Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early

Modern Tuscany and Eurasia

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.
The chapters in this volume discuss how casting a global, cross-cultural net was
part and parcel of the Medicean political vision. Diplomatic gifts, items of commercial
exchange, objects looted at war, maritime connections, and political plots were an
inherent part of how the Medici projected their state on the global arena. The eleven
chapters of this volume demonstrate that the mobility of objects, people, and knowledge
that generated the global interactions analyzed here was not unidirectional—rather, it
went both to and from Tuscany. In addition, by exploring evidence of objects produced
in Tuscany for Asian markets, this book reveals hitherto neglected histories of how
Western cultures projected themselves eastwards.

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 scholar.

Routledge Research in Art History

Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of
art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering
areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on
art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By mak-
ing these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to
promote quality art history research.

Mural Painting in Britain 1630–1730

Experiencing Histories
Lydia Hamlett

Academies and Schools of Art in Latin America

Edited by Oscar E. Vázquez

The Australian Art Field

Practices, Policies, Institutions
Edited by Tony Bennett, Deborah Stevenson, Fred Myers, and Tamara Winikoff

Lower Niger Bronzes

Philip M. Peek

Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia

Edited by Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo

The Cobra Movement in Postwar Europe

Reanimating Art
Karen Kurczynski

Emilio Sanchez in New York and Latin America

Victor Deupi

Henri Bertin and the Representation of China in Eighteenth-Century France

John Finlay

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in-Art-History/book-series/RRAH
Art, Mobility, and Exchange
in Early Modern Tuscany
and Eurasia

Edited by Francesco Freddolini

and Marco Musillo
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Freddolini, Francesco, editor. | Musillo, Marco, editor.
Title: Art, mobility, and exchange in early modern Tuscany and Eurasia /
Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020005110 (print) | LCCN 2020005111 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367467289 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003030690 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Medici, House of. | Art objects—Economic aspects—
History. | Tuscany (Italy)—Commerce—Eurasia—History. |
Eurasia—Commerce—Italy—Tuscany—History.
Classification: LCC DG737.42 .A78 2020 (print) | LCC DG737.42 (ebook) |
DDC 303.48/24550509031—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005110
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005111
ISBN: 978-0-367-46728-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03069-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of Illustrationsvii
List of Tablesx
List of Abbreviationsxi
Notes on Contributorsxii
Acknowledgmentsxiv

  1 Introduction: Eurasian Tuscany, or the Fifth Element 1

FRANCESCO FREDDOLINI

PART ONE
Mediterranean Connections17

  2 Making a New Prince: Tuscany, the Pasha of Aleppo,

and the Dream of a New Levant 19
BRIAN BREGE

  3 “To the Victor Go the Spoils”: Christian Triumphalism,

Cosimo I de’ Medici, and the Order of Santo Stefano in Pisa 33
JOSEPH M. SILVA

  4 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles in the Seventeenth

Century: The Cospi Collection 48
FEDERICA GIGANTE

PART TWO
Livorno: Infrastructures and Networks of Exchange67

  5 Disembedding the Market: Commerce, Competition,

and the Free Port of 1676 69
COREY TAZZARA
vi  Contents
  6 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado: British Early Trading
Networks and Maritime Trajectories, c. 1570–1623 85
TIZIANA IANNELLO

  7 Ginori Porcelain: Florentine Identity and Trade With the Levant 100
CINZIA MARIA SICCA

PART THREE
Asian Interactions119

  8 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints: (Re)presenting India

in Medici Florence 121
ERIN E. BENAY

  9 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure: Francesco Paolsanti Indiano and

His Early Seventeenth-Century Trade Between Florence and Goa 146
FRANCESCO FREDDOLINI

10 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici: Giovanni

Gherardini and the Portraits of Kangxi 167
MARCO MUSILLO

11 Postscript: Textual Threads and Starry Messengers: The Global

Medici From the Archive to the Fondaco 187
MARCO MUSILLO

Bibliography194
Index217
Illustrations

1.1 Jacques Callot, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici Overseeing

the Fortification of Livorno, c. 1615–1620, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC. Transferred from the Library of Congress,
1986.50.112.2
1.2 Jacopo Ligozzi, Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors,
1591, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 3
1.3 View of the Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 4
1.4 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Ferdinando I
Dominating the Sea, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence. 6
3.1 Church of Santo Stefano, interior, Pisa. 35
3.2 The Pisa Griffin, c. 12th century, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Pisa. 37
3.3 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Cosimo II Receiving
the Victorious Knights of Santo Stefano, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia,
Florence.39
3.4 Bronzino, The Nativity of Christ, c. 1564, Church of Santo
Stefano, Pisa. 41
3.5 Giorgio Vasari, Stoning of Saint Stephen, c. 1569–71, Church of
Santo Stefano, Pisa. 42
4.1 Cospi Museum, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, in Legati, Mvseo Cospiano,
Bologna 1677. 50
4.2 Salt-cellar, wood, and mother-of-pearl, India. Museo Civico
Medievale, Bologna, inv. no. 1921. 52
4.3 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico
Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292. 53
4.4 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico
Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292. 53
4.5 Muraqqa‘ containing the Gulshan i rāz by Sheikh Mahmoud
Shabistari and parts of sections eighty-two and eighty-three of
Jamshid u Khurshid by Salman Savaji. Biblioteca Universitaria,
Bologna, ms. 3574pp. 54
4.6 Annotation in the Gulshan i rāz by Sheikh Mahmoud Shabistari and
parts of sections eighty-two and eighty-three of Jamshid u Khurshid
by Salman Savaji. Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 3574pp. 55
4.7 Jacopo Tosi, Testacei, cioe Nicchi Chioccioe e Conchiglie di più
spezie con piante marine etc. Regalo del Ser.mo Cosimo III Gran
Duca di Toscana al Senatore, Marchese, Balì e Decano Ferdinando
Cospi. Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 4312. 60
viii  Illustrations
7.1 Dish with Ginori coat of arms. Chinese (Italian market), ca. 1698,
hard-paste, diam. 34.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum, New
York, Helena Woolworth McCann Collection. Purchase. Winfield
Foundation Gift, 1962 (62.188), CC0 1.0 Universal (CC01.0)
Public Domain Dedication. 102
7.2 Carlo Ventura Sacconi, Portrait of a Man With Basket of Porcelain,
early 1720, oil on canvas, 85.5 × 70 cm. Villa Medicea di Poggio
Imperiale, Florence. 104
7.3 Mark on underside of pilgrim flask (Florence, Medici factory), ca.
1682–1685, soft-paste porcelain, h. 28.6 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles (86.DE.630). 105
7.4 Cristoforo Munari, Still Life With Blue and White Porcelain,
ca. 1690, oil on canvas, 29.8 × 41.3 cm. Nasher Museum of Art at
Duke University, Durham, NC, gift in honor of Marilyn M. Segal
by her children (1998.22.2). 106
7.5 Cristoforo Munari, Melon and an Octagonal Cup on a Silver
Charger, an Upturned Bowl Behind, ca. 1690, oil on canvas
22.2 × 29.9 cm. Formerly Lodi Collection. 106
7.6 View of the Ginori Villa at Doccia, engraving, 18.5 × 44 cm.
From Thomas Salmon, Lo Stato presente di tutti i Paesi e Popoli
del mondo naturale, politico e morale, con nuove osservazioni
degli antichi e moderni viaggiatori. Volume XXI. Continuazione
dell’Italia o sia descrizione del Gran-Ducato di Toscana, della
Repubblica di Lucca, e di una parte del Dominio Ecclesiastico,
Venezia: nella Stamperia di Giambatista Albrizzi, 1757. 107
7.7 Pitcher, Doccia, Ginori, 1750–1760, Pandolfini, Florence, Fascino
e splendore delle maioliche e delle porcellane: la raccolta di Pietro
Barilla ed una importante collezione Romana, 17 May 2017, Lot 109. 109
7.8 Tray, Doccia, Ginori, 1745–1747, decoration attributed to Carl
Wendelin Anreiter von Ziernfeld. Hard-paste porcelain decorated
in polychrome enamels and gold, 3.5 × 30.8 × 23.5 cm. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1906 (06.
372c). CC0 1.0 Universal (CC01.0) Public Domain Dedication. 111
8.1 Egnazio Danti, PARTE DEL INDIA DENTRO AL GANGE
HO detta INDOSTAN, 1574–75, Guardaroba Nuova,
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 125
8.2 Anonymous, Saint Thomas, sculptural fragment, c. sixth century (?).
Saint Thomas Mount church, Chennai. 128
8.3 Anonymous, Saint Thomas [left] and King Gondophares [right],
sculptural fragments, c. sixth century. Basilica of Saint Thomas
collection, Chennai. 129
8.4 Anonymous, Baptismal Font, base c. ninth century; bowl
seventeenth–eighteenth century. Saint Thomas Christian Museum,
Kakkanad.130
8.5 Anonymous, Mylapore Casket, (a) back and (b) front, c. 1500. Silver
repoussé. Previously Basilica of Saint Thomas, Mylapore, Chennai,
now lost. 131
 Illustrations ix
8.6 Hanging (kalamkari), one of seven pieces, 1610–20, painted resist
and mordants, dyed cotton, 275 × 95.9 cm, Brooklyn Museum of
Art, Brooklyn, New York. 134
8.7 Tortoiseshell and silver casket, sixteenth–seventeenth century,
Indian (Goa?), Tesoro dei Granduchi, Florence. 135
8.8 Christ as the Good Shepherd, ivory, seventeenth century, Goa,
Tesoro dei Granduchi, Florence. 136
8.9 Virgin and Child, ivory, seventeenth century, Goa (?), Tesoro dei
Granduchi, Florence. 137
8.10 Christ as the Good Shepherd, seventeenth century, ivory, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. 138
9.1 Anonymous, Cameo of Shah Jahan, first half of the 17th century,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 151
9.2 Anonymous, Portrait of Shah Jahan, first half of the 17th century,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 152
9.3 Anonymous, pietra dura panel, c. 1638–1648, Red Fort, Delhi,
India. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections,
UW40555.153
9.4 Giovanni Battista Foggini, Monument to St. Francis Xavier,
1689–1698, Church of Bom Jesu, Goa. 156
9.5 Cristofano Gaffuri, View of the Port of Leghorn, 1604, Galleria
degli Uffizi, Florence. 157
10.1 Imperii Sino-Tartarici Supremus Monarcha (Supreme Monarch of
the Sino-Tartar Empire), engraving from Athanasius Kircher, China
Monumentis, Qua Sacris quà Profanis, Nec non variis Naturæ &
Artis Spectaculis, Aliarumque rerum memorabilium Argumentis
Illustrata, published in 1667, between pages 112 and 113. 168
10.2 Giovanni Gherardini (attributed), Portrait of Kangxi, oil on
painting, 129.6 × 98.2 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 175
10.3 Display of Gherardini’s portrait in the West corridor of the Galleria
degli Uffizi. 178
11.1 Don Mancio (Itō Mansho), Letter to Bianca Cappello, Grand
Duchess of Tuscany, 1585, Archivio di Stato, Florence. 188
Tables

5.1 Commercial indicators in Genoa, 1655–1684 (five-year averages). 73

5.2 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1665–1674 (five-year averages). 74
5.3 Ship arrivals in Livorno by provenance, 1667–1675 (three-year totals). 74
5.4 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1670–1884 (five-year averages). 76
5.5 Ship arrivals by provenance, 1670–1680 (five-year totals). 76
Abbreviations

AGL Archivio Ginori Lisci

ASB Archivio di Stato, Bologna
ASF Archivio di Stato, Florence
ASP Archivio di Stato, Pisa
ASL Archivio di Stato, Livorno
BU Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Florence
BUB Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna
MAP Medici Archive Project
MdP Mediceo del Principato
MM Miscellanea Medicea
Corp. Rel. Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese
Contributors

Erin E. Benay is the Climo Associate Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art at Case
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Faith, Gender,
and the Senses in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art: Interpreting the Noli me
tangere and Doubting Thomas (Ashgate, 2015), and Exporting Caravaggio: The
Crucifixion of Saint Andrew at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Giles, 2017). She is
working on her third book project, which will consider artistic exchange and cult
traditions between Italy and India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Brian Brege is Assistant Professor of History at Syracuse University and received his
PhD in history from Stanford in 2014. An early modern Europeanist with a strong
interest in world history, his research focuses on political and diplomatic history,
especially the relationship between small European states and the broader early
modern world.
Francesco Freddolini is Associate Professor of Art History at Luther College, Uni-
versity of Regina, and Director of the Humanities Research Institute, University
of Regina, Canada. He has received fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, the Huntington Library, the Getty Research Institute, and
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Federica Gigante is Curator of the Collections from the Islamic World at the History
of Science Museum in Oxford. She gained her PhD at the Warburg Institute jointly
with SOAS focusing on the collection of Islamic artworks of Ferdinando Cospi, and
has held doctoral fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence and the
Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations of Koç University, in Istanbul.
Tiziana Iannello received her PhD in modern and contemporary history of Asia from
the University of Cagliari and is a former researcher in East Asian history at eCam-
pus University of Novedrate (Como). Her research focuses on early modern com-
mercial, diplomatic, and cross-cultural relationships between Europe and East Asia.
Marco Musillo is an independent scholar holding a doctoral degree from the School of
Art History and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. He has received
fellowships from the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco, the Getty
Research Institute and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz.
Cinzia Maria Sicca is a full professor of art history at the University of Pisa. A for-
mer Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, she has held fellowships at the Getty
Research Institute, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National
 Contributors xiii
Gallery of Art, and the University of Leicester. She has received major research
grants, including a Getty Collaborative Research Grant and a number of grants
from the Italian Ministry of University and Research.
Joseph M. Silva teaches courses on medieval and early modern Italian art and archi-
tecture at Providence College and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He
received his PhD in the history of art and architecture at Brown University and has
held a Newberry Library Fellowship and an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Proctor-
ship in the Department of Prints, Drawing, and Photographs at the Museum of the
Rhode Island School of Design.
Corey Tazzara received his PhD in 2011 from Stanford University and was a member
of the University of Chicago Society of Fellows. He is currently Assistant Profes-
sor of History at Scripps College in Claremont, California. He is the translator
(with Brad Bouley and Paula Findlen) of the Gusto for Things by Renata Ago. His
first book, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean
World, was published in 2017 from Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments

This project originated from Florentine exchanges between the editors, which mostly
unfolded within the inspiring space of the Kunsthistorisches Institut’s garden. These
conversations, centered on the possibilities of a global history of Medici Tuscany, led
to three panels at the Renaissance Society of America conference, held in Boston in
2016. Some of the papers presented there became the backbone for this book, while
other important contributors joined the project at a later stage.
During the preparation of this volume, our research and writing have benefitted
from the support of many institutions and funding agencies, among which we would
like to mention the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Biblioteca Uni-
versitaria Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Musei
Civici di Bologna, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz,
Luther College at the University of Regina, University of Pisa, University of Washing-
ton Libraries, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Gerald Hill helped with a first round of copy editing of our volume before submit-
ting the manuscript and prepared the index, while Isabella Vitti and Katie Armstrong
at Routledge provided enthusiastic support for the publication of our volume.
We are indebted to many colleagues that have answered questions and entertained
conversations on our book, and especially to Matteo Bellucci, Amy Buono, Dominic
Brookshaw, Jeffrey Collins, Sylvain Cordier, Gail Feigenbaum, Elena Fumagalli, Amin
Jaffer, Mark MacDonald, Lia Markey, Julia McClure, Eugenio Menegon, Annalisa Raho,
Federica Rossi, and Scott J. Wilson.
1 Introduction
Eurasian Tuscany, or the Fifth Element
Francesco Freddolini

Jacques Callot’s print depicting Ferdinando I overseeing the fortification of the Port
of Livorno visualizes a political dream in the making (Figure 1.1).1 Engraved between
1615 and 1620, this posthumous image celebrated the creation of the infrastructures
that provided Florence full access to the Mediterranean and, through a network of
diplomatic and commercial relations, the oceans.2 The dates are significant for under-
standing how this image resonates with a period of fervent interest in global networks
at the Medici court. In 1612, only a few years after Ferdinando’s death, his successor,
Cosimo II, received a report from his secretary, Orso D’Elci, outlining the nautical
connections between the Grand Duchy, the East Indies, and the West Indies.3 The com-
plex, ten-paragraph document revolving around the centrality of Livorno as a node
within a larger maritime network aimed to obtain a license from the King of Spain for
unmediated access to the oceans. A key passage in D’Elci’s text explains that

The question to ask His Catholic Majesty for the business in the Indies is to obtain
a license to send ships to the said Indies, East and West. [These ships] should be
able to leave from the port of Livorno, and on both ways they should be able to
dock at any port in France, England, and the Low Countries, without prejudice,
and there have permission to load and unload merchandises.4

After Ferdinando I expanded the port and the city of Livorno to grant the Medicean
state full access to maritime routes, the time was ripe to explore opportunities beyond
the European continent and the Mediterranean basin.
This volume explores how the 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. The chapters that follow show how casting a global, cross-cultural
net was part and parcel of the Medicean political vision. Diplomatic gifts, items of
commercial exchange, objects looted at war, maritime connections, and political plots
were an inherent part of how the Medici projected their state on the global arena.
Once again, the arts conceptualized this vision with unparalleled lucidity. In 1592,
Jacopo Ligozzi signed a monumental painting on slate representing Pope Boniface
VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors (Figure 1.2). The work was made for the Salone
dei Cinquecento, the hall in Palazzo Vecchio that Giorgio Vasari envisioned as a visual
journey into the formation of the Ducal (and later Grand Ducal) political identity
of the Tuscan state.5 The subject is Pope Boniface VIII’s legendary reception, held in
1300, of twelve ambassadors from various parts of Europe and Asia. Upon realizing
2  Francesco Freddolini

Figure 1.1 Jacques Callot, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici Overseeing the Fortification of
Livorno, c. 1615–1620, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Transferred from
the Library of Congress, 1986.50.112.
Source: Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington.

that all ambassadors were Florentines, the Pope defined Florence as the “fifth ele-
ment” and acknowledged its role as commercial and political connector on the Eura-
sian scale. This episode, becoming popular in the sixteenth century, was celebrated
by Michelangelo Buonarroti and Benedetto Varchi as a mark of Florentine identity.6
Ligozzi added another layer, transporting the narrative into the temporal and geo-
political context of Grand Ducal Florence. In the background, a painting within the
painting portrays Tuscany seated on a throne in an ideal dialogue with Asia, Europe,
Africa, and America. Tuscany wears the Grand Ducal insignia; it is, unmistakably,
Medici Tuscany vis-à-vis the continents. The visual centrality of Tuscany evokes the
political ambition to become an independent and central interlocutor with the four
continents—the “fifth element” of Boniface’s embassy, a node within a larger, and
now truly global, network.
As Lia Markey has demonstrated, visualizing America at the Medici court became
a way to conceptualize Florence’s identity within a dramatically expanding world.7
Colonization, either real or “vicarious,” as Markey has defined Florence’s colonizing
efforts, is crucial for understanding transatlantic histories of the Medici state. Once we
direct our gaze eastwards, however, we are faced with a different gamut of historical
and historiographical problems. A longer tradition of interreligious tensions, dating
 Introduction 3

Figure 1.2 Jacopo Ligozzi, Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors, 1591, Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

back at least to the crusades, shaped the Medici relations to the Ottoman Empire and
coexisted with commercial relations that never stopped. These were further enriched
by the long-standing trade routes that had been already established with Asia, which
in turn became more multifaceted through the mediation (or lack thereof) of Russia,
especially over the course of the seventeenth century. As Geoffrey C. Gunn has per-
suasively argued, although vast peripheral areas of Asia were subjugated and radically
transformed by European colonization, “in Asia the Europeans entered elaborate and
mannered trading networks.”8
The connective, transnational tissue of the Eurasian cultural and geographical
region has recently proven to be an extremely productive area for studying transcul-
tural interactions. This volume contributes to this historiographical stream by explor-
ing how the Grand Dukes promoted such connections. Exchanges were crucial for
Florence when looking East, and a network of political and infrastructural relations
was essential to support them.9 The document penned by D’Elci in 1612 could be seen
as the culmination of the late-sixteenth-century strategy to connect Florence with the
global world, a vision that started with Cosimo I and was fostered by the ruling family
as part of a political plan. Courtly spaces articulated this strategy through images and
objects on display. The maps of the Sala delle Carte Geografiche in the Medici Guard-
aroba (Figure 1.3), painted in two phases by Egnazio Danti (1563–1575) and Stefano
Bonsignori (1576–1586), prompted the Grand Dukes, their courtiers, and their guests
to understand the Ducal (and later Grand Ducal) territories in relation to the global
4  Francesco Freddolini

Figure 1.3 View of the Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

world, metaphorically projecting the Medicean state into a growing network of explo-
ration and colonial aspiration, as well as mobility of people, objects, and knowledge.10
In a similar vein, Ludovico Buti portrayed exotic worlds on the ceilings of the
Armeria (1588),11 and the Grand Dukes avidly collected exotic objects from Asia,
the Islamicate world, and the Americas.12 It is well known that the aspirations to
establish colonies across the Atlantic and open direct maritime routes from Livorno
to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans soon vanished due to the opposition of the true
global maritime powers13—Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, and Britain—but the
Medici still participated in the main networks of interactions by making Livorno a
node of larger commercial exchanges. Livorno—as the chapters by Tazzara, Iannello,
and Sicca demonstrate—epitomizes the ambition of the Grand Dukes, whose strategy
was to find a role within exchanges that transcended the Mediterranean. Livorno,
furthermore, shows that global interactions for the Medici were a political affair that
required a strategy to finally turn the Tuscan state into the “fifth element.”
A growing interest in how objects and knowledge were exchanged in the increas-
ingly complex transcultural arena of the early modern period has helped us under-
stand the agency of things and the importance of their social life.14 Seminal scholarship
by Paula Findlen and Pamela Smith, as well as more recent studies by Giorgio Riello,
Anne Gerritsen, Meredith Martin, and Daniela Bleichmar among others, have helped
shape this field.15 Our book also explores objects—it is the central methodological
tenet that informs most of the art history and material culture approaches in the
 Introduction 5
chapters that follow—but our aim is different from the one adopted in most of the
aforementioned studies exploring the social lives of things along the lines of broad net-
works of exchange.16 As Paula Findlen reminds us, “the global lives of things emerge
within and at the interstices between local, regional, and long-distance trading net-
works.”17 In order to delve deeply into such interstices, we have chosen to focus on a
specific geopolitical entity—the Medicean state—and explore how actants—objects,
networks, infrastructures, and people—instantiated its interactions with the Levant
and Asia.18 Our book, in other words, is about Grand Ducal Tuscany; our aim is to
situate the Medici politics during the Grand Ducal period within a larger map encom-
passing the Eurasian space.
With a few exceptions—for example Marco Spallanzani’s studies on maiolica and
oriental carpets in Renaissance Florence, Francesco Morena’s work on porcelain, or
some articles addressing focused case studies—this early modern global history of the
Grand Duchy has only recently emerged.19 Studies on Florentine merchant networks
in the Mediterranean Basin and Asia have paved the way to understanding the multi-
faceted relations between the Medici and the Orient, while work specifically inspired
by the vast diplomatic correspondence in the Grand Ducal archive has recently cast
new light on the relations between the Tuscan dynasty and the Levant.20
One feature of Grand Ducal Tuscany that offers a distinctive lens through which to
study early modern Italy in relation to global interactions is its archival repositories.21
A methodology of inquiry based on archival research has enabled most of the authors
in this volume to delve deeply into the histories of individual objects, merchants, and
political agendas. Objects, biographies, and histories of local infrastructures such as
the port of Livorno enable us to connect the local (Grand Ducal Tuscany) with the
global (the Eurasian context) by way of what Francesca Trivellato has recently defined
as “global microhistories.”22 As Trivellato argues, this method stemming from a dis-
tinctively Italian historiographical tradition has great potential for casting light on
how localized facts—for example one object, or one biography—are nodes within
complex networks. A local fact can have connections with much larger contexts, and
things mutate—physically, semantically, and ontologically—through space and time
and in relation to cross-cultural exchanges. For the authors in this volume, the archive
is a means to explore the social life of things on the move across cultures, to show how
regimes of value and meanings change through exchange, and to reveal how the onto-
logical status of objects is modified by their display or use within new frameworks of
social and religious rituals.23
By centering our attention on Grand Ducal Tuscany, the chapters in this volume
forge connections between objects and contexts. We can follow Islamicate objects
reaching Florence and then transitioning to Bologna, while Islamic banners are given
a new ontological status in Pisa—almost forced to convert, as Joseph M. Silva argues.
At the same time, British merchants establish commercial agreements with coral sup-
pliers, thanks to privileged conditions in the port of Livorno. Through the letters of
Sassetti, the printing of Giampiero Maffei’s Istoria delle Indie Orientali by Filippo
Giunti in 1589, or the Ivories at the Museo degli Argenti described by Erin E. Benay,
we can explore how India was perceived, consumed, and shaped as a narrative in Flor-
ence. Further primary sources reveal how the Medici exported luxury objects to Asia,
while quenching their thirst for knowledge about China through a myriad of routes,
objects, and people by way of Russia. In this volume, the oscillation between micro
and macro is essential for understanding Medicean Tuscany as a Eurasian entity.
6  Francesco Freddolini
An important methodological premise is our understanding of the Medicean state
as a whole, to focus especially on the triad of cities that projected the Medici towards
the seas: Florence, Pisa, and Livorno. Most studies have focused on Florence and the
Medici family as the exclusive center of interest; however, to understand the Grand
Duchy as a complex geopolitical entity, our study explores how the cities of Pisa and
Livorno played a crucial role in positioning the Medicean state vis-à-vis the global
world.24 This approach, grounded in the history of the Grand Duchy, stems from the
political identity that the Grand Dukes personally promoted for their state.25 In fact,
when the painter Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, celebrated the era of
Ferdinando I in the Medici villa of La Petraia between 1636 and 1646, he reimag-
ined Giovanni Bandini’s statue in Livorno to function as a proxy of the Grand Duke
himself—standing on the shore and dominating the sea, accompanied by Neptune
(Figure 1.4). However, the Grand Duke was not alone. The painter included the per-
sonifications of Livorno and Pisa, which highlights how the Medici’s political agenda
was clearly based on the interactions between the capital—Florence—and these two
cities.26
Florence alone, in other words, was not the Medici state. The visual and material
culture of spolia in Pisa, where the Medici and their Knights of St. Stephen performed
rituals that reminded them of their role as defenders of the Christian faith, as well
as the ubiquitous presence of Livorno in almost all chapters as the essential infra-
structural and institutional context for the mobility of objects and people, show how

Figure 1.4 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Ferdinando I Dominating the Sea,

1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
 Introduction 7
studying these cities together is key for understanding Medici politics. This is true not
only within the local history of Tuscany but, more importantly, as part of Grand Ducal
Tuscany’s international—indeed Eurasian—history.
A selective focus on Florence, to the detriment of other cities in Tuscany, has been
especially prominent in the field of art history—a consequence of studies largely
devoted to the history of collecting, exploring objects imported by the Medici, or to
the representation of other cultures at the Grand Ducal court. This volume aims to
counterbalance this approach, not only in terms of its geopolitical emphasis, but by
revealing how the flow of objects towards Florence represents only half of the narra-
tive. As the chapters in this volume collectively argue, mobility was not unidirectional.
The consumption of objects from the Eurasian context in Florence coexisted with the
projection of Medicean influence on other cultures and the export of Grand Ducal
commodities to other regions. As such, a twofold way of examining exchanges—to
and from Tuscany—becomes both the object of our study and the methodological
choice that enables us to better situate the Medici Grand Dukes within a narrative of
global interactions.27
Several chapters explore evidence of objects produced in Tuscany for Asian markets
and reveal hitherto neglected histories of how Western cultures projected themselves
eastwards. Most studies on global circulation of objects—art, or material culture—
tend to privilege a mobility towards Europe, exploring the often unstable ontological
status of objects and their agency within Europe and investigating how non-European
communities developed infrastructures for the production and commercialization of
things for western consumption.28 By focusing on the Eurasian context, however, we
note more complex trajectories of interactions: the Mughal emperors and their avid
demand for European objects, the Ottoman Empire as both a market for western
luxury objects and a door towards markets further east, Goa as a hub for commercial
relations in Asia, China and its curiosity towards Europe, Russia and its unstable posi-
tion between Europe and Asia—all topics that emerge in the chapters in this volume.29
Together with chapters that explore collecting practices by the Medici and their
courtiers, such as Ferdinando Cospi, or the reception and representation of India
at the Medici court, this volume includes contributions on how the Medici, helped
by their entourage, found ways to export luxury objects far beyond the boundaries
of Europe, creating the conditions for their production and commercialization, and
exchanging information on the objects that could be more marketable in Asia. Ample
historiography has shown how Florentine merchants and agents—Andrea Corsali or
Filippo Sassetti, just to mention two prominent protagonists of this story—sent infor-
mation on distant lands, shaping narratives of alterity and fostering the demand for
exotic objects.30 A complementary though less studied chapter of this story is repre-
sented by the letters of the Jesuit Lay Brother Atanasio Fontebuoni urging the Medici
to send devotional and luxury objects to Asia, confident in the profits to be made by
meeting an avid local demand.31
Many objects—the fountain sent to Ali Pasha and discussed by Brian Brege; coral,
porcelain, and pietre dure discussed by Iannello, Sicca, and Freddolini; as well as books
such as the Trattato della Direzione de’ Fiumi that we find in seventeenth-century
­Beijing—were made in Florence and found their ways to Istanbul, the Mughal court,
or China. Studies that tackle the presence of western commodities in Asian cultures
often explore such objects at their point of arrival and provide important reflection
on such objects’ status in the cultures of destination but rarely discuss how western
8  Francesco Freddolini
cultures catered to such global markets.32 By focusing on this theme, we can under-
stand how promoting global interactions was part of the Medici’s political agenda.
Several authors of the chapters in this volume are concerned with the circumstances
of production of these luxury objects and on the networks of mobility that enabled
them to travel and become transcultural agents. Supported by the Medici, Tuscan
merchants and courtiers or British ships stopping in Livorno could carry such objects
and export Medicean signature works across long trajectories. It was, of course, a
profitable market, but at the same time—and perhaps more importantly—a means to
establish an identity on the international political arena.
Even though we are limiting our scope to the Eurasian context, our approach shapes
a global history of Medicean Tuscany in terms of methodology, especially by looking
at how the Grand Duchy contributed to—and existed as a node of—complex transna-
tional interactions. World history and global history do not always coincide. As Sebas-
tian Conrad has articulated, global history “is both an object of study and a particular
way of looking at history: it is both a process and a perspective, subject matter and
methodology.”33 Therefore, studying the networks that linked the port of Livorno to
the East India Company in the seventeenth century or exploring how Florentine cour-
tiers and merchants established connections across cultures to mobilize objects along
old and new trade routes enables us to understand Florence, the Medici, their courti-
ers, and the Grand Duchy as a significant part of a dynamic system of interactions.
It is precisely this multidirectional flow of things and people along the lines of a
complex infrastructure of mobility, instantiated by Livorno and fostered by the Medici
politics, that lets the specificity of Grand Ducal Tuscany emerge. Tuscany tells a dif-
ferent story from Venice, for example, whose relations with the East had been shaped
by long-standing transcultural relations based on Venice’s geographical position and
commercial history, and whose print industry mediated the reception of the Americas
for most of the early modern armchair travelers.34
The Medici had virtually no rivals among the other rulers of the Italian peninsula in
terms of collecting across cultures. At the same time, they succeeded in developing a
network of commercial and diplomatic relations that projected the Grand Ducal state
in a global context.35 Livorno, an entangled ethnoscape shaped by the presence of mer-
chants, agents, as well as slaves from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds,36
played a crucial role in developing such networks, as did the presence of Florentine
merchants in key outposts located in colonial states such as Portugal, Spain, and the
Dutch Republic. The Medici expanded these traditional merchant networks operating
along international routes. Such networks, and such a tradition, survived the Tus-
can dynasty, as Cinzia Sicca in this volume shows. When in the late 1740s Marquis
Ginori succeeded in the export of his porcelain to Constantinople, he relied on a solid
network of diplomatic and mercantile relations, especially with the British, whose
presence in Livorno dated back to the seventeenth century and, as Tiziana Iannello’s
chapter demonstrates, included the Tuscan port within a larger infrastructural and
financial network for maritime trade. Ginori’s entrepreneurial efforts, as Sicca argues,
were also a way to reclaim a tradition by establishing a new—but quintessentially
Florentine—post-Medici mercantile identity for the Tuscan ruling families, again in a
context of cross-cultural exchange.
In addition to merchants and, of course, diplomats, the Medici cultivated networks
among the religious orders, especially the Jesuits, to obtain information and have
 Introduction 9
trustworthy agents even in areas under the control of Spain or Portugal. Letters sent
to Florence by the earlier-mentioned Jesuit painter Bartolomeo Fontebuoni, who made
a career in Asia, show how he maintained relations with his family and the Medici
court, conveying information and requesting objects from Florence.37 More famously,
when the Jesuit Johannes Grueber arrived in Livorno in 1666, he was welcomed by
Florentine courtiers—especially by Lorenzo Magalotti, who eventually published a
Relazione della China based on Grueber report.38 Later, in 1667, a letter sent from
Goa to Cosimo III by Tomaso Da Costa, who wanted to build a church in India in
honor of St. Thomas, offers expressions of gratitude for the support received.39 Da
Costa’s letter shows that the interest in St. Thomas’ presence in India, explored in this
volume by Erin E. Benay, went beyond the sixteenth century, developing into an overt
intention to establish a Medici presence through art patronage in the territories related
to the Apostle.
Art patronage helped establish a firm Medicean presence well beyond Italian or
European boundaries. For example, in 1587 Ferdinando I—whose vision for a global
reach of Florence laid the foundations for most of the stories unfolding in the pages
that follow—commissioned from Giambologna a series of reliefs for the altar of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.40 Almost exactly a century later, Cosimo III
shipped from Florence all the bronze ornaments made by Giovanni Battista Foggini
for the Altar of St. Francis Xavier in the Church of Bom Jesu in Goa (1689–1698).41
In 1688, the Superior General of the Jesuits, Tirso González de Santalla, thanked
Cosimo III for his intention to “extend his royal liberality to the New World, to enrich
St. Francis Xavier’s sepulchre.”42 The Medici coat of arms marked the Grand Ducal
presence in places that were not simply geographically distant from Florence (and
from each other) but also represented symbolic outposts of Christianity within spaces
of emblematic religious, cultural, and colonial tensions. On the one hand, the altar of
the Holy Sepulchre stands as a material counterpart to the Islamic spoils looted and
displayed in Pisa by the Knights of St. Stephen (examined here by Joseph M. Silva). On
the other hand, the altar of St. Francis Xavier in Goa encapsulated the deep interests
in the Indian subcontinent cultivated by the Medici since the late sixteenth century,
as the letters by Filippo Sassetti have shown,43 and as Erin E. Benay’s chapter and my
own confirm.
Our volume is divided into three spaces of discussion: Mediterranean Connections;
Livorno: Infrastructures and Networks of Exchange; and Asian Interactions. Brian
Brege’s chapter, opening the first section, casts light on how Ferdinando I—quite sur-
prisingly, considering his self-fashioning as a champion of a renewed crusade spirit—
supported Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha in his rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
Political schemes that could have led to profitable commercial interactions were behind
the support offered by Ferdinando I to the Pasha of Aleppo—an example of how reli-
gious conflicts were complicated by the political agenda on a transnational scale, and
an illuminating case study showing the multifaceted relations between the Medici and
Islam.44
The following chapter, by Joseph M. Silva, elucidates how Pisa, the city where the
headquarters of the Knights of St. Stephen were located, became a privileged space
to reconfigure Islamic spoils with new Christian and triumphalistic meanings. The
third chapter of this section exploring various aspects of Mediterranean interactions is
devoted to the collecting of Islamic artworks at the Medici court. Its author, Federica
10  Francesco Freddolini
Gigante, explores how the route to Florence was orchestrated by a courtier and agent,
Ferdinando Cospi, who not only procured objects for Ferdinando II de’ Medici but also
selected them and contributed to the reshaping of meanings associated to such objects.
The following section is specifically devoted to Livorno, its port, and its mercantile
role, exploring infrastructures and networks of cross-cultural exchange.45 Corey Taz-
zara highlights how the political vision of the Medici established Livorno’s primacy
within the Mediterranean after decades of fruitful trade. In 1676, the creation of the
free port became a model for other countries and challenged the role of major Euro-
pean ports. Livorno is the real protagonist of Tiziana Iannello’s narrative, in which the
red coral harvested in the Tyrrhenian Sea prompted British merchants to exploit their
growing presence in Livorno to export such a luxury commodity to East Asia. The
last two decades of the sixteenth century coincided with an expanding British inter-
est in East Asia that eventually led to the establishment of the East India Company.46
In 1583 and in 1586, Queen Elizabeth sent letters to the Chinese Emperor, trying to
establish privileged reciprocal commercial relations.47 In the first letter, she wrote, “We
are borne and made to have need one of another, and . . . we are bound to aide one
another.”48 Understanding the potential of this trade while lacking both an adequate
fleet and financial power needed for ventures into the oceans, the Medici fostered the
leading role of the East India Company and, by doing so, strengthened Livorno’s posi-
tion as a node of global interactions.
Cinzia Sicca’s chapter on the Ginori porcelain exported to Constantinople in 1748
concludes this section. Examining a wealth of archival materials that cast further light
on the networks linking Florence, Livorno, and the British, her study highlights how,
after the Medici, the former courtiers turned into successful entrepreneurs, paving
the way for the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century development of fondachi and
warehouses in Livorno.49 The establishment in Livorno of the Oriental Company in
1749—by Carlo Ginori with the Alexander Drummond, English Consul in Aleppo,
and Richard Bourchier, British Governor of Bombay—shows that in the long term,
the idea of asserting independent, Tuscan control of the export of merchandise to the
Orient eventually succeeded.
The third section of the volume explores long-distance interactions, especially with
the Indian subcontinent and China. In her chapter, Erin E. Benay analyzes how India
was represented at the Medici court and how information about the continent—­
especially about the churches and relics related to St. Thomas—reached Florence,
shaping ideas about distant lands. Moreover, this chapter reveals the longue durée
of global interactions, further problematizing the assumption that early modern
exchanges emerged from “the acceleration of a process of interactions between dif-
ferent parts of the world that had been in place for centuries.”50 The monuments
Benay describes predate any early modern long-distance interaction and, as the author
argues, their style and their meanings are neither local nor colonial. In fact, Benay
elaborates on the notion of untranslatable images, devised by Alessandra Russo, to
interpret early modern objects made in the Americas, prompting us to reconsider can-
ons of transcultural artistic relations.51 My chapter complicates the relation with the
Indian subcontinent, showing how a family of courtiers and merchants mobilized a
fruitful trade of pietre dure, gems, diamonds, and other luxury goods between Goa
and Florence, in part redirected to the court of the Mughal Emperors. In light of this
global exchange, even a quintessentially Florentine work, such as the Cappella dei
Principi and its interior decoration, is here construed as an integral part of a larger
 Introduction 11
cross-cultural framework, rather than simply the visual and material expression of
a Medici Tuscan local identity. Marco Musillo’s chapter, concluding the section and
the book, explores the mobility of both artists and artworks—the painter Gherardini
from Europe to China and back, and his portrait of Kangxi sent to Florence—and the
fluctuations of meanings related to objects, styles, and iconographies. Furthermore,
this chapter explores the role played by the tsar in mediating the interactions between
the Qing and Medici courts and reflects on how the cultures, the languages, and the
social status of travelers, intermediaries, and agents shaped interactions, regimes of
values, and semantic interpretations of objects and texts.
As recent historiography shows, and as the chapters in this volume further confirm,
by being omnivorous collectors, by investing in infrastructures for mobility, by main-
taining epistolary relations with agents worldwide, by commissioning and exporting
artworks and luxury goods to distant places, and by interacting with dynasties beyond
the European scope, the Medici conceived their Grand Duchy as a node of a complex
system of transnational and transcultural dialogues.
The Florentine myth of the “fifth element,” evoked in early modern histories of
Florence and visualized by Jacopo Ligozzi in the space that celebrated the creation of
the Medicean state, became instrumental in constructing an identity for Grand Ducal
Tuscany as an interlocutor with the global powers of the early modern period. We
argue that this myth reflected a vision that the Medici nurtured through their politics
of Eurasian exchange, and the chapters in this volume aim to find a thread—in the
archives, through objects, and the protagonists involved—to unravel the global narra-
tive of Eurasian Tuscany.

Notes
1. The print is based on a drawing by Matteo Rosselli. On the dating of this series of prints see
Jules Lieure, Jacques Callot, 3 vols. (Paris: Editions de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1927),
152; Shelley Perlove, “Callot’s ‘Admiral Inghirami Presenting Barbary Prisoners to Ferdi-
nand I’,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 58, no. 2 (1980): 98.
2. Major studies on the Port of Livorno include Fernand Braudel and Ruggiero Romano,
Navires et marchandises a l’entrée du port de Livourne (1547–1611) (Paris: A. Colin,
1951); Jean Pierre Filippini, II porto di Livorno e la Toscana (1676–1814) (Napoli: Edizioni
scientifiche italiane, 1998); Corey Tazzara, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transforma-
tion of the Mediterranean World, 1574–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
3. ASF, MM, 370, ins. 7, Orso d’Elci, Note sulla navigazione tra Firenze e le Indie orientali e
occidentali.
4. Ibid. “La domanda che si deue fare a S.M.ta Catt.ca per il negozio dell’Indie, sia di hauere
un priuilegio di poter mandare due Naui alle dette Indie, tanto orientali, quanto occiden-
tali. E che possano partire dal porto di Liuorno, e che nell’andare e tornare, possano toc-
care in qualsiuoglia porto di Francia, Inghilterra, et Paesi Bassi, senza alcun pregiudizio, et
in quelli caricare e discaricare mercanzie.”
5. For this painting, see Ettore Allegri and Alessandro Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici:
guida storica (Florence: Studio per edizioni scelte, 1980), 372–374; Gerhard Wolf, “Ligozzi,
Miniator,” in Jacopo Ligozzi, “altro Apelle”, ed. Maria Elena De Luca and Marzia Faietti
(Florence: Giunti 2014), 13–17.
6. Claudia Tripodi, “I fiorentini ‘quinto elemento dell’universo’: L’utilizzazione encomiastica
di una tradizione/invenzione,” Archivio Storico Italiano 3 (2010): 491–515, especially 501.
7. Lia Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (University Park, PA: The Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 2016).
8. Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800 (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 3.
12  Francesco Freddolini
9. On Eurasia as a region of transcultural exchange see Gunn, First Globalization (espe-
cially 8–10 as a historiographical category, and 113–144 in terms of how it was mapped,
and therefore identified, in early modern Europe), as well as Zoltàn Biedermann, Anne
Gerritsen, and Giorgio Riello, eds., Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in
Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Anna Grasskamp
and Monica Juneja, eds., EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object,
1600–1800 (Berlin: Springer, 2018).
10. For the maps in the Medici Guardaroba, see Mark Rosen, The Mapping of Power in
Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Flor-
ence, 29–45.
11. Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence, 93–117.
12. After the pioneering work by Detlef Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici (Florence: Edam,
1972), the scholarship on Medicean cross-cultural collecting has only recently flourished
with major studies including Francesco Morena, Dalle Indie orientali alla corte di Toscana:
Collezioni di arte cinese e giapponese a Palazzo Pitti (Florence: Giunti 2005); Adriana
Turpin, “The New World Collections of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and Their Role in the
Creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio,” in Curiosity and Won-
der from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Robert John Weston and Alexander
Marr (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 63–85; Adriana Turpin, “The Display of Exotica in the
Uffizi Tribuna,” in Collecting East and West, ed. Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Galdy, and
Adriana Turpin (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 83–118;
Jessica Keating and Lia Markey, “Indian Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inven-
tories: A Case Study of a Sixteenth-Century Term,” Journal of the History of Collections
23, no. 2 (2011): 283–300; Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence.
13. Brian Brege, “Renaissance Florentines in the Tropics: Brazil, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany,
and the Limits of Empire,” in The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492–1750, ed.
Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017),
206–222.
14. Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
15. Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce and the Rep-
resentation of Nature in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2001); Anne Ger-
ritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., Writing Material Culture History (London and New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2015); Meredith Martin and Daniela Bleichmar, “Introduction:
Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World,” Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 604–619;
Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture
of Connections in the Early Modern World (London and New York: Routledge, 2016);
Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello, Global Gifts. On the specific Eurasian Grasskamp and
Juneja, EurAsian Matters.
16. The study of material culture, especially at the intersection between history, art history
and anthropology, is a growing field. To name just a few examples: Jules D. Prown, Art
as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2001); Lorraine Daston, ed., Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (New
York: Zone Books, 2004); Daniel Miller, ed., Materiality (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005); Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800
(London: Routledge, 2013); and Gerritsen and Riello, The Global Lives of Things.
17. Pamela Findlen, “Afterword: How (Early Modern) Things Travel,” in Gerritsen and Riello,
The Global Lives of Things, 244.
18. On the term “actant” see Bruno Latour, “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifica-
tions,” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996): 373.
19. See for instance: Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Flor-
ence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1978); Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche alla corte dei
Medici nel Cinquecento (Modena: Panini, 1994); Marco Spallanzani, Mercanti Fiorentini
nell’Asia Portoghese (Florence: SPES, 1997); Morena, Dalle Indie orientali alla corte di
Toscana; Francesca Trivellato, “From Livorno to Goa and Back: Merchant Networks and
the Coral-Diamond Trade in the Early-Eighteenth Century,” Portuguese Studies 16 (2000):
 Introduction 13
193–217; Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora,
Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2009); Kaled El Bibas, L’emiro e il granduca. La vicenda dell’emiro
Fakhr ad-Dīn del Libano nel contesto delle relazioni fra la Toscana e l’Oriente (Florence:
Le Lettere, 2010); Irene Backus, “Asia Materialized: Perceptions of China in Renaissance
Florence,” PhD Diss., University of Chicago, 2014; Markey, Imagining the Americas in
Medici Florence; Maurizio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio, eds., The Medici and the Levant:
Material Culture, Diplomacy, and Imagery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Turnhout:
Harvey Miller, 2016); Horodowich and Markey, The New World in Early Modern Italy;
Mahnaz Yousefzadeh, “The Sean of Oman: Ferdinand I, G. B. Vecchietti, and the Armour
Of Shah ʽAbbās I,” Rivista degli studi orientali 90, no. 1–4 (2018): 51–77.
20. Arfaioli and Caroscio, The Medici and the Levant.
21. On the scale of Medicean archives see Arfaioli and Caroscio, The Medici and the Levant,
and Musillo’s Post Scriptum to this volume. Although Italy was not a political entity, sev-
eral historiographical cases have been made to study the Peninsula as a whole in relation to
global interactions. See for example, Giuseppe Marcocci, “L’Italia nella prima età globale
(ca. 1300–1700),” Storica 20, no. 60 (2014): 7–50; Horodowich and Markey, The New
World in Early Modern Italy.
22. Francesca Trivellato, “Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global His-
tory?” California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2011). Reflecting on Trivellato’s article, Paula
Findlen proposes the phrase “material microhistories” (Findlen, “Afterword,” 244).
23. For the use of the phrase “regimes of value” see Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Com-
modities and the Politics of Value,” in Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 15.
24. See especially the chapters by Joseph M. Silva, Corey Tazzara, Tiziana Iannello, and Cinzia
Sicca in the present volume.
25. On the formation of the Grand Ducal state see Elena Fasano Guarini, Lo stato mediceo di
Cosimo I (Florence: Sansoni, 1973).
26. For the monument, which included four bronze statues cast by Pietro Tacca, see Anthea
Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno: Il monumento a Ferdinando I de’ Medici (Livorno:
Debatte, 2008); Mark Rosen, “Pietro Tacca’s Quattro Mori and the Conditions of Slavery
in Early Seicento Tuscany,” Art Bulletin 97, no. 1 (2015): 34–57; Steven F. Ostrow, “Pietro
Tacca and His Quattro Mori: The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves,” Artibus et Historiae
36, no. 71 (2015): 145–180. For Volterrano’s fresco, see Riccardo Spinelli, “Gli affreschi di
Baldassarre Franceschini, il Volterrano, a villa ‘La Petraia’: Iconografia medicea e orgoglio
dinastico,” in Fasto di Corte. L’età di Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1628–1670) ed. Mina
Gregori (Florence: Edfir, 2006), 13–30.
27. After pioneering studies such as Claire Farago, ed., Reframing the Renaissance (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), important recent work discussing the
complexities of “circulations” in art history include Liselotte E. Saurma-Jeitsch and Anja
Eisejbeiβ, eds., The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations: Art and
Culture Between Europe and Asia (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010); Thomas DaCosta
Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Punel, eds., Circulations in the Global
History of Art (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). On Eurasian exchanges see Michael North and
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, eds., Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in
Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014); Petra Chu and Ding Ning, eds.,
Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West (Los Angeles: Getty
Research Institute, 2015); Grasskamp and Juneja, EurAsian Matters; Marco Musillo, Tan-
gible Whispers, Neglected Encounters: Histories of East-West Artistic Dialogues 14th–
20th Century (Milan: Mimesis, 2018).
28. See for example Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World:
The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Ellen C. Huang,
“From the Imperial Court to the International Art Market: Jingdezhen Porcelain Produc-
tion as Global Visual Culture,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 115–145; Anne
Gerritsen and Stephen McDowall, “Global China: Material Culture and Connections in
World History,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 3–8; Anne Gerritsen and
Stephen McDowall, “Material Culture and the Other: European Encounters with Chi-
nese Porcelain,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 87–113; Stacey Pierson, “The
14  Francesco Freddolini
Movement of Chinese Ceramics: Appropriation in Global History,” Journal of World His-
tory 23, no. 1 (2012): 9–39. A relevant exception is Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello,
Global Gifts, where the mobility of European objects is considered within the framework
of diplomacy, rather than commerce.
29. Mika Natif, Mughal Occidentalism: Artistic Encounters Between Europe and the Courts
of India, 1580–1630 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018); Tülay Artan, “Eighteenth-Century
Ottoman Princesses as Collectors: Chinese and European Porcelains in the Topkapi Palace
Museum,” Ars Orientalis, Vol. 39, Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eight-
eenth Century (2010): 113–147; Kristina Kleutghen, “Chinese Occidenterie: The Diversity
of ‘Western’ Objects in Eighteenth-Century China,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 2
(2014): 117–135.
30. Marco Spallanzani, Giovanni da Empoli: Un mercante fiorentino nell’Asia Portoghese
(Florence: SPES, 1999); Barbara Karl, “ ‘Galanterie di Cose Rare’: Filippo Sassetti’s Indian
Shopping List for the Medici Grand Duke Francesco and His Brother Cardinal Ferdi-
nando,” Itinerario 22, no. 3 (2008): 23–41; Nunziatella Alessandrini, “Images of India
Through the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Cen-
tury,” in Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World, ed. Mary
N. Harris and Csaba Lévai (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2007), 43–58; Barbara Karl, “Gar-
dening in Goa: Filippo Sassetti’s Experiences with Indian Medicine and Plants,” in Early
Modern Merchants as Collectors, ed. Christina M. Anderson (London: Routledge, 2016),
63–79; Benay in this volume.
31. See my chapter in this volume.
32. Important exceptions are Timon Screech, “The Cargo of the New Year’s Gift: Pictures from
London to India and Japan, 1614,” in The Power of Things, 114–134; Jessica Keating,
“Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court,” Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 732–747; Jessica
Keating, Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Early Modern
World (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018), especially
77–119; Kyoungjin Bae, “Around the Globe: The Material Culture of Cantonese Round
Tables in High-Qing China,” in Eurasian Matters, 37–56.
33. Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 11.
34. Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian
Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000); Bronwen
Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 2005); Elizabeth Horodowich, The Venetian Discovery of America:
Geographic Imagination and Print Culture in the Age of Encounters (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2018).
35. On cross-cultural collecting in the early modern period see Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C.
Mancall, eds., Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlan-
tic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
36. For Livorno in a global commercial context, see especially the important studies by
Francesca Trivellato mentioned earlier (note 19). An overview of the social and religious
panorama of Livorno in the early modern period is in Adriano Prosperi, ed., Livorno
1606–1806: Luogo d’incontro tra popoli e culture (Turin: Allemandi, 2009). On the term
“ethnoscape” see Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural
Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society 7 (1990): 295–300.
37. These letters have been discovered and partially studied, especially in relation to the factual
information that they can provide, by Enrico Parlato, “Fontebuoni, Bartolomeo,” in Dizionario
Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 48 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), 760–762.
38. Lorenzo Magalotti, Relazione della China (Milan: Adelphi, 1974).
39. ASF, MdP, 1605, fol. 199r: “Io come dissi a V.A. vado meditando il luogo in cui possa riti-
rarmi per servire Dio, e tutta quella pocha fabrica che potrò fare in S. Tomaso mia Padria
la riconoscerò nella liberale mano di V. A. come quella che sarà fabricata con li denari che
in elemosina mi diede.”
40. The reliefs were cast by Fra Domenico Portigiani. See Avraham Ronen, “Portigiani’s Bronze
‘Ornamento’ in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthis-
torischen Institutes in Florenz 14, no. 4 (1970): 415–442; Massimiliano Rossi, “Emuli di
Goffredo: epica granducale e propaganda figurative,” in L’arme e gli amori. La poesia di
 Introduction 15
Ariosto, Tasso e Guarini nell’arte fiorentina del Seicento, ed. Elena Fumagalli, Massimiliano
Rossi, and Riccardo Spinelli (Livorno: Sillabe, 2001), 35; and Susan B. Butters, “Contrast-
ing Priorities: Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Cardinal and Grand Duke,” in The Possessions of
a Cardinal. Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M.
Richardson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 188.
41. Klaus Lankheit, Florentinische Barockplastik. Die Kunst am Hofe der Letzten Medici,
1670–1743 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1962), 102–109; Carla Sodini, I Medici e le Indie Orien­
tali. Il diario di viaggio di Placido Ramponi emissario in India per conto di Cosimo III
(Florence: Olschki, 1996); Claudia Conforti, “Cosimo III de’ Medici patrono d’arte a Goa:
la tomba di San Francesco Saverio di Giovanni Battista Foggini,” in Lo specchio del Prin­
cipe, 109–121; Annamaria Giusti, “Ritorno in India: di nuovo l’Opificio e il mauseoleo di
San Francesco Saverio a Goa,” OPD Restauro 11 (1999): 278–289; Claudia Conforti, “Il
Castrum Doloris (1689–1698) per San Francesco Saverio al Bom Jesus di Goa di Giovan-
battista Foggini. Dono di Cosimo III de’ Medici, granduca di Toscana,” in The Challenge
of the Object, ed. G. Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch, vol. 4 (Nuremberg: Germanis-
ches Nationalmuseum, 2013), 1436–1440.
42. The hitherto unpublished letter is in ASF, MdP, 1171, fol. 96r: “Dal P. Francesco Sarmento,
Procuratore della Prouincia nostra di Goa, hò intesa la generosa, e pia intentione, che V.A.
Seren:ma hà di stendere la sua reale beneficenza sino al nuovo Mondo, per nobilitare il
Sepolcro di San Francesco Sauerio.”
43. For Sassetti see Karl, “ ‘Galanterie di Cose Rare’,” 23–41; Alessandrini, “Images of India
Through the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Cen-
tury,” 43–58; Barbara Karl, “Gardening in Goa: Filippo Sassetti’s Experiences with Indian
Medicine and Plants,” in Early Modern Merchants as Collectors, ed. Christina M. Ander-
son (London: Routledge, 2016), 63–79; and Erin E. Benay in this volume.
44. See for example Christopher Pastore, “Bipolar Behavior: Ferdinando I de’ Medici and the
East,” in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750. Visual Imagery Before Ori-
entalism, ed. James Harper (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 129–154, and consider the role of
the Typographia Medicea, established and supported by Ferdinando I to translate religious
texts in Oriental languages (See Sara Fani and Margherita Farina, eds., Le vie delle lettere:
La Tipografia Medicea tra Roma e l’Oriente (Florence: Mangragora, 2012).
45. For the importance of the “physical, infrastructural, and institutional conditions of move-
ment” see Stephen Greenblatt, “A Mobility Studies Manifesto,” in Cultural Mobility: A Man-
ifesto, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 250.
46. Marguerite Eyer Wilbur, The East India Company (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1945).
47. The letters never reached China. See Nicholas Koss, “Matteo Ricci on China via Samuel
Purchas: Faithful Re-Presentation,” in Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific
Age, 1522–1657, ed. Christina Lee (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 88.
48. Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations: The Third Volume of the Principal Naviga-
tions, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation [. . .] (London: George
Bishop, 1600), 83, as quoted in Koss, “Matteo Ricci on China,” 88.
49. On the market for luxury goods sent from Livorno in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, see Cinzia M. Sicca, “Livorno e il commercio di scultura tra Sette e Ottocento,”
in Storia e attualità della presenza degli Stati Uniti a Livorno e in Toscana, ed. Paolo Cas-
tignoli, L. Donolo, and Algerina Neri (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2003), 275–297; Cinzia
M. Sicca, “Il Negozio di Giacinto Micali e figlio in Livorno ove si trovano ogni sorte di
Mercanzie e oggetti di Belle Arti in Marmo,” in Carrara e il mercato della scultura. Arte,
gusto e cultura materiale in Italia, Europa e Stati Uniti tra XVIII e XIX secolo, ed. Luisa
Passeggia (Milan: Federico Motta: 2005), 78–85; Cinzia M. Sicca and Alessandro Tosi,
ed., A Window on the World: Il mercato internazionale delle stampe nella Livorno del
Settecento (Florence: Edifir, 2019).
50. Marcocci, “L’Italia nella prima età globale,” 8: “l’accelerazione di un processo d’interazione
tra le diverse parti del mondo già in atto da secoli”, expanding on Charles H. Parker,
Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2010), 1–2.
51. Alessandra Russo, The Untranslatable Image: A Mestizo History of The Arts in New Spain
1500–1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).
Part One

