Recreation in the Renaissance

Conclusion 123
with images of archery and other military exercises, thus indicating the
particular body culture and functional context within which most
medieval physical training would ordinarily be conceived.
From the end of the fourteenth century, Western religious painting
started setting a playing and gambling scene within representations of
the Crucifixion – a visual interpretation of the narrative, included in all
four Gospels, of the soldiers deciding who was to have Christ’s tunic by
casting lots. At the 1440s – that is to say, in a significant synchronism
with developments in the writing of play-related literature – a turningpoint
can be traced: a cycle of frescoes in the Villa Borromeo in Milan
portrays dancing, ball and card games; the example has been commented
on as one of the emergence of an autonomous recreation
scene. 16 By 1500 these developments had brought both the increasing
availability of play objects (as exemplified by sets of cards or snakesand-ladders
boards) and of serially produced artefacts displaying leisure
as a subject, such as the tapestries at the Hôtel de Cluny (see above,
Chapter 6, and Figure 6.1). The new pictorial attention for the subject
can be seen as reaching full maturity during the century that starts with
Bruegel’s Kinderspiele (1560, Figure 6.2) and the Ferrara frescoes, and
spans until the engravings of Jacques Stella (1667, Figure 6.3). The social
and cultural context has noticeably changed by the time in which the
Florentine artist Giuseppe Zocchi (1711–67), in the early 1750s, paints
a series of Giochi (six oil-paintings on canvas, now at the Museum of
the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, models for inlaid stone works
to be carried out for the Habsburg court in Vienna): The Swing, Badminton,
The Ball Game, Bow-shooting, Billiards, Real Tennis. The pictures
set the scenes in well-defined architectural and landscape surroundings,
which include the ruins of classical buildings. All the games are presented
as performed by a small group of people in eighteenth-century
clothing, while others watch them. It is easy to identify the social background
of the characters as aristocratic. From the point of view of
gender, the gatherings are characteristically promiscuous. There remain
some activities which are performed by young men (ball game, billiards,
real tennis) or women (swing) only. Others, including bow-shooting,
are, however, mixed. And there is always at least a member of the opposite
sex (sometimes in the form of a couple) among the spectators. It
looks as if the whole range of activities serves precisely the purpose of
offering young men and women the opportunity to meet socially,
display themselves and observe one another. It is noticeable how far we
have gone from the overwhelmingly male body culture of Duke Alfonso
and its cultural meanings.