The snatching of a grace beyond the reach of art. Gazing down on Urbino city from
his lofty palace walls, Castiglione’s ideal courtier has something which cannot be
acquired. The essence of courtliness, Il Cortegiano tells us, rests in
sprezzatura, effortless superiority, which one may approach through long years
of education but which ultimately eludes any didactic effort.
Thus embracing the notion of immaterial refinement, sprezzatura is
positioned in stark contrast to the material side of courtliness. So
is Thorstein Veblen’s ‘conspicuous consumption’, a term originally coined to
describe the habits of the English leisure class.1 Although at
first sight a hymn to materiality, it celebrates the annihilation of resources before an
admiring audience and has therefore been applied to the study of early modern courtly
culture. According to such readings, courtly festivals come across as fireworks of material
waste, ephemeral splendour. Aristocrats remain yet aristocrats, however, once the
spectacle has ended. Similar to the concept of sprezzatura, these shows drive
home the lesson that nobility is something you can neither buy nor consume.
The greater, then, the pleasure of burrowing in the paraphernalia of
splendour and prodding the left-overs of such pyrotechnics. Scholars have increasingly turned to the study of material culture:
Malcolm Smuts, Mara Wade, Steven Orgel and Roy Strong among them; Helen
Watanabe O’Kelly, who has catalogued festival books; and Volker Bauer and Jörg-
Jochen Berns with their typological approach to German court studies.2 Recent work combines the material (architecture) with the
immaterial (courtly etiquette, networks of influence). Such methods have led to thought-
provoking ideas of how ‘access equals power’ (commonly known as the Starkey thesis).
Back in the 1980s, Berns complained that research indulged
in too many case studies but lost out on the big picture: nobody cared about a general
survey of festive court culture within its material and ideological contexts.3 It seems that court studies have moved on since.
A general typology of festive court culture
Here, for instance, comes a book on entertainment culture which looks like
a response to Berns’s plea. Claudia Schnitzer has produced a compendious volume on
the function and material backbone of costume divertissements at early modern German
courts. She engages with a vast number and variety of entertainments in disguise from
the early sixteenth to the eighteenth century. She pays much attention to the courts at
Dresden and Vienna but also includes Munich, Stuttgart, Braunschweig-
Wolfenbüttel and many more in her survey. Leaving aside theatrical productions
such as operas, plays or ballets, Schnitzer focuses on non-dramatic disguisings and
concentrates on social occasions which involved an active participation of the court (p.2).
Even though Schnitzer hardly mentions the side of courtly showbusiness in which
professional actors, dancers and musicians were most prominent, a mind-boggling range
of disguisings is considered on some 350 pages: mummeries, tournaments and pageants,
banquets, masked balls, each of these with many sub-categories.
Theory
Schnitzer’s theoretical vantage point lies where many studies on courtliness
set out from. Gesturing at Norbert Elias, she locates entertainments within the social
fabric of courtly society, providing both a recreational and an obligatory element.
Whether they felt inclined or not, courtiers were called upon to participate; on the other
hand, such duties often brought about an opportunity for social advancement. Schnitzer
defines dress as a part of courtly culture which expresses rank and signifies conformity to
certain expectations. By way of their ceremonial and representative function,
divertissements both reinforced the hierarchy within and appealed to the public outside
the court. They offered an opportunity for transgression (for instance, putting on a mask
concealed a person’s identity and enabled relaxed or even licentious behaviour) but also
served to stabilise the social order (the identity of a courtier would be discovered and
courtly decorum suffered temporary offence only). Such views resound with post-
Bakhtinian criticism.
