The Reinassance: Floats, Symbols, and Colors (1400-1500) |
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n the 1400s ever more frequent, consistent records report the modern names of the Contrade, which began to appear in the public festivities and to take part in the ritual games with groups of men in livery. . Le pugna was a kind of collective boxing match with hundreds of contestants, the heir of gladiatorial games and forerunner of modern boxing. In Siena this game was in vogue during the low Middle Ages, often banned because of the deaths and riots it regularly provoked. In the pugna recorded by Gentile Sermini in a short story dating back to 1424, written in a style that antipicated live news-reporting, readers learn of the groupings of the Snail, of the Giraffe, and of the Val di Piatta (the modern day Forest). In the pugna games of 1494, mentioned in the Chronicles of Allegretto Allegretti, written in honor of the Cardinal of San Malò’s visit to Siena, participating groups included the Snail, the Dragon, the Giraffe, the Wave, and Camollia (today’s Porcupine). The game went on for a long time. In the 1800s Niccolò Tommaseo defined pugilism as “a game played in the style of pugna: much used among the Greeks and carried on up until the recent years among the Sienese.” From the pugna arose the theatrical yet virulent pugnacity that lives on today. Le cacce, “the hunts,” marked the entry of the costumed representatives of the Contrada in the Piazza, along with allegorical floats of exotic or imaginary animals, symbolizing mythic events or noble virtues. In the transition from the 1400s to the 1500s, the Contrade completed the fantastic menagerie from which they took their emblems. Lacking precise records, one can hypothesize a spontaneous process by which Contrade came together to construct the machines. The Contrade, chose their emblematic animals from the heraldic repertory in vogue in Siena and throughout Italy, using ideas and symbols from the crests of kings and nobles, of mercenary companies, of the arts and professions, of towns and cities, or from Medieval “bestiaries,” like those of Brunetto Latini. One might reconstruct and hypothesize for each Contrada a path and process that is individual and different from all others. For example, the enterprise of the Borghesi was perhaps the source for that of the Dragon Contrada, the enterprise of the Marescotti for the Eagle Contrada. In the case of the Caterpillar, the symbol is that of the art of the silk-makers, as documented in 1370. As for the Panther, historians have hypothesized a possible direct link with the presence in Siena of a colony of silk-makers from Lucca. And in the case of the Porcupine, composed of the men of Camollia, it is very possible to imagine a derivation from the emblem of the Ricci (literally “hedgehog”) family, or from the emblem of King Louis XII of France. Allegorical floats could be found in many cities. In nearby Florence, for example, a hunting procession included a wooden Giraffe-shaped machine, and in 1514 floats were to be seen in the shapes of a Porcupine and of a Tortoise. These machines, with various men inside, served to frighten and to rouse the animals, and were used as shelters by the hunters who poked the animals from inside with spears around the Piazza, to create the impression that the wooden predators did battle with the real ones; totem against ferocity, myth against reality. |
 Vincenzo Rustici: The Costumed Representatives of the Contrade at the Bull-Hunt in the Piazza del Campo (XVI c.).Siena, Headquarters of the Monte dei Paschi Bank |
n Siena in 1482, according to the Histories of the erudite prelate Sigismondo Tizio, the inhabitants of San Marco built a Snail-shaped float and those of San Pietro a Ovile a machine in the shape of a Giraffe. In 1506 the Eagle Contrada, the Snail, the Dragon, the Giraffe, the Porcupine, the Lionphant (today’s Tower), the Ram, the Shell, the Goose, the Wave, and the Forest, each with its costumed representatives, took part in “hunting procession” in the Piazza del Campo held for the feast of Our Lady. In 1546, in the report on the feast of the Assumption drawn up and printed by Cecchino Chartaio, all 17 of today’s Contrade are named: the Eagle, the Caterpillar, the Snail, the Owl, the Dragon, the Giraffe, the Porcupine, the Unicorn, the She-Wolf, the Shell, the Goose, the Wave, the Panther, the Forest, the Tortoise, the Tower, and the Ram. Their symbols were the same then as now. Their colors were to undergo a longer, more complex evolution. The Eagle and the Snail came out in 1546 with their present colors (but they were to vary occasionally); 5 other Contrade took on their colors for the first time in the 1600s, 8 in the 1700s, and 2 last