‘Marvel at the new star … ’: The Apotheosis of Danaë, Baldassare Taccone, and Leonardo da Vinci

Abstract

Leonardo da Vinci’s stage designs for the production of Baldassare Taccone’s La Comedia di Danaë (1496) found on the verso of Inventory 17.142.2 (Metropolitan Museum of Art) provide remarkable insight into the role of courtly theatre in Milan. When read in concert with Taccone’s original text and stage directions, Leonardo’s sketches, particularly his design for a stage machine, reveal that the production of Danaë was both a skilfully planned spectacle and a unique opportunity for both artist and playwright to advance their status at court.

Keywords:

• Leonardo da Vinci
• Theater History
• Art History

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

2 Paul Müller-Walde initially identified the relationship between the Metropolitan sheet and Taccone’s Danaë when the sheet was first exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1919. Marie Herzfeld published his findings in 1922. Marie Herzfeld, ‘La Rappresentazione della danae organizzata da Leonardo da Vinci’, Raccolta Vinciana 10 (1922), pp. 226-8. For the drawing’s provenance, see Carmen C. Bambach, ‘Allegory on the Fidelity of the Lizard’, in Carmen C. Bambach (ed.), Leonardo da Vinci: Master Draftsman (New York, 2003), pp. 449-50. For a list of publications that mention the double-sided sheet in New York, see Carmen C. Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered (New Haven and London, 2019), vol. IV, p. 195, n. 748.

3 The foreword in Taccone’s program confirms the date and location of the performance. Baldassare Taccone, La Danaë di Baldassare Taccone recitata in casae del Signore Conte da Cajazzo … adi ultimo MCCCC LXXXXVI (Bologna, 1888). The full transcription of the five acts and two intermezzi of La Comedia di Danaë is now available online by the Biblioteca Italiana project (http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it), accessed 12 June 2023.

4 See, for example, the brief discussion of Leonardo’s theatrical entertainments in the landmark exhibition catalogue Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan. Luke Syson, ‘The Rewards of Service’, in Luke Syson and Larry Keith (eds), Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan (London/New Haven, 2011), pp. 26-32.

5 Recent work in early modern art history has begun to shed new light on the value and significance of ephemera. Preeminent among these studies is Pamela H. Smith’s ongoing investigation as the director of the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University. Pamela H. Smith et al., ‘The Matter of Ephemeral Art: Craft, Spectacle, and Power in Early Modern Art’, Renaissance Quarterly 73, no. 1 (2020), pp. 78-131.

6 On the website entry for the Metropolitan Sheet, Bambach invokes Leonardo’s recommendation in a note in Paris MS A, inv. 2185 on the verso of folio 27 (dated ca. 1490–92) to draw ‘con brevi segni.’ The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/339130, accessed 11 November 2022.

7 Leslie A. Geddes, Watermarks: Leonardo da Vinci and the Mastery of Nature (Princeton, 2020), pp. 20-2.

8 Directly preceding the note there is a symbol - +. This is a transcription symbol that suggests that this note refers to another portion of paper, likely lost. Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, vol. I, p. 490.

9 The fact that the largest speaking part went to a renowned vocalist suggests that this performance, like most early modern theatrical productions, included a significant amount of singing. Romano’s excellent singing voice was recorded by Beatrice in a letter to her sister Isabella. The letter is cited by Herzfeld who does not, unfortunately, provide a location of the original. She gives her source on Romano’s ‘bellissima voce’ as ‘una lettera di Beatrice Sforza alla sorella Isabella’. Herzfeld, ‘La Rappresentazione della danae’, p. 226, n. 6.

10 It was customary for young men to play the role of female characters in early modern plays. Laura Giannetti Ruggiero, ‘When Male Characters Pass as Women: Theatrical Play and Social Practice in the Italian Renaissance’, Sixteenth Century Journal 36 (2005), pp. 743-60.

11 On the many members of Ludovico’s court, including Romano, Taccone and other prolific playwrights, see Jill Pederson, Leonardo, Bramante, and the Academia: Art and Friendship in Fifteenth-Century Milan (Turnhout, 2020).

12 Carlo Vecce, ‘“The Sculptor Says”: Leonardo and Gian Cristoforo Romano’, in Constance Moffatt and Sara Taglialagamba (eds), Illuminating Leonardo: A Festschrift for Carlo Pedretti Celebrating His 70 Years of Scholarship (1944–2014) (Leiden, 2016), pp. 230-2.

