The Prince and the «Condottiero» in Italian Humanism and Renaissance

I. The Prince and the Condottiero: New Forms of Leadership in Early Modern Italy

If I thought that it would be possible to heal through tears and laments the deep and sore wound that has been inflicted on us all by the painful, and probably more than untimely, death of Francesco Sforza, an invincible condottiero and clement father of the fatherland, […] I would encourage you [Milanese citizens] more and more to spend your whole life crying and mourning until he returns to life. […] There is no one who does not know how affable he was with everyone, how gentle, generous, clement, and how much affection, magnanimity and loftiness he had in his spirit. What can I say about his incredible justice, which is adorned with compassion? What about his constancy in keeping his word? And what about the invincible strength and fortitude of his spirit?¹

With these solemn words, Francesco Sforza was celebrated by the humanist Francesco Filelfo in a lengthy oration delivered in front of the most important Milanese citizens to commemorate the first anniversary of his death on 9 March 1467 during the official ceremony organised to celebrate and immortalise probably the most renowned condottiero-prince of Quattrocento Italy.² In the idealised profile of the ruler of Milan, pater patriae, and invincible military commander (in a description similar to analogous celebrations included in other sources), it is possible to recognise both the encomiastic picture of the actual historical protagonist on the Italian political scene and the exemplary model of a perfect leader, who incarnates the essence of the kind of authority that was arising in the fifteenth-century historical context: a political and military authority founded on new values and in search of a consolidation that would also come from its legitimising representations.

The evolution of the forms of political power between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance has been a central research topic in recent scholarship and has been investigated through different standpoints and innovative multidisciplinary perspectives, with a specific focus on the function and the development of the cultural horizon connected to this transformation. This analytical approach, thanks to the synergy of studies in various fields (history, philology, literature, philosophy, art) and the examination of sources belonging to various domains, has allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of the complex and multifaceted cultural dynamics that characterise this crucial age of European history. A fundamental position in this political and cultural evolution is occupied by the Italian peninsula, where some of the most distinctive phenomena of this period stand out with particular prominence and produced outcomes that would have an influence on a broader scale on some of the emerging ideologies, principles and manifestations of modern culture. This volume aims to contribute to the ongoing research in this area and by adopting a new multidisciplinary and inclusive approach seeks to explore the complex process of definition, evolution and representation of the figures of the prince and the condottiero in the Italian Humanism and Renaissance. Indeed, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, new forms of powers emerged and strengthened their authority in Italian states, seeking, right from the beginning, to found their sovereignty in new sources of legitimisation. The issue of legitimacy is at the core of the political and cultural evolution that took place in this historical phase.³ Thus, in the heterogeneous context of Italian political centres, developing forms of leadership needed to build their rightfulness: they succeeded in doing so not by relying on traditional universalistic sources of legitimisation, dominant in the Middle Ages (in particular provided by the Church and Empire), but by resorting primarily to the formulation of new (or renewed) ideological principles. The recovery of the ancient tradition and the revival of the classical idea of virtue, adapted through original approaches to contemporary society, provided the main bedrock on which these political tenets were elaborated. Such an operation was the product of the synergic interplay of the output by humanists, literati, artists, philosophers, historians and political thinkers: intellectuals who often collaborated closely with rulers and men of power in a fruitful interconnection between ideal aspirations and realistic needs.

In particular, the two figures of the prince and the condottiero arise in the political scene as protagonists in a changed historical milieu: two roles that are often interconnected and, in some cases, are embodied by the same political character, who is both a military leader and a signore, or a prince.⁴ However, these two images are also positioned at the heart of the political discourse as exemplary icons to be modelled by literati and artists in their works, in a continuous interchange between the ideal and real dimensions, the theoretical aspect of political speculation and the actual realm of politics, the transfiguring sphere of literature and art and the tangible domain of history. The centrality of these actors on the Italian peninsula also mirrors a more general phenomenon: the emergence of a form of personalistic power principally based on individual human virtue. This became the essential legitimising element, or, in its absence, the de-legitimising factor for political authorities (both secular and religious) in their various manifestations: the prince, condottiero, signore, king, optimus civis, pope, cardinal and even the tyrant, another key figure/function in Renaissance political thought, often presented as the opposite but specular image of the ideal ruler and portrayed as an anti-model.

