Notes from the Administrative Director - December 2009

 

Last year, we created the Medici Archive Society to expand the opportunities for friends and supporters to become involved with the Medici Archive Project. With Sela Ward graciously serving as Honorary Chair, the Medici Archive Society has been gaining momentum ever since. http://www.medici.org/medici-archive-society

 

The Society’s inaugural event was last year’s spectacularly successful Florence Trip. Several of the very first Society members joined with MAP’s Board members in Florence last October to participate in an unforgettable five-day cultural celebration. This trip’s highlights included a behind-the-scenes visit to the Medici Archive Project Fellows who led us--literally letter by letter--though the ancient manuscripts of the State Archive; curator-guided visits of Florence’s little-known niche museums; a passage through the Vasarian Corridor; a lunch hosted by Count Manfredi della Gherardesca at his historic family villa in the Tuscan countryside; and a candlelight dinner in the fourteenth-century courtyard of Palazzo Davanzati. All throughout, we were accompanied by the thrill of having an insider’s access to Florence’s cultural patrimony, and the joy of sharing the experience with so many lively, cosmopolitan, fascinating individuals bound by a common passion for art, history, and Italy. http://www.medici.org/medici-archive-society/trips/photo-gallery

 

We’re now in the midst of putting together our second annual Medici Society trip, slotted for April 6 – 12, 2010, and we hope it will be every bit as magical as the first one. This time, our destination will be Venice, where the Medici Archive Project’s research team will be participating the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America. It is a unique opportunity to see the Serenissima though the eyes of the Medici dynasty, including Cosimo the Elder who found a delightful and profitable refuge here during his 1433 exile, to Lorenzino de’ Medici who was killed there in 1548 by the avengers of Alessandro de’ Medici’s assassination, to Cosimo I’s bastard son Don Giovanni who died while pursuing secretive business in 1621, to Gian Gastone de’ Medici, the last of the Medici Grand Dukes, who traveled here as a young man as a highlight of his Grand Tour education. http://www.medici.org/medici-archive-society/trips

 

The theme of the Venice trip will be “Medici Mysteries in Venice,” and in fact, each night at dinner, we will unravel a different mystery involving the Medici and their connection with Venice. We will be working with Context Travel to arrange a program of special events and visits that shed new light on this city’s history and artistic heritage in the period of the Medici Grand Duchy. There will be plenty in the way of banned books, murderers, jewels, technological secrets, Oriental luxuries, beautiful seductresses, poisons, and even penitence. That last theme, though, will have to wait until after the decadently sumptuous gala dinner that is in store for our guests!

 

Please don’t hesitate to contact me for more information at rharms@medici.org.

 

Arrivederci a Venezia!