Luci sullo spettacolo di corte tra i mari del Nord: Anna di Danimarca da Copenaghen al trono di Scozia (1574-1590)

The essay is part of a research project that aims to extend to the Nordic dynasties the historiographic acquisitions achieved in the study of the spectacle in the European court. Anna of Oldenburg, daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, and sister of Christian IV, received since childhood a princely education that made her one of the most appealing candidates in the swirling circle of dynastic marriages. Before becoming, at the age of fourteen, engaged and then married to James VI Stuart, next Queen of Scotland and England, she had the chance to verify the political value of ceremonies in a refined renaissance court. The cultural substratum, feeded by the attentive education received in particular by her mother Sofia of Mecklenburg-Gustrow and supported by the presence of many spectacular-dynastic events, made Anna perfectly capable of creating a syncretic court once she rose to the throne. The research at the base of this study represents the first piece of a wider investigation that aims to highlight the queen’s role as a patron-sovereign, until now better known as the founder of the Jacobean masque

Anna di Danimarca e i ‘Queen’s Masques’ (1604-1611)

This essay offers a preliminary portrait of Anna of Denmark, queen of Scotland from 1589 for her marriage with James VI and queen of England, Scotland and Ireland for her husband’s accession to the throne as James I in 1603. Unjustly described by the anti-jacobean storiography as a vague character, changeable and superficial, extremely frivolous because of her interest in the court revels, Anna was instead an emblematic and eclectic personality, both in politics and cultural activity, expecially for her patronage of arts, artists and spectacle. Patron of painters, musicians and actors, connoisseurs of the Italian Renaissance architecture, Anna was the effective promoter of the english court spectacle, creating a series of yearly events which, from 1604 to 1611, signed the ultimate codification of the English masque