Imago Triumphalis: The Function and Significance of Triumphal Imagery for Italian Renaissance Rulers (review)

Margaret Ann Zaho's book fits much useful information on triumphal imagery into one small volume. She devotes specific case studies to fifteenth-century works that other scholars have often treated: Alfonso of Aragon's arch at Castel Nuovo in Naples; Sigismondo Malatesta's Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini; Piero della Francesca's Portraits of Federico Montefeltro and Battista Sforza; and the frescoes painted for Borso d'Este at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. However, rather than focusing on the general iconographic place in art history of these triumphal pieces or on the artists who created them, Zaho examines the differing approaches and motivations of the rulers who commissioned them.

In order to do this, Zaho traces the evolution of the triumph across time to find what it could have meant in the Renaissance. She condenses the history (and prehistory) of the Roman triumph in written documents and in art into one admirably compact and convenient first chapter. Following this is a chapter examining the medieval, Christian, and expressly didactic treatment of this ancient pagan victory celebration. Of special importance for Renaissance visual imagery were the contributions of Dante and, above all, Petrarch. The latter's I Trionfi, written some time around the middle of the fourteenth century, provided artists and patrons with popular subjects and deeply influenced later enactments of the triumph, both in art and in life.

These two broad streams came together for the Renaissance prince who wished to publicize himself as a triumphator, and Zaho argues that his choice of one or the other signals the main point of his message. She lays out this argument in the succeeding chapters, which she dedicates to comparative studies of princely triumphal imagery. Rulers such as Alfonso of Aragon and Sigismondo Malatesta chose the older form, emulating Rome in militaristically all'antica imagery. Both men had pressing reasons to point out their strength and to trace their descent from the generals and emperors of Rome. The alternative to the Roman triumph was its late-medieval, largely allegorical analogue, and that was the choice of Federico Montefeltro and Borso d'Este. These bookish rulers, according to Zaho, placed value on a prince's other qualifications.

Neither the Roman nor the Christian tradition, however, enjoyed complete independence. Rulers asked their artists to employ variations, modifying the images that the triumph put forth to give an overall effect, as well as a more subtle reading of character. For instance, Alfonso's triumphal arch combined a classicizing subject and details with elements from Arthurian legend to define the king as a virtuous Christian knight. Sigismondo Malatesta, the most forthright classicist of Zaho's examples, used Rimini's Arch of Augustus as a model for his Tempio. In sculpture, he assimilated himself to Scipio Africanus; but Sigismondo, too, borrowed from Petrarch. Zaho contrasts him with his rival, the highly educated warrior Federico da Montefeltro, whose triumphal imagery was quite unlike Sigismondo's. The reverse of Federico's portrait by Piero della Francesca not only referred to a military victory and endowed Federico with the classical victor's attributes, but also and more overtly made a Petrarchan comment on the prince, seating him in a triumphal cart accompanied by the four Cardinal Virtues. But where this painting of Federico showed him in a Triumph of Love, a sculpted tondo of Sigismondo surrounded him with laurel in a Triumph of Fame. The triumphs of Federico and of Sigismondo therefore made opposing statements about each prince. Borso d'Este, for his part, was commissioning idiosyncratic works for a "pleasure palace" (100), and his triumphal frescoes reflected his interests, especially in astrology, while covering walls with visual statements about Borso's greatness as a ruler.

Each ruler took from tradition what best suited his desired public persona. The imagery as Zaho discusses it fits our...