Royal Entry - Examples of Entries

Examples of Entries

• 1356: the Joyous Entry into Brussels, by Joanna and her husband Wenceslaus I, Duke of Luxembourg, upon her becoming Duchess of Brabant. "Joyous Entry" is a common term for French or Netherlandish entries. This one is famous because the Charter granted by the ruler to the Duchy came to assume a position in the history of the Low countries similar to that of the Magna Carta in England.

• 1431: Henry VI of England returned to London after being crowned King of France in Paris, then occupied by the English, and the arms of both crowns were prominently displayed. Henry, then aged fifteen, was encountered by the "empresses" of "Nature, Grace and Fortune" who destowed various virtues and talents upon, then by fourteen maidens, representing the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit and a further set. After further tableaux, at Cheapside a fountain ran with wine (a particular speciality of London festivities) and large tableaux represented the genealogy of the King, and a complementary Tree of Jesse showing that of Christ. The finale was a huge tableau of Heaven, where God the Father, surrounded by saints and angels, addressed the King.

• 1443: Alfonso V of Aragon's triumphal entry into Naples was "the earliest of the triumphal entries all'antica in Europe" Unlike most lathe-and-plaster painted triumphal arches, its permanent commemoration is the arch before the Castel Nuovo. The event, portraying Alfonso as a classical hero of Antiquity, set iconographic examples for his nephew in the Royal entries of Ferdinand of Aragon. The published account by Antonio Beccadelli, "Il Panormita", circulated widely.

• 1457: The Entry of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, into Ghent

• 1494: For Charles VIII's entry into Florence, which occasioned the temporary eclipse of Piero de' Medici, Filippino Lippi collaborated with Perugino on the decors.

• 1513: Ferdinand of Aragon's triumphal entry into Valladolid, taking the conquest of Navarre as an occasion for allegorical displays of regal power in "an unusually lavish and explicitly propagandist entry".

• 1515: The triumphal entry of the Medici Pope Leo X into Florence is one of the most thoroughly documented entries, both in official records and private journals— though the visual and musical components are lost— and has attracted a separate monograph, by Ilaria Ciseri. It was produced on a princely scale, catching Leo at the peak of his reputation, en route to a meeting at Bologna with François I, at the head of temporarily victorious forces. Ciseri identifies two likely candidates for the allegorical programme, Jacopo Nardi and Marcello Virgilio Adriani, and a theme that offered parallel evocations of Imperial Rome the heavenly Jerusalem. The unfinished façade of the Duomo was temporarily "completed" in "chiaroscuro" (grisaille) canvases of feigned architecture and sculpture by Andrea del Sarto to designs by Jacopo Sansovino.

• 1515 and 1535-36: Charles V was both the most powerful and the most mobile monarch of the Renaissance, and made unprecedented numbers of entries. He made a series in his youth, from which the 1515 entry into Bruges is one of the best recorded of the old medieval style, with an unusually well-illustrated Festival Book for the date. In 1533 he was regally entertained in Genoa by Andrea Doria, with a mock battle staged in the harbour. In 1535-36, at the height of his success, he made a progress through Italy, being crowned as Emperor by the Pope in Bologna and visiting the capital of his new Kingdom of Naples. His Imperial Entry into Rome, 1536, is particularly well documented in contemporary accounts, in Giorgio Vasari's Lives and in surviving drawings. Throughout the tour, he was presented as the heir, and surpasser, of the Roman Emperors, and triumphal arches and Roman imagery abounded.

• 1548-49: Philip II made a tour as the heir of Charles beginning in Italy, up through Germany, and ending in the Netherlands, entering many cities, often with Charles, with Antwerp as the culmination, shown in a well-illustrated Festival Book, which shows many decorations that were not actually constructed. Apart from very heavy rain, the entry had been designed to celebrate agreement of Philip's succession to the Empire, which the Electors refused. The States (assemblies) of Flanders also made difficulties, and if it was the "most famous entry of the century", this was largely thanks to the book, which was published in three language editions. In charge of the Antwerp decorations was Pieter van Aelst, whose pupil and future son-in-law Pieter Bruegel the Elder probably worked on them, and whose mature art was to decisively reject the style and substance of such occasions. These were undoubtedly the high-water mark of the sixteenth-century Royal Entry, but with signs of the troubles to come already beginning to show.

