The Medici Archive Project

📣CALL FOR PAPERS: Marking Completion: The Status and Circulation of Drawings from the 15th Century to Today

International Workshop (22-23 September 2026, Florence)

Organized by the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects” at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute and the Medici Archive Project.

Organizers: Karina Pawlow (Saarland University / KHI) and Rebecca I. Arnheim (Tel Aviv University).

When is a drawing complete, independent, or “finished”? Is the concept of completion a conscious decision made by the artist, or something that happens later, in the hands of collectors, dealers, curators, or algorithms? The aim of this workshop is to investigate when and whether drawings were considered “finished” and how that sense of completion is frustrated as drawings move between contexts from the fifteenth century to today. The workshop treats drawings as independent objects that circulate and accrue economic and emotional value, and generate knowledge across art, science, design, and technology.

This two-day workshop will be hosted across three venues: on the first day at the Medici Archive Project (Palazzo Alberti), and on the second day at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai) with a visit to the drawing collection of the Museo Galileo, organized in collaboration with the museum.

We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages whose work engages with the material, epistemic, or institutional dimensions of drawing.
Submissions are due 10 July 2026.

For more information including how to apply, check our website: https://www.medici.org/cfp-marking-completion-the-status-and-circulation-of-drawings-from-the-15th-century-to-today-workshop/

📣 Book Presentation: IL COLLEZIONISTA DI MERAVIGLIE. LEOPOLDO DE' MEDICI E LA ROMA DEL SEICENTO by Stefano Dall'Aglio

🗓 Thursday, 18 June 2026, 5:00 PM
📍 The Medici Archive Project, Palazzo Alberti (Via de' Benci, 10), Florence

Principe, cardinale, mecenate: Leopoldo de’ Medici (1617-1675) fu tutto questo e molto di più. Uomo dai mille interessi, colto e sagace, è noto soprattutto per essere stato un collezionista straordinario e il fondatore dell’Accademia del Cimento. Un ruolo privilegiato nel complesso sistema di relazioni di Leopoldo lo ebbe quello stupefacente teatro del mondo che fu la Roma barocca, crocevia di papi e cardinali, artisti e letterati, scienziati e artigiani specializzati. Il volume fa luce sul rapporto del Medici con la Roma del Seicento per tramite del suo agente in loco Ottavio Falconieri (1636-1675), ripercorrendo vicende che spaziano dal collezionismo agli scavi archeologici, dalla circolazione libraria alle osservazioni astronomiche, e vedono coinvolti molti dei protagonisti dell’epoca, da Bernini a Cristina di Svezia. Alla base del lavoro vi è un inedito corpus di lettere mandate da Leopoldo de’ Medici a Falconieri, fino a oggi rimasto sconosciuto agli studiosi.

Per maggiori informazioni sul libro visita: https://www.carocci.it/prodotto/il-collezionista-di-meraviglie

L’evento sarà in italiano.

We are pleased to announce the program for the international conference THE JEWS, THE ARTS, AND THE MEDITERRANEAN (1450-1750), organised in collaboration with the Université de Versailles–Saint-Quentin and the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi.

The conference will take place in Palazzo Alberti, Florence, on 12 June 2026. Email [email protected] to RSVP.

A period of major sociopolitical transformations and profound cultural and spiritual ruptures—from the discovery of the New World to the rise of religious dissent—the early modern era marked for Jews the beginning of a long phase of arbitrary legal impositions, among which were the creation of ghettos, first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe. Despite these legal, economic, and social discriminations, small groups of Jewish intellectuals, artists, musicians, and artisans managed to weave fruitful relationships with the cultural and political elites of Italian and Southern European courts. Starting from this premise, some strands of historiography have often failed to recognize the interpenetrating interactions that took place beyond, and the connections that were triggered between different social groups thanks to the porous nature of the barriers of separation.
The purpose of this conference is to identify, contextualize, and historically define the significance of these phenomena; to analyze the education, working conditions, and material production of Jewish musicians, artists, and artisans in the early modern Mediterranean. All forms of artistic production (music, visual arts, performing arts) and craftsmanship were essential activities for the functioning of daily life, and in particular for the artistic life (theater, concerts, performances, visual arts) of a court, a city, or a given place.

📣CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Short-Term Fellowships at MAP

The Medici Archive Project is offering twelve short-term fellowships for graduate and pre-doctoral students, working on fields related to early modern Italy (preferably with an emphasis emphasis on Tuscany or Medici history).