century. Over the centuries, all changed their borders and geometrical figures, their stripes and arabesques, proving that nothing about the Palio is ever unchanging. The City-State had its own float as far back as the 14th century. The “Wagon of the Angels” was a machine holding up youths dressed as angels, and a complicated system of ropes and pulleys made them rise and fall around an image of the Madonna. A receipt from 1406 documents 36 farthings spent on the oranges the youths threw to the crowd as good-luck projectiles. On the Wagon of the Angels, and later on the Carroccio wagon, the Palio was carried, mounted on a painted pole topped by a silver lion. The precious fabric of the “Great Banner” often came from elsewhere, from Florence or Lucca, from Bologna or Venice. To stuff the 1430 Palio with silk rosado, 18 “Sienese arms” long (13.42 meters), with fringe and bands of silk and gold, 1,400 vaio pelts were needed. In 1447 the Palio was made of crimson velvet, and 30 “arms” (22.38 meters) were purchased. The Great Banners of this period are no longer in existence because, unlike those of today, they were functional, not merely symbolic, prizes. As a rule, they were used to make altar cloths, canopies, tapestries, and sacred vestments, yet one may suppose that they ended up being worn by the winners and by their earthly madonnas, who often in the days of the Palio wore precious stones and dresses of silk and velvet, making show of the luxury which ordinarly the sumptuary laws of the Republic did not allow. The days of the Palio were world events: to the city came the great names of Italy’s born and moneyed aristocracy, high prelates, and crowned heads of Europe (such as Emperor Sigmund who attended the 1432 Palio), the Borgias, Gonzagas, Medicis, Malatestas, the Marquises of Mantua, the lords of Milan. Since the lords no longer participated personally in wartime battles (that work being delegated to mercenaries), they stopped running in the Palio, delegating the job to the jockeys. the Palio became for them a spectacle to be seen, the race an event to which they invited their racers and their color-bearers, putti or ragatii (“kids”) with nicknames as picturesque as their blouses. Running in the 1461 Palio were the rowdy youths called Paganinus Pagani of Romania, Furaboscus of Cremona, Fallatutti Factinnanzi of Schiavonia, Tremalmondo of Ferraria, Setacchiappo Barilis of Montefiascone, Fiascus Barilis of Montefiascone. In 1492 the jockey of Cesare Borgia made a false start in the race and the Municipality awarded the Palio to the Marquis of Mantua. In 1514 Muccia Farasche won the Palio for his illustrious and bizarre patron Sodoma, riding a dark horse that was “decorated Turkish-style on its flanks and on its head.” The other horses were two brown sorrels, a black roan, 2 bays and 2 greys. |
 The oldest source and print of the Palio: It is an anonymous account in verse of the August festival of 1506. Siena, Library of the Intronati |
In 1559, after a desperate and memorable war of siege, with a Government in exile in Montalcino, Siena received a condemning sentence with no chance of appeal from the tractate of Cateau-Cambrésis, which gave a new territorial map to Europe. Siena was reduced to a province of the Granduchy which, moreover, had its capital in the ever-unpopular Florence; Siena was no longer the master of its own fate, but was to be steered by Florence until the Risorgimento.The festivities of mid-August, apart from the religious component, suddenly lost their political meaning of triumph for the city. Instead of receiving the annual homage from all lands and castles, from cities, hamlets and lords for the feast of its Madonna, Siena was forced to pay yearly homage to St John of the Florentines, in a ceremony that Siena knew well, having been on the receiving end.
Thus with a brusque “desemanticizing and resemanticizing,” a turn-around of meanings, the feast was no more a celebration of the present but a reminder of the past – history and memory, dream and nostalgia for the golden age when Siena had been free, independent, and sovereign. Perhaps it is from this end of the great feast that there arose, in the second half of the 1500s, the teeming festivities and games and neighborhood Palios which strengthened the invisible walls of the Contrade, making them definitively cities within the city, guardians of memories and traditions of a city that turned its back on history and closed itself within itself. A probing example: the summer feast of 1581. Siena's Governor, Federigo di Montuato, wrote to Florence, “almost all the Contrade wanted to run their own Palio, some with horses, others with mares, others with mules... others with water buffaloes like the Roman custom. |