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This book explores how the Medici Grand Dukes pursued ways to expand their political, commercial, and cultural networks beyond Europe, cultivating complex relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Islamicate regions, and looking further east to India, China, and Japan.
List of contents
Introduction: Eurasian Tuscany, or the Fifth Element
Francesco Freddolini
Part 1: Mediterranean Connections
- Making a New Prince: Tuscany, the Pasha of Aleppo, and the Dream of a New Levant
Brian Brege2. To the Victor Go the Spoils: Christian Triumphalism, Cosimo I de’ Medici and the Order of Santo Stefano in Pisa
Joseph M. Silva3. Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles in the Seventeenth Century: the Cospi Collection
Federica GigantePart 2: Livorno: Infrastructures and Networks of Exchange4. Disembedding the Market: Commerce, Competition, and the Free Port of 1676
Corey Tazzara5. Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado: British Early Trading Networks and Maritime Trajectories,
c. 1570-1623
Tiziana Iannello6. Ginori Porcelain: Florentine Identity and trade with the Levant
Cinzia Maria SiccaPart 3: Asian Interactions7. Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints: (Re)presenting India in Medici Florence
Erin E. Benay9. Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure: Francesco Paolsanti Indiano and His Early Seventeenth-Century Trade between Florence and Goa
Francesco Freddolini10. The Russian Fata Morgana of Cosimo III: The Fluctuating Portraits of Kangxi between Florence and Beijing
Marco Musillo11. Postscript. Textual Threads and Starry Messengers: The Global Medici from the Archive to the
FondacoMarco Musillo
About the author
Francesco Freddolini is Associate Professor of Art History at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada, and Director of the Humanities Research Institute, University of Regina.
Marco Musillo is an independent researcher.
Summary
This book explores how the Medici Grand Dukes pursued ways to expand their political, commercial, and cultural networks beyond Europe, cultivating complex relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Islamicate regions, and looking further east to India, China, and Japan.
