Today I took the train from Padua to Ferrara, which took about an hour. I wanted to go back to a place I’d visited years before, the Palazzo Schifnaoia, which means “[Go] Away Boredom!” It was a place for the Este dukes to relax and have a good time, just a bit outside the center of the town with all its responsibilities of rule and bureaucracy. I’d done a seminar paper on it once, so felt I had a sort of responsibility to see it again. Around 1470 Duke Borso d’Este commissioned a huge room in the palace–a grand reception room about the size of a tennis court–to be painted with large wall frescoes showing the months of the years, their astrological symbols, the Olympian gods associated with them, and the courtly activities of the duke in the lowest, earthly level. Thus the everyday was linked to the months, seasons, and movements of the heavens and the gods. Borso d’Este has been used as an example of a sort of retrograde type of patron from around 1470; instead of paying his painters for their skill, as was quickly becoming the enlightened norm, he negotiated a price per square foot. There was a team of painters, including Cosimo Tura, Francesco del Cossa, and Ercole de’ Roberti. As always, I’m looking at the details realized by the painters. In this one we see Borso d’Este smiling and hanging out with his courtiers. He’s pleased with one of his underlings (see above post) probably giving him a gold coin, but the gold leaf once used to show it is long gone. All around Borso we see his courtiers: scholars, young men in fine clothes; they exemplify the courtly concept of magnificenza or ‘magnificence’. So here is a snippet of the splendor of the Este court in Ferrara; a snapshot from 545 years ago.