ABSTRACT
The reader could see all the elements of the carrousel, the lists, tribunes, the Palace of Felicity, knights and triumphal cars, the grouping of the quadrilles and refer to the captions. The famous Polish engraver also produced a second plate where the carrousel is presented as a long, curling procession, mounted on a placard describing the festivities by Jean Le Clerc. The Italian courts published illustrated accounts of their festivals. Almost half the illustrated festival books published in Ferrara in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for instance, are of carrousels and equestrian ballets. The absence of an illustrated festival book for 1612 actually conforms to a well-established French tradition. The memory of the 1612 carrousel, and the ballet, was preserved through the publication of Pluvinel's Maneige royal in 1623, which emphasised Louis XIII's wish to be associated with this description of the chivalric feats performed and in particular with the ballet engraved by Crispin de Passe.
