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Milan And The Development And Dissemination Of Il Ballo Nobile: Lombardy As The Terpsichorean Treasury For Early Modern European Courts, Katherine Tucker Mcginnis

Quidditas

"Le mosche d'Italia in una poppa, Volando in Francia, per verder i ragni...." In these lines, titled "Di Pompeo Diabone," the Milanese artist and poet Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo celebrated the Italian dancing masters who, lured like flies to the web of the spider, served in the courts of France. In the sixteenth century there were many Italians in France, including a large number of influential and prosperous dancing masters. In spite of obvious connections with Florence via Catherine de’ Medici, the majority came from Lombardy, an area long considered the center of il ballo nobile, the formalized social …