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Neptune's Empire: Art, Confession, and Statecraft in Transalpine Europe, ca. 1530–1618

par Martino, Davide ;Crofts, Frederick G.
Référence 68th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) (30/03-02/04/2022: Dublin, Ireland)
Publication Non publié, 2022-03-30

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

The ancient god of the sea Neptune was a popular figure in the sixteenth century. From the 1530s, monumental fountains of Neptune were erected in cities north and south of the Alps. Prior to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, Poseidon/Neptune also frequently appeared in civic artworks and triumphal festivals of courts and cities. However, this sixteenth-century ‘Neptunomania’ in transalpine Europe has received little scholarly attention.This paper will trace the development of these representations and their meanings, from the Virgilian topos of Neptune calming the waters to claims of lordship over the seas. In particular, it will focus on three overlapping contexts. First, rival courts and cities competing through spectacle and visual self-fashioning. Second, how pagan imagery could help create a conceptual field within which confessional tensions and disagreements could be bypassed. Third, the (perceived) Ottoman threat, and the competition for supremacy in the Mediterranean.