Catena d'onore, catena d'amore: Baldassarre Castiglione, Elisabetta Gonzaga e il gioco della 'S'

In the funerary chapel of Baldassarre Castiglione in Santa Maria delle Grazie (Curtatone, Mantua) we can see an unusual collar: it is a famous livery collar named the collar of the 'S'; Castiglione was given it by Henry VII of England in autumn 1507. This collar presents itself as a metallic chain composed of elements in the form of an 'S' shape. On the chain livery badges would be appended to indicate different levels of associations and different roles. The collar was introduced into the court of England by Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, at the beginning of the XV century and its use lasted throughout the Tudor age. In this period the collar had many forms according to the fashion of the time as we know by the many exemplars of this collar still preserved. The significance of the 'S' has been long debated by scholars. The hypotheses most accepted today are: - 'S' representing the capital letter of Soverayne, the Sovereign
 - 'S' representing the capital letter of Souveignex, the first word of the common motto ‘Soueignex vous du moy’ (remember me). Probably the latter hypothesis is the most creditable because the knight always had to remember the relationship to his king. Before the coronation of Henry IV, when he was still duke of Lancaster, he was already well known for one of his personal emblems, the 'Forget-me-not'. Additionally a necklace that he commissioned was composed of alternating elements in the shape of the S and the forgetmenot flower. When Henry IV became king the meaning of the 'S' shifted from the 'Souveignex/forgetmenot' to 'Soverayne/Sovereign', and in this way had a double meaning with the 'S' changing from a personal emblem to a livery symbol which the English king gave to his knights to signify his gratitude and esteem. Baldassarre Castiglione went to England as an ambassador many times and his role as such is recorded in the long epitaph written by Pietro Aretino on the tombstone in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In a recent book Lina Bolzoni points out that Castiglione gives very often the impression that he knew well the symbolic and economic value of the collar. She suggests that on frequent occasions the elements of the collar were unlinked and sold but always later bought back and reconnected because the symbolic value was higher then the material one. In the Cortegiano book, Castiglione proposed a wordplay about the 'S', a badge wich Elisabetta Gonzaga wore on her forehead. Bolzoni's hypothesis is that the jewel enclosing the 'S' which the lady wore was a gift from Castiglione and it was an element of his own collar. But we know that the Gonzaga family as well was given the sign of the 'S' by the king of England at the beginning of the XV century as this sign is shown in the frescos of Pisanello in Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, and this collar is listed in the inventory of the jewels of the Gonzaga family in the XV cent. We therefore hypothesised that the 'S' on the forehead is not a gift from Castiglione but a family jewel. It is not plausible, as Bolzoni wrote, that Castiglione did not know the meaning of the 'S'. When he returned from England to Urbino he brought the same symbol that Elisabetta had been given by her family, the Gonzagas. In this way the 'S' is charged with a new meaning: indeed the enterprise is by its nature polysemic. In the Cortegiano the gentlemen played wordgames and questioned themselves about the meaning of the 'S': the question about the symbol remained without an answer but Castiglione left the ambiguity open. The meaning of the 'S' was probably known only by Baldassarre and Elisabetta: the hidden meaning is the double servitude of the knight, to the love of the Lady and to the fidelity to the King.