Modelli ideologici e culturali nel teatro milanese di età viscontea e sforzesca

This paper has outlined a framework of ceremonial and theatrical models, which, from the Visconti to the Sforza’s age, were developed by the Milanese court. Since the days of Azzone Visconti, followed in this choice by his successors until the last Sforza, the Dukes decided to be guided by the modules of the French-Burgundian International Gothic, and of the ostentatious luxury involved by that style, to legitimize their princely status in the eyes of both the subjects and of the other European political potentates. In terms of theater history, the option for the Gothic led, on the one hand, to the prevailing organization of knightly games, as jousts and tournaments, still in vogue at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and to a constant reference, in the civic celebrations such as the offerings at the Fabbrica del Duomo, to the tradition of triumphal Franco-Burgundian entries; on the other hand, to a certain coldness to the new use of the performance of Terence and Plautus’s comedies which, for example at the courts of Ferrara and Mantua, was supplanting the old ways of festive celebration in the italian courts.