Tommaso Francini, engineer, scenographer, Florentine “honorable homme” at the French court (1598-1651)

Abstract

The author traces the career of Tommaso Francini, and traces his work in France from the performances of automatons in the caves of the Castle of St. Germain en Laye to the stagings of the ballets de cour at the court of Louis XIII. The lucky French career of the Florentine engineer who was a pupil of Buontalenti confirms the theory of the European affirmation of the Italian model of the ‘spectacle a machines’ (with elaborate scenic changes effected mainly through the solution of periaktoi or rotating wings), as the development of a philosophical culture and an ideology of power linked to the courts of the Ancien Regime.