During the second half of the sixteenth century, Florentine artistic production and access to it became increasingly sought after across the Holy Roman Empire. An important dynastic connection between the Austrian Habsburg dynasty and the Medici family in 1565 was the marriage of Archduchess Johanna of Austria (1547–1578) to Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–1587). This was a catalytic event that brought the German-speaking dominions of Central Europe into close contact with Florence, its court and its multifaceted arts. This talk will trace the diverse artistic connections created and sustained between Florence and the Empire’s ruling elites, on the occasion of this event. More specifically, it will examine the wide-reaching artistic and cultural ramifications of this union and how it impacted the cultural landscape of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QIbe9CiZEg&t=10s&ab_channel=TheCourtauld

This conference aims to discuss a forthcoming book : Déborah Blocker, Le Principe de plaisir: esthétique, savoirs et politique dans la Florence des Médicis (XVIe-XVIIe) (forthcoming with Les Belles Lettres in Paris, in it collection "Essais" : https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/collections/15-les-belles-lettres-essais). The book's central claims, its methods, its archival findings and the historiographical reframings it is advocating for will therefore be at the center of our debates. But we will also discuss the academic and civic culture of early modern Italy and the history of aesthetics more generally. For the manuscript purports to shed light on long-term transformations in the realm of aesthetics by closely examining the practices, discourses and ideas of a late 16th century Florentine academy, and of its aristocratic membership. The book principally focuses on understanding the Alterati’s conception of art as the source of a “praise-worthy pleasure” (lodevole diletto), analyzing in detail how this representation fits in with the social and political conceptions of the Florentine patricians who belonged to this academy, most of which stemmed from families which had fought to uphold the late Florentine Republic during the rise of the Medici. The study shows how their understandings of art, which centered on pleasure, freedom, parity and leisure, were initially at odds with conceptions of art developed under direct Medici patronage. It also studies the various ways in which, over the life of the academy, the Alterati’s hedonistic conceptions of art were progressively integrated into the culture of the Medici court. Finally, the book places the pleasure principle on which the Alterati based their aesthetic conceptions into comparative perspective, by drawing connections with 17th century France and 19th century Berlin. The central hypothesis of this study is that the pragmatic tension between courtship and defiance, which manifested itself in the affirmation of aesthetic of pleasure, amid and around an patrician academy such as that of the Alterati of Florence, was a major cultural phenomenon among the aristocracies of early modern Europe, as they adapted to the rise of authoritarian régimes — and one that has shaped understandings of art, literature and aesthetics to this day. This book is a thoroughly interdisciplinary investigation that attempts to delimit a new research field, which could be defined as the social and political history of early modern aesthetics. Aesthetic theories developed in and around German Idealism largely rejected the aesthetic discourses produced in early modern Italy and France as amateurish, irrational or lacking in historical perspective. Yet, many of the aesthetical concepts articulated throughout early modern Europe, such as that of pleasure, remain centrally important today, in our own aesthetical discourses or practices. The book attempts to understand the social and political circumstances in which these conceptions became important, in order to recover some of the early modern foundations of current understandings of art. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the project, ten speakers from a wide variety of disciplines and fields — such as social, political and/or intellectual historians of Florence (15th-18th centuries), scholars working in comparative literature and aesthetics across the early modern period, and scholars of early modern Italian literature, music and culture — have been brought together. Two of the speakers are UC Berkeley colleagues or graduate students (one of each), four are attached to other major American universities, two are from Italy (both will will be participating via Skype) and one will be coming from France. The manuscript is in French but discussions will be held in English and Italian. If you would like to receive a PDF of the manuscript prior to the conference, please email Déborah Blocker at dblocker@berkeley.edu. With the distinguished participation of Albert Ascoli (Terrill Distinguished Professor in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Déborah Blocker (Associate Professor of French and affiliated faculty in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Tim Carter (David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Louise George Clubb (Professor Emerita of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Arthur Field (Associate Professor Emeritus of Renaissance History, University of Indiana, Bloomington), Jean-Louis Fournel (Professor of Italian Studies, University of Paris-VIII and École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), Wendy Heller (Professor of Music and Director of the Program in Italian Studies, Princeton University), Jennifer MacKenzie (PhD in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Francesco Martelli (curator of Medicean collections at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze and scientific coordinator of its Scuola di archivistica, paleografia e diplomatica), Diego Pirillo (Associate Professor in Italian Studies, UC Berkeley), Maria-Pia Paoli (ricercatore in early modern Italian History at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa) and Jane Tylus (Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, New York University).

This essay examines the circulation of Islamic artworks at and beyond the Medici court in the seventeenth century. It will focus in particular on the types of artefact that were imported from the Islamic world, the routes that they took to reach Italy as well as the trading mechanisms that brought them to Italy. The paucity of surviving Islamic artefacts from the Medici collections and the related dearth of documentation of their provenance have thus far precluded scholarly exploration of this aspect of the Medici's seafaring activities, in particular as regards the seventeenth century. This essay overcomes these obstacles by focusing not on the Medici collection proper but on its offshoot: the Cospi Collection.