats of arms at the very centre and is thus likely to celebrate a marriage between these two families. On

the frontal, see Campbell, Love and Marriage, cat. 7, pp. 92-95, although she does not speculate on the likely marriage.

65 Michael Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century, with the Diary of Luca di Maso degli Albizzi,

Captain of the Galleys 1429-1430 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).

66 Ibid., 95 n. 4.

67 M. Pisani, Benedetto Dei: Un avventuriero del Quattrocento. La vita e opere di Benedetto Dei (Genoa, Naples, Città

di Castello & Florence: 1923), 14.

68 Deborah L. Krohn in Bayer, Art and Love,, cat. 56, 129-132 with further bibliography. For another frontal that

perhaps shows Constantinople, see Roberta Bartoli in Paolini et al., Virtù d'amore,, cat. IV, 270-271.

69 Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, 5.

70 Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. F. Gaeta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1962), Book 8, Chapter 36, 575.

71 Ibid., Book 7, Chapter 12, p. 471.

72 Nerida Newbigin, 'I giornali di Ser Giusto Giusti d'Anghiari (1437-1482)', 3 (2002), 160.

73 Ibid., 160.

74 Matteo Palmieri, Annales [historia florentina], ed. G. Scaramella (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1906), Vol. XXVI, pt. I,

p. 189.

75 Ibid., p. 189.

76 Francis W. Kent, 'Prato and Lorenzo de' Medici', in J. E. Law and B. Paton, eds, Communes and Despots in Medieval

and Renaissance Italy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 193-208.

77 Macinghi Strozzi, Lettere, 605-606.

78 R. M. Comanducci, 'Giusto, Giusti' DBI (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2001), 182.

79 Palmieri, Annales, 189.

80 McGee, 'Alla Battaglia', 289-90; Kent, 'Isaac's Music'; Wilson, 'Isaac among the Florentines'.

81 McGee, 'Alla Battaglia', 299-300.