The Melancholy of Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici
A lecture by Alessio Assonitis, Director of the Medici Archive Project
The career of Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici (1642-1723) can be best epitomized by these two contrasting images. In the first, the young Medici is depicted on horseback, in elegant attire. The artist, Stefano della Bella, captured both his monumentality and his mobility. Before becoming grand duke, Cosimo spent much time "on the road", visiting European cities for leisure, study and diplomatic purposes. In the second image, he is depicted in ecclesiastical robes, proudly holding a biretta, having put aside the grand ducal crown. In 1700, he was made Canon of Saint John at the Lateran by Pope Innocent XII. This lecture will trace a personal account of this Grand Duke, with an emphasis on this (apparently) contradicting personality: the curious, analytical, intellectual, itinerant Cosimo, who travelled around the continent with a great desire to discover new peoples, religions, cities, and natural settings, and the ultra-orthodox Cosimo, schooled and raised by unenlightened priests, who was fearful of anything that fell outside the parameters of post-Tridentine dogma.
Alessio Assonitis arrived at the Medici Archive Project in 2004 with a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship. He became director in 2009 and served as Principal Investigator for digital projects supported by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, including BIA (2010-2012; 2013-2014) and MIA (2015-2017; 2017-2019). He has published extensively on topics related to Italian Renaissance art, book history, Medici history, archival studies and digital humanities. He is editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Memorie Domenicane and founder and editor-in-chief of the MEDICI ARCHIVE PROJECT academic book series (Harvey Miller/Brepols), established in 2016.
If you are in Florence and would like to attend the lecture in person at the British Institute Library, please register here or send an email to bif@britishinstitute.it
Please note, only people with confirmed registrations can attend the lecture in person. The registration fee is 10 Euro per person.
Please note that, following national regulations, all attendees will be required to to wear a mask throughout the event.
To join this lecture with Zoom (no reservation necessary), simply click on this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88080914570?pwd=cFdPNHlEbVVuOXdrVUxhVnA4Q2MxZz09at 18:00 on Wednesday 1st June.