Of Elephants and Harmony: Memory, Knowledge and Pleasure in the Joyous Entry of Albert of Austria and Isabella of Spain into Antwerp

Abstract

This essay is about a sculpted elephant set on a wheeled base, an early modern festival float belonging to the city of Antwerp in present-day Belgium. Twice a year, during civic processions known as ommegangen, this float was paraded through the streets of Antwerp. However, on 10 December 1599, the civic authorities deployed the elephant as a stationary pageant, to form part of a different festival, the Joyous Entry of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and her husband, Archduke Albert of Austria. This article explores the many roles and resonances pertaining to this specific use of the float. The article is therefore a detailed case study of how one Habsburg subject city deployed one particular sculpture within urban pageantry to articulate and negotiate its often fraught relationship to its overlords and its position within the broader Luso-Hispanic Empire. At the same time, I show how the Antwerp urban elite drew on diverse forms of knowledge - historical, geographical, dynastic, scientific, musical and religious - to address and, to a certain extent, domesticate their courtly visitors.