NOVELLA BARBOLANI DI MONTAUTO is Professor of Early Modern Art History, History of Drawing and Printmaking at the University of Florence. She studied at the University of Florence and at the University of Pisa. From 2010 to 2022, she taught at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research focuses on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting and drawing and the history of collecting in the same period.

MARCO RUFFINI is Professor of History of Art Criticism at Sapienza University of Rome. He studied at Sapienza and at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at Dartmouth College and Northwestern University. His research focuses on theoretical and methodological questions, art literature, and the history of art history.

LUNARITA STERPETTI is Postdoctoral Academic Assistant at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute and Adjunct Professor in Iconography and Iconology at Sapienza University of Rome, where she also earned her degree. Her research interests include the history and theory of collecting, the relationship between art and power in court culture, and the intersections between art history, ecology, and heritage studies.

This book reconsiders the history and culture of the Medici family of Florence between the beginning of the ducal era (1530) and the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648), examining art collecting and patronage within a broad geographical, political, and cultural framework through unpublished case studies and innovative methodologies. The book investigates the family’s lines of expansion toward Rome, the Viceroyalty of Naples, and Milan, and its relations with the European powers: Spain (through the figure of Eleanor of Toledo), France (focussing on the artistic patronage of Maria de’ Medici) and the Habsburg Empire (in light of the lively artistic exchanges with the court of Rudolph II). It also shows the relevance of the Medici presence in non-European areas such as the principality of Transylvania, the Levant, and the Americas, through cultural and commercial exchanges with the Mughal Empire and Brazil. The aim is to refocus attention on the interaction between members and close associates of the family and their adversaries, and reread Medici historiography from its formation to the present day. Focusing on objects, collections, and artistic mobility around the Medici, the book delves into the relationship between art and power and the importance of the circulation of symbols in the ongoing process of identity reconfiguration of the early modern world.  

Preface and Acknowledgments, Novella Barbolani di Montauto, Marco Ruffini, Lunarita Sterpetti – INTRODUCTION: CENTERING AND DECENTERING FLORENCE - Beyond Florence. The Medici? Objects, Representations, Resemantisations, Lunarita Sterpetti - Dentro e fuori Firenze. Jacopo Ligozzi e la leggenda degli ambasciatori fiorentini, Marco Ruffini – ON THE EDGES OF POWER - Le ambiguità dei fuoriusciti. Gli antimedicei fuori Firenze tra dissenso, incertezza e riavvicinamento, Stefano Dall’Aglio - Battista della Palla, Vasari e i Medici fuori Firenze, Roberto Marvin Wellman – MEDICI ROME: DIPLOMACY AND DISPLAY - Alessandro de’ Medici cardinale a Roma. Un percorso tra i tituli dimenticati, Mauro Vincenzo Fontana - Affetti, politica e religione nelle lettere di Alessandro de’ Medici alla sorella Costanza, Francesco Martelli - Le antichità di Ferdinando de’ Medici nelle incisioni di Girolamo Franzini, Stefano Pierguidi – VI- CEREGAL CONNECTIONS AND MEDICEAN PRESENCE - From Naples to Florence. Cultural Translation in Eleonora di Toledo’s Artistic Patronage, Bruce Edelstein - I Medici nel Viceregno. Parenti, agenti, intermediari, Vincenzo Sorrentino - Cosimo II de’ Medici, Costantino de’ Servi e la Milano borromaica e spagnola, Elena Fumagalli – EUROPEAN COURTS AND MEDICEAN IMPRINTS - Rubens e Maria de’ Medici. Modelli fiorentini per una biografia figurata, Novella Barbolani di Montauto - Peter Paul Rubens per Maria de’ Medici. Un problematico equilibrio di antinomie retoriche, Sergio Taddei - From the Arno to the Danube. Medicean Artists on the Move between Florence and the Austrian Habsburg Courts, Adriana Concin - Daniel Fröschel as a Painter and Antiquarius at the Court of Rudolf II, Syl- va Dobalová – GEOGRAPHIES OF POWER AND PERCEPTION - I Medici e le Indie Orientali. Oggetti, sudditi, informazioni dalla Sala delle Carte Geografiche alle lettere di Bartolomeo Fontebuoni, Francesco Freddolini - Embroideries from Portuguese Bengal as Mediating Objects in the Medici-Mughal Artistic Exchange, Francesco Gusella - The Florentine Path to Portuguese Nobility. Florentine Patricians in Early Colonial Brazil, Brian Brege - Robert Rudley Dudley e la diplomazia del mare nella Toscana dei Medici, Giovanni Santucci – APPARATI – Bibliografia - Indice dei nomi - Crediti fotografici