Engineering gods : renaissance theurgy and the sixteenth-century automata of Francesco I de' Medici

Abstract

The writings of the sixteenth-century court philosopher and university lecturer Francesco de' Vieri, also known as Verino Secondo, have to date been recognized by intellectual historians primarily for their contributions to the history of Aristotelianism in the vernacular and by art historians as a primary source for the architectural and artistic features of the Medici Villa Pratolino, a site realized for Francesco I de' Medici which was largely demolished in the early nineteenth century. However, while De' Vieri's 1587 text which describes the features of Pratolino, Delle Maravigliose Opere di Pratolino, d'Amore, has been mined for the material and iconographic details it provides on no-longer extant works of art and architecture, its commentary on Pratolino's automata has not been adequately recognized, neither for its unique commentary early modern technology in a transitional period which blended occult philosophy with emerging mechanical proficiency, nor for this commentary's and the automata themselves' affirmation of the identity of their Medici patron as terrestrial sovereign and divine demiurge, or in the words of one Pratolino scholar, “the mirror of the passions and virtues of a narcissistic prince.” While the conceptual unity of art history with mechanics, or properly technology, did not emerge until the late eighteenth century, the commentary of Francesco de' Vieri provides rare and valuable insights into the reception and function of such technology in the courtly milieu of the late sixteenth century. I argue that the creation of moving statues at the court of Francesco I de' Medici was a process with occult associations with ancient Greek and Egyptian traditions of binding spirit to cult statues; in Francesco I and his court's success at manipulating natural forces to bring autonomous movement- Classical philosophy's criterion for life- to inanimate statues spoke to a total mastery of the elements parallel to his terrestrial sovereignty.