Schnitzer waltzes to a conventional tune, too, when she speaks about
costumed courtiers engaging in dance. The dubious works of Braun and Gugerli
should not be relied upon to explain courtly dancing.4 Much is
made of Stephen Orgel, Roy Strong and zur Lippe’s Naturbeherrschung am
Menschen, that classic study which treats the baroque stage like a Benthamite
surveillance exercise with the scheming monarch at the heart of his spectacular
panopticon.5 References to more recent work, such as that of
Mark Franko, Katherine McGinnis or Susan Leigh Foster might have counterbalanced
the discipline-and-punish impression by an account of how individual courtiers played
with their roles and subtly undercut hierarchies.6 Yet
Schnitzer’s account of how social distances are transformed into real-spatial distances is
convincing on the whole and ambitious in its wider application. The spatial dimensions
of the pageant in length, width, and height, she argues, are the co-ordinates of a system
which maps every participant according to his or her rank (p.160). In the course of her
study, she extends the politics of inclusion and exclusion to the marching order of
tournaments, triumphant progresses and certain ballrooms where barriers kept the lowly
from the higher aristocracy. In doing so, Schnitzer develops a comprehensive theory of
‘spacing the courtier’.
We also learn about the pitfalls of such spectacles: a ruler in sumptuous
costume might impress the public but also lose respect by seeming too histrionic;
masking garments might add an extravagant note to a feast but also encourage bad
manners, if not violence. Costumes sometimes concealed weapons ready to assassinate
the mighty, a prominent victim being the Swedish king Gustav III in 1792. Checks on
masking garments at balls in eighteenth-century Vienna make sense in this context.
Schnitzer finally arrives at a general theory of control patterns in the devising of
costumes: apart from security reasons, restrictions imposed on courtiers might include a
dress code expressing social rank or the aesthetic programme of the day (p.257).
Censorship might also be self-imposed: courtiers wishing to please do conform to courtly
standards in manner and appearance. Such strategies of (self-)discipline underline, as
Schnitzer convincingly argues, the deeper anxieties of rulers and their courts.
Structure
Schnitzer’s system is arranged according to type of entertainment. In line
with this clear structure, the tone is no-nonsense, matter-of-fact, if not dry at times (the
one and only joke occurs in the third last line of the book). The chapters in Schnitzer’s
encyclopedia read like extended entries which can be consulted independently of one
another. Those who wish to know more about jousts obtain information on the spot
without needing to look elsewhere. The strength of the book – its typological division –
is also its weakness, since geography and time are subordinate here. Especially in the
initial chapter the author swiftly changes court, country and century; readers had better
brace themselves for a discourse which shuttles from Maximilian I to Lieselotte von der
Pfalz and from Maria Theresia’s Vienna to Casanova’s Milan in the course of the volume.
Schnitzer’s typological anatomy of entertainment also privileges instant information over
suspense. Those reading the book from cover to cover will occasionally experience a déjà-
vu effect, for instance, when the author repeatedly explains that certain costumes were
too grotesque to be admitted at court, or that courtiers were led by the principle of
prudence in the choice of their disguises.
Regrettably, no conclusion sums up the wealth of information and theories
in this volume. Instead, the baffled reader encounters only the appendix. Here Schnitzer
includes extracts from primary sources and depictions of costumes and designs. The
copious collection of hitherto unknown or unpublished iconographic material is one of
the many assets of Schnitzer’s study and is simply wonderful to look at. Niemeyer was
well-advised to include so many illustrations in the volume and should have applied this
generosity to the wider layout. It is a surprise to see a major German academic publisher,
formerly esteemed for fine text design, settle for the Microsoft Word look. Furthermore,
Niemeyer does not provide any information about the author.
Sources
Schnitzer’s main textual sources are etiquette books, court protocol,
entertainment booklets and inventories, by which she amply demonstrates how both the
powerful and would-be aristocrats dressed to impress. These sources tell us how crowds
thronged the scene to witness spectacles and pageants and how courts consciously put
themselves on display to the outside world. Often arranged on the occasion of state
visits, such entertainments attracted a large number of foreign dignitaries. Schnitzer
stresses that spectacles were political events. Their whole point was that others could see
and admire them.
But where, then, is the target of such waste of action? Where is the voice of
the audience? Very few eyewitness accounts temper the picture of official glory. After
four chapters, we still know next to nothing about the way individual participants reacted
to such feasts, let alone how outsiders, such as ordinary citizens, perceived them. The
lack of diplomatic correspondence is a problem, too. From such sources we know that
English entertainments of the early modern period were closely observed for their
political content and aesthetic success. Non-textual aspects, in particular, costumes,
found prominent, if mixed, reviews in private papers as well as ambassadors’ letters. Do
such sources not exist for German court culture?