Mediterranean Connections
2 Making a New Prince
Tuscany, the Pasha of Aleppo,
and the Dream of a New Levant
Brian Brege

Then again, governments set up overnight, like everything in nature whose growth
is forced lack strong roots and ramifications. So they are destroyed in the first bad
spell. This is inevitable unless those who have suddenly become princes are of
such prowess that overnight they can learn how to preserve what fortune has sud-
denly tossed into their laps, and unless they can then lay foundations such as other
princes would have already been building on.1

For a rebel to become a recognized prince, his regime must survive. This, Machi-
avelli warned, generally fails to happen. In 1605–1607, Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha, self-
proclaimed Ottoman governor of Aleppo and scion of a powerful northern Syrian
Kurdish clan, rebelled against an Ottoman Empire beset by foreign wars and other
rebellions, and formed a fledgling state.2 Perhaps unexpectedly, the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany took the lead in attempting to make his new title a reality, as he was styled in
his treaty of alliance with Tuscany, “Prince and Protector of the Kingdom of Syria.”
This chapter considers part of that project.3
Tuscany’s effort to support this aspirant prince promised to be difficult. As a draft
of the Tuscan ambassador’s instructions explained,

And already it is understood here, that the Turk has been preparing himself with
very large forces to overcome them and principally the Pasha of Aleppo, for being
of the lineage of the great lords of Syria, and of those particularly that gave to the
Ottoman House.4

As impending destruction approached, Ali Pasha looked abroad for succor. That he
should do so is unsurprising, given his peril.5 Perhaps more surprising is that it should
come from Michel Angelo Corai—who had been born in Aleppo with the name
Fathullah Qurray—operating on behalf of the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany.6 The
full measure of Tuscany’s extensive ambitions in the Levant and relationship with Ali
Pasha requires extended treatment; here, I propose to consider one aspect of the effort
to make the pasha a king.7 This aspect is the “List of the items that were of necessity
that Sir Michelangiolo agreed with this Most Serene Pasha,” which included both
“Five pieces of field artillery and accompanying battery” and “a great barrel of mar-
zolino,” a type of Florentine cheese.8 The list of diplomatic gifts offers a window into
Tuscany’s goals and methods in seeking to make a new prince. Before delving further,
though, a brief account of the complex situation in Syria is in order.9
20  Brian Brege
Beset by a grinding two-front war with the Habsburgs in the Balkans and, from
1603, the Safavids in northwestern Iran and the Caucasus, the Ottomans state began
to buckle under the pressure. This allowed numerous, disruptive rebel groups called
celâlîs to wreak havoc in Anatolia. In northern Syria and eastern Anatolia, near the
front with the Safavids, different tiers of the Ottoman military and political system—
from the janissaries posted to Damascus and Aleppo through the beylerbeyis (pro-
vincial governors) of Aleppo, Damascus, and Tripoli to the serdar commanding the
Ottoman army on the eastern front—proved fractious, engaging in violent personal
rivalries and armed confrontations.10 These were exacerbated by the fraught relation-
ship with figures outside the standard hierarchy, especially hereditary local emirs and
celâlîs, armed bands, usually a few dozen strong but sometimes much larger. Both
the emirs and celâlîs possessed militarily powerful, but problematic, forces that were
sometimes co-opted into the Ottoman military system to meet immediate threats. The
celâlîs could be bandits, destructive of the peace and competent with weapons but
undisciplined and self-seeking, making them unreliable on the battlefield. Ambitious
emirs might possess more disciplined and effective forces, but such emirs usually had
local ambitions for autonomy, resources, and recognition that did not always mesh
well with the needs of grinding campaigns in the devastated lands on the empire’s
eastern frontier. Out of this welter of leaders claiming authority and backed by their
armed forces emerged a series of armed confrontations in Syria, including in Damas-
cus and Aleppo, concentrating on the right to hold governing posts in the Ottoman
administration. In Aleppo—a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants—the dispute
between the Istanbul appointee Nasuh Pasha (d. 1614) and the Kurdish emir of
Kilis, Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha (d. 1605), a friend of the serdar Cağalazade Sinan
Pasha (d. 1605), over the city’s governorship resulted in a siege by the emir’s forces
in 1604 that ended in Nasuh Pasha’s exit. With a hereditary Kurdish emir and his
well-equipped forces now in charge of Aleppo, the serdar expected support on his
campaigns against the Safavids. Following the stinging, career-ending defeat of the
Ottoman army under the serdar’s command by Shah Abbas (1571–1629) at Sufiyan in
November 1605, the retreating serdar encountered Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha with
his army intact at Van. Rashly, the serdar had Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha executed
for dilatoriness in the discharge of his duties.11
Faced with the legally dubious execution of his uncle, Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha
(d. 1610) raised a cry of vengeance that met with initial sympathy. Aligning himself
with major celâlîs and local rebels, especially Çemsid, Pasha of Adana, Ali quickly
moved to assume his uncle’s position in Aleppo. Through a rapid campaign against
existing Ottoman leaders in Tripoli and Damascus, which included winning a pitched
battle at Hama on 24 July 1606, Ali consolidated control of Syria. Leading as many
as 60,000 troops in the summer of 1606 and surrounded by a network of allies and
protégés, Ali played a double-game, professing loyalty to the Ottoman Empire in
some venues yet simultaneously taking the fateful step of proclaiming independence,
in coinage, Friday prayers, and even a foreign treaty. An initially propitious set of
circumstances for this move slowly disintegrated, as the Ottomans came under the
firm leadership of Kuyucu Murad Pasha (d. 1611). After negotiating peace with the
Habsburgs at Zsitvatorok in 1606, Murad Pasha rose steeply in rank. The death of
Lala Mehmed in June of 1606 and the execution of his successor, Derviş Pasha, in
December, led to Murad Pasha’s elevation to the Grand Vizierate. Proceeding carefully
 Making a New Prince 21
and skillfully, Murad Pasha assembled an overwhelming Ottoman field army using the
newly available Ottoman forces in Europe.
The Grand Vizier proceeded to snuff out or neutralize the celâlîs of Anatolia as he
marched relentlessly eastward. With the collapse of Ali Pasha’s allies in Anatolia and a
simultaneous rebellion in Baghdad, he was left to face the main Ottoman field army on
unfavorable ground at Oruç Ovası on 24 October 1607. Though the Ottoman force
of 75,000 was nearly double his, Ali Pasha’s army acquitted itself well for two days.
On the third, however, Ali’s army was decisively defeated, sustaining catastrophic
losses in battle and subsequent executions. Ali Pasha fled, attempting to secure his
family in Aleppo’s castle before making his way on a complex journey starting with
Baghdad. This plan failed. Canbulad property was confiscated, Aleppo fell swiftly,
and Ali’s family and supporters suffered grievous losses in a wave of executions. Ali’s
own fate was more complicated, involving rejection by Shah Abbas, failed negotia-
tions with the major celâlîs in Anatolia, and a nominal and controversial in-person
reconciliation with Sultan Ahmed I (1590–1617). Appointed beylerbeyi of Temeşvar
but never accepted as reconciled by substantial portions of the Ottoman elite, Ali fled
to Belgrade in April 1609. The end was near. Murad Pasha, returning west, ordered
Ali’s execution, which took place around 1 March 1610.12

Making a Prince
In 1606 and for much of 1607, the creation of an independent Syria ruled by
Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha seemed a real possibility. Well informed about Levantine
affairs and keenly interested in all anti-Ottoman projects, Medici Tuscany sought,
in 1607, to transform the rebel pasha into a sovereign prince. They did so as part of
a broader project to destroy the Ottoman Empire, with which Medici Tuscany had
persistently dreadful relations after repeated failed efforts at reconciliation.13 Aware
that the Austrian Habsburgs and Safavids had battered, but not seriously breached,
Ottoman defenses, the savvy Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I (r. 1587–1609),
appreciated the futility of a direct assault. Instead, the Medici state pursued a two-
pronged strategy. Tuscany would assiduously seek to form a coalition to attack the
Ottoman Empire on as many fronts as possible, stretching the empire’s resources
and preventing its pre-eminent army from concentrating its might against a single
foe. Simultaneously, Tuscany would seek to ally with the local leaders of subjected
religious and ethnic communities to carve out independent or at least autonomous
polities. In Tuscan plans, the empire would then crumble into its constituent pieces.
Grateful for outside support, these would form manageable successor states granting
favorable arrangements to the Tuscans. To this end, the instructions to the lead Medici
ambassador, Michel Angelo Corai, state,

And assure the said Pasha and all of the other leaders, that the Christian princes
will not have any greediness to acquire countries in the land of Asia, but that their
principal intention is, that everyone works together to finish the destruction of the
said Ottoman Empire.14

By disavowing territorial ambitions, the Medici could and did act effectively as a
safe source of support. Tuscany’s relatively modest military power lent credibility to
22  Brian Brege
the claim that the Medici simply sought the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and
favorable commercial, diplomatic, and religious arrangements in the Levant.
A draft of the letter to the pasha of Aleppo preserved among the Medici state papers
in Florence concisely lays out the basis of Medici action:

To the most high and powerful Lord Ali Pasha, of the most honorable lineage of
Zambollat, Protector of Aleppo, Damascus, and Tripoli in Syria, and of all the Holy
Land. After you declared yourself opposed to the tyranny of the Ottoman house,
you in such matter reconciled the spirits of the Christian Princes, which all are prais-
ing and honoring your generous resolution, desiring also the augmenting of your
power and glory. And We that continually endeavor with Our galleys and ships to
trouble this great Tyranny, we are also ready to help all those that seek to offend
them. So that returning in this same province the honored man Sir Michelag.lo Corai
of the City of Aleppo, very well known and loved by Us, we have given him some
commissions to treat secretly with you for the common service. Therefore, it will
please you to listen to him, and then let us understand that which from here we will
be able to do for your service, and to end we salute you with all our spirit.
Most prompt for any service to you15

Tuscan offers of material support on these terms were so acceptable to the rebel
pasha that he signed a treaty of alliance with Tuscany. The opening sentences of the
main body of the treaty recount its origins:

According to the relation that we have from the Most Serene Grand Duke of
Tuscany, and which was given by Sir Signor MichelAngiolo Corai[,] a Gentleman
of Aleppo, sent to Us, as express ambassador of His Most Serene Highness in
the name of whom he has presented to us a most cheerful letter, to Us the above
letter [is] most gratifying for We have had great pleasure in this, the great desire
that His Most Serene Highness has to contract with Us a perfect Friendship. We
declare that about this, Our wish is not a minor point, and that we are most con-
tent. Therefore, we accept willingly his most powerful and inviolable Friendship,
assuming that it is truly offered; of which we are certain, that he will accept Our
lofty and irrevocable Friendship, the which we offer to him with great chains of
obligations and affection, that tighten a true eternal Friendship, foreseeing the
infinite good that ought to result for both parties.16

The treaty then outlines detailed commercial and diplomatic arrangements under the
rubric of “capitulations,” a standard term for such an agreement; the terms gave Tus-
cany a remarkably privileged position.17 Given the desperateness of Ali Pasha’s plight,
the attractiveness of paper promises when immediate material assistance was on offer,
and the relatively low cost of privileging the Tuscans, the pasha readily agreed. Under
the treaty, Tuscany’s merchants and diplomats would quite simply have the best posi-
tion of any Europeans in the region, from special rights of supervision of disputes in a
Jerusalem open to Catholic pilgrims to free commerce throughout the pasha’s lands.18
These rights were conceded in part in the expectation that

if perhaps the Most Serene Grand Duke condescends to such a great friendship
with Us, the Holiness of the Most Blessed Pope Paul Vth vicar of the Omnipotent
 Making a New Prince 23
God among the Christians, and the Majesty of the Most Glorious and Catholic
Don Philip III King of Spain Ze’ and other Potentates and Christian Princes, will
all agree to make a League with Us.19

Tuscany’s position in this arrangement was as a special interlocutor. No matter how

enthusiastic the Tuscans were in their support of Ali Pasha, they lacked the forces to
turn the tide against even a severely weakened Ottoman host. Among the Christian
powers, only Spain, Venice, and France had the combination of naval and ground
forces to intervene in strength in Syria. The immediate purpose of involving Tuscany’s
allies, then, was clearly military.
Syria was not a remote frontier region the Ottomans could afford to let slip into
the control of a local dynasty that only occasionally heeded the wishes of the Sultan.
Sitting at the crossroads among continents, Syria possessed a central commercial and
strategic importance for any empire with aspirations for control in the Middle East.
Aleppo, in particular, played a vital role in the lucrative silk trade.20 As the very exist-
ence of this treaty of friendship constituted an act of defiance against the Ottomans,
the signatories had little reason to attempt to conceal their goals. Accordingly, the
treaty specifies the purpose of this new league in no uncertain terms:

And this great Friendship and League among Us, is not for any other effect, but to
abase and destroy, as [much] can be with divine help, the Ottoman Empire, and
to increase the Power of the House of Giampulat and particularly to raise up Our
illustrious person.21

The purpose of the treaty from the perspective of Ali Pasha, then, is clear. He and his
house sought large-scale Christian intervention to defeat the Ottomans, which would
allow the House of Giampulat (Canbulad) to become the ruling dynasty of an inde-
pendent Syria. For the Tuscans, Ali Pasha’s compromising defiance made true recon-
ciliation with the Ottomans and betrayal of the Tuscans impractical. This would have
had the effect of signaling to Tuscany’s allies, weary of endless over-optimistic reports
of discontented locals ready to rebel, that Ali Pasha was fully committed. Whatever
his later protestations to the Ottomans, his actions indicate that the rebellion was,
indeed, in earnest. It was certainly substantial enough that major European interven-
tion might well have secured Syrian independence, at least for a time.
This intervention, the Tuscans were optimistic, would be forthcoming. Indeed, on 6
April 1607, a letter from the Grand Ducal court in Tuscany to Michel Angelo Corai
recounts the gathering of the fleet of the Catholic alliance.22 As in decades past, the
Spanish ships from Sicily (12), Naples (12), and Spain (40), allied ships from Genoa
(8), Don Carlo Doria (14), Malta (5), the Papacy (5), and Savoy (2) were to gather in
Messina; less Venice, this was the Lepanto coalition.23 Tuscany was to provide its own
force of eight galleys and fifteen galleons or bertoni (roundships) “armed with good
men and many artillery.”24 Optimism about the enthusiasm of the Spanish alliance
for an all-out naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire proved to be misplaced,
though not for lack of Tuscan effort.
In 1607, Grand Duke Ferdinando I dispatched a fleet of eight galleys and nine other
ships, carrying more than 2,200 soldiers and substantial amounts of weapons and
munitions, to Cyprus to take Famagusta in response to secret intelligence from there.
The Tuscans were to be supported by 6,000 Greeks in the attack on Famagusta. The
24  Brian Brege
Tuscan ambassador to Syria, Michel Angelo Corai, was intimately involved in this
project, dispatching an encouraging, partially enciphered message from Cyprus on 1
March 1607.25 Cyprus was to have been a base for the execution of the plans for Syria,
but the attack failed because the fleet was scattered in the voyage, which prevented the
Tuscans from using their entire force in the first blow, and because the Greeks were
not as disposed to help as had been promised.26
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s ability to engage so actively in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean reflected an unusual moment in Tuscan history. The period from the expulsion
of the Medici in 1494 to the conquest of the Republic of Siena in 1554–1559 had seen
devastation wreaked by the sieges of Pisa, Florence, and Siena and the sack of Prato.
Following these traumas, Florence enjoyed a robust recovery.27 Flush with the success
of unifying most of Tuscany in an absolutist, bureaucratic, and centralized polity at
peace with its immediate neighbors, the Medici could devote considerable resources
to expeditionary forces. The heavy fortification of Tuscany—it has been likened to
Vauban’s later fortification of France—and Medici alliance with the Spanish Habs-
burgs meant that this force could be used with impunity.28 Medici security and prestige
depended on their relationship with Spain and the Papacy. Joining their allies in cam-
paigns for Mediterranean defense against an aggressive Ottoman Empire, the Medici
developed both the Tuscan fleet and the maritime crusading Order of Santo Stefano,
which operated at a high tempo.29 Tuscany benefitted from its middle position. It was
strong enough to resist coercion and to intervene by sea in the Eastern Mediterranean,
but not so large or close as to have interests or ambitions that might spark suspicion
among allies or provoke a strong Ottoman reaction against Tuscany itself.

Gifts for the Pasha

Tuscany’s ambitions throughout the Mediterranean relied on not just a willingness
to deploy naval force, but also an astute recognition of its partners’ priorities. Ben-
efitting from excellent information and an illustrious tradition of diplomacy, Tuscan
diplomats soothed concerns and lined pockets even as they negotiated favorable treaty
terms. To secure the extraordinarily generous provisions of the treaty between Tus-
cany and Ali Pasha, Ambassador Corai offered rich gifts.30 On a short-term basis,
Tuscany agreed to pay Ali Pasha with real items of value in exchange for nothing
more than paper promises. Had the rebellion been a success, though, this might well
have seemed a light price to pay for the generous privileges envisioned by the treaty.
What were gifts next to the right of the Florentine consul in Aleppo to judge foreign
civil and criminal cases, as the treaty envisaged?31 Indeed, under the treaty, the Tuscan
community was to be a self-governing affair, practically immune from local laws and
officials and governed by resident diplomats accorded extensive rights.32
To secure these privileges for such a modest military power as Tuscany was a diplo-
matic coup, one made possible by offering appropriate gifts. This was doubtless facili-
tated by Tuscany’s lead diplomat’s origins in Aleppo. Ambassador Corai’s extensive
experience both in the Middle East and in Italy gave him the cross-cultural knowledge
to understand both what Tuscany could give and what Ali Pasha needed to make a
regal court.33 Fortunately, the terms agreed have come down to us:

Copy of the League and Chapters that were made and agreed in Aleppo between
the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Third, and the Most Serene Prince
Alij Giampulat Governor of the Kingdom of Syria34
 Making a New Prince 25
List of the items that were of necessity that Sir Michelangiolo agreed with this
Most Serene Pasha
Five pieces of field artillery and accompanying battery
Barrel of the arquebus of the measure of 5 palms of a design that Hippolito35
has in his trunk of ———— number 1000—
Jackets / Mail shirts of the fashion [or fashionable jackets] of the measure that
the said Hippolito has in his trunk, that ten conform to the said measure and the
others in the best fashion that can be found of ————— number 100—
Columns of white marble and marmo mischio, as knows the bearer, that
4 white and the others motley [mischie] and having to serve for a fountain 8
columns———
A Lion carved in white marble that would have the two white parts in front [/]
above the body of an ox and the other a type of prey with the mouth open from
where would be able to exit the water having to serve for a fountain
Two robes of finished velvet on the outside and plush inside of the color as will
be most liked, except for black or melancholy colors, having to serve for the Most
Serene Pasha and the other for his married wife
A great barrel of marzolino [a type of Florentine cheese]
A gardener and a gunner
Four marked for the checchià of rich velvet, in the hand of which remains eve-
rything and governs all, of the color green, peacock-colored, red, and sky blue
A dozen gilded pistols of one palm that are found at Vienna of Hungary of the
price of an unghero each
Two wheel-lock arquebuses
Cuts of ermine or satin for five, or six robes for various officials36

Though the list of items to be transferred initially appears to be eclectic, ranging

from gilded pistols to marble columns, as a group the items have a measure of coher-
ence. While not sufficient in and of themselves, the listed items represent a significant
contribution to the equipment of a new royal court. This is most evident in the fine
clothing—for the pasha, his wife, and his officials—and in the carved lion and eight
marble columns intended for an apparently elaborate fountain.37 Yet even the seem-
ingly more martial items—the five pieces of field artillery, the 1,000 arquesbuses, the
dozen gilded pistols, and the two wheel-lock arquebuses—seem to be court pieces.38
With the possible exception of the artillery, they represented a militarily trivial amount
of weaponry for any confrontation with an Ottoman imperial field army, as must soon
have been expected. A thousand arquebuses and five field guns may have served well,
however, for a palace guard. Likewise, the ambiguously named jackets, or mail coats,
may well have been war materiel, given that the Tuscans agreed to transfer 100 of
them; in the absence of the design referenced it is difficult to tell.39 As with the guns,
though, the quantity seems to have been enough for no more than a court guard. The
handful of fine pistols and arquebuses was presumably reserved for the pasha and
those close to him. Interpreting the list as items for a fledgling court has the added
attraction of explaining curious items—the great barrel of cheese and the gardener
and gunner—that otherwise seem out of place. The barrel of cheese might have served
for a feast while the gardener and gunner would have served on a palace staff.40
Notably absent from the list of items is a sense of urgency, or the need to prior-
itize military items to meet the coming military challenges. For instance, the cost and
transport space required by the eight marble columns might, it would seem, have been
26  Brian Brege
replaced with weapons, ammunition, or money, any of which might have aided the
rebellion’s military fortunes.41 Like the provisions of the treaty that laid out in detail
the future framework within which Tuscans might trade, pray, and conduct diplomacy
in the Levant, this request for columns for a fountain seemed to assume success. For
an established sovereign like the Safavid Shah, who might expect to have a court and
empire even if the fortunes of war turned against him, such a request might simply
have been part of the normal currency of diplomatic exchange. But for a rebel whose
dominions were by no means securely held and who might expect an immediate inva-
sion and dreadful consequences in case of defeat, the request for columns bespeaks a
striking degree of insouciance. Perhaps the pasha thought to behave as a sovereign as
part of his claim to legitimacy. Or perhaps he expected that the opportunity cost of
requesting columns was acceptably low or that the Tuscan aid would arrive too late to
make a military difference. Though if he expected the latter, why begin with requests
for weapons? In any case, the pasha certainly expected to enjoy the benefits of power
through a flow of luxuries from the alliance.
The agreed items, both military and otherwise, are revealing of the currency of
Tuscan diplomacy and what was ultimately valued in the Levant. As in Tuscany’s
similarly dubious dealings in Morocco, Tuscan marble was prized.42 The listed items
allow us to conjure up a fountain with eight Tuscan marble columns, four white and
four motley (marmo mischio), with a sculpted lion from which water was to emerge.43
The Tuscans could offer to clothe and arm the sovereign and his household and to
provide some of the experts with which to run his court and artillery train.44 Of mod-
est military utility, Tuscan aid was primarily political.
As a partner during peacetime, then, Tuscany could offer the luxury goods to help
create a dazzling court. Relying on the Galleria dei Lavori, which Ferdinando I had
established in the Uffizi as part of the Guardaroba, the Medici possessed both ample
collections of court finery and the ability to produce high-quality clothing and lux-
ury goods. Tuscany, therefore, was especially well prepared to equip a prince and his
court.45 To enjoy such a court, though, a ruler had to hold power. For Ali Pasha, this
was a doubtful proposition indeed. Insouciance would cost all involved dearly, for
Ali Pasha lost his war, as we have seen.46 Perhaps, then, the Medici and their Syrian
ally would have done better to turn to the writings of another Tuscan who knew the
bitterness of defeat, Niccolò Machiavelli. Nearly a century before, he had advised a
previous Medici of the fragility of a new prince’s hold on power.47 The Medici might
well have benefitted also from Machiavelli’s advice in the Discourses—“One Should
Never Risk One’s Entire Fortune and Not One’s Entire Army, So Defending Passes Is
Often Harmful”—and concentrated their efforts on the main chance in Syria, rather
than fruitlessly attack Cyprus.48
The first decade of the seventeenth century was perhaps the closest the Ottoman
state came to falling apart in the early modern period. The Long Turkish War against
the Austrian Habsburgs (1593–1606) left the Ottomans vulnerable to celâlî rebellion
in Anatolia, Safavid invasion, rebellion in Syria, sedition in Lebanon and the Greek
world, and political turmoil at the center.49 The Ottoman Empire did not, of course,
fall apart. Indeed, it may not have been all that close to it. Contemporaries, however,
thought they smelled blood and felt that a final push might have done the trick. They
could not have known this would be a 300-year chimera; for them it was new. This
last points to two key problems. First, nearly all dreams of destroying the power of the
Ottomans depended on rallying an implausibly large group of allies, many of whom
 Making a New Prince 27
were perfectly happy to see the powerful Ottomans fighting someone else. Philip III
of Spain, for instance, was in no need of new wars, having plenty of other problems.
Second, in light of the Ottoman Empire’s power and internal diversity, plans for its
destruction nearly always featured optimistic expectations about the prospects for
massive rebellion in support of outside intervention. Exiles kindled such hopes. Yet,
exiles can be dangerous guides to policy, as Machiavelli perspicaciously noted in his
Discourses in the section “How Dangerous It Is to Believe Exiles,”

As for vain promises and expectations, their desire to return home is so great that
they sincerely believe many things that are false and add many things to them cun-
ningly. Consequently, between what they believe and what they say they believe,
they fill you with such expectations that, if you rely on them, either you incur
futile expenses or you engage in an undertaking that destroys you.50

Even in the case of its support for one of the largest rebellions that the Ottoman
Empire faced in the early modern period, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany might have
been wise to remember not just the examples from classical antiquity on which Machia­
velli drew, but also the history of the many generations of illustrious Tuscan exiles
produced by centuries of political turmoil. Dreams are powerful things, however, and
exiles can be spellbinding.
Lured by the dream of what a new Middle East of friendly successor states would
mean for their power, wealth, and faith, Tuscan diplomats and envoys sought to
assemble coalitions to act in alliance with Ottoman rebels. In so doing, the Tuscans
easily and pragmatically crossed religious, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural boundaries
to form an alliance against the diverse Ottoman state. For all the differences between
Tuscany and its partners, all parties shared an understanding of power and its rhe-
torical and material cultural manifestations. Both Tuscany’s grand strategy and Ali
Pasha’s willingness to sign an alliance depended on this. If this cross-cultural military
alliance had triumphed, Tuscany would have assumed leadership in brokering the
relationship between Europe and the Levant. If only the Tuscans could fashion a new
prince, albeit here a Syrian rather than Tuscan one, then Florence could solve its core
problems and prosper in the way Venice had once done; if only.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to the participants in the workshop Conversations in Conflict Studies, PARCC,
Maxwell School, Syracuse University—at which I presented “The Syrian Civil War and
Western Intervention, 1606–1607”—for their feedback on a version of this chapter;
particular thanks are due to Professor Timur Hammond for his invaluable advice, espe-
cially on bibliography. Responsibility for all remaining deficiencies remains my own.

Notes
1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003),
22–23.
2. See Colin Imber, “The Battle of Sufiyan, 1605: A Symptom of Ottoman Military Decline?”
in Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, ed. Willem Floor and Edmund Herzig (New
York: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 96–98. With reference to the execution of Canbuladoğlu Ali
28  Brian Brege
Pasha’s uncle, Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn, following the Ottoman defeat at Sufiyan on 6–7
November 1605, Imber argues that this “was the pretext for the rebellion of his nephew
Canbuladoğlu Ali of Aleppo, a revolt which for a while seemed to herald the dismember-
ment of the empire,” (98). See also, Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the
Ottoman Empire 1300–1923, 2005, paperback ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 179
and Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The Ottoman City Between East
and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 29–33.
3. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r. “Casa Giampulat, e in partic:re di Noi Alij Giampulat, Principe e
Protettore del Regno di Soria”.
4. ASF, MdP 4275, 51r. “et già s’è inteso qui, ch[e] il Turco si preparava con grandme. forze
p[er] debellargli [??] et principalmte. il Bascia d’Aleppo, p[er] esser di stirpe di grn̓ sigri. dlla
[della] Sorìa, et di quei proprij ch[e] la diedero alla Casa Ottoma̓ na: onde ta[n]to piu è
necissa. la d.a unione, perch[e] il Turco conservi instatamte. di separarli concedendo à ciascn̉
Capo tutte le condizioni ch[e] chied[e]ranno, p[er] no[n]le mantener poi loro, come fu à
molti, et come hanno fatto i suoi Antecessori.”
5. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179.
6. Federico M. Federici, “A Servant of Two Masters: The Translator Michel Angelo Corai as
a Tuscan Diplomat (1599–1609),” in Translators, Interpreters, and Cultural Negotiators:
Mediating & Communicating Power from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, ed. Fede­
rico Federici and Dario Tessicini (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 81–82.
7. For a recent collection of essays on the Medici and the Eastern Mediterranean, see Mauri­
zio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio, eds., The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant: Material
Culture, Diplomacy, and Imagery in the Eastern Mediterranean, The Medici Archive Pro-
ject Series (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2016).
8. Multiple versions of this list of items to be transferred appear in ASF, MdP 4275. ASF,
MdP 4275, 103r-104r appears to be the final version. “Listra d[el]le robe ch’ è stato di
necessità che l sr Michelang:lo accordi con questo S:mo Bascia.” “Cinque pezzi d’Artiglierie
da campagno ɛ batteria scompartito” and “Un bariglione di marzolini—.” John Florio
defines “Marzolino” as “that is sowed or groweth in March. Also a kind of daintie cheese
made about Florence,” in Queen Anna’s New World of Words or Dictionarie of the Italian
and English Tongues . . . (London: Printed by Melch. Bradwood for Edw. Blount and Wil-
liam Barret, 1611), 302. On Italian cheese see Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and
the World Around It (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 141. Faroqhi cites Benjamin Arbel,
who shows that the Venetians exported fine Italian (though the example is not Florentine)
cheese to Istanbul for Ottoman pashas. Benjamin Arbel, Trading Nations: Jews and Vene-
tians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean (New York: Brill, 1995), 15–16 and 16
n.12 citing Marin Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 58 (Venice: Fratelli Visentini, 1879–1903). So, this
was well-informed, not eccentric, gift giving.
9. For this I rely primarily on William J. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion: 1000–
1020 / 1591–1611, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, vol. 83 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag,
1983), but also on background in Finkel, Osman’s Dream. Griswold also discusses the
activities of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but I rely on my own research and Federici’s
recent “A Servant of Two Masters” instead.
10. A beylerbey (beglerbeg) served as governor of the largest Ottoman administrative unit, the
beylerbeylik (beglerbegilik); there were more than thirty in the Ottoman Empire at the end
of the sixteenth century. A serdar (serdâr) was usually the ranking general officer on the
military frontier. Appointed by the sultan to lead a campaign, he had sweeping powers of
appointment and was accountable to the sultan. For the foregoing see Selcuk Aksin Somel,
Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 6,
41, 43, 268 and Jane Hathaway with contributions by Karl K. Barbir, The Arab Lands
Under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800 (New York: Pearson, 2008), 296.
11. The standard work on the rebellion in Syria on which much else is still based is Griswold,
The Great Anatolian Rebellion: 1000–1020 / 1591–1611. The foregoing relies primarily
on Griswold’s essential work, especially Chapters III and IV (pp. 60–156) but also draws
on Chapters I and II for reference. Chapter III (pp. 60–109) provides the detail on Otto-
man administration and the conflicts in Syria up to Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha’s execu-
tion shortly after the Battle of Sufiyan in 1605. Husëyn’s name is alternatively rendered,
 Making a New Prince 29
“Canpoladzade Husëyin Pasha.” For this spelling, further discussion of this family’s activi-
ties, and the transformation of the Ottoman Empire see Baki Tezcan, The Second Otto-
man Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 145, 149–151, 161–162, 173. For the celali, banditry,
and the Ottoman state see Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route
to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), especially Chapter 5,
“Celalis: Bandits without a Cause?” For the Long Turkish War see Peter H. Wilson, The
Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy, (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2009), Chapter “4 The Turkish War and its Consequences” (pp. 76–115).
On the Safavid situation see, Imber, “The Battle of Sufiyan, 1605,” 96–98. For translated
primary documents on the Ottoman administration in Lebanon, see Abdul-Rahim Abu-
Husayn, The View from Istanbul: Ottoman Lebanon and the Druze Emirate in the Otto-
man Chancery Documents, 1546–1711 (New York: I.B. Tauris in Association with the
Centre of Lebanese Studies, 2004), 94.
12. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, Chapter IV (pp. 110–156) provides the basis
for this narrative. However, for the account of the decisive battle see also, ASF, MdP 4275,
124r–124v. The whole letter is ASF, MdP 4275, 124–127; it is partially enciphered. It
was sent by Tuscan ambassador Michelangiolo Corai from Aleppo on 6 December 1607.
Murad Pasha took Aleppo almost immediately after arriving on 8 November 1607, but
the castle only fell after a treacherous negotiation led to its surrender and the execution
of many of its occupants (Griswold, 148). See also Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179; Barkey,
Bandits and Bureaucrats, 215–217; Hathaway, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule,
1516–1800, 72. For a recent work on Aleppo that briefly mentions Tuscany’s role see
Philip Mansel, Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City (New York: I.B.
Tauris, 2016). See also, Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The Ottoman
City Between East and West, especially Bruce Master’s section on, “Aleppo: The Ottoman
Empire’s Caravan City,” pp. 17–78.
13. For one Tuscan effort at diplomatic rapprochement that foundered on Tuscan bad faith
in 1577, see Riguccio Galluzzi, Storia del Granducato di Toscana, 11 vols., vols. 3 and
4 bound together, Nuova Edizione (Firenze: Leonardo Marchini, 1822), Vol. 4, Lib IV,
Cap. III, 66–71, years 1577 and 1578. For the failure of more conciliatory Tuscan efforts
in 1598 see National Archives at Kew, SP 98/1, Bundle 1, 122r–122v. There is another copy
of the letter on 123r–123v. Galluzzi, Storia del Granducato di Toscana, Vol. 5, Lib. V, Cap.
VIII, 212–214, year 1598. For an alternative reading of these same events, see F. Özden
Mercan, “Medici-Ottoman Diplomatic Relations (1574–1578): What Went Wrong?” in
Arfaioli and Caroscio, eds., The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant, 19–31. Whereas
Tuscany failed to address the problem of the Knights of Santo Stefano, France squared
the circle of Ottoman alliance and Christian militancy. Suraiya Faroqhi argues that French
nobles joining the Knights of Malta provided countervailing prestige among Christians for
France after its controversial alliance with the Ottomans, Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire
and the World Around It, 8.
14. ASF, MdP 4275, 51v. “Et assicurate pure il detto Bascia et ogn ˙altro di quei capi, ch[e] i
Principi Ʌchristiani no[n] havranno mai avidità di guadagnar paesi neˋ Terre in Asia, ma ch[e]
la principal intenzione loro è, ch[e] ognuno concorra à finir di distruggere il detto Imperio
Ottomanno”.
15. ASF, MdP 4275, 56r-v. 56r. “Al molto alto et potente Signore Halj Bascia, della honoratis-
sima stirpe di Zambollat, Padrone di Aleppo, Damasco, e Tripoli di Sorìa, et di tutta la
Terra Santa. Doppo che voi vi dichiaraste contro alla tirannide della casa Ottomảna, vi
sete talmente conciliato gli animi de Principi christiani, che tutti lodando et magnificando
la vostra generosa risoluzione, vi desiderano ancora augume[n]to di potenza et di gloria.
et Noi ch[e] tuttavia ci ingegniamo con le Nostre Galere et Navi di travagliare questo gran
Tiranno, siamo anch pronti ad aiutare tutti quelli ch[e] corcano di offenderlo. onde torna[n]
dosene in cotesta provincia”. 56v: “il Cav.re li honorato huomo m Michelag.lo Corai della
Città di Aleppo, molto conosciuto et amato da Noi, gli habbiamo dato alcune commessioni
da trattar segretamente con esso voi per servizio comune. Però vi piacerà d’ascoltarlo, et
farci poi intendere quello che di qui potremo fare per vostro servizio, et per fine vi salu-
tiamo con tutto l[’]animo. Prontissimo p[er] ogni vri servizio”. The word “corcano” poses
certain problems for translation. Florio’s dictionary, defines “Corcáre” (p. 123) as: “to lie
30  Brian Brege
downe or along, to squat downe. Also to doubt. Also to bray as a stag or bucke.” Since this
makes little sense in the context of the rest of the sentence, I have assumed for the purposes
of the translation that “cercano” was intended.
16. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r. “Per la relazione che Noi habbiamo havuta del Sermo Gran Duca di
Toscana, e che c’è stata data dal Cavalre Sigr MichelAngiolo Corai Gentilhuomo d’Aleppo,
spedito à Noi, per Ambasc:re espresso da S.A.S.ma à nome della quale ci ha presentato una
giocondiss:ma lettera, à Noi sopramodo gratiss:ma per haver visto con gran piacer Nostro in
essa, il grand:mo desiderio che ha S.A.S. di contrarre con esso Noi una perfetta Amicizia.
Noi dichiaramo che intorno à questo, non punto minore è il desiderio Nostro, et che ne
siamo contentissimi. Però accettiamo volontieri la sua potentiss:ma & inviolabile Amiciza,
secondo che la c’è stata realmente offerta; si come siam sicuri, che l’accettarà l’eccelsa &
inrévocabil Amicizia Nostra, la quale le offeriamo con quei maggiori vincoli d’obligo &
affezione, che possino stringere una vera Amicizia eterna, antivedendo dover risultarne per
ambele parti infinito bene.”
17. The treaty uses the word “Capitolazioni” in article 3 and again in article 5, ASF, MdP
4275, 113v–114r. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 128–132 discusses the treaty
and diplomatic mission, but this has been superseded. Federici, “A Servant of Two Mas-
ters,” 91–96 is right to see Corai, not Leoncini, as the head of the mission, as a perusal of
the documents in ASF MdP 4275 makes clear. For a lengthy discussion of this, see my “The
Empire That Wasn’t: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Empire, 1574–1609,” PhD diss.,
Stanford University, 2014.
18. ASF, MdP 4275, 113–117. For a brief account of the treaty see, Galluzzi, Storia del Grandu-
cato di Toscana, vol. 6, lib. V, cap. XI, 75–76, year 1607.
19. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r. “si fa forse il Sermo G.D. di far condescendere à tanta Amcizia Nr̓ a,
[Nostra] la Santtà del Beatmo Papa Paolo V.o vicario dell’ Omnipotentmo Dio fra Christiani,
e la Maiestà del Gloriosiss:mo ɛ Cattico Don Filippo iij̊ Re di Spagna Ze’. et altri Potentati e
Principi Cʰra̓ ni [Christiani], i quali tutti concorderanno à far una Lega con esso Noi.”
20. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179 sees the economic role of Aleppo as the motivating factor
behind Tuscan involvement. For a sense of the scale of this trade see E. K. Faridany, “Signal
Defeat: The Portuguese Loss of Comorão in 1614 and Its Political and Commercial Conse-
quences,” in Acta Iranica: Portugal, the Persian Gulf and Safavid Persia, ed. Rudi Matthee
and Jorge Flores, Iran Heritage Foundation and Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2011), 123 n. 15, who estimates
annual raw silk exports from Iran to Europe via Aleppo at above 200 metric tons in 1600.
21. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r.
22. MAP Doc ID 21027, entry for ASF, MdP 4275, 134. Unsigned letter from the Grand Ducal
Court in Florence to Michelagnolo Corai, 6 April 1607.
23. Niccolò Capponi, Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of
Lepanto, 2006, paperback ed. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2007), 331, Appendix 1; Roger
Crowley, Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest
for the Center of the World (New York: Random House, 2008); Victor Davis Hanson,
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, 2001, paperback
ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 238.
24. MAP Doc ID 21027, entry for ASF, MdP 4275, 134. Unsigned letter from the Grand Ducal
Court in Florence to Michelagnolo Corai, 6 April 1607. The relevant portion of the MAP
Transcription is, “Et se al Gran Duca [Ferdinando I] riuscirà l’impresa che quest’anno ha
mandato a tentare, egli ha pensiero di conservarla, et vi terrà 8 galere armate et 15 tra
galeoni et bertoni armati di brava gente et di molta artigliera, et sarà sempre pronto per dis-
turbare ogni disegno et ogni forza che il Turco volesse tentare contro al Sig.r [Ali] Giambol-
lat [Pasha of Aleppo], et contro ai ribelli, con i quali S. A. terrà sempre buona amicizia et
intelligenza, et starà unito con loro ai danni del Turco.” On the Tuscan bertoni see Gregory
Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts,
1560–1800 (New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1998), 13, 40.
25. ASF, MdP 4275, 64r–64v, 65r.
26. The foregoing summary of events on Cyprus closely follows Galluzzi, Storia del Grandu-
cato di Toscana, vol. 6, Lib. V, Cap. XI, year 1607, 77–78. See also the brief comment
in Niccolò Capponi, “Le Palle di Marte: Military Strategy and Diplomacy in the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany Under Ferdinand II de’ Medici (1621–1670),” The Journal of Military
 Making a New Prince 31
History 68 (October 2004): 1109. Capponi cites “P. Stylianos, “The Cyprus Revolution
of 1607 with the Help of the Grand Duke of Toskan,” Kypriakos Logos 12, no. 67–68
(1980): 129–30; ins. 1, 475 Miscellanea Medicea (hereafter MM), ASF.” (Capponi, 1109,
n. 10). See also Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition, 39–41.
27. For Florence’s population see, Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Flor-
ence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 337, Table 4.3; On Florence’s
recovery, see Eric Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries 1527–1800: A History of
Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1973).
28. For the Vauban comparison see, Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition, 62; J. R.
Hale, Florence and the Medici, 1977, paperback ed. (London: Phoenix, 2001), 130. Robert
Dallington, A Survey of the Great Dukes State of Tuscany in the Year of Our Lord 1596
(London: Printed [by George Eld] for Edward Blount, 1605.), 8 (5). Capponi, “Le Palle di
Marte,” 1129.
29. On Medici maritime activities, see Cesare Ciano, I primi Medici e il mare: Note sulla poli­
tica marinara toscana da Cosimo I a Ferdinando I. Biblioteca del «Bolletino Storico Pisano»
(Pisa: Pacini Editore: 1980). Franco Angiolini, “L’Ordine di Santo Stefano, i Toscani e il
Mare,” in Atti del Convegno, L’Ordine di Santo Stefano e il Mare (Pisa: ETS, 2001), 31–50.
30. ASF, MdP 4275, 103r–104r.
31. ASF, MdP 4275, 114.
32. ASF, MdP 4275, 113–117. For a brief account of the treaty see, Galluzzi, Storia del Grandu-
cato di Toscana, vol. 6, lib. V, cap. XI, 75–76, year 1607.
33. For cross-cultural brokering and diplomacy in the Venetian context, see Natalie Roth-
man, Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects Between Venice and Istanbul (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2014); Eric Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation,
Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2008). On diplomacy, see Monica Azzolini and Isabella Lazzarini, eds.,
Italian Renaissance Diplomacy: A Sourcebook (Durham and Toronto: Durham University
in Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham University and Pontifical Insti-
tute of Medieval Studies, 2017).
34. ASF, MdP 4275, 103r–104r.
35. This is Ippolito Leoncini, who seems to have been legation secretary, not the lead fig-
ure envisioned by Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 129. See ASF, MdP 4275,
49r. The treaty (ASF, MdP 4275, 117v) states, “Sigr MichelAngiolo Coraj. Ambasc:re quì
presente, col Sr Hippto Lioncinj mandato in sua conpagnia dalla sudetta Alt.za e dal Segret.rio
Giorg.o Cru̎ ger - . . .”.
36. ASF, MdP 4275, 103r-104r. “Copia d[el]la Lega˙ ɛ Capitoli che s’è fatta ɛ accordata [/] In
Aleppo fra ’l [il] Sermo Gran Duca di Toscana iií [/] ɛ l Sermo Principi Alij Giampulat Gov-
ernatr. ch[’] l [/] Regno di Soria——”
  Listra d[el]le robe ch’ è stato di necessità che l sr Michelang:lo [/] accordi con questo
S:mo Bascia [/] Cinque pezzi d’Artiglierie da campagno ɛ batteria scompartito [/] Canne
d’archibuso d[el]la misura ch[e] ͡ 5 palmi che n’ ha un [/] disegno Hippolito nel suo tam-
buro d————nro 1000 —— [/] Giachi alla foggia d[e]lle misuro che ha il detto Hippolito
[/] nel suo tamburo, che dieci conforme alla detta misura & [/] gli altri nel miglior modo
che si troveranno d————nro 100 —— [/] Colonne di marmo bianco ɛ mischie come sa
il latore che [/] 4 bianche ɛ l’altre mischie ɛt hano̓ [hanno] a˙ servire p[er] una fontana cne
8 —— [/] Un Lione scolpito in marmo bianco c’habbia le due bianche avanti [/] sopra la
trita d’un Bue ɛ l’altre un modo di predare con la bocca aperto [/] per dove possa uscire
l’acqua havendo à servire p[er] una fontana [/] Due veste di velluto à op[er]a di fuori ɛ felpa
dentro di colore come piu [/] piacerà fuor che nro [nero] o colore maninconico havendo
à servire una p[er] il smo [/] )—‫ ׀‬Bascia ɛl’altra p[er] la sua moglie sposa [/] Un bariglione
di marzolini— [/] Un Giardinero ɛ un Bombardiero [/] Quattro visto p[er] il checchià di
velluto riccio, in man d[e]l quale sta ogn·~ [/] cosa ɛ governa tutto, di coloro verde pao­
nazzo rosso ɛt azurro celeste [/] Una dozina di pistoli d’un palmo indorate che sono trova
a Vienna d’ [/] Ungheria di p[r]ezzo d’un unghero l’una Dua archibusi à ruota [/] Tagli di
Ermisino ò raso p[er] cinque, ò sei veste p[er] diversi offizialj
37. ASF, MdP 4275, 104r.
38. Ibid.
32  Brian Brege
9. Ibid.
3
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. Kaled El Bibas, L’Emiro e il Granduca: La vicenda dell’emiro Fakhr ad-Dīn del Libano nel
contesto delle relazioni fra la Toscana e l’Oriente, Le Vie della Storia, 77 (Firenze: Le Let-
tere, 2010), 48.
43. ASF, MdP 4275, 104r. As a symbol linked to power and kingship, the lion had both very
old roots in the region and contemporary salience across a wide array of cultures.
44. ASF, MdP 4275, 104r.
45. Thanks to Francesco Freddolini for this information.
46. See also Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179, 185.
47. Machiavelli, The Prince, VII, 22–23.
48. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses, 1.23. For an excellent edition see, Niccolò Machia­
velli and Francesco Guicciardini, The Sweetness of Power: Machiavelli’s Discourses &
Guicciardini’s Considerations, trans. James B. Atkinson and David Sices (De Kalb, IL:
Northern Illinois University Press, 2002), 82–83.
49. On the Long Turkish War see Wilson, The Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy, 97–103.
50. Machiavelli and Guicciardini, The Sweetness of Power, Discourses, II.31, 251.
3 “To the Victor Go the Spoils”
Christian Triumphalism, Cosimo I de’
Medici, and the Order of Santo
Stefano in Pisa
Joseph M. Silva

On 1 October 1561, Pope Pius IV, a distant relative of the Medici family of Flor-
ence, approved by papal bull Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s petition to found a military
holy order, the Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, dedicated to the third-century pope and
martyr.1 Its objective was to defend Catholicism, guard the Mediterranean from the
Infidels, and bring glory to Cosimo himself.2 Pius IV then signed in Rome His Quae
Pro Religionis Propagatione, a bolla, on 1 February 1562, which approved the stat-
utes of the Order, its insignia—a red, equal-armed cross with eight points on a white
background—and Cosimo I and his progeny as Grand Masters of the order in perpe-
tuity.3 The granting of this privilege, usually accorded only to royalty, demonstrated
Cosimo’s deep ties to the Roman Church.4
The establishment of such an institution was particularly relevant at this moment
in the sixteenth century, when the medieval idea of a crusade had first gained support
from Pope Paul III and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Council of Trent some
fifteen years earlier in 1545.5 Charles V, an ally of Cosimo, had lost substantial terri-
tory to the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Suleiman and failed to take the Ottoman
stronghold of Algiers. His navy was also routinely pirated by the Barbary c­ orsairs—
Islamic privateers who settled along the Barbary coast of North Africa—in the Medi-
terranean Sea.
The Order of Santo Stefano allowed Cosimo several political advantages. It tied
together the Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States, giving him greater status over his
peers in the Italian peninsula. Since a holy order was a religious organization of the
Roman Catholic Church, it was independent of secular law and incapable of being
disbanded by a secular authority without the consent of the Holy See. It also allowed
Cosimo, who envisioned and promoted himself as a modern Christian crusader, to
exert his presence and expand his territory into the Mediterranean Sea under the oper-
ative of providing security to Christian coastlines, mercantile vessels, and trade posts.
Although membership was restricted to nobles, primarily from Tuscany, the knight-
hood was no honorific or chivalric society like the Order of the Golden Fleece.6
Cosimo’s knights engaged in physical warfare and suffered significant injuries and
casualties, a point largely ignored in current scholarship.7 This chapter examines the
themes of conflict, triumph, and bodily sacrifice as they are addressed by the archi-
tecture, spectacle, painting, and, most importantly, spoils taken by the Knighthood of
Santo Stefano in their battles with Barbary corsairs and Ottoman Turks. A cohesive
visual program was therefore established to promote and legitimize Cosimo I and his
knights as successful and devoted Christian crusaders, who swore “to bear willingly
any danger for the defense of the Christian religion.”8
34  Joseph M. Silva
Cosimo headquartered the Order of Santo Stefano in the city of Pisa, which enjoyed
an illustrious maritime history in the early Middle Ages. Its naval fleets participated
in the First Crusade (1096) and the defeat of Turkish Muslims in Corsica (1016 and
1046), Sardinia (1052), and Palermo (1060).9 By basing the order here, Cosimo linked
his modern crusading knighthood to a rich, medieval history of Christian triumph
over Islam, and by doing so, provided the order with an instant pedigree.10 The city—
even though its harbor was choked with silt—would once again hold military claim
over the Mediterranean and Tyrrhenian Seas after nearly two centuries of decline in
its resuscitated purpose of defending Christians and Christendom from the Muslim
threat.11
But the crumbling former governmental buildings, private residences, and ecclesias-
tic spaces that ringed the Piazza delle Sette Vie in the medieval center of Pisa—which
were to be repurposed to house the knighthood and its governing bodies—lacked such
a distinguished heritage. The piazza and its abutting structures had grown organically
throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with no systemization, rendering the
piazza irregular in shape, intersected by seven streets, and bordered by eight variably
sized and stylistically non-cohesive buildings. Cosimo presented his court artist and
architect, Giorgio Vasari, with the challenge of bringing order and visual harmony to
the rambling square in order to make it modern and befit the honorable mission of
the noble knights.12
The most important building on the square was the church of the order, Santo Ste-
fano dei Cavalieri, as it represented symbolically and physically the very reasons for
the founding of the holy order by Cosimo I: the defense, preservation, and triumph of
Christianity (Figure 3.1). The church was the only structure built anew between 1565
and 1569, the year it was consecrated.13 Since it was intended for the exclusive use of
the order, accommodating the liturgical needs of the knights was key in determining
its plan. Every member was required to attend the knighthood’s triennial convocation,
so a large space was needed to host the event. Responding to this requirement, Vasari
chose a simple but functional rectangular plan without side aisles, the nave of which
terminates in the east with a square apse. The entrance to the apse is free of a rood
screen, offering unobstructed views from all points within the church of the religious
ceremony at the high altar. This is an important difference from other churches of the
medieval and early modern period, where the congregation’s view of the high altar
was obscured by a wall or screen. Only the officiating clergy was privy to the rite tak-
ing place in the apse.
Ewa Karwacka Codini rightly asserts that Vasari’s design also responded to the
changes in liturgical practice dictated by the Council of Trent, whose sessions ended
in 1563, coinciding with the planning of the church.14 According to the Canons and
Decrees of the council, the laity was to be more actively involved in religious cer-
emony by bearing direct witness to it, especially to the mystery of the Sacrament of
the Eucharist.15 But it was not until 1577 that Carlo Borromeo, the papal secretary
under Pope Pius IV during the proceedings of the Council of Trent, published his trea-
tise on ecclesiastic architecture that took into consideration the new liturgical prac-
tices set forth by the Council and disseminated them.16 Therefore Cosimo and Vasari
anticipated these future changes in church architecture. Although Codini mentions the
prescient nature of the design, it is Marcia Hall who suggests that Cosimo’s familial
relationship with Pius IV privileged his knowledge of these changes.17 I would add that
Cosimo’s role as grand master of a holy crusading order, which placed him in direct
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 35

Figure 3.1 Church of Santo Stefano, interior, Pisa.

