The Medici Archive Project

UPCOMING CONFERENCES & TALKS - FELLOWS & STAFF
MAP STAFF
October 27, 2013

  

  • Piergabriele Mancuso will speak at the Association for Jewish Studies conference (Boston, 15-17 December 2013). His paper is entitled: Magnifico principe: ambassadors, informers and spies at the service of the Medici court. The study of the Medici state papers and their relevance in the study of Jewish history.

 

  • Elena Brizio will present a paper entitled "Non poco darìa da pensare se fusse uno huomo bene suficiente et facultoso: Eustochia Bichi and her life in Cinquecento Siena" at the Biennial Medieval and Renaissance Conference which will take place at the New College of Florida at Sarasota on March 4-6, 2014.

 

  • Tessa Gurney (Samuel H. Kress Fellow, Fall 2013) is co-organizing a graduate student conference entitled “Building Connections: The Changing Face of Romance Studies” (April 3-5, 2014 at UNC – Chapel Hill). For description and call for papers, click here. 

 

  • Alessio Assonitis, Samuel Morrison Gallacher, Alana O'Brien, Marta Caroscio, Piergabriele Mancuso, Julia Siemon, John Henderson, Brendan Dooley, and Carla Darista will be presenting papers at the Renaissance Society of America which will take place in New York on March 27-29, 2014.

 

  • Alana O'Brien ("Cosimo I de' Medici and the Cultural Network of MIchelangelo Buonarroti"), Alessio Assonitis ("The Circulation of Prohibited Texts at the Court of Cosimo I de' Medici"), Jessica Maratsos ("The Elusive Image: Pontormo's Heresy at San Lorenzo") and Sheila Barker ("Lucrezia Quistelli: a Gentlewoman and Painter in Sixteenth-Century Florence" ) will be speaking at the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference which will take place in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 24-27, 2013. For further information, see the conference program.

 

  • Maurizio Arfaioli ("A gentleman more robust than the others...: Chiappino Vitelli's Many Appetites"),Alessio Assonitis (“Unicorns, Medals, and Heretics: The Frivolous Obsessions of a Medici Duke”),Brendan Dooley ("To have and to have not. Forbidden Fruit in Renaissance Florence"), Lisa Kaborycha("The Epicurean Machiavelli") and Samuel Morrison Gallacher ("Fealty and Familiarity: Gifts of Food at the Court of Cosimo I de' Medici") will be speaking at the international conference entitled "Florence_A city of many appetites" which will be held at Palazzo Bombicci Guicciardini Strozzi (Corso Tintori 21, Florence) on November 8 & 9, 2013.

 

  • Sheila Barker will be speaking at the Fourth Annual Feminist Art History Conference which will be held at the American University (Washington, DC) on November 8-10, 2013. Her paper is entitled “On Her Own: Artemisia Gentileschi, c. 1612-1617”. For further information, see conference program.

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CONFERENCE: ARTISTE NEL CHIOSTRO
Biblioteca Domenicana - Santa Maria Novella (Jacopo Passavanti) & Jane Fortune Research Project on Women Artists
October 4, 2013

This year marks the 75th anniversary of Giovanna Pierattini's groundbreaking study on nun artist Suor Plautilla Nelli, published in Memorie Domenicane in 1938. In conjunction with this anniversary, the MAP's Jane Fortune Research program on Women Artists and the Biblioteca Domenicana in Santa Maria Novella are co-sponsoring a conference on nun artists and the circumstances of artistic production in female monastic communities from the early Renaissance until the Napoleonic suppression, in Italy and abroad as well. The conference will take place October 4-5 in the Sala dell'Annunciazione at the Convento dei Frati Servi di Santa Maria (SS. Annunziata), via Cesare Battisti 6 (Firenze).

For details, click HERE.

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LECTURE: Pills, Poison, and Power: The Role of Medicine at the Court of the Medici Grand Dukes - ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE - WASHINGTON
Dr. Sheila Barker
September 18, 2013

Medici, the name of the family that ruled Tuscany for two hundred years, means 'doctors.' This curious fact, however, is only the beginning of the epic story of this Italian court's role in unshackling medicine from ancient authorities like Galen and Hippocrates and leading it to the modern laboratory. Between 1537 and 1737, six generations of the Medici family enriched medical science with new drugs from the Americas, the Levant, and Asia; they created and managed botanical gardens, pharmacies, a hospital, and a university (Pisa), where new therapies and theories were always welcome; they recruited leading innovators in medicine and pharmacology from all over Europe and without regard to religious creed; and they themselves—the grand dukes and grand duchesses of the House of Medici—were avid amateur chemists and medical practitioners, delighting in the discovery of an opiate based recipe to relieve arthritis, or an oil of scorpion venom used to counteract any poisons that might infiltrate their banquets. Even more importantly, the Medici sovereigns recognized early on that their technological leadership in such a crucial human concern as medicine could be exploited for the purposes of statecraft and international diplomacy. Using almost exclusively unpublished documents from the Medici Granducal Archive, the presentation will reveal the Medici court's key role in the quest for knowledge of diseases and their cures. This lecture will be followed by a presentation of The Medici Archive Project by Alessio Assonitis, and a musical performance by Barbara Hollinshead and Howard Bass. Click here for more information.

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Research Program on Jewish History & Culture at the Medici Archive Project
MAP STAFF
May 5, 2013

The Medici Archive Project (MAP) is pleased to announce a new scholarly initiative: the Eugene Grant Research Program on Jewish History and Culture in Early Modern Europe (JHP). Thanks to the generous lead support of MAP board member Eugene Grant, as well as the support of other board members and donors, this program has been established to raise awareness among academic audiences about the great potential of unpublished documentary material on Jewish culture that is found in the Medici Granducal Archive. This archival collection contains circa four million letters from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries covering nearly every aspect of political, diplomatic, economic, artistic, scientific, military and medical culture not only at the Tuscan Court, but also throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world. During the course of the next three years, this program will accomplish a number of scholarly initiatives: making unpublished historical documents on Jewish history available on BIA, organizing conferences and talks in Europe and the United States, and publishing original scholarly research. The director of this program, Dr. Piergabriele Mancuso, will lead a team of postdoctoral fellows, junior scholars and interns and will be based at the Medici Archive Project at the Archivio di Stato in Florence.

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