A large-scale sculpture installed inside the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in 2019 displayed a deep ocean swelling in the confines of a room. Natural light from a window danced on the waves, dappling their surface. As the sun moved the ripples shifted in form, making it appear as a real water body was moving – albeit innaturaly slowly. Made of a synthetic polymer, this static and yet hyper-realistic big blue piece stopped abruptly, becoming thinner until it reached the level of the floor. The clear-cut distinction between the installation and space occupied by viewers created an unnatural geometric shore that thwarted the realism of the waves themselves. This sculptural sea aimed to draw attention to “the inherent unreliability” and uncertain future of the Earth’s oceans. By ensnaring oceanic currents in their natural swelling, the piece played with the manipulation of the physical world and the unsettling of viewers’ perceptions, with its title – Contact – suggesting a potential tactile encounter that was actually denied by the prohibition against touching the installation.
By focusing on the Savoy Duchy during the lifetime of the regent Christine of Bourbon-France as main case-study, this paper delves into critical instances of Baroque recreations of seawaters. Commemorative drawings, account books, and printed reports for spectacles staged between 1611 and 1660 attest to the Savoy proclivity for fictive maritime environments despite the fragile and tenuous relationship the montainous Savoy Duchy actually held with the sea. Marine eco-systems and phenomenons were recreated with differing intensity: seascapes painted on walls; waves simulated by blue-coloured fabrics or moving and volumetric elements sculpted from timber and papier-mache; the texture of sea surfaces was even emulated by real water pooled in halls “carefully caulked in the guise of ships,” thus allowing viewers to partially engage with the sensorial destabilization provoked by an actual contact with water (similar spectacles were put together in the Palazzo Pitti’s courtyard in Florence and Farnese Theatre in Parma.) Of particular interest is the mock naval battle staged on Mont Cenis pass: this crucial geopolitical and economic hub was transfigured into a majestic seascape, with miniaturized sailing vessels arranged across its small lake. This latter is today replaced by the much larger basin whose waters supply the surrounding Italian and French hydro-electrical plants operating since 1969. The eco-systems that were submerged with the creation of this energy reserve re-emerge in the details left by the texts reporting this spectacle. Similar to the installation Contact, these recreations raise questions about contrasting sensorial qualities, waters exploitability, and re-framing of “terrestrially nurtured” perceptions (to use Melody Jue’s terms), with their shores calling attention to the tumultuous or gentle ebb and flow between the material and imaginative.
key words: Baroque; Christine of France; Savoy Duchy; Alps; Blue Humanities; Scenography
Elisa Antonietta Daniele, PhD, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA/University of Bologna.
website: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/elisa.daniele3/en
I am Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow with the research project "ANIMATE - Animation, Materials, Transcultural Ecologies: Performing Worlds at the Baroque Savoy Court of Christine of France." This research project is funded by the EU and develops between UCLA (2022 and 2023) and the University of Bologna (2024). I received my PhD in History of the Arts from the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari in 2018. Between 2018 and 2021, I was Ahamanson-Getty postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Center for 17th– and 18th– Century Studies and Berenson Fellow at Harvard – Villa I Tatti.
Publications:
“Africa and Sheaves of Grain: Giambattista Tiepolo’s Allegories of the Continent”, in Controversial Monuments: Personifications of the Continents from the 18th to the 21st Century, eds. L. Arizzoli, M. Horowitz, M. Romberg (Leiden: Brill forthcoming) 8,177 words.
“Nature, Commodities, and Bodies in Baroque Ballets across the Savoy State: Choreographies of Transmutation and Consumption”, 35th CIHA World Congress Conference Proceedings (São Paulo: Vasto forthcoming) 4,198 words.
“Drawing Worlds. Bodies and Smoke in the Courtly Ballet Il Tabacco”, in Making Worlds: Global Invention in the Early Modern Period, eds. B. Wilson and A. Vanhaelen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2022) 85-109.
“The Visual Forms and Color Palette of Francesca Romana’s Holiness at Tor de’ Specchi”, co-authored with Dr. Pamela Gallicchio (Ca’ Foscari University), in Ikon – Journal of Iconographic Studies, 14, 2021, pp. 177-188.
“Portraits of the World. The Four Continents at Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola: The Figurative Code, Sources and Comparisons”, in Bodies and Maps: Early Modern Personifications of the Continents, eds. M. Horowitz and L. Arizzoli (Leiden: Brill 2020) 191-214.
“Indice dei Nomi e dei Luoghi”, in Giorgio Fossaluzza, Nelle chiese di Farra, Soligo e Col San Martino. Itinerario di pittura dal Tre al Quattrocento (Zero Branco: Treviso 2018) 391-399.
“Giardino e città nel Giudizio universale dell’Angelico per Santa Maria degli Angeli”, in Arte Cristiana - International Review of History and Liturgical Arts, CV, 898, 2017, pp. 9-18.
“The Bosom of the World. The Mountain of Eden as Empirical Quest and Spiritual Conquest”, in Conquistare la montagna. Storia di un’idea / Conquering Mountains. The History of an Idea, eds. M. Al Kalak and C. Baja Guarienti (Milan: Mondadori 2016) 95-108.
This paper explores how recreations of seawaters in Baroque spectacles played with the manipulation of the physical world and the unsettling of viewers’ perceptions and ideas. Focusing on the Duchy of Savoy during the lifetime of the regent Christine of Bourbon-France, it considers various simulations of marine ecosystems and phenomena, their potential technologies and effects - in particular, the naumachia staged on the Mont Cenis pass in 1619. Finally, the paper draws attention to the shorelines created in these critical instances: the ebb and flow, tumultuous or gentle, between the material and the imaginative they performed.