" Messire Bernabò de Milan : case study

Faced with the indeterminacy of the times, Machiavelli suggests striking the spirits with a few "rare examples of himself, similar to those told about Messire Bernabò of Milan". The lecture proposes a textual archaeology of this notation from chapter XXI of The Prince, an attempt to approach a historical figure to take the measure of its reconfigurations by political fiction. How do we "stare down the tyrant"? First, we propose to mobilize the traditional tools of the history of representations: emblematic study - where does the Visconti viper come from? -and iconography - what can we learn from Bernabò's patronage, and in particular from the study of Guiron le courtois (BnF, Nouv. acq. fr. 5243)? - and monumental: how does the Visconti palatial establishment in Milan betray the lordly bite of urban memory? But it is the analysis of Bernabò Visconti's funerary monument that allows us to take the full measure of what appears less as a case study than the study of a case.

Contents

• From the past we are separated, so why write history? (Levent Yilmaz, Le temps moderne, 2014)
• The Machiavellian tipping point of chapter 15: "so it is necessary for a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good and to use and not to use it, according to necessity"
• From De principatibus to the Prince, from the typology of the social production of states to the anthropology of the exercise of power
• Between the ancients and the moderns, between "the continual reading of the ancients" and "the experience of modern things", the middle past
• The irruption of a name: "It is also very advantageous for a prince to give rare examples of himself for the government of things within(a' governi di dentro) - similar to those that are told about Messire Bernabò of Milan; when he has the opportunity, when someone does something extraordinary, either good or bad, in civil life, he must choose a way of rewarding or punishing him that will be much talked about."
• They say he knew how to make people talk about him: the narrative hors-champ of the novellistica
• Great men and uomini grandi : in the Florentine Histories, "Messire Bernabò" names the average time of political action
• A classic case study? Attempting to approach a historical figure to gauge its reconfiguration through political fiction
• Unmasking the tyrant, 1: how deep is the gash in Cangrande della Scala's smile? Defeating the tyrant, 2: upright, severe, majestic and martial, Bernabò Visconti sculpted by Bonino da Campione
• Funerary monuments and political triumphs, or the Milan-Verona axis
• Dynastic roots, the coat of arms and portraiture (Hans Belting)
• The Visconti biscione : the guivre and the dreamlike horizon of the crusade (Paolo Zaninetta, Il potere raffigurato, 2013)
• From snake to viper: the story of a symbolic moult
• La vipera che i Melanesi accampa (Dante, Purg, VIII, 80), the child spat out or swallowed: cannibal power again
• The serpentina machinatione of sense, or the undulating politics of the Milanese
• Souffrir m'estuet : Bernabò Visconti's totemic animal and motto (Laurent Hablot)
• At the head of a lordly cavalcade, from the equestrian effigy of podestate Oldrado di Tresseno (1233) to the lost statue of Azzone Visconti, lord of Milan (1329-1339)
• Modern horses, ancient horses: Pavia's Regisole , "a bronze equestrian statue covered in gold, at the top of the forum, which seems to be speeding up the hill" (Petrarch, Seniles, 5, 1)
• Bernabò's horse, a "portrait of a muzzle" (Armelle Fémelat)
• Lombard illumination and the naturalistic treatment of reality: from Tacuinum sanitatis (BnF, Nouv. acq. lat. 1673) to Guiron le courtois (BnF, Nouv. acq. fr. 5243)
• Bernabò Visconti's patronage and European courtly culture (Kay Sutton)
• Charles Borromeo facing Bernabò Visconti's funeral monument in the church of San Giovanni in Conca in 1567: the tomb as provocation
• Its place: the seigniorial rocca as recinto sacro, a brief history of urban transgression
• The uncertain topographical memory of the Cà di can, Bernabò Visconti's palace in Milan
• An archival and archaeological reconstruction of the Visconti palatial settlement in Milan: the lordly bite (Edoardo Rossetti, "In "contrata de Vicecomitibus"...", in Pier Nicola Pagliara and Serena Romano eds. Modernamente anichi..., Rome, 2014)
• Pietro Azario, Chronicon de gestis principum Vicecomitum (before 1363) "[...] ac a lateribus stipatum, statuis referentibus eius iustitiam et fortitudinem, quibus virtutibus innixus regit ; eamque statuam locauit in superficie altaris maioris "
• Galeazzo II and Bernabò Visconti, two styles of government: by norm and by grace (Andrea Gamberini, La città assediata, Rome, 2003)
• Plenitudo potestatis or plenitudo honestatis ? (Nadia Covini, "La balanza dritta", Milan, 2007)
• Force of law: the two female allegories of strength and justice are less in tension than in support
• Not a case study, but the study of a case