Leonardo in 1490 Leonardo organised the stage design for a wonderful performance,
commissioned by Ludovico il Moro (the Moor), known as the Festa del Paradiso, on the occasion of the marriage between Galeazzo Maria Sforza
and Isabella of Aragon. There were children dressed as angels and mythological planets placed inside niches rotating around Jupiter, and candles used instead of stars, reflecting on a golden curved surface, thus creating a dazzling sparkle. Giovio wrote that Leonardo “was a rare and masterful inventor of all kinds of elegance and particularly of delightful theatrical performances”. This was shown by the Festa del Paradiso for the wedding of Gian Galeazzo Sforza and Isabella of Aragon. The Festa del Paradiso was one of the ceremonies which the shrewd Ludovico il Moro used to give the unhappy bride and bridegroom an illusion of their sovereignty, with a parade in which everyone bowed to them. Here Leonardo used all his pictorial and mechanical ability to create amazing scenery. The mechanism of Paradise was placed at the end of the great hall, known as the Sala Verde (the Green Room). (See plate 1).
It is safe to assume that this was the hall from the account by Trotti, as it was the only one at the bottom of a double staircase which led to the upper loggia of Galeazzo Maria1. Paradise was covered with a satin cloth (or curtain) by which it was concealed during the preliminary dance performance. In front of the curtain there were benches occupied by the stock characters where they waited before coming on stage.
When the time came for the performance to start, at dusk, around five in the evening, the curtain fell, and a little putto dressed like an angel delivered a prologue with a covering veil behind him. Then the veil also fell to the ground and “there was great ornament and splendour which at the beginning looked like a natural Paradise, and also sounded like one, with the sweet sounds and songs that were inside it.
In the middle was Jupiter with the other planets behind him, according to their rank.” All the actors who personified the planets were adolescents, dressed in only a few veils, with their skin painted white and a torch of pure white wax in their hand. They were radiant.
Jupiter began by thanking God for creating Isabella, who was “such a beautiful, graceful, shapely and virtuous woman”. Apollo, below, seemed to be jealous of this, but the father of the gods came down to earth with all the planets, and then went up to the top of a mountain with his followers behind him.
From there he sent Mercury to Isabella, to inform her of his arrival with the Virtues and Graces. Apollo then led them, and the seven nymphs, to Isabella. The Feast ended with Apollo giving Isabella a booklet containing all the words of the performance and praise for the most famous people present at the feast.
Isabella then gave copies of the booklet to all those present in the room. The Graces and the Virtues sang, and accompanied the Duchess to her rooms with torches, leaving a luminous trail behind them, up the stairs to the first floor, where the groom awaited her.
And the dusk and the glimmers of the stars slowly faded away.
An account of the Festa del Paradiso, a booklet with the movements and the words of the actors, as well as a description by the Secretary of “il Moro” have been preserved. These three documents are all that remain as evidence of the Festa del Paradiso, and they are reproduced in the appendix. However, they do not give us an adequate account of the sumptuous stage design by Leonardo
and they focus at length on the clothes, dances and the recitative part.
The information they provide about the stage mechanism by Leonardo has, however, enabled me to compare the Paradise with a design signed by the young Leonardo, 956 recto of the Codex Atlanticus, (plate 2) which, according to my thesis, allows us to reconstruct the details of the stage mechanism created by Leonardo.
First we must look at what evidence remains of this mechanism in the quoted sources.
1)
Bernardo Bellincioni, the author of the dialogue, wrote of “The Feast or Performance called Paradise which Ludovico commissioned to praise the Duchess of Milan. It was called in this way, and Paradise was constructed with great talent and art by the Florentine, Maestro Leonardo da Vinci, with all the globes, the planets which spun round, and the planets were represented by men in the forms and clothes that the poets describe, and everybody spoke of the aforesaid Duchess Isabella”.
2 ) Tristano Chalci, Ludovico il Moro’s secretary, recalled what he saw
in 1490: “to see with one’s own eyes those lands where, according to voices that came from him, Jupiter himself had descended the previous year, accompanied by all the other gods. He was evidently referring to what had happened the previous winter (23 January 1490), and what had been done, with great sensation and magnificence when, thanks to a mechanism in the form of half a sphere built with iron rings, and thanks to a series of hanging lights and seven dazzling children who portrayed the planets, with a throne in the centre set up among the seated gods, the image of the rotating heavens had been reproduced.”
3) An account by the Ambassador Jacopo Trotti: “Paradise was made in the likeness of half an egg, the inner side of which was decorated entirely in gold, with a great number of lights representing the stars, and with certain niches where all the seven planets were placed, high or low according to their rank. Round the edge of the above-mentioned half egg, there were 12 signs, with some lights inside the glass, which made a lovely and beautiful sight: in that Paradise there were many songs and very sweet, melodious sounds.”
