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  • Ceremonial Entries in Early Modern Europe: The Iconography of Power ed. by J. R. Mulryne, with Maria Ines Aliverti and Anna Maria Testaverde
  • Tessa Morrison
Mulryne, J. R., with Maria Ines Aliverti and Anna Maria Testaverde, eds, Ceremonial Entries in Early Modern Europe: The Iconography of Power (European Festival Studies: 1450–1700), Farnham, Ashgate, 2015; hardback; pp. 412; 7 colour, 38 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £85.00; ISBN 9781472432032.

This collection of fourteen articles discusses ceremonial entries into early modern European cities. The main theme of the volume is the different means employed by royalty, aristocracy, the clergy, and the commercial elite to create a ‘common voice’ or iconography of ceremony among the elite of society in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries.

The iconography was developed through a ceremonial language that was occasional and flexibly adapted to the political and social circumstances of the time. This language typically used ancient myths that had become part of the humanist language of the Renaissance to create the imagery of triumph. Architecture was the vehicle of the iconography in the ceremonial language [End Page 341] that is discussed in many of the articles. In the ceremonies, the urban landscape would be transformed through the construction of temporary architecture, usually in the form of a triumphal arch. The ancient triumphal arches of Rome were strongly associated with war but in the Renaissance they were interpreted as being closely associated with military and particularly political power.

The triumphal arches were decorated with mythological images creating an iconography as an integrated rhetorical and visual statement in an unfolding narrative that would ‘educate’ and entertain the onlookers. The temporary structures were often extremely large and overwhelmed the narrow medieval streets, and often permanent buildings were removed or partially removed to accommodate these structures. French king, Henri IV, entered into the city of Rouen on 16 October 1596. Triumphal arches had been sculpted in plaster and built throughout the city as the workmen laboured to the music of Amphion, whose image was reproduced in plaster on one of the arches. The meaning was visually clear that ‘Amphion, like the King of Thebes who rebuilt his city through harmonious song, was a metaphor for Henri IV who by the quality of his person will rebuild the country from the rule and fragments shattered through France’ (p. 57). Architecture, music, and pageant were the building blocks of the ceremonial language that emphasised the political message.

In the early sixteenth century, the Roman possersi used urban space and architecture, and spatial interaction between the ephemeral city – created by the temporary architecture and the procession – and the real city. The carefully selected urban routes and the placement of the arches would highlight particular buildings and commercial zones, emphasising the message of the ceremony. The setting up of arches for a ceremonial procession was recorded as early as 1119 and was well established by the Renaissance.

Not all ceremonial triumphal arches were temporary constructions. Maximillian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, commissioned a magnificent engraved triumphal arch from the workshop of Albrecht Dürer. It consisted of 195 woodcuts printed on thirty-six portfolio size sheets and when assembled it was 3.41 metres by 2.92 metres. The imagery was a genealogy and history of Maximillian and his achievements, which visually created a mixture of power, virtue, and culture. The message conveyed by these images was emphasised by the central archway that was named ‘Arch of Honour and Power’. This printed archway was sent to numerous cities throughout the Holy Roman Empire whereby entry to the cities was less ostentatious but nevertheless in the same style of iconography so that the strength of the political message remained the same.

Not all ceremonial processions needed architecture as a vehicle of the iconography. The River Thames in London, ‘the only big street in London’ [End Page 342] (p. 221), brought different sections of society together to mark important and national events. Anne Boleyn (1533), Catherine of Braganza (1662), and Elizabeth II (2012) entered London on a waterborne procession. All these ceremonies were the platform to educate and entertain with the message of power and authority, religion, politics, and the...

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