Il Padiglione di Cassandra. Miti troiani antichi e moderni nell'Orlando Furioso

Orlando Furioso’s last Canto is devoted to the climactic marriage between the poem’s main characters, Ruggiero and Bradamante. In it, Ariosto describes a miraculous tapestry, that the Trojan princess Cassandra had woven at the time of the Trojan War. The tapestry (a padiglione) prophetically represents and celebrates Ippolito d’Este, Ariosto’s patron. This ekphrasis is part of a complex dynastic construction that runs through the poem, aimed at glorifying the Estense by means of emphasizing the family’s mythical Trojan ascent, an invention mainly due to and propagated by Ariosto’s predecessor Boiardo. Ariosto’s affectation of humility and homage towards his patron was criticized even by his contemporaries and is never more jarring than in dynastic passages like this one. However, a close reading of the different Trojan sources (Virgil, Dictys and Dares, Herodotus) involved in the pavillion stanzas and elsewhere in the poem show how Ariosto sows the seed of doubt as to the plausibility of the Este’s dynastic pretences.