Document Highlights

January 2002

"Bacchino", 1560, Valerio Cioli da Settignano

DOCUMENT CITATION:
Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 1171, insert 2, folio 62 (Entry 6488 in the "Documentary Sources" database.)

TRANSLATION:
There was a bit of entertainment in the form of a combat between the dwarf and a really good monkey that belongs to the Provveditore.The dwarf had two injuries, one in the shoulder and the other in the arm, while the monkey was left with his legs crippled. The monkey eventually gave up and begged the dwarf for mercy. The dwarf, however, didn’t understand the monkey’s language and having seized the monkey by the legs from behind, kept beating his head on the ground. If My Lord the Duke [Cosimo I de’ Medici] hadn’t stepped in, the dwarf would have gone on to kill him. The dwarf fought naked, having nothing to protect him except a pair of undershorts that covered his private parts. Suffice it to say that the dwarf was the victor and he won ten scudi in gold, which had been secured by pledging the ring of the Bishop of Forlì [Bernardo de’ Medici].

TRANSCRIPTION:
[...] Hebbe un poco d'intertenimento d'una battaglia che fu fatta tre [tra] il Nano et una scimia che ha il Proveditore di qui molto brava, nella quale detto Nano rimase con due ferite, una nella spalla et l'altra nel braccio, et la scimia stroppiata nelle gambe, la quale s'arrese, domandando al Nano la vita per merzede, benchè lui non intendendo il linguaggio suo, havendola presa per le gambe di dietro, attendeva abbacchiarla del capo in terra. E se non che 'l duca mio s.re vi s'interpose, el Nano la finiva d'ammazzare. Detto Nano combattè ignudo, et non haveva altr'arme che un paro di brache ^che^ gli coprivano le vergogne. Basta che lui è restato vincitore, et ha guadagnato [scudi] X d'oro, per i quali ha impegno l'anello del Vescovo di Furlì [...]

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
The spectacle must have been a compelling one, offering a primal combat between two creatures that were seen to share many of the characteristics of humankind but without a full claim to that status. Dwarves and monkeys played conspicuous if ambivalent roles in the culture of the European courts, where they were alternately indulged and abused, greeted with fascination and disgust, fear and ridicule, cruelty and condescending affection. In the documentation for these years, there are at least five dwarves in evidence at the Medici Court: Filippino Nano (PeopleBase ID 4016), Gianmaria Nano (9820), Lodovico Nano (4015), Morgante Nano (955) and Gradasso Nano (2231). At this stage, it is difficult to fix the identity of the particular one that wrestled the monkey, since he is only cited as "il nano" in the document. In regard to the monkey, the Medici Court had close contacts with Constantinople, Malta, Sicily and the Mahgreb; African or Asian monkeys could have reached Florence through any of these sources. We are somewhat closer to identifying the Provveditore who owned the animal; the most likely candidate is Domenico di Braccio Martelli (PeopleBase ID 3019), who was Commissario di Pistoia in 1544.

We note that the two creatures were wrestling almost naked, which would have heightened the ridiculous and undignified aspect of the event. On other occasions, court dwarves could be splendidly dressed. A year earlier, Lorenzo Pagni relayed Duchess Eleonora di Toledo de’ Medici’s order to Pier Francesco Riccio for "two white satin jackets and two pairs of white stockings for the dwarves Lodovico and Filippino", perhaps implying that they were viewed as a matched set. (Entry 6020 in the "Documentary Sources" database; ASF Med. Princ. 1170, insert 5, f.262; 10 June 1543.)

On 2 November 1544, Pagni reported to Riccio on a diversion at the Villa di Petraia outside Florence, "This evening the Duke [Cosimo I] stayed in the garden for more than an hour. The dwarf stretched the big cloths on those boxwood trees outside the maze and put his owl there and thus succeeded in catching six or eight birds. This greatly pleased His Excellency but pleased Don Francesco and Donna Maria even more." (Entry 6020 in the "Documentary Sources" database; ASF Med. Princ. 1171, insert 3, f.147; 2 November 1544.)

Hanging nets or canvases on trees or poles and using trained birds to drive other birds into them was a standard hunting technique of the time, though the owl might well have been a mascot or appendage of the dwarf in question. This performance by an amiably cavorting homunculus was much appreciated by the three-and-a-half year-old Don Francesco (later Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici) and his four-and-a-half year old sister Donna Maria. As entertainments go, it seems sweetly bucolic when compared with the blood-and-thunder wrestling match a few months earlier. That particular dwarf went over the top and had to be restrained by Duke Cosimo from doing the monkey serious harm. Along the way, he evidently treated his patrons to a thrilling if freakish spectacle of primitive nature breaking loose amidst the relative sophistication of a princely court.

