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The Medici Archive Project

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The Medici Archive Project

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Bringing together a worldwide scholarly community for those who are interested in early modern history.

Originally envisaged as a database project, after twenty-years of innovation in Digital Humanities, our work was launched in 2012 on the BIA platform (bia.medici.org). As we continue to expand and improve our platform, MAP has become a leading research institute for early modern studies, engaged with four research initiatives, three fellowship programs, two educational courses in palaeography, a publication series, and international conferences, workshops, and seminars. Above all, we are dedicated to the study of one of the most influential family dynasties in Western civilization: the Medici.

02/10/2026

📣 We are pleased to announce the program for the international workshop:
TUSCANY AND THE IBERIAN EMPIRES. MIGRATION AND KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD, organized by David Soares Mesquita (Centre for Classical Studies – University of Lisbon) and Joao Covolan Silva (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa).

🗓 Friday, 30 October 2026, 9:30 AM
📍 The Medici Archive Project, Palazzo Alberti (Via de' Benci, 10), Florence
Email [email protected] to RSVP.

In the early modern period (c. 1500–1700), Iberian religious refugees, scholars, merchants, and diplomats took up residence in Tuscany. In search of protection or fame, they weaved a network that linked Iberia, Tuscany, and wider imperial territories. New Christians, Moriscos, and other communities displaced by persecution—as well as intellectuals, philosophers, medical practitioners, envoys, diplomats, and other intermediaries—mediated the circulation of knowledge, materials, and political interests between courts, universities, and religious institutions.

By taking a broad view of these encounters, this workshop aims to explore the multiple and layered presence of Iberian agents in early modern Tuscany between c. 1500 and 1700.

The workshop will be live-streamed on ZOOM.
LINK: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86320199309?pwd=mAc4Xlhs7tMY7hMTPdlFeh2MGrGRtv.1
Webinar ID: 863 2019 9309
Access Code: 186372

Info: www.medici.org

15/09/2026

📣The Medici Archive Project is pleased to announce the dates for the upcoming 2027 Winter Seminars in Paleography and Archival Studies which will take place in Florence on 4-9 January 2027 and 11-16 January 2027.

Applications due 1 January 2027.

The principal aim of this seminar is to provide an introduction to Italian archives (with particular emphasis on Florentine archival collections); to examine in depth various documentary typologies; to read diverse early modern scripts; and to to assist in planning research in Italian archives and libraries. Especially relevant for graduate students, university faculty, and museum curators working on Renaissance and early modern topics, this seminar is taught by a team of current and former MAP scholars, as well as university professors and other MAP-affiliated researchers.

Teaching will take place at MAP head offices at Palazzo Alberti in Via de’ Benci 10 and on-site, in public and private archives in Florence.

A working knowledge of Italian is recommended. No previous archival and paleographic experience is required. Teaching will be in English.

Participants will be encouraged to develop their research with archival approaches, meet with instructors individually in order to strategize future archival research in Italy, network with scholars in their field, and gain access to archives and libraries resources pertinent to their research.

Click this link for more information including how to apply: https://www.medici.org/education/paleography-seminars/

09/09/2026

Marking Completion: The Status and Circulation of Drawings from the 15th Century to Today.

International Workshop from 22–23 September 2026, organized by the Lise Meitner Group "Coded Objects" at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute and the Medici Archive Project.

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. The workshop treats drawings as independent objects that circulate and accrue economic and emotional value, and generate knowledge across art, science, design, and technology. Here, “completion” is not understood as a final state, but rather as a series of active thresholds. The workshop intends to focus on those moments when a drawing is judged, classified, circulated, or stabilized. The papers address how drawings shift status as they move between studios, museums, archives, markets, and digital platforms from the 1400s to today.

This two-day workshop will be hosted across three venues: on the first day (22 September) at the Medici Archive Project (Palazzo Alberti, Via de’ Benci 10, Florence), and on the second day (23 September) at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Via dei Servi 51, Florence, and online) with a visit to the drawing collection of the Museo Galileo (Piazza dei Giudici 1, Firenze), organized in collaboration with the museum.

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

02/09/2026

📣CALL FOR PAPERS: Architecture and Mobility in Early Modern Tuscany

International Workshop - Friday, 5 February 2027 - The Medici Archive Project, Palazzo Alberti, Florence

Fifty years after the publication of Giorgio Spini’s seminal Architettura e politica da Cosimo I a Ferdinando I, the Medici Archive Project is organizing a workshop addressing the interpenetration between building practices and state-building during the Medici grand duchy, with a specific emphasis on how investments in infrastructure facilitated and/or regulated the mobility of people, commodities, material culture, and intelligence in the stato vecchio and the stato nuovo. Especially welcome are papers that shed light on how civil engineering works—such as roads, canals, ports, river harbors, bridges, fortifications, dams, gates, post houses, staging inns, aqueducts, and custom houses—served as vehicles of communication, and how these networks fundamentally shaped the political success and economic progress of Medici Tuscany. Also relevant will be contributions reflecting on the creation of urban spaces specifically designated for the reception of mobility, including squares, markets, gardens, pharmacies, libraries, and neighborhoods (such as the Jewish Ghetto and the German quarter in Florence and the “foreign” settlements in Livorno and Pisa). Ideally, this workshop will begin to chart the critical topographies and infrastructure that defined the history of circulation throughout the Tuscan territory.

This initiative marks the first of four academic events dedicated to Medici architecture and urban planning. Concurrently, it feeds into a long-term research project that will culminate in an exhibition on the Medici and global news networks, tentatively entitled “How the Medici Came to Know about the World” (October 12, 2028 — January 12, 2029).

The organizers invite proposals for 20-minute unpublished papers in English or Italian, and especially those that take interdisciplinary approaches engaging architectural history, art history, archaeology, history, urban studies, landscape studies, and material culture.

Submissions are due 1 October 2026.
Click here for more info: https://www.medici.org/cfp-architecture-and-mobility-in-early-modern-tuscany-florence-5-february-2027/

16/06/2026

📣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/

15/06/2026

📣 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.

02/06/2026

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.

28/05/2026

📣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].

20/05/2026

📣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]

09/05/2026

📣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/

Indirizzo

Via Dei Benci 10
Florence
50122

Orario di apertura

Lunedì	09:30 - 17:30
Martedì	09:30 - 17:30
Mercoledì	09:30 - 17:30
Giovedì	09:30 - 17:30
Venerdì	10:00 - 17:30

Sito Web

http://www.medici.org/

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