Although somewhat similar in type and exotica to the mounted cavalcade celebrating the entry of the Polish Ambassador into Rome in 1633, designed by della Bella while in Rome (1633 -1639), iconographic details better place the drawing ca. 1651 shortly after final return to Florence from a long Parisian sojourn. Two pertinent elements must be considered: The rider is of African lineage, while his costume of pantaloons, a ruff like one occasionally still worn by della Bella, and the distinctive form of a fool’s cap latterly reserved as the identifying mode for theatrical cast of fops, fools,jesters and kindred entertainers in court and courtyard masques and pageants. Here, ethnic distinction and costume supply the probable identity of the performer and his role in a known context. The task of designing many of these costumes fell to della Bella’s skills upon his return to Florence in 1650 for the presumed premier of Il Pazzo del Forza “Mad for Power.” Some of his designs were intended for specific libretti including Francesco Cavalli’s Hipermestra first staged in 1658 and still performed into the next century. A number of della Bella’s handsomely finished pen and wash drawings of costumes and set details for these performances survive in the British Museum and a few more transient venues as gathered, identified and published by Phyllis Dearborn Massar, “Costume Drawings by Stefano della Bella for the Florentine Theater,” Master Drawings, VIII/3, pp. 243-266.
ETHINICITY AND COSTUME ICONOGRAPHY: DATE AND IDENTITY
Within the context of Medici court theatrics during della Bella’s reign as a leading theatric designer, ethnicity and costume provides a generic connection between this drawing and the three prints of a “cavaliere nègre” in della Bella’s suite of eleven rondels of Cavalieres nègres, polonais, et hongrois etched in 1651 upon his return to Florence (cf. de Vesme-Massar, nos. 270-272 & p.195 to which may be added, without conflation with the cavalier, two further prints by della Bella of a negro groom (de Veme-Massar nos. 283-284 & p.195). Coeval with the three rondel prints and the present drawing, della Bella also drew a carefully rendered portrait now in Paris of an Afro-European in a fantasy costume appropriate to a festival performance (cf. François Viatte, Inventaire Géneral des Dessins Italiens II: Dessins de Stefano della Bella, Paris, 1974, no. 280, pp. 280-1, 111 x 86 mm.) To this sheet may be added two more at Windsor Castle in a similarly sensitively attentive style showing four versions of two Afro-European women in theatrically fanciful costumes (cf. Anthony Bunt. The Drawings of G.B. Castiglione & Stefano della Bella in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, London, 1954, p. 95, Nos. 27, 28 & 31, pls. 8, 9 & 10. Clearly, portraits of men of African lineage in equestrian and fanciful array are not common servants but part of a contingent of equestrian, theatric and musical talents employed by the Medici court to partake in the large musical theatric entertainments performed for and with court participation within court halls and gardens.
In addition to the many drawing for Hipermestra preserved in London (with two more in Florence), several others possibly prepared for that libretto were also oppressed into service are known or inferred by iconographic inference for roles as rogues, jesters and fools in that and kindred productions. These extra-social characters all share the outré costuming and features of African lineage that identify the Moorish Rogue in Il Podestà Colognole (Massar, Costume, plate 1), a figure not unlike the subject of the drawing on hand. Yet the role of the fool was not automatically déclassé in this and related perennially popular court productions of sponsored and enjoined by the cadet noble and theatrical enthusiast Carlo Ventura del Nelo who was himself also was costumed fool’s cap and all by della Bella for a part in Il Pazzo del Forza (Masser, Costume, plate 6 and notes p. 260). A similar dual-coned fool’s cap was also given a member of the ballet corps in the same production (Massar, Costume, plate 7), while a third figure in a similar fool’s cap is presented as a further party to this group (Massar, Costume, plate 8). The figure of a single female fool in Il Pazzo per Forza is spared the fool’s cap but given sprays of wheat in her headdress and a child’s doll as raised insignia (Massar, Costume, plate 9).
COSTUME, ROLE AND EMERGENT IDENTITY
In all, there is strong kinship between the Moorish theatrical equestrian fool in della Bella’s’ drawing and a dominant role for a similar elegantly accoutered and mounted Moorish performer in the Pazzo del Forza or a kindred production awaiting identification. Indeed, as the role of fool was a generic cast type taken as an engagingly eccentric caricature thatdid not convey a pejorative ethnic stigma for neither subject or performer. Indeed, most of the performers at this festival spectacles were court members by birth or employment of the Medici household. Among the most accomplished, famed and cherished of these compatriots of the court was the probable subject portrayed here by della Bella: the accomplished poet and singer Giovanni Buonaccorsi, by birth a Moor and by professional choice a probable castrato whose career at the court as a singer and librettist lasted from about 1650 – the year of della Bella’s return to Florence — and his death in 1674, ten years after della Bella’s own demise.
Of relevant importance for and beyond della Bella’s participation in the Medici court performances, Buonacorsi’s career has been carefully reconstructed by the historian and musicologist Emily Wilbourne with documented consideration of matters of ethnicity, professional options and choices, his relationships with the Medici, with whom he was several times painted as a retinue companion, and with della Bella as an affiliated designer for the court’s theatricals. (Cf. Emily Wilbourne, Voice, Slavery, & Race in Seventeenth-Century Florence, Oxford, 2023.)
STYLE AND DATING. Although an exact date for della Bella’s drawings for Il Pazzo del Forza would presume a terminus ante quem of 1658 and the probable premier of that mélange of opera, ballet and equestrian spectacle, as well as a similar date for the Then too, the style and handling of the Moorish Cavalier Fool closely resemble the freely flitting pen lines and accentuations of pallid tan wash spots in most of the costume studies in London for Il Pazzo del Forza, thus giving some fixed date for della Bella’s lissomly linear handling of drawn form would precede a slightly later terminal phase in which touches of painterly wash serve as accent or massed moments of shadow defined in within their own boundaries of the brush. Nevertheless, as it seems probable that both groups of costume studies unquestionably by della Bella were seemingly created in two differing campaigns in about 1658 when Hipermestra also premiered, the slight difference between purely linear definitions of form and more painterly touches of shadow wash to increase plastic illusion in anticipation of varying requirements of visibility for an audience at varying distances and under varying condition of lighting from ambient sunshine to nocturnal interior candle torches.
N.b.: (cf. The fundamental catalogue of della Bella’s prints included in Alexandre de Vesme, Le Peintre-Graveur Italien, Milan, 1906, pp. 66-332 as reprinted by Collectors’ Editions, New York, 1971, in original form but with an essential new introduction, emendations throughout as correcting old errors, filling in lacunae and adding a great deal of more recently discovered material concerning states, locations dating, preliminary and related drawings and subject matter long and laboriously gathered by Phyllis Dearborn Massar along with the near complete photographic compilation of della Bella’s prints published as a supplementary volume cited as de Vesme-Massar. (As a nota personae, the very existence of that most useful book was of course first of all due to the dedicated scholarship of Phyllis Dearborn Massar and her work sustained in large measure by the print department of the NY Metropolitan Museum; then too, there was support from print collector and fan of della Bella’s work Leo Steinberg and the print dealer and connoisseur James Goodfriend; it’s nice and proper to recognize this among many other contributions to the study of graphic art by these scholars, both of whom in turn brought the project to the acquisitions editor at Collectors Editions who happily enough shared their enthusiasm for della Bella.)