Source: Joseph M. Silva.

service to, not just in political or religious alliance with, the papacy, provided him
with privileged information. The knights, as agents and defenders of Christendom,
undoubtedly wanted an unimpeded view of the miracle of the Eucharist and the divine
presence of Christ, for whom, as martyrs, they sacrificed their lives.
But some of the most visually and symbolically charged objects in the church were
the trophies taken in victory by the knights from their defeated Muslim enemies. The
order’s statutes give specific reference to the spoils of war:

We order all the good members of the Divine Cult, that goblets, vases of silver,
of gold, or gilded, cloth of gold, of silver, of silk, or other similar things that are
recovered in the spoils of our knights . . . will arrive at the Church of our Con-
vent . . . and a diligent inventory of these items will be done.18

The inventories were kept in the Libro delle prede, bandiere, e schiavi, which records the
number of spoils accompanied by brief description that were captured by the knights
from 1573 to 1692.19 According to the Libro, flags and banners were hung in the nave
of the church, but it remains unclear if the objects made of precious metals were dis-
played in the church, locked away in the sacristy, or sent to Florence. Pandolfo Titi’s
guide to Pisa, published in 1751, confirms that “trophies of banners and standards
36  Joseph M. Silva
taken from the Berbers” adorned the interior of the church, while a later nineteenth-
century English travel guide to central Italy adds that “banners, shields, horse-tails,
scimitars, [and] poop lanterns” were arranged “picturesquely” against its walls.20
Few of the many objects survive today save for some of the banners that continue
to line the walls of the nave.21 Although these date from the mid- to late seventeenth
century, the practice of displaying them probably began with Cosimo I in the late
sixteenth century. For example, at the Battle of Piombino in 1555, the duke ordered
that flags taken from the defeated Ottoman Turks be placed inside the church of San
Lorenzo in Florence.22 Such trophies quantified his success as a military commander,
and in Pisa, they legitimized his and the knighthood’s role as modern Christian crusad-
ers.23 This is further suggested by one of the most important flags seized by the naval
knighthood that was displayed in its church: the flag from Muezzinzade Ali’s ship,
the Sultana.24 Taken by the Knights of Santo Stefano at the decisive Battle of Lepanto
in 1571, it represented an unparalleled victory not only for the Holy League but also
for the fledgling order.25 So powerful and tangible was this symbol of victory—like
the spolia opima of ancient Rome—Cosimo did not feel obligated to commemorate
the event in any other way, unlike King Philip II and Pope Pius V, who commissioned
paintings of the battle from Titian and Vasari respectively.26
These items served as the physical evidence and historical record of the knight-
hood’s primary mission: the martial defense of Christianity.27 And they continually
reminded the knights of their physical sacrifices as well as their victories. The decora-
tive program in Santo Stefano, however, was not new to Pisa. The public display of
spoils on or in ecclesiastic space enjoyed a long history in the city, centering primarily
around the medieval cathedral complex, its religious heart.
Medieval Pisa’s obsession with spoils can be traced to the year 1060, when the Pisan
navy narrowly defeated a fleet of Islamic galleys in the waters off of Palermo. As Eva
Hoffman is correct to point out, such battles were waged primarily over the monopoly
of lucrative trade routes and territorial expansion rather than over religious intoler-
ance.28 But the victory was deemed by the Pisans as a miracle enacted by the Virgin
Mary, attesting to the power of Christianity over Islam and asserting that Christians
had divine rights over the waters in the southern Mediterranean. It was in honor of
the Virgin’s miraculous intercession that the construction of the Pisa cathedral, Santa
Maria Assunta, began in 1064, financed almost exclusively by the spoils procured
during that battle.29
Sometime in the twelfth century, a large-scale, Islamic bronze sculpture of a griffin
was installed high atop a column that rises from a gable over the apse of the cathe-
dral (Figure 3.2).30 The sculpture, with the head of a cockerel and the winged body
of a feline, was likely cast in Islamic Spain in the mid-eleventh century, a conclu-
sion based primarily on stylistic similarities with other works attributed to that time
period and location.31 The exact means of its arrival in Pisa is also uncertain, but it
probably entered the city as part of a trove of booty from the Pisan navy’s conquest
of the Balearic islands, a Muslim principality in the western Mediterranean Sea, in
1115.32 The battle, launched to free Christian slaves from their Muslim captors, was
recorded and celebrated in the form of an epic, the Liber maiolichinus de gestis pisa-
norum illustribus, commissioned by the government of Pisa and written between 1117
and 1125.33 Moreover, the decisive victory was added to a list of inscriptions on the
facade of the cathedral that memorialized the city’s naval successes against its Muslim
enemies.34
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 37

Figure 3.2 The Pisa Griffin, c. 12th century, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Pisa.
Source: Joseph M. Silva.

The surface of the griffin is ornamented with Arabic written in kufic script and styl-
ized representations of feathers, but such intricate detail was lost to the casual Pisan
observer, who saw the sculpture from below and at a great distance. This begs the
question whether or not the griffin was still recognizable as an Islamic trophy by the
time of Cosimo I and the Knighthood of Santo Stefano in the mid-sixteenth century.
The answer is yes. A document that lists the cost of repairs made to the Pisa cathedral
in July 1543 records the replacement of the column upon which the griffin perches.35
The installation would have afforded an up-close view of the bronze, re-affirming its
38  Joseph M. Silva
non-Christian manufacture, and the fact that the column was replaced, rather than
removed altogether, suggests the importance of keeping the griffin on the cathedral to
the Opera del Duomo. Moreover, the sculpture is described by Raffaello Roncioni in
his Delle istorie pisane, dated between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of
the seventeenth century, as a very beautiful bronze hippogryph engraved with “Egyp-
tian letters.”36
Although the sculpture could not be easily seen, it could be heard. Anna Conta-
dini convincingly argues that the original purpose of the griffin was that of a sound
machine evidenced by a highly resonant, bowl-shaped vessel located inside the hol-
low-cast sculpture that was once activated by a bagpipe.37 Such roaring sculptures
were a type of courtly amusement, as described by Liudprand, Bishop of Cremona,
at the court of Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Phocas in Constantinople in the tenth
century.38 In the windy conditions on top of the Pisa cathedral, the griffin shrieked as
if it were alive, drawing the attention of all those in the vicinity and reminding them
of its presence, as both a marvel of engineering and craftsmanship and as a symbol of
Pisa’s triumph over its Muslim enemies.
The most important of trophies brought to Pisa, relics, included soil taken from
the Mount of Golgotha, the legendary site of Adam’s burial and of the crucifixion
of Christ, just outside the walls of Jerusalem, by Ubaldo Lanfranchi, the archbishop
of Pisa, in 1189. Lanfranchi led the Pisan navy into battle during the failed Third
Crusade orchestrated by popes Gregory VIII and Clement III to liberate Jerusalem
from Muslim occupation and to claim it for Christianity.39 Upon his return to Pisa,
Lanfranchi obtained property near the cathedral in 1203, where the architectural reli-
quary, the Camposanto, was built to enshrine fifty-three galleys’ worth of the sancti-
fied soil by 1278.40 The atrium replaced the cathedral as the most desirable burial site,
for it was believed that the soil miraculously decomposed the body within nine days
of interment and ensured it eternal life.41 In this way, the Holy Land was quite literally
transported to Pisa, making the city a more accessible and potent pilgrimage site than
distant and dangerous Jerusalem.
It is also important to note that the plan and elevation of the circular Pisan bap-
tistery, begun in 1153 and completed sometime in the 1300s, imitated those of the
Anastasis Rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the most sacred Christian site
in Jerusalem.42 Thus, this network of sacred buildings worked together as a physical
and symbolic representation of Jerusalem in Pisa and as a collective monument to
Christian victory through the public presentation of spoils.
Cosimo I exploited this, forging a visual and historical link between the medieval
Pisa cathedral complex and the modern church of Santo Stefano by way of their tro-
phies. The bronze griffin perched atop the gable of the cathedral thus entered into a
dialogue with the banners and flags that hung along the interior walls of the knight-
hood’s church, connecting the past with the present in an uninterrupted chain of Pisa’s
involvement in Christian triumphs over Islam.
Yet unlike the griffin, the Islamic banners, standards, and pennants were crafted
specifically as symbols of religious and territorial alliance for war galleys, and thus
for conflict. Emblazoned with crescent moons and passages taken from the Qur’an in
Arabic calligraphy with the name of Allah repeated in some instances thousands of
times, they functioned not only as markers of a faith but also as talismans, charged
to protect the crews from every injury or to promise Paradise upon death.43 One can
imagine these crimson silk banners with gold embroidery fluttering wildly in the wind
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 39
on the roiling sea, but then, once seized by their enemies, the Order of Santo Stefano,
hanging limply, inert and landlocked on the whitewashed walls of a small church,
subject to readings of scripture from the Bible in Latin like a forced conversion.
Unlike the static display of spoils in the cathedral complex of Pisa, the trophies pro-
cured by the knighthood moved. A fresco painted by Baldassare Franceschini, called
il Volterrano, in the cortile of the Medici Villa La Petraia between 1636 and 1646
commemorates the Order of Santo Stefano’s raid on the Tunisian city of Bona in 1607,
orchestrated by Grand Duke Ferdinando I, Cosimo’s son (Figure 3.3).44 It was the
most lucrative exploit of the knighthood, capturing fifteen hundred Muslim men and
women who were sold in the Tuscan slave market. The painting depicts the return of
the knights, who led a parade of spoils and bound Barbary prisoners to Ferdinando’s
heir Cosimo II, who, as current grand master of the order, stands outside the church
of Santo Stefano to receive them. Although the scene contains allegorical figures and
perhaps hyperbolizes the amount of spoils, it is a faithful representation of the specta-
cle and mobilization of trophies that took place in the Piazza dei Cavalieri upon each
successful incursion.45
Every three years, the spoils left the order’s church to enter the piazza in a large-scale
procession that marked its triennial convocation, when the entire membership of the
knighthood convened in Pisa to elect its officers and attend communal mass. According
to Fulvio Fontana, a Jesuit priest who wrote the earliest history of the Order of Santo
Stefano in 1706, the knights, dressed in white robes embellished with the crimson red

Figure 3.3 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Cosimo II Receiving the Victorious

Knights of Santo Stefano, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
40  Joseph M. Silva
cross of the order on their chests, exited the Palazzo dei Cavalieri in pairs arranged by
age from youngest to oldest.46 Behind a large cross, the knights carried the

banners, standards, spoils, [and] trophies all brought back [to Pisa] at the cost of
the sweat, and the wounds of the Knights, and . . . soaked no less in their own
blood, and that of the blood of the enemies of the Holy Faith.47

Fontana’s visceral description with its emphasis on blood underscores the deeper
significance of the trophies. They not only represented Christian victory and conquest
but also bodily sacrifice to both the order and the attendees of this public specta-
cle.48 In this way, the knights were promoted as martyrs, like their patron saint. The
appearance of these blood-soaked objects in the procession, vivified by the physical
movements of the knights themselves, made tangible and immediate the violence of
the battles that occurred far away from Pisa at sea and confirmed Cosimo’s and the
knighthood’s triumphs in securing the Tuscan state and Christendom. The proces-
sion was also an opportunity for the public to see these objects, which were normally
stored in the private confines of the church. Spectators no doubt marveled at their
exotic appearance and manufacture: their foreignness and beauty contributing to the
visual splendor and wonder of the event. The experience must have been a galvaniz-
ing one, for the procession was rife with powerful thematic juxtapositions—beauty
vs. gore, life vs. death, victory vs. defeat, Christianity vs. Islam—primarily expressed
through foreign objects.
The parade circumambulated the Piazza dei Cavalieri before filing in to the Church
of Santo Stefano, which could be interpreted as a theater dedicated to the perfor-
mances of sacrifice and triumph. While seated amidst their blood-stained trophies,
the knights had a clear view of the high altar in the apse as well as to two other altars
set against the side walls of the church. Cosimo I commissioned his court painter
Bronzino in 1564 to execute a large-scale altarpiece illustrating the nativity of Christ
for one of them, which was installed upon the completion of the interior of the church
in 1569 (Figure 3.4).49
Here, one is confronted by a both joyous and tragic moment. Bronzino’s high tech-
nical ability in creating fluid and animated forms helps convey a sense of jubilation
on account of the birth of the Christ child. Viewed in this way, the painting is celebra-
tory in nature because God was made flesh through the Incarnation and promised
salvation. But Bronzino placed the child at the bottom of the composition in close
proximity to the altar table, intimating that he will ultimately be sacrificed to redeem
humankind of its sins. This is further evidenced by the sacrificial lambs carried by two
male figures, one to the left and one to the right of the Virgin Mary, and the basket of
bread—body of Christ—that another man rests against the stone slab that supports
the fidgeting Christ child. The slab could allude to the physical altar itself or to the
Stone of Unction, the stone upon which Christ was prepared for burial by Joseph of
Arimathea, located in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in what the knights perceived
as enemy-occupied Jerusalem in need of liberation and Christian ownership.50
The child’s placement near the altar sets up a powerful visual dialogue between
Christ’s pictorial representation in the painting and his real, physical presence in the
bread and the wine of the Eucharist, a belief made doctrine at the thirteenth session
of the Council of Trent in 1551.51 At the altar, Christ is sacrificed, bodily and repeat-
edly, to cleanse the sins of the knights and to recommit them to their faith and mis-
sion. Such an interpretation would not be lost on these learned nobles, who not only
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 41

Figure 3.4 Bronzino, The Nativity of Christ, c. 1564, Church of Santo Stefano, Pisa.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

took Communion before the altarpiece but were also sworn to protect Christianity as
soldiers of Christ, even if it meant the sacrifice of their own bodies and the spilling of
their own blood in direct imitation of Christ, a fate made tangible by the trophies that
surrounded them.
42  Joseph M. Silva
The painting for the second side altar was executed by Vasari between 1569 and 1571,
while working in the Vatican under Pope Pius V (Figure 3.5). The subject is the martyr-
dom of Saint Stephen, but this is not the third-century Saint Stephen, pope and martyr, to
whom the order is dedicated. Instead, Vasari represents the first-century Saint Stephen,
deacon and martyr, who was stoned to death. It is unclear why Vasari painted the ear-
lier Saint Stephen instead of the more technically appropriate third-­century namesake,

Figure 3.5  Giorgio Vasari, Stoning of Saint Stephen, c. 1569–71, Church of Santo Stefano, Pisa.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 43
especially when the order expressed concern to him in a letter dated 1569 that it had no
representations of its patron saint in the church.52 One wonders if this is an hagiographic
or iconographic error on his or his advisors’ part, or if it was an intentional decision.53
The first-century Saint Stephen is the more theologically important of the two, as his
story is recounted in Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament and at length in Jacobus
de Voragine’s The Golden Legend.54 He is considered to be the first martyr of Christian-
ity, making him the exemplar on which all subsequent martyrdoms were based, and he
was martyred in Jerusalem, an important detail for a crusading order.
Vasari painted the most dramatic scene in the life of Saint Stephen: the moment
before his death. The event is staged against a backdrop of what appears to be a con-
flation of ancient Roman and Renaissance architecture that is supposed to represent
Jerusalem in the first century. The domed structure behind the crenellated tower in the
background may be a loose interpretation of the Anastasis Rotunda of the Church of
the Holy Sepulcher, the architecture of which was known through eye-witness accounts
from pilgrims as well as through prints and drawings.55 Its general resemblance was
probably enough for the knights to make the visual connection.56 Saint Stephen, dressed
anachronistically in the contemporary vestments of a deacon, kneels among his execu-
tioners. The blood-red cloth of his garment, richly brocaded with gold, surely echoed
in color and ornamentation the Islamic banners that hung in the church.
The enraptured, if not ecstatic, expression on his face confirms a willing acceptance
of his fate, the spectacularly gruesome nature of which is intimated by Vasari, together
with a profound assurance of his future salvation and afterlife through Christ, pictured
alongside God on a cloud. The painting was intended to inspire the same depth of reli-
gious and spiritual conviction in its target audience, the Knights of Santo Stefano. In
their religious fight against the enemies of Christianity, the knights could relate to the
saint himself, who fearlessly spoke against the Sanhedrin, which, angry with the saint’s
ability to convert Jews to Christianity, falsely accused him of blasphemy. Moreover,
the conversion of Muslims to Catholicism was a popular topic of post–Protestant Ref-
ormation discourse as a way to uphold Counter-Reformation doctrine and assert the
supremacy of the Catholic denomination.57
The representation of Jerusalem in the background—along with the Stone of Unc-
tion in Bronzino’s painting—was a powerful reminder of its present occupation by the
Ottoman Empire. The most sacred Christian relics and sites were therefore in the pos-
session of the so-called Infidel. But Vasari’s glorified image of martyrdom, which the
knights faced during every military incursion, promised immediate salvation and an
eternal afterlife in the presence of God, bolstering their sworn commitment to defend
Christianity at any cost.
Cosimo I de’ Medici employed a multi-media visual program that served to define
and promote himself and the Order of Santo Stefano as defenders of Christianity and
the territorial holdings of Christendom as a whole. Although primarily confined to the
Tuscan city of Pisa, this orchestrated panoply of objects and performances commu-
nicated to all who saw them Cosimo and the order’s global, not just domestic, reach
and influence. The collection of both medieval and early modern Islamic spoils in par-
ticular played a crucial role in representing this religious and international conflict, in
all its sacrificial and literal bloodiness, that occurred far beyond the Tuscan coastline
in the Mediterranean Sea. Crusading—the very notion of which implies the crossing
of imaginary yet imposed boundaries—allowed Cosimo to expand, theoretically, the
geographical parameter of his Duchy and image himself not only as a national but
also as a world power, an aspiration often left unexplored in previous scholarship
44  Joseph M. Silva
on the duke. Even Vasari’s altarpiece of Saint Stephen, although painted in Rome
and housed in Pisa, transports the viewer visually to Jerusalem, the primary locus of
international and religious dispute concerning its ownership. The subject matter of the
painting and the surrounding spoils recovered in battle by the victorious Knights of
Santo Stefano placed Cosimo squarely in the discourse about the military campaigns
against the Ottoman Turks and the Barbary corsairs in the early modern period. He
and his knighthood were thus visualized as intrepid crusaders and willing martyrs
who defended Christianity on a global scale from the perceived threat of Islam and
Muslim territorial expansion into the West.

Acknowledgments
The material for this chapter comes out of my doctoral dissertation, Thuscorum et
Ligurum Securitati: Cosimo I de’ Medici and the Visual Program for the Order of
Saint Stephen in Pisa and Florence, completed under the direction of Evelyn Lincoln
at Brown University in 2015. I am grateful to Roberta J. M. Olson for reading a draft
of this chapter and offering me invaluable insights. I am also thankful to Francesco
Freddolini and Marco Musillo who invited me to present my research at the 2016
Renaissance Society of America conference in Boston, MA for their panel The Medici
and the Seas: Things on the Move and Grand Ducal Tuscany and for their incisive
commentary on the chapter.

Notes
1. The knighthood was dedicated to Saint Stephen, pope and martyr, since two important mili-
tary victories for Cosimo I occurred on that saint’s feast day, 2 August: The Battle of Mon-
temurlo in 1537 and the Battle of Marciano in 1554. For general studies on the Knighthood
of Santo Stefano, see: Gino Guarnieri, I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano nella storia della marina
italiana (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1960); Franco Angiolini, “L’arsenale Mediceo: la politica marit-
tima dei Medici e le vicende dell’arsenale a Pisa,” in Livorno e Pisa: Due città e un territorio
nella politica dei Medici (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editrice, 1980), 176–178; Franco Angiolini,
“L’ordine di Santo Stefano: una storia plurisecolare,” in Pisa dei Cavalieri, ed. Clara Barac-
chini (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci Editore, 1997), 7–19; Franco Angiolini, “L’ordine di Santo
Stefano, i Toscani e il mare,” in Atti del convegno l’ordine di Santo Stefano e il mare (Pisa,
11–12 maggio 2001) (Pisa: ETS, 2001), 31–50; Rodolfo Bernardini, “Istruzione e obblighi
militari dei cavalieri carovanisti da Cosimo I a Pietro Leopoldo I,” in L’istituzione dei Cava-
lieri di Santo Stefano: Origine, sviluppo, attività (Pisa: ETS, 2005), 230–231.
2. “Ad Dei laudem et gloriam, ac fidei catholicae defensionem, marisque Mediterranei ab
infedelibus custodiam et tuitonem, nec non posterum tuorum decus.” See Aurelio Scetti,
The Journal of Aurelio Scetti: A Florentine Galley Slave at Lepanto, 1565–1577, ed. Luigi
Monga (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), 22.
3. Marco Gemignani, “The Navies of the Medici: The Florentine Navy and the Navy of the
Sacred Military Order of Saint Stephen, 1547–1648,” in War at Sea in the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance, ed. John B. Hattendorf and Richard W. Unger (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
2003), 174; Guarnieri, I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano nella storia della marina italiana, 43.
4. Baldassarre Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, published in 1528, discusses the pres-
tige of founding a military order, which was a particular characteristic and prerogative of
princes who presided over established courts. Baldassarre Castiglione, Il cortegiano (Vene­
zia: Bernardo Basa, 1583), 116. Cosimo I was also member of the Order of the Golden
Fleece, an honor granted to him by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1545.
5. Ewa Karwacka Codini, “I Medici e i Cavalieri. Rifondazione di uno spazio urbano,” in Pisa dei
Cavalieri, ed. Clara Baracchini (Milan: Franco Maria Ricci Editore, 1997), 30 and Jonathan
Riley-Smith, The Crusades: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 282–284.
6. For a case study of this procedure see Peter M. Brown, “Lionardo Salviati and the Ordine
di Santo Stefano,” Italica 34, no. 2 (June 1957): 69–74; Marcella Aglietti, Le tre nobiltà,
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 45
La legislazione nobiliare del granducato di Toscana (1750) tra magistrature civiche, Ordine
di Santo Stefano e diplomi del principe (Pisa: ETS, 2000), 15–24.
7. For example, in July 1563, two of the order’s galleys, the Lupa and Fiorenza, were ambushed
by two Muslim galleys near the port city of Tortosa off the north coast of Africa. The Lupa
was all but completely destroyed and approximately a dozen knights were killed. The sur-
vivors were taken prisoner and enslaved. See Gemignani, “The Navies of the Medici,” 176
and Niccolò Capponi, Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle
of Lepanto (New York: Da Capo Press, 2006), 110–111. For art historians who downplay
the efficacy of the knights and the mortal danger they faced, see Paul Richelson, Studies in
the Personal Imagery of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence (New York: Garland Pub-
lishing, Inc., 1978), 148–149; Mario Scalini, Il saracino e gli spettacoli cavallereschi nella
Toscana granducale (Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 1987), 153; and Henk Th.
van Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 97.
8. “[S]ottentrare di buona volontà a qualunque pericolo per difesa nella Cristiana Religione”
Statuti dell’Ordine di Santo Stefano (Florence: Giunti, 1655), 80.
9. See Emilio Tolaini, Forma Pisarum: Storia urbanistica della città di Pisa (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi,
1979); Marco Tangheroni, ed., Pisa e il Mediterraneo. Uomini, merci, idee dagli Etruschi ai
Medici (Milan: Skira, 2003).
10. Choosing Pisa was also a practical decision for Cosimo, as it involved no diplomatic
maneuvering or payment to any foreign power, and the city already held on occasion the
galleys of the Tuscan navy.
11. Pisa fell into decline during the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and early-sixteenth centuries
beginning with the outbreak of plague in 1348 and the city’s sale to Florence in 1406, to
Genoa in 1421, and back to Florence in 1472.
12. Riccardo Ciuti, Pisa Medicea, itinerario storico artistico tra Cinque e Seicento (Pisa: Felici,
2003), 34–35 and most importantly Ewa Karwacka Codini, Piazza dei Cavalieri, urba­
nistica e architettura dal Medioevo al Novecento (Florence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze,
1989), 13–20; Codini, “I Medici e i Cavalieri. Rifondazione di uno spazio urbano,” 93.
13. Codini, “I Medici e i Cavalieri. Rifondazione di uno spazio urbano,” 95 and Giovanna
Piancastelli Politi and Paolo Mazzoni, “La riorganizzazione del centro e la Piazza dei Cava-
lieri,” in Livorno e Pisa: Due città e un territorio nella politica dei Medici (Pisa: Nistri-
Lischi Editrice, 1980), 345.
14. Codini, “I Medici e i Cavalieri. Rifondazione di uno spazio urbano,” 95.
15. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. Theodore Alois Buckley (London:
George Routledge and Co., 1851), 143–144. For Pope Paul III and his emphasis on com-
munion, see Ludwig von Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle
Ages, vol. 11 (London: J. Hodges, 1894–1953), 150.
16. Carlo Borromeo, Instructiones fabricae et supellectilis ecclesiasticae, 1577, trans. Evelyn
Carol Voelker (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1977).
17. Marcia B. Hall, Renovation and Counter-Reformation: Vasari and Duke Cosimo in Santa
Maria Novella and Santa Croce, 1565–77 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 7–8.
18. “Ordiniamo, che tutti i ben deputati al culto Divino, come sono calici, vasi ‘argento, d’oro,
o indorati, panni d’oro, d’argento, di seta, o altre cose simiglianti, che si ritroveranno nelle
spoglie de’Cavalieri nostri . . . pervenghino alla Chiesa del nostro Convento . . . e se ne fac-
cia diligente inventario.” Statuti, 128–129.
19. Gino Guarnieri, “Il registro delle prede dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano,” Archivio Storico
Italiano 131, no. 477 (1973): 257–286.
20. Pandolfo Titi, Guida per il passeggiere dilettante di pittura, scultura ed architettura nelle
città di Pisa (Bologna: Forni Editore, 1973), 104–105 and John Murray and Octavian Ble-
witt, A Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (London: John Murray, 1867), 35.
21. Sarah Butler Handcock, “I trofei di vittoria: Bandiere, stendardi, gagliardetti, fiamme, fanali,
tolti al nemico,” in L’Ordine di S. Stefano nei suoi aspetti organizzativi interni sotto il Gran
Magistero Mediceo, vol. 1 (Pisa: Giardini, 1966), 279–289; Marco Piccolino and Nicholas
J. Wade, “Flagging Early Examples of Ambiguity,” Perception, vol. 35 (2006): 1003–1006;
and Guarnieri, “Il registro delle prede dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano,” 257–286.
22. Roberto Cantagalli, La Guerra di Siena, 1552–1559. I termini della questione senese nella
lotta tra Francia e Absburgo nel’500 e il suo risolversi nell’ambito del Principato Mediceo
(Siena: Accademia Senese degli Intronati, 1962), 439.
46  Joseph M. Silva
23. For interpretive studies on the flags, see Codini, “I Medici e i Cavalieri. Rifondazione di
uno spazio urbano,” 95; Guarnieri, “Il registro delle prede dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano,”
257; Clara Baracchini and Donata Devoti, “Le glorie di una dinastia. I trofei turcheschi e il
tesoro” in Pisa dei Cavalieri, ed. Clara Baracchini (Pisa: Franco Maria Ricci, 1997), 72–80;
and Barbara Karl, “The Ottoman flags of Santo Stefano in Pisa as tools of Medici dynastic
propaganda,” in Thirteenth International Congress of Turkish Art, Proceedings, ed. Geza
Dávid and Ipolya Gerelyes (Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2009), 211–224.
24. Roger Crowley, Empires of the Sea, the Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Con-
test for the Center of the World (New York: Random House, Inc., 2008), 280. The banner
is no longer extant.
25. Scetti, The Journal of Aurelio Scetti, 22. Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204–1571,
vol. 4 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984); Crowley, 85–190; and Capponi.
26. For Titian, see Peter Humfrey, Titian: The Complete Paintings (Ghent: Ludion, 2007), 368.
For Vasari, see Rick Scorza, “Vasari’s Lepanto Frescoes: ‘Apparati’, Medals, Prints and the
Celebration of Victory,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 75 (2012): 141–200.
27. Spolia performs as a proxy for the event itself, as argued by Paolo Liverani, “Reading Spo-
lia in Late Antiquity and Contemporary Perception,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appro-
priation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant
and Dale Kinney (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 33–51.
28. Eva R. Hoffman, “Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian interchange from the
tenth to the twelfth century,” Art History 24, no. 1 (February 2001): 22.
29. Adriano Peroni, ed., Il Duomo di Pisa, vol. 1 (Modena: F. C. Panini, 1995), 13–14 and Fabio
Redi and Carlo Cantini, Pisa: Il Duomo e la Piazza (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1996), 43–56.
30. The original bronze, now located in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, was replaced by a
modern facsimile in 1828.
31. Marilyn Jenkins, “New Evidence for the Possible Provenance and Fate of the So-Called Pisa
Griffin,” Islamic Archeological Studies I (1978): 79–85; Cynthia Robison, “Pisa Griffin,” in
Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain, ed. Jerrilyn E. Dodds (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
Inc., 1992), 216–218; Anna Contadini, Richard Camber and Peter Northover, “Beasts That
Roared: The Pisa Griffin and the New York Lion,” in Cairo to Kabul, Afghan and Islamic
Studies Presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, ed. Warwick Ball and Leonardo Harrow (Lon-
don: St. Edmundsbury Press, 2002), 67–68; and Rosemand Mack, Bazaar to Piazza, Islamic
Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 3.
32. Ugo Monneret de Villard, “Le chapiteau arabe de la cathédrale de Pise,” Comptes Rendus
de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 1 (January–March 1946): 21–23 and Con-
tadini, Camber, and Northover, “Beasts That Roared,” 67.
33. Liber maiolichinus de gestis pisanorum illustribus, ed. Carlo Calisse (Rome: Forzani, 1904)
and Gary B. Doxey, “Norwegian Crusaders and the Balearic Islands,” Scandinavian Stud-
ies 68, no. 2 (1996): 139–160.
34. Giuseppe Scalia, “Tre iscrizioni e una facciata: Ancora sulla Cattedrale di Pisa,” Studi
Medievali 23, no. 2 (1982): 817–859.
35. “[U]n capitello sulla tribuna della primaziale per collocarvi il grifone di bronzo.” The
document was transcribed by Leopoldo Tanfani Centofanti, Notizie di artisti tratte dai
documenti pisani (Pisa: Enrico Spoerri Editore, 1897), 469.
36. “[E] nella sommità sua è posto uno ippogriffo di bronzo, tutto intagliato di lettere egizi-
ache: cosa invero molto bella da vedere.” Raffaello Roncioni, Delle istorie pisane: Libri
XVI (Florence: G. P. Vieusseux, 1844–1855), 114.
37. Contadini, Camber, and Northover, “Beasts That Roared,” 68–70.
38. “It [the throne] was of immense size and was guarded by lions, made either of bronze or of
wood covered over with gold, who . . . gave a dreadful roar with open mouth.” Liudprand of
Cremona, Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, ed. and trans. Brian Scott (London: Bristol
Classical Press, 1993), 39 and Contadini, Camber and Northover, “Beasts That Roared,” 69.
39. Rudolf Hiestand, “L’arcivescovo Ubaldo e i pisani alla Terza Crociata alla luce di una
nuova testimonianza,” Bollettino storico pisano 58 (1989): 37–51.
40. Diane Cole Ahl, “Terra santa: Picturing the Holy Land in Pisa,” Artibus et Historiae 24,
no. 48 (2003): 95.
41. Ibid.
42. Urs Böck, “Das Baptisterium zu Pisa und die Jerusalemer Anastasis,” Bonner Jahrbücher
des Rheinischen Landsmuseum in Bonn 164 (1964): 146–156.
 “To the Victor Go the Spoils” 47
43. Robert Irwin, Islamic Art in Context (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 79–83. The
Great Banner of the Caliphs, which was handed down from father to son in the Ottoman
dynasty, was fashioned from green silk on which was embroidered in gold thread the name
of Allah 29,800 times, 265.
44. For Volterrano see, Maria Cecilia Fabbri, Alessandro Grassi and Riccardo Spinelli, Volter-
rano: Baldassarre Franceschini (1611–1690) (Florence: Edifir, 2013). For the raid on Bona,
see Marco Gemignani, “La conquista di Bona,” Società di Storia Militare, 2 (1994): 7–36.
45. Franco Paliaga, “Feste e ceremonie organizzate dall’Ordine nel periodo mediceo,” in Le
imprese e i simboli: Contributi alla storia del Sacro Militare Ordine di S. Stefano P.M. (sec.
XVI-XIX) (Pisa: Giardini, 1989), 245.
46. Fulvio Fontana, I pregi della Toscana nelle imprese più segnalate de’ cavalieri di Santo
Stefano (Firenze, 1701), 14.
47. “[B]andiere, stendardi, spoglie, trofei tutti riportati a costo di sudori, e di ferite da’Cavalieri,
e . . . del loro proprio sangue, che del sangue de Nemici della Santa Fede.” Ibid., 14–15.
48. Sean Nelson argues that the Ottoman spoils may be interpreted as relics of Christian vic-
tory. The term “relics,” however, connotes veneration, and more specifically, the veneration
of Christian objects—whether the remains of or the personal effects of an individual—
deemed holy. It is speculative, if not heretical, that these Islamic trophies would qualify as
relics. See Sean Nelson, “Relics of Christian Victory: The Translation of Ottoman Spolia in
Grand Ducal Tuscany,” in The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant, ed. Maurizio Arfaioli
and Marta Caroscio (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2016), 75–84.
49. Vasari mentions and praises the altarpiece in his vita of Bronzino. “Dopo diede ordine il
Duca a Bronzino facesse due tavole grandi . . . un’altra per la nuova chiesa de’Cavalieri di
Santo Stefano . . . nella qual tavola dipinse Bronzino dentrovi la Natività di Nostro Signore
Gesù Christo” and “con tanta arte, deligenzia, disegno, invenzione e somma vaghezza di
colorito, che non si può far di più: a certo non si doveva meno in una chiesa edificata da
un tanto principe, che ha fondata e dotata la detta religione.” Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’
più eccellenti pittori scultori e architettori: nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. Rosanna
Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, vol. 2 (Florence: Sansoni, 1966), 866. Bronzino’s altarpiece
has received little scholarly attention and is currently the subject of a forthcoming article
by the author of this chapter. See Mariagiulia Burresi, L’opera ritrovata: La natività del
Bronzino nella chiesa di Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri (Pisa: S. N., 2002). Codini suggests
that the painting, finished by 1565, may have been installed temporarily in the church
of San Frediano, where the knights performed and attended liturgical services before the
construction and completion of their official church in 1569. See Ewa Karwacka Codini,
“Piazza dei Cavalieri ed edifici adiacenti,” in Livorno e Pisa: Due città e un territorio nella
politica dei Medici (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi Editrice, 1980), 223–241.
50. Grand Duke Ferdinando I commissioned the sculptor Fra Domenico Portigiani to cast
a bronze frame for the Stone of Unction in 1588, which did not fit. See Nirit Ben-Aryeh
Debby, “Giambologna’s Salviati reliefs of St Antoninus of Florence: saintly images and
political manipulation,” Renaissance Studies 22 (April 2008): 197–220.
51. Canons, 77.
52. “[I]n detta chiesa non ci è imagiene nè memoria alcun a di santo Stefano papa e martire.”
Pietro M. Lonardo, “Lettere inedite di Giorgio Vasari,” Studi Storici 6 (1897): 266.
53. No scholarly study addresses the conflation of the two Saint Stephens, and therefore the
painting is the subject of a forthcoming article by the author of this chapter. See Codini,
“Piazza dei Cavalieri ed edifici adiacenti,” 353–354.
54. Acts 6, 7 NOAB and Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, Readings on the Saints,
trans. William Granger Ryan, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 45–55
and 2:40–44.
55. Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West. From the Beginning to 1600
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 294–327.
56. Imitation was a selective process where just a few points of resemblance were needed to
understand the symbolic connection between monuments, as argued by Richard Kraut­
heimer, “Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture,” Journal of the War-
burg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1–33.
57. Paula Fredriksen, “Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions and
the Retrospective Self,” Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 3–34.
4 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles
in the Seventeenth Century
The Cospi Collection
Federica Gigante

Medici Collecting and Their Political Agenda

The Medici’s relationship with exotic collectibles was tinged with an overriding politi-
cal agenda from at least the sixteenth century onwards. Francesco I’s—and later Fer-
dinando I’s—rearrangements of the family collections led in 1584 to the creation,
in the Uffizi Galleries, of the Tribuna, which was to become the city’s prime exhib-
iting space, showcasing not only the family’s most prized paintings and sculptures
but also their varied collection of exotic items.1 The Tribuna emerged as a stage of
Medici legitimization of their role as rulers of Florence, a display of cultural as well as
political authority in which exotic artefacts served as tokens of maritime and military
power.2 The Islamic artefacts therein played a particular role.3 They were not mere
­curiosities—such items had been imported to Florence and used at court for more than
a century beforehand4—but were rather a statement of the same maritime dominance
that was projected, on a different front, by the creation of the Order of St. Stephen,
the Florentine military order charged with patrolling and protecting Mediterranean
waters from Turkish intrusions as much as reconquering Christian land seized by the
Ottomans.5 The Armeria, initiated at the same time as the Tribuna, was part of the
same scheme, presenting the Medici’s triumphs over the Turkish enemy in the Turkish
weaponry displayed alongside the names of their defeated owners and the particular
battle at which they were seized.6 In a similar way artefacts from the New World,
while pertaining to the realm of curiosities more than the Islamic items, stood in the
Tribuna to offer material evidence of the Medici’s attempts to share in intercontinental
voyages and discoveries.7
The Medici also used exotic natural specimens and animals to project the same
image of power and political dominance. The Botanical Garden of Pisa, for example,
through their assiduous patronage became one the most important botanical gardens
of the sixteenth century.8 Exotic plants and seeds were used in the garden itself, while
stones, minerals, soil samples, horns, seashells as well as other exotic artefacts were
placed in its adjoining gallery, which was open to the public and became a compul-
sory stop for travellers.9 The Medici were also keen keepers of exotic animals. Liv-
ing lions—one of the symbols of Florence—had been a common feature of the city
since the thirteenth century and were employed with notable enthusiasm by Cosimo
the Elder and Lorenzo the Magnificent to impress foreign visitors,10 while live ani-
mals were kept by the Medici themselves at their rural Villa di Pratolino.11 Cosimo I
started to use exotic animals as diplomatic gifts12 and commissioned a fresco in the
Palazzo Vecchio depicting the famous giraffe gifted to Lorenzo the Magnificent by
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 49
the Egyptian Sultan Qaitbay as part of a new iconographical scheme geared towards
burnishing the family’s international prestige.13 Pope Leo X de’ Medici had a life-size
portrait of an elephant he was given by the King of Portugal, Manuel I, painted in the
Vatican in memory both of the beast as well as of its owner.14 Finally, sculptures of
exotic animals, alongside more local fauna, were also used in the so-called Grotto of
the Animals at the Medici’s Villa Castello as part of an allegorical decorative plan to
glorify the city of Florence and the Medici dynasty.15
The Medici also promoted collecting endeavours in prominent geographical and
political centres outside Florence in order to expand their cultural influence beyond
the Grand Duchy’s political boundaries. Foremost among these was Bologna, a most
strategic city whose position on the land routes from northern to southern Italy made
it an obligatory staging-post for any traveller intending to cross the Apennines as
well as the seat of one of Italy’s most important universities. In the sixteenth cen-
tury Francesco I de’ Medici chose the collection of the botanist and naturalist Ulisse
Aldrovandi as a platform to project the family’s cultural influence on Bologna through
extensive gifts and financial support. In the seventeenth century the Medici continued
to cast their collecting shadow onto Bologna by fostering the collection of a devoted
courtier, Ferdinando Cospi. The Cospi Museum, as it came to be known, was replete
with exotic objects and thus placed both Cospi and his patrons on a global map of
cross-cultural collecting, achieved by means of exploiting diplomatic and commercial
relations across various lands and seas.
This chapter will analyze the Medici’s relationship with exotic artefacts and natural
specimens in the seventeenth century and the underlying strategies of self-promotion
which encouraged their practices of patronage and sponsorship through their relation-
ship with the Cospi Museum in Bologna. It will explore both the publicity-seeking
mechanisms which various members of the Medici family brought to bear on the
development of the Cospi Museum and Cospi’s own quest for legitimization through
the Medici imprimatur.

Ferdinando Cospi, Courtier and Collector

Ferdinando Cospi was born in Bologna in 1606, the son of Vincenzo Cospi, a
Bolognese nobleman, and Costanza de’ Medici, who belonged to the branch of the
Medici family which produced the archbishop of Florence, Alessandro de’ Medici,
briefly pope under the name of Leo XI. The young Cospi thus grew up in Florence
with the Medici princes and there founded his collection “as a noble pastime during
his youth at the court”16 (Figure 4.1). Upon his return to his native Bologna as a dip-
lomatic representative and agent commissioning and procuring artworks from local
painters, Cospi was able to expand his museum, which was later placed in the Palazzo
Pubblico of Bologna and became, in large part as a result of Medici patronage, one of
Italy’s most prominent collections of the seventeenth century.
In 1659 Cospi himself appealed to one of the Medici’s keenest collectors, Cardinal
Leopoldo de’ Medici,17 for help in building his museum:

Most Serene Patron, I have undertaken to create in this Palazzo Publico, joined
to the Aldrovandi Studio, and to bequeath in my memory, a room to be called
Cospa, full of natural curiosities, bizarre antique items and of weaponry, of mari-
time items, and all sorts of other mysterious peculiarities in order to promote
50  Federica Gigante

Figure 4.1 Cospi Museum, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, in Legati, Mvseo Cospiano, Bologna 1677.
Source: Courtesy Warburg Institute, London.

learning, and I am having a catalogue of everything produced. . . . I, however,

who desire to fill this [Museum] ever more fully, humbly beg your Highness for
your favour and help, which will be among the greatest graces I could ever receive,
since these items are not easily found.18

The Medici were indeed to shower their patronage on the Cospi museum throughout
the collector’s long life in all the areas Cospi himself spelled out in his pledge for help—
“natural curiosities,” “bizarre antique items,” “weaponry,” and “maritime items”—
such that the collection can be viewed, in Paula Findlen’s words, as “a hieroglyph of
Medici power.”19 The justification, provided in the letter, of collecting “in order to pro-
mote learning”, however, was soon to be overridden by social and political motivations.
Cospi, indeed, relied on the Medici to increase his collection and prestige as much
as the Medici relied on the Cospi Museum to showcase their cultural superiority out-
side Florence. In the seventeenth century, the reduction in Medici’s territory, as well
as military capacity, left them with little besides cultural prestige, achieved by means
of extensive patronage, as competitive ground on which to rival their European coun-
terparts.20 In the dedicatory letter to the Grand Prince Ferdinando, son of the Grand
Duke Cosimo III, in the main catalogue of the museum printed in 1677, Cospi went
so far as to say that:

I know that this [collection] deserves to be conserved in the Rooms joined to the
famous Aldrovandi Museum and exhibited in public only as a result of the fine
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 51
items donated to me out of the generous bounty of the Most Serene Princes of
Tuscany.21

At the same time Cospi also stated that he had

resolved to present [the collection], in print and dedicated to you, so that, on the
wings of your Most Serene Fame, it might reach the eyes of distant countries,
shining under the same nobility that has always lent lustre to my most favored
fortunes.22

This makes clear the symbiotic relationship between Cospi and the Medici, Bologna
and Florence, out of which the Cospi Museum acquired legitimization and renown
under the Medici aegis and the Medici acquired visibility and prestige by the resultant
broad diffusion of a distinguished museum catalogue which bore their insignia and
sang their praises, eight hundred copies of which were sent “to many princes of Italy,
cardinals, and knights of quality.”23

Medici Gifts: Artificialia

Bizarre Antique Items

Exotic artefacts formed the core of the Cospi museum and were its essence and boast.
Among the most prized artworks featuring in the Cospi collection was a (Figure 4.2)

noble salt-cellar from Goa, in the form of a slender tower, made out of wood . . .
wholly encrusted in fragments of mother-of-pearl and Gajanda . . . all the con-
tours set in gold with very fine decorations. . . . It is a most precious gift of the
Most Serene Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici.24

Leopoldo’s enthusiastic answer to Cospi’s appeal for help in procuring such collectibles
clearly emerges from the long list of items described as coming “from his generosity
in this area of Indian items”25 (to be broadly understood as signifying an origin in
eastern lands), which thus appears to have been Leopoldo’s specialism. Among the
many exotic artefacts listed as donated by Leopoldo are “a wooden weighing scale,
used in the countries of the Turk to weigh the Medini, which are coins,” “a grater . . . a
wooden instrument used by the Turks to scratch their shoulders,” “two wooden chains,
an arm’s length . . . carved from a single block by the hand of a most skilled Turkish
workman”26 later described as having “two spoons”27 at the end (Figures 4.3–4.4).
The weighing scale was recorded for the first time in an appendix to the 1667
catalogue28 featuring a group of Islamic artefacts imported from the eastern Mediter-
ranean to Tuscany in 1668.29 Turkish wooden chains and a grater, on the other hand,
were also described in the 1626 catalogue of the gallery of the Botanical Garden
of Pisa as “more wooden chains, with a spoon at the bottom”30 and “a decorated
Turkish bone, black in colour, which is used to scratch oneself.”31 Leopoldo had in
fact given orders in 1672 “to remove from the gallery in Pisa certain curious items
for the gallery that we are founding in Florence,”32 a decision which followed the
increasing loss of prestige of the Pisan Botanical Garden and its adjoining gallery. By
the compilation of the 1673 inventory of the gallery of the Pisan Botanical Garden
52  Federica Gigante

Figure 4.2 Salt-cellar, wood, and mother-of-pearl, India. Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna,
inv. no. 1921.
Source: Museo Civico Medievale. Bologna, Italy.

these objects had disappeared, and only a few years later similarly described items
were to enter the Cospi collection via Leopoldo himself.33 It is impossible to affirm
with certainty that these are the very same objects but the coincidence of descriptions
and timing, together with the peculiarity of items, all suggest that this is the case. It is
therefore possible that, following the loss of prestige of the Botanical Garden of Pisa,
the Medici chose not to “waste” the exotic items therein included in an ill-frequented
place but rather decided to send them to more visible spots, such as the Florentine
galleries and their offshoot collection, the Cospi Museum in Bologna. This transfer
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 53

Figure 4.3 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi
Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292.
Source: Museo delle Civiltà–MPE L. Pigorini.

