Strategies of subversion: the power of live performance within the walls of a Renaissance city

According to Argan, during the early modern period, 'a theory, or science, of the city was created', a science founded on the principle that 'the perfect architectural and urban form of the city corresponded to the perfection of its political and social arrangements, conceived and carried out by the wisdom of the prince'. This process was supported by spectacular and festive events which were regulated by a common vision of reality informed by the overarching Renaissance perspective. This perspective eventually created a form of representation that, as Lefebvre states, 'became enshrined in architectural and urbanistic practice as the code of linear perspective'. What I hope to investigate with this paper, however, is not so much the emergence of this code and the hegemonic set of discourses and practices controlling vision, but rather the oppositional moments-within theatrical representations-by means which dominant practices and techniques were resisted.