ABSTRACT
An established pattern of ritual awaited archduchess Maria Maddalena d’Austria when she entered Florence for the first time through the Porta al Prato on 18 October 1608.1 Giovanni Maggi’s engraving presents Maria Maddalena’s route from this gateway to Palazzo Pitti as a tiered system in which the archduchess and her entourage progress upwards (Figure 3.1). In this lively visual narrative, the archduchess appears three times. A pair of portrait medallions showing the bride and groom are inset upper right and left. Maria Maddalena is also shown lower left being met by grand duke Ferdinando outside the Porta al Prato to be crowned ‘Principessa di Toscana’, and, at a further stage on the route, she is shown on horseback under a canopy carried by pages, accompanied by her brother, on her way to the Duomo – inset at the centre of the image – where the marriage service was conducted.2 In his account of the entrata, Camillo Rinuccini noted the archduchess’s gown of tela d’argento ‘in the German style’, and in this image the engraver has made an attempt to depict its long, open sleeves that reached ‘to the ground’.3 Maggi’s engraving produces a new layer of theatricality to the highly staged-managed entrata, which worked to make the distinctive figure of the bride visible in relation to the city’s key sites.