Figure 4.4 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi
Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292.
Source: Museo delle Civiltà-MPE L. Pigorini.
54  Federica Gigante
would thus reveal a conscious intention on the part of the Medici to stage their col-
lections in places of major visual impact.
One of the most magnificent examples of the Medici donation of oriental artefacts
to the Cospi Museum was a gift of the Grand Duke Cosimo III, who was particu-
larly affectionate towards his family’s old friend Cospi—once writing that “I con-
sider you the person most closely bound to me and my household because you are
its oldest friend”34—and maintained an active interest in the Cospi Museum and its
contents, never failing “to check whether there might be some miscellaneous item
to send for your fine museum.”35 The item in question was described as “a book of
parchment paper with gold arabesques, containing a Persian poem”36 in an appendix
to the ­collection—the “Addition of items to the Cospi Museum from the year 1680 to
the end of the year 1685”—which was printed in June 1686 for inclusion in a number
of copies of the 1680 catalogue.37 This is a muraqqa‘ or calligraphic album by Mullā
Sultān ‘Alī Mashadī (d. 1520), calligrapher at the Timurid court in Herat, assembled
and illuminated in the Safavid period (Figure 4.5).38
On the back of the last page of the manuscript there is an annotation in seventeenth-
century handwriting stating that the manuscript was a gift “of the Most Serene Grand
Duke; some select verses of a number of Persian poets.”39

Figure 4.5 Muraqqa‘ containing the Gulshan i rāz by Sheikh Mahmoud Shabistari and parts
of sections eighty-two and eighty-three of Jamshid u Khurshid by Salman Savaji.
Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 3574pp.
Source: Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna–Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 55

Figure 4.6 Annotation in the Gulshan i rāz by Sheikh Mahmoud Shabistari and parts of sec-
tions eighty-two and eighty-three of Jamshid u Khurshid by Salman Savaji. Bibli-
oteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 3574pp.
Source: Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna–Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.

The exact date of the gift is not recorded on the manuscript itself but its inclusion in
the Addition places it between 1680 and 1685. Indeed, in a letter dated January 1683,
Cosimo III wrote to Cospi that

the Serene Prince of Orange has sent me a fine gift . . . [including] 4 books of

pictures of the Mogor which are very curious and which, God willing, I will show
you when you come here.40

“Mogor” was often used in seventeenth-century catalogues of museums to refer to

items of Iranian provenance. When, in due course, Cospi did travel to Florence in
May 1683, Cosimo was to give him a collection of previously promised shells “to
take to your museum.”41 Whether or not one of the four albums was also part of his
gift to Cospi on this occasion, and whether this is the muraqqa‘ featured in the Addi-
tion, went unrecorded and is left to the speculation permitted by the coincidence in
timings. What is in any case noteworthy is that the Grand Duke chose, out of all the
Prince of Orange’s gifts—which mainly comprised Dutch paintings—to show Cospi
only these oriental artworks.42 This evinces awareness of the resonance of foreign
56  Federica Gigante
exotic artefacts, as opposed to more domesticated Dutch art, in creating and nurturing
political relationships.

Weaponry
Islamic weaponry also played a significant role in the Medici’s exhibiting scheme,
and it is therefore unsurprising to see such items featured among the Medici’s dona-
tions to the Cospi Museum. Knives and daggers such as “two most refined knives
with damascened blades and heliotrope handles, one larger and one smaller, both in
sheathes, a gift of the most excellent Prince Cardinal Leopoldo of Tuscany”43 were
among these gifts. These objects must have been of a very similar type to the “Dama-
scened knives . . . placed under every niche of the lower shelf”44 in the Tribuna in Flor-
ence. Indeed, another Islamic dagger gifted by the Medici “has a handle of extremely
transparent bone, into which are set many precious stones, on its blade are carved
some lines of Arabic characters,”45 a description which very closely recalls the “Ger-
man or Damascened knife, with a handle of bone set with gold, small rubies and
turquoises . . . and a blade of gilded silver”46 which featured in the first inventory of
the Tribuna. Through his gifts to Cospi, Leopoldo thus allowed for the recreation in
Bologna of a very similar setting to the one found in the Florentine galleries.
A most interesting example of Islamic weaponry of Medici provenance is the scimi-
tar gifted to Cospi directly by his grandfather, Cosimo of Francesco de’ Medici, a
distant relative of the Grand Ducal family and a second cousin of the Archbishop of
Florence, and later Pope Leo XI, Alessandro de’ Medici.47 In the 1677 catalogue of the
Cospi collection, this is described in detail as an

antique scimitar with a flat blade and hilt, but worked with inlay, with flowers and
birds along with an excellent handle, not so much for the variety of the minute
ivory arabesques most delicately incised there, as for the very fine animal forms—
principally lions—and splashed-gold arabesques, which are a superb ornament to
it. At the pommel it has a marvellous lion’s head shaped with excellent craftsman-
ship, and four others on the four opposite sides, mixed with many other sheets of
gold. . . . It is a Turkish weapon.48

Far from being viewed as a simple spoil of war, this object is here described as a work
of art in its own right in a series of value judgments: “excellent,” “very fine,” “superb”
and “marvellous,” made “with excellent craftsmanship.” The catalogue identifies its
provenance as from “Cosimo Medici, grandfather of the Marquis on the maternal
side” and specifies that

it was acquired during the Hungarian wars against the Turks, on which he was
sent by his excellence the Grand Duke Ferdinando I, in the company of Giovanni
Medici, with a large number of soldiers serving the Emperor, where he died in the
year 1590.49

If on the one hand this weapon can be viewed as a product of the Medici practice of
using their foreign military campaigns as opportunities to expand their collections,50
on the other it embodies the struggle between Christian and Muslim forces at a very
personal level, the sword having belonged to a close relative of Cospi pricisely killed
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 57
by such Turkish forces. In its desciption, the cataloguer of the Cospi Museum in fact
takes the opportunity to exclaim, “Oh, if only it was used against the Turks”!51
The Islamic weapons of the Cospi Museum, therefore, fulfilled here the same role
as those hanging from the shelves of the Tribuna or featuring in the armoury in­
Florence—that of reminding the viewer, or the reader of the catalogue, of Medici
military power and of their struggle against the Turkish enemy. In sending Islamic
weapons to their exhibiting outpost in Bologna, attended by “many important people
and great princes,”52 the Medici therefore projected their image as new crusaders and
defenders of Christendom, propagated militarily by the actions of the Order of St. Ste-
phen, the Medicean knightly order charged with fighting the Turkish enemy.

Medici Gifts: Naturalia

Natural Curiosities
Medici patronage of the Cospi Museum not only extended to artefacts but also
encompassed the natural collecting. Indeed, the Medici had been the patrons of Ulisse
Aldrovandi’s own Bolognese museum of natural history as well as botanical garden.
In the seventeenth century their enthusiasm for natural history is evidenced by the
foundation of the Accademia del Cimento by Leopoldo de’ Medici in 1657 as well as
the creation of the natural history laboratory (under the direction of Francesco Redi)
in the Villa Ambrogiana. Cosimo III, who “took pleasure in assembling . . . whatever
ambiguous products of nature he could obtain, furnished to him by travelers and mis-
sionaries,”53 established a menagerie of exotic animals in the Boboli Gardens in 1667.
It is no surprise therefore that the Medici also provided natural specimens, and in
particular exotic ones, to the Cospi Museum, including a “hippopotamus’ tooth . . .
from the Most Serene Prince Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici.”54
Many of these specimens appear to have been the byproduct of experiments con-
ducted by Francesco Redi, the physician of the Medici court considered the founder
of experimental biology, in the Medici laboratory, such as the “hair, or rather, bristle
of an elephant’s tail . . . [from] Francesco Redi, experimental philosopher of the first
rank, who gave this to the Museum.”55 In April 1667 the Grand Duke Ferdinando II
wrote to his brother Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici that “I’ve had the box containing
the eight-legged cat consigned to Redi, and thus far I have not seen this curiosity.”56
Around the same time a “cat with eight legs”57 was also to enter the Cospi Museum
which will likely have been the very same specimen—the probability of there being two
rival eight-legged cats in circulation in the same year being rather low. Malformed and
monstrous animals were in fact considered in very similar terms to exotic specimens
and were included, for example, in the series of exotic animals painted for Cosimo III
for his Villa Ambrogiana.58 Again through Francesco Redi, the Medici gave Cospi a
“scorpion . . . [that] was brought alive from Tunisia to Tuscany in 1668 and spent
three and a half months in Florence.”59 After it was initially delivered to Francesco
Redi by Giovanni Pagni—a physician sent by the Grand Duke Ferdinando II to Tunis
to attend the local Bey Mohamet Apsi as well as to collect natural specimens—the
death of the scorpion reduced the animal’s status from an object of study to a curios-
ity immediately dispatched to the Medici’s collecting outpost in Bologna.60 Through
this small animal the visitor could thus be subtly reminded of the Medici’s ability to
procure such specimens from foreign lands and their control of maritime routes.
58  Federica Gigante
Cosimo III was particularly active in sending natural specimens to the Cospi
Museum. In 1680 the Grand Duke wrote to Cospi from Livorno that

having here found a dry fish which can be used as a hat, being rather a rare and
curious thing, I take the liberty of sending it to you with the present consignment.61

Here the Grand Duke is patently more interested in sharing a practical joke than seri-
ously promoting scientific collecting. A few days after sending the fish, however, he
wrote:

I thank you for the most courteous and excellent acknowledgment of that small
bagatelle of a fish skin, which merited not to be put in your museum but only to
be worn on the head of some masquer in this carnival.62

Despite the Grand Duke’s irony, Cospi unfailingly honoured his patron and duly
included his gift in the museum: “one dry fish which is used as a hat”63 was to feature
in the 1680 catalogue of the museum.
Cosimo also sent living exotic animals to Cospi. In 1684 the Grand Duke wrote
to Cospi that “I will supply—if, God willing, I am able—a splendid parakeet, and
the Great Lumachino will be its trainer.”64 Cosimo was particularly passionate about
exotic birds, and parakeets in particular, and considered their ability to speak to be an
essential characteristic.65 In just over ten days the parakeet, Cosimo assured Cospi, was
“already here, under the direction of the Great Lumachino, but does seem somewhat
brainless.”66 The bird, despite its lack of wit, was immediately put under the direction
of a trainer as Cospi “desir[ed] that the parakeet could speak fluently”67 and to ensure
a positive outcome Cospi “greased the Gran Lumachino’s mouth well . . . with plenty
of salami.”68 Such speaking birds were not uncommon in Italian collections, in which
visitors would often be shown scientific tricks69 or even be given objects they had
admired to take away as mementos of the collection.70 In the same way the parakeet
would have acted as a very loud reminder of Cospi’s social position, a man capable,
through his Medici connections, of sourcing a living exotic bird, most likely from
north Africa. The bird, however, was not always up to the task, as Cosimo wrote:

I am delighted that the parakeet is serving you well; but you have treated its
master Lumachino so well that the student should perform even better than he
currently does!71

Maritime Items
Shells were among the most popular exotica in the seventeenth century, and the high
turnover of imported examples made them a readily available item for purchase.72
A “nautilus”73 was donated to Cospi by Leopoldo de’ Medici, but it was chiefly
Cosimo III who had a particularly marked interest in shells and frequently enthused
to Cospi about this passion:

my shells are with the convoy in Cadiz but could come to Livorno at any time if
another fleet of Dutch warships comes from Amsterdam. I look forward then to
showing them to you.74
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 59
Amsterdam was one of the main hubs to which the Medici had recourse in procuring
exotic specimens.75 A few months later he was to update Cospi, saying that “I await
you here to show you my shells which have arrived and which I am arranging.”76
As a natural consequence, maritime items, and shells in particular, proved to be
the most important area of patronage in which Cosimo applied himself to increase
the Cospi Museum. He procured shells from all over the world to send to Bologna—
“I shall send you some of all the shells which recently arrived from Brazil”77—and
was subsequently to take an interest in how his gift would look in the Cospi Museum,
delaying one delivery because

I am having the shells cleaned with the wheel as I do for all my own and for this
reason it will take a little while longer to send them to you.78

Cosimo had very little scientific or naturalist’s interest in the specimens he sent to
Cospi but was rather more concerned with verifying the aesthetic impact and visibility
of his gift in the museum:

I shall greatly delight in seeing, God willing, in due time the plan of how you will
display the shells in your museum.79

This aesthetic interest, in line with the Medici’s practice of visibility-seeking patron-
age, emerges throughout Cosimo’s correspondence. Only a few months later, with
another cargo approaching the port of Livorno, Cosimo wrote to Cospi that

the fleet which has now arrived in Spain from the Indies has brought me some
shells which, if I don’t err, I commissioned from Peru 4 years ago and which I hope
will arrive, God willing, in little time in Livorno and some of which I, God willing,
will send to you to display, so beautiful are they.80

Cosimo’s motivations in sending the shells to Bologna were purely for show.
Notably Cosimo sent Cospi some of the shells which had formed part of the
Ambonese Cabinet of Curiosities of Georg Eberhard Rumphius, one of the biggest
and most important collections of shells ever assembled, which Cosimo controver-
sially acquired in 1682.81 In April 1683, a few months after receiving Rumphius’s col-
lection of exotic shells, Cosimo was awaiting Cospi’s arrival to Tuscany and informed
him that “I shall, God willing, be at the Ambrogiana when you arrive in Florence and
in case you wish to see the shells.”82 In May, Cosimo wrote again to Cospi, rejoicing
“that you have arrived safely at Livorno . . . [and that] I shall have some shells pre-
pared for you so that you can take them to your museum.”83
This latter Medici gift prompted Cospi to embark on having the shells painted in
a most splendid album entitled Shells . . . of various kinds with maritime plants etc.
A gift of the Most Serene Prince Cosimo III Grand Duke of Tuscany to the Senator,
Marquis, Balì e Dean Ferdinando Cospi 84 (Figure 4.7). The album was immediately
sent to Florence for Cosimo’s approval—

I have received the book of the shells that you sent me; certainly those which you
have had made in your presence in the villa [Ambrogiana] here are even better-
made than the first85
60  Federica Gigante

Figure 4.7 Jacopo Tosi, Testacei, cioe Nicchi Chioccioe e Conchiglie di più spezie con piante
marine etc. Regalo del Ser.mo Cosimo III Gran Duca di Toscana al Senatore, Mar-
chese, Balì e Decano Ferdinando Cospi. Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 4312.
Source: Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna–Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.

—and sent back to Cospi with advice about the display of such shells:

I am sending back to Your Lordship your fine book of shells and I do not know if
Your Lordship’s idea to install a vault in which to place the shells arranged in the
shape of a larger shell will work because in the aforementioned room, in which
you are going to put the shells, many other naturalia will need to be put, God will-
ing, the room being quite large.86

The two collectors here engage in museological discussions with Cosimo suggesting
an arrangement of shells combined with other naturalia, which recalls the reproduc-
tion of a microcosm already theorized by Samuel Quiccheberg in his Inscriptiones vel
tituli Theatri Amplissimi in 156587 and used as the basis of many northern European
cabinets of curiosities. While the furthering of scientific knowledge and the prestige
thus derived were always closely linked in Medici patronizing policies, a shift between
the support given to Aldrovandi’s scientific classifying arrangement of natural speci-
mens in Bologna a century previous and to Cospi’s more decorative and eye-catching
display embodies a change in attitude. The Medici and the nobility are now interested
more in visually celebrating their own social prestige and giving visibility to their
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 61
patrons and patronage than in furthering scientific enquiry. The dispatch to Florence
of the book depicting the shells that Cosimo had gifted to Cospi thus served the func-
tion of a reciprocal exchange of favours and assured Cosimo that his generosity was
appropriately acknowledged and that the gift would receive appropriate visibility in
the museum.88

Conclusions
The Medici relationship with exotica had since the sixteenth century been tinged with
political overtones. At the same time the family’s patronage of collections situated
outside their dominions—most notably in Bologna, a key political and cultural center
in Italy—had been used from the sixteenth century onwards as a means to stretch the
Medici cultural and political presence outside the Grand Duchy’s physical bounda-
ries. Throughout the seventeenth century this approach was particularly strengthened
by means of an unabated patronage of the Cospi Museum, which acted as a hub of
Medici cultural and political pretences in Bologna. The museum thus became a show-
case of Medici generosity, attracting in particular the efforts of the family’s two most
enthusiastic collectors, Cardinal Leopoldo and Cosimo III. In sending items gathered
from all corners of the world, and at times relocating them from less visible spots in
the Florentine domains to the very visible Cospi Museum placed in the Palazzo Pub-
blico of Bologna, the Medici engaged in a very conscious campaign of self-sponsor-
ship, nurtured by the growing ethnographical and scientific interests in foreign lands.
The Medici relationship with exotic collectibles thus served the ends of a social and
political mechanism by means of which the family continued to compete in an indi-
rect and non-confrontational manner with other political powers in Italy and abroad.
Thus the Cospi Museum “deservedly patronized . . . by the Most Serene House of
Medici . . . [was] enjoyed with particular pleasure by all erudite people, local citizens,
and foreigners.”89

Notes
1. Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, La Tribuna di Ferdinando I de’ Medici: inventari 1589–1631
(Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1997); Marco Spallanzani, “Metalli islamici nelle
collezioni medicee dei secoli XV e XVI,” in Le arti del principato mediceo (Florence: SPES,
1980); Giovanni Curatola and Marco Spallanzani, Metalli islamici dalle collezioni grandu-
cali–Islamic Metalwork from the Grand Ducal Collection (Florence: Museo Nazionale del
Bargello, 1981); Detlef Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici (Florence: Edam, 1972), 19; for
a full list of exotic items in the Tribuna see Adriana Turpin, “The Display of Exotica in
the Uffizi Tribuna,” in Collecting East and West, ed. Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Gáldy and
Adriana Turpin (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 113–18.
2. Detlef Heikamp, “La tribuna degli Uffizi come era nel Cinquecento,” Antichità Viva 3
(1964): 12, 29; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Cul-
ture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 114; Olmi
Giuseppe, “Science-Honour-Metaphor: Italian Cabinets of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries,” in The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Sev-
enteenth-Century Europe, ed. Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1985) 5–16, 10; Barbara Karl, “Objects of the Ottoman World in the Collections
of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany: Different Aspects of Collecting,” in Osmanlilar
ve Avrupa: Seyahat, Karşılaşma ve Etkileşim–The Ottomans and Europe: Travel, Encoun-
ter and Interaction, ed. Seyfi Kenan (Istanbul: İ slâm Araştırmaları Merkezi, 2010), 614;
Turpin, “The Display of Exotica,” 112.
62  Federica Gigante
3. For a list of Islamic items in the Tribuna, see Gaeta Bertelà, La Tribuna; Heikamp, “La
tribuna,” 12.
4. Ezio Bassani, “Il collezionismo esotico dei Medici nel cinquecento,” in Le arti del princi-
pato mediceo, 55. On the Medici relationship with the Islamic world see The Grand Ducal
Medici and the Levant: Material Culture, Diplomacy and Imagery in the Early Modern
Mediterranean, ed. Maurizio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016).
5. For the Order of St. Stephen see Joseph M. Silva, “ ‘To the Victor Go the Spoils’: Christian
Triumphalism, Cosimo I de’Medici and the Order of Santo Stefano in Pisa,” in this volume.
6. See Sean Nelson, “Jerusalem Lost: Crusade, Myth, and Historical Imagination in Grand
Ducal Florence” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2015), Chapter 4, Collect-
ing the Crusade in Grand Ducal Tuscany, 177–218 and in particular 189–194.
7. Ibid., 61; Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici, 18.
8. Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Arte e natura nel Giardino dei Semplici: dalle origini alla fine
dell’età medicea,” in Giardino dei Semplici: l’Orto botanico di Pisa dal XVI al XX secolo,
ed. Fabio Garbari, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, and Alessandro Tosi (Pisa: Cassa di rispar-
mio, 1991); Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Il Giardino dei Semplici dello Studio Pisano. Collezio­
nismo, Scienza e Immagine tra Cinque e Seicento,” in Livorno e Pisa: due città e un territorio
nella politica dei Medici (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi e Pacini, 1980), 514–526; Fabio Garbari and
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Il giardino dei semplici,” in Storia dell’Università di Pisa, vol. 1
(Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1993), 363–373; Giuseppe Olmi, “Science-Honour-Metaphor,” 10;
William Schupbach, “Some Cabinets of Curiosities in European Academic Institutions,” in
The Origins of Museums, 169–170.
9. Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Arte e natura,” 161; Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Il Giardino dei Semplici dello
Studio Pisano,” 515–516; Schupbach, “Some Cabinets of Curiosities in European Aca-
demic Institutions,” 170; Olmi, “Science-Honour-Metaphor,” 8.
10. Marina Belozerskaya, “Cómo una jirafa transformó a un comerciante en un príncipe,” in
La jirafa de los Medici, y otros relatos sobre los animales exóticos y el poder (Barcelona:
Editorial Gedisa, 2008), 118.
11. Gustave Loisel, “Les ménageries d’Italie a l’époque de la Renaissance: Le développement
des ménageries en Italie. Les ménageries de Florence,” in Historie des Ménageries de
l’antiquité à nos jours, vol. 1 (Paris: O. Doin et fils, 1912), 201.
12. Angelica Groom, “The Role of Rare and Exotic Animals in the Self-Fashioning of the Early
Modern Court: The Medici Court in Florence as a Case Study” (PhD diss., University of
Sussex, 2012), 53–54.
13. Christine L. Joost-Gaugier, “Lorenzo the Magnificent and the Giraffe as a Symbol of
Power,” Artibus et Historiae 8 (1987): 91; Belozerskaya, “Cómo una jirafa,” 112; on Sul-
tan Qaitbay’s gifts see Michael Rogers, “To and Fro: Aspects of Mediterranean Trade and
Consumption in the 15th and 16th Centuries,” in Villes au Levant: Hommage à Andrè
Raymond, ed. Jean-Paul Pascual, vol. 55, no. 1, of Revue du monde musulman et de la
Méditerranée (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1990), 57–74, 62.
14. Silvio A. Bedini, The Pope’s Elephant (Manchester: Carcanet, 1997), 144–145. See also
Benay in this volume.
15. Liliane Châtelet-Lange and Renate Franciscond, “The Grotto of the Unicorn and the Gar-
den of the Villa di Castello,” The Art Bulletin 50, no. 1 (1968): 57–58.
16. “[L]o cominciò per nobile paßatempo nella sua fanciullezza alla Corte,” Protesta di D.
Teodoro Bondoni a Chì legge, in Lorenzo Legati, Museo Cospiano Annesso a qvello del
Famoso Ulisse Aldrovandi e Donato alla sua Patria dall’Illustrissimo Signor Ferdinando
Cospi (Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1677).
17. See in particular Miriam Fileti Mazza, “Rapporti col mercato emiliano,” in Archivio del
collezionismo mediceo. Il cardinale Leopoldo, vol. 2 (Milano, Napoli: R. Ricciardi, Banco
commerciale italiana, 1993); Edward L. Goldberg, “The Cospi-Ranuzzi and the Sirani,”
in Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983),
34–53; Riccardo Carapelli, “Un importante collezionista bolognese del seicento: Ferdi-
nando Cospi e i suoi rapporti con la Firenze medicea,” Il Carrobbio 14 (1988): 99–114.
18. “Ser.mo Padrone io sono imbarcato per fare e lasciare per mia memoria in questo Palazzo
Pubblico, unito allo Studio Aldrovandi, una stanza detta Cospa, tutta piena di curiosità,
Naturali, et Antiche Bizzarrie, e di Armi, di Cose di mare, et di qualsi voglia Altro Mistero
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 63
Estravagante per Cavarne da tutto Erudizione è sopra tutti fo scrivere. . . . Io però che
disidero impinguare questa sempre più, supplico humilmente l’AV. del suo favore et aiuto,
poi chè queste non si trovano con facilità, che sarà delle Maggior gratie che io possa mai
ricevere,” in ASF, Carteggio d’Artisti 16 (16 April 1659), fols. 328v–329r (old numbering),
partially transcribed in Carapelli, “Un importante collezionista,” 104.
19. Paula Findlen, “The Economy of Scientific Exchange in Early Modern Italy,” in Patronage
and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court, 1500–1750,
ed. Bruce T. Moran (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1991), 22.
20. Goldberg, Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage, 8–18.
21. “[E] sò non avere altro merito di conservarsi nelle Stanze unite al famoso Museo Aldro-
vandi, ò di comparire in pubblico, che nelle belle cose donatemi dalla generosa bontà de’
Serenissimi Principi di Toscana,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, Dedicatory epistle to the
Grand Prince; see also Findlen, “The Economy,” 9.
22. “[R]isolvo esporla dedicatale in istampa, perchè, sù’l volo alla sua Sereniss. Fama, scorra
gli occhi di lontani Paesi, e risplenda sotto que’ medesimi titoli che sempre diedero il lustro
alle mie più gradite fortune,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, Dedicatory epistle to the Grand
Prince.
23. “[À] Prencipi di Italia, Cardinali, e Cavallieri di merito,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, CP 61.1, Memo-
rie, p. 39.
24. “SALIERA nobile di Goa, in sembianza di leggiadrissima Torre, fabbricata di legno . . .
tutta è incrostata di minuzzoli di Madreperla, e Gajanda . . . tutti i contorni messi a oro
con bellissimi fregi. . . . È pregiatissimo dono del Sereniss. Card. Leopoldo de’ Medici,” in
Legati, Museo Cospiano, 288.
25. “[D]alla cui liberalità in questo genere di cose Indiane,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 289.
26. “BILANCIA di legno, usata ne’ Paesi del Turco, per pesare li Medini, che sono Monete”;
“GRATTATOIO . . . Strumento di legno usato da Turchi per grattarsi le spalle”; “Due
CATENE di legno, lunghe un braccio, di quindici annela per ciascheduna, cavate tutte d’un
pezzo per mano d’Artefice Turco molto ingegnoso,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 289.
27. “[D]ue Cucchiari,” in Inventario Semplice di Tutte le Materie Essattamente Descritte che
si trovano nel Mvseo Cospiano (Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1680), 16.
28. “Indice Delle cose rare aggiunte al Museo Cospiano dopo la dilui descrittione,” in Legati,
Breve Descrizione del Museo Dell’Illustriss. Sig. Cav. Commend. dell’Ordine di S. Stefano,
Ferdinando Cospi (Bologna: Gio. Battista Ferroni, 1667).
29. Federica Gigante, “Trading Islamic Artworks in Seventeenth-Century Italy: The Case of the
Cospi Museum,” in The Mercantile Effect: Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World Dur-
ing the 17th and 18th Centuries, ed. Sussan Babaie and Melanie Gibson (London: Gingko
Library, 2017), 74–85.
30. “Più catene di legno con cucchiaio in fondo,” in ASP, Università 531, transcribed in Ton-
giorgi Tomasi, “Arte e natura,” 296.
31. “Un osso turchesco lavorato di color nero che serve per grattarsi,” in ASP, Università 531,
transcribed in Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Arte e natura,” 302.
32. “[D]i levare dalla Galleria di Pisa certe curiosità per la Galleria che si comincia a Firenze,”
in ASP, Università 531, fol. 51v.
33. A list of items removed from the gallery of Florence is in Ibid., fols. 51r–52v; the later
inventories of the gallery, however, show, by comparison with earlier inventories, the loss
of many more items.
34. “[I]o la considero la persona che porta più affetto a me et alla mia casa essendo il più antico
amico di essa,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (Florence, 10 giugno 1673), 95.
35. “[E]t intanto vedro se ci sia da mandare insieme qualche miscea per il Museo bello di VS,”
in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (Florence, 4 June 1680), 439.
36. “1 Libro di carta pergamena rabescato d’oro, contiene vn Poema Persiano,” in Aggiunta di
cose al Museo Cospiano dall’anno 1680 per tutto l’anno 1685, printed addition bound to
the Inventario Semplice, Archiginnasio 32, F477, 29.
37. ASB, Notarile, Medici Girolamo, 1685–1686, Minutario, Inventario D (inventory of the
expenses of Cospi’s household after his death), 22bis. See Federica Gigante, “Import-
ing, Trading and Collecting Islamic Artworks in Seventeenth-Century Italy: The Cospi
Museum” (PhD diss., University of London, 2017), 46–48.
64  Federica Gigante
38. Angelo M. Piemontese, Catalogo dei manoscritti persiani conservati nelle biblioteche
d’Italia (Roma: Ist. Poligraf. E Zecca Dello Stato, 1989), 23.
39. “[D]el Ser.mo G.n Duca. Alcuni versi scelti di più Poeti Persiani,” in BUB, ms. 3574PP.
40. “Il Sr Principe di Oranges mi ha mandato un bell regalo . . . 4 libri di Pitture dell Mogor
che sono molto curiosi che Piacendo a dio li mostrerò quando vera qua,” in ASB, Ranuzzi,
Carte Politiche 45 (22 January 1683 (1682 ab incarnatione)), 84.
41. “[P]er che se li Porti all suo Museo,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 11 May
1683), 147.
42. Among the other gifts are two cabinets, a portrait by Van der Helst, a small portrait of the
mother of the Prince of Orange, two more paintings, and a nautilus.
43. “Due COLTELLI nobilissimi di lame Damaschine, e manici d’Eliotropia, l’uno maggiore, e
l’altro minore, amendue in una guaina, dono del Serenissimo Principe Cardinal Leopoldo
di Toscana,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 240; see Lionello Giorgio Boccia, L’Armeria del
Museo civico medievale di Bologna (Busto Arsizio: Bramante, 1991), 15.
44. “[C]oltelli alla Domaschina . . . che sono messe sotto ad ogni gocciola del palchetto da
basso,” in M. Francesco Bocchi, Le bellezze della città di Fiorenza, dove a pieno di Pittura,
di Scultura, di Sacri Tempij, di Palazzi, i più notabili artifizij, et più preziosi si contengono
(Florence, 1591), 52.
45. “[H]à l’impugnatura d’osso trasparentissimo, in cui sono incastrate molte pietre preziose.
Nella lama vi sono intagliate alcune righe di caratteri Arabici,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano,
235.
46. “Un coltello Germani o dommaschino, con manica d’osso commesso d’oro e rubinetti e
turchine . . . e puntale d’argento dorato,” in BU, ms. 70, Inventario della Tribuna, 1589, 4,
transcribed in Gaeta Bertelà, La Tribuna, 8, no. 62.
47. Cosimo of Francesco de’ Medici was the father of Costanza de’ Medici, mother of Ferdinando
Cospi. He served as a captain in the Emperor’s service in Hungary, where he died; see ASB,
Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 61.1, Memorie della vita del cavalliere Ferdinando Cospi, Balì di
Arezzo, Marchese di Petriolo e Sena.re di Bologna, Nato nel 1606, Scritte dal Senatore Conte
Ferdinando Vincenzo Ranuzzi Cospi Sen.re di Bologna (Memoirs of the life of Ferdinando
Cospi written by Ferdinando Vincenzo Ranuzzi Cospi) (1717), 14; see Emilio Grassellini
and Arnaldo Fracassini, Profili Medici. Origine, Sviluppo, Decadenza della Famiglia Med-
ici attraverso i suoi Componenti (Florence: S.P. 44, 1982), 69, and Pompeo Litta, Famiglie
celebri italiane, fasc. XVII, Medici, Parte VI (Milan: P. E. Giusti, 1829) tav. XVIII.
48. “Scimitarra antica, di lama, e d’elsa piana, ma lavorata alla Zimina, con fiorami, and
uccellami, fornita d’impugnatura nobile, non tanto per la varietà de’ minutissimi Arabeschi
d’avorio gentilmente incastratevi quanto per le sottilissime figure d’animali, massime di
Leoni, e per gli arabeschi di getto dorato, che gli sono superbissimo ornamento. Nella cime
del Pomo hà una bellissima testa di Leone con tutta maestria formata, e quattro altre ne’
quattro lati opposti, e tramezzati d’altre tante lastre con getti parimenti Dorati. . . . E’ arma
Turchesca,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 232–33; see Boccia, L’Armeria, 15.
49. “Fù di Cosmo Medici Avo Materno del Sig. Marchese, acquistata nelle Guerre d’Ungheria
contro i Turchi, alle quali fù mandato dal Serenissimo Gran Duca Ferdinando Primo, in com-
pagnia del Sig. D. Giovanni Medici, con buon numero di Soldati in ajuto dell’Imperadore,
ove morì l’anno 1590,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 232–233. Here there might be a slight
imprecision of dates as Giovanni Medici was called by the Emperor Rudolph II to fight
in Hungary from 1594 until 1596; see Grassellini and Fracassini, Profili Medici, 105;
Umberto Dorini, I Medici e i loro tempi (Florence: Nerbini 1982), 448.
50. Bassani, “Il collezionismo,” 61.
51. “Et oh se fusse maneggiata contro i Turchi,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 233.
52. “[M]olti Personaggi, e Principi grandi,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 515. Legati lists the
Archdukes of Austria, Ferdinand Charles and his brother Sigismund, the Archduchess
Anna, all the princes and cardinals brothers of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, the Grand
Duke Cosimo III himself as well as “other Italian and northern princes” (“altri Principi
Italiani, e Oltramontani”).
53. “[S]i fece piacere di raccogliere . . . quanto poté avere di vaghi Prodotti della Natura,
presentatigli da Viaggiatori e da Missionari,” in BMG, MED 2008, Giovanni Targioni
Tozzetti, Catalogo delle Produzioni Naturali che si conservano nella Galleria Imperiale di
Firenze, distese l’anno 1763 per ordine di Sua Eccellenza il Sig. Maresciallo Marchese Anto-
nio Botta Adorno (Florence, 1763), fol. 3r; see Tongiorgi Tomasi, “Arte e natura,” 184.
 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles 65
54. “Dente d’ippopotamo . . . dal Serenissimo Principe Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici,” in
Legati, Museo Cospiano, 25.
55. “PELO, ò più tosto SETOLA della coda d’un Elefante . . . Francesco Redi, Filosofo speri-
mentale di primo nome, che donò questa al Museo,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 11–12.
56. “[H]o fatta consegnare al Redi la scatola dentrovi il gattino con l’otto gambe, et per ancora
non ho veduta q.ta curiosità,” in ASF, MdP, 5498 (Livorno, 6 April 1667), 207.
57. “Gatto con otto piedi,” in Legati, Breve Descrizione, 22.
58. Angelica Groom, “Collecting Zooligical Rarities at the Medici Court: Real, Stuffed and
Depicted Beasts as Cultural Signs,” in Collecting Nature, ed. Andrea M. Gáldy and Sylvia
Heudecker (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 2014), 19–35, 27–28.
59. “Scorpione . . . fù da Tunisi, portato vivo in Toscana del MDCLXVIII. e campò tre mesi, e
mezo in Fiorenza,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 51.
60. See Legati, Breve Descrizione, 50; Francesco Redi, Esperienze intorno alla generazione degli
insetti (Rome: Edoardo Perino, 1885), 43–45 (first published in Florence in 1668), and Gio-
vanni Pagni, Lettere di Giovanni Pagni medico, ed archeologo pisano a Francesco Redi in rag-
guaglio di quanto di quanto egli vidde, ed operò in Tunisi (Florence: Magheri, 1829), 137, 141.
61. “Havendo trovato qui un Pesce secco che serve per cappello et essendo cosa assai rara et
curiosa Piglio la libertà di mandarlo a VS. con il Presente Procaccio,” in ASB, Ranuzzi,
Carte Politiche 44 (Livorno, 21 February 1680 (1679 ab incarnatione)), 407.
62. “Ringratio VS dell Cortesissimo et eccellente aggradimento havuto per la Piciola bagatella
di quella Pelle di Pesce, et non meritava di essere messa nel suo Museo ma solo di essere
messa in Testa a qualche Maschera in questo Carnavale,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche
44 (Livorno, 4 March 1680 (1679 ab incarnatione)), 409.
63. “1. Pesce secco che serve per cappello,” in Inventario Semplice, 18.
64. “[F]arò Provedere se si Possa a dio Piacendo un bravo Parrochetto, et il Grande lumachino
ne sarà il direttore,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Pisa, 17 March 1684 (1683 ab
incarnatione)), 307. The bizzare-sounding name, Grande Lumachino, is most probably an
italianization of an Arabic name.
65. Groom, “The Role of Rare and Exotic,” 66, 72.
66. “[G]ià qui, sotto la direzione del Grande Lumachino ma Pare un Poco perso di cervello,”
in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Pisa, 28 March 1684), 313.
67. “[V]uole che il Parrochetto Parli bene,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 11
April 1684), 321.
68. “[H]a unto la bocca . . . bene al Gran Lumachino con tanti salami,” Ibid., 321.
69. Findlen, Possessing Nature, 225.
70. Findlen, The Economy, 21; Findlen, Possessing Nature, 225; Legati, Museo Cospiano, 515.
71. “[E]t godo . . . che il Parrochetto serva bene; ma VS ha trattato così bene il maestro luma­
ghino; che lo scolare dovrebbe fare anche meglio che non fa,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte
Politiche 45 (Florence, 19 June 1684), 351–352.
72. Benjamin Schmidt, “Inventing Exoticism: The Project of Dutch Geography and the Mar-
keting of the World, circa 1700,” in Merchants & Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in
Early Modern Europe, ed. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen (New York and London:
Routledge, 2002), 353.
73. “Nautilus,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano, 107.
74. “[L]i miei nichi sono con il convolo in Cadiz ma potrebbero venire a livorno e ogni volta se
un altra squadra di vascelli da Guerra olandesi verra da Amsterdam Io l’attendo per poterli
poi mostrare qua a VS,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (Florence, 18 May 1675), 147.
75. Groom, “The Role of Rare and Exotic,” 49.
76. “[A]spetto VS qua a vedere li miej nichi che mi sono arrivati et ora li sto riordinando,” in
ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (Florence, 3 September 1675), 157.
77. “Io manderò a VS di tutti quelli nicchi che mi sono venuti ultimamente dell Brasill,” in
ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (Florence, 19 June 1682), 757.
78. “Io fo ripulire li nicchi con la Ruota come sono tutti li mia et per questo si tarda un Pochino
Piu a mandarli a VS,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (Florence, 7 July 1682), 747.
79. “VS mandi Pure li nicchi che Piacendo a dio li farò ripulire, et godero molto di vedere
Piacendo a dio a suo Tempo il disegno di come VS accomodi li nicchi nell suo museo,” in
ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 44 (25 August 1682), 708.
80. “La flotta che ora e arrivata dell Indie in Spagna mi ha portato alcuni nicchi che 4 anni sono
se non erro Io commessi nel Peru che spero che fra Poco Tempo Piacendo a dio arriveranno
66  Federica Gigante
a livorno et io Piacendo a dio ne manderò a VS qualche duno per per mostra in così che
siano belli,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 2 November 1682), 19–20.
81. Beekman in Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet, ed. and
trans. Eric M. Beekman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), civ–cvi. The pres-
ence of shells coming from the Ambonese cabinet is suggested by the coincidence between
the date of the sale by Rumphius (see Rumphius, The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet,
223) and that of Cosimo’s correspondence to Cospi on the other. Moreover, the pres-
ence of Ambonese shells in the Cospi Museum is confirmed by Giuseppe Gaetano Bolletti,
Dell’origine e dei progressi dell’Istituto delle Scienze di Bologna (Bologna, 1751), 89, while
the alienation of some shells from the Ambonese cabinet by Cosimo is confirmed in Tar-
gioni Tozzetti, Catalogo delle Produzioni naturali che si conservano nella Galleria Imperi-
ale di Firenze, disteso nell’anno 1763, fol. 4r.
82. “Io sono all’Ambrogiana a dio Piacendo quando VS arriverà a Fiorenza e se VS vorrà
vedere li nicchi,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 5 April 1683), p. 137.
83. “[C]he VS sia arrivata con salute in livorno . . . puote esser certo che sarà mia consolatione
di rivederla qua. Io li fo Preparare delli nicchi per che se li Porti all suo Museo,” in ASB,
Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 11 May 1683), 147.
84. BUB, ms 4312, Testacei, [cioe Nicchi Chioccioe e Conchiglie] di più spezie con piante
marine etc. Regalo del Ser.mo Cosimo III Gran Duca di Toscana al Senatore, Marchese,
Balì e Decano Ferdinando Cospi; see also Elisa Boldrini, “Il manoscritto ‘Testacei, cioe nic-
chi chioccioe e conchiglie’ della Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, disegnato e miniato da
Jacopo Tosi e il collezionismo malacologico tra 16. e 17. secolo” (tesi di laurea: Università
di Bologna, 1995).
85. “[H]o ricevuto il libro delli nicchi che VS mi ha mandato, che certo quelli che VS ha fatto
fare costì in villa alla sua Presenza sono anche meglio fatti delli Primi,” in ASB, Ranuzzi,
Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 25 September 1683), p. 235. In this letter Cosimo also dis-
cusses the victory of the Christian army over the Turks at the gates of Vienna.
86. “Rimanderò a VS il suo bell libro de nicchi et il Pensiero di VS di accomodare la volta dove
deve stare li nicchi di nicchi commessi; non so se si potrà fare per che nella Predetta stanza
dove ci mette li nicchi a Dio Piacendo ci si devono mettere molte cose naturali et essendo la
stanza assai grande,” in ASB, Ranuzzi, Carte Politiche 45 (Florence, 5 October 1683), 249.
87. Samuel Quiccheberg, Inscriptiones vel tituli Theatri amplissimi, complectentis rerum uni-
versitatis singulas materias et imagines eximias etc. (Munich, 1565), classis tertia, inscrip-
tio prima and inscriptio secunda.
88. See Findlen, “The Economy,” 22.
89. “[M]eritamente patrocinato . . . dalla Serenissima Casa Medicii . . . assaggiatasi ora con
particolar gusto di tutti gl’Ingegni, e Cittadini, e stranieri,” in Legati, Museo Cospiano,
“Protesta di Teodoro Bondoni a chi legge.”
Part Two

Livorno
Infrastructures and Networks
of Exchange
5 Disembedding the Market
Commerce, Competition, and
the Free Port of 1676
Corey Tazzara

Introduction: People and Commodities

The development of commodity markets remains poorly understood in comparison
with other aspects of the transition to capitalism in early modern Europe. This is
surprising, since commodity markets are generally thought to resemble the ideals of
free competition more than any other component of the capitalist system. Whereas
markets for land, labor, and capital seem especially prone to social manipulation even
today, commodity markets have sometimes been viewed as natural, almost ahistorical
in the way they brought together buyers and sellers.1
It is true that commodity markets are also thought to have been victims of distor-
tions, to use a modern term. Trading companies and navigation restrictions limited
market development, as Adam Smith argued in his famous critique of the mercantil-
ist system. But here we shall consider a set of factors that drew rather less attention
from Smith and other eighteenth-century economists: how tariff rules, ethno-religious
identity, and citizenship status affected the price and availability of wares. Insofar as
goods and people are admitted to a market upon equal terms, then a market may be
described as free. By these criteria, the appearance of freer commodity markets within
the interstices of mercantilist exclusions was an important development in early mod-
ern Europe.
The most celebrated exemplar of free trade was Amsterdam, which enjoyed low
tariffs (perhaps around 5%) and an absence of restrictions on the flow of people and
commodities through its port. Of course, the Dutch entrepôt benefited from organ-
ized violence in the colonial sphere and was ultimately buttressed by a social alliance
between Dutch political leaders, the Calvinist establishment, and elite merchants.2 The
free market’s social foundations lay in the peculiar soil of Dutch history. Although
Amsterdam did serve as a model to contemporaries, Pieter de la Court’s famous max-
ims of Dutch policy were honored more in the breach than the observance.
There was another, southern European path to the commodity market. Starting in
the 1590s, Livorno coped with chaos in the international trading sphere by unilater-
ally opening its doors to foreign merchants of all nations. Commerce remained tied
to personal status, except that everybody enjoyed equal privileges, “even our enemy
the Turks.”3 The effort to attract commerce to the port initially revolved around
encouraging foreign merchants to settle and trade in the port; the Medici regime was
intensely involved in the management of social networks flung across the Mediter-
ranean world. Later, a reform act in 1676 applied a universal stallage tariff to goods,
paid for the right to use the port’s warehouse facilities. Goods were taxed upon arrival
70  Corey Tazzara
with no questions asked about their provenance, destination, or transactional destiny.
This entailed a further development in the creation of free commodity markets. It is
the primary focus of the present chapter.
By the early eighteenth century, most Italian ports modeled their customs regime
after Livorno—they were open to foreign traders and had low tariffs on the import,
storage, and export of goods.4 This state of affairs was the unexpected outcome of
competition between Livorno, Marseille, and Genoa over the mediation of long-­
distance commerce. Free port rivalries, as they developed during the late seventeenth
century, prompted more explicit attention to liberalizing the flow of goods as such; it
dissolved the connection between commodities and the group identity of their owners.
This movement was less the result of a social alliance, as in the Netherlands, than of
a competitive environment in which ports had little choice but to lower trade barriers
or risk losing rich commercial fluxes.

The Port Project

Florence: an inland city that dreamt of the sea. It purchased Livorno and Porto Pisano
from the Genoese Republic in 1421. It soon launched a state-sponsored galley system
to fetch wool from England and transport textiles to the Levant; these ships departed
from Porto Pisano in impressive numbers during the central decades of the fifteenth
century.5 But Florentine merchants discovered that they were content to rely on third-
party shipping rather than fund their own fleet. In addition, the silting of the harbor at
Porto Pisano rendered it unfit to host a regular marine. Henceforth the best prospects
for a Florentine port lay by the undeveloped fortress of Livorno—little more than a
“castle placed on the sea” when Montaigne saw it in 1581.6
Change was already underway when Montaigne visited. The consolidation of the
Medici principate made possible a new level of investment in the port. Cosimo I
(r. 1537–1574) had devoted some attention to strengthening the city’s defenses and,
after about 1560, its commercial infrastructure as well. The Canale dei navicelli, a
channel that connected Livorno to the Arno River, was his most important achieve-
ment. Completed in 1574, it effectively joined the port to its Tuscan hinterland. But it
fell to his sons Francesco I (r. 1574–1587) and especially Ferdinando I (r. 1587–1609)
to bring the port project to fruition.7
Francesco I commissioned one of the Grand Duchy’s finest architects, Bernardo
Buontalenti, to design an enlarged and modern city in 1576. Construction began that
very year after an astrological ceremony that must certainly have appealed to the
alchemist-prince. He developed a grand commercial strategy that aimed to capture
the Portuguese spice trade and to replace Venice as the principal Italian broker with the
Islamic east.8 Although a peace overture with the Ottoman Empire proved ­stillborn—
the Order of St. Stephen’s assaults on Muslim shipping made that inevitable—one pol-
icy did survive the collapse of Francesco’s plans: hospitality toward Ottoman subjects.
Francesco had sought a negotiated and reciprocal agreement with the Ottoman
Empire, in line with traditional commercial diplomacy. His brother Ferdinando I pur-
sued a policy more in tune with the chaotic conditions prevailing in the Mediterra-
nean in the closing decades of the sixteenth century.9 In addition to intensifying the
infrastructural investments begun by his predecessors, he issued a body of legislation
intended simply to populate the new port. Most important in this respect was his
unilateral invitation to “merchants of any nation” to settle in the port: “Easterners,
 Disembedding the Market 71
Westerners, Spanish, Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Jews, Turks, Moors,
Armenians, Persians, and [people] of other states.”10 This invitation, called the Livorn-
ina, was issued in 1591 and reissued in modified form in 1593. It offered a variety of
protections to merchants and their property, including numerous provisions directed
specifically toward Jewish settlement. This ensemble of privileges was remarkable less
for the text itself than for the fact, not foreseeable in 1591, that the Medici would
preserve and indeed extend them over time.
The population of Livorno expanded rapidly in subsequent years. From a small
village of perhaps 500 inhabitants, its population grew to about 10,000 people by
the middle of the seventeenth century, and in fits and starts it continued to grow until
the end of the Ancien Régime.11 While the bulk of immigrants came from Tuscany
and nearby coastal regions in Italy, its most conspicuous residents were the foreign
merchant communities that the Livornina had targeted. The Jewish community was
largest in number—it became the largest settlement of Jewry in southern Europe—and
played an important role in mediating trade between the Levant, North Africa, and
Italy. But several other merchant communities appeared as well, attracted by the Medi­ci
policy of commercial toleration. Like other regimes of the era, the Medici policed reli-
gious boundaries, especially in public, but it also turned a blind-eye to the practice of
Protestantism.12 The Dutch and English communities are of special interest. They not
only mediated access to Atlantic markets, but they also played an increasingly impor-
tant role in intra-Mediterranean commerce, with Livorno as their base of operations.
For the French traveler Charles De Brosses, life in the Tuscan port the “seemed to be a
veritable masquerade and the language that of the Tower of Babel.”13
Livorno’s economic take-off occurred in the early 1590s, when famine in Italy
prompted the massive import of grains from the Baltic. In the decades around the turn
of the seventeenth century, Livorno served three commercial functions: a port of redis-
tribution for Tyrrhenian produce, an entrée point for industrial raw materials, and the
major grain port of the central Mediterranean. So important was grain, in fact, that
long-distance trade in Livorno was largely a function of cereal imports.14
To these “legitimate” commercial roles, we might add the redistributive role played
by Livorno in the corsair economy of the Mediterranean. According to one Venetian
ambassador, “for some years, many corsairs have appeared in Livorno with prizes
taken in Levantine waters, or other people who bought prizes in Barbary or Sicily; and
they are secure thanks to this privilege [of the city], taking however the name of ‘mer-
chants’ rather than ‘corsairs.’ ”15 This predation economy reached its heights under
Ferdinando I and Cosimo II (1609–1621), who relentlessly celebrated the maritime
exploits of the Order of St. Stephen even as they opened the port’s doors to dubious
goods from North Africa. The regime sometimes went to amusing lengths to pro-
tect the sale of predated wares. For example, when a French corsair seized a felucca
near Rome in 1695, among his booty was a painting by Guercino representing the
Cumaean Sybil al naturale. The Grand Duke, presumably to please the owner of the
painting, wrote to the governor of Livorno about trying to “recover it by making good
the price that was paid for it,” if by chance some merchant had bought the canvas.16
Alas! “I was too late,” explained the governor. The corsair had indeed tried to sell the
paintings in Livorno, but he had not found a buyer and had already departed for the
French port of Toulon.
Nevertheless, predation—whether direct or indirect—never accounted for more
than 20% of the commercial activity of the port, and much less by the mid-seventeenth
72  Corey Tazzara
century. The free port’s commercial destiny lay elsewhere, as English and Dutch mer-
chants began to use Livorno as a center for the deposit and warehouse of goods.
Goods en route from northwestern Europe as well as those from Italy or the Levant
would be stockpiled in Livorno.17 Contemporaries were well-aware of how this system
of multilateral trade functioned:

after unloading merchandise destined for here, they load goods for Izmir and the
Levant. Upon their return they stop here, leaving many wares from the Levant (silk,
cotton, leather wares, wax, mohair, cloth, taffeta, Persian goods) and picking up
alum, rice, gall nuts, tartar, irises, and the same Levantine wares in these warehouses.18

This system had two principal rationales. The informational costs of managing far-
flung commercial networks were high. Creating key nodes of wares (and information)
simplified trade considerably. In addition, endemic maritime insecurity occasioned
various convoy systems that were formalized around 1650: strength in numbers.
The regular routes required of ships moving in convoys privileged a nodal system of
deposit and transit.
The customs regime of Livorno impeded the further development of this system.
The early free port envisioned the hospitable reception of aliens. The Livornina was an
invitation to foreign merchants, who could trade in Livorno on equal terms regardless
of their ethno-religious status. People were free to come and go. But the regime gov-
erning the movement of goods was not well adapted to the commerce of deposit and
transit. Early customs privileges surrounding the movement of goods were codified
in 1566 but evolved ad hoc toward greater liberty (or licentiousness, from the point
of view of Florence). Procedurally, the exemptions associated with the early free port
complicated rather than simplified the collection of taxes. Bureaucratic interference
affected the import, exchange, and export of goods; the system nourished extensive
fraud at the same time as it aggravated merchants.19 Had the larger commercial out-
look of the Mediterranean remained unchanged, the Medici might have allowed the
incoherent customs regime to languish in malign neglect. But competition among rival
ports provoked a transformation in the way the customs bureaucracies handled goods.

