When we think of the so-called Ancien Régime, i.e. the period of the European history between the Renaissance and the French revolution (late sixteenth - late eighteenth century), we usually believe that Europe has been marked by the rise of a unique political model: the absolute monarchy. Hence, our ideas about early modern cultural production, which includes poetry, art, and theatre, tend to focus either on the context of this political model (the court) or on his leading actor (the king). This ERC project studied an alternative genealogy for Europe’s identity, for it analyzed how power and society were represented in the European states that had no king to celebrate: the Italian city-states that maintained their independence throughout this timeframe (Venice, Genoa, Lucca), the Republic of Ragusa (today in southernmost Croatia) and the Dutch Republic.
In early modern Europe the representation of power was a comprehensive audio-visual expression, pivoting on several media. Writing merged not only with music, visual arts, and performance, but also with technological devices such as smoke, fountains, and fireworks; therefore, a true multimedia experience was created. There is no doubt that a sweeping metamorphosis affected this experience after the end of the Renaissance, and this transformation primarily concerned the figure of the king. During the Ancien Régime, the king went on stage, as he played the ancient hero (e.g. Caesar, Hercules) or the pagan deity (e.g. Jupiter, Apollo). The king appropriated mythological and literary characters to exploit the force of their cultural legacy, and, in so doing, his dramatic persona - i.e. his figure as presented to and perceived by others - came to be the focus of a large propaganda campaign.
However, there was no king to celebrate in the republican states. Their figureheads, the doge (Venice, Genoa), the stadtholder (the Dutch republic), the rector (Ragusa), and the gonfalonier (Lucca), had neither a divine right to invoke nor an absolutist persona to stage. When they filled their leading political position, they were not consecrated, but simply elected. They did not dress in the over-the-top mythological disguises worn by the king, because their bodies could not fit the body politic of the state.
In this respect, early modern republics seem to have little to do with the political ritualization of absolute monarchies. Yet, are we sure that republican culture and civic ritual are not affected by the metamorphosis shaping the image of kingship during the so-called Ancien Régime? Republics eschewed any vestiges of monarchy to state their independence; still, they could not but refer to the same historical framework, marked by spectacular displays of ceremonial pomp, magnificent and clockwork rituals, and centralizing power.
This project studied republican pageantry and cultural production in their multimedia appearance, and took into account a multidisciplinary corpus of sources, including both texts and images. By comparing the representation of kingship and the staging of the republican state, this project did not merely expand the area of inquiry - from absolute monarchy to seventeenth-century republicanism - but rather opened a whole set of new questions. To what extent does the absolutist framework influence the display of republican ideals such as freedom, equality, and the common good? How may the rhetorical devices of baroque culture extoll a power that does not apply to someone (the king) but rather to something (the republic and republican virtues)?