Schnitzer’s work is at its best on those rare occasions when it hints at
individual reactions to organised disguise. At one point she includes the engaging
description of a courtier fretting that he has yet again been ‘invited’ by his sovereign to
join a tedious ball (p.268). She also mentions an eighteenth-century diary describing
Viennese Redoute locations (p.264). Excellent, too, are the references to entertainments
going wrong, for they yield clues about organisation and performance practice. While the
official festival books of Dresden suggest a flawless Götteraufzug in 1695,
the files of the administration reveal the chaos and the manifold logistical problems
attending this event. Oversized pageant cars could not pass the narrow rear gate of the
Dresden Reithaus; many participants did not know which part of the pageant they
belonged to. Things improved, though: later events saw special co-ordinators and each
device was measured before its construction (pp.159-60). Schnitzer includes a real gem
with Philipp Agricola’s eyewitness account of a joust with disguised performers he saw in
1581 (p.326). Designs for this occasion present a cupido shooting arrows into the crowd.
How could he have done so without injuring people or running out of artillery? Agricola
solves the problem: the arrows were tied by a fine string to his bow, hence the boy-actor
never lost any. There ought to be more of this kind of information to fill the lacunae in
the reception of courtly entertainment.
From the choice of sources to the sources themselves. As her differentiated
treatment of eyewitness narratives and illustrated documentation shows, Schnitzer is very
much aware of the deceptive nature of sources and clear about the ideological
commitment of official records. Accounts of festivities in the Mercure galante or
in pageant booklets, she argues, must have differed from what actually happened since
they reported on events in the ‘should be’ mode. Schnitzer also suggests that the
existence of rules implies offence. Thus, the dress regulations stipulated by the
Reichspolizeiordnung were in effect little regarded. Schnitzer provides the refreshing
example of a friend of the Fugger family: in sumptuous fancy-dress above his station,
young Veit Konrad Schwarz was touring the brothels with his cronies in 1561, all
"frolicking like young calves”, as he wrote later (p.68).
The representation of rulers
Schnitzer’s approach is bound to achieve new insights even in well-worn
topics of festival literature. Writing on the Freydal commissioned by Maximilian I, she
notes a discrepancy between hagiography and actual event – while the festival book
designs represent Maximilian I as an observer it was clear that he had, in fact, danced at
the actual event too. She concludes that rulers not only behaved according to the public
nature of the event itself but also consciously shaped the way they were represented in
subsequent documentation. Hence follows the attractive theory that with increasing
public exposure rulers tended to withdraw as active participants from disguisings.
Festival iconography often depicts heads of state as detached observers according to a
static ideal. Here one feels reminded of anthropologic
studies such as Jean-Claude Schmitt’s La raison des gestes on the representation of
monarchs.7
The tendency to make heads of state look immobile matches another: that of
appearing in plain clothes while everybody else is masked. At the imperial court at
Vienna, Maria Theresia regularly appeared distanced through a lack of disguise from the
balls she herself arranged. In this context, Schnitzer convincingly explains the success of
the domino, a gown which barely concealed the normal dress underneath and thereby
hinted at its wearer’s rank in everyday life (p.277).
Architecture as 'mnemotopos'
Schnitzer shows us the limits of festival reports and illustrations by her
critical evaluation of how they spin events to suit a favourable presentation. She also
draws attention to other forms of remembrance often overlooked in current criticism but
available to audiences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It becomes clear that
costume pageants were not as ephemeral as often made out but consciously preserved in
the architecture of courts. Rooms, for instance, were called after the devices they stored:
Dresden’s "Elementen-Cammer” contained the costumes dating back to the 1719
carousel of the same name (p.339). This representative hall was a showpiece of Dresden
festival culture, consciously presented to and preserved for visitors. The example of
Dresden demonstrates how rooms evolved from storage spaces to veritable galleries:
wooden horses carried decoration and armour in a representative manner, equine
portraits adorned the stables, pictures of festivals complemented depots, and aristocratic
ancestors were displayed in a long gallery nearby (pp.347-48). Depots were showrooms, a
glimpse of splendour out of season, a museum of magnificence.