The Free Port of 1676

In the first half of the seventeenth century, the port of Marseille played a notable but
not dominant role in France’s foreign trade. It had a complex and, for outsiders, inhos-
pitable customs regime. But after Louis XIV “reconquered” the city in 1660, Marseille
began to figure in Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s plans for relaunching French commerce and
industry. His first steps were to authorize convoys to protect Marseillais shipping, post
an intendant there, and undertake a program of urban renewal.20
An edict of 1669 declared the city a free port and established a new framework for
trade. The preamble to this edict sounds like an encomium on free trade:

Since commerce is the fittest means for conciliating the various nations and keep-
ing the most opposed spirits within a good and mutual correspondence, bringing
and spreading abundance by the most innocent of paths . . . we declare the port
and haven of our town of Marseilles free and open to all merchants and business-
men and to all merchandise of whatsoever quality or nature.21
 Disembedding the Market 73
In fact, while the port was nominally open to all merchants, Armenians and Jews had
a difficult time making good on the edict’s promises. In addition, a prohibitive customs
duty of 20% was levied on goods coming from the Levant on non-French ships, or
even on French ships hailing from nearby ports in Italy or Spain. This latter provision
was aimed at drawing commerce away from Marseille’s rivals, Livorno and Genoa.
There are two oddities to observe about Colbert’s edict. First, it took the form of a
free port and explicitly recalled principles of free trade. And indeed, this most mercan-
tilist of measures did simplify the customs regime while making Marseilles freer for
some immigrant-merchants, particularly Protestants from northern Europe. Second,
Colbert’s jealousy of trade had a counterintuitive outcome: it promoted the spread of
free trade institutions and maritime integration. The countermeasures taken by Genoa
and especially Livorno accelerated liberalization in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
It is difficult to say what effect the Marseilles declaration had on Genoese com-
merce. Port data for the 1660s and 1670s are the most fragmentary for the entire
seventeenth century; the data we do possess show no trend (Table 5.1). The policy
response is clearer. In a free port law of 1670, the Genoese offered fresh incen-
tives for long-distance trade, reduced overland transit exemptions, and promoted
the export of local textiles and the corresponding import of raw silk and wool. It is
worth noting that the Genoese had already liberalized substantial dimensions of their
customs regime, however. Limitations on shipping or transshipment via Livorno
had been removed in 1651; in 1654, provisions for admitting foreign merchants to
Genoa were enacted; in 1658, a separate set of grain trade exemptions was rolled
into the free port; in 1660, various transactional taxes were eliminated or lowered.
These measures were capped by a treaty with the Sublime Porte in 1665. A fresh free
port law was issued in December 1670, nineteen months after that of Marseilles. It
consolidated the liberalizing provisions of the prior two decades.22 Thereafter, the
Genoese patriciate had no stomach for further liberalization until the eighteenth
century. The ruling class was ambivalent about the tradeoffs the free port involved
between a more active maritime policy, revenue collection, and dominance over the
subject cities of Liguria. In addition, Genoa faced a more cramped fiscal environment
than its rivals.23

Table 5.1 Commercial indicators in Genoa, 1655–1684 (five-year averages).

Anchorage Carati (lire) Navi Cabotage Navi Cabotage

(Arrivals) (Arrivals) (Departures) (Departures)

1655–69 14693 223860 215 1082 127 944

1660–64 13213 268999 220 1293 187 1201
1665–69 13291 307478c 179b 1353c 251 1615c
1670–74 21280 286601c 297b 685b
1675–79 22181 282237e 323 1411c
1680–84 21341 264304d 312 1245e
Sources: Giacchero, Il seicento e le compere di San Giorgio, 679–681; Edoardo Grendi, “Traffico e navi nel
porto di Genova fra 1500 e 1700,” in La repubblica aristocratica dei genovesi (Bologna: Mulino, 1987),
309–64: appendices 2, 3, 4, and 6; Giorgio Doria, “La gestione del porto di Genova dal 1550 al 1797,” in
Il sistema portuale della Repubblica di Genova. Profili organizzativi e politica gestionale (secc. XII-XVIII),
ed. Giorgio Doria and Paola Massa Piergiovanni (Genova: Società ligure di storia patria, 1988), 135–98:
appendix 2. Notes: a: Major reform in anchorage assessments in 1669. b: Based on only one year of data. c:
Based on only two years of data. d: Based on only three years of data. e: Based on only four years of data.
74  Corey Tazzara
The declaration of a free port in Marseilles had swift repercussions for Livorno. The
French consul in Livorno remarked,

As to French commerce in this city, it is very thin, since after Marseilles became a
free port, we stopped sending our Levantine merchandise there; one doesn’t con-
duct half the business that one used to before, and we do not send half the French
ships we used to.24

The statistics bear out the consul’s analysis. Long-distance shipping declined by 31%
in the five years after 1669 (Table 5.2); the decline appears even more severe if one
focuses on the period 1667–1675 (Table 5.3). The crisis affected almost every arena of
long-distance shipping, but losses were especially catastrophic in shipping from Spain
and northwestern Europe, which declined by 77%. Commerce with North Africa fell
almost immediately, whereas trade with the Levant declined somewhat more slowly.
Revenue indicators also show a decline in these years. For instance, the stallage rev-
enue, the most important index of long-distance shipping, declined by 12% in the
seven years from 1669, as did extraordinary revenues (by 5%). The latter was associ-
ated with long-distance commerce through various licensing fees. The new free port
of Marseilles struck directly at its rival Livorno’s role in the deposit-and-transit trade
between East and West, initially by sapping French use of the port.
Despite signs of crisis, however, the fundamental regional commerce of the port was
largely unaffected. The anchorage tax was levied on every ship that entered the har-
bor. Anchorage revenue, which affected local cabotage as well as long-distance ships,

Table 5.2 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1665–1674 (five-year averages).

Ship Ordinary Anchorage Stallage Extraord. Victual

Arrivals Revenue Revenue Revenue Revenue Revenue
(lire) (lire) (lire) (lire) (lire)

1665–69 802 748545 85735 362237 815579 353254.8

1670–74 551 800748 88511 318915 775053 352559
% Change –31% +7% +3% –12% –5% 0%
Source: ASL, Sanità, 67, 68, 69, and 71; Ghezzi, Livorno e l’Atlantico, 32; ASF, Soprassinadaci e sindaci,
469–474. I thank Lucia Frattarelli Fischer and Andrea Addobbati for providing me the transcriptions of
the fiscal revenues.

Table 5.3 Ship arrivals in Livorno by provenance, 1667–1675 (three-year totals).

The West The Levant North Africa The Italian Unknown Total
Sphere

1667–69 230 197 92 29 19 566

1670–72 108 172 61 18 21 379
1673–75 54 120 59 23 8 264
% Change (thru 1672) –53% –13% –34% –38% 10% –33%
% Change (thru 1675) –77% –39% –36% –21% –56% –53%
Source: ASL, Sanità, 67, 68, 69, and 71. Note that “the West” includes the Iberian Peninsula; the Italian
Sphere includes the West Mediterranean, the Regno, the Tyrrhenian, and miscellaneous Italy.
 Disembedding the Market 75
actually increased slightly in this period, by 3%. In addition, various taxes on victuals
such as wine, grain, and oil—the preeminent goods of local trade—showed no signs
of crisis, and some were even growing. Such commerce was more closely related to
the underlying economic realities of the region than to long-distance trade. Trampers
had no reason to notice the epochal changes in international commerce underway. It is
striking to compare the dramatic fall in long-distance shipping with the more modest
fluctuations in revenue yields. This was a sign of how much local cabotage contributed
to Livorno’s trade.
The Grand Duke took the decline of long-distance commerce very seriously. But
although Cosimo III (r. 1670–1723) assumed the reins of government shortly after
Marseilles became a free port, his policies in Livorno should be seen as part of a
comprehensive effort to reform the Tuscan political economy rather than merely a
response to its French rival. His regime sought to maintain the competitiveness of
Livorno while at the same time emulating the industrial and commercial policies of the
economic juggernauts of the day, particularly Holland. The regime pursued a series
of plans for reforming the state machinery. These included reworking the flour tax
(1671 and 1678) and remodeling both the Office of Plenty (1671) and the Victual
Office (1681).25 In 1678 the regime undertook a profound examination of the Wool
Guild of Florence, which had long been one of the sacred cows of the Tuscan political
economy.26 Meanwhile, the regime set up new industrial enterprises in Florence and
commercial houses abroad. Much of this activity was overseen by Francesco Feroni
(1614–1692), a “most subtle and quibbling” person.27 Feroni, from a humble back-
ground, had made a fortune in Amsterdam and returned to Tuscany as a kind of com-
mercial and financial expert. He was closely involved in crafting the regime’s solution
to the trade crisis in Livorno.
The eventual response to the trade crisis did not take the form of a simple lowering
of duties or extension of warehousing rights. Instead, in early 1676, after extensive
consultations between central officials such as Feroni and foreign merchants—local
bureaucrats were marginal to these discussions—the Grand Duke eliminated import/
export taxes entirely. To make up for lost revenue, he imposed an elevated stallage
tariff paid by every good entering the port. This measure radically simplified transac-
tion costs for both merchants and officials. Merchants now had the liberty to trade
without “formalities, orders, or writings . . . and freely unload, transit, sell, contract,
or export from Livorno for anywhere in the world.”28
Commerce rebounded almost immediately under the new dispensation, which
helped secure Livorno’s prosperity for over fifty years, right up until the extinction
of the Medici dynasty. Long-distance shipping increased by 36% in the next five-
year period (which includes the last “bad” year, 1675) and soon reached levels never
before seen by Livorno, with growth continuing long after the Reform (Table 5.4).29
Stallage revenues increased by about 30%, indicating that not only were more ships
arriving in Livorno, but they were depositing more goods in its warehouses. Nor
did the increase in traffic come from siphoning off overland transit.30 Instead, the
shipping data indicate a substantial increase in shipping from northwestern Europe
and the Italian sphere (Table 5.5). Shipping from the Levant and North Africa, by
contrast, declined slightly or held steady. The Reform strengthened Livorno’s posi-
tion in exchange between northwestern Europe and the Western Mediterranean
while enabling the free port to hold onto its position in trade with the Islamic
world.31
76  Corey Tazzara
Table 5.4 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1670–1884 (five-year averages).

Ship Arrivals Stallage (and Ordinary) Anchorage Extra

1670–74 551 1119663 88511 775053

1675–79 749 1476971 91307 930537
1680–84 911 1424851 88123 1008227
% change (thru 1679) 36% 32% 3% 20%
% change (thru 1684) 65% 27% 0% 30%
Sources: ASL, Sanità, 67, 68, 69, and 71; ASF, Soprassinadaci e sindaci, 469–474. Note that stallage taxes
have been combined with ordinary taxes for the years 1670–76 to provide a more reliable indicator of com-
merce (the elevated stallage fee was intended to compensate for the elimination of ordinary taxes in early
1676). Note also that most of the taxes on victuals were eliminated in 1676; for that reason they have not
been included in the table.

Table 5.5 Ship arrivals by provenance, 1670–1680 (five-year totals).

The West The Levant North Africa The Italian Sphere Unknown Total

1670–74 138 257 104 27 25 551

1675–79 271 228 79 120 51 749
% Change 97% –11% –24% 344% 107% 36%
1671–75 130.2 223.92 101 32 20.28 507.4
1676–80 325.8 252.88 88 109 54.92 831
% Change 150% 13% –13% 241% 171% 64%
Source: ASL, Sanità, 67, 68, 69, and 71.

In the words of one anonymous Frenchman in 1699, Livorno remained “the city
in the world where one finds the greatest number of foreigners of various nations and
where, although the Inquisition be established, there is liberty of conscience, since
reason of state prevails over all others.”32 But that reason of state had moved past
the issues of foreign hospitality that had preoccupied it a century earlier. By now, the
Medici regime had begun the process of altering the regulation of exchange itself.

Disembedding the Marketplace

Some historians have seen 1676 as the birth of the free port. In fact, Livorno had
been considered a free port since the late sixteenth century, and the term continued
to denote both special treatment of goods and of merchants.33 The significance of the
Reform of 1676 lies rather in the new manner of treating goods. It instantiated the
principle that free trade required international commerce to be taxed only to cover
the costs of providing commercial services, not to enrich a state’s coffers—that is, the
principle that import/export duties were to be eliminated and service fees instituted
instead to cover administrative and infrastructure expenses. In other words, what we
see is the controlled (and voluntary) abandonment on the part of the authorities of the
right to tax goods along socially relevant criteria, such as ethno-religious or citizen-
ship status, and even more, the constitution of the marketplace as a kind of black box
of mercantile exchange in which the government undertook to establish and police
the infrastructure, but withdrew from intervening in the details of its workings. I say
 Disembedding the Market 77
“controlled” because such an autonomous commodity market coexisted alongside the
regular marketplaces of the Medici state, in Pisa or in Florence for instance, which
continued to resemble the more structured marketplaces of the Middle Ages. Livorno
was the special domain of international commerce.
We should view 1676 as a milestone in the disembedding of the marketplace from
social relationships. Over the early modern period and into the nineteenth century,
various processes subjected ordinary Europeans to market forces in land, labor, and
food provisions. To the extent that international commerce has entered this history,
it has done so under the guise of progressively lower tariff rates, as though tariffs
had been a “barrier” waiting to be eliminated. In fact, tariff rules (and exceptions to
those rules) were more important than rates themselves, and those rules were entan-
gled in matters of personal identity and affiliation; they were not about goods in
the abstract. Much commercial competition was over attracting merchants from spe-
cific ethno-­religious groups. Throughout the Mediterranean, their trading networks
were protected by such devices as settlement capitulations, formal or informal group
autonomies, and fiscal exemptions. Free ports represented an effort to offer further
protections and indeed to universalize them. “To all merchants of whatever nation”:
the preamble to Livorno’s privileges of 1591, much imitated throughout the region,
capture the spirit of this movement.
Thus far, liberalization proceeded via hospitality toward ethno-religious strangers.
Livorno’s Reform of 1676 was a notable step in the creation of commodity markets
that treated goods only as vectors of value. The new tariff applied to goods, not to
people, and it distinguished solely between high-value, low-value, and manufactured
goods (tax dues were higher on more valuable goods)—that is, it relied on economis-
tic criteria. Yet this act of disembedding, like all such acts, had its social antecedents.
The categories by which the reform tariff differentiated goods were descendants of the
traditional policies of urban provisioning, which offered cheap victuals for the masses,
as well as the jealousies of the guilds, which sought to buy raw materials cheaply and
minimize the import of finished goods. The structure of the tariff was a product of
mercantilist logic even if it served “liberalizing” ends.
More concrete social forces were at play in Livorno, too. The city had neither guilds
nor a native nobility. Its elite was a footloose assembly of merchants interested in the
commerce of transit and deposit. Cosimo III sought to create an indigenous nobility
with some allegiance to Tuscany while binding the port more closely to its hinter-
land.34 As in Amsterdam, an interplay of social forces lay behind the free marketplace
in Livorno. Unlike Amsterdam, however, its example proved portable—it could be
detached from Livorno and transplanted into new contexts.
Livorno’s treatment of goods profoundly influenced its neighbors. Ancona (1732)
and Trieste (1719, 1725) practically copied its legislation verbatim, as did the Swedish
port of Marstrand (1775) on the opposite side of the continent.35 Livorno’s traditional
rivals—Marseilles, Genoa, and Venice—found themselves unable to enact an identical
customs regime for political reasons, although they were lavish in their attention to, and
anxiety about, Livorno’s treatment of commodities. Their use of bonded warehouses, or
special free port facilities distinct from normally taxed warehouses, testifies to a willing-
ness to exempt certain goods from ordinary regulatory channels. Livorno’s example was
even debated in Amsterdam itself in the early 1750s.36 The Dutch episode is interesting
because it reveals how the debate about customs levels (Amsterdam) and customs rules
(Livorno) amounted to almost the same thing in practice by the mid-eighteenth century.
78  Corey Tazzara
In early modern Europe, the principal change in making possible the “commodity”
was the suppression of social dimensions to commerce. For that reason, the treatment
of foreign merchants is central to the history of the commodity. This transition was
never complete. Customs tariffs are still set by nation states, thereby linking commod-
ity prices to citizenship status. But in practice, customs duties are today a minimal
factor in shaping commodity prices, since the principal producers and consumers have
subscribed to most-favored-nation treaties that have reduced them to a bare mini-
mum. In modern times the process of commodification has more often involved the
privatization of hitherto public goods or the transformation of real objects into sim-
plified abstractions.37 To that extent, the multiplication of the “commodity form” is
indeed characteristic of modernity. But underlying this transformation is the pushing
of privileges linked to social identity into the margins of the marketplace. This began
to happen well before the rise of liberalism, owing more to the exigencies of competi-
tion than to ideology.

Conclusion: Tuscany and the Global Early Modern

Disembedding the marketplace did not result in the de-socialization of commerce. On the
contrary, it helped pave the way for the golden age of cross-cultural trade in the Mediter-
ranean, when commerce was conducted by informal networks of Jews, Armenians, and
Greek Orthodox merchants as well as by the English, French, and Dutch with their pow-
erful navies. To understand how evacuating social privilege from the marketplace helped
reinforce networks that were organized along those very lines, it is helpful to recall
that informal trading networks remained relatively efficient transmitters of information
throughout the early modern world (and in some cases until the present day).38 Indeed,
in lowering ethno-religious barriers to trade, Livorno and other Italian ports diminished
the benefits of using violence to capture trade and diminished the costs for outsiders
to access the marketplace. The advantages that joint-stock companies had over some
diasporic groups elsewhere in the world were largely absent in the Mediterranean.39
These remarks on commercial organization in the Mediterranean invite further
reflection on Tuscany’s place in the larger world. Italian states in the late Middle Ages
had been able to exact various rents. In the case of Genoa and Venice, these rents
often came through the application of force that anticipated the kind of violence that
came to typify colonial encounters. For Italian states like Tuscany, notwithstanding its
many projects of colonial desire, the opportunities to exact rents declined markedly
through the long sixteenth century—even as other European powers began to “trans-
late” Italian methods into the larger world.40 Successful colonial trading projects ulti-
mately relied on military power, and states like Tuscany were too weak to compete in
this arena, especially after the death of Cosimo II. That is why Italian ports did not
develop regular bilateral trade relations with America until the late eighteenth century,
let alone the Far East.
Yet the process of liberalization described in this chapter made it feasible for a
relatively small (and increasingly marginal) state to participate in global commerce on
the best possible terms. That meant that Livorno could play host to trading networks
that connected Tuscany to the Americas, India, and beyond. In exploring Livorno’s
peculiar cocktail of policies, we have not only traced a little-known aspect of the his-
tory of liberalism but also reconstructed the Grand Duchy’s global city. If the dynam-
ics that shaped policies in Livorno were usually Mediterranean or even (in 1676) just
 Disembedding the Market 79
Tyrrhenian, the world of commodities to which the free port gave access was as fully
global as anything found in Amsterdam or London—or Goa and Macao.

Appendix: Reconstructing Livorno’s Commerce

Livorno’s commercial history poses a special challenge in light of the destruction of
the port’s customs records in 1877. The main sources for maritime traffic are the
portata reports completed by officials of the city’s Health Board, which survive in
the archives of both Livorno and Florence. The portata contained information about
the tonnage of a ship and its flag, crew, provenance, and cargo. Unfortunately, the
Health Board generally collected data only on long-distance traffic or ships hailing
from places suspected of plague. In normal times, local shipping—the trading arc from
Sicily to southern France—was exempt from Health Board scrutiny. Long-distance
shipping, by contrast, was always subject to inspection and quarantine. As a result,
the series is a better indicator of large-scale shipping from northwest Europe and the
Islamic world than of local or regional trade.41
The portate have made it possible to reconstruct the long-haul import commerce
of Livorno from 1547 to 1666 (complete from 1612). Unfortunately, the flood of
1966 damaged later years of the portate records in Florence, making it difficult to
study trade during the decades surrounding the port’s most innovative moment, the
elimination of import/export duties in 1676 (although the avvisi da mare in Florence
do provide some similar information). To remedy this inconvenience, I have examined
the archive of the Health Board in Livorno for the period 1667–1683. This archive
contains letters from its Florentine counterpart assigning quarantine times to ship
arrivals; it is the sister documentation to the damaged series of portate.42 It is also,
alas, more laconic. Unlike the portate drafted in Livorno, the Florentine ordini do not
contain details about the nationality of a ship, its size and crew, its cargo, or its ship
captain. It only reliably indicates the name of a ship, its provenance, and any ports-
of-call. Even these details are sometimes absent, so that one only reads of “that ship
recently arrived from Alexandria” or “the felucca of captain so-and-so.” This source
problem is particularly acute in the case of the Dutch and English convoys that roved
the Mediterranean in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The ordini offer an
imperfect substitute for the Health Board records in Florence.
The Health Board ordini raise three questions: How reliable is the Livorno docu-
mentation as an indicator of the wrecked portate that had been sent to Florence? How
reliable are the portate series as an indicator of shipping? And lastly, how reliable are
the portate as an indicator of commercial performance? The first and the third of these
queries are the most vexed.
First, the relationship between my documents and the damaged portate in Florence.
This question matters because the portate were the foundation source for studies of
Livornine commerce before 1667; a good answer makes it possible to integrate my
series with their data. Over the thirty months for which archives in both Livorno
and Florence are complete, 75% of ship arrivals are indicated in both runs of docu-
ments; 5% of ship arrivals appear only in Livorno, and 20% only in Florence. In other
words, the Florentine portate are substantially more complete than the Livorno ordini,
although the Florentine series is not perfect. Fortunately, the proportion between the
Florentine portate and their sister documentation is relatively stable, making it pos-
sible to use a coefficient of .2 to correct for my Livorno series’ deficiencies.
80  Corey Tazzara
The next problem is the fidelity of the portate as an indicator of shipping. Alas,
this is the easiest problem to conceptualize and the hardest to correct. For gauging
the short-distance, small-ship tramping that accounted for much Mediterranean com-
merce, they are not useful at all. For this reason, this chapter has largely bracketed the
problem of cabotage. The portate are most reliable for commerce with North Africa
and the Levant, where plague fears prompted constant official vigilance; very reliable
for commerce beyond the Straits of Gibraltar; and rather less reliable as an indicator
of shipping for the broad arc from Sicily through southern France.
A final problem is treating the portate as an indicator of trade in general. Not sur-
prisingly, the cargo lists that accompanied the Florentine portate show some substan-
tial correlations for the period 1612–1666. For instance, the quintessential Atlantic
commodity of sugar tracked shipping from northwestern Europe fairly closely. There
is little reason to doubt the portate for goods imported from Asia (e.g. cotton or pep-
per), North Africa (e.g. hides), northwestern Europe (e.g. lead or fish), and the New
World (e.g. tobacco). The portate are rather less reliable for more locally produced
commodities, such as grain, olive oil, or wine.43 To make matters worse, the docu-
ments do not indicate anything about exports—a double loss for Livorno, which reex-
ported much of its imports to Italy and beyond, as well as exporting Tuscan goods.
Fortunately, we possess another indicator of commerce in Livorno, less direct than
shipping records but more uniform and complete. These are the accounts of port
revenue sent annually to an oversight body in Florence and complete from 1600 to
1740; anchorage data continues until 1773. The anchorage fees were subject to a
complicated assessment according to type of ship, tonnage, provenance, and route.
Annual variation was modest because most anchorage revenue came from local ship-
ping rather than the long-distance shipping so subject to vagaries in the international
scene. Anchorage should be taken as index of all shipping, not only of the big navi.
Also useful are the stallage fees paid for storing goods in the city’s warehouses. The
latter series becomes more trustworthy from 1676, when a reform of the customs
administration eliminated import/export exemptions in favor of a more structured
stallage tariff, as discussed in the text. Before the reform, the stallage should be com-
bined with the ordinary (import/export) duties to get a better sense of the overall com-
mercial flow in the port.44
To summarize: the shipping series was reconstructed from the archives of the Health
Board in Livorno, which recorded quarantine assignments for ship arrivals. In com-
piling these data, I have tried to adhere as much as possible to the methods used by
Ghezzi. For instance, I have removed corsairing, prize, and war vessels from the totals.
I have also sought to present my data primarily by regional provenance, which makes
it easier to compare Ghezzi’s data (organized by city) to that of Filipino (organized by
region). This decision was also conditioned by the vagueness of the ordini in compari-
son to the portate used by Ghezzi.
I have applied a convoy multiplier for cases in which the number of convoy ships
was not specified. When there were plural ships, but the term convoy was not used,
I simply added two ships to my database: a conservative procedure. When the actual
term convoy (as in “Dutch convoy from Izmir”) was used, I applied my convoy mul-
tipliers: 7 for the West, 4 for the East. When there were plural ships coming from
multiple provenances—e.g. “le merce et robe venute d’Inghilterra, e d’Olanda con le
nave descritte nella portata dell’ultimo passato”—I divided the two groups in half; in
practice this may have affected country provenances but not my regional totals. When
 Disembedding the Market 81
archival information enabled me to complete some of the convoy information (for
instance, official testimony that referenced specific vessels), I added convoy ships only
up to the number of 7 or 4, depending on provenance. When there were clear cases
of convoy ships listed a few days from vague notice of the arrival of a convoy, I have
treated those as part of said convoy and therefore not used the multiplier so as to
exclude the danger of double counting. In the few cases when the provenance of a con-
voy was not specified, but its arrival was noted in December or January, it is treated as
if coming from the appropriate place in the West (e.g. the Dutch and English convoys
that arrived on 27 January 1672 were treated as coming from the Netherlands and
England respectively).

Notes
1. See, for instance, the ambivalence expressed by Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capital-
ism (Berkeley: University of California, 1982–1984), vol. 2, 27–29, 51, 93–97, 194, 412,
416–423 and vol. 3, 236–239.
2. See John F. Padgett, “Country as Global Market: Netherlands, Calvinism, and the Joint-
Stock Company,” in The Emergence of Organizations and Markets, ed. John F. Padgett
and Walter W. Powell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 208–234.
3. ASF, MdP, 2160, f. 187, 02/19/1645 [AD], Pandolfo Attavanti to Domenico Pandolfini.
4. Jacques Savary des Brûslons and Philémon-Louis Savary, Dictionnaire universel de com-
merce, vol. 2 (Paris: Jacques Estienne, 1723), 1777–1778; and in general, see Corey Taz-
zara, “Capitalism and the Special Economic Zone, 1590–2014,” in New Perspectives on
Political Economy, ed. Sophus Reinert and Robert Fredona (London: Palgrave, 2018),
75–103.
5. Michael E. Mallet, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon,
1967).
6. François Rigolot, ed., Journal de voyage de Michel de Montaigne (Paris: Presses universi-
taires de France, 1992), 262.
7. On the early port project, see especially Giacinto Nudi, Storia urbanistica di Livorno: dalle
origini al secolo XVI (Venezia: N. Pozza, 1959); Danilo Matteoni, Livorno (Bari: Laterza,
1985); Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno città nuova: 1574–1609,” Società e storia XI
(1989): 873–893.
8. Filippo Sassetti, “Ragionamento sul commercio ordinato dal granduca fra i sudditi suoi e
le nazioni del Levante,” Archivio storico italiano App. IX (1853) [1577], 171–184.
9. See Molly Greene, “Beyond the Northern Invasion: The Mediterranean in the Seventeenth
Century,” Past and Present 174, no. 1 (2002): 42–71.
10. Giuseppe Gino Guarnieri, Livorno medicea nel quadro delle sue attrezzature portuali e
della funzione economica-marittima: Dalla fondazione civica alla fine della dinastia medi-
cea (1577–1737) (Livorno: Giardini, 1970), doc. 5.
11. Elena Fasano Guarini, “Esenzioni e immigrazioni in città tra sedicesimo e diciasettesimo
secolo,” in Livorno e il Mediterraneo nell’età medicea (Livorno: Bastogi, 1978), 56–76;
Elena Fasano Guarini, “La popolazione,” in Livorno e Pisa: due città e un territorio nella
politica dei Medici: Livorno, progetto e storia di una città tra il 1500 e il 1600 (Pisa: Nistri-
Lischi e Pacini, 1980), 199–215; Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The
Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 54.
12. See Stefano Villani, “ ‘Cum scandalo catholicorum . . .’. La presenza a Livorno di predica-
tori protestanti inglesi tra il 1644 e il 1670,” Nuovi studi livornesi VII (1999): 9–58; Stefano
Villani, “ ‘Una piccola epitome di Inghilterra’: La comunità inglese di Livorno negli anni di
Ferdinando II: questioni religiose e politici,” Cromohs 8 (2003): 1–23; Lucia Frattarelli Fis-
cher and Stefano Villani, “ ‘People of Every Mixture’: Immigration, Tolerance and Religious
Conflicts in Early Modern Livorno,” in Immigration and Emigration in Historical Perspec-
tive, ed. Ann Katherine Isaacs (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2007), 93–107; Barbara Donati,
Tra inquisizione e granducato. Storie di inglesi nella Livorno del primo seicento (Rome:
82  Corey Tazzara
Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 2010); Corey Tazzara, “Maintaining Religious Bounda-
ries in Italy During the Age of Free Trade, 1550–1750,” in Jews and the Mediterranean
World, ed. Jessica Marglin and Matthias Lehman (Indiana University Press, forthcoming).
13. Charles de Brosses, Lettres familières écrites d’Italie en 1739 et 1740 (Bruxelles: Editions
Complexe, 1995), 125.
14. Fernand Braudel and Ruggiero Romano, Navires et marchandises à l’entrée du port de
Livourne (1547–1611) (Paris: A. Colin, 1951); Renato Ghezzi, Livorno e il mondo islami­co
nel XVII secolo: naviglio e commercio di importazione (Bari: Cacucci, 2007); and Renato
Ghezzi, Livorno e l’Atlantico: I commerci olandesi nel Mediterraneo del Seicento (Bari:
Cacucci, 2012), esp. 105–118 on the grain trade.
15. Quoted by Giorgio Mori, “Linee e momenti dello sviluppo della città, del porto e dei traffici
di Livorno,” La Regione 3, no. 12 (1956): 3–44, 10; see also Corrado Masi, “Relazioni fra
Livorno ed Algeri nei secoli XVII–XIX,” Bollettino Storico Livornese 2 (1938): 183–193.
16. This and the following quote are in ASF, MdP, 2216, 9/13/1695, Francesco Panciatichi
to Marco Alessandro Dal Borro; and ASF, MdP, 2216, 9/16/1695, Marco Alessandro Dal
Borro to Francesco Panciatchi. My thanks to Francesco Freddolini for sharing these docu-
ments with me.
17. For the development of the deposit and transit trade, see Corey Tazzara, The Free Port of
Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2017), chap. 6; for the role of predation in the city’s economy, see Corey Tazzara,
“Port of Trade or Commodity Market? Livorno and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early
Modern Mediterranean,” The Business History Review, forthcoming.
18. Quoted by Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno 1676: la città e il porto franco,” in La Tos-
cana nell’età di Cosimo III, ed. by Franco Angiolini, Vieri Becagli, and Marcello Verga
(Firenze: EDIFIR, 1993), 46.
19. Corey Tazzara, “La gestione della dogana nel primo Seicento,” in La città delle nazioni:
Livorno e i limiti del cosmopolitismo (1566–1834), ed. Andrea Addobbati and Marcella
Aglietti (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2016), 219–236.
20. Junko Thérèse Takeda, Between Crown and Commerce: Marseille and the Early Modern
Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 25–35.
21. Quoted by Louis Dermigny, “Escales, échelles et ports francs au moyen âge et aux temps
moderns,” in Les grandes escales (Bruxelles: Recueil de la Société Jean Bodin, 1974), 521–
626, 553–554.
22. Not too much should be read into this date. The Genoese (unlike the Tuscans or the French)
revised their free port at regular legislative intervals, usually every ten years. The 1670 law,
which embodied the policy response to Marseille’s 1669 free port, had long been “scheduled.”
23. Giulio Giacchero, Origini e sviluppo del portofranco genovese (Genova: Sagep, 1972),
83, 87, 90–91, 107, 131–146; Giulio Giacchero, Il seicento e le compere di San Giorgio
(Genoa: Sagep, 1979), 457–460; Giulio Giacchero, Storia economica del Settecento Geno-
vese (Genoa: Apuania, 1951), 49–57; Luigi Bulferetti and Claudio Costantini, Industria e
commercio in Liguria nell’età del Risorgimento, 1700–1861 (Milan: Banca Commerciale
Italiana, 1966), 136–141; Thomas Allison Kirk, Genoa and the Sea: Policy and Power in an
Early Modern Maritime Republic, 1559–1684 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2005), 176–180; Corey Tazzara, “Against the Fisc and Justice: State Formation, Market
Development, and Customs Fraud in Seventeenth-Century Liguria,” in The Routledge His-
tory of the Renaissance, ed. William Caferro (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017),
358–372.
24. Letter by Pierre Cotolendy to the French Secretary of Maritime Affairs, 08/21/1671, as
quoted by Jean-Pierre Filippini, Il porto di Livorno e la Toscana 1676–1814, vol. 2 (Naples:
Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1998), 157.
25. Alessandra Contini, “La riforma della tassa delle farine (1670–1680),” in La Toscana
nell’età di Cosimo III, 241–273. On the Abbondanza, see Jean-Claude Waquet, Corrup-
tion: Ethics and Power in Florence, 1600–1770 (Cambridge: Polity, 1991).
26. Francesco Martelli, “ ‘Nec spes nec metus’: Ferrante Capponi, giurista ed alto funzionario
nella Toscana di Cosimo III,” in La Toscana nel’età di Cosimo III, 137–163, 151–152.
27. Paola Benigni, “Francesco Feroni, Empolese, negoziante in Amsterdam,” Rassegna degli
Archivi di Stato 47 (1988): 488–517; Paola Benigni, “Francesco Feroni: da mercante di
schiavi a burocrate nella Toscana di Cosimo III. Alcune anticipazioni,” in La Toscana
 Disembedding the Market 83
nell’età di Cosimo III, 165–183; Hans Cools, “Francesco Feroni, intermediario in cereali,
schiavi e opere d’arte,” Quaderni storici 41, no. 2 (2006): 353–365.
28. Quoted by Frattarelli Fischer, Livorno 1676, 57.
29. In the period 1547–1675, the slope of a linear curve was only 1.1; in the period 1676–
1793, the slope was 2.7. Note that a few peak years early in the century (1607 and 1629)
resembled late-seventeenth-century levels, although those peaks were exceptions rather
than norms.
30. See Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno 1676,” 54–55. I am grateful to her and Andrea Addobbati
for providing me with the customs receipts of Pisa from 1600–1694.
31. My analysis differs substantially from that of Jean Pierre Filippini, who argues that the
reform edict did not really affect Livorno’s commerce. His shipping series only begins in
1684, however, so he misses both the depression before 1676 and the immediate burst
thereafter. We shall see later why the edict’s effect diminished over time. See Filippini, Il
porto di Livorno e la Toscana, vol. 2, 158–159.
32. ASF, MdP, 1815, “Mémoire de l’Etat présent de Livourne et do son Commerce. Année
1699,” quoted by Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno 1676,” 63.
33. On interpreting the free port, see esp. Andrea Addobbati, Commercio, rischio, guerra. Il
mercato delle assicurazioni marittime di Livorno (1694–1795) (Roma: Edizioni di sto-
ria e letteratura, 2007), part 1; Guillaume Calafat, “Un mer jalousée: Juridictions mari-
times, ports francs et régulation du commerce en Méditerranée (1590–1740)” (PhD thesis,
Université Paris, 2013), part 2; Corey Tazzara, “Managing Free Trade in Early Modern
Europe: Institutions, Information, and the Free Port of Livorno,” The Journal of Modern
History 85, no. 3 (2014): 493–529.
34. See in general Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno 1676,” 63–65. The 1681 law is in ASL (Archivio
di Stato di Livorno), Comunità, 4, f. 195, 03/12/1681 [1680 ab inc.]. On Frenchmen
enrolled as citizens, see Jean-Pierre Filippini, Il porto di Livorno, vol. 2, 399–414. For
the nobility of Livorno, Danilo Marrara, “Livorno città ‘nobile’,” in Livorno e il mediter-
raneo nell’età medicea (Livorno: Bastogi, 1978), 77–81; Marcello Verga, Da “cittadini”
a “nobili”. Lotta politica e riforma delle istituzioni nella Toscana di Francesco Stefano
(Milano: Giuffrè, 1990), 524–526. For an example of the social ascent of a mercantile
family, see Antonio Ruiu, “La famiglia Sproni fra Comunità di Livorno, Ordine di Santo
Stefano e nobiltà toscana: l’ascesa di una nuova aristocrazia,” Nuovi studi livornesi 16
(2009): 97–119. In the Jewish community, the number of governors increased from eight-
een to thirty in 1690, and from thirty to sixty in 1693. These measures excluded Jews of
non-Iberian origin from government: Lucia Fratarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto. Ebrei
a Pisa e Livorno (secoli XVI–XVIII) (Turin: Silvio Zamorani, 2008), 178–184. For the
effort to promote ties between Livorno and its hinterland, apart from the works on Feroni
cited previously, see Daniele Baggiani, “Tra crisi commerciale e interventi istituzionali: Le
vicende del porto di Livorno in età tardo medicea (1714–1730),” Rivista storica italiana
104, no. 3 (1992): 678–729.
35. Fratarelli Fischer, Vivere fuori dal ghetto, 55.
36. Koen Stapelbroek, “Dutch Commercial Decline Revisited: The Future of International Trade
and the 1750s Debate About a Limited Free Port,” in Governare il mondo: L’economia
come linguaggio della politica nell’Europa del Settecento, ed. Manuela Albertone (Milan:
Feltrinelli, 2009), 227–255.
37. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1992).
38. See Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers; Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian
Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from
New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); cf. Greif, for whom the pos-
sibility of more impersonal forms of trade must lead to more modern (i.e. corporate) busi-
ness forms. Avner Greif, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from
Medieval Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
39. Tazzara, The Free Port of Livorno, 11–12.
40. See, for instance, Allison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of
Expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Maria Fusaro, Political
Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the
Rise of England 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
84  Corey Tazzara
41. On the sources, see Braudel and Romano, Navires et marchandises, 10–12, 79–87; Danie­le
Baggiani, “Appunti per lo studio del movimento di navi e merci a Livorno tra XVIII
e XIX secolo,” Ricerche storiche 24, no. 3 (1994): 701–17; Marie-Christine Engels, Mer-
chants, Interlopers, Seamen and Corsairs: The “Flemish” Community in Livorno and
Genoa (1615–1635) (Hilversum: Verloren, 1997), 83–85; Filippini, Il porto di Livorno
e la Toscana, vol. I, 39–44; Ghezzi, Livorno e il mondo islamico, 19–22; Trivellato, The
Familiarity of Strangers, 109; for information about the Health Board, see Cesare Ciano,
La sanità marittima nell’età medicea (Pisa: Pacini, 1976); Carlo M. Cipolla, Il burocrate
e il marinaio: la “Sanità” toscana e le tribolazioni degli inglesi a Livorno nel XVII secolo
(Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992).
42. In particular, I relied upon ASL 67, 68, 69, and 71 (70 contains other business). Fortu-
nately, these sources just cover the missing period. In 1684, portate from “unsuspicious
places” ceased to be sent to Florence, and shipping from northwestern Europe and the
Western Mediterranean disappear from the documentation. Frattarelli Fischer (“Livorno
1676,” 62) says that this change occurred in 1690; whether her date is erroneous or merely
a legal confirmation of the new status quo is unclear. In any case, the last year for which
the Sanità sources in Livorno are comparable to the older documentation is 1683.
43. Thus, while Ghezzi’s figures for the grain trade probably correctly reflect grain imports
from northwestern Europe and Sicily, especially important during times of famine, they do
not shed light on the trade in local cereals, which was also important in ordinary years.
44. For a discussion of these sources, see Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno 1676,” 53–57. I disa-
gree with her opinion that it is inadvisable to use ordinary revenues as an index before the
reform. As she points out, Grand Ducal officials were careful to ensure that the new proce-
dures brought in as much revenue as the old ones. In addition, Frattarelli Fischer exaggerates
the validity of the stallaggio after the reform, since different goods paid different values; so
while it may be a general indicator of commerce, it cannot distinguish between high-value
and low-value goods, between industrial products, raw materials, and bulk victuals.
6 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado
British Early Trading Networks and
Maritime Trajectories, c. 1570–1623
Tiziana Iannello

Italian Peninsula and Global Trades: The Role of Livorno

The economic and commercial eclipse of the Mediterranean Sea was a long and une-
ven process following the rise of the long-distance continental trades, especially to
Asia and the American continent. However, until the mid-seventeenth century the
Mediterranean region remained a strategic area for the growth of European and extra-
European commercial exchanges.1 Especially from the mid-sixteenth century until the
first decades of the seventeenth century, the trades from the Italian peninsula influ-
enced the cultural and commercial milieus of continental Europe, and the ports of
Genoa, Venice, Naples, Ancona, and Livorno still played a strategic role on the inter-
national scene. Furthermore, this period coincided with the involvement of Venetian,
Bolognese, Florentine, and Genoese bankers, cartographers, merchants, and voyagers
in extra-European trades. Merchants and travelers such as the Tuscan Giovanni da
Empoli (1483–1518), the Medici agent Andrea Corsali (born 1487), the Bolognese
Lodovico di Varthema (1480–1517), and others who traveled to Africa, India, China,
and Japan on Portuguese ships provided financial and technological support to open
trade routes eastward reaching the Indian Ocean.2
Throughout the sixteenth century, the economic and trading activities of the Italian
peninsula thus fostered the revitalization of commercial itineraries linking the Mediter-
ranean to northern Europe, the Levant, the Maghreb, and the Baltic Sea. Not surpris-
ingly, the Italian seaports became increasingly engaged in linking the Mediterranean to
the East Indies through the emerging Atlantic sea powers, such as the Iberian countries,
the British islands, and the Netherlands. Although the rise of seaborne empires, epito-
mized by ports like Lisbon, Seville, Amsterdam, or London, represented the great com-
mercial shift of the early modern era, the involvement of the Italian States in projecting
the Mediterranean trades on a global dimension remained therefore relevant.3
A paradigm of the aspirations of the Italian trade centers to be part of large-scale
commercial routes emerges from the Medici’s overseas commercial and maritime
policy, especially with regard to the establishment of a Grand Ducal navy and the
promotion of Tuscan ports, such as Pisa, Porto Pisano, Talamone, Portoferraio, and
finally the opening of Livorno to foreign merchant communities. In 1591 and 1593, as
a consequence of Ferdinando I de’ Medici’s charters known as “Livornine,” foreign-
ers were allowed to freely pursue their transactions in the Tuscan port.4 As a result,
diverse foreign peoples were integrated in Livorno, connecting Tuscany to Provence,
the Iberian Peninsula, the Levant, and the Maghreb, and hence to the colonial mar-
kets in the East Indies. Quite soon Livorno became an important Mediterranean hub
where merchandises were stored and shipped.5
86  Tiziana Iannello
An early seventeenth-century memorandum preserved in the Medici archives, con-
firms Livorno’s strategic role as an international free port linked to large-scale com-
mercial networks, involving mostly north European ships (notably British and Dutch).
The following passage articulates the expectations on the commercial development of
the port:

As His Serene Majesty wish to trade by sea in the East Indies by the way of Hol-
land, being until now a true valuable business, it should be necessary to build or
to buy four solid ships, one larger than the other . . . provided with wine, olive oil,
and other provisions, artillery and ammunition enough to this kind of voyage . . .
and [furnished] with Spanish real de a ocho,6 polished beads of coral and other
knick-knacks [minuterie]. . . . To go further, the ships should be bought or built
in Holland and should be sent from there, delivering goods directly to the East
Indies, with a full mandate and all supplies. It would be better to send them back
here in Livorno full of pepper and other spices. . . . And then, after downloading
in Livorno, [the ships] may load for Holland, London . . . and coming back in
those places they should reload and deliver again to the said Indies . . . only here
[in Livorno] should be bought all the polished coral to be sent to the said Indies,
where it will be sold with good profit and advantage.7

The anonymous advisor suggested how the Medici could commence unmediated
long-distance traffics, and how Livorno should become a commercial crossroad, espe-
cially with regard to the trading of coral with India and East Asia. The document also
confirms that from the last quarter of the sixteenth century onwards, Livorno had been
growing as a leading center for coral manufacturing and export in the Mediterranean.8
Such production and trade was also further promoted by the arrival and settlement of
Sephardic communities and Armenian merchants by the mid-sixteenth century, that
focused on coral and diamond trade with the Maghreb, the Levant, and India.9
In addition to playing a key role as a market for both western and eastern products,
Livorno became crucial for the maritime expansion of the British trade in the Medi-
terranean and beyond. As stated by the British consul in Constantinople, Sir Peter
Wyche, “our merchants who reside here [in Livorno] are very satisfied and believe that
this is the most convenient place for their trade with the Levant.”10
This study discusses how red coral played a substantial part in the British trade of
luxury commodities on a global scale, and especially toward Asia, with Livorno as a
central pivot where this material was procured before being shipped across the oceans.
Following such a perspective, this chapter examines the contexts and networks of the
coral trade, casting light on how the Medici promoted the circulation of this com-
modity through manufactures based in Livorno and the activities of its port, but also
through the contacts with other coral centers like Genoa and Marseilles. In particular,
it explores how this trade was controlled by British authorities, who attempted—not
always successfully—to open new mercantile trajectories by exploiting the success of
this coveted commodity.

The Medici and the British Maritime Expansion, c. 1570–1600

In their foreign political strategy and system of alliances in the European context and
in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Medici were concerned to promote political and trading
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 87
relations with England. In order to increase the economy of the Grand Duchy, during
the 1570s and 1580s Francesco I de’ Medici (1541–1587) supported the development
of Tuscany’s ports, particularly of Livorno, where British merchants rushed to do busi-
ness, anticipating the forthcoming maritime commercial initiatives implemented by his
successor Ferdinando I (1549–1609).11
When the British nation began its rise as an emerging trading power in the Mediter-
ranean Sea and on the oceans since the last quarter of the sixteenth century, merchants
found it advantageous to establish direct trades in the Italian ports. As a main source
of cash coming from the traffics with the Levant, the peninsula was in fact a key
area for the British commercial system.12 The first trading contact between a British
ship and Livorno was attained by the Swallow: on 23 June 1573 this vessel, coming
from London and Southampton under command of Captain John Scott, docked in the
Tuscan seaport. Noting immediately how advantageous it was to start traffics in the
Tuscan port both from the English side and from the local authorities, within a few
years Livorno became the first and most important British trading port in the Mediter-
ranean.13 As archival sources reveal, cargoes of British ships usually included tin, lead,
wool and textiles, leather, barrels of herring, salmon and dried fish, and commodities
from Lisbon or Cádiz, such as cochineal, linen, or textiles. Most transactions unveil
that conspicuous cargoes of alum and food (such as wine, raisins, grains, olive oil)
were exported from southern to northern Europe and exchanged for wool, tin, and
lead; and trading routes show that British ships continued their way to the Maghreb
coasts and the Levant. By following these strategic routes, the British controlled traffics
linking the Mediterranean, the Levant, and the oriental markets to northern Europe.14
The British long-distance trade to the East Indies was launched by the charter
granted by the crown to the Levant Company in 1581, with the goal of establishing
a monopoly of the pepper and spice trade.15 Later, in 1600, with the creation of the
East India Company (hereafter EIC), new strategies of business were established to
promote overseas maritime trade, although private merchants were still free to export
single commodities and to import Asian products on their own, while employed by
the firm.16 Even if the British could find Asian merchandises in the Mediterranean
ports—for example spices, silks, porcelain, leather, or sugar—their aim was to create
direct commercial connections with the East Indies.
During this period, British merchants laid the foundations of their commercial
power based on a widespread system of factories and trading networks that flourished
in the ensuing century. Although in this early phase only a marginal part of Brit-
ish traffics concerned red coral, such a trade proved to be quite significant to foster
connections toward eastern markets. The early modern commerce of coral may have
seemed a minor and very specialized single-commodity trade within the European
exchanges with Asia, especially in comparison with pepper and spices, silks, and silver
goods. Nevertheless, Mediterranean red coral was one of the most coveted products,
exchanged with Arabs, Persians, Indians, and East Asian traders.