13 Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford, 2007), pp. 1-5, 16-9 and 83-8.

14 These technicians, individuals we might today call special effects masters, were arguably the most important individuals involved in early modern courtly entertainment. Indeed, they were some of the earliest paid theatre professionals. Leonardo is perhaps best understood as a special effects maestro, even impresario, of court spectacle.

15 At the conclusion of Act I, Taccone directs, ‘Here, once the first act ended, the large instruments hidden behind that stage machinery played, then DANAE approached the merlons of the tower and uttered this lament of love’; ‘Qui finito il primo arto sonorono li instrumenti grossi ascosi dreto a quelle machine de la scena, poi DANAE factassi alli merli de la torre fece questa lamentazione de amore.’ Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

16 I thank Martin Endicott for putting forward this suggestion, which has proven to hold water.

17 For example, Danaë appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in books 4, 5, 6 and 11. Ovid, Metamorphoses, eds and trans. Rolfe Humphries and Joseph D. Reed (Bloomington, 2018), p. 101.

18 The story of Danaë appears in Book II of Boccacio’s Genealogiae deorum gentilium libri. Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogiae deorum gentilium libri, trans. Giuseppe Betussi (Venice, 1581), vol. II, pp. 32-3.

19 On visual representations of Danaë in the early modern period, see Matthias Wivel, Titian: Love, Desire, Death (London, 2020), pp. 45-6. 

20 On the shifting reception of the legend of Danaë, see Cathy Santore, ‘The Renaissance Courtesan’s Alter Ego’, Zietschrift für Kunstgeschitichte 54 (1991), pp. 412-27.

21 Gino Benzoni, ‘Ludovico (Ludovico Maria) Sforza, detto il Moro, duca di Milano’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome, 1960), vol. LXVI, pp. 436-44. On Ludovico’s rise to power and absolutist rule specifically, see Jane Black, Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and the Sforza (Oxford, 2009).

22 On Ludovico’s patronage, see Evelyn Welch, Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan (New Haven, 1995); Constance J. Moffatt, ‘Merito et Tempore: The Imprese of Lodovico Sforza at Vigevano’, Emblematica 2, no. 2 (1988), pp. 229-63; idem, Urbanism and Political Discourse: Lodovico Sforza’s Architectural Plans and Emblematic Imagery at Vigevano (Los Angeles, 1992); and Paola de Vecchi, ‘Committenza e attività artistica alla corte degli Sforza negli ultimi decenni del quattrocento’, in Milano nell’età di Ludovico il Moro: atti del Convegno internazionale, 28 febbraio–4 marzo 1983 (Milan, 1983), vol. II, pp. 503-32.

23 The three lunettes above Leonardo’s mural display the arms of Ludovico and his wife, Beatrice d’Este, as well as those of their two sons. Across the room, the portraits of Ludovico, Beatrice and their sons were added to Montorfano’s Crucifixion scene around this same time, likely by Leonardo himself. While we do not have documentation confirming the exact date that Leonardo began the project, we do know for certain that in 1497 the painting was nearly complete. It is generally accepted that the coats of arms and the portraits were added after Ludovico’s investiture. Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, vol. I, p. 416. Many thanks to Timothy McCall for making this observation and connection at the Renaissance Society of America annual conference in April of 2021.

24 The archival evidence attests to the fact that Gian Galeazzo had been ill for many months leading up to his death, even obtaining final confessions multiple times throughout the fall of 1494. It also confirms that the rift between uncle and nephew was well known throughout the court. Given that Ludovico personally appointed and oversaw Gian Galeazzo’s doctors, it is possible, even likely, that the would-be duke plotted to slowly poison his nephew. See Monica Azzolini, The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 163-6.

25 On Ludovico’s known sobriquet, ‘il Moro’, see Elizabeth McGrath, ‘Ludovico il Moro and His Moors’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002), pp. 67-94. McGrath argues that Ludovico first earned his nickname ‘il Moro’ as a child based on his dark complexion, hair and eyes, and that later in life he would further cultivate associations with a reading of ‘moro’ as connected to the mulberry tree (morono is the Lombard word for mulberry) in relation to his role revitalizing the silk industry in Milan.

