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People, Place, and Power in Eighteenth-Century GhentMain MenuPeople, Place, and Power in Eighteenth-Century GhentWhat Festival Books Can Tell UsThe Festival Book: Narrative, Image, and RemembranceTimelineScroll-Over Locales in the Festival BookEarly 18th-Century map with locales mentioned in the Festival BookPersonnages and Pathways 1Personnages and Pathways 2Sounds and Sights in GhentMemorializationFurther ReadingContributorsRutgers University, Department of Italian
Bruxelles 1717_1
12019-05-12T22:52:25-07:00Maria Teresa De Luca183068fc9e122e312b7c443a54b76ceed8f54396319611Grand Theatre, illustrated and engraved by Harrewijnplain2019-05-12T22:52:25-07:00Maria Teresa De Luca183068fc9e122e312b7c443a54b76ceed8f54396
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12019-04-14T17:50:18-07:00More Festival Books for Charles VI62plain2019-05-13T13:47:10-07:00Below are examples of publications similar to the Relation de l'Inauguration Solemnelle... created for Charles' entry into Ghent in 1717.
La joyeuse entrée de Charles VI in Bruxelles (1717)
On October 11 1717, a week before he would be celebrated as Count of Flanders in Ghent, Charles VI was recognized as Duc de Brabant and Limburg in the nearby city of Brussles. The festival book commemorating the event contains etchings representing the main locations where the event took place. Engravers who worked on these representations were the same as those who created the illustrations of the Ghent event. (cfr. Lebeer 1958).
Il festino della felicità (1720)
The London treatise of August 2, 1718 assigned Sicily to Charles VI, but only in May 1720 were Spanish troops finally forced to leave the island. In August, the Duke of Monteleone was finally able to acclaim Charles VI ‘l’austriaco Splendore’, as the king of Sicily.
Le simpatie della città di Messina (1720)
This festival book printed in 1720 in Messina celebrates the coronation of Charles VI as king of Spain and Sicily. The ceremony occurred in the same year the book was printed. The book contains illustrations made by local artists, as well as the lyrics of a Serenata a quattro voci performed in Messina for Charles VI. The lyrics had been put to music by D. Francesco Tozzi, Maestro di Cappella di questa nobile, Fedelissima ed Esemplare Città di Messina.
A digitized version of this festival book is also available from the Beinecke Library's Rare Book Collection at Yale University.
1media/Bouquet_images_title_cropped.jpg2019-04-26T18:49:17-07:00Memorialization35image_header2019-05-13T12:27:29-07:00Ceremonies such as the one so lavishly portrayed in the Relation de l'Inauguration Solemnelle de sa Sacreé Majesté Imperiale et Catholique Charles VI...provided the opportunity for local, national, and European-wide politics to come together. Such events required large monetary expenditures and organizational efforts, usually undertaken on the part of civic institutions. In order to preserve and share the memory of such events beyond the immediate time and space in which they occurred, many of these same institutions employed authors, artists, engravers and publishers to create a lavish and costly festival book. The festival book is thus a complex artifact that can be considered an artistic record of the events as well as a visual representation of the host city's power.
The city of Ghent was not new to this kind of event nor to the making of commemorative festival books. The festival book printed at Ghent to celebrate the entry into the city of Charles VI as Count of Flanders has counterparts in similar books created elsewhere to commemorate the Emperor’s entry into other cities.
Although we were unable to determine the number of copies of the festival book printed in Ghent for Charles VI, we were able to track down images of at least two other copies of the work in question. Aside from the copy currently held at the Rutgers Library Festivlal Book collection, it has been possible to locate two other exemplars of the very same printed festival book, and to note .
The role played by the Relation de l'Inauguration Solemnelle can be clarified if one considers how the book was made, and particularly the intended effect of the visual representations (illustrations) created for this particular publication.
1media/Bouquet_images_title_cropped.jpg2019-05-13T01:49:58-07:00Images and Image makers17image_header2019-05-13T15:38:28-07:00Many famous artists are known to have contributed, over and above their main artistic activities, to the designing of provisional structures such as theatre built for important ceremonies, and to producing the illustrations for festival books. Among them are Pierfrancesco Giambullari, Antonio and Lorenzo Landi, Palladio, Ronsard, Rubens, and Vasari.
The artists involved in the illustrations of the Festival Book printed to celebrate the entry of Charles VI into Ghent are local, though their number included experienced illustrators or engravers.
In particular, Jacobus Harrewijn, Jean-Baptiste van Volsom and Jean-Baptiste Berterham also contributed to the making of the festival book printed in Bruxelles to commemorate the royal entry that happened there the week before. While the two festival books represented similar scenes such as the theater, the fireworks and the triumphal arch, nevertheless the particular artists chose to depict different scenes in the different books (different artists represented for example the theater in the two different books), thus showing some range and variability in their interest).
Also interesting is that the representation of the same item changes according to time and place. For example, illustrations of the theater in Bruxelles (1717), in Messina (1720) and in Ghent (1744)