Coral in the Eurasian Cultural Milieu

Harvested mainly in the western Mediterranean—a natural habitat for corals to grow,
due to the warm waters of the sea and a good tide—red coral (Corallium rubrum or
nobilis) was a most valuable item, easy to store and ship, and traditionally exported
by European ships to Indian, South Asian, and East Asian markets before and after the
88  Tiziana Iannello
opening of the transoceanic navigation.17 In ancient times, once polished the red coral
was prized as a gem for its brilliant color and smooth surface and mostly exchanged
for amethysts, turquoises, and shells from Far East Asia and India through the Silk
Road routes coming through Central Asia and the Caspian Sea. Mediterranean red
coral was appreciated universally in artistic commissions for its brightness, color
shades, and hardness, being the hardest substance apt to be manufactured into beads
for jewelry pieces and cameos, or as an attractive ornament to embellish statuettes,
hilts, mirrors, and other luxury objects.
Esteemed in India and East-Southeast Asia, where it was exchanged for diamonds
and pearls, red coral was a staple of Asian jewelers’ craft in manufacturing beads,
necklaces, rings, earrings, rosaries, and amulets. Furthermore, it was widely appreci-
ated for its religious, apotropaic, and magical attributes, or for medical use.18 Other
types included white coral (Corallium album) and stony or hard coral also widely
known by Asian people, acquainted with the coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean.19
Before the arrival of the first European ships at the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury, almost all red coral was exported to China and Japan from Southeast Asian
ports.20 In Ming China (1368–1644) and coeval Japan, red coral had different pur-
poses, from jewelry to pharmacopoeia.21 It was known by the Chinese since the later
Han period (AD 25–220) as a precious gem or stone coming from the Daqin, the name
given to the Roman Empire. Afterwards, Chinese and Japanese merchants bought red
coral (together with other varieties of white or black coral) in Southeast Asian and in
Indian trading posts, mainly commercialized by Arabs and Persians.
In China, red coral became an imperially endorsed treasure during the Western Han
dynasty (206 BC–AD 23), together with jade, crystals, and precious stones, as Chinese
emperors and courtiers greatly appreciated it as tribute and gift, and esteemed it for
decorating art pieces, frames, jewels, belts, sword hilt, berets and uniforms, and so
on.22 Chinese historical sources mentioned coral trees among the products traded by
Arab and Persian merchants in maritime China during the Tang period (AD 618–907),
or as homage from unspecified western countries (generally referring to the Levant,
Middle East, or India).23 Coral could be bought directly by Chinese merchants at
Aceh in Indonesia and Colombo in Sri Lanka, and in order to procure the precious
item they could also stretch to Aden in Yemen.24 In addition, coral was extensively
known in east and west India, for example in Bengal, or in cities such as Calicut (today
Kozhikode) in Kerala.
References to coral trade in East Asia appear in several sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century books and travel accounts. In his Navigationi et viaggi, Ramusio noted that
merchants in Calicut “accepted for payments only gold, silver and corals” in their
transactions with the Portuguese; and in the isle of Zeitan (Ceylon), coral and saf-
fron in great quantity were offered by Portuguese merchants to the local king, while
coral was also used to ornate the dead.25 According to Ramusio, coral transactions in
Burma were made by European merchants with the king of Pegu, who “seeing such
beautiful coral, was impressed and so happy to have among other pieces, two such fine
branches of coral never seen before in India.”26
Other mentions of coral in Asia can also be found in the writings of the Flemish
merchant and adventurer Jacques de Coutre (1572–1640), who specialized as gem
trader. He reported that among “the best things to bring [to Goa] are reals-of-eight,
reals-of-four, and large and small [pieces of] unprocessed as well as processed coral.”27
While discussing the China trade, he stated that:
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 89
the Portuguese from Melaka also used to go to Champa and Cochinchina and they
used to take with them textiles and reals-of-eight, and coral, and from there they
used to bring back carracks laden with eaglewood, kalambak, and benzoin. From
Melaka carracks used to go to China, [and to] Macao, a Portuguese settlement
in the land of China. Many carracks from Goa also used to go to these lands and
these carracks used to take to China many pardaos of reals, which are reals-of-
eight, and catechu, and coral.28

With regard to the Dutch coral trade in the area, he reported:

they take many reals-of-eight, and a lot of gold, but not as much as compared to
the carracks that sail between Portugal and India. They take a lot of coral fash-
ioned into rosaries and polished branches, and rough coral. They take a lot of
processed and rough amber, which they buy in Danzig.29

Livorno and the Coral Trade in the Mediterranean Sea

The coral network grew as a complex maritime system in which coral workers, groups
of merchants, and dealers operated. From the end of spring to summer, red coral was
gathered in a variety of coral-rich marine sites in the Mediterranean Sea, then brought
to the main ports and/or coral processing centers, such as Genoa, Cagliari, Livorno,
Florence, Marseilles, and Ragusa, where it was processed before being traded as a
commodity. British merchants bought refined coral in those seaports, as well as in
Florence, the Grand Ducal capital, and then shipped it to London and loaded it on the
Indiamen bound for India and East Asia.
Early transactions of coral by British private merchants in Livorno are recorded in
the 1570s and 1580s. Ships from England, Ireland, and Wales traveled to Livorno,
Genoa, Marseilles, and the emporia of the Levant, establishing new mercantile
flows and trade networks. A system of freights, insurances, and low protection
costs boosted this business,30 and according to the maritime customs registers of
local prices and duties, merchants bought mainly raw coral in pieces, branches, or
trees and polished coral in beads.31 Ferdinando I de’ Medici seized such a commer-
cial opportunity, and in the 1590s he granted licenses to specialized artisans from
Genoa and Marseilles for coral manufacture in Livorno, and to all the fishermen
and merchants dealing with the precious material.32 Clearly he had understood the
British intentions to develop such a trade and wanted to secure a profitable place
for the Grand Duchy within this newly developing trading trajectory originating
from the Tuscan coasts. The rising of Livorno’s status as international trading hub
fueled the competition with Genoese maritime authorities and merchant guilds, and
the guilds of Genoese coral workers became more and more protectionist of their
business. For example, a grida (proclamation) signed in Genoa on 10 March 1600
decreed the growth of the coral fishing off the Corsican coasts and invited the
Serenissima Repubblica of Genoa to promote the activity of Genoese coral workers
in Corsica.33
Since antiquity, Catalans, French, Italians, and the merchants from Maghreb and
the Levant traded coral in various ports, emporia, and warehouses, habitually in the
western Mediterranean, through an extensive network of dealers, local agents, and
peddlers. Transactions in precious coral were often a prerogative of specific groups
90  Tiziana Iannello
of merchants, such as the Sephardic and Armenian communities, who dealt especially
with Indian diamonds, pearls, and gemstones.34
From the fifteenth century onward, the Italian fishermen, traders, and artisans
became increasingly busy in gathering, trading, and manufacturing coral, especially
in the gulfs of Genoa and Naples, as well as in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and later
in the Tuscan archipelago. Soon heated rivalries emerged between French, Spanish,
and Arabs, and the control of coral fisheries was plagued by long contentions among
Marseilles, Muslims, and Genoese traders. For examples, the coral trade of Tuni-
sia was disrupted when Genoese merchants settled on the Tabarca island—once a
Roman colony and one of the most important centers for coral fishing in the western
­Mediterranean—under the control of the Lomellini family from 1542 to 1741.35 In
this regard, Ramusio mentions that off the coast of Tunisia

there was a place rich in coral, that nobody is able to fish or to harvest, because
of the King hired the isle to some Genoese, who were harassed by corsairs and
demanded him the permission to build there a fortress.36

Clearly, the Medici—as well as British merchants—aimed at positioning themselves as

active players within this network of commercial relations.
As a sign of the economic relevance of this commodity, the available figures on coral
fishery are impressive: at the end of the sixteenth century the Compagnie du Corail of
Marseilles harvested little more than 27,000 pounds of coral, a number that in 1740
grew to approximately 90,000 pounds under the newly founded Compagnie Royale
d’Afrique.37
Around the mid-sixteenth century, the coral was travelling along a dynamic com-
mercial network embracing the spice routes and following a series of maritime tra-
jectories from western Mediterranean coasts to Maghreb, Ottoman Turkey, Safavid
Persia; from Mughal India to East Asia, reaching Guangzhou (Canton), Macau, and
finally Hirado, on the northwestern coast of Kyūshū in Japan.
Since their first expeditions off the Atlantic coasts of Africa and then to India and
East Asia at the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese were also engaged in coral
fishery and export to Asia.38 An early seventeenth-century anonymous memorandum
in the Medici archive describes their trade of coral, diamonds, pearls, and gemstones
in India, as follows:

Silver in reales, wine, oil, and other sorts of merchandises like corals, glasses and
similar goods of minor importance, allow to earn immediately more than 50 per
cent once arrived in India, i.e. in Goa and Cochin [Kochi], as the real de a ocho is
worth 320 reis in Lisbon, and is sold and spent at 480, or 484 reis at the exchange
rate, therewith it could be bought all kind of spices and drugs, coming from there,
except for pepper, that is an exclusive privilege of the King of Portugal, or of those
who ask for a contract with His Majesty. Other goods, such as diamonds, pearls,
rubies and other sort of jewelry, besides different items from China, like silks,
musk, porcelain, and other goods, other items from the country such as cotton
fabrics and all sort of things coming from those places, each Portuguese merchant
is free to buy and brought on carracks leaving from Goa and Cochin between late
December and early January.39
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 91
This document is an important source to understand how global trade networks
were emerging on a large scale at the time, and how the Medici wanted to explore
opportunities for those trades, especially outside the institutionalized commercial
routes controlled by the Portuguese.40 To fulfill their ambitions of global trade in those
commodities that were not exclusive Portuguese privilege, such as jewelry and other
luxury goods, the Medici needed adequate ships and a solid network—exactly what
the British could offer at the time.

British Exchanges from Livorno, Genoa, and Marseilles

to the Indian Ocean in the Early Seventeenth Century
In an effort to gain outposts overseas and break the Iberian monopoly in the Indies,
British merchants gained much experience in the Mediterranean seaports, becom-
ing acquainted with merchandises marketable in India and the rest of maritime Asia,
including red coral. They could exchange northern and central European commodities
with the items sold in the Italian, French and north African emporia, and such free-
dom in pursuing private trade in coral by the Company was considered an important
factor for succeeding initial trading activities.
The coral trade flourished in a variety of Mediterranean ports and was conveyed
mostly to India, Southeast Asia, south China, and Japan. A letter penned by James Ley,
first earl of Marlborough (1550–1629), on 28 January 1625, is particularly revealing
in terms of strategies and routes, as well as on some of the material conditions of ship-
ment that could sometimes become problematic for the preservation of coral. In this
case, most pieces were broken but still marketable in the East Indies:

After my hearty commendations, whereas I have been petitioned by the Com-

mander and Company of Merchants of London trading to the East Indies, concern-
ing those chests of refuse coral, which they nearby bring from Leghorn [Livorno]
into this Kingdom which is in regard, they are in so small pieces that they came
neither be polished made into beads, or serve for any use in this Kingdom. They
desire that such a rate may be set down, as well for the time past as for the future,
as may be thought indifferent between His Majesty and the Patrons, and whereas
I understand by certificate from you that greatest part of the said coral is of mean
condition an no way useful here, but brought either purposely to be sent for the
Indies and therefore you think it reasonable that so long as the Honourable Com-
pany shall being their coral thus sorts for to be transported that they pay custom
not according to the book of rates, but to the value the said coral did cost in Italy,
which all charged by way of poundage. They are therefore to will and require you
to permit and suffer the said Governor and Company of East India merchants to
transport the said broken and small corals so sorted as aforesaid, and from time
to land and transport again, paying custom for the same, according to the value
that the said coral did cost in Italy, so the all charged by way of poundage but the
rates in the book of rates to remain in force thereafter, if they shall alter or vary
from the foresaid assortment. For doing whereof this, shall be your warrant.41

Besides Livorno, commercial orders of coral for the EIC were moreover placed by Brit-
ish ships in Genoa and Marseilles, creating a triangular coral trade system, as confirmed
92  Tiziana Iannello
in many records of the EIC. This pattern of coral circulation was convenient to the
Medici policy, aiming at strengthening relations with France. To get an idea of quanti-
ties and prices of items bought, we may refer to a grant given on 9 March 1619 to Giles
Martyn as “allowance of 400 l. or 500 l. per annum . . . for procuring coral from Mar-
seilles, Leghorn & co. if he employs 30,000 l. for the Company,”42 and another order
“concerning coral procured at Leghorn” was placed the same year.43 Another example
is offered by the Court of Committees on 5 May 1637, that “ordered that 76l. 16s. 8d.
be paid for coral bought in Genoa by Mister Ellam for the Company,”44 or by a mes-
sage from Genoa “advising the price of coral being raised above 30 l. per hundred.”45
Even if smuggled, coral trade was officially recognized by the EIC, as a Court min-
ute of 1620 reveals explicitly, granting a “gratuity to the masters of the vessels who
brought the coral . . . at Zante” they carefully saved the custom by translating the
coral in the night from one ship to another, which otherwise must have paid. The
trade licenses concerning this commodity granted by the EIC in 1635 became a turn-
ing point in the British trade of coral: from this year onward, organized joint ventures
involving conspicuous financial investments to control the mobility of ships between
England, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean replaced individual initiatives by
single merchants or by the ship captains, who had invested their own money and
could therefore guarantee only very limited resources.46
During the first three decades of the seventeenth century, footholds and factories
were established by the EIC in the Indian subcontinent at Surat in Gujarat, in Masuli-
patam on the Coromandel coast, and in Madras. In Southeast Asia they kept bases in
Bantam on western Java, and in the island of Ambon in the Maluku Islands (held until
1623, then captured by the Dutch), and in Siam (Patani and Ayutthaya); from 1613
to 1623 they had a factory in Japan (Hirado). With regard to India, Robert Jeffries
discussed the route to Dabul in a letter to the EIC:47

it was told by the people there that the English would do well to establish a fac-
tory there [in Dabul], where clothes, coral, lead, elephant’s teeth, & c. would sell,
the proceeds of which they might invest in goods proper for the Red Sea, Persia
and England.48

Surat in particular was a key port for British coral export to India, even if transac-
tions were irregular and sometimes unpredictable. Notwithstanding the paucity of
archival sources for the period 1570–1630, a variety of records illustrate some of
the early British exports of red coral to East Asia.49 In a letter dated 1617, sent from
Surat to the EIC in London, the agents Thomas Keridge and Thomas Rastall wrote
that “all the coral, both branches and beads, has found a ready sale, the polished in
less esteem than the unpolished, yet on both there is a loss of at least 20 or 25 per
cent.”50 In another letter dated 12 March 1619, it is recorded instead that a “sudden
sale of all the coral from Captain Pring’s fleet; yearly supply of 60, 70 or 100 chests
of unpolished required. . . . Amber and coral beads not in so much request,”51 and in
November of the same year it is reported that “Deccan merchants ready to buy their
coral but it was prohibited to be landed; have petitioned the Prince about this and
sundry other grievances, but have small hope of remedy.”52 Two years later, in 1621
there was “so much coral in the country that no need to send any more.”53
In a letter dated 22 September 1615, Mister Burnell and Richard Dike, agents of
the EIC, annotated the “commodities considered excellent for Surat, Coromandel and
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 93
Japan, including coral, lead, quicksilver, and elephant’s teeth.”54 For the year 1617,
several entries were made in the EIC’s Court Book and references could be found
in the minutes sent to the Company in London. In Hirado, for example, merchants
annotated some “presents fit for the Emperor of China [among which] a white or red
coral tree he would esteem a most precious jewel.”55 In April 1617, a letter by Thomas
Barker to Sir Thomas Roe, British ambassador to the Great Moghul, mentioned that
“particulars of commodities originally to be had in Persia and vendible in India [were]
coral beads.”56 Other Court Minutes for the period 1617–20 testify orders and exports
of coral to the Levant and India, specifying quantities and prices.

Commercial Expectations for the Coral Trade to China and Japan

It is known that Ferdinando I de’ Medici was interested in the overseas trade. The
Grand Duke welcomed ships coming from England to Livorno and supported British
merchant venturers and privateers that occasionally he himself financed especially
with anti-Spanish aims. In particular, the opening of the free port of Livorno and the
promotion of coral manufacture in Florence and Livorno were intended to secure
foreign merchants arrival on Tuscany coasts and extend coral trade in the Tyrrhenian
area, the Levant, and hence on the oceans as far as East Asia. Moreover, Ferdinando
planned to send his agents abroad with the goal of opening commercial relations with
the East Indies and Brazil, and he promoted a series of initiatives intended to this
scope. Last but not least, the recruitment as councilor of Francesco Carletti (c. 1573–
1636)—a merchant and experienced traveler in Asia, who was in Nagasaki, Macau,
and Goa around the end of the sixteenth century—was a signal that Grand Ducal poli-
tics aimed to open the port of Livorno to trade flows with East Asia. At the beginning
of the seventeenth century, imports of coral and other merchandises to China were
made by overseas Chinese trading communities or by the Portuguese between Macau,
Kyushu, and the port of Guangzhou.57 Chinese ports remained closed to foreign mari-
time contacts—at least to the official trade, but in fact, smuggling with European ships
occasionally took place off the coast—almost until 1684, except for Macau and the
Portuguese, as Ming and Qing emperors banned overseas trade.58 If China was almost
inaccessible, the EIC’s ships had the opportunity to enter and to establish a commer-
cial base in Japan.59 The first English ship to arrive in Japan in 1613 was the Clove
under command of Captain John Saris and, as we have seen, a factory was opened in
Hirado, whose first director was Richard Cocks. Among the records on coral in the
EIC’s correspondence, a note by Treasurer William Harrison and Mister Bell written
in 1615 recorded “a parcel of branched coral to be carried to Japan in the Advice.”60
Furthermore, a letter sent in 1618 included an “advice, by Sir Thomas Roe, of goods
and presents fit to be sent from England to Surat. The goods include broad cloths of
various colours, coral.”61
A more revealing document recording coral, both red and white, indirectly sent to
China, is a letter to the Company by Richard Cocks, who wrote that:

the China captens which labour to get us entrance into China doe tell me that your
Wors. canot send a more pretiouser thing to present the Emperour of China withall
then a tree of currall, ether white or red. They say the Portingales of Macau gave
a white corrall tree to the Emperour of China many yeares past, which he doth
esteem one of the inchest Jewells he hath. Also they say that earelings or jewelles
94  Tiziana Iannello
to hang in hattes, that are greate pearls and of an orient culler, are esteemed much
in China. . . . The three peeces currall your Wors. sent for a triall were disposed of
as followeth, viz. 1 branch containing 1 ta. 1 ma. 5 co., and 1 branch containing
9 ma. 2 co., both geven the Emperour in his present; 1 branch containing 1 ta.
2 co., sould for ten tais two mas plate. But yf much com it will not sell at that rate.
The biger the peces or branches are, and of a red culler well polished, are most in
esteem; for they make buttens or knots of them to hange their purces at.62

In 1623 the EIC closed its commercial house in Hirado, as Japanese trade was not
quite successful as initially expected: financial losses primarily due to still undevel-
oped cross-cultural commercial strategies, the restrictions imposed to foreign traders
by the Japanese authorities, and the competition with the Dutch and Portuguese
rivals proved to be insurmountable difficulties. East Asia in the seventeenth century
was not yet an open market for British merchants, as it would become in the ensuing
century.
From 1650 to 1670, British coral trade activities in the Mediterranean diminished,
owing mainly to the Anglo-Dutch rivalry, which broke out into three wars from 1652
to 1674, following the Navigation Acts of 1651. Maritime trade reopened soon after
1670 and substantially developed in the eighteenth century. Thus, free export of all
types of coral to India and East Asia became a core activity by the EIC.63 From 1670
onwards, records by the Court of Committees registered several transactions in coral
in Livorno and Genoa.64 Further archival documents reveal the growing success in
this business for the following period, as recorded by several entries in the Court
Books of the EIC and other manuscripts of the India Office.65 The increase in the pre-
cious products’ trade like coral, diamonds, and pearls by British merchants was also
possible as after 1660s the EIC allowed private officers of the Company to purchase
goods in limited quantities not subject to the official monopoly except to law duties.66
Moreover, by the end of the seventeenth century several Jewish families such as the
Ergas, the Franco-Albuquerques, and the Supinos, who were particularly engaged in
the coral-diamond trade to India, moved from Livorno to London.67
As the EIC gained outposts in maritime India, notably on the Coromandel coast,
and was successful in obtaining commercial concessions by the Qing authorities in
coastal China by the eighteenth century, the coral trade became again a lucrative
business in the Asian markets. At the same time, the western Mediterranean centers
for coral fishing and manufacturing in Sicily, Sardinia, Livorno, and Torre del Greco
(Naples) developed their production in coral for exportation at a great extent.
An analysis of the British early modern coral trade in Livorno, proceeding from the
Mediterranean to East Asia between the end of the sixteenth century and the mid-
seventeenth century, shows that both British private merchants and then the EIC were
convinced to deal with a promising and advantageous business, as red coral was one
of the rarest, most highly valued, and more coveted commodities for the Asian mar-
kets. Although coral had represented a minor item in the early import-export traffics
with East Asia, its trade contributed to the development of a rising global market, as
well as to setting solid foundations for the construction of the British overseas com-
mercial power. A century after the first attempts, when the Company had successfully
established maritime routes to India and China, coral trade was ranked by British
merchants as one of their successful businesses, crucially favored by the Mediterra-
nean coral production and circulation.
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 95
In conclusion, if the opening of the free port of Livorno guaranteed the arrival of
foreigners and ships in Tuscany, coral trade was a supplementary opportunity for
the Medici to promote local manufactures and to develop an international commer-
cial network in the Mediterranean Sea. In Ferdinando I’s ambitious project, coral
production and circulation was subordinated to the making of alliances with Genoa
and France (Marseilles)—where coral manufacture was not by chance traditionally
advanced—with the goal of creating a trading system where the British emerging
power played a leading role. Even though at the end of the sixteenth century coral was
still a minor item of the traffics between the Mediterranean Sea and Asia, nevertheless
this trade contributed to the launch of the British mercantile activities of the nascent
EIC in its initial phase of maritime expansion toward the Indian Ocean and East Asia.
At the same time, the commitment of the Medici in the development of Tuscany’s
navy and ports and coral manufacturing in Livorno and Florence boosted the entry of
Livorno in a global scale system of trade.

Notes
1. On the Mediterranean basin and its cultural and economic history in the early modern
period, see the seminal Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à
l’époque de Philippe II (Paris: Colin, 1949).
2. In addition to the pioneering study by Angelo De Gubernatis, Memoria intorno ai viaggia-
tori italiani nelle Indie orientali dal secolo XIII a tutto il XVI (Florence: Fodratti, 1867),
for a comprehensive bibliography, see Ilaria Luzzana Caraci, Scopritori e viaggiatori del
Cinquecento e del Seicento (Milan: Ricciardi, 1991); Marco Spallanzani, Mercanti fioren-
tini nell’Asia portoghese, 1500–1525 (Florence: SPES, 1991); Margherita Azzari and Leo­
nardo Rombai, eds., Amerigo Vespucci e i mercanti viaggiatori fiorentini nel Cinquecento
(Florence: Firenze University Press, 2013).
3. Fernand Braudel discussed extensively this point in his work Il secondo Rinascimento. Due
secoli e tre Italie (Turin: Einaudi, 1974).
4. No taxes were imposed to their commerce. See Giuseppe Gino Guarnieri, Livorno medicea
nel quadro delle sue attrezzature portuali e della funzione economica-marittima: Dalla
fondazione civica alla fine della dinastia medicea (1577–1737) (Livorno: Giardini, 1970),
documento 5, pp. 261–268. On this issue, see also Tazzara in this volume.
5. Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, Mercanti inglesi nell’Italia del Seicento. Navi, traffici, egemo-
nie (Venice: Marsilio, 1990), 16 ff.
6. Spanish piece or dollar, used generally in international and long-distance trade.
7. ASF, MM, 97, no. 89, fol. 1v: “Per introdurre il negozio dell’Indie orientali. Discorso a
S.A. per atto di negotiare nell’Indie orientali” (“Discourse to His Majesty to Establish
Trade to the East Indies”), c. 1609, published in Guarnieri, Il Principato mediceo, 411–413.
8. For the coral trade in Livorno, see Giovanni Tescione, Italiani alla pesca del corallo ed
egemonie marittime nel Mediterraneo (Naples: Assimilate, 1968); Marcello Berti, “La pesca
e il commercio del corallo nel Mediterraneo e le prime ‘Compagnie dei coralli’ di Pisa nel
XVI e XVII secolo,” in La pesca in Italia tra età moderna e contemporanea. Produzione,
mercato, consumo, ed. Giuseppe Doneddu and Alessandro Fiori (Sassari: Editrice Demo-
cratica Sarda, 2003), 77–169; Gino Guarnieri, Il Principato mediceo nella scienza del mare
(Pisa: Giardini, 1963); Clara Errico and Michele Montanelli, Il Corallo. Pesca, commercio
e lavorazione a Livorno (Pisa: Felici Editore, 2008); Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity
of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross–Cultural Trade in the Early
Modern Period (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Olimpia Vaccari, “Livorno: un
osservatorio mediterraneo per l’approvvigionamento ittico tra medioevo ed età moderna,”
in Pesci, barche, pescatori nell’area mediterranea dal medioevo all’età contemporanea ed.
Valdo D’Arienzo and Biagio Di Salvia (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2010), 293–319.
9. On the Sephardic diaspora in Livorno, see Renzo Toaff, La nazione ebrea a Livorno e a
Pisa (1591–1700) (Florence: Olschki, 1990); Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, “Livorno città
96  Tiziana Iannello
nuova: 1574–1609,” Società e storia 46 (1989): 873–893; Trivellato, Familiarity, 43–69.
For a general overview on the Sephardic diaspora, see also Jonathan Israeli, Diasporas
Within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World of Maritime Empires (1540–1740)
(Boston, MA: Brill, 2002).
10. The National Archives, Kew, London, Ms. SP98/8, “Sir Peter Wyche to Sir Edward Con-
way,” Livorno 27 February 1627.
11. On the Medici’s maritime policy in the late XVIth century, see Gustavo Uzielli, Cenni storici
sulle imprese scientifiche, marittime e coloniali di Ferdinando I granduca di Toscana (Fire-
nze: Spinelli, 1901); Cesare Ciano, I primi Medici e il mare: note sulla politica marinara
toscana da Cosimo I a Ferdinando I (Pisa: Pacini, 1980); Franco Angiolini, “Spagna, Tos-
cana e politica navale,” in Istituzioni, potere e società. Le relazioni tra Spagna e Toscana
per una storia mediterranea dell’Ordine dei Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, Atti del Convegno
internazionale, ed. Marcella Aglietti (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2007), 41–65; Francesco Minec-
cia, “Per una storia della marina granducale toscana in età moderna (secoli XVI–XVIII),”
Itinerari di ricerca storica 30, no. 2 (2016): 197–206.
12. For an overview on the British expansion and trade in the Mediterranean in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, see Ralph Davis, ed., English Overseas Trade, 1500–1700 (Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1973), 244 ff.; Christopher Hill, La formazione della potenza inglese.
Dal 1530 al 1780 (Turin: Einaudi, 1977); Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, Il commercio inglese
nel Mediterraneo dal ‘500 al ‘700. Corrispondenza consolare e documentazione britannica
tra Napoli e Londra (Naples: Guida, 1984); Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, Mercanti, in part.
207 ff.; Peter Dietz, The British in the Mediterranean (London and Washington: Brassey’s,
1994); Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Con-
flict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2014).
13. On the international trade focusing in Livorno in the period examined, see Mario
Baruchello, Livorno e il suo porto. Origini, caratteristiche e vicende dei traffici livornesi
(Livorno: Editrice riviste tecniche, 1932); Fernand Braudel and Ruggiero Romano, Navires
et marchandises à l’entrée du port de Livourne (1547–1611) (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1951);
Livorno e il Mediterraneo nell’età medicea. Atti del Convegno (Livorno, 23–25 settem-
bre 1977) (Livorno: Ugo Bastogi, 1978); Gigliola Pagano de Divitiis, Il porto di Livorno
fra Inghilterra e Oriente (Livorno: Belforte, 1993); Michela D’Angelo, Mercanti inglesi a
Livorno, 1573–1737: alle origini di una British Factory (Messina: Istituto di studi storici
G. Salvemini, 2004). Further essays on the history of Livorno from the seventeenth century
onward in Livorno, 1606–1806: luogo di incontro tra popoli e culture, ed. Adriano Prosperi
(Turin: Allemandi, 2009); and in Andrea Addobbati and Marcella Aglietti, eds., La città
delle nazioni: Livorno e i limiti del cosmopolitismo (1566–1834): studi dedicati a Lucia
Frattarelli Fischer (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2016).
14. Braudel and Romano, Navires, 50.
15. On the Levant Company see Mordecai Epstein, The English Levant Company: Its Founda-
tion and Its History to 1640 (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1908); Alfred Cecil Wood, A
History of the Levant Company (London: Oxford University Press, 1935).
16. The bibliography on the EIC is vast. For some general introductory studies on the EIC
in East Asia at its early stage, see Henry Stevens, The Dawn of British Trade to the East
Indies as Recorded in the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1599–1603 (Lon-
don: Cass, 1967); Kirti N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East
India Company, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Anthony
Farrington, Trading Places: The East India Company and Asia 1600–1834 (London: Brit-
ish Library, 2002); Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of
Expansion, 1560–1660 (New York–Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Emily Erik-
son, Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
17. On coral fishery, manufacturing and trade, see Tescione, Italiani alla pesca del corallo;
Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth Century Trade
(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978); Francesca Trivellato, “From Livorno to Goa
and Back: Merchant Networks and the Coral-Diamond Trade in the Early Eighteenth Cen-
tury,” Portuguese Studies 16 (2000): 193–217; Luisa Piccinno, “Trade of Precious Corals
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 97
in the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages,” in A Biohistory of Precious Corals: Scientific,
Cultural and Historical Perspectives, ed. Nozomu Iwasaki (Kanagawa: Tokai University
Press, 2010), 165–180.
18. Akemi Iwasaki, “The Language of Coral: The Vocabulary and Process of Its Transforma-
tion from Marine Animal into Jewellery and Craftwork,” in A Biohistory of Precious Cor-
als, 113–163. On the history of coral trade in ancient times, see Michael N. Pearson, ed.,
Trade, Circulation, and Flow in the Indian Ocean World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015), 39.
19. These natural barriers—mostly those ringing the Maluku Islands and spreading around
Okinawa and the Ogasawara Islands—were sadly known for the several shipwrecks reg-
istered by records. Species of white coral, found off the southern coasts of India, in the
Maldives archipelago, or in the scattered atolls of the South China Sea, were commonly
used as building material.
20. On red coral trade in South-East and East Asia, see Tiziana Iannello, “Itinerari e fonti del
Corallium rubrum. I commerci tra Mediterraneo, India, Cina e Giappone dall’antichità alla
prima età moderna,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale 51 (2017): 109–128.
21. For different usages of red coral in China, see Roderich Ptak, “Notes on the Word Shanhu
and Chinese Coral Imports from Maritime Asia c. 1250–1600,” Archipel 39, no. 1 (1990):
68, 76, n. 19. Mediterranean coral as a commodity within global trade from Europe to
Ming China and its reception by Chinese Buddhist art and culture are discussed by Anna
Grasskamp, “Branches and Bones: The Transformative Matter of Coral in Ming Dynasty
China,” in Gems in the Early Modern World: Materials, Knowledge and Global Trade,
1450–1800, ed. Michael Bycroft and Sven Dupré (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018),
119–147.
22. Pippa Lacey, “The Coral Network: The Trade of Red Coral to the Qing Imperial Court in
the Eighteenth Century,” in The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connec-
tions in the Early Modern World, ed. Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (London: Rout-
ledge, 2016), 84–85. References may be found in the Yantielun (“Discourses on Salt and
Iron,” first century BC), a report on the discussions about the Han monopoly. See Huan
Kuan, Discourses on Salt and Iron: A Debate on State Control of Commerce and Industry
in Ancient China. Chapters I–XXVIII, ed. Esson M. Gale (Taipei: Ch’engwen, 1967), 15.
23. Some references to the coral trees imports in the Chinese sources are quoted by Angela
Schottenhammer, “Transfer of Xiangyao from Iran and Arabia to China: A Reinvestiga-
tion of Entries in the Youyang zazu (863),” in Aspects of the Maritime Silk Road: From
the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea, ed. Ralph Kauz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010),
121; Geoff Wade, “Ba-la-xi and the Pārsis During the Ming Dinasty: A Note,” in Aspects
of the Maritime Silk Road, 173–174.
24. See Ma Huan, Ying–yai sheng–lan: An Overall Survey of the Oceans’ Shores [1433], ed.
Ch’eng-Chun Feng and J. V. G. Mills (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1970), 48, 123; Roder-
ich Ptak and J. V. G. Mills, eds., Hsing-chʻa-sheng-lan: The Overall Survey of the Star Raft
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), 68, 75, 77.
25. Giovanni Battista Ramusio, Delle Navigationi et Viaggi, (Venice: Giunti, 1554), I, 131, 179–180.
26. Ibid., 181.
27. Peter Borschberg, ed., The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre: Security, Trade
and Society in 16th–17th Century Southeast Asia (Singapore: National University of Sin-
gapore Press, 2014), 202.
28. Ibid., 214–215.
29. Ibid., 226.
30. On the EIC’s trading strategies, see Erikson, Monopoly and Free Trade.
31. On coral valuation and currency, on different types of raw and polished coral, as well as on
local monetary units and weight in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Livorno, see Errico
and Montanelli, Corallo, 39–40, 45–47, 49–51.
32. Berti, Pesca, 91–93.
33. For the full text, see Giovanni Carlo Gregorj, Statuti civili e criminali di Corsica (Lyon:
Dumoulin-Ronet-Sibuet, 1843), 1, 229–232. For the history of Genoese coral guilds, see
Onorato Pastiné, “L’arte dei corallieri nell’ordinamento delle corporazioni genovesi (secoli
XV–XVIII),” Atti della società ligure di storia patria 61 (1933): 277–415.
98  Tiziana Iannello
34. On Jewish and Armenian merchants’ coral trade, see Yogev, Diamonds; Trivellato, Famil-
iarity. As concerns the Armenian diaspora and trade, see Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural
Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 185–206.
35. On the Genoese in Tabarca, see Carlo Bitossi, “Per una storia dell’insediamento geno-
vese di Tabarca. Fonti inedite (1540–1770),” Atti della società ligure di Storia Patria 111
(1997): 213–278.
36. Ramusio, Navigationi, I, 70.
37. Paul Masson, La Compagnie du corail. Étude historique sur le commerce de Marseille au
XVe siècle et les origins de la colonisation française en Algérie–Tunisie (Paris: Fontemoig–
Barlatier, 1908), 114–115.
38. On the coral fishing and trade by Portuguese merchants, see S. Viterbo, A pesca do coral
no seculo XV (Lisbon: Calçada do Cabra, 1903).
39. ASF, MM, 97, no. 88, fols. 2r–2v, published in Angelo Cattaneo, “Geographical Curi-
osties and Transformative Exchange in the Nanban Century (c. 1549–c.1647),” Études
Épistèmes. Revue de littérature et de civilisation (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) 26 (2014): 24, n 32.
40. On this issue see especially Freddolini in this volume. The Medici, in turn, sought after
oriental artifacts, from ceramics and porcelains to glasses and rugs, to furnish their rich
art collections. See Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche alla Corte dei Medici nel Cinquecento
(Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini, 1994); Marco Spallanzani, Vetri islamici a Firenze nel
primo Rinascimento (Florence: SPES, 2012).
41. British Library, London, Ms. Eur D 935, “A Warranty for the East India Company for
Coral,” Whitehall, January 128, 625. For legibility, the original text and punctuation have
been standardized.
42. “East Indies, China and Japan: March 1619,” in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East
Indies, China and Japan (hereafter CSP-EI), I: 1513–1616; II: 1617–1621, ed. William
Noel Sainsbury (London: Longman, 1869), 256, letter 9 March 1619.
43. Ibid., 286, letter 23 July 1619.
44. A Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1635–[1679], (hereafter
CM), ed. Ethel Bruce Sainsbury (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907–1938), 263, “A Court of
Committees, 5 May 1637.”
45. Ibid., 102, “A Court of Committees, 9 October 1635.”
46. Trivellato, Familiarity, 235.
47. Former name of the city of Dabhol, a dynamic seaport between Goa and Chaul in western
India.
48. CSP-EI, II, 464: “From the Road of Chaul,” letter 4–5 October 1621.
49. For the period examined there are few extant sources on coral trade in Livorno in the
archives of Livorno, Pisa, and Florence, due to the loss or damage of materials. Records
are mostly available from the archives of the EIC, from the correspondence of private mer-
chants and firms trading between Europe and Asia, or from narrative sources.
50. CSP-EI, II, 74, letter by Thomas Keridge and Thomas Rastall to the EIC, Surat, 10
November 1617.
51. CSP-EI, II, 258, letter by Kerridge, Biddulphe, Rastell and James to the EIC, Surat 12
March 1619.
52. CSP-EI, II, 314, letter by Kerridge, Rastell and James to the EIC, Surat, 3 November 1619.
53. CSP-EI, II, 493, n.p., letter 3–7 December 1621.
54. CSP-EI, I, 429, “Mister Burnell and Richard Dike to the EIC,” letter 22 September 1615.
55. CSP-EI, II, letter sent from Firando (Hirado), 1 January 1617.
56. CSP-EI, II, 159, letter by Thomas Barker to Sir Thomas Roe, April 1617.
57. Gang Zhao, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013), 176.
58. The rise of the foreign dynasty of the Qing to the throne of China opened up a period of
political unrest with consequences on maritime and coastal activities, which were totally
banned from 1662 to 1683.
59. On the English factory in Japan, see Ludwig Riess, “History of the English Factory at
Hirado (1613–1622): With an Introductory Chapter on the Origin of English Enterprise
in the Far East,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 26 (1898): 1–101, 163–218;
Derek Massarella, A World Elsewhere: Europe’s Encounter with Japan in the Sixteenth
 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado 99
and Seventeenth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Anthony Farrington,
The English Factory in Japan, 1613–1623 (London: British Library, 1991).
60. CSP-EI, I, 401, letter 29 March 1615.
61. CSP-EI, II, 146, letter March 1618.
62. “Richard Cocks to the Company, letter form Hirado, 1 January 1617”, in Edward Maunde
Thompson, Diary of Richard Cocks, Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan,
1615–1622 with Correspondence (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970), II, 287–288.
63. Yogev, Diamonds, 100, 104–106, 208.
64. For some entries in the British sources on coral trade in Livorno in 1670, see British
Library, IOR/B 31, Court Minutes, 18 May 1670; 15 February 1670; 19 July 1670; 28
September 1670; 23 December 1670.
65. For references of archival sources on coral trade related to the second half of the eighteenth
century, see Yogev, Diamonds; Trivellato, Familiarity; or Lacey, Coral network.
66. Trivellato, Familiarity, 234.
67. Toaff, La nazione ebrea, 390–391; Errico-Montanelli, Corallo, 137; Trivellato, Familiarity,
60–61, passim.
7 Ginori Porcelain
Florentine Identity and Trade
With the Levant
Cinzia Maria Sicca

On 20 October 1747, Marquis Carlo Ginori (1702–1757) purchased insurance worth

3,000 pezze di Livorno for a shipment of porcelain and pietre dure works headed for
Istanbul.1 The following day, Peter Langlois, head of the merchant company trading in
Livorno under the name of Langlois and Anthony Lefroy, wrote to Federigo Hibsch,2
their corresponding partner in Istanbul, recommending that he assist the captain and
writing clerk of the ship, introduce them to the Ottoman court and ministers, and help
with the sale of any goods left over after their departure. An almost identical letter
was written by Saul Bonfil3 to Isaac and Moisé D’Angelo, merchants in Istanbul, on
22 October. Attached to these documents, preserved in the Florentine archive of the
Ginori family, is a detailed list of the contents of the fifteen cases that were shipped,
complete with the values of each item calculated in Turkish piastras for a grand total
of 4,762 piastras.
As we will see, this entrepreneurial initiative aimed to project Ginori’s porcelain on
an international market for luxury goods. A long-standing Florentine interest in earth-
enware laid the foundations for the Ginori manufacture established in 1737, and the
body of documents considered here situates such interest within the cultural, political,
and mercantilistic climate of the time. From this perspective, this chapter discusses
how Ginori porcelain became a mark of Florentine identity, first as local production
closely linked to the Medicean tradition—even after the dynasty’s extinction—then
as a luxury production that provided opportunities for exploring global mercantile
routes toward the Ottoman empire and, subsequently, Asia.
The timing of the 1747 shipment to Istanbul shows Ginori’s entrepreneurial acu-
men. It occurred one year after his appointment as Governor of Livorno,4 and only
four months after Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine and Grand Duke of Tuscany,
elected emperor of the Romans (1745), agreed and ratified the Treaty of Perpetual
Peace and Free Trade With the Ottoman Empire.5 The Treaty granted Tuscan sub-
jects the same rights enjoyed in the Levant by the English, Dutch, and French, which
entailed free access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire and the payment of a single
duty to import goods by land or sea.6 Only two years later, in 1749, Ginori broadened
his view and pushed his ambitions by establishing an “Oriental Company” with the
support of Alexander Drummond, the English Consul in Aleppo, and Richard Bour-
chier, the British Governor of Bombay.7
Ginori represents, therefore, the eighteenth-century counterpart to Francesco Paol-
santi the Elder and his nephew Francesco Paolsanti Indiano, discussed in this volume
by Francesco Freddolini. Like them, Ginori embodies the mercantile instincts of the
Florentine noble “citizens” who had contributed to the realization of the first Grand
 Ginori Porcelain 101
Dukes’ visions of expansion beyond the Mediterranean Sea. Unlike the Paolsantis,
however, Ginori did not operate under the aegis of the grand dukes. He was no longer
a Medici courtier but a patrician ruled by the Lorraine Hapsburg dynasty. Notwith-
standing such difference in circumstances, Ginori fought to uphold the traditional
Medicean policies with respect to the status of the port of Livorno, and trade with the
Levant and the far East as well as with the Atlantic world, while understanding that
Florentine commerce could no longer be supported by the traditional products which
had ensured the flourish of the Grand Duchy’s economy and trade.

Carlo Ginori, Porcelain, and Pietre Dure: Florentine

Traditions and Global Luxury
As the Venetian ambassador Andrea Gussoni reported in 1575, “artificial” porcelain
was first produced in Florence in the Casino di San Marco, the building constructed
for Grand Duke Francesco I (1541–1587), which housed several workshops that pro-
duced luxury goods made from precious metals, rock crystal, richly coloured hard-
stones, and glass.8 The soft-paste porcelain produced in the Medici workshops took
approximately ten years to refine and became the first successful European attempt at
fabricating porcelain in imitation of the wares imported from China.
Technically difficult and expensive to make, Medici porcelain was manufactured
in very small quantities which significantly diminished, if not ceased, with the death
of Francesco in 1587. Sixty objects survive today from the three hundred or so that
were made.9 The intense cobalt-blue decoration, together with the whiteness of the
clay body and its translucency and durability, made Chinese porcelain of the early
Ming dynasty (1365–1644) highly desirable, inspiring the products of the Medici
workshops. However, Gussoni’s reference to “a man that came from the Levant”
suggests that there were also influences from Turkish Iznik pottery, which was com-
posed of a white, slip-covered frit paste rather than porcelain. Marco Spallanzani’s
archival research has shown that sixteenth-century inventories do not clearly distin-
guish between Iznik wares and Chinese porcelain, simply referred to as porcellana or
domaschino.10 Indeed, the predominant decoration of blue arabesques and stylized
floral embellishment with rose, carnation, tulip, and palmette motifs points to Turkish
pottery as a source of inspiration.
It is likely that the production of Medici porcelain continued on a considerably
reduced basis until 1620.11 After that date, the search for the right ingredients required
in the production of hard-paste porcelain was pursued in other European countries.
Eventually both the right clay and the technology for developing kilns that reached the
very high temperatures needed to fire porcelain were obtained in Meissen in 1710.12
In Italy, the first factory to produce hard-paste porcelain was founded in Venice ten
years later (1720) by Francesco Vezzi (1651–1740). In 1719, Vezzi was in Vienna,
where Claude Du Paquier (d. 1751) had established his own porcelain manufactory
just the year before.13 Du Paquier employed Christoph Konrad Hunger (active ca.
1717–ca. 1748) who had been at Dresden and who appears to have provided the
Viennese enterprise with access to the same deposits of kaolin as used at Meissen. In
1720, Hunger fled to Venice. By 1721 he is recorded as one of Vezzi’s partners, having
presumably brought with him the same know-how he had offered in Vienna. Vezzi’s
factory was in operation for only seven years; fewer than two hundred pieces, primar-
ily tableware and teapots, have survived.14
102  Cinzia Maria Sicca
Meanwhile in Florence, the young Carlo Ginori spent the late 1720s and early
1730s conducting experiments for the production of hard-paste porcelain in a chem-
istry cabinet specially built in the family’s palace in Via de’ Ginori.15 His experiments
involved the use of a burning lens that reached up to 1400°C with which he tested
samples of clay from various parts of Tuscany. Probably the idea drew inspiration
from the experiments on the combustibility of diamonds carried out by his teachers
Giuseppe Averani (1662–1738) and Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (1712–1783) using
the burning lens made in Dresden by Benedikt Bregans and donated to Cosimo III
in 1690.16 Pursuing the search for the hard-paste porcelain formula bespeaks three
of the qualities that distinguished Ginori: an inquisitive mind, remarkable entrepre-
neurial skills, and a sense for what was fashionable and marketable on the interna-
tional trade.17
The Ginori family had a long-standing interest in porcelain. Lorenzo, Carlo’s father,
a collector of Chinese porcelain, in 1699 ordered through the Portuguese East India
Company an impressive blue and white Chinese porcelain dinner set with his family
arms (Figure 7.1).18 Lorenzo contributed to the diffusion of the fashion for Chinese
porcelain by supplying Cosimo III,19 but the Grand Duke was by no means the only
member of the Medici family fond of these luxury goods. Both his children, Ferdinando

Figure 7.1 Dish with Ginori coat of arms. Chinese (Italian market), ca. 1698, hard-paste, diam.
34.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum, New York, Helena Woolworth McCann Col-
lection. Purchase. Winfield Foundation Gift, 1962 (62.188).
 Ginori Porcelain 103
Gran Principe di Toscana (1663–1713) and Anna Maria Luisa (1667–1743), as well
as his brother, Francesco Maria (1660–1711), were in fact keen collectors of Chinese
and Japanese porcelain.20 The Medici’s interest in porcelain was pervasive. As we will
see, Carlo Ginori saw his porcelain manufacture as a means to perpetuate this Medici
culture within a context marked by Lorraine-Habsburg’s new political climate when,
in 1737, he started the production in Doccia.
During the last years of Medici rule, connoisseurship on earthenware increased
remarkably, eventually becoming a matter of identity. Correspondence between Anna
Maria Luisa, Electress Palatine, and her uncle Francesco Maria de’ Medici shows that
both collected the Mexican and Portuguese perfumed red earthenware celebrated by
Lorenzo Magalotti in his Lettere sopra le terre odorose d’Europa e d’America dette
volgarmente buccheri, composed between 1693 and 1696.21 In the course of his trip
to Portugal in 1668 and 1669, Cosimo—attended by Magalotti, among others—had
visited a pottery in the town of Estremoz, known as the producer of the best púcarcos
(buccheri) in the Iberian Peninsula.
The Grand Duke and his courtiers were not content with just owning such exotic
artefacts; they also celebrated them in paintings commissioned to Bartolomeo Bimbi
(1648–1723) and Cristoforo Munari (1667–1720). These still-lifes included both Ori-
ental and sixteenth-century Medici porcelain and, in the case of Munari, three of his
paintings contain a red Mexican bucchero almost identical to pieces in the Museo degli
Argenti, Florence (inv. ns. 1065 and 1433).22 In the Medici collection there was also
an unusual portrait, attributed to Carlo Ventura Sacconi (1692–1747) (Figure 7.2),
a painter and Aiutante di Camera who had been favoured by the Gran Principe, for
whom he worked almost exclusively, and subsequently by Anna Maria Luisa.
The painting, currently known as A Vendor of Porcelain, shows a man offering a
porcelain cup taken out of a full basket of porcelain on his right arm.23 The strong
facial characterization—the sitter suffers from strabismus and has a cleft lip—suggests
this is a portrait of an individual rather than a “genre” character, and it would fit well
in the long-established tradition of portraits of Medici servants. The oldest one, dating
back to 1528, is the portrait by Franciabigio (1484–1525) of Jacopo Cennini,24 estate
manager to Pierfrancesco de Medici. It was followed by the more recent paintings of
dwarfs, musicians, and servants at court by Anton Domenico Gabbiani (1652–1726).
The individual in the portrait by Sacconi might be the keeper of Medici porcelain col-
lections in the 1720s, someone involved in the construction and management of the
various Stanze delle Porcellane, the most recent one being Anna Maria Luisa’s at Pitti,
built between January 1720 and June 1721.25
Magalotti’s Lettere sopra le terre odorose are not just concerned with buccheri but
with porcelain. In particular they reveal a sustained interest in what he calls Florentine
porcelain, namely the soft-paste products previously discussed in this chapter. Maga-
lotti and Strozzi argue over quality, decorative patterns and function of all types of
porcelain as if they were collectibles like shells, drawings, medals, or even engraved
gems.26 They use the investigative tools of eighteenth-century connoisseurship: writing
to correspondents in Italy and abroad, exchanging notices and objects, and recording
the aspect of some choice samples.
In what amounts to a typical antiquarian approach, a focus of investigation was
the mark on the base of Florentine soft-paste porcelain. How to interpret the “F”
underneath the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore painted in underglaze
blue? (Figure 7.3) Magalotti believed it stood for Florence, until Marquis Vitelli, who
104  Cinzia Maria Sicca

Figure 7.2 Carlo Ventura Sacconi, Portrait of a Man With Basket of Porcelain, early 1720, oil
on canvas, 85.5 × 70 cm. Villa Medicea di Poggio Imperiale, Florence.

had gone to visit him and inspect two paintings then being made, I believe by Munari
(Figures 7.4–7.5), revealed instead that it was the initial of Francesco I.27
The fact that Florentine porcelain bearing this mark could be firmly associated with
the Medici must have given Ginori the idea that it could be turned into a strong
identity symbol, a powerful political statement of continuity. Indeed, the first mark
of Ginori porcelain was the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.28 The date of inception
of his porcelain manufactory (1737) is in itself meaningful, coinciding as it did with
the official transference of governance from the last of the Medici to the Lorraine-
Hapsburg dynasty.
 Ginori Porcelain 105

Figure 7.3 Mark on underside of pilgrim flask (Florence, Medici factory), ca. 1682–1685, soft-
paste porcelain, h. 28.6 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (86.DE.630).

Most of the porcelain enterprises established on the European continent between

the end of the seventeenth and the eighteenth century were founded by Princes of
the Blood, whose financial backing was crucial for the survival of plants that rarely
operated at a profit. This was certainly the case at Meissen, Chantilly, Sévres, Limo-
ges, and Clignancourt. As royal enterprises, these manufactories served the needs of
the king and the court, thus producing a line of élite products, detached from any
market concern, that served a representational function rather than a practical one,
frequently serving as gifts either to family members at home and abroad, or as straight
diplomatic gifts.29 Ginori’s establishment of the Doccia porcelain manufactory was
therefore unique in its lack of the active support of a ruler.
The whole enterprise of setting up the production of porcelain in 1737 was a dis-
play of extraordinary wealth and ambition. It required the acquisition of Villa Le
Figure 7.4 Cristoforo Munari, Still-Life With Blue and White Porcelain, ca. 1690, oil on can-
vas, 29.8 × 41.3 cm. Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, gift
in honor of Marilyn M. Segal by her children (1998.22.2).

Figure 7.5 Cristoforo Munari, Melon and an Octagonal Cup on a Silver Charger, an Upturned
Bowl Behind, ca. 1690, oil on canvas 22.2 × 29.9 cm. Formerly Lodi Collection.
 Ginori Porcelain 107

Figure 7.6 View of the Ginori Villa at Doccia, engraving, 18.5 × 44 cm. From Thomas Salmon,
Lo Stato presente di tutti i Paesi e Popoli del mondo naturale, politico e morale, con
nuove osservazioni degli antichi e moderni viaggiatori. Volume XXI. Continuazione
dell’Italia o sia descrizione del Gran-Ducato di Toscana, della Repubblica di Lucca,
e di una parte del Dominio Ecclesiastico, Venezia: nella Stamperia di Giambatista
Albrizzi, 1757.

Corti at Colonnata and of the nearby Villa Gerini (Figure 7.6) (both located within
a short distance from the original Ginori villa at Doccia), which were turned into the
new plant and annexed gallery of sample products.30 This was followed by another
magisterial coup, namely the recruitment of workforce from the Du Paquier manufac-
tory in Vienna: the painter Carl Wendelin Anreiter von Ziernfeld and the kiln master
Johan George Deledori.31 It is evident that Ginori meant to present himself and his
family as the upholders of Florentine princely traditions and guardians of Tuscan inde-
pendence from Vienna. The idea of perpetuating Medici traditions was also recogniz-
able in the fact that alongside porcelain at Doccia there was a workshop devoted to
the production of pietre dure artefacts. Furthermore, Ginori made large-scale porce-
lain sculptures reproducing pieces from the tradition of late Renaissance and Baroque
Florentine sculpture made by court sculptors such as Giambologna, Foggini, and Sol-
dani Benzi.32
Although historians debate whether Ginori expected to reap a profit margin on the
sales of his wares on the market, the rich evidence preserved in the family archives
reveals that only after 1758 did his investments begin to generate an increasing flow of
profits. These were estimated by Johannon de Saint Laurent, his long-term secretary,
to be 15,522 lire a year.33 From 1737 until his death in 1757, Ginori appears to have
treated Doccia as both a court production and a mercantilist venture at the same time,
as the shipment of porcelain to Istanbul will show.