Numerous studies in recent decades have been devoted to these topics, as the application of innovative methodologies has led to a radical reconsideration of traditional interpretative categories, which now prove to be too partial and inadequate to explain complex phenomena. In particular, a profound review of concepts and definitions, such as ‘Civic Humanism’, ‘letteratura cortigiana’ and ‘Republicanism’, in tandem with a parallel reassessment of the too clear-cut distinction between princely and republican ideals,⁵ has been accompanied by a renewed focus on the plurality of voices involved in the production and fruition of political and cultural languages, with a more solid awareness of the need to study the diverse forms of ‘political communication’⁶ (which include products belonging to the spheres of literature, art, history and philosophy), and with the acknowledgement of the many-sided contribution made by the class of intellectuals and artists.⁷ However, most studies have concentrated on specific areas of investigation or on chronological scopes limited by traditional periodisations rather than adopting a more extensive perspective: the focus has been placed either on political speculation or on historical output, humanist literature of the Quattrocento or sixteenth-century works, Neo-Latin texts or texts in the vernacular, textual sources or artistic works, the image of the ruler or on the that of the condottiero. In the recent proliferation of important research on early modern political thought, scholars have often fallen under the spell of the figure of the Renaissance prince and predominantly treated military and political leaders as independent entities.⁸

By contrast, this volume considers the profiles of both the prince and the condottiero and examines the interrelations between the two with the more general purpose of gaining a better understanding of Renaissance leadership by looking at it from a broader angle, which also includes other pivotal figures who played a crucial role in the definition and in the actual exercise of power from a theoretical and practical perspective (such as prelates, who at the time were often perceived as holding secular authority, or the image of the tyrant, the antithesis of the just ruler). Thus, by adopting a wide-ranging approach, this book aims to provide a comprehensive investigation into leadership and its representation in the Italian Renaissance, exploring the modes of illustration and definition of the various figures within the category of ‘capi politici e militari’ in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy and highlighting both the ideal and real traits (and the interconnections among them) that they assume in this period. Specific attention is paid to the different facets and declinations that these forms of power display, as incarnated by political and military leaders. In particular, through its sixteen chapters, the volume integrates two complementary and often interrelated dimensions into the history of political thought: the exemplary and prescriptive representation of the prototype of the perfect prince and condottiero and the portrayal of the actual historical actors. Moreover, through the analyses provided by the sixteen contributions, the book looks at the various genres, languages and cultural vehicles through which the definition and depiction of these key political figures have been put forward between the Quattrocento and Cinquecento, taking a long-distance look at the reception of these Renaissance icons in the modern age. These channels of representation may be historical narratives, orations, treatises, chivalric romances, historical-epic poetry, drama, visual and artistic works. These media overlap in various ways but have rarely been considered through a comparative and unified perspective. Thanks to such a multidisciplinary methodology, this collection of chapters seeks to highlight the synergies, similarities and specificities of these fields, helping to recognise their actual contribution to the evolution of political ideologies in the Italian Renaissance. Notably, the volume includes essays devoted to works belonging to the different linguistic codes of the vernacular and Neo-Latin and to genres that are seldom analysed together, such as, for example, chivalric romance and humanist literature. Consequently, these different sources have been placed in this book in a mutually enriching dialogue, which enables us to question conventional assumptions about the Renaissance and depict a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of the cultural and political changes occurring in that period.

As the second part of the Introduction illustrates more closely, the volume begins with the Quattrocento, the era of Humanism and a lively cultural phase that would profoundly influence the subsequent periods; then it proceeds to consider the sixteenth century, with contributions that explore, among other things, how the reinterpretation and re-evaluation of the ideals and ideas of the earlier Renaissance were carried out by various authors. It contains a separate section devoted to works of art from 1400 to 1600, with the last essay of the miscellany examining the reception of the figure of the Renaissance prince in fin-de-siècle Britain and thus serving as an afterword. In this trajectory, the multifaceted profile of the ‘felix prince’, which is analysed through different perspectives, opens and closes the ideal path of this journey, showing the enduring vitality and the continuous evolution and transformation of images, patterns and concepts throughout the centuries.