• 1549-50. Henry II of France and his family made a tour of entries which set the tone for Valois propaganda. For the Entry into Paris, 16 June 1549, following Catherine de' Medici's coronation at Saint-Denis, a loggia designed by Pierre Lescot with sculptures by Jean Goujon had been in preparation for two years; a naval battle was staged on the Seine, a tournament was held, and heretics were burned. The entry to Rouen was the introduction to France of the fully all'antica triumphal procession, and had a well-illustrated Festival Book, whose woodcut illustrations follow a set derived from Mantegna extremely closely - whether, or in what form, six elephants were actually seen in Rouen may be wondered. Henry IV's 1594 Rouen entry was also informatively illustrated.

• 1558: The new Queen Elizabeth I of England passed through the City of London on her way to her coronation at Westminster. A much less elaborate affair than Habsburg entries, but at least for the Protestant population, one more genuinely celebrated. There is a typical English emphasis on poems and orations, of which the majority were given by children. Elizabeth processed in a triumphal "Chariot", was presented with a bible by the city, and passed giant figures re-used from the wedding of her sister Mary. Both speeches and tableaus depicted her as saviour of the Protestant faith, a new Deborah. A 1578 entry into Norwich is almost homely; the master of the grammar school being apparently the only townsman whose Latin was fit to put before the Queen, he catches her up and orates at several points.

• 1571: The separate Entries of Charles IX of France and his new Habsburg queen, Elizabeth of Austria, into Paris, 6 March and 29, were recorded in a book of woodcuts with text, Simon Bouquet's Bref et sommaire receuil..., published in July. Bouquet, an alderman of Paris, was responsible for coordinating the details. Poets Antoine Dorat and Pierre Ronsard drew up the iconographic program, and Germain Pilon executed temporary allegorical sculpture, and Niccolo dell'Abate provided paintings. The main theme was the inauguration of a new era of peace: Charles' personal motto, Piety and Justice furnished the allegory presented at one of the cortege's stops. A little over a year later the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacres inaugurated a new phase of the wars.

• 1574: The new King Henry III of France on his way back from his brief period as King of Poland was given an exceptionally grand Entry to Venice, which rarely had the opportunity of welcoming a friendly monarch, though it had its own very lavish round of festivities. This was a "State Visit" with no element of accepting fealty. Tintoretto and Veronese collaborated in painting an arch designed by Palladio, and for the banquet for 3,000 in the Doge's Palace, statuettes in sugar designed by Jacopo Sansovino decorated the tables.

• 1583: The French Fury was a disastrously unsuccessful attempt by François, Duke of Anjou to use the excuse of an entry to take Antwerp - the citizens were forewarned and attacked the army as it marched through the streets, sending it running. They had already been sacked in the Spanish Fury in 1576, with the sack of Rome in 1527, among the most notorious anti-entries of the period.

• 1589: The triumphal entry of Christina of Lorraine at Florence and her wedding procession with Ferdinand I de' Medici, complete with ephemeral triumphal arches, included — interspersed with public shows, a game of calcio, animal-baiting, a staged joust in Piazza Santa Croce — semi-private court events, the musical intermedi that were presented in the newly redesigned theatre in the Uffizi; these elaborately costumed and staged allegorical tableaux with complex allegories mark a stage in the development of court pageantry and the masque, as well as in the pre-history of opera.

• 1598: For the triumphal entry of Pope Clement VIII into Ferrara, where the principal Este line had failed and the Pope had declared the fief to have reverted to the Papal States, the occasion urgently required splendidly presented and concrete allegorical propaganda, in order to justify the new situation to the Ferrarese. Once ensconced, Clement was host to a series of dukes and ambassadors honoured with princely entries themselves, climaxed with the betrothals by proxy of Margaret of Austria and Archduke Albert of Austria.

• 1648: The "Joyous Entry" of Archduke Leopold William of Austria into Antwerp was also coordinated by Gevartius, who devised its iconography and published his own description. Rather than three-dimensional arches and tableaux, the allegories were rendered in two dimensions on strategically placed screens.