Vincenzo Borghini: "MDLX a 28 d’ottobre, nel qual dì, Sua Eccellenza hebbe il tosone, fece l’entrata in Siena come appresso" Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Ms. II. X. 100 [ca. 1560] (FONTES 50)

Abstract

FONTES 46 (Ammanati), FONTES 48 (Cirni), and FONTES 49 (Martellini) have each treated the written testimonies that document a civic festival important for the emergence and evolution of the political iconography of the Medici principate, established in 1537, an event in which architecture and images played a central rôle. This event was the triumphal entry of Cosimo de’ Medici and his family into Siena following the conclusion of the War of Siena, in 1559, and the subsequent annexation of Siena to Cosimo’s territories, laying the basis for a Tuscan State. The entry itself took place on 28 October 1560, and it was the first stop on a journey undertaken by a large part of the ducal court which led the entourage to Rome, where the Duke and his company arrived on 6 November 1560 for an extended stay. The victory over Siena represented the first and the essential consolidation of Cosimo’s territorial and dynastic ambitions, and the entry was intended to enforce the submission that followed victory and the conciliation that healed defeat, both accompanied by the celebration of a new power status enjoyed by the expanded Medici state and by the assertion of claims to a regal rank. It was the advancement of these aims that led the Duke, his family, and his court to continue on to the Rome of Pope Pius IV. If one attempts to discover and visualise the images of power that accompanied this event, it is to the extensive written sources that one must turn. The subject of FONTES 50 is the last of the known written documents that describe the entry into Siena. It is a somewhat summary description of the entry which focuses on its programmatic elements (inventions and inscriptions). It is found among the papers of Vincenzo Borghini in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF). Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580) was the friend, confidant, and counselor of Giorgio Vasari, the luogotenente of the Accademia del Disegno, and an important artistic adviser to the Medici. Borghini’s description belongs to a manuscript which contains a collection of Borghini’s notes about various public festivals extending over many years and drawn from many places within Italy and beyond in Europe. Borghini’s description is based on information furnished to him by informants. The existence of Borghini’s collection of festival descriptions documents the crystallization of a European tradition for such events. The Siena entry of 1560 merits further study in the context of the elaboration of Medici iconics during the principate, especially during the reign of the first Medici duke, Cosimo I, a topic which has been intensively researched in the last half-century. It is an early event in the second phase of the elaboration of the "imagerie" of Medicean ideology, which began in 1555 and was already beginning to fade a few years before 1574, the year Cosimo I died. The entry into Siena thus comes at a time when the ongoing and cumulative elaboration of symbolic programmes for the Medici was still in a very active phase