2 Samuel H. Kress Fellowships
4 Eva Schler Fellowships
4 Beatrice Solomon Fellowships
2 Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust Fellowships

Each fellowship will last for an uninterrupted period of no less than three months, taking place between 15 September 2026 and 20 December 2026 (FALL SEMESTER) or 4 January 2027 and 20 July 2027 (SPRING SEMESTER).

The fellowship stipend is USD 8,000.
The scholarship requires a period of residence in Florence and is incompatible with any other work commitments during the same time.

Applications are due 15 July 2026.

For further information and application instructions, check our website: https://www.medici.org/fellowships/ or contact [email protected].

📣PUBLIC LECTURE at MAP

"Medici Twisting of Medici History in the Sala di Leone X"
by Prof. Henk Th. Van Veen (University of Groningen)

🗓 Thursday, 11 June 2026, 5:30PM
📍 The Medici Archive Project, Palazzo Alberti, Florence

In recent years, the paintings by Vasari and his workshop in the Palazzo Vecchio have been characterized as products of the recycling of imagery that he had previously developed and used elsewhere. This is said to have given these paintings a rather generic character and to have left them with little specific, topical content or meaning. By examining some of the most important paintings in the Sala di Leone X, this lecture will demonstrate that rather the opposite is true. In these scenes, the recent history of the Medici was manipulated in such a way as to allude to important specific political and military positions and actions of the patron, Duke Cosimo. To achieve this, written and visual sources—which themselves were already manipulations of historical reality—were further distorted. The way each individual figure is placed in the scenes expresses the judgment passed upon that figure from the perspective of Cosimo’s regime. In a blatant distortion of historical fact, certain figures were also omitted from or added to the scenes. This procedure made it possible, within the scenes, to evoke still other historical episodes which could allude to Cosimo than the ones depicted.

Henk Th. Van Veen is professor em. at the University of Groningen. His field of research is Tuscan sixteenth-century art and culture. He wrote Cosimo I De' Medici and His Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture, CUP: Cambridge 2006 (2011). In 2022, Alessio Assonitis edited together with him, A companion to Cosimo I de' Medici, Brill: Leiden/Boston 2022. In 2024, together with Bouk Wierda and Lotte van ter Toolen, he edited The Codex of the Anonimo Magliabechiano: Newly edited with a transcription faithful to the original manuscript and provided with an Introduction, Brill: Leiden 2024.

This event is free and open to the public.

The lecture will be live-streamed on ZOOM.
LINK: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87347715758?pwd=sbBdLFVJziTWqq2YBr5dzTg0o4Rico.1
Meeting ID: 873 4771 5758
Access Code: 146966

Info: [email protected]

📣CALL FOR PAPERS - INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

"The Networks & Legacies of Ottaviano de' Medici"

🗓 Friday, 6 November 2026
📍 The Medici Archive Project, Palazzo Alberti, Florence
Submissions Due 15 July 2026

The Medici Archive Project, the Gallerie degli Uffizi and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut (KHI) are partnering on a broader research initiative dedicated to Ottaviano de’ Medici (1484–1546), a crucial yet still overlooked figure in the political and cultural milieu of early sixteenth-century Florence. This overarching project is connected to the exhibition on Ottaviano’s collection at the Gallerie degli Uffizi (Fall 2027).
Under this aegis, the Medici Archive Project is organizing an international workshop on 6 November 2026. Conceived as a research-oriented and discussion-driven event, this workshop will be held in conjunction with a conference at the KHI in Florence (5 November 2026).

The principal goal of this workshop is to reassess the breadth and gravitas of Ottaviano de’ Medici’s political, economic, familial, artistic, and intellectual networks. Particular attention will be paid to his relations with members of the Medici establishment—including, Leo X, Clement VII, Ippolito, Alessandro, Cosimo, and Catherine—as well as with all those figures that gravitated around epicenters of dissent and anti-Medici tenets. His role as broker in between constituencies, collections, factions, generations, and traditions will also be examined. Another goal of this workshop is to better visualize the extent to which Ottaviano’s contributions have shaped the cultural patterns and political trajectories of the Medici principate. Finally, equal importance will be given to mapping out Ottaviano’s archival legacy, which is still patchy and impressionistic.

