Joint Research Seminar Panthéon Sorbonne University (Paris 1) – HiCSA and
The Medici Archive Project, September – December 2026
Venue: Hicsa, Salle Jullian, INHA, Galerie Colbert, Paris
Organizers:
Sefy Hendler (HiCSA, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Alessio Assonitis (The Medici Archive Project)
Throughout most of their reign, the Medici Grand Dukes strategically oriented their gaze toward the East rather than the West, prioritizing the preservation of their maritime hegemony in the Mediterranean rather than trying their fortune in and across the Atlantic. Archival records inform us that one of their major concerns, as well as a source of endless fascination, was the Ottoman Empire, especially Constantinople and the sultans, from Suleiman the Magnificent to Ahmed III. Current scholarship has actively interrogated this very dichotomy: the interplay between aversion to and fascination with the Sublime Porte. At the heart of this discourse lies the concept of perception, continuously shaped by a vast matrix of fragmented news narratives and stimulated by an ever-growing accumulation of books, maps, and material culture. In their attempts to decipher the sultans and the complex power dynamics encompassing war, religion, diplomacy, economic interests, and cultural exchange, the Medici ended up inventing them.
In recent years, historians of the Medici and scholars working in related fields have traced this specific modus operandi to ‘worlds’ situated outside traditional Tuscan-Ottoman diplomatic, financial, and cultural spheres. Scholars have explored Medici awareness of the Americas; Medici-Persian diplomatic networks; epistolary exchanges between the Indian subcontinent and the Tuscan court; artistic and political ties between Tuscany and the Maronite community in Lebanon; trade routes across the Black Sea; the geopolitical influence of Sephardic merchants acting as Medici intermediaries and maintaining deep roots in the Saadi Sultanate of Morocco; and the (sometimes) patchy accounts of merchant-travellers in East Asian and African territories.
The ‘Medici and Their Worlds‘ seminar, conceived as a multi-year initiative, seeks to explore Tuscany’s interactions with territories to the north, south, east, and west through collecting practices, art objects, and material culture. Particular attention will be paid to how awareness of the world outside the Palazzo was constructed, mediated, and transformed, and how the Medici engineered spaces specifically calibrated to shape perceptions of otherness.
The keynote speaker for the first semester will be Valentina Conticelli of the Uffizi Galleries, who will explore “The World in a Room” through the Medici collections.
All seminar sessions take place on Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. (INHA Salle Jullian)
Lectures will be held in English or French