ABSTRACT
Among naumachiae, not a vastly numerous genre though increasingly studied, perhaps the best known is the entertainment that featured as the concluding event of a festival staged in Florence in the first days of May 1589 – a festival, celebrated at the time and in retrospect, marking the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando of Tuscany and his Grand Duchess Christine of Lorraine, granddaughter of the formidable French queen Catherine de’ Medici.2