The gendered courtier
Höfische Maskeraden also addresses gender issues.
Tournaments are conventionally described as a space for indulging in hominid instincts
and chivalric nostalgia. Schnitzer’s discussion of women’s active participation in so-called
"Damenringrennen” provides an enlarged perspective (it would have been
fascinating to hear about their involvement in greater detail). Initially female roles had
been taken by male knights; for example, prince Johann Georg of Saxony appeared as
Amazon Queen in Altenburg in 1654 (p.181). Schnitzer’s
information on women’s tournament costumes for men complements theoretical
works on the performance of gender such as Stephen Orgel’s Impersonations.8
In the early modern period, theatrical roles were often informed by the
notion that a woman acting before the public was a public woman, a prostitute.
Therefore opportunities for female disguise often evolved within a private sphere
(p.191). Schnitzer observes that the public presence of professional female artists at
German courts emerged in the field of music. Female singers were the first to enter the
entertainment industry; an early example dates back to a carnival pageant in Dresden in
1574: "Dis ist ein Weibsbilt gewesen vnndt hatt woll gesungen (this was a real
woman and she sang well indeed)” (p.192).
The logistics of disguisings:
economising on the marvellous
At last we get to know more about the practical side of disguisings. Schnitzer
describes the workshop of the designer Giovanni Maria Nosseni at the court of Saxony, a
case study of how worn material was revamped, how devices were produced and stored,
and what kinds of sources were used for their invention. For instance, Nosseni owned an
edition of Mandeville’s travels. Schnitzer talks about the efforts which went into pattern
books for devices such as the one compiled by a chamberlain during his thirty-years
career at the court of Bayreuth (p.322).
Schnitzer repeatedly draws attention to the fact that nothing was ever
thrown away. Properties and dresses found multiple applications, and cheap materials
imitated silk and diamonds. The production process of a costume often marked the ruler:
his garment might be the only new and sumptuous one (p.343). Courtified humble
dresses of shepherds, innkeepers, or beggars fit into this picture, since they suggest a
person of distinction shining through the lowly role: studded with diamonds and
expensive furs as it was, the furrier’s costume made for August the Strong looked more
like the ceremonial vestment of a sovereign than the clothes of a craftsman (p.236).
Worn garments were sometimes presented as precious gifts. Material decline
and a high number of previous owners, however, diminished the prestige of such a gift:
the third-hand costume was a dubious honour. Badly torn stuff often ended up in the
theatres. Schnitzer’s ideas are reminiscent of Anglo-
American approaches to the economics of costume, as expounded, for instance, by Peter
Stallybrass.9 They also add some fine-tuning to the notion of
conspicuous consumption.
One of the most impressive ideas in this book is that of the pageant as a
mobile wunderkammer. Objects displayed during festivals and banquets –
automata, tables in the shape of artifical mountains and the like – often became
wunderkammer attractions thereafter (p.357). Conversely, the
wunderkammer was a storehouse of exotica likely to be cannibalised for
spectacles. The use of, say, pillage from the Turkish wars instead of fake properties
added a touch of authenticity to shows. Addressing a larger audience than a
wunderkammer, an entertainment might be regarded as an encyclopedia for the
masses. It built on the riches owned and arranged by a ruler. Before the public gaze it
demonstrated Herrschaftswissen, knowledge mastered by the savant
sovereign.
In brief
To conclude: with its riches displayed for the reader, Schnitzer’s book might
in itself be called a wunderkammer. This is a monumental, scrupulously-
referenced work which opens to its reader a wide variety of courtly entertainments and
challenges received notions of courtly life such as conspicuous consumption. Schnitzer’s
anatomy of entertainment covers a stunning range of visual sources, many of which have
been made available for the first time. Her book is bound to become an important
reference work.
Dr. Barbara Ravelhofer
St John’s College, Cambridge
St John's Street
GB-Cambridge CB2 1TP
Ins Netz gestellt am 22.08.2000.
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