Plate for Giovanni d'avalos d'Aragona, from a series of twelve showing knights and their attendants dressed for a tournament (plate 2)

This is a series of etchings showing knights panoplied for the tournament held in the Belvedere courtyard of the Vatican on Monday 5 March 1565, as part of the celebrations for the marriage of Annibale Altemps and Ortensia Borromeo. Originally there were twelve in the series, for they are listed in the inventory of the Gherardi inheritance of 1594. The 1594 inventory also reveals that they were printed two to a sheet (Ehrle, 1908, p.51, lines 386-7: 'Dodici pezzi di livrea della festa della giostra di Belvedere, di due per foglio'). There is a detailed account of the tournament by Antonfrancesco Cirni, in the form of a letter to Cosimo de' Medici, dated 14 March 1565 (Cirni, 1898). There are problems matching Cirni's description with the prints. The most likely explanation is that the plates were prepared before the events actually took place and that what actually happened did not correspond precisely to what had been planned. For example Giovanni Orsini (plate 8; 53.601.158), according to Cirni should be Pallavicino Rangone.
The splendid show of liveries was commented on by Cirni, who noted that 'the excellent miniaturist don Giulio Clovio was the inventor of many of them' ('di molte delle quali fu inventore l'eccelente miniatore don Giulio Clovio', Cirni, 1898, p.21). The amount of attention that the event attracted, witnessed to by the literary accounts as well as by the visual records, was exceptional. Who was responsible for this impressive set of 12 plates is not clear. Gherardi, in whose 1594 inventory they are clearly listed, inherited the bulk of his plates from Antonio Lafreri, through Lafreri's nephew Claudio Duchetti. However there is no apparent record of the plates in Lafreri's stocklist of 1573. The plates must have been acquired later, either by Lafreri or by one of his successors.
(Abridged text from Michael Bury, 'The Print in Italy 1550-1620', BM 2001 cat.110; see catalogue for complete text)

MMA has plates 2-12. See 53.601.153–163.