26 See Cynthia Pyle, ‘Per la biografia di Baldassare Taccone’, Archivio storico lombardo 8 (1991), pp. 391-413.

27 Filippo Maria conferred nobility to the Taccone family in 1417 in exchange for their military allegiance in the Guelf/Ghibelline struggles. Pyle, ‘Politian’s Orfeo’, 33.

28 Baldassare Taccone, L’Atteone (Favola) e le Rime di Baldassare Taccone (Florence, 1884).

29 Cynthia Pyle, Politian’s ‘Orfeo’ and other favole mitologiche in the Context of Late Quattrocento Northern Italy (Columbia University, 1976), p. 169, n. 1.

30 Concepts such as auditions and casting processes are modern theatre conventions, as is the notion of a director. In the early modern theatre, playwrights wrote their parts with a specific actor in mind. They would regularly incorporate the actor’s vocal rage, size, talents and even mannerisms into the character. Palfrey and Stern even go so far as to say that ‘[c]asting was effectively a kind of patronage. Pen power could promote or demote players’. Thus, each of Taccone’s casting decisions potentially reveals hidden motivations for each of the actors involved in the production. Palfrey and Stern, Shakespeare in Parts, pp. 3-4.

31 ‘La fede vecchia non voglio interrompere, / ch'io ho servata e di servar desidero: / un monte d’oro non me puotria rompere.’

32 ‘E quest advine chi serve con gran fede / E con sincerità Dei e signori, / chè chi ben serve tutti gli altri excede.’

33 Biblioteca Trivulziana, Archivio Storico Civico. Registro No. 7 (Litterarium ducalium 1497–1502). Known to me Pyle, Politian’s Orfeo, p. 35, n. 83.

34 It has been suggested that the figure in the flaming mandorla of the Metropolitan sheet is Jove. This is unlikely. First, the didascalie confirms that Jove never makes a vertical journey during the production. Jove first appears in the second act in a beautiful sky suspended above the stage. And while the characters of Mercury and Apollo and Hebe all descend at various points of the production to the earthly realm of the stage, Jove does not; he remains aloft for the entirety of the play. And second, the didascalie also specifies that the realm of the gods needed to have been large enough for multiple adult male actors to occupy the space together. The flaming mandorla of the Metropolitan sheet is large enough for only the single seated figure that Leonardo sketches in brief.

35 ‘Qui è da sapere che Giove mosso a commiseratione de Danaë, doppo la fu portata via la converse in una stella, e lì se vide di terra nascere una stella e a poco a poco andare in cielo con tanti soni che’l pareva ch’I palazzo cacasse.’

36 Nerida Newbigin’s two-volume work on Florentine religious drama is the authoritative source on Florentine feste. Nerida Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno: Plays in Churches in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Florence, 1996).

37 Performances of the Annunciation play definitively occurred in 1440, 1470, 1471, 1494, 1525, 1533, 1547, 1566 and 1586 and are all documented; it is likely there were other instances that have not been recorded. Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, vol. I, p. 155.

38 On the Sforza visit to Florence, see Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan Under Galeazzo Maria Sforza (Berkely, 1994), pp. 98-100. See also Newbigin, Feste d’Oltrarno, vol. I, pp. 39-41 and vol. II, pp. 749-52.

39 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori et architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, eds Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi (Florence, 1997), vol. III, pp. 188-91. On Vasari and theatre in general, see Orville K. Larson, ‘Vasari’s Descriptions of Stage Machinery’, Educational Theatre Journal 9 (1957), pp. 287-99 and Thomas A. Pallen, Vasari on Theatre (Carbondale, 1999).

40 Bonaccorso Ghiberti (nephew of Lorenzo) recorded a mandorla device in his Zibaldone that appears to be very similar to the one described by Vasari. He annotated his diagram of a mandorla device: ‘When a cord, as is shown in the drawing, is pulled, it sends lights out of the tube. One cord sends out six or eight of them, so that when it is time [to do so] they all come out simultaneously.’ It is likely that Bonaccorso was following Brunelleschi’s example. For transcription and translation, see Götz Pochat, ‘Brunelleschi and the “Ascension” of 1422’, Art Bulletin 60 (1978), p. 234.

41 ‘Però donne e signor sapiate: quella che poco inante par che qui moresse è Danae vostra commutata in stella.’

42 See Stephen Campbell, ‘Introduction’, in Stephen Campbell (ed.), Artists at Court: Image-Making and Identity, 1300–1550 (Boston, 2005).

