Tournament in Piazza Castello, Turin

In 1620 Turin was celebrating a wedding. Prince Victor Amadeus, heir to the Duke of Savoy, had married Christine of France, a daughter of King Henry IV, and the city staged a tournament for the couple in Piazza Castello, the square at the heart of the ducal capital. Antonio Tempesta, the Florentine painter of crowds and cavalcades, was passing through Turin that year, and this canvas records the occasion. The princes watch from the balcony of the old castle of the Acaja while spectators pack the square. Behind rises the new ducal palace, fronted by temporary structures built for the festivities, and on the right runs the long wing joining the two buildings, the Grande Galleria where Duke Charles Emmanuel I kept his collections. Pictures of Savoy court festivals from these years are rare, so the painting is also a record of how the centre of Turin looked after its rebuilding. The old castle later took the name Palazzo Madama from two royal widows who lived there, and the first of them was this bride, Christine.