Anti-Rhetorical Strategies in Early Modern Images of Comic Actors

The Compositions de Rhetorique by Tristano Martinelli were published in 1600 as a present to Maria de’ Medici for her marriage. The book is composed by blank pages interposed by images and the frontispice shows the famous actor as an almost hellish figure, bearing a pannier full of little Harlequins. A similar iconography pattern is to be seen in the Recueil Fossard , though  as part of a dramatic context, and could ultimately derive from the iconography of Hellequin, as it is shown in a miniature of the Roman the Fauvel , where the hellish figure leads a cart with dead  unchristened children. Discussing the hellish origin of Harlequin, most of scholars have neglected the evidence that some of his attributes are rooted in the sinful world of medieval entertainment. The pannier full of little kids or apes, for instance, recurs in medieval iconography of jesters, and since the XIVth century it begins to occur also in the depictions of devils, who assume some comical connotations. Exploring the context of medieval miniatures in relation to later iconography of actors, the article aims at rediscussing the vexed question of the hellish origin of Harlequin, providing some examples of a puzzling intertwining of elements and patterns.


Anti-Rhetorical Strategies in Early Modern Images of Comic Actors:
Harlequin's Iconography and its Surviving Medieval Features

Sandra Pietrini
The Compositions de Rhétorique by Monsieur Don Arlequin was published by Tristano Martinelli in 1601 as a wedding present to Maria de' Medici. 1    According to Henry Rey-Flaud, the brood depicted in the miniature are illegitimate and abandoned children adopted at the moment of their death. 17In this case, the reference would be more precisely to a social behaviour deserving to be stigmatized with a burlesque procession.
An engraving by Jacques Callot shows a riding of an ass backward, an iconographical subject deriving from the medieval tradition of scornful attitudes, related to the widespread category of obscena and adopted also during the feasts of fools. 18Also the osculum infame, that is the scornful kissing of the ass, is a topos in medieval iconography and it frequently   We can find the basket containing children also in some images satirically hinting at the world of entertainment and the upside down world, such as in a breviary that belonged to Marguerite de Bar dating to the beginning of the 14 th century, where the basket full of children is carried by a wolf talking to a stag (Figure 12).
Another miniature of the manuscript (f.263) shows a man with a stick and the typical basket on his back, in this case not containing apes or children but two rabbits, one of them playing a trumpet.We can find suggestive re-elaborations of the theme also in the best known manuscripts of the 13th and 14th century.In a miniature from the Roman d'Alexandre, for instance, a man with a traveller's staff carries two children in a basket, while a buffoon with a stick and a typical offering plate is carrying two little buffoons in a    eggs nursed by an adult buffoon (Figure 16).
Later on, they grow up playing joyfully and amusing themselves, until the moment in which they are caught, measured with a rule and put all together in a bag, probably in order to be carried on to some court, where they will be employed for the entertainment of the aristocrats.
These Fauvel, a devil holding a stick in his hoofed hand and sporting a second face on his belly, both evoking his feral nature, carries on his back a basket containing a horse, that is, the sinful protagonist, and some children (Figure 17).
A pannier with children is also to be found in the depiction of a devil in the Roman de la Rose manuscript illuminated by da Richart e Jeanne de Montbaston around the mid-14th century (f.71). 33This miniature shows a punishment inflicted on sinners, who are boiled in a cauldron; the action is performed by two horned demons with burning eyes: one of them, crouched, is poking the fire, while the other is The black mask entirely covering his facequite unrealistic since, as everybody knows, the Martinelli was at the time one of Maria de' Medici's favourite players and the book was completed during the company's journey between autumn of 1600 and spring of 1601, following the future queen, who was to be married to Henry IV. 2 Imprimé Dela Le Bout du Monde, the book, had been conceived during the period of Maria de' Medici's engagement to the king of France, while the Italian troupe the Accesi was staying in Lyon with the French court.Martinelli resorts to a clearly provoking procedure, since the title of the book evokes the most prestigious art of literary tradition, but these Compositions de Rhétorique are in fact composed of blank pages interposed with images.One of the pages shows the famous actor in the typical Harlequin's patchwork costume, a spear in his hand and a pannier with three little Harlequins and some tools on his back (Figure 1).The reference to the noble art of rhetoric is an ironic trick which accompanies the iconographic strategy: the pages of the book contain a sort of parade of comici presented in the characteristic attire of their types: it is a promotional book to be browsed in order to celebrate and make memorable their successful stage performances.The ironical reference to rhetoric points out the diversity and alterity of players: while the literati use words and sentences, the comici employ their expressive bodies and gestures: a popular visual strategy counterpoised to that of the dominant culture.The (anti)rhetorical strategy of Tristano Martinelli does not explain some puzzling attributes of his image, in particular the three little Harlequins in the basket on his back and the spear in his hand, details which I will dwell upon later.A figurative document presenting a certain resemblance to this bizarre iconography is nevertheless worth mentioning right now.An engraving in the Recueil Fossard, one of the first iconographical documents concerning a commedia dell'arte troupe, shows Harlequin carrying the sons of Franceschina to their actual father, Pantaloon, holding some of them by the hand and others, once more, in a basket on his back 3 (Figure 2).

Figure 3 Figure 4
Figure 3 Roman de Fauvel.Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, ms.fr.146, f. 34 figures, most probably two cats.A very fascinating analogy has been traced between this depiction and a painting extremely derisive to the point of blasphemy, by Niccolò Frangipani, Charivari e Sacra Famiglia.21Here, an old Saint Joseph wearing a buffoon's cap is nourishing a cat representing Christ, held by a cheerful young Maria.The scene is very crowded, since the notso-holy family is surrounded by coarse, laughing and gesticulating men, one of them lifting a frying pan over the cuckolded presumed father.22Dating to the 16th century, the painting is certainly part of a tradition of parody reelaborations, whose success is partly due to the scenes re-launched by comici dell'arte in their exhibitions and sometimes surviving in iconography, such as an anonymous 17th century painting showing a Columbine holding a cat-child, a possible Pantaloon riding an ass, and a Harlequin with a menacing stick in his hand.23Such echoes of an enduring tradition of scorn and derision enrich the fruitful breeding-ground from which commedia dell'arte stems.
figures such as jesters and beggars -often affected by some physical deformity which ideally corresponds to a spiritual degenerationand the infernal world of demons.In a French manuscript of the Histoire de Fauvain 32 , a probable source of inspiration for the Roman de

Figure 17
figure, Krampus, a hellish counterpart of Santa Claus who has the function of punishing naughty children.Usually represented as a devil with cloven hooves and horns, he carries a basket in which he will put abducted children.Krampus appeared in the 19th century and it still survives in the popular rites preceding St. Nicholas' Day.Is therefore the Harlequin carrying a basket to be ultimately linked to the demons, with the image of jesters and trainers as a sort of morally connoted trait d'union between the two typologies?The superposition of signs is evident, even if tracing a direct analogy and line of continuity would be just a little far-fetched.At any rate, it is true that during the 13th century devils begin to lose their original monstrous character for a decisive shift toward the comic and the farcical, while entertainers often acquire devilish or beastly connotations.Harlequin has