THE MEDICI ARCHIVES
The Medici Archives
Streaming the Renaissance
The Medici Archive Project puts centuries-old letters online
The irony of my job is not lost on me. As I go
to work each day, I make my way on stony streets where it seems, at times, that
you can still hear the Guelfs and Ghibellines hurling abuses, and sometimes
even projectiles, …
The Medici Archives
The world beyond the Medici court
Travel accounts reveal wonders abroad
As many friends and patrons of the Medici Archive Project already know,
the Mediceo del Principato
archival corpus is composed mostly of
correspondence directed to and originating from the grand dukes and duchesses,
princes and princesses, secretaries and ministers, agents and ambassadors in Italy and …
The Medici Archives
Giving like a Medici
The Medici sent gifts to friends, agents, diplomats and rulers all over Europe, and the objects they sent were highly coveted. Sometimes too highly coveted. In a letter thanking his Medici employers for gifts to his wife, an Italian engineer temporarily working at the …
The Medici Archives
Have breasts, will travel.
Wet nurses at the Medici court
There were the Grand Duke and
Duchess with all their children, the youngest at his wet nurse's breast,
happily suckling away.
A courtier, describing a ballet held at the
Medici court to the Duchess of Mantua.
February 12, 1619
When Cosimo II and Maria Magdalena went to …
The Medici Archives
Florentine football under siege
The Medici Archives
In the very last day of the year 1544, Bernardo de' Medici, Medicean
ambassador to France, wrote a letter to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici about a very
special football match played at the French court in Fontainebleau: Yesterday, the most illustrious Dauphin, …
The Medici Archives
Family matters
The Medici Archives
by Elena Brizio
...Count
Nicola of Pitigliano [Orsini] had sexually
assaulted his own daughter-in-law, wife of the
Count's son, Alessandro ... and the family of the woman were planning to go to
Pitigliano and take her back home. Moreover, Count Nicola just had a son, after
three daughters, by …
The Medici Archives
The art of poison
The Medici Archives
One of the many arts cultivated in Renaissance Italy was the black art of
poisoning. The Medici Granducal Archives are teeming with references to this
nefarious branch of chemistry, including a series of documents confirming Grand
Duke Cosimo I de' Medici's involvement in a …
The Medici Archives
The crime of the (seventeenth) century.
An English scandal fascinates the Medici court
There
is never any shortage of gruesome crimes to occupy the public's imagination. To
be termed a ‘crime of the century', however, a murder must have special
qualities that make it stand out: a celebrity is involved, the murder is carried
out in a particularly …
The Medici Archives
Cosimo I's secret weapon
The Medici Archives
Since I have come across a secret of no small importance, considering the times we live in today, especially in use against the Turkish cavalry, I have judged it worthy of Your Majesty. (Archivio di Stato in Florence, Mediceo del Principato …
The Medici Archives
Diplomacy, Italian style
The Medici Archives
I have heard you would like to try some cheeses from Pesaro,
so I am sending you these as a sample. Let me know if you like them and I'll send more...
When Vladimir Putin calls George Bush, does he ask how …
The Medici Archives
The emperor's troubles
The Medici Archives
As far as news from Poland, I regret to inform your highness that things are going very unhappily for us there...all of Lithuania and Prussia are lost to us as well...
We tend to think of our modern world as the first …
The Medici Archives
Canvas is for commoners
Princesses paint on amber
On 20 July 1658, Torquato Montalto wrote to Giovanni Battista Gondi, [...] Two rooms were decorated for Her Ladyship the Bride with crimson damasks with very rich gold fringes and lacework, and there I saw a great number of very large …
The Medici Archives
The 16-year-old widow and her boy husband
The Medici Archives
Betrothed at seven and married seven years later, Margaret of Habsburg, the illegitimate daughter of the Emperor Charles V, became a widow in 1537, at the tender age of 15. Her 27-year-old husband, Alessandro de’Medici the Duke of Florence, the illegitimate …
The Medici Archives
The powder of persuasion
An Englishman in Tuscany
The Count of Warwick pays his reverences to His Most Serene Highness the Lord Duke, and he will give me a book in praise of chemistry by Doctor Cornacchino who teaches at Pisa, as well as a certain miraculous powder, which …
The Medici Archives
You bet your life!
The Medici Archives
by Mark Rosen
Renaissance Florence was built around trade, and trade requires efficient and reliable banks. Banking relies on speculation on probable outcomes. So it should not be surprising that Florentines were renowned for their passion for gambling on a wide range of activities.
Betting …
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Wednesday, May 22, 2013