<i>Danza, poesia e musica in</i> Fabula.<i> Bologna 1487 - nozze Bentivoglio-D'Este</i>

Abstract

From the mid XVth century a theory and justification of dance as art arose in Italy. The theoretical workings did not always correspond to what other sources tell us of the actual performance of dances and bourgeois festive occasions. Nevertheless in some case the expansiveness of certain chroniclers offers a wealth of indications about different moments of spectacle. This is the case of the celebrations organised in Bologna on 1487 for the marriage between Annibale Bentivoglio, and Lucrezia d'Este, and the allegorical fibula represented on January the 29th, which will be the focus of the present paper. The mythological fable was mentioned and described by various literary and chronicle sources including: the Nuptiae Bentiuolorum, the official version in latin; the account of Sabadino degli Arienti; the Ephitalamium written in vernacular and dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent; the Nuptiale carmen in which Naldo Naldi recalls the Bentivoglio-d'Este wedding a few months afterwards; a previously unknown anonymous Narratione, in vernacular. The analysis of these documents, allow to describe the dance in his complexity. The dance appears to take on a determining and polyfunctional role in the structuring of the dramatised story, off shoot in part of an acquaintance with well-tried patterns of spectacle and techniques of entertainment; but at the same time the result of new experiments and reworkings open to the combinations of different patterns of spectacle.