The organizers invite proposals for 20-minute papers, in English or Italian, that present new, unpublished, and innovative research.
To apply, please submit a PDF with title and abstract (max. 250 words), along with a short bio (max. 100 words), by July 15, 2026 to [email protected].
Successful applicants will be notified by August 1, 2026.

Selected papers will be included in an edited volume published by the Medici Archive Project Series with Brepols/Harvey Miller.

Information: https://www.medici.org/cfp-the-networks-and-legacies-of-ottaviano-de-medici/

📣BOOK PRESENTATION
Join us for the presentation of the book "Medical Theory and Practice in Early Modern Italy" edited by Sandra Cavallo and John Henderson (2025), part of MAP Book Series with Harvey Miller / Brepols.
🗓12 May 2026, 5:00 pm
📍 Palazzo Alberti, via de' Benci 10, Florence

This volume brings together scholars at the forefront of the latest developments in the history of medicine in Italy. In recent years, the traditional separation between studies of medical theory and studies of medical practice has increasingly given way to a more nuanced approach that problematizes the relationship between these fields, which is too often seen as mechanical. Building on these recent trends, this book sheds new light on the complex ways in which medical knowledge and medical practice interacted in a period characterized by the rise of empiricism and the challenges raised by the need to incorporate novel drugs and unfamiliar diseases into the classic paradigms of professional medicine. Focusing on a range of themes — bodies and diseases, medical treatment, pharmacy and public health — chapters in this volume challenge ingrained scholarly accounts of medical theory, highlight areas of innovation in medical treatment arising from vernacular practice, hospital experimentation, and the study of inanimate things, and explore the impact of these novelties on the more conservative official pharmacopoeias. At the same time these essays remind us that medical innovation was not an independent process, but was also the product of commercial dynamics, political interests and religious and charitable discourses.

For more information about the MAP publication series, visit: https://www.brepols.net/series/HMMAP

Our conference TALKING STONES: OBJECT AND MATERIALITY IN EARLY MODERN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE, organised in conjunction with the Studia Rudolphina Center and Collecting Central Europe, will be held this week, on 17-18 April 2026 at the Academic Conference Center, Institute of Art History, Czech Academy of Sciences (IAH CAS).

Program: https://www.udu.cas.cz/en/akce/talking-stones-1058
To RSVP, email [email protected]

Building on the workshop “The Medici and the Princely Courts of Central and Eastern Europe: Art, Diplomacy and Material Culture” (Florence, February 2025), this conference will further explore the dynamics of communication through objects and materiality in Central and Eastern Europe during the early modern period.
Contact and exchange between courts and cities was often carried out through objects, their makers, and the networks that enabled their circulation. Stones, jewels, pietra dura, and other forms of precious matter were not only treasured for their beauty but also for their symbolic, healing, and economic value. The multiple lives of objects — from quarry to workshop, from gift to inheritance — offer unique insights into the practices of collecting, diplomacy, use, knowledge transfer, and representation in early modern Europe.

Holding this conference in Prague, the seat of Emperor Rudolf II, highlights the pivotal role of Central Europe as a crossroads of communication, diplomacy, knowledge exchange, and collecting. The region was not only a recipient of influences from Italy, particularly from the Medici court, but also a source of objects and expertise — a powerful center of artistic and material exchange shaping connections across the continent.

We are delighted to host the presentation of Nuno Castel-Branco's new volume THE TRAVELING ANATOMIST: NICOLAUS STENO AND THE INTERSECTION OF DISCIPLINES IN EARLY MODERN SCIENCE (The University of Chicago Press, 2025).

The presentation will be held at the MAP Offices in Palazzo Alberti, Florence on Tuesday, 14 April 2026 at 4:00pm, and will include a discussion featuring Gaston J. Basile, Stefano Dominici, Abram Kaplan, and the author.

Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) was a renowned anatomist in his lifetime. He reformed the anatomical understanding of glands, argued that the heart was a muscle, renamed the so-called female testicles as ovaries, and developed a mathematical model for understanding muscle contraction—discoveries that were fundamental to the fields of anatomy and physiology. However, other aspects of Steno’s life have come to define him: his claim that mountains’ strata reveal the history of the Earth and his conversion to Catholicism as a practicing scientist. This excessive attention to his geological discoveries and to asking whether science and religion are compatible, Nuno Castel-Branco argues, has obscured his significant accomplishments as an anatomist. The Traveling Anatomist thus restores Steno to his rightful place as a crucial figure in early modern science.

For further information or to rsvp, email [email protected]