The Renaissance of Empire in France

Abstract

But change only the name of Caesar to Henry, the names of Ariovistus and of Vercingetorix to the leaders of the League; the name of those who fought against Caesar to Spaniards, Italians, Savoyards, Lorrainers, and others that were joined against Henry: who have made resolutions, plots, revolts, and efforts against the two; the speed, the valor, the struggles, the work and the success of the two, and you will see the life of the one fully reflected in the image of the other, so that one is able to look at one and see both. Anthoine de Bandole, Les Paralleles de Cesar et de Henry IIII , 1609 In 1616, a large bronze equestrian monument of Philip III arrived in Madrid after the long voyage from Florence. It was a gift ordered by Archduke Ferdinand de Medici from the workshop of Giambologna a decade earlier that was eventually placed in the center of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. The monument connected Spain’s monarchy to the long genealogy of equestrian monuments stretching back to Donatello’s Gattamelata, the sculpture of Borsa d’Este in Ferrara, and the ancient Marcus Aurelius moved to Michelangelo’s new Capitoline Hill by Paul III. It also had three contemporary siblings, including the two statues that Ferdinand had commissioned of Cosimo I and himself for the Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in Florence, respectively. Leone Leoni would have been pleased that the project he first proposed for Charles V in Milan was at least realized for his grandson in Madrid. In the case of Philip III, the statue was an acknowledgement of a real empire that the Medici dukes still had to please. But it was not the first equestrian monument to be erected in a European capital in that decade.