[Sca-cooks] OT: Christmas decorations in period Venice

[Johnna Holloway]

Florence and the Medici had decorated pageant floats for various weddings.

One of the books that talks about these is 
The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi

 By James M. Saslow

One of the1589 floats can be seen here:
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/books-manuscripts/florence-1589-alberti-cherubino-and-5213936-details.aspx

also see http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wedd/hd_wedd.htm
 which notes:

"Descriptions of fabulous scenery and floats for the great Medici weddings of the sixteenth century are well known through Giorgio Vasari's Lives and other sources. In his account of the life of the versatile designer Il Tribolo, Vasari describes the 1539 wedding, in Florence, of Cosimo I de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo: "Tribolo was given the charge of constructing a triumphal arch at the Porta al Prato, through which the bride, coming from Poggio, was to enter; which arch he made a thing of beauty, very ornate with columns, pilasters, architraves, great cornices, and pediments. The arch was to be all covered with figures and scenes, in addition to the statues by the hand of Tribolo." Vasari catalogues the allegorical figures on this arch as well as the decorations in the Medici palace, in the Piazza San Marco, and the scenery for theatrical events staged during the wedding festivities. Other descriptions of entire cities being transformed into stage sets for the performances of great court weddings tantalize the imagination, yet little visual evidence remains.

Wedding feasts were among the most lavish of meals, featuring entertainment as well as many courses of specialty foods for both eating and beholding. When Eleanor of Aragon arrived in Ferrara in 1473 for her multiday wedding, she was greeted by a parade of allegorical floats, followed on subsequent days by a fifty-six-course feast, and dances and jousts, during which sugar sculptures were displayed. The humanist Filippo Beroaldo reported that the 1487 wedding of Lucrezia d'Este and Giovanni Bentivoglio in Bologna featured giant sugar sculptures of castles, ships, people, and animals, and a flaming wheel of fireworks that accidentally ignited some of the wedding guests. Contemporary handbooks provide specific instructions on wedding planning and menus, such as Domenico Romoli's 1560 Singolare dottrina, which contains a section instructing the steward on how to lay the tables with embroidered tablecloths. In his spalliera painting The Banquet in the Pinewoods, one of four grand panels for a wedding chamber based on Giovanni Boccaccio's dark moralizing tale, in The Decameron, of Nastagio degli Onesti, Botticelli illustrated a feast gone awry. The potential bride being wooed by the hapless Nastagio has been invited to a banquet, where she bears witness to a spectral reluctant bride pursued to the death by her spurned lover—a knight—and his dogs. As the naked woman is nipped by dogs in the foreground prior to being eviscerated at the hands of the knight, the carefully laid table is thrown into disorder by the agitated guests, overturned glasses staining the tablecloths and gleaming vessels clattering to the ground. In its remarkable detail and psychological poignancy, this image conveys both the highest aspirations and the greatest fears of any bride on her wedding day.

Deborah L. Krohn
The Bard Graduate Center
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Johnnae

On Dec 9, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> I got an inquiry today from a Lady looking to decorate their shire float in a mundane Christmas parade with decorations that would fit in, in period Venice. I sent her some general info from my Yule-msg file, but even there, most of what I have is on Germanic traditions. 
> 
> Has anyone written an article on period Italian Yule celebrations?
> 
> =====
> The reason why I am asking is this,
> this up coming Saturday my shire is participating in a lighted Christmas parade and the theme of our float is "A Holiday in Venice" as our main back drop we are going to have the Rialto bridge from Venice but much smaller lol.