Porcelain to Istanbul: Gifts and Luxury Goods for the Sultan

On 25 May 1747, the two Plenipotentiaries on behalf of the Emperor of the Romans
and of the Emperor of the Ottomans, Sultan Mahmud I, agreed in Istanbul to the
Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Free Trade, which was solemnly ratified the follow-
ing June in Vienna and one month later in Istanbul. The Treaty, which also included
108  Cinzia Maria Sicca
merchants and traders of the City of Hamburg and Lubeck, gave Imperial and Grand
Ducal merchants the same rights to freely exercise commerce as enjoyed in the Levant
by the English, Dutch, and French. The only charge to which they would be subject
was a single duty of 3% to be levied at the first port of call, or at that from which
the goods were exported from the country. Furthermore, the Treaty ensured complete
freedom of movement “either for the purposes of trade, or of religious pilgrimages”
in the Ottoman dominions without any hindrance or interruption and furnished with
effective laissez passers.34
On 22 May 1747, Ginori, Governor of Livorno, began drafting plans for an “Ori-
ental Company” with operating bases in Livorno and Trieste, an alternative to the
one proposed by the Grand Ducal Minister Emmanuel de Richecourt (1698–1768).35
Ginori believed that Richecourt’s plans for a “Tuscan Company” would have inter-
fered too much with the established French, English, and Dutch companies trading
with the Levant. These much larger enterprises, Ginori argued, would have never
tolerated a newly created Grand Ducal company challenging their control of the seas
below the Equator. For this reason, he put forward an alternative route, the feasibility
of which relied on the successful negotiation of a single duty of 3% on the value of
goods imported or exported in Ottoman territories.
According to this scheme, goods would be transported by vessels along the Arabian
Sea rim as far as the strait of Bab el Mandel (Djibouti). Here they would enter the Red
Sea and sail to the port of Jeddah, where the merchandise would be placed on lighter
boats that would carry it to Suez. At this point the goods would be loaded on camels
and follow the well-established routes of camel caravans to Cairo. The next phase
would use boats to sail up the river Nile to the port of Alexandria, where ships already
sailed every month to Livorno and Trieste. No doubt, given time, the fertile imagina-
tion of Ginori would have produced a project along the lines of the Suez Canal.
The Oriental Company of Livorno (at times simply called the Compagnia di Livorno)
did not remain a paper dream. Established in 1748 with capital raised in Livorno, and
directed by Giovanni Di Martino, from 1749 it sent a vessel to Iskenderun (Alexan-
dretta) laden with silk cloth, coral artefacts, and silverware, which were then distrib-
uted by land to Bassora, Bagdad, and Bengal, where the company had placed factors.36
The departure, toward the end of October 1747, of the imperial ship La Ron-
dinella with its cargo of Doccia porcelain and pietre dure artefacts headed to Istanbul
occurred, therefore, in a climate of political and mercantile debate. This very context
determines the complex nature of this shipment, which on one hand might appear as
a mere marketing enterprise aimed at opening up a new commercial flow of luxury
goods in the wake of the recently signed Treaty. On the other hand, it is difficult,
given the nature of the wares moved, not to think that Ginori, acting as Governor of
Livorno and promoter of the new Oriental Company, was seeking direct contact with
the Sublime Porte on a sheer political level. The letters of recommendation sent on
this occasion by Saul Bonfil to the D’Angelo brothers, and by Langlois to Hibsch, are
explicit in this respect, asking that the captain and writing clerk of the ship be intro-
duced to the Court and to those Ministers capable of easing their mission.37 A suc-
cessful endeavour would have certainly convinced both the Consiglio di Reggenza and
Francis Stephen of the political and commercial viability of Ginori’s idea, in contrast
to Richecourt’s proposal.
As we have seen, Ginori conceived his porcelain as a quintessential product of Flor-
entine ingenuity and artistic achievement, identifying it closely with the history of his
city from the sixteenth century onward and with the refined taste and connoisseurship
 Ginori Porcelain 109
of the cosmopolitan nobility surrounding Cosimo III, where he had been educated as
a courtier. That context defined him as Florentine nobleman, and it seems therefore
plausible that Doccia porcelain and pietre dure works, in addition to being an invest-
ment for personal profit, were deployed as luxury items defining the uniqueness of
Florence within the international commercial arena.
Eleven of the fifteen cases shipped from Livorno contained 3703 pieces of porcelain.
These included piatti reali, mezzi reali, and arcireali—that is, round dishes with diam-
eters measuring 22.5 cm, 45 cm, and over; piatti imperiali, oval-shaped bowls and
basins; chicchere (coffee and chocolate cups) and their saucers; caffettieri or versatori
alla Turca (coffee pots) and cylindrical vases (vasi da fiori a cannello), presumably for
tulips. The items sent to Constantinople came either in white blanc de Chine or with
a decorative pattern of blue flowers (con fiori Blau) on a white background. Although
the shipping list does not specify whether this latter decorative pattern was hand-
painted (dipinto) or stenciled (stampato), it is most likely that these were all stenciled
designs inspired by real flowers and assembled in spare and somewhat orientalizing
compositions, as in the pitcher (Figure 7.7) formerly in the Barilla collection auctioned
by Pandolfini, Florence in 2017.38

Figure 7.7 Pitcher, Doccia, Ginori, 1750–1760, Pandolfini, Florence, Fascino e splendore delle
maioliche e delle porcellane: la raccolta di Pietro Barilla ed una importante collezi-
one Romana, 17 May 2017, Lot 109.
110  Cinzia Maria Sicca
The quantities exported testify to the commercial scale of production achieved by
the Doccia factory during the years 1745–1747 but also to the avidity with which
Ottoman royalty were acquiring and hoarding European goods, and porcelain more
particularly. Unlike their counterparts in Europe, Ottoman royalty had continuous
access to Chinese porcelain from the mid-fifteenth century, and surviving evidence
shows that from the early sixteenth century a large collection of Chinese blue-and-
white porcelain, celadons, and enamels were being assembled in the Topkapi Palace.
In the seventeenth century it was complemented by priceless Japanese ware. However,
Oriental porcelain went out of fashion around the 1730s, when European porcelain
became available in the Ottoman luxury market and was acquired on a massive scale.
By 1732–1734, Ottoman merchants had already begun to place huge orders from
the Meissen factory for coffee cups. In 1732 one such merchant, Manasses Athanas,
commissioned 2,000 dozen coffee cups without handles and saucers; two years later
a new order was placed, perhaps by the same merchant, for a total of 36,000 cups.
Ottoman collectors were also interested in the Du Paquier Vienna porcelain exported
by the Ostender Kompanie, which around the 1730s began developing decorations
especially to suit Ottoman taste.39 These consisted of painted vignettes of hunting
scenes based on engravings by Johann Elias Ridinger; harbour scenes with western
and Ottoman merchants based on Melchior Küsel’s series of engravings of 1681
after Johann Wilhelm Baur’s Palatia auf dem Neuen grund zu Venedig; and male and
female figures from the costume gallery engraved by Christoph Weigel after drawings
by Caspar Luyken for Abraham à Sancta Clara’s Neu-eröffnete Welt-Galleria Worin-
nen sehr curios und begnügt unter die Augen kommen allerley Aufzüg und Kleidungen
unterschiedlicher Stände und Nationen, published in Nurenberg in 1703.40
Around 1745–1747, the Doccia manufactory joined in this development of decora-
tions with a near-eastern flavour, as well as of forms suitable for that particular market.
The inventory of the Porcellane del Gabinetto a canto la Galleria at Doccia, taken on
11 July 1757, for the use of Carlo Ginori’s heirs, registers twenty oval serving dishes
and two round plates decorated with “Turkish figures” taken from a manuscript in the
Gaddi library illustrated by the Medici court painter Jacopo Ligozzi (1547–1627).41
Andreina D’Agliano has shown that although Ligozzi added animals, his figures, their
costumes, and their hats are based on the depictions in Nicolas de Nicolay’s Les navi-
gations, peregrinations et voyages faicts en la Turquie published in Antwerp in 1576.42
Eleven trays made by Carl Wendelin Anreiter and following closely Ligozzi’s manu-
script still survive in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Figure 7.8), but it is not pos-
sible to tell whether any of these pieces were part of the 1747 shipment to Istanbul.
The 1757 Doccia inventory also lists “42 Chicchere del N. 6 colla doppia traforata
a forma di fillagrana alla Turca dipinte, e dorate per un servito Turco.” Likewise the
inventory of the Livorno warehouse, drafted on 7 June 1757, lists three sets of “Chic-
chere col portachicchere all’uso Turco di un servito non ancora terminato, dipinte, e
filettate d’oro.”43 This latter entry interestingly refers to the case in which the cups
were contained, a properly fitted box (portachicchere) offered in the Livorno ware-
house that shipped porcelain and majolica abroad but also traded over the counter.
Detailed accounts of items sold in Livorno starting in 1760 show that many customers
were foreigners, grand tourists, diplomats, or naval officers who required fitted boxes
to carry porcelain during their travels.44
The remaining four cases shipped on La Rondinella contained items in hard and
precious stones, namely a tray in pietre dure valued at 600 piastre; a box of precious
 Ginori Porcelain 111

Figure 7.8 Tray, Doccia, Ginori, 1745–1747, decoration attributed to Carl Wendelin Anreiter
von Ziernfeld. Hard-paste porcelain decorated in polychrome enamels and gold,
3.5 × 30.8 × 23.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund,
1906 (06. 372c).

stones inside a green cover valued at 1,500 piastre; a box of coral and silver containing
a mirror and dried flowers valued at 600 piastre; a pietre dure box valued at 300 pias-
tre, containing twenty-four porcelain snuffboxes worth 300 piastre; three pietre dure
snuffboxes together with a bigger one in the same materials. These artefacts and jeweled
“galantries” were unique, grounded in the Medici tradition cultivated by the Galleria
dei Lavori. They had no competitors in Europe. Francesco Poggetti headed the pietre
dure section of the factory at Doccia, where he worked from 1744 to 1750, managing a
department of seven craftsmen. Pieces like the tray and snuffboxes had frames, handles,
and mounts in gold or silver produced by silversmiths working under the guidance of
Jean-François Racein, who was called to work at Doccia in 1744–1745. After 1746,
these galantries were assembled in Livorno, where the “lavoranti delle Cerniere”—as
they were called—spent up to six months at a time, working under Ginori’s close scru-
tiny. Besides wanting to keep control over the production of snuffboxes, which were the
most popular diplomatic gift for general use, Ginori may have moved this production
to Livorno because it was easier to find precious and semiprecious stones in the city,
which housed the Grand Ducal Fabbrica dei Diaspri and the Magazzino dei Diaspri.45
The exact outcome of this first shipment to Istanbul is not known in detail unless
we deduce that the extraordinary increase in the revenue produced by the Livorno
112  Cinzia Maria Sicca
warehouse was in part due to this new enterprise. In 1746 the income in Livorno
amounted to ca. 396 scudi; in 1747 it had jumped to ca. 1,574 scudi and in 1748
reached ca. 2,304 scudi.46 This trend in Livorno decreased in 1749, 1750, and 1751
and peaked again in 1752 when the revenue amounted to ca. 1,095 scudi. There was,
then, a trough in the business cycle. Only in 1758 did sales in Livorno reach their for-
mer heights, continuing to climb steadily for a decade at least.
That these figures may well represent Ginori’s success in the Ottoman market is
suggested by the fact that a new shipment of nine cases to Constantinople occurred
in 1748,47 and that in 1753 eleven cases were sent by Giovanni Di Martino (by then
Director of the Oriental Company of Livorno) to Pietro Mattheys in Smirne.48 We
know for sure that the pietre dure pieces sent in 1747 were accounted for only in
June 1748 when Carlesi reported that the very expensive tray in case number 12 had
been sold to the “Primo Ministro Moro del Gran Signore.” However, this had come
at a cost of 35 Leoni, spent in tips to one of the pages that introduced Ginori’s repre-
sentatives in the Seraglio, to the broker (“sensale e Torgimano”), and to a man that
helped bring the duty on the tray to only 5% of its value and who was given a snuff
box in return. Eight different snuff boxes were sold for the total sum of 44 Leoni.49
The reprise in income produced by the Livorno warehouse in 1752 might be associ-
ated with the opening of a new commercial venture, this time further afield. Ginori
was setting his eye on India. In a letter written to Jacopo Fanciullacci in May 1751,
the Marquis gave detailed instructions concerning the wares he wanted packaged in
cases proportional to the weight carried, provided with handles, and filled not with
the usual straw but with finely chopped hay. Once opened, the cases should be tidy
and eye-pleasing to the beholder, so as to reveal at once the preciousness of the Doc-
cia porcelain. To this effect he reiterated the need to select pieces that should be fine,
transparent, and light, and whose whiteness should be perfect. He revealed to Fan-
ciullacci that the shipment in question was being sent to India as a trial, and that it
mattered greatly to him to score a positive result: “importandomi infinitamente che
questa Commissione incontri.”50
The reason the shipment was so important has to do with the life and success of the
recently established Oriental Company, which since 1749 had placed factors in Dely
and Bengal. As astutely noticed by Antonella Alimento,51 Ginori saw the 1747 Treaty
with the Porte as a preliminary step toward the creation of an even broader mercantile
space based on a single and unified system of custom duties. He saw trade with the
near East as indissolubly intertwined with that in the Far East (especially India) and
even cultivated hopes of establishing a colony in the West Indies.
Far from being a mere expansion of a local market toward international clients,
Ginori’s enterprise represents an emblematic and unique case of brand creation in the
early modern period. The evidence explored in this chapter shows how Florentine por-
celain could be refashioned as cross-cultural luxury commodity by establishing con-
nections to foreign productions and consumers’ milieus, while remaining faithful to a
centuries-old local tradition. Quintessentially Florentine, and at the same time com-
peting with other contemporary European porcelain productions, Doccia’s objects
were marketed by Ginori to fulfil the demand of a new global clientele that would
acquire both a piece of Florentine artistic identity and a piece of contemporary luxury.
Appendix I

AGL, Filza 18 “Ginori Senatore Carlo Affari di Governo relativi a cariche da esso godute”,
n. 17 Memoria per formare una Compagnia di Commercio in Livorno, e Trieste per l’Indie
Orientali, Coste dell’Affrica, e dell’Arabia felice. Fatta In Livorno li 22 Maggio 1747.

Le forti opposizioni, che fanno e faranno sempre le Compagnie Francesi, Inglesi ed

Olandesi che oramai anno stabilito il Loro Traffico per l’Oceano nell’Indie Orientali,
e i molti profitti che sostenuti e protetti respettivamente da Loro Sovrani ricavano da
un tal Loro traffico, sono la Causa che s’incontrerà sempre un’opposizione e contrasto
quando si pensi à stabilire un Commercio nell’Indie per i mari da essi battuti, e par-
ticolarmente passata la linea sono sempre in pericolo le navi, che in alcuna di quelle
delle predette Compagnie s’imbattono.
Pare che si potrebbe stabilire un regolato Commercio coll’Indie Orientali più facile,
più comodo, e di più breve Camino, e senza incontri con dette Compagnie quando S:
M: Ces:a col mezzo del suo Residente alla Porta ottenesse dal Gran Signore, che tutti
gl’Effetti, che transitassero per li Stati a Lui sottoposti non dovessero pagare che un
discreto Dazio, il che doverebbe facilmente riescire sul reflesso, che da questo nuovo
negoziato risulterà frutto, e non pregiudizio alla Porta.
Nell’Indie Orientali molte sono le Coste, le Isole, ed i Luoghi, dove è permesso a tutte
le nazioni il trafficare; da tali Luoghi si potrebbero trasportare le mercanzie lungo le
Coste del Mare d’Arabia fino allo Stretto di Babel-Mandel, ò sia della Mecca, e intro-
ducendosi nel Mar Rosso si conducono fino a Gidda ò sia Zilden, ò Gioddah Porto
situato nella sponda del Mar Rosso nella Provincia d’Hegiaz, di dove imbarcati sopra
Bastimenti sottili, e pratichi di quel Mare si conducono le Mercanzie a Zues, ò Suez nel
fondo del Golfo Arabico, di dove in soli tre giorni di Carovana, che vi è già stabilita
regolare si conducano sopra Cammelli al Cairo, ò sia Miser Capitale dell’Egitto, di
dove per il fiume Nilo possono essere tragittate fino alla sponda del Mar Mediterraneo
al luogo detto Alessandria, di dove quasi ogni Mese vi sono più navi che vengono diret-
tamente à Livorno, e possono ancora con egual cammino andare a Trieste.
I Veneziani in altri tempi andavano a far compra, e Carico nel Cairo dei Generi
che si ritraggono dall’Indie Orientali, e anche al presente il bisognevole per la Turchia
si ricava per detti Scali dal Porto di Suratt, Iola Malabar, Caromandel e Bengala, ed
altre parti dell’Indie Orientali. Le Mercanzie che si spediscono per la strada del Cairo
pagano un tre per cento di Dazio del Gran Signore, ma siccome potrebbe occorrere
oltre il suddetto Dritto qualche altro Dazio da pagarsi al Bascià di Gidda, bisogne­
rebbe convenirne nel tempo istesso per mezzo della Porta.
Convenuto di tali Dazi si può pensare à stabilire in Livorno, e Trieste una Compa­
gnia, e si potrà per mezzo della medesima, e per questa ideata strada negoziare non
114  Cinzia Maria Sicca
solo nell’Indie Orientali, ma anche nelle Coste dell’Affrica, e in quelle dell’Arabia
felice, ne quali luoghi si potrà ancora far vendita di tutti i nostri Generi, che nell’andata
e ritorno si possono vicendevolmente trasportare.
Questa Compagnia avrà bisogno di quattro amministratori uno ad Alessandria,
uno a Zues, uno a Gidda, ed uno ò a Suratt ò à Goa, ò a Porto Macan, ò alla China
dove è permesso à tutti stabilire negozi, ò in altri Luoghi delle Indie Orientali, dove
riescisse à S.M. Cesarea di fare stabilire una sua Colonia, quale senza pericolo di
lunga navigazione senza contrasti colle Compagnie Francesi, Inglesi, e Olandesi, e
senza dover passare la Linea potrebbe in breve tempo far venire regolatamente le sue
Mercanzie in Europa.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Marquis Lorenzo Ginori for granting access to his family archive, here
referred to as Archivio Ginori Lisci (AGL), and to Dottoressa Elena Mattioli for facili-
tating my visits there. I wish to thank Antonella Alimento for generously sharing her
knowledge with me and Manuel Rossi for easing my delving into archives. Research
for this chapter, part of a wider project on Livorno emporio del Mediterraneo coor-
dinated by Antonella Gioli, was made possible by a grant from the University of Pisa
(PRA_2017_42).

Notes
1. AGL, Filza 39 “Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doccia. Scritture e Documenti,” 5. The captain
of the Imperial warship La Rondinella was presumably an Irishman, as the “Guglielmo
Odonohue” suggests, but it is impossible to determine whether he was a denizen of Livorno.
2. In 1759 Hibsch is mentioned by Francesco Foscari, Venetian envoy to Constantinople, in a
dispatch to the Venetian Senate and is described as being a merchant frequently entrusted by
foreign powers with special tasks connected with the arrival in Constantinople of foreign rep-
resentatives; cf. Francesco Foscari, Dispacci da Costantinopoli 1757–1762, ed. Filippo Maria
Paladini (Venice: La Malcontenta, 2007), 263. In the Gazzetta Universale of 1784, Hibsch
is called “Barone de Hibsch” and described as “negoziante” (Gazzetta Universale vol. XI
dell’Anno 1784, 59); the Abbé Domenico Sestini confirms he was a merchant, owner of a beau-
tiful villa in Bujuk Derè (Opuscoli del Signor Abate Domenico Sestini [Florence 1785], 11).
3. Saul Bonfil, a native of La Canea on the island of Crete, was one of the powerful governors
(massari) of the Hebrew nation in Livorno (ASF, Reggenza, 645, ins. 50); in 1759 his com-
pany was recorded in Constantinople as acting on behalf of Venetian merchants for whom it
provided alum shale, hides, sheepskins (montonine), wax, and wool (Foscari, Dispacci, 202).
4. On Carlo Ginori’s political life see Robert Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy:
The Florentine Patricians 1530–1790 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986),
50–58; Marcello Verga, La Reggenza Lorenese, in Storia della Civiltà Toscana. Vol. IV.
L’età dei Lumi, ed. Furio Diaz (Florence: Le Monnier, 1999), 27–50; Antonella Alimento,
“Tra ‘gelosie’ personali e ‘gelosie’ tra gli Stati: i progetti del governatore Carlo Ginori e
la circolazione della cultura economica e politica a Livorno,” Nuovi Studi Livornesi XVI
(2009): 63–96; Antonella Alimento, “Carlo Ginori and the Modernization of the Tuscan
Economy,” in Florence After the Medici, Tuscan Enlightenment 1737–1790, ed. Jacob
Soll, Paula Findlen, and Corey Tazzara (London: Routledge, 2019), 157–175. For Ginori’s
years as Governatore see Marcella Aglietti, I Governatori di Livorno dai Medici all’Unità
d’Italia. Gli uomini, le istituzioni, la città (Pisa: ETS, 2009).
5. The full text in Italian and English is in British and Foreign State Papers 1832–1833 (Lon-
don: James Ridgeway and Sons, 1836), 99–112.
6. See Article II, 102–104.
7. Alimento, “Tra ‘gelosie’ personali e ‘gelosie’ tra gli Stati,” 74.
 Ginori Porcelain 115
8. Eugenio Alberi, Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti al Senato Serie II, vol. II (Florence:
All’insegna di Clio, 1841), 377–378. On Medici Porcelain in relation to the reception of
China in Florence see Irene Backus, “Asia Materialized: Perceptions of China in Renaissance
Florence” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2014).
9. Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche Orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: Libreria
Chiari, 1978), especially chapters 2 and 3.
10. Spallanzani, “Medici porcelain,” 317. See also Clare Le Corbeiller, “A Medici Porcelain
Pilgrim Flask,” The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 16 (1988): 119–126.
11. Jeffrey Munger, European Porcelain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New Haven and
London: Yale University Press, 2018), 24.
12. Christina Nelson, A History of Eighteenth-Century German Porcelain (Manchester, VT:
Hudson Hills Press, 2013), 117–183. More generally on porcelain and its reception in
Europe within a context of Eurasian exchanges, see Anne Gerritsen and Stephen Mc Dow-
all, “Material Culture and the Other: European Encounters with Chinese Porcelain, c.
1650–1800,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 87–113; Anne Gerritsen, “Chi-
nese Porcelain in Local and Global Context: The Imperial Connection,” in Luxury in
Global Perspective: Objects and Practices, 1600–2000, ed. Bernd Stefan Grewe and Karin
Hofmeester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 116–137.
13. Johann Kräftner, Baroque Luxury Porcelain: The Manufactories of du Paquier in Vienna
and of Carlo Ginori in Florence (Münich: Prestel Verlag, 2005).
14. Luca Melegati, Giovanni Vezzi e le sue porcellane (Milan: Bocca, 1998).
15. Alessandro Biancalana, Porcellane e maioliche a Doccia. La Fabbrica dei Marchesi Ginori:
i primi cento anni (Florence: Polistampa, 2009), 16.
16. Marco Fontani et al., Chemistry and Chemists in Florence: From the Last of the Medici
Family to the European Magnetic Resonance Center (Basel: Springer, 2016), 6–7.
17. In 1738 Ginori acquired the former Medici fief of Cecina, drained the lands surrounding
the village and built a Roman-style villa that housed a range of manufactures: preservation
of oily fish, processing of coral, making of straw hats (the famous Leghorn hats) and pot-
teries. This way he succeeded in attracting back to the coast of Maremma many families of
fishermen who could have not otherwise supported their families. The corallari, who came
from Naples and Sicily, specialized areas of production since the fifteenth century, amounted
to three hundred workers by 1748. In the 1740s Ginori launched a manufacture of shawls
of camel hair and silk, and the refurbishment and expansion of the thermal spa at San
Giuliano, near Pisa, see Marcello Verga, Da “Cittadini” a “Nobili”: Lotta politica e riforma
delle istituzioni nella Toscana di Francesco Stefano (Milan: Giuffré, 1990), 182–185.
18. The design, which includes borders of foliage copied from Delft, is almost identical to a ser-
vice with the Portuguese arms of Coelho, and a dish with the arms of da Costa; this has lead
scholars to believe that the three serviti were commissioned at the same time. The shipment
reached Livorno in March 1699, in time for Lorenzo’s marriage to Anna Maria Minerbetti.
19. See Francesco Morena, “La ‘stanza delle porcellane’ di Cosimo III nel Corridoio degli
Uffizi,” Commentari d’Arte 7–8 (2001–2002): 55–59; Francesco Morena, Dalle Indie
Orientali alla corte di Toscana: Collezioni di arte cinese e giapponese a Palazzo Pitti
(Florence: Giunti, 2005); Francesco Morena, “Cosimo III de’ Medici e Pietro il Grande,
una passione comune: l’Oriente,” in The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant, ed. Marta
Caroscio and Maurizio Arfaioli (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 137–147.
20. For the Gran Principe’s collection see Francesco Morena, “Oggetti di Cina e Giappone
nell’Inventario del Gran Principe Ferdinando: brevi spunti per una ricostruzione,” in
Arte Collezionismo Conservazione: Scritti in onore di Marco Chiarini, ed. Miles Chappel
et al. (Florence: Giunti, 2004), 79–83; for Anna Maria Luisa see, “La Stanza delle porcel-
lane dell’Elettrice Palatina a Palazzo Pitti,” in La principessa saggia: L’eredità di Anna
Maria Luisa de’ Medici Elettrice Palatina, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 23
December 2006–15 April 2007), ed. Stefano Casciu (Livorno: Sillabe, 2006), 78–83.
21. On March 8, 1698 the Electress Palatine wrote to her uncle “Sento che Lei aveva gran
traffichi di Porcellane: io ieri ebbi molto da fare a farne mettere alcune ne miei Gabinetti
mescolate con Buccari,” ASF, MdP, 5836, and Morena, La Stanza, 79. Francesco Carlo’s
“Camera delle Porcellane” was housed in the Villa di Lappeggi, not far from Florence;
in 1696, according to a surviving inventory, it stored 846 pieces of Chinese and Japanese
porcelain (Morena, Dalle Indie Orientali alla Corte di Toscana, 161–165).
116  Cinzia Maria Sicca
22. Munari’s paintings are in Florence in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, the Museo Bardini, and in the
Galleria Nazionale, Parma. See Francesca Baldassari, Cristoforo Munari (Milan: Motta, 1999).
23. Stefano Casciu, La Morte della Vergine ed altri dipinti di Carlo Ventura Sacconi per
l’Elettrice Palatina, in Stanze segrete-Raccolte per caso. I Medici santi–Gli arredi celati,
exhibition catalogue (Florence, 25 March–26 September 2003), ed. Cristina Giannini (Flor-
ence: L.S. Olschki, 2003), 43–62. Sacconi’s painting is recorded in the 1768 appendix to the
Medici Inventory as being kept in the villa at Artimino. It was brought to Florence in 1780.
24. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 405766.
25. Payments in the account books for these years mention a Niccolò Pietro Bombardini respon-
sible for cleaning and maintaining porcelain and buccheri, as well as Giovan Domenico Lupi
charged with buying Meissen porcelain (Morena, La Stanza delle Porcellane dell’Elettrice, 80).
26. “[H]o praticato questa ragionevolezza in nicchi, in disegni, in medaglie e talora in qualche
piccolo cammeo,” letter to Monsignor Leone Strozzi dated Florence, 17 April 1694, Lorenzo
Magalotti, Lettere Odorose (1693–1705), ed. Enrico Falqui (Milan: Bompiani, 1943), 78.
27. Magalotti had commissioned an otherwise unspecified painter to make two “portraits” of
Florentine porcelain with the specific request that an item marked with the dome of Florence
cathedral should be shown upright, as well as tilted in order to make the bottom visible.
Two paintings by Cristoforo Munari seem to fit these qualities; one is a Still-Life With White
and Blue Porcelain (Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, inv. 1999.22.2), showing an
array of nine serving dishes, plates, bowls, cups, and two jars. The other, formerly in the
Lodi Collection, Milan, is a still-life with Melon and an Octagonal Cup on a Silver Charger,
an Upturned Bowl Behind (sale Christie’s New York, 17 October 2006, lot 36). The osten-
tatious exhibition of the underside of bowls, making the mark visible (and distinguishable
when magnified) is unique to these two canvases by Munari, who is likely to have met
Magalotti in Rome, before being called to Florence (1706) by Cosimo III. The portrait of
porcelain pieces (“il ritratto delle porcellane”) was seen by Marquis Vitelli who “inteso a
quel che era destinato, mi mandò subito dopo un piccolo catinetto della medesima fabbrica,
e segnato con l’istesso marchio, a conto del quale m’insegnò questa erudizione di più che
questa manifattura fiorì sotto il Gran Duca Francesco, e che quell’F interpretato comune-
mente per Firenze, con probabilità forse maggiore si legge da alcuni per Francesco,” letter to
Monsignor Leone Strozzi dated Florence, 17 April 1694 (Magalotti, Lettere Odorose, 78).
28. Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a Doccia, 15. The mark was used from 1735 until 1745.
29. See Maureen Cassidy Geiger, Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts,
ca. 1710–63, exhibition catalogue (New York, Bard Graduate Center, 15 November 2007–
11 February 2008) (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008).
30. Beatrice Mazzanti, “Carlo Ginori a Villa ‘Le Corti’: la fabbrica di porcellane di Doccia
nella sua prima sede,” Annali di Storia di Firenze VII (2012): 123–163.
31. Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a Doccia, 35–36, 121–130.
32. Ibid., 39–121; Rita Balleri, Modelli della manifattura Ginori di Doccia: Settecento e gusto
antiquario (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2014); Tomaso Montanari and Dimitrios
Zikos, “Carlo Ginori e il suo popolo di statue: un’ ‘opera italiana’,” in La Fabbrica della
bellezza: La manifattura Ginori e il suo popolo di statue, exhibition catalogue (Florence,
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 18 May–1 October 2017) (Florence: Mandragora, 2017),
29–43; Dimitrios Zikos, “ ‘Il decoro della nostra Italia in ragione di scultura’: L’importanza
dei ‘modelli’ della fabbrica Ginori per lo studio della Kleinplastik fiorentina,” in La Fab-
brica della bellezza, 45–67.
33. Giuseppe Liverani, La manifattura di Doccia nel 1760: Secondo una relazione inedita di J.
De St. Laurent (Firenze: l’Arte della Stampa, 1970). AGL, Filza 38 “Fabbrica delle Porcel-
lane di Doccia. Dimostrazioni e Ristretti,” n. 38, Dimostrazione in Ristretto delle Somme
incassate dalla vendita delle Porcellane dall’anno 1757 a tutto 1778 e delle Spese fatte in
detto tempo a servizio della fabbrica delle medesime.
34. British and Foreign State Papers 1832–1833, 101–103, 107–110.
35. For Richecourt’s plans see Carlo Mangio, “Richecourt e il miraggio dell’Oriente,” in Il
Mediterraneo delle Città: Scambi, confronti, culture, rappresentazioni, ed. Franco Salvatori
(Rome: Viella, 2008), 363–376; Alimento, “Tra ‘gelosie’ personali e ‘gelosie’ tra gli Stati,”
73–74. For Ginori’s scheme see here Appendix 1. Parts of the document have been pub-
lished by Alimento, “Tra ‘gelosie’ personali e ‘gelosie’ tra gli Stati,” 72–74. The relationship
 Ginori Porcelain 117
between Ginori and the Regency, in particular with Richecourt, was extremely awkward as
the Florentine nobleman stood in defence of the autonomy and interests of Tuscany and of
the old patrician class. In an attempt to moderate the heavy tax imposed by Vienna to cover
the military expenses of the War of Austrian Succession, Ginori envisioned the creation of
a “Tuscan company” that would act as a tax farmer while at the same time boosting the
economy by reorganizing customs tariffs, eliminating internal duties, and abolishing many
monopolies (Verga, Da “Cittadini” a “Nobili”, 187).
36. AGL, Filza 18 “Ginori Senatore Carlo Affari di Governo relativi a cariche da esso godute,”
n 17, Fogli e progetto per il commercio delle Indie Orientali, fully transcribed in Alimento,
“Tra ‘gelosie’ personali e ‘gelosie’ tra gli Stati,” 90–91.
37. AGL, Filza 39 “Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doccia. Scritture e Documenti,” n 5, Copia di
Lettera scritta dal Sig.re Saul Bonfil ne 22 ottobre 1747 alli Ss.ri Issache e Moisè di Samuel
D’Angelo Mercanti in Costantinopoli [in Spanish], and Copia di Lettera scritta dai SS.ri
Langlois ne 21 ottobre 1747 al Sig. Federigo Hibsch negoziante in Costantinopoli, fol. 11r,
“Sua Eccellenza il Sig.r Marchese Ginori Governatore di questa città di Livorno ci porge
l’honore e vantaggio d’obbedirlo nel raccomandarvi come facciamo con ogni maggior fer-
vore e caldezza il Sig:r Cap:no Gugl:mo oDonnohey e Sig:r Angelo Carlesi Scrivano della
Barca di S:M:I: la Rondinella. Preme infinitamente a noi di dimostrare a S.E. con attestati
i più sinceri del nostro rispetto ossequio ed attenzione la stima facciamo de Suoi comandi
ne due soggietti suddetti, che come Persone di tutto merito, vi preghiamo di renderli ogni
possibil servizio con assisterli anche nell’Esito di quei generi che seco loro portono Intro-
ducendoli a tal Effetto appresso la Corte e quei Ministri che contribuir possano a detto loro
Intento, e se a caso nella partenza che faranno da Codesta vi lasciassero qualch’Effetto a
disposizione di S.E. vi piacera proseguir voi le diligenze per l’Esito più vantaggioso con darci
successivamente parte del vostro operato. Non ci serviamo di piu forti espressioni sulla fidu-
cia che ben comprenderete la forte obligazione del nostro Impegno, accertandovi solo che
tutte le finezze che praticherete a detti soggetti anderanno a peso nostro per riciprocarvene
in ogni e qualunque Incontro senza riserva con qual Fine vi baleni.”
38. Pandolfini, Florence, Fascino e splendore delle maioliche e delle porcellane: la raccolta di
Pietro Barilla ed una importante collezione Romana (Florence: Pandolfini Casa d’Aste,
May 17, 2017), Lot 109.
39. Ilona Baytar, Saray Porselenlerinden Izler. The Silent Witnesses of 150 Years: Traces of
the Palace Porcelain, exhibition catalogue (Istanbul, 7 May–12 June 2007) (Istanbul: Oto
Sanayi Sitesi, 2007); Tülay Artan, “Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Princesses as Collectors:
Chinese and European Porcelains in the Topkapi Palace Museum,” Ars Orientalis, Vol. 39,
Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century (2010): 113–147.
40. See items reproduced in Kräftner, Baroque Luxury Porcelain, ns. 204, 357, 164, 325, 195, 350.
41. AGL, Filza 137, “Manifattura di Doccia. Documenti vari,” I, Inventario della Fabbrica
delle Porcellanee Maioliche di Doccia fatto il dj 11 Luglio 1757 per il dj 30 Aprile 1757,
“20 Vassoj terzi frà quali due piatti terzi rappresentanti delle figure Turche ricavate da un
Manoscritto della Libreria Gaddi, la maggior parte spaccati, con oro.”
42. Kräftner, Baroque Luxury Porcelain, 115–125; Munger, European Porcelain, 26–28.
43. AGL, Filza 37, “Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doccia. Inventari Diversi,” 7, Fattura e prezzi delle
Porcellane e maioliche ritrovate in essere di pertinenza dell’Ill.mi SS.ri Eredi della fu Ecc.za Sua
il Sig.re Sen.re March.e Carlo Ginori stato Gov.re di questa Città, Presente nel Magazzino preso
à pigione in via delle Galere e consegnate per procurarne la vendita à Ant.o Corsi.
44. They are labelled Ristretti delle vendite di Porcellane e Maioliche del magazzino di
Livorno, and are contained in AGL, Filza 38, “Ginori. Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doc-
cia. Dimostrazioni, Ristretti.” Some examples are reproduced in Maureen Cassidy-Geiger,
Princes and Porcelain on the Grand Tour, in Fragile Diplomacy, 209–255.
45. During the year ending May 1747 the best lapis lazuli was acquired in Livorno to the
amount of ninety-four scudi; AGL, Filza 38, “Ginori. Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doccia.
Dimostrazioni, Ristretti,” 111 Dimostrazione in Ristretto di tutte le spese eseguite in un
anno a tutto maggio 1747 per la detta Fabbrica, f. 4r “per Pietre Lapislazuli provviste in
Livorno sd. 94. 3. 15.”
46. AGL, Filza 38, “Ginori. Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doccia. Dimostrazioni, Ristretti,” 112
bis, Ristretto del Riscosso e Speso per la Fabbrica delle Porcellante e Terriglie a Doccia in
118  Cinzia Maria Sicca
un anno a tutto Maggio 1748; see also AGL, Filza 38, “Ginori. Fabbrica delle Porcellane
di Doccia. Dimostrazioni, Ristretti,” 8 Dimostrazioni in Ristretto dell’incasso e speso negli
ultimi passati anni a tutto Aprile 1757 presso la Fabbrica delle Porcellane e Maioliche di
Doccia degli Illustrissimi Sig.ri Marchesi Ginori, compiled by Giuseppe Marrini, accountant.
47. See Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a Doccia, 178, with partial transcription of the
document.
48. See Ibid., 178–179, with partial transcription of Giovanni Di Martino’s letter to Carlo
Ginori and of the enclosed note by Federico Hibsch dated Constantinople, 30 August 1753.
49. AGL, Filza 39 “Fabbrica delle Porcellane di Doccia. Scritture e Documenti,” n. 5, Conto di
Vendite a N. 12 del Vassoio Pietra dura, e dell’appresso Tabacchiere di proprietà di S. Ecc.
za il Sig. Senat.re, e Marchese Carlo Ginori.
50. “[M]i pare potreste accomodare in una Cassa tutti i quattro [serviti] posti sotto N.°1 e
N.°2; avvertite però di separare ciascheduno da per sè e che la Cassa sia proporzionata a
reggere il peso, e colle sue maniglie di corda. Invece di paglia accomodateli con del fieno
gentile, e ben trito, e che aprendosi la Cassa si riconosca la pulizia, e l’occhio resti anche
appagato, e ci si veda la maniera del Fedi, acciò tutti conoschino che questa è Porcellana
delicata, e non piatti di Montelupo. Questa è una commissione, che per prova si manda
all’India, e se incontra non avremo da somministrare tanto lavoro che serva, però badate
che sia tutta robba scelta e perfetta . . . ma sopra tutto badate che tutto sia fine, trasparente
e leggieri, e non vi sia nulla di storto, importandomi infinitamente che questa Commissione
incontri, badate ancora sopra tutto alla bianchezza”; Biancalana, Porcellane e Maioliche a
Doccia, 179.
51. Alimento, “Tra ‘gelosie’ personali e ‘gelosie’ tra gli Stati,” 74.
Part Three

Asian Interactions
8 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints
(Re)presenting India in Medici Florence
Erin E. Benay

In March of 1514, Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, r. 1513–1521) received
an Indian elephant from King Manuel I (r. 1495–1521) of Portugal.1 Although Hanno,
as the elephant was named, was kept in a menagerie in the Belvedere Courtyard along
with other exotic animals, the Medici pope preferred the elephant and had its likeness
documented in numerous artistic commissions. Extant drawings by Giulio Romano
(1499–1546) and Francisco d’Hollanda (1517–1585), as well as an elephant fountain
by Giovanni da Udine in the Villa Madama, indicate that by 1521 Hanno had become
synonymous with the Indian mammal more generally.2 Similarly, an Indian rhinoc-
eros sent to Leo X by the Portuguese king inspired the canonical woodcut by Albre-
cht Dürer. Dürer’s authoritative print provided the archetype for subsequent images
including Duke Alessandro de’ Medici’s emblem, a sculpted rhino in the grotto of the
Villa Medici at Castello, and a bronze relief on the door of the Cathedral of Pisa (cast
by Domenico Portigiani, c. 1602).3 In both cases, King Manuel’s original diplomatic
intention—to remind the Pope, and thus the Catholic world, of Portugal’s conquest of
Asia—was eventually forgotten, while the magnificence and wonder of these Indian
animals was immortalized in Medici-sponsored art. In subsequent years, members
of the Medici family continued to demonstrate their interest in Indian naturalia in a
number of ways. For instance, Francesco I (1541–1587) collected rare plant samples
for his medicinal garden, and Ferdinando I (1549–1609) requested birds from India,
as well as stockpiled pineapples, coconuts, pepper, and semi-precious stones in the
Medici storeroom.4 Various Medici dukes corresponded with their merchants on the
sub-continent with the hope of securing examples of local craftsmanship, as the fol-
lowing pages will show. Textual accounts, artistic commissions, and evidence of a
mostly lost collection suggest that the Medici were deeply invested in attaining what
they could of this destination to the east.
Writing to the Medici of their travels through India in the fifteenth–sixteenth cen-
turies, Niccolo de’ Conti (1395–1469), Giovanni da Empoli (1483–1517), Andrea
Corsali (b. 1487), Filippo Sassetti (1540–1588), and Francesco Carletti (1573–1636)
and many others described a land populated by wild beasts, strange peoples, and fra-
grant plants.5 In the maritime city of Mylapore (a suburb of modern-day Chennai),
however, they found the burial site of Saint Thomas the Apostle to be a surprising
bastion of Christianity. As a result, accounts of a thriving cult of so-called “Thomas
Christians,” replete with temples filled with golden idols and elaborate stone carvings,
were found within the same textual context as reports of cannibal kings and man-
eating spiders. Arguably, the inclusion of such ebullient, illustrative passages served
an important rhetorical function: they offered descriptive proof of distant lands,
122  Erin E. Benay
updated the encyclopedic writings of ancient scholars whose texts were long held as
the authoritative source for geographic knowledge, and made the phenomenological
experience of foreign travel available to those who would never visit the “Orient.”6
Generations of Medici family members must have been stunned by the revelations
that were vividly transposed to Tuscany via this new textual genre, as their assem-
blage of Indian collectibles and commissions for images of animals such as the Indian
elephant and rhinoceros attest.7 Previous scholarship has made clear that travelers and
merchants were integral to the advent of collections of Indian curiosities by European
noblemen like the Medici.8 This chapter instead argues for the significance of Thom-
as’s cult, and objects produced in that milieu, in a nexus of exchange between Medici
Florence and India. Textual accounts of south Indian cities often included lengthy
descriptions of available products, but they were also populated with references to
the cult of Saint Thomas and to the site of his burial in Mylapore. Unpublished letters
and avvisi (news bulletins) that arrived at court during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries codified the place of Saint Thomas’s relics in India and, I propose, correlated
his apostolic presence there with the export of precious goods from the region. In
her study of medieval “India” as a “plural and unfixed geographical and imaginative
space,” Marianne O’Doherty suggests that Tuscan discourses of travel directed read-
ers away from geography and toward ethnography, but these ideas were not neces-
sarily mutually exclusive in the early modern period.9 The place of Saint Thomas and
of Thomas Christians in an evolving conception of India in Italy indicates a fluidity
between cartographic and cultural categories. Although they have not been the subject
of scholarly interpretation, South Indian devotional objects that are today displayed
in the Medici collection of the Tesoro dei Granduchi (formerly Museo degli Argenti)
in the Pitti Palace were made in the “contact zone” between Christians and Indians
and were obviously worthy of collection by the most esteemed European noblemen.10
Generations of Medici Grand Dukes were therefore arbiters not only of a convention-
ally exotic image of India Orientale as a place filled with strange beasts and wonderful
riches, but of India as a Christian pilgrimage site, fixed to geographic coordinates.

Imagining Saint Thomas’s India in Early Modern Italian Texts

Accounts beginning with Theophilus to Constantine in 354 C.E. reported that Thomas’s
conversion of locals in Southern India had resulted in a community of “Thomas Chris-
tians” in and around the site of his burial in San Tomé.11 Saint Ephrem (381 C.E.),
John of Chrysostom (c. 380 C.E.), and Gregory of Tours (c. 550 C.E.) all confirmed
the presence of the Apostle’s tomb in India.12 The later writings of missionaries like
Giovanni da Montecorvino (1246–1328) identified the tomb of Saint Thomas in
Mylapore and noted that the church dedicated to the apostle was “filled with idols.”13
Other thirteenth-century missionaries described a similarly “barbaric” form of
“Thomas” Christianity in the region: Odorico da Pordenone (1286–1331) called the
Indian Christians “vile and pestilent heretics” and described the idolatrous practices
of Thomas Christians in particular.14 Chapter 18 of Odorico’s text, entitled “Con-
cerning the kingdom of Mobar, where lieth the body of Saint Thomas,” recounted an
elaborate ritual of bodily mortification involving repeated prostration while moving
en route to a

wonderful idol . . . [of Saint Thomas], commonly depicted by the painters, and it

is entirely out of gold, seated on a great throne, which is also of gold. And around
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 123
its neck it hath a collar of gems of immense value. And the church of this idol is
also of pure gold, roof (and walls) and pavement.15

Odorico’s goal in traveling to “Eastern parts of the world” was to “win some harvest
of souls,” but he was equally preoccupied with “many other stories of sundry kinds
concerning the customs and peculiarities of different parts of this world . . . [and to]
rehearse many great marvels which I did hear and see.”16 In this way, missionaries like
Odorico da Pordenone and Giovanni da Montecorvino established a textual tradi-
tion whereby the account of Thomas Christianity became a marvel among many rare
sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and haptic experiences.
Poised at the edge of the explored world and far from the center of Christianity in
Rome, Saint Thomas’s burial site and such sumptuous, idolatrous displays became
inversions of “authentic” Christianity. This type of contrast was struck by Marco
Polo (1254–1324), who recorded his visit to Thomas’s Indian tomb in his widely read
Descrizione del mondo (c. 1298).17 Preceded by a lengthy exposition of the harvest
of diamonds by flesh-eating eagles in the mountains of “Mutifili,” Polo effortlessly
segues into a summary of “the place where the body of Master Saint Thomas the
most holy Apostle is.”18 According to Polo the site was the locus of pilgrimage for
many Christians, where “the body shows very many and fine miracles,” including
one involving the sacred ground upon which Thomas was martyred.19 Polo recounts
these miracles and the story of Thomas’s martyrdom with the same objective, autho-
rial voice that he employs to describe (at great length) the tarantulas of India’s tropi-
cal regions. Nevertheless, he also constructs a contrast between the holy earth at the
Center of Christianity in the Holy Land and the holy earth at the edge of the world
in India.20
Marco Polo’s travelogue was among the most influential for the development of the
genre of travel literature and for evolving conceptions of India and the East.21 Like
those missionary texts briefly described earlier, Marco Polo characterized his experi-
ences in terms of strange customs and idolatrous practices. Even so, and as Joan-Pau
Rubiés has explained, we need not understand these accounts as moral or spiritual
condemnations per se.22 Instead, and as close readings of Polo’s texts have revealed,
his accounts were more neutral than has often been assumed and mark a turn toward
a secularized, or at least more worldly, variety of pilgrimage popularized in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Unlike the missionary accounts that preceded his
Descrizione, Marco Polo is more eclectic in his approach to popular beliefs and cus-
toms; while Odorico da Pordenone condemns the heretical practices of Thomas Chris-
tians, Polo mentions that he too healed Venetians with a bit of red earth that he took
from the tomb of Saint Thomas in Mylapore.23 The differences and diversity of beliefs
noted by Polo was not reduced to a schema of medieval monstrosity and deviance and
was instead admired as congenial to Christian ideals and behavior.24 Polo’s rhetorical
tone also further endowed his text with quasi-empirical legitimacy. In so doing, his
widely read, copied, and imitated Descrizione helped to fix the pilgrimage site of Saint
Thomas in a developing cultural topography of India.
Subsequent explorers confirmed Polo’s observations of Thomas Christians and
reminded those at home—particularly members of the Medici court—of Thomas’s
successful conversion of natives in distant lands. In the 1440s the humanist Niccolo
de’ Conti was sent by Pope Eugenius IV (r. 1431–1447) to update the abbreviated
descriptions of India given in Pliny’s Natural History.25 Conti’s commentary, repub-
lished first by Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) and again by the
124  Erin E. Benay
Castilian humanist Pedro Tafur (1410–1484), exemplifies what Rubiés has called the
“mechanism through which non-clerical erudite culture and travel literature became
connected.”26 In other words, Conti’s vivid writings are not necessarily meant to alert
Roman authorities to the missteps of Christians abroad but rather to codify the expe-
rience of “otherness” in the context of international discovery.27 Although Conti (and
subsequent republications of his text) was not necessarily commissioned by Medici
family members, he was a recognized part of Cosimo de’ Medici’s (1389–1464) wide
mercantile circle, and the popularity of these texts among the elite successfully per-
petuated the model of a new type of traveler who could avoid Church censure.
Conti’s travelogue, as well as other Italian texts published in the sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries such as those of Andrea Corsali, Giovanni da Empoli, Filippo
Sassetti, and Francesco Carletti, was written for members of the Medici family or
their entourage. Like Polo and Conti’s observations, sixteenth-century descriptions
of Thomas’s important and highly visible role in the region were often embedded in
longer, proto-ethnographic passages about the flora, fauna, and exportable commodi-
ties native to the area.28 In an exhaustive letter to his father detailing his commercial
enterprises in India, the Florentine merchant Giovanni da Empoli (1483–1518) lists
“the body of the Apostle Saint Thomas” among other high-priced exports like pepper,
ginger, pearls, cinnamon, and rubies, despite the fact that the apostle (or his relics) was
not an exportable good in the same sense.29 His brief mention of Saint Thomas’s tomb
is thus punctuated by the more important delineation of essential commodities, the
trade of which was his primary occupation.
The letters of Giovanni da Empoli, along with those of Duarte Barbosa, Andrea
Corsali, and Ludovico di Varthema, were all printed in one of the most widely read
anthologies of sixteenth-century travel writing, Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Navi-
gationi et viaggi, published in 1556 in Venice. Ramusio’s three-volume compendium
was unusual at the time because it included translations of Portuguese and Spanish
texts into Italian. Almost all of the texts compiled into Ramusio’s second volume on
India include details about the importance of Saint Thomas in southern India. Many
of these authors correlated important exportable commodities with sites of Thomas
Christian devotion on the Malabar coast and the place of his burial on the Coroman-
del coast. Eagerly read by the Grand Dukes, Ramusio’s books asserted the place of
Saint Thomas’s relics in India and, I argue, implicitly linked cult devotions to the saint
with international commerce.
The second volume of Ramusio’s anthology includes a detailed map at the front of
the book. Dotted with tiny elephants, India’s important landmarks are labeled, includ-
ing “S.Thomaso mailepur,” designated not only by the inscription but also by a small
drawing of a church. Indeed, Thomas’s burial site was often the only named location
on early modern maps of India. For instance, in Cosimo I’s Guardaroba Nuova, now
called the Sala delle Carte Geografiche, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Egnazio and Stefano
Buonsignori painted vibrant maps on the cabinet doors that likely housed the duke’s
impressive collection. The Parte del India Dentro al Gange Ho(ggi) detta Indostan
(Figure 8.1) depicts the Golfo di Bengala and features an inscription along the Coro-
mandel coast noting that “Here lies the body of the Apostle Saint Thomas” (Qui sta ii
carpo di S. Tommaso Apostolo) alongside the neatly painted name of the city “Mali-
pur.” This is the only geographic label on the map, making it visually prominent.
Other city names and locations were certainly known at this date, so Danti’s selection
is deliberate: it directs viewers to what he understood to be the most salient feature of
the map—namely the tomb site of a Christian martyr.
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 125

Figure 8.1 Egnazio Danti, PARTE DEL INDIA DENTRO AL GANGE HO detta INDOSTAN,
1574–75, Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
Source: Alamy Stock Photo.

