5 - The World Upside Down: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli's Games and the Performance of Identity in the Early Modern World

Summary

Abstract

Games of chance have a long history across different cultures in the early modern period, yet in Bologna they take on specific visual formats that are closely tied to the city and its politics, as well as Counter-Reformation proverbs of the day. Giuseppe Maria Mitelli makes use of the broadsheet format to create games that participate in the performance of local identity, blending elements of both high and low culture. These games create a type of site-specific visual poetry of the piazza, similar to the popular verses of Giulio Cesare Croce, where role reversals and change of fortunes are common. While gambling was prohibited by the Catholic Church, these prints survive as part of a culture deeply rooted in the visual display and performance of piety and popular folklore. In the end, Mitelli’s games always present us with a moral; ironically, while in the very midst of play.

Keywords: popular prints, games, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Counter-Reformation, Giulio Cesare Croce, Cockaigne

Games of chance have a long history across different cultures in the early modern period, yet in Bologna they take on specific visual formats that are closely tied to the city and its politics, as well as to the Counter-Reformation morality of the day, illustrated via humorous satire. The seventeenth-century artist Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (1638–1718) makes use of the broadsheet format to create games that blend elements of both high and low culture, confirming the complex multivalent nature of both the games and their reception by the Bolognese audience. These games create a type of theater of the world and a microcosm of the piazza, where role reversals and changes of fortune are common across all classes and professions. This essay will focus on the meaning and use of certain key themes that weave throughout Mitelli's games: these include aspects of the world upside down (a familiar trope in the early modern world), the importance of food and the sin of gluttony (one of the seven deadly sins), and the morals of women, all contributing factors/facets of a local identity as expressed in the popular verses of the day and set against a backdrop of Church reform. In a Papal State such as Bologna, these game prints can serve as testimony of a culture deeply rooted in the visual display of both popular folklore and religion.