Born: Bernardo Dovizi, in Bibbiena, Casentino, Florentine Republic, 4 August 1470. Career: Entered the service of the Medicis at an early age: Florentine ambassador to Pope Alexander VI in Rome, 1492, and to King Alfonso II of Aragon and Naples, 1494; followed Pietro de’Medici into exile following his expulsion from Florence by the French, 1494, and, after Pietro’s death in 1503, served his brother, Cardinal Giovanni de’Medici, as secretary; plenipotentiary for the Pope at the Congress of Mantua, 1512; on Giovanni’s election as Pope Leo X in 1513, became papal treasurer and Cardinal of Santa Maria, Portico; thereafter pursued papal diplomatic and religious interests: enabled papal alliance with Austria, Switzerland, Venice, and Milan, 1515, acted as legate to the papal armies besieging Urbino, 1516, and travelled to France, 1518-19, to raise support for a new crusade against the Turks; obtained the bishop’s palace in Costanza, 1518, but gave it to his friend Pietro Bembo, q.v. Died: 9 November 1520.
Publications
Plays
La Calandria (produced 1513). 1521; as La Calandria, 1786; edited by N. Borsellino, in Commedie del Cinquecento 1, 1967, also edited by P. Fossati, 1967, and by Giorgio Padoan, 1970; as The Follies of Calandro, translated by Oliver Evans, in The Genius of the Italian Theater, edited by Eric Bentley, 1964.
Other
Epistolario, edited by G.L. Moncallero. 2 vols., 1955-64.
Critical Studies:
Il cardinale Bibbiena by A. Santelli, 1931; Commedie fiorentine del Cinquecento: Mandragola; Clizia; Calandria by Luigi Russo, 1939; Il cardinale Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, umanista e diplomatico (1470-1520) by Giuseppe L. Mocallero, 1953; The Birth of Modern Comedy in Renaissance Italy by Douglas Radcliff-Umstead, 1969; ”Women and the Management of Dramaturgy in La Calandria" by Laurie Detenbeck, in Women in Italian Culture edited by Ada Testaferri, 1989; ”Drama and the Court in La Calandria" by Jack D’Amico, in Theatre Journal, 43(1), 1991.
In the Rome of the Medici popes, and at the court of Urbino that had produced Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano (The Book of the Courtier), Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena had been a papal courtier from an early age, and later a politician, ambassador, and ultimately cardinal. Literature was a pastime for him and (other than some letters to contemporaries) the comedy La Calandria (The Follies of Calandro) is all that survives of his works. He assisted Giovanni de’ Medici to become Pope Leo X in 1513, and there was speculation that Dovizi da Bibbiena may have been poisoned as his powerful position suggested that he might have been involved in an intrigue to succeed to the papacy. His influence and prestige are indicated by the number of references to him in The Book of the Courtier; Castiglione was also responsible for the celebrated production of The Follies of Calandro at Urbino in 1513 (and it is to Castiglione that the second prologue to the play has been attributed). This was the earliest production of an Italian play of which we have a full account. The comedy was published first in Siena in 1521, but was consistently staged (at least eight productions are recorded before 1550). An entertaining courtier and consummate literary craftsman, Dovizi da Bibbiena is characterized above all by humour and intelligence.
Dovizi da Bibbiena’s masterpiece was first staged at the court of Urbino in the throne room of the ducal palace, with a set by Girolamo Genga. It was directed and staged-managed by Castiglione, whose letter about the staging provides a unique insight into the production. The principle of courtly patronage, in deference to the Duke of Urbino, was represented in hanging tapestries of stories from the history of Troy, reflecting the Duke’s recent reconquest of the city, in an inscription in large letters which figured in the design, and in the proscenium arch, which has been compared with the twin towers and fagade of the ducal palace itself, making an analogy between the playing space, the power of the Duke, and the Duke’s ”ideal” city-state. The surviving documentation identifies the playing space, seats for spectators, entries and exits, and the location of musicians.
In 1514, The Follies of Calandro was staged in Rome, in a production organized by Dovizi da Bibbiena himself with a set designed by the celebrated designer Peruzzi. A sketch survives that may have been for this production, showing the Urbino ducal palace fagade translated into ”Roman” terms, with twin temples based on the Pantheon replacing the two towers. This production has been seen as seminal for the entire subsequent history of the perspective set because of the link with Peruzzi (whose model ”tragic” and ”comic” set designs were to become standard points of reference), and since reference was made specifically to the Urbino staging for the Roman production.
In 1532 Mantua saw a production of the comedy. The unique documentation charts the progress of a dispute between the celebrated artist Giulio Romano, who designed the set, and the ”director,” Ippolito Calandra, over the question of whether the set should contain ”flat” painted houses or representations of architecture in relief. But the most spectacular production of all was staged in Lyon in 1548, by the community of Florentines resident in the city, organized and funded by the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, Archbishop of Lyon. Mounted in the great hall of the Archbishop’s palace, the play was performed before a set depicting Florence, with recognizable monuments reproduced and the hall embellished with 12 giant statues of Florentine warriors and artists in a Parnassus celebrating the glories of Florence for resident expatriates. The performance was attended by the King of France, Henry II, and the intermezzi between the acts (of which full descriptive documentation survives) set a pattern in the courtier/ patronage relationship, between the play and its illustrious patron, which was to be influential, and looks forward to the celebrated production of Bargagli’s Pellegrina in Florence in 1589. Allegorical figures representing the ages of Iron, Bronze, Silver, and Gold dispute for the favours of the King, and are unrelated to the text of the comedy itself.
Uniquely therefore, the history of the staging of Dovizi da Bibbiena’s The Follies of Calandro documents the importance of this comedy among the earliest in the ”vulgar” tongue, sets the tone for dramatic representation of the stories from Boccaccio’s The Decameron (its source), and establishes the relationship between comedy in performance, the city-state as playing space (in the reproduction of reality in the perspective set), the patronage network, and the intermingling of political and practical life with creativity in all the arts (painting, architecture, sculpture, writing, comedy, acting, and so on). And the multi-faceted fagade of this concept of theatre echoes the careers of two of the most successful courtiers in the Renaissance: Dovizi da Bibbiena, the play’s author, and Castiglione, its first director.
