The performance of displaying: Gesture, behaviour and art in early modern Italy

furlotti, barbara;

This article considers the display of art as a ceremonial performance and a means of establishing social and political interaction between collectors and visitors. It demonstrates that in early modern Italy the
actors of these mises en scène did not improvise, but would rather know their lines by heart. By the beginning of the seventeenth century they also relied on treatises on gesture such as Giovanni Bonifacio’s L’arte de’ cenni. They were trained to behave in such situations according to shared social practices. The hosts would show with pride their collections, while guests were required to gaze at objects and to comment on them. The examples analysed in this contribution will help us to understand that showing art and being
shown art in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy was primarily a social experience.