… From these documents we can conclude that the scenery of the performance must have been roughly as illustrated in plate 3.
The following drawing by Leonardo, Codex Atlanticus 956 recto, in plate 2, is the one I wish to use as surviving evidence of the staging of this event.
Some signed writing can be noted on the sheet of paper, and next to the half egg section, or ellipse, the word “zodiac” appears.
On the other side of the sheet of paper there are drawings of toothed circles that are as long as they are thick, clearly rotating around the centre, because they are set in motion by differential cogs, which are also pictured, and which move simultaneously, each one driven by the movement of the adjoining one. Inside the circles theword “Earth” is written in the centre,
and “Mercury, Moon, Venus” in the outer circles. One circle shows large teeth inside it, which must have been used to join the circle of the planet to the adjacent one.
By combining this drawing, which refers to the movement of only three circles for the respective three planets, it is possible, once again using the differential cogs like the ones that are drawn, to reconstruct the movement of all the seven planets, with a space in the centre which remains stationary, as under this space the first cog rotates which then moves all the others, where Jupiter is placed in the Performance of the Feast, together with the adolescent planet-actors, who rotate at different speeds (as a result of the different connections between the teeth of the ,cogs) (plate 4).
The sheet of paper 256 recto was dated by Carlo Pedretti around 1479, and
contains everything necessary in order to prepare the mechanism of the Festa del Paradiso of 1490, if this examination is approved.
We know that Leonardo had only two months to prepare it (Lopez, La roba e la libertà, quoted). Therefore I assume that Leonardo already had the project ready, and that he brought it with him when he started working for Ludovico
il Moro. Only very small modifications were carried out. For example, the centre is no longer occupied by Earth, as noted on the sheet of paper, but Jupiter instead.
A little sketch on the sheet of paper (plate 5) shows how the mechanism would have been tilted compared to the floor of the performance hall. The musicians were seated in the remaining space behind the tilted Paradise mechanism, so that they could not be seen by the audience.
The sketch, and the way of arranging the steps to accommodate the audience, correspond and adapt perfectly to the measurements of the Green Room of the Sforza castle, where the performance took place.
…
Leonardo was in Florence in 1479, and he could have drawn inspiration for the creation of the Festa del Paradiso from the travelling Performances of Brunelleschi,2 which he may have seen, or he could have read about St Francis’s vision of paradise on Mount La Verna. 3 In this vision the mount shone, reflected in Leonardo’s idea of putting numerous lighted candles against a window that had been polished with gold leaf.
He was also familiar with the work of Heron, whom he quotes, from the copies of manuscripts that were in circulation in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. One of these is preserved in the Laurentian Library in
Florence.
One of Heron’s mechanisms was a carousel, powered by steam, in which the figures placed on a circular surface rotated around the centre, and they were protected by glass (plate 7). I will not venture to establish what the source could have been that prompted the young Leonardo to think of the staging of the Festa del Paradiso. However, I will confine myself to suggesting that he came up with the idea around 1479 when he was still in Florence, and he was then given the opportunity to carry out his plan in Milan, together with many other projects that he speaks of in the famous letter to Ludovico il Moro, for whom he went to work.
Endnotes
1 Trotti wrote that “The room where the party was held, […] was the one at the bottom of the stairs, in front of the rooms of the above-mentioned most excellent Duke of Milan”.
2 Filippo Brunelleschi and the men of his circle were responsible for the extraordinary stagecraft progress for the miracle plays that took place in Florence during the course of the fifteenth century: from the static structure of the “appointed places”, namely the various buildings which represented the different locations for the typical activities of the Medieval religious play, to a type of “mobile” stage which made use of the spaces between the religious buildings that hosted the miracle plays in an active and structured way. The invention of hese machines – or talents, as they were called at the time – was made possible by exploiting the rules of the “new” science of perspective and the knowledge and technology acquired and put into practice in the builders’ yards.
3 In Fioretti, it is written that Saint Francis in ecstasy walked towards Mount La Verna, where he was to receive the stigmata. The mount appeared completely illuminated like Paradise to the inhabitants, and for this reason the owner gave it to the saint.
4 Cfr. G. Lopez, La roba e la libertà. Leonardo nella Milano di Ludovico il Moro, Mursia, Milano, 1979, pp. 30-80
Fig. 1. Posizione della Sala Verde nel Castello sforzesco, B. Circa 9 x 18 metri
Fig. 2. Leonardo da Vinci, Codice Atlantico, f. 956r
Fig. 3. Ricostruzione della Festa del Paradiso
Fig. 4. Rapporti delle dentature degli ingranaggi
Fig. 5. Leonardo da Vinci, Codice Atlantico, f. 956r, particolare
Fig. 6. Veduta della sala, con lo spazio per i musicisti invisibile al pubblico
