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Renaissance Ferrara, Cradle of Royal Tennis
Cees de Bondt
Renaissance Ferrara may be seen as the cradle of royal tennis,
the precursor of the modern game. Ferrara was the breeding
Royal Tennis
in Renaissance Italy
ground where tennis developed into a high cultural form
of court entertainment, especially during the reign of Duke
Alfonso II d’Este (1559-1597). The city was also the setting
of the first book on tennis, Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del
giuoco della palla (1555). It was dedicated to Alfonso, who
came to be Italy’s principal patron of tennis. During his
reign he had seven tennis courts, three at his main residence,
Ferrara’s imposing Castello Estense. The Duke, an audacious
❑ I would like to order Royal Tennis in Renaissance Italy
x + 280 pages, 153 illustrations (137 bl/w and 16 colour plates),
180 x 250 mm, Hardback
ISBN 978-2-503-52273-9
Price: £ 70.00 – 100 €
❑ I would like to benefit from the special 20% discount
Discount price: £ 56.00 – 80 €.
This offer is valid until 15 November 2006.
Portrait of Alfonso II d’Este
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Ferrara’s Castello Estense
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warrior and keen sportsman, built up a reputation of a fierce
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was challenged by another good tennis player, the Marquis of
ballplayer, unlikely to be beaten by anyone. When Alfonso
Pescara, the Este Duke proved far too good for him. Having
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played Alfonso for a few sets without taking a game from him,
the frustrated marquis took off his hat and said: “I don’t want
to play on. I thought I was to play a prince, not a maestro”
84PD0624
Castello Estense’s Loggia of the Oranges, which
originally served as Alfonso’s tennis court
Royal Tennis
in Renaissance Italy
Contents
After his detailed study Tennis in Holland from
1500-1800 (a Dutch publication of 1993),
Cees de Bondt for Royal Tennis in Renaissance
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Italy spent some 8 years in libraries and archives
to unearth the history of the game in Italy. This
book is written to appeal to both historians
and to tennis players.
Italy has a long history of competitive games
and sports, which was to a great extent inspired
by the athletic contests of Antiquity. The
human educators and the Renaissance rulers
attempted to recreate the grandeur of Imperial
Rome. Athletic excellence became an equally
strong component of Italian culture during the
Renaissance as in ancient Greece and Rome.
Italy was the place to be for spectators and to
Standard tennis history books have so far
train to be proficient in a variety of physical
focused mainly on the role that tennis
exercises. The focus of this study is mainly on
played in England and France. These
how Renaissance Italy became the playground
studies were projected in response to the
where royal tennis, the ancestor of the modern game,
diverse opinions that had developed as to
developed into a high cultural form of private court
how, where and when tennis originated.
entertainment. The book regularly quotes from Antonio
Royal Tennis in Renaissance Italy aims
to claim that Renaissance Italy should be
seen as the cradle of the royal game. The
book addresses how the ball game played
The Royal Tennis Court of Hampton
Scaino’s Trattato, which was written as an instructive
Early seventeenth-century painting inspired by the murder
committed by the painter Caravaggio of his opponent after a
game of tennis in 1606
manual for the ballplaying courtier. Scaino’s introduction of
Introduction
The Ball Game of the Ancients
The Birth of Tennis
The Birth of the Royal Game of Tennis
The Court of the Estes in Ferrara (1400-1500)
Antonio Scaino’s Book on Tennis
The Court of the Estes (1500-1700)
The Design of the Tennis Court
The Gonzagas of Mantua
The Medici of Florence
Tennis in Papal Rome
Tennis at Other Italian Courts
Tennis Courts Used as Theatres
The Image of Tennis in Art
Appendix I : Real Tennis
Appendix II : Excerpts from Scaino’s Trattato del giuoco della palla
Appendix III: Tennis Courts at Italian Palaces and Italian Tennis
Court Theatres
With over 150 illustrations (16 colour plates), including images of
tennis art and including 50 photos of Italian palaces featuring tennis
courts (some examples can be found on the right)
Former tennis courts at (top to bottom)
Villa d’Este, Tivoli; Villa Belriguardo,
near Ferrara; Medici Villa of Poggio a
Caiano, and Palazzo Ducale in Urbino
tennis laws enabled the aristocracy to draw a line between
themselves and the populace who continued to play a crude
in the streets evolved into the game played within four walls in the fifteenth century. It shows how the
type of the game in the streets. After the publication of the
cultural vigour of the court of the Este dynasty in Ferrara in particular fostered the practice of games,
Trattato of 1555. the game went through a long civilising
including tennis, and how the game came to be seen as the principal exercise in the education of sons of
process, the longest in any sport, and culminated in the
noble lineage at other princely courts: the Montefeltro and della Rovere of Urbino, the Medici of Florence,
birth of the modern game of lawn tennis in 1874.
the Gonzagas of Mantua and among the cardinals residing in Rome. The frequent complimentary visits that
the Italian princes paid to other courts, and the fierce competition that existed between them, necessitated
Although it requires a great leap of the imagination to
stricter tennis rules and regulations. By the mid-sixteenth century, after more than a century of trial and
reconstruct the reality from the documentary sources
error, the game of tennis came to full maturity, culminating in the publication of the first book on the
and the few tangible remains of the game, Royal Tennis
game, Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del giuoco della palla (Treatise of the Ball Game) of 1555. In the second half
in Renaissance Italy aims to bring to life the appeal the
of the sixteenth century tennis courts were virtually automatically incorporated in the lay-out of the Italian
royal game of tennis generated among Italy’s leading
princely residences. Of the hundreds of tennis courts Italy used to have none have survived.
Renaissance rulers and their courtiers.
Portrait of the young prince Luigi Gonzaga il Santo
The Medici Villa of Lappeggi, near Florence, with open tennis court on the left