HMNS Lecture Series: Marvels, Oddities and Natural Science in the Medici Court

Alessio Assonitis, Ph.D., and Sheila Barker, Ph.D., deliver a presentation on the natural sciences at the Court of the Medici Grand Dukes. The lecture, “The Medici Court: Marvels, Oddities and Natural Science,” will take place on November 7, 2012 at HMNS at 6:30 p.m. and is sponsored by the Medici Archive Project, Florence, and Arader Galleries, New York and Houston.

More than the arts, it was the sciences that flourished under the protection of the Medici grand dukes. After all, long before the Uffizi was used to display the Medici art collection, it was used to house a collection of natural wonders, a pharmaceutical laboratory, and a rooftop botanical garden. Vesalius, Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli and Niels Stensen are among the many scientists who found a thriving scientific community in Tuscany’s universities, botanical gardens, chemistry laboratories, and at its physics institute, known as the Accademia del Cimento (Academy of the Experiment).

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