Architecture as Performance in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Court Ritual in Modena, Rome, and Paris.(Book Review)

Alice Jarrard. Architecture as Performance in Seventeenth-Century Europe: Court Ritual in Modena, Rome, and Paris.

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xvi + 298 pp. + 8 color pls. index. append. illus. map. bibl. $80. ISBN 0-521-81509-6.

In 1598, an expansionist papacy deposed the illegitimate Cesare d'Este (r. 1597-1628) and expropriated Ferrara, the historic Este capital. Alice Jarrard goes some way to elucidate how Cesare's grandson Francesco (r. 1629-58) commissioned and used works of art in Modena, the new Este capital. Tournaments, theaters and theatrical performances, architecture, and portraiture in various media are treated, each in one chapter.

The book's subtitle adumbrates Jarrard's intention to establish Modenese sources for the visual arts, and to place Modena on a par with Rome and Paris indeed invites curiosity. …