43 sEvelyn Welch, ‘Painting as Performance in the Italian Renaissance Court’, in Campbell (ed.), Artists at Court, pp. 9-18.

44 Lubkin, Renaissance Court, pp. 105-9.

45 Welch, ‘Painting as Performance’, p. 243.

46 ‘Assai mi rincresce che l'avere a guadagniare il vitto m'abbia forzato interrompere l'opera e soddisfare alcuni piccoli, — del seguitare l'opera che già vosta Signoria mi commise; Ma spero in breve avere guadagniato tanto che potrò soddisfare ad animo riposato a vostra Eccielenza, alla quale mi raccomando, e se vostra Signoria credesse ch'io avessi dinari, quella s'ingannerebbe; ò tenuto 6 boche [36] mesi, e ò avuto 50 ducati.’ Transcription and translation, Jean Paul Richter, The Notebooks of Leonardo (London, 1883), vol. II, p. 399.

47 It was not until 26 April 1499 that the gift of the vineyard was officially recorded. However, it is very likely that Leonardo took possession of it much earlier. Customarily, the recipient of a gift could legally take possession of the land given as soon as the Duke expressed the gift verbally. The process of registration was quite long and often took many months. Therefore, it is likely that Ludovico gifted the vineyard to Leonardo shortly after he purchased it from the monastery of S. Vittore for the high cost of 2,108 lire imperiali and 11 soldi in early 1497. On Leonardo’s vineyard, see Gerolamo Biscaro, ‘La vigna di Leonardo da Vinci, fuori di porta Vercellina’, Archivio storico lombardo 12 (1909), pp. 363-96.

48 The chancery records of the Caiazzo branch of the Sanseverino family have not yet been discovered so there remains a lacuna in the scholarship on Giovan Francesco and his wife, Barbara Gonzaga. The main sources for information on the Sanseverino family are as follows: Scipione Ammirato, Delle Famiglie Nobili Napoletane, Parte Prima (Florence, 1580/1973); M. Prunetti, Sanseverinae gentis fasati (Rome, 1757); Franco Catalano, ‘Il ducato di Milano nella politica dell’equilibrio’, in Storia di Milano. Bd. 7: L’età sforzesca dal 1450 al 1500 (Milan, 1956), pp. 217-414; Isabella Lazzarini and Franca Leverotti (eds), Carteggio degli oratori mantovani alla corte sforzesca (Rome, 1999); and Elisabetta Scarton (ed.), Corrispondenza degli ambasciatori fiorentini a Napoli, Giovanni Lanfredini (Salerno, 2005). See also, more recently, Clifford Malcolm Brown, ‘The Farnese Family and the Barbara Gonzaga Collection of Antique Cameos’, Journal of the History of Collections 6, no. 2 (1994), pp. 145-51.

49 The Sanseverino family’s support of the Sforza is complicated by both the fact that they were related through marriage (Roberto’s mother was Elisa Sforza, Francesco’s sister) and because Roberto had not, in fact, supported Ludovico’s campaign to become duke. The relationship between Ludovico and his cousin was strained following a September 1480 agreement between Florence and Milan that resulted in precarity for Roberto’s position. In response, in the spring of 1482, Roberto and his sons left Sforza service to support Venice in the Ferrara war. Ludovico made great effort to entice both Giovan Francesco and his brother Galeazzo back to Milan, which happened in June of 1483. Giovan Francesco would remain loyal to the Sforza for the next sixteen years.

50 See Michael Mallett and Christine Shaw, The Italian Wars 1494–1559 (Harlow, 2012). 

51 ‘il ramarro . fedele allomo vede[n]do quello adorme[n] / tato . co[n] batte . cholla bisscia esse vede no[n]lla potere / vincere core sopra il uolto dello mo . ello dessta accioche / essa . bisscia no no ffenda loadorme[n]tato . homo.’ Transcription and translation Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, vol. I, pp. 492-3.

52 Bambach, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, vol. I, p. 494. Bambach proposes that the tondo shape indicates Leonardo’s intention of providing a design for a medal of a theatrical costume. I think this very likely.

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Abigail Upshaw

Abigail Upshaw

Dr. Abigail Upshaw is a scholar of Early Modern Italian art and an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where she has taught courses on the Italian Renaissance, the Global Baroque, and Gender and Visual Culture since 2021.