Cittadini and Celebration

• In Event: Citizens of Venice in History and Art III: Fashioning Class Identity

Abstract

The “cittadini originari” participated in the festive life of the Venetian Renaissance from the 1450s with the Company of the Hose of the “Fedeli,” just as the patrician compagnie were also emerging. Other citizens’ companies followed later, formed by eminent families, and then, in the early 1500s, the “cittadini” celebrations reached their apex with the famous wedding festivities of the Freschi family. In their festive behavior, the original citizens followed patrician and common Italian customs, but also sought a particular confrontation with these because their agendas sometimes paralleled but sometimes conflicted with those of the patricians. My paper will, on the one hand, explore the desire to emulate and attain acceptance from the superior class; and, on the other, examine the desire to establish differentiation from its own class on the part of the rising elite within the “cittadinanza,” that is, the families of the Ducal Chancery.

Author

• Matteo Casini, Suffolk University