Networks of power: The art patronage of Pier Maria Rossi of Parma.

Abstract

This study investigates the ways in which Count Pier Maria Rossi of Parma (1413--1482) was able to proclaim, promote, and negotiate his autonomy and authority through patronage of art. Rossi articulated his dynasty's power through pointed visual imagery advertising chivalric and courtly ideologies, political alliances, territorial aggrandizement, and participation in networks of civic and regional powers and institutions. By supporting ecclesiastical cults, by building churches, convents, and castles, and by commissioning fresco cycles, medals, and illuminated manuscripts, Rossi extended his dynasty's image of authority well beyond Parma. This imagery was not addressed to an insulated court but to intersecting audiences ranging from his peasant subjects to Italy's most powerful families. I examine closely the frescoed <italic>camera d'oro</italic> in Rossi's castle of Torrechiara and the <italic>camera di Griselda</italic> in Roccabianca and move beyond an exclusively biographical reading of imagery associated with Rossi's mistress Bianca Pellegrini to trace and to excavate the multivalent, poetic image of Bianca as mistress within regional political networks, as devout pilgrim, and as chivalric damsel. The <italic>camera di Griselda</italic> emerges not as a private bedroom, as has been assumed, but chamber where legal disputes were heard and where Rossi utilized the Griselda narrative to construct an image of just rule. Through the imagery of the <italic>camera d'oro</italic>, Rossi figured his authority and made reference to his dynasty's chivalric, patriarchal, crusading, and signorial traditions and histories. This amorous and peregrine imagery, I argue, was not secretly shared by two lovers but was intended for a wider audience and was employed by generations of Rossi as a symbolic and intimate register to bolster their dynasty's authority. I discuss the topography of the <italic>camera d'oro</italic>, moreover, as a polemical visualization of Rossi's networks of power and economic resources and the frescoes' castles as changing, idealized, and even fictitious claims on territorial control. By examining an ostensibly second-tier ruler who challenged regional powers through artistic patronage in a wide variety of media, this study challenges the model of Italian courts as closed entities connected by a putative court culture shared only by a small number of dominant centers.