Louis XII en Milanais: XLIe Colloque International d'Études Humanistes 30 Juin-3 Juillet 1998 (review)

This is a welcome volume of high-quality essays on a French monarch, who occupied the Milanese Duchy for some 13 years in the early sixteenth century. Relatively little has been written on the reign since the works of two pioneer scholars of the late nineteenth century: Léon-G. Pélissier, who provided the key archival material on the conquest and occupation, and René de Maulde La Clavière. The latter's edition of Jean d'Auton forms the basis of the opening essay by one of the editors (P. Contamine), who sets out what little is known of the chief chronicler of Louis XII. He ends with some intriguing new research on Maulde La Clavière's administrative career. The remaining essays cover every aspect of the French occupation. There are masterly surveys of the views of the French by the local Lombard historians of the time (P. Gilli); the French administrative officials and institutions of the Duchy (P. Hamon); the role of the Swiss in the wars of Louis XII (H-J. Schmidt). A valuable essay on the crusading schemes during the reign of Louis XII (G. Le Thiec) perhaps inevitably leaves too unresolved the central question of the King's sincerity. Similar questions of motive arise in B. Chevalier's miniature masterpiece on the role of Cardinal Guillaume Briconnet in the proceedings of the Councils of Pisa and Milan, but the religious beliefs of the Cardinal are taken seriously. There is new archival material (by L. Vissiere) on the relationship of Louis II De La Tremoille with Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, chiefly the correspondence between the two between 1499 and 1503. La Tremoille reappears in a less satisfactory essay by D. Crouzet, which consists of reflections on a passage on the renowned commander's death at Pavia (1525) in a famous panegyrical biography by Jean Bouchet, still without a modern edition. Some of the outstanding contributions on cultural history are highly specific: on public oratory and literature, surveying some of the obscurer humanists of the time who dedicated works to Louis XII (S. Albonico); on music (M. Caraci Vela), which among other topics comments on the musical humanism of Franchino Gaffurio who remained for some forty years in Milan through various changes of regime. N. Hochner produces a very clear essay on the early ceremonial entries of Louis XII and seeks to relate some changes in iconography to debates among contemporary political theorists, although it is difficult to establish the agency behind these presentations. A survey by P.L. Mulas of illuminated manuscripts acquired or commissioned by the French, or presented to them, includes material on Geoffroy Carles, who became president of the Milanese Senate from 1504, and acquired several manuscripts from the Sforza collection. There is the sad story of the illuminations commissioned for his own poems by Bernardino Arluno, who intended to ingratiate himself with various French patrons, but it seems that they never reached their dedicatees. L. Giordano discusses artistic commissions that celebrate military victories in an impressive survey. C. Robertson on the patronage of Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, one of Louis XII's main commanders and Milanese allies, provides new material from his account books, for example, on his efforts to reconstitute his library after its destruction in Milan in 1500; on the set of tapestries of 'The Twelve Months', the location of which is not known for certain; and on his funerary chapel of San Nazaro, never completed, but 'specifically designed top accommodate a large number of family members'. Efforts to define the nature of his artistic taste ('emphatically different from that of his French masters') are perhaps more speculative. B. Jestaz on artistic commissions by Frenchmen in the Milanese Duchy and on their response to Italian art shows what an observant art historian can gather from studying surviving inscriptions on buildings or tombs, making a plea...