Recreation in the Renaissance

28 Recreation in the Renaissance
nate the iconographic programme of a further, connected room
(‘Camera dell’aurora’).
While the choice of games from the classical past testifies for the
passion for Antiquity characteristic of Renaissance taste, the Ferrarese
environment seems to have developed a special interest in the world of
play, documented by a variety of clues such as the play element in
Guarino da Verona’s educational programme, or the juristic work of Ugo
Trotti. One should also take into account that it is once more in the
Ferrara of Alfonso II that we will find Torquato Tasso taking a more than
cursory interest in the interpretation of play (see below, Chapter 6). The
apartment, on the top floor of the Castle, was reached through an
impressive stairway, and was also meant to receive honoured guests,
one of its first visitors being King Henry III of France and Poland, who
was in Ferrara in July 1574 when the decoration was still not entirely
complete.
Recent research on the iconographic plan for the whole apartment
has revealed a much higher degree of consistency than previously
acknowledged, a conclusion that makes the choice of the play topic for
the frescoes all the more interesting. It seems that, after the earthquake,
the decoration of the apartment was meant to display and embody a
complex project of renewal, where play and a specific Renaissance
philosophy of time, with human life interpreted in the light of a cosmic
cycle, kept central ground. It is now clear that what is represented in
the Saletta is the range of activities that were typical of an ancient school
(gymnasium, or ludus), with its characteristic pursuit of a harmonic
balance between body and mind. It has been noticed that some of the
scenes that would look more problematic for an educational purpose,
such as the gladiatorial contest, are not in fact depicting a real fight, but
rather a mock one performed as a form of exercise, or a dance miming
the contest (the musicians playing in a corner being common in treatises
of education as a specific requirement for that form of training).
The presence in the panels of the figure of the tutor supervising the
exercise also confirms that we are looking at scenes from a school. Other
children’s games represented in the same room – spinning-top and skittles
– had a philosophical, neo-Platonic tradition of allegorical meaning.
The traditional ludi, which are depicted on the ceiling of the Salone,
express the Duke’s passion for athletics more directly. Although the
figures appear mannerist rather than neo-classical in style, they are
filtered through a humanist antiquarianism, which Ligorio had also the
opportunity to nourish by actually observing contemporary archaeological
excavations (at the Villa Adriana at Tivoli). In the overall