In regard to relative sophistication, the enthusiastic involvement of Bernardo de’ Medici is certainly noteworthy. He was a Canon of Florence Cathedral as well as Bishop of Forlì and in 1540 figured as one of the founding members of the literary and scholarly Accademia Fiorentina. Bernardo was also one of Duke Cosimo’s most distinguished diplomats, serving as ambassador to Charles V in Spain in 1537 and François I in France in 1544. The wording of the present document invites surmise. What "ring" are they in fact talking about? Is it possible, barely a year before the First Council of Trent (1545), that one of Florence’s most prominent churchmen actually used his Episcopal ring to secure a bet on a wrestling match between a monkey and dwarf?

Pagni noted that the dwarf failed to understand the monkey’s language (in which case he might or might not have stopped pounding his head on the floor.) Since the Renaissance monkey was eponymous with "apeing", or thoughtless imitation, it is noteworthy that he is here credited with having a "language" as such, especially one which the dwarf could not understand. If animals were granted any form of semiotic capability, it was generally the use of simple, unmediated and primitive signs, directly expressing their animal needs, rather than any rational utterance. The reference to the monkey's "language" might thus tell us more about the semiotic limitations of the dwarf, and the wisdom of the Granduke, than an epistemic shift in comparative semiotics. The ability to understand unknown languages, even gestural codes, was considered a sign of wisdom, having its locus classicus in the biblical meeting of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, since these two did not have a spoken language in common.

Whatever the monkey signified or failed to signify semiologically, it is likely that Pagni was engaging in a little secretarial irony. Cosimo’s secretaries were overworked, underpaid, and often forced to perform their duties in extreme circumstances. Cosimo was a hands-on administrator and more than a little hyperactive; he managed to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory traits by carrying on disparate activities simultaneously. In Pagni’s reports, it is not unusual to find references to secretaries taking orders or even dictation on horseback while riding through the forest during ducal boar hunts. Indeed, that could well stand as a metaphor for the life of these officials who had virtually no private time and were constantly on the road, following Cosimo as he moved around the Florentine territory. Though Pagni and his colleagues were in fact ranking ministers of state, they often complained to Riccio (the Duke’s majordomo) of the cold and damp in their improvised quarters, the early morning calls and their late-arriving pay. Humor was one of the most effective devices for maintaining a sense of proportion and control. Pagni must have been working for a laugh when he filed a full report on the breakdown in communication between a dwarf and a monkey, as if they were two squabbling foreign ambassadors, restrained only by the sage intervention of the absolute ruler of Florence.

We can note that nearly thirty years later, in 1573, the elderly and ailing Cosimo de’ Medici (by then Grand Duke of Tuscany) could still relish tragicomic scenes from the parallel universe of the court dwarves. "The Grand Duke continues to show good health, greatly encouraging his doctors and all of the others who serve him. Yesterday, he even went to see the spectacle of the dwarf who was sent to prison and subjected to a trial for adultery. Then the dwarf was sent off on the back of a donkey, seated backwards, with a placard with a clearly legible inscription declaring his adultery. Magnifichino [another dwarf] was on another donkey proclaiming the life story and ribald antics of the dwarf, preceded by the trumpeter of the ministers of justice who attracted the entire populace. And this gave His Excellency [Cosimo I] marvelous pleasure." (Entry 4225 in the "Documentary Sources" database; ASF Med. Princ. 1212, insert 1, f.114; 22 February 1573.)

The Grand Duke’s pleasure was presumably rooted in the traditional belief that dwarves were wildly lascivious by nature and subject to unbridled sexual passions. The public humiliation of an adulterous dwarf was therefore the best possible joke, at once comic and grotesque, serving to reinforce the common perception of the fundamentally bestial nature of these creatures.

ILLUSTRATION NOTES:

Pietro Barbino ("il Morgante") was the most celebrated dwarf at the Medici Court in the Sixteenth Century and might well have been the victorious wrestler who overcame the monkey. This statue in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, at once hyper-realistic and satyrical, was realized in 1560 by Valerio Cioli da Settignano. It is traditionally known as the "Bacchino" ("Little Bacchus") though the actual mythological reference is more probably to the satyr Silenus.

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