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Balls on walls, feet on streets: Subversive play in Grand Ducal Florence

This article draws attention to the social and political import of balls games and acts of play in the urban space of Grand Ducal Florence. At the same time that the Medici were commissioning artworks that rhetorically promoted a unified identity of Florence and a spectre of control over the city space through the apparatus of public games like calcio in livrea, young men engaged in transitory activities of play in the street that contributed to community identity and belonging in space. Teasing out the transgressive and political potential of the ludic apart from and apart of the festal demonstrates how games in the city produced moments of community in an early modern public sphere‐ a sphere carved out through use of and performance in urban space, a sphere sometimes contending with and in contention with legislation, control, and authority by the Grand Duchy. Play shaped the production, use, and meaning of the urban environment both in daily life and during special events. In turn, the city's socially invested topography contributed to the construction of Florentine identity, within, between, and beyond factions.