ABSTRACT
In a passage from Book 3 of the Discorsi, in the midst of a discussion of the violence that can overtake principalities, Niccoli'> Machiavelli calls attention to a singularly bizarre episode in Italian history. The incident occurred when conspirators who were
formerly citizens of Forli
In a perceptive article on this passage, John Freccero links Caterina not only to Dante's Medusa above the gate of Dis but to a more pervasive tradition from which Dante plundered, one that can be traced to "those images [on city walls] of divine maternity-welcoming outsiders, offering sanctuary."2 Caterina Sforza and Dante's Medusa demonically invert the welcoming and loving Madonna as they lift their skirts
not to envelop needy pilgrims but to "dumbfound" their enemies with the sight of their "genital members" as the mythological Medusa had dumbfounded hers with the sight of her (sexually suggestive) snaky locks. Experienced in the ways of theatrical spectacle, as witnessed by his Mandragola with its brilliantly sinister revisions of classical comedy or his praise of Cesare Borgia for his bloody display in the Romagna, Machiavelli turns this exhibition into a coup de theatre. Refusing to elaborate, for example, on what must have been Caterina's bold denouncement of the conspirators, he leaves us with the stark image of a countess atop her own fortress, a liminal space between the citadel and the piazza, where she employs her womanhood to advantage in a fashion that recalls not so much the Madonna and the Medusa but the only somewhat less spectacular antics of the clever wives in Boccaccio's Decameron.