Maps and letters like these did not merely represent the world but helped to create it
in the minds of their illustrious readers/viewers.30 The Medici dukes played important
roles in this productive process. In one notable case, Ferdinando I even underwrote the
publication of an encyclopedic text that promised to describe the Indies in a way that
had never been previously attempted. In 1588, Ferdinando authorized Giampietro
126  Erin E. Benay
Maffei to publish his influential Indicarum Historiarum libri in Florence.31 Maffei was
a Jesuit priest from Bergamo, invited by the Portuguese King Enrico I in 1579 to study
from the missionary archives in Lisbon. The resulting volumes document the history
of the evangelization of Asia and the Americas. Maffei’s book, published in Latin by
Filippo Giunti, was translated into Italian and republished in 1589. The Italian edi-
tion includes a detailed table of contents and index, which allow the curious reader
to find information about subjects like “coco noce Indiana” (Indian coconuts), and a
“tempio fatto da San Tommaso vedi San Tomaso Apostolo” (a “temple made by Saint
Thomas” where presumably you can “see Saint Thomas Apostle”).32 In fact, Maffei’s
text was, to my knowledge, the lengthiest account of Christianity in southern India to
be published in Europe in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Over the course of
several chapters Maffei describes the city of Cochin (Kochi) in southern India, devo-
tion to Saint Thomas on the Malabar (western) coast of India, the saint’s miracles,
martyrdom, and burial in Meliapore (Mylapore, in modern-day Tamil Nadu), and the
subsequent involvement of the Portuguese in the site of his relics.33 Much of Maffei’s
text follows the apocryphal story given in the Acts of Saint Thomas or in the Golden
Legend.34 Interwoven with that narrative, however, are details that must have derived
from the archival documents Maffei consulted in Lisbon. For instance, in a section
dedicated to Thomas’s martyrdom, Maffei interjects that Indian children sing in their
own Malayali language to celebrate these events in the Apostle’s life.35
Unlike medieval hagiographic sources that detailed Saint Thomas’s apostolic charge
in India, Maffei’s text is peppered with details about geographic sites and the role of
the Portuguese in recovering Saint Thomas’s relics from the idolatrous “Christians”
who had preserved them.36 In his account, when the Portuguese arrived in San Thomé
they found an area dedicated to Saint Thomas in ruins.37 Remnants of ancient pyra-
mids, towers, columns, and stone fragments of figures made in a variety of colors and
of great craftsmanship offer evidence of the former beauty of the city. In the same pas-
sage Maffei describes the vestiges of a magnificent temple dedicated to Saint Thomas
and goes on to delineate the difficulty with which the Portuguese were finally able to
unearth the relics of the saint and to properly commemorate them with a celebration
including the locals.38 Maffei’s descriptions of Christian history and religious practices
in India appear as chapters in a book otherwise dedicated to the recollection of the
strange customs and marvelous flora and fauna of India. Much like the letters pub-
lished in Ramusio’s important anthology, Maffei’s volume equates Thomas Christians
with other foreign idolaters. With the dissemination of Maffei’s text during the last
years of the sixteenth century, the Indian location of Thomas’s relics was confirmed
for Italian readers in the Grand Ducal court, but it was also implicitly exoticized as a
mysterious quasi-legitimate pilgrimage site.
By supporting its publication, Ferdinando I de’ Medici virtually guaranteed the suc-
cess of Maffei’s Historie delle Indie and the circulation of new “data” about India
and Asia. Moreover, Ferdinando’s desire to have Maffei’s work published in Florence
indicates his proprietary claim of the text, and by extension, of the Indies described
therein. Backing Maffei’s project allowed Ferdinando to control the output of infor-
mation about the Indies and to forever associate the Medici name with exploration
overseas. In turn, the publication of Maffei’s riveting books may have inspired further
Grand Ducal interest in India and the cultural wonders available there. Several vol-
umes of miscellaneous documents in the Medici archives reflect a series of viaggi nelle
Indie Orientali (voyages to the east Indies) embarked on by Florentine merchants
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 127
between 1608 and 1609 and indicate that the “Cose notabili dell’India” (notable
things of India) continued to occupy the court well into the seventeenth century.39

Saint Thomas and the Material Culture of India

in Grand Ducal Florence
These documents increasingly blur the line between the genre of travel literature—
produced by those on self-styled “pilgrimages of curiosity”—and those composed by
missionaries sent by the Church authorities in Rome.40 Marveling at what he had seen
in India, Giovanni da Empoli writes that “it is hard to believe even when you have
seen it, and just think how many have not seen it; such a person would surely call it all
lies.”41 In his letter to Baccio Valori (1535–1606), director of the Laurentian library
and steward of the Medici medicinal garden, Filippo Sassetti similarly wonders at the
array of exotic goods in India noting that they are so fine “they must be seen to be
believed.”42 Ironically, in the same letters in which they catalogued the tomb of the
incredulous apostle Thomas, who needed to see in order to believe in Christ’s resurrec-
tion (John 20:24–29), these merchants expressed their own sensorial conundrums.43
Despite being awestruck by what they saw, many of these authors attempted to
describe just that, and wrote lengthy passages about temples, sculptures, and products
made by local craftsmen. In his letter to Giuliano de’ Medici (1479–1516), Andrea
Corsali noted bas-reliefs in the church of Saint Thomas in Mylapore and a footprint
of Saint Thomas on an immense stone nearby.44 Although the Saint Thomas Mount
church in Chennai has been largely rebuilt, a bas-relief was transferred to the left nave
wall, near the primary entrance (Figure 8.2). Saint Thomas stands with his builder’s
square, a common attribute of the saint in European art. A similarly carved set of
reliefs is also preserved in the nearby museum of Saint Thomas Basilica in Chen-
nai (Figure 8.3). Clearly carved of the same dark, soft, smooth stone, a double-sided
sculptural relief depicts Saint Thomas on the front side, a book in one hand, his other
raised in benediction. On the verso is a figure of the baptized King Gondophares
(founder of the Indo-Parthian kingdom, r. 19–46 C.E.). Given their early dating, these
sculptures could have been among those seen by European travelers such as Corsali,
all of whom described the rich decoration of Thomas sites in India.45
Although most churches dedicated to Saint Thomas in the southern states of Kerala
and Tamil Nadu that were built prior to the seventeenth century have since been
reconstructed, many maintain elaborate altars containing “Saint Thomas crosses.” All
of these crosses recall a lost eighth-century prototype, and many copies likely date to
that period as well.46 Carved from granite and sheltered in an architectural niche, these
crosses significantly incorporate the lotus flower at their base. The lotus, common to
much Buddhist, Hindu, and Islamic art in India, acts as a sort of visual cradle for the
cross itself, its petals unfurled to contain the bottom of the cross. Despite the preva-
lence of the motif in art of those religions, its prominence in the practice of Thomas
Christians has not been acknowledged.
By incorporating a motif typically associated with more-dominant religions in the
area, makers of Thomas crosses localized the universal symbol of Christendom long
before the arrival of the Portuguese. Later ensconced in ornate altar retables, the
crosses continued to function as the visual centerpiece of Thomas Christian churches,
but their framework—both literal and ideological—had been adapted to the Renais-
sance conventions of altarpiece design, albeit in brighter hues. Better known altars in
128  Erin E. Benay

Figure 8.2 Anonymous, Saint Thomas, sculptural fragment, c. sixth century (?). Saint Thomas
Mount church, Chennai.
Source: Erin E. Benay.

Goan churches, such as the elaborate seventeenth-century high altar of the Church
of the Holy Spirit, inspired by Jacopo Vignola’s (1507–1573) designs for the Gesù in
Rome, blended Vignola’s characteristic Baroque sense of drama with the Hindu archi-
tectural precepts of vastusastra (architectural theory), in order to arrive at a uniquely
Indian (and colonial) style of altar that was at once comfortable to locals and familiar
to visitors from the West.47 Thomas Christian church altars employed a similar strat-
egy from a much earlier date.
Liturgical devices often accompanied the granite crosses that serve as the simple dec-
orative centerpiece for many altarpieces in Saint Thomas churches throughout Kerala
and Tamil Nadu. Preserved in the Saint Thomas Christian Museum in Kakkanad, a
massive granite baptismal font is carved with decorative bands, a large angel with hands
raised in prayer, and a cross (Figure 8.4). At its base, feline creatures guard the font.
Likely made by Indian artists in the area, the base appears to date to the ninth century,
while the basin is of considerably later manufacture, perhaps seventeenth or eighteenth
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 129

(a) (b)

Figure 8.3 Anonymous, Saint Thomas [left] and King Gondophares [right], sculptural frag-
ments, c. sixth century. Basilica of Saint Thomas collection, Chennai.
Source: Erin E. Benay.

century.48 Both parts of the font, however, reflect a non-European style of carving that is
a combination of local techniques and materials with both traditional Christian iconog-
raphy and that of indeterminate provenance. Although it is unclear who would have
made such an object, the presence of the font nevertheless suggests that such decora-
tive objects adorned Saint Thomas churches and augmented the devotional experience
of congregants and visitors. Finally, the baptismal font’s complex dating suggests that
later artists, influenced or perhaps employed by missionaries, contributed to the visual
topography of Christianity in a region far removed from the Jesuit stronghold in Goa.
Just as in Goa, artists created objects that forged a meaningful relationship between
existing visual traditions and those that were imported from lands to the west.
Furthermore, the relief carvings of Saint Thomas in Chennai, the baptismal font in
Kakkanad, and the Saint Thomas crosses found throughout both the states of Kerala
and Tamil Nadu are evidence of what must have constituted a larger body of imagery
and objects associated with Thomasan devotion that is now lost. European perceptions
of India were largely formed via the reception of travel accounts like those described
in the first part of this chapter and by the collection of objects that were understood
to be “representative” of their countries of origin. Even though little evidence remains
of their output, Thomas Christians seem to have played multiple roles in a network
of artistic production and trade between India and Europe. Those examples that do
130  Erin E. Benay

Figure 8.4 Anonymous, Baptismal Font, base c. ninth century; bowl seventeenth–eighteenth

century. Saint Thomas Christian Museum, Kakkanad.
Source: Erin E. Benay.

survive contribute to our understanding of art produced outside of the urban centers,
such as Goa, that typically governed the circulation of such objects.49
For instance, in his recollection of the exhumation of Saint Thomas’s bones under
Portuguese supervision, Duarte Barbosa (c. 1518), a Portuguese writer, translator, and
officer whose texts were translated into Italian and widely circulated in Florence in the
mid-late sixteenth century, notes that Saint Thomas’s bones were placed in a newly
made casket.50 Perhaps it was a small repoussé box dated to around the time of Bar-
bosa’s arrival in Mylapore that was used as a precious container for these relics (Fig-
ure 8.5). Decorated with a geometrical pattern of foliage and Hindu motifs, the lock and
side hinges further suggest that it was once a reliquary box.51 At its center is a medallion
of the Doubting Thomas; displaced from the rest of the Biblical narrative, the figures of
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 131
Christ and Thomas remind viewers of the most integral moment in the story from the
Gospel of John (20:24–29). Thomas has demanded physical evidence of Christ’s resur-
rection and in a gesture of generosity, Christ offers his side wound as the sensorial proof
Thomas needs. A moment later, Christ gently admonishes Thomas, urging him to rely
on faith, rather than on the tangible manifestation of the divine (John 20:24–29).
The figures of Christ and Saint Thomas are cast under a constellation of seven
stars, or the Hindu Septa Rishi.52 According to legend, the Septa Rishi (or seven great
teachers) were turned into stars—Christ and Thomas are thus included in that galaxy.

(a)

(b)

Figure 8.5 Anonymous, Mylapore Casket, (a) back and (b) front, c. 1500. Silver repoussé. Pre-
viously Basilica of Saint Thomas, Mylapore, Chennai, now lost.
Source: Erin E. Benay.
132  Erin E. Benay
The medallion is flanked by peacocks that symbolize Christian immortality or the
incorruptibility of flesh, but they also must function as pictorial synonyms for the
town itself—named Mylapore, or “Peacock town,” where peacocks once adorned
the ancient chapel of Saint Thomas, now destroyed.53 Peacocks were also implicated in
versions of Saint Thomas’s death: in Marco Polo’s Descrizione he describes Thomas’s
accidental death in a peacock hunting accident.54 In this retelling, Thomas ironically
dies from a wound to his right side, located in much the same place as Christ’s side
wound, inflicted by Longinus. The peacock would therefore seem an apt attribute for
Saint Thomas and the site of his relics.
Another Hindu symbol appears on the casket: the feet of the chest appear to be the
paws of dogs. The dog is thought to represent the four Vedas, or sacred books of Hin-
duism.55 A large and finely carved chest in the Indo-Portuguese collection at the Museu
Nacional in Lisbon is similarly footed with dogs, suggesting a common characteristic
of these caskets. Finally, the lizard that ornaments the lock of the reliquary is also
meaningful. Lizards often appear on Indo-Portuguese caskets as three other examples
in Lisbon demonstrate.56 Although an obvious symbol of protection for the precious
content of these boxes, in this case the lizard-adorned lock has added significance:
according to Hindu belief, touching a lizard absolves devotees of their sins.57 Since the
relics contained within the box, and perhaps handled by pilgrims, belonged to a saint
who famously touched Christ in order to be absolved of his doubt, the iconographic
selection is especially compelling. Perhaps made under the influence of European mis-
sionaries, or alternately commissioned by a missionary from a local artist, this unu-
sual casket appears to fulfill conventional definitions of Indo-Portuguese art, but it
also defies such delineated categorization and signals a far more complex relationship
between “indigenous” and “Western” idioms than such a term implies.
The intricate merging of Hindu and Christian iconographies on the reliquary cas-
ket speaks to the conflation of local and canonical traditions associated with Saint
Thomas without pointing to a specific European or Indian workshop or aesthetic
tradition. Indeed, it is impossible to associate the repoussé box with any such par-
ticular provenance: it is neither an object produced by the “vanquished” indigenous
population of Mylapore for the intended consumption of European “victors,” nor is it
conventionally Indo-Portuguese.58 Dispensing with the terms commonly employed to
discuss such objects, such as “hybrid” and “transcultural,” Alessandra Russo suggests
that these images are thus untranslatable in that they operate between the identifiable
visual languages of the local and the “foreign.”59 Rather than see this box as untrans-
latable, however, we might just as readily acknowledge it as multilingual, circulating
in a region where several visual-linguistic languages are employed simultaneously.60
European collectors soon became interested in the types of treasures described
in textual accounts, and the “Indian” objects recorded in the inventories of collec-
tions like the Medici reflect a complex array of goods.61 Although the best-known
examples of such imports are finely carved noci d’India (coconut cups) and Bengal
colchas (coverlets),62 the Medici holdings included at least one known example of
art produced within the Thomas Christian milieu. Both Francesco and Ferdinando
de’ Medici authorized the merchant Filippo Sassetti to spend a budget of 500 and
300 scudi respectively on “exotic goods” while in southern India.63 In his capacity
as director for the collection of pepper in Goa, Sassetti was uniquely positioned to
act as an agent for the Medici, and their vague instructions reflect the confidence
placed in his ability to select artifacts worthy of the Medici collection. In his letters
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 133
to his Medici patrons, Sassetti reported on the “Saint Thomas Christians” on at least
two occasions.64 The first, addressed to Cardinal Ferdinando, soon to become Grand
Duke (r. 1587–1609), dates to January of 1584, in which Sassetti goes to some length
to explain the lush, vegetal flora, the mysterious fauna (replete with crocodiles and
tigers), dietary habits, and religious customs of inhabitants of Cochin.65 Included in
this section of his letter is a report of the “many Christians” of an ancient sect trac-
ing their origin to Saint Thomas Apostle.66 Sassetti is careful to delineate the heretical
practices of this cult, which he observes are closer to the Greek than Roman Catholic
rites with which he is familiar, and suggests that the reform of the Thomas Christian
church has already begun under the authority of the Jesuit mission.67 Unlike many
earlier, abbreviated textual references to Thomas Christians in India, Sassetti’s descrip-
tion is rather lengthy and occupies about a quarter of the whole letter.
Ferdinando’s reply (if he wrote one) is lost, but a second letter from Sassetti to
Ferdinando dated to 10 February 1585 was accompanied by a bill and list of objects
acquired on Ferdinando’s behalf. The most detailed listing is for a “textile ensemble”
(padiglione) painted with various figures and curious designs from the church of San
Tomé on the Coromandel Coast.68 Although the letter was written in Cochin, the tex-
tile that Sassetti describes originated on the opposite coast of southern India, near the
burial site of Saint Thomas (San Tomé) in Mylapore. Sassetti explains that the textile
must be treated with great care so that the gold details do not disappear with wash-
ing and elaborates on the laborious process used to dye the fabric with rich colors.
He notes that local royalty would wear textiles of the same variety, implicitly linking
the garment with Ferdinando’s worthy status.69 Given the extended description of
Saint Thomas Christians in Sassetti’s letter to Ferdinando of just a month earlier, the
elaborate textile would have been of special interest to Ferdinando not simply as an
example of Indian craftsmanship but as physical evidence of the artistic production
associated with a place and cult that he likely had little knowledge of prior to Sassetti’s
reports. The geographic discrepancy between the textile’s origin (Mylapore) and the
Thomas Christians described in Sassetti’s 1584 letter (Cochin) was likely of no real
significance to either Sassetti or Ferdinando since both locations were home to the
population of heretical Christians to whom Sassetti referred.
No longer traceable to a specific object, the textile ensemble described by Sassetti
was likely a kalamkari—a type of dyed fabric made by applying each color with a sty-
lus (kalam) and that could have served a number of functions, including that of a bed-
cover.70 Kalamkari and many of the other textiles Sassetti describes were undoubtedly
made specifically for an international market.71 Since there are no extant kalamkari
dating to before the seventeenth century, textual records like Sassetti’s are the only
evidence of their existence prior to this date.72 Often commissioned by European trad-
ers and influenced by the designs such merchants provided, textiles like the Tommasan
kalamkari were neither Indian, nor were they European in manufacture. Like a well-
preserved seventeenth-century example in the Brooklyn Museum of Art (Figure 8.6),
the elaborately decorated textile from the Church of Saint Thomas in Mylapore must
have reflected a combination of European and local motifs. The Brooklyn kalamkari
hanging features figures in Dutch or Portuguese-inspired costumes negotiating the
purchase of pepper from local sellers whose dress and skin color is differentiated from
the European patrons. Despite the obvious attempt to make some of the figures look
European, the details of their clothing and accessories are inaccurate, indicating that
the artist was not herself European but was attempting to appeal to such a customer.73
134  Erin E. Benay
Each narrative band is framed by geometric and floral motifs common to Indian art,
resulting in a richly textured and varied visual product.
As recipients of sumptuous textiles evocative of the Brooklyn hanging, the Medici
would not likely have realized that these objects were marketed, if not made, with
patrons like them in mind. Instead, this fusion of styles and content would have con-
tributed to their “perception of what was ‘Indian’ in the sixteenth century.”74 Like
such textiles, a number of objects now in the Sala Esotica of the Tesoro dei Granduchi
are of the type that would have been available to Sassetti in any of the South Indian
ports in the Thomas-Christian ambient (Cochin and Mylapore included). For instance,
a tortoiseshell casket (Figure 8.7), an ivory figure of Christ as the Good Shepherd, and
an ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child (Figures 8.8 and 8.9) were probably made
by local craftsmen in India, all three conform to stock types that likely developed first

Figure 8.6 Hanging (kalamkari), one of seven pieces, 1610–20, painted resist and mordants,
dyed cotton, 275 × 95.9 cm, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York.
Source: Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, 14.719.2_SL1.jpg.
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 135
around Goa and may have later migrated south, and all would have contributed to the
material knowledge of India in Grand Ducal Florence.
A valuable, organic material, tortoiseshell had been used since antiquity in the pro-
duction of luxury items and was familiar to wealthy Europeans.75 Nevertheless, large
sheets of tortoiseshell were harder to manufacture and involved heating the pliant lay-
ers of slutes from the turtle’s carapace and welding them together. It is unknown who
such boxes were made for, though their modern-day provenance in many Portuguese
collections, as well as this casket’s location in Florence, suggest that they were bought
by Europeans.76 If the chest began as a functional object in India, it is unlikely that
the box remained so once in the Medici collections. Instead it was likely treasured as
an example of fine Indian craftsmanship in two materials that were characterized by
their ability to be heated, reshaped, and soldered together. Transformed yet again by
its placement in a collection among other rare collectibles, the small chest must have
functioned less as a place for storage and more as a conduit for discussion and wonder.
The two ivory figures in the Tesoro dei Granduchi are similarly enigmatic and rep-
resent a type that may now be found dispersed in major European collections. Ivory
statuettes were an artistic mainstay in the Jesuit missionary stronghold of Goa. They
were portable and therefore easily disseminated among new converts and European
missionaries alike.77 Small-scale carving in wood and ivory had already been estab-
lished in Goa prior to the arrival of the Portuguese, but the new market for Christian
subjects would have offered a lucrative alternative for local artists—whether they had

Figure 8.7 Tortoiseshell and silver casket, sixteenth–seventeenth century, Indian (Goa?), Tesoro
dei Granduchi, Florence.
Source: Marco Musillo.
136  Erin E. Benay

Figure 8.8 Christ as the Good Shepherd, ivory, seventeenth century, Goa, Tesoro dei Granduchi,
Florence.
Source: Marco Musillo.

converted to Christianity or not.78 These ivories must have fascinated collectors with
their combination of luxurious material, Christian iconography, and Indian motifs.
The rough carving of such ivories may have even appealed to Italian collectors, in
whose eyes such coarse quality might have heightened their exoticism.79
Indeed, Mary Olson has proposed that an underlying Indic aesthetic aligns statu-
ettes like the ones in the Tesoro dei Granduchi with local religious-artistic traditions;80
Christ’s dainty feet (Figure 8.9), for instance, are crossed at the ankle, as in many Bud-
dhist sculptures. More indicative of an Indic aesthetic, however, is the style in which
these ivories are carved. This is especially true of a small, seated ivory figure of Christ
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 137
as the Good Shepherd. Although it has not been previously identified as such, this
figure undoubtedly crowned the top of a Good Shepherd “rockery,” an iconographic
variant that was commonly produced in Goa—like the seated Christ that surmounts
a mountainous landscape in an example at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Fig-
ure 8.10). Christ in the Tesoro dei Granduchi sits in a contemplative, crossed-ankle
position. His eyes are downcast and he rests his head on his hand, perhaps alluding to
much earlier sculptures of the Buddha. Christ’s elbow sits on his water gourd; his left
hand cradles a small lamb. Visible traces of paint on Christ’s belt, sandals, hair, and
bag indicate that the statuette was once colorfully painted. Both Christ’s tunic and the

Figure 8.9 Virgin and Child, ivory, seventeenth century, Goa (?), Tesoro dei Granduchi, Florence.
Source: Marco Musillo.
138  Erin E. Benay
lamb’s wooly coat are carved with a tiny, repeating waffle pattern that also appears
in the Boston statuette and in another painted example in the Victoria and Albert
Museum.81 The rockeries are based on a combination of the verse “I am the good
shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep” (John 10:11), and John’s
description of Christ as the Water of Life (John 4:14). Common in Goa during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rockeries could be extravagantly elaborate and
were sometimes made of rock crystal as well. With their lush, tiered landscapes, the
rockeries may allude to a type of Indian temple design.82 An allusion to Hindu temples
would also serve an iconological purpose as the tiered temple structure was meant

Figure 8.10 Christ as the Good Shepherd, seventeenth century, ivory, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 139
to evoke a mountain abode for the gods, just as the rockery provides a mountainous
home for the figure of Christ.83
The decorative elements of the rockery ivories vary but often include flora, fauna,
and a spring or water source, and depict the reclining figure of Mary Magdalene at the
base of the sculpture. Laying at the bottom of Christ’s mountain in a small, cave-like
setting, Mary Magdalene provides a model for emulation—a wayward woman who
sinned, was forgiven, and ultimately became an esteemed member of Christ’s flock.
Given the iconographic complexity of the rockeries, a Christian adviser (probably
a member of the Jesuit mission) must have mediated at least some of the content—
either verbally or visually in the form of prints, model drawings, or maquettes. It is
unclear what sort of agency Indian artists had in the manufacture of the ivory rocker-
ies. Nevertheless, as has been demonstrated about other forms of Christian art in early
modern India, these ivories employ the carving techniques that Indian artists used on
non-Christian ivory statuettes, including tight patterns of square notches and circular
ringlets.84 Tiered, densely populated subjects were common in the sculptural decora-
tion of Hindu temples, and may have been part of the artists’ cache of visual references
as they were fashioning the rockery statuettes.
Details like Christ’s contemplative posture, or Mary’s supine position, hand sup-
porting her head, may also recall images of the reclining Buddha or of Hindu deities,
but this does not mean that they carry the attendant iconographic significance of those
postures with them in these new re-presentations. Christ is not made into the Buddha,
nor Mary into a female Vishnu, but rather the statuettes become the sort of “connec-
tive tissue” linking centuries of local Indian craftsmanship with a new, Christian art
of India.85 Statuettes like those in the Medici collection at the Tesoro dei Granduchi
are not Portuguese, as their label “Indo-Portuguese” implies, and they would not have
been understood as such in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite their rec-
ognizable Christian subject matter, these must have entered into the Medici holdings
as rarities and as compelling evidence not only of the success of the Jesuit mission in
Portuguese India but of the startling ways that Christianity was being observed by
indigenous populations in a land converted by Saint Thomas himself.
In this way, these visual artifacts mirror the same mixture of the “exotic” and
“familiar” that are the tropes of travel literature dating to the same period. Together
with travel accounts, these objects communicated a potent visual impression of a
geographic location where an apostolic saint had inspired the formation of an endur-
ing cult. In each of the examples discussed in this chapter, elements of Christian
iconography are embedded in a pictorial and cultural language that is distinctly
non-European. Floral motifs, local materials, and schematized figures suggest a sty-
listic idiom not typical of late medieval or Renaissance devotional art in Europe.
As such, these objects, with varying provenance and dating, should be understood
as amalgamations of local and foreign typologies that were capable of communi-
cating with Thomas Christians or European travelers alike. The sculptural reliefs,
Thomas crosses, reliquary casket, kalamkari, and small collectibles point to the ways
in which travel between India and Europe more subtly influenced networks of artistic
exchange across the globe.
Textual descriptions, avvisi, and material goods from India continued to arrive
at the Grand Ducal court throughout the seventeenth century. A filza in the Medici
archives labeled “Levantine India & Barbaria dal 1665–1684” assembles letters writ-
ten by merchants and priests who had traveled to parts of Asia, including those who
140  Erin E. Benay
had gone to “S. Tomaso” during the reigns of Ferdinando II and Cosimo III.86 By
the time of these compositions, the maritime city of Mylapore and the burial site of
Saint Thomas Apostle were no longer surprising details for inclusion. Accounts of a
thriving cult of “Thomas Christians,” replete with temples filled with golden idols
and elaborate stone carvings had, as we have seen, long since been found within the
same textual context as reports of cannibal kings and man-eating spiders. This folio
of documents likewise perpetuates an image of India in which a Christian pilgrim-
age site and succulent fruit groves cohabitate. Similarly, textiles and statuettes from
“Christian India” appeared alongside other curiosities in the Medici collections dur-
ing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like the images of Indian elephants and
rhinoceroses with which this chapter began, such objects conveyed a fascination with
the “wild” habitat of India and with the control of this habitat (including its “hea-
then” population) by European Christians. The regular inclusion of Saint Thomas’s
pilgrimage site in documents and maps from this period, and the provenance of Indian
objects from ports where Thomas Christians were known, suggests that its indigenous
Christian population was part of what made India fascinating in the first place and
helped to disambiguate India orientale from other marvelous destinations.

Notes
1. See Silvio A. Bedini, The Pope’s Elephant (Nashville: J.S. Sanders & Co., 1998).
2. For example, Giulio Romano’s sketches, once attributed to Raphael, are preserved at the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University (WA1846.226). A sketch by Francisco d’Hollanda
from his trip to Rome 1538–1540 records the Elephant Fountain by Giovanni da Udine
prior to losses and abrasions accrued over time (Ink and water color on paper, in the Bibli-
oteca del Real Monasterio San Lorenzo, El Escorial, Madrid (Escorial MS, Antigualhas).
3. Claudia Lazzaro, “Animals as Cultural Signs: A Medirci Menagerie in the Grotto at Cas-
tello,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–
1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 195–228.
4. Ferdinando’s request for “birds from India” may be found in a letter from Domitio Peroni
to Belisario Vinta discovered by Francesco Freddolini and generously shared with me for
inclusion here (ASF, MdP, 4938, fols. 90r–91r Madrid, 16 February 1608): “haueua pen-
sato di mandar’ a S.A. certi uccelli dell’Indie, et se gl’era fatti mandare et gl’haueua tenuti
alcune settimane, ma in fine si erano morti, essendo uccelli fastidiosi da nutrirsi in queste
parti, et fra essi uccelli vi era uno che lo chiamano. Card.le et vn’altro chiamato cento
lingue di strauagante fatura.” Francesco and Ferdinando’s collection of natural specimens
from India are noted by Barbara Karl, “Galanterie di cose rare . . .: Filippo Sassetti’s
Indian Shopping List for the Medici Grand Duke Francesco and His Brother Cardinal Fer-
dinando,” Itinerario 32 (2008): 23–41.
5. The texts referred to here are as follows: Niccolò de’ Conti (1395–1469) as recounted
to Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) in De varietate fortunae, ed. Outi Merisalo (Helsinki:
Suomalainen Tiedeakatemian, 1993); Giovanni da Empoli (1483–1517) Relazione del
primo viaggio (1503–04) and Relazione del secondo viaggio (1510–1514) both in Giovanni
da Empoli, Mercante navigator fiorentino, ed. Marco Spallanzani (Florence: Studio per
edizioni scelte, 1984); Andrea Corsali (b. 1487) published in Giovan Battista Ramusio, “Di
Andrea Corsali fiorentino allo illustrissimo signor duca Giuliano de’Medici lettera scritta
in Cochin, terra dell’India, nell’anno MDXV, alli VI di gennaio,” in Navigazioni e viaggi,
ed. Marcia Milanesi, vol. 2 (Turin: G. Einaudi, 1978–88), 24–25; Filippo Sassetti, Lettere
dall’India (1583–1588), ed. Adele Dei (Rome: Salerno, 1995).
6. See Thomas Cummins, “From Lies to Truth: Colonial Ekphrasis and the Act of Cross-
Cultural Translation,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin
America 1450–1650, ed. Claire Farago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 53–158.
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 141
7. Ligozzi’s illustrations included Indian birds, such as the Kingfisher (Cavaliere d’Italia, Cor-
riere grosso, Martin pescatore, Ran verde, [Black-winged stilt, ring-necked plover, Eurasian
kingfisher, ‘edible frog’] c. 1577–1587, Fondo Mediceo), and Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Ornitho-
logiae (published 1599) contains an entire book dedicated to birds of India. Aldrovandi’s
text is dedicated to Ferdinando I.
8. See for instance, Jessica Keating and Lia Markey, “ ‘Indian’ Objects in Medici and Austrian-
Habsburg Inventories: A Case-Study of the Sixteenth-Century Term,” Journal of the His-
tory of Collecting 23, no. 2 (2011): 283–300.
9. Marianne O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination
(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), 30, 156.
10. Mary Pratt coined this phrase in Imperial Eyes, 1–12.
11. The history of “Thomas Christians” is recounted in numerous general histories of Chris-
tianity in India. See, for example, Robert Eric Frykenberg, Christianity in India: From
Beginnings to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 91–116; and Leslie
Brown, The Indian Christians of Saint Thomas: An Account of the Ancient Syrian Church
of Malabar, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), especially 43–59.
12. For a thorough account of the Indian history of Saint Thomas see Frykenberg, Christianity
in India, 91–114.
13. Brown, The Indian Christians of Saint Thomas, 324–325; Stephen Neill, A History of
Christianity in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 72.
14. Odorico’s descriptions of India were hugely important for later travel literature and were
widely plagiarized, most famously by Sir John Mandeville (Neill, A History of Christianity
in India, 75; Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 64). The Relatio was trans-
lated and published by Sir Henry Yule in 1913, Cathay and the Way Thither: being a col-
lection of Medieval Notices on China, vol. 2 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1913), 141–146.
See also, India and Italy, an exhibition catalogue written by R.M. Cimino and F. Scialpi
(Rome: Tipografia Don Bosco, 1974), 77–99.
15. Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, 141–143.
16. Odorico da Pordenone, in Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, 141–146.
17. Marco Polo dictated his Descrizione del mondo to the poet and novelist Rustichello da
Pisa (see Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia: An Introduction to His “Description of the
World” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960)). In this record Marco Polo notes
that the tomb of Saint Thomas is in coastal South India.
18. Marco Polo, Description of the World, ed. A. C. Moule and P. Pelliot, vol. 1 (London:
George Routledge and Sons Limited, 1938), 396–397.
19. Ibid., 398.
20. See Claire Farago, “The Semiotics of Images and Political Realities,” in Transforming
Images: New Mexico Santos in Between Worlds, ed. Claire Farago and Donna Pierce (Uni-
versity Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 26–43.
21. Joan Pau Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance: South India Through European
Eyes, 1250–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 35.
22. Ibid., 36–37.
23. Polo, Description of the World, 1, 398.
24. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 66.
25. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1938–1962), book 6, chapters 20–24. See also Thomas da Costa Kaufmann,
Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 18–20, who
discusses the ancient model for cultural geography established by Polybius and Herodotus.
26. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 85. In Poggio Bracciolini’s De varietate
fortunate the author combined a transcription of Conti’s narrative tale of India with sec-
tions on ancient Roman ruins and the events of Martin V’s pontificate.
27. Ibid., 85–86. Moreover, Peter Mason argued that such “discovery” itself worked to actively
construct “exoticism” in the minds of Europeans in his seminal 1998 book, Infelicities:
Representations of the Exotic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 3.
28. Although the term was not coined until the eighteenth century, this genre of travel writing
suggests an early form of ethnography. See for instance, Stephanie Leitsch, Mapping Eth-
nography in Early Modern Germany: New Worlds in Print Culture (New York: Palgrave
142  Erin E. Benay
Macmillan, 2010), 5–8; Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 200, and “Travel
Writing and Ethnography,” in Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme
and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 243.
29. Giovanni da Empoli, Lettera di G. da Empoli, ed. Alessandro Bausani (Rome: Nabu Press,
1970), 75–76. See also Nunziatella Alessandrini, “The Far East in the Early 16th Century:
Giovanni da Empoli’s Travels,” in Global Encounters, European Identities, ed. Mary N. Har-
ris, Anna Agnarsdóttir, and Csaba Lévai (Pisa: Plus-Pisa University Press, 2010), 215–224.
30. Marianne O’Doherty is to be credited with the idea that the “Indies” emerged as an imag-
ined location just as much as a real place: The Indies and the Medieval West, 264.
31. Letter of Sept. 8; ASF, MP 5042, fol. unnumbered. “Molto volentieri provedemmo al Padre
Maffeo [Giampietro Maffei] del ricapito necessario per trattenersi qui a stampar l’historia
sua dell’Indie, sì per favorir’ in questo un soggetto sì meritevole come egli è, sì per sentir che
ne restava servita Sua Maestà [Philip II], la quale fra luoghi d’Italia per stamparla gl’haveva
fatto proporre o approvare Fiorenza.”
32. Pietro Maffei, Le Historie delle Indie Orientali del R. P. Giovanni Pietro Maffei della Com-
pagnia di Giesu (Venice: Damian Zecharo, translated into Italian by Francesco Serdonati,
1589). For a brief discussion of the importance of Maffei’s publication in Italy see Juncu,
India in the Italian Renaissance, 213–218.
33. Maffei, Le Historie delle Indie, vol. 1., 22.1.2, 32.2–33.2, 140.1–140.2, 257.2–260.2.
34. As discussed in Chapter 1 of this book.
35. Maffei, Le Historie delle Indie, 34.1. “Anzi sono soliti I fanciulli Malabari con canzone
fatte in loro lingua celebrare le lodi di S. Tomaso, e la morte sopportata patientemente per
il nome di Christo.”
36. Ibid., 140.1; this entire section is dedicated to this section and is far too long to transcribe here.
37. Ibid., “Costoro andati à Meliapore (che quiui havevano udito essere sepolto il corpo
dell’Apostolo) trovarono spianata per terra una città di meravigliosa grandezza; solamente
restano della miserabile strage alcune poche piramidi, torri, e colonne; e similmente pie-
tre di vario colore, & la alcuni pezzi di figure, come di porfido, e fatte di scultura con
gran maestria, le quali erano certo indizio dell’antica bellezza, e leggiadria della città. Fra
queste si vedevano le vestigia d’un certo magnifico Tempio fatto con molta fatica, del quale
restava in piedi una sola cappella verso Oriente ripiena di dentro, e di fuori di spesse Croci
di pietra, secondo l’usanza de gli antichi; e perché gli habitatori del luogo affermavano di
certo, che sotto quel tetto erano l’offa [l’ossa] dell’Apostolo, primamente restaurarono
quell’edificio, perché le mura aggravate dal peso della volta s’erano aperte in alcune parti.”
38. Ibid., 140.1–140.2.
39. These documents are discussed by Francesco Freddolini in his chapter in this volume. See
ASF, MM 152, fol. 184; 153, 154, and 155.
40. Rubiés, Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance, 355.
41. “Sono cosé per chi l’à viste per non crederlle; pensate a chi non là iste! Le potrà chiamare
bugie del certo,” from the Relazione del secondo viaggo 1510–1514, published in Marco
Spallanzani, Giovanni da Empoli-mercante navigator fiorentino (Florence: Studio per
edizioni scelte, 1984), 157.
42. This is from a letter sent from Lisbon on 10 October 1578 to Baccio Valori in Florence,
published in the edition edited by E. Marucci, Lettere edite e inedite di Filippo Sassetti
(Florence, 1850), 124–155. See also Nunziatella Alessandrini, “Images of India Through
the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Century,” in
Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World, ed. Mary N. Har-
ris and Csaba Lévai (Pisa: Edizioni Plus, Pisa University Press, 2007), 43–58.
43. The exegetical and hagiographic history of this theme is discussed by Glenn W. Most,
Doubting Thomas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). The iconography
of the Doubting Thomas has been explored in depth by Erin E. Benay, “The Pursuit of
Truth and the Doubting Thomas in the Art of Early Modern Italy” (PhD diss., Rutgers
University, 2009); Erin E. Benay and Lisa Rafanelli, Faith, Gender, and the Senses in Italian
Renaissance and Baroque Art: Interpreting the Noli Me Tangere and Doubting Thomas
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2015).
44. Corsali’s letter is transcribed by Ines Zupanov, Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier
in India, 16th–17th Centuries (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 91. Corsali
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 143
wrote that the “most important church of the Malabar Christians was found on the Coroman-
del Coast” and that, according to his fellow countryman Pietro Strozzi, who had visited the
place, “the ancient stone slab (sepulcro antico di pietra) of the apostle was sheltered there.”
45. Given their dwarfish proportions with large heads and hands, and their similarity to other
Indian sculptural reliefs, a dating of around the sixth century for these reliefs seems prob-
able (Sonya Quintanilla, George P. Bickford curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art at
the Cleveland Museum of Art, personal correspondence, 30 July 2014 and Frederick Asher,
Professor Emeritus of Art History, South Asian Art, University of Minnesota, personal cor-
respondence, 25 January 2017).
46. In Kerala Saint Thomas churches (and Saint Thomas crosses) exist in Kakkanad, Malay-
attoor, Udayamperoor, Kottayam, Kaduthuruti, Thiruvalla, Palayoor, and Kundungallur
(Crangaore). See Frykenberg, 91–92.
47. See for example, Partha Mitter, Indian Art (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001), 181–183. Altars were not the only location where the visual amalgamation
of local and European typologies were consolidated. The best-known example of which is
likely the tomb monument for the Jesuit Saint Francis Xavier (1506–1552) in the Basilica
of Bom Jesus, Goa which was commissioned by the Portuguese, crafted largely by Goan sil-
versmiths, and installed under the patronage of Cosimo III de’ Medici (r. 1670–1723). With
the addition of an elaborate stone sepulcher in the seventeenth century, Cosimo III marked
Portuguese Goa with a symbol of Medici patronage, Florentine craftsmanship, and Grand
Ducal devotion. On the transcultural aspects of the monument see for example Urte Krass,
“Saint Francis Xavier’s Tomb in Goa: Transmission, Transplantation, and Accidental Con-
vergence,” in The Challenge of the Object, ed. G. Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch
(Die Herausforderung des Objekts, Congress Proceedings CIHA 2012, vol. I, Nürnberg
2013), 198–202.
48. Quintanilla, personal correspondence, 30 July 2014.
49. See John Irwin, “Reflections on Indo-Portuguese Art,” The Burlington Magazine 97,
no. 633 (1955): 386–390; Gauvin Bailey, Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin
America, 1542–1773 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), particularly 380–401;
David Kowal, “Innovation and Assimilation: the Jesuit Contribution to Architectural
Development in Portuguese India,” in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences and the Arts, 1540–
1773, ed. John W. O’Malley et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 481–503.
50. Barbosa’s text was included in Italian translation in the important collection edited by Fra-
canzio de Montalboddo, Paesi nuovamente retrovati, et novo mondo da Alberico Vesputio
Florentino intitulato (Vicenza, 1507) and in another collection edited by Giovan Battista
Ramusio in 1550 (Giovan Battista Raumsio, Delle navigationi et viaggi (Venice: Giunti,
1550). Ramusio’s compilation was extraordinarily popular in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries (see Meera Juncu’s chapter on Ramusio’s “contribution to understandings
of Indians,” in her book India in the Italian Renaissance: Visions of a Contemporary Pagan
World, 1300–1600 (New York: Routledge, 2016), 188–211.
51. This casket was published in a pamphlet for the Basilica museum by B. A. Figredo, Bones
of Saint Thomas and the Antique Casket at Mylapore, Madras (Madras: Christian Litera-
ture Society, 1972). Reliquary specialist Cynthia Hahn has confirmed the designation of
this object as a likely reliquary (e-mail message to author, 30 August 2007).
52. Figredo, Bones of Saint Thomas, 2. Amalgamations of Christian and Hindu iconogra-
phies were not altogether uncommon in this context; see Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses
and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1989), 248–253.
53. Figredo, Bones of Saint Thomas, 7.
54. Polo, Description of the World, 400.
55. Figredo, Bones of Saint Thomas, 14.
56. The two caskets that are not illustrated are also of Indo-Portuguese manufacture (Inv. 384
and Inv. 577).
57. Figredo, Bones of Saint Thomas, 13.
58. Alessandra Russo, The Untranslatable Image: A Mestizo History of The Arts in New Spain
1500–1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), 4.
59. Ibid., 13.
144  Erin E. Benay
60. W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2005), 47.
61. See Keating and Markey, “ ‘Indian’ Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Invento-
ries,” 283–300; Barbara Karl, “ ‘Marvelous Things Are Made with Needles’: Bengal col-
chas in European Inventories, c. 1580–1630,” Journal of the History of Collections 23,
no. 2 (2011): 301–313.
62. Karl, “Galanterie di cose rare,” 27.
63. Ibid., 24.
64. Sassetti, Lettere dall’India (1583–1588). The two letters to Ferdinando cited here date to
January 1584, 56–61, 10 February 1585, 102–106.
65. Ibid., 56–59.
66. Ibid., 60. “Fra questi naturali sono molti cristiani di seta antica fatti dall’apostolo San Tom-
maso che venne qua a predicare, già declinati a molte eresie, almeno considerando il rito
romano, che forse è venuto in gran parte dal non avere penetrato qua le riforme de’concili, né
eziandio di quelli che si celebrarono nella Grecia, il rito della qual Chiesa seguono oggi ancora,
essendo provisto il prelate loro, che la titolo d’Arcivescovo, dal patriarca antiocheno.”
67. Ibid., 61.
68. Karl, “Galanterie di cose rare,” 31.
69. Sassetti, Lettere dall’India, 102–103. “Il padiglione è rputato qua assai. Dipingonsi
que’panni nella città di San Tommé, ch’è nella costa d’India verso levanter, donde vanno per
tutta questa terra, e è la fabbrica loro unna delle piú travagliose cose ch’io abbi sentito
mai, per incerarsi tuti e bollirsi poi in acqua tante volte quante sono le diversità de’colori.
Quelli tocchi d’oro, vi sono stati messi qui e se ne andranno facilmente, ma gli altri colori
reggono ad ogni acqua, e quanto piú si lavano piú si fanno vivi. E con I panni di questa finez­za
si cingono qua i reucci di queste parti. In queste e in tutte le altre cose ch’io le mando ho
cercato di accostarmi, quanto ho potuto, all memoria ch’ella mi fece madare.” In his chroni-
cles of the “East Indies,” Corsali elaborates on the sumptuous textile production in San
Tomé (Mylapore) (see the English translation by Herbert Weinstock, My Voyage Around
the World by Francesco Carletti A 16th-Century Florentine Merchant (London: Methuen &
Co., 1964), 194).
70. Marika Sardar, “A Seventeenth-Century Kalamkari Hanging at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art,” in Sultans of the South: Arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323–1687, ed. Navina
Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 148–161.
71. Karl, “Galanterie di cose rare,” 32 and John Irwin, “Indian Textile Trade of the 17th Cen-
tury: Foreign Influences,” Journal of Indian Textile History 4 (1959): 57–64.
72. Marika Sardar, “The Courtly Tradition of Kalamkaris,” in Sultans of Deccan India 1500–
1700: Opulence and Fantasy, ed. Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar (New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), 269.
73. Nina Gwatkin, “The Brooklyn Museum Hanging,” in Master Dyers to the World: Tech-
nique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles, ed. Mattiebelle Gittinger (Washing-
ton, DC: The Textile Museum, 1982), 89–108.
74. Karl, “Galanterie di cose rare,” 32.
75. See Gerald W. R. Ward, ed. Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 714–715.
76. Nuno Vassallo e Silva has published several examples of similar tortoiseshell caskets that
were once in the treasury collections of churches in India and are now in private collections
in Lisbon (see catalogue entries 6–9 in A Herança de Rauluchantim (exhibition catalogue,
Museo de São Roque, Lisbon, 1996), 192–197. It is possible that these boxes were contain-
ers for liturgical objects or for alms. Indian goldsmiths were careful not to cover over the
finest, most translucent areas of the tortoiseshell, allowing the content of the box to glow
from within.
77. On the production of South Indian ivory statuettes see F. Collin, “The Good Shepherd
Ivory Carvings of Goa and their Symbolism,” Apollo (1984): 170–175; Mary G. Olson,
“Jesus, Mary, and All the Saints: Indo-Portuguese Ivory Statuettes and Their Role as Mis-
sion Art in 17th–18th c. Goa” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2007; “Mary on the
Moon: Ivory Statuettes of the Virgin Mary from Goa and Sri Lanka.” Deobrah S. Hutton
and Rebecca M. Brown, eds., Rethinking Place in South Asian and Islamic Art, 1500–­
 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints 145
Present (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 97–115; Susan Lowndes Marquez,
Portuguese Expansion Overseas and the Art of Ivory (Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foun-
dation, 1991). Several of these types of ivories also appeared in the exhibition (and cata-
logue), Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2007), cat. 18, 19, 23.
78. Anand Amaladass and Gudrun Löner, Christian Themes in Indian Art, Christian Themes
in Indian Art (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2012), 20.
79. Alessandro Russo has demonstrated how indigenous artists in the New World were cel-
ebrated for their artistic ingenuity and craftsmanship and may in turn have contributed
to much broader ideological shifts in perceptions of art-making; and yet the well-known
ivory-carving market in Goa is not typically the subject of panegyrics on Indian craft.
See Alessandro Russo, “An Artistic Humanity: New Positions on Art and Freedom in the
Context of Iberian Expansion, 1500–1600,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 65–66
(2014–2015): 352–363.
80. Olson, Jesus, Mary, and All the Saints, 71–72; Olson does not include the statuettes in the
Tesoro dei Granduchi in her study.
81. Christ as the Good Shepherd, seventeenth century, ivory, Goa, Victoria and Albert Collec-
tion, London.
82. Olson, Jesus, Mary, and All the Saints, 85.
83. Ibid., 86.
84. Olson notes this formal similarity, 83–84; see also Yael Rice, “Lines of Perception: Euro-
pean prints in the Mughal kitabkhana,” in Prints in Translation, 1450–1750, ed. Suzanne
Karr Schmidt and Edward H. Wouk (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 202–223,
who explains that Mughal artists were interested in the European printed image for aes-
thetic reasons.
85. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 4; for Bhabha
this connective tissue is the product of conflict between the aggressive colonizer and the
colonized, but it is entirely unclear how and by whom these ivories were made. Christian
Indians may have been eager to apply their skills to the production of a new Christian art
that they considered to be just as “Indian” as older, indigenous forms.
86. See ASF, MP 1605, fol. unnumbered.
9 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure
Francesco Paolsanti Indiano and His
Early Seventeenth-Century Trade
Between Florence and Goa
Francesco Freddolini

In the summer of 1608, with only a few months left to live and reign, Grand Duke
Ferdinando I sent four men on a mission to India. The group had to procure precious
stones and pietre dure for the decoration of the Cappella dei Principi—the Medici
mausoleum that had been officially under construction since 1604.1 The mission
failed, but Francesco di Andrea Paolsanti (d. 1652), a member of a family of Medici
courtiers that had been involved in this endeavor, persevered independently in the
trade of pietre dure and precious stones, eventually succeeding in establishing com-
mercial relations between Florence, Goa, and the Mughal court.2
Focusing on Francesco Paolsanti—nicknamed “Indiano” for his travels and trade
in India—as well as on his family, this chapter explores the early seventeenth-century
material and artistic exchanges between Florence and Goa. Payments, contracts, cargo
lists, and epistolary evidence cast light on the precious stones imported; on the Flor-
entine artworks exported; on the artists involved; on how the Paolsanti family orches-
trated this trade; and, finally, on the role played by the Medici.
The trade of luxury goods promoted by the Paolsanti family marked a shift from
previous generations of Florentine merchants and agents in Asia. Rather than simply
conveying information and sending objects from Asia to Florence to fulfill the collect-
ing interests of the Medici family,3 Paolsanti imported diamonds and precious stones
and exported Florentine pietre dure works and other luxury objects to India, thus
promoting multi-directional exchanges across cultures. Therefore, the microhistory of
this family oscillating between courtly environment and mercantile trade emerges as
part of a larger and complex network involving diplomatic and mercantile relations.
In this way, Francesco Paolsanti becomes a lens through which to view Florence on
a global map and situate the local production of pietre dure within a global context.
Moreover, Paolsanti’s mercantile activities cast light on the mechanics of production
and commercialization of western objects coveted at the Mughal court.
Although we have visual and textual evidence concerning western objects collected
by Mughal emperors, most studies have focused on construing such objects in rela-
tion to their reception at the Mughal court, exploring how cross-cultural collecting
changed the meanings as well as the ontological status of such objects at their place
of destination.4 In contrast, by investigating Paolsanti’s relation with the Medici and
the Medicean laboratories for the production of pietre dure works, this chapter is
concerned with the place of origin, the political implications at the Medici court, and
the material and economic circumstances of production and mobility from the port of
Livorno to Lisbon, Goa, and finally the Mughal court.
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  147
Prologue: Pietre Dure, Commercial Aspirations,
and the Complications of Diplomacy
In 1608, the Grand Duke waited impatiently to obtain permission for his agents to sail
from Lisbon to India and begin their assigned mission: securing enough pietre dure for
the Cappella dei Principi.5 Moving fast was crucial, especially considering that Fer-
dinando I was obliged to buy most of the materials for the Grand Ducal mausoleum
from intermediaries who speculated quite substantially on their price.6 In fact, over the
previous decade, Ferdinando had made several efforts to obtain materials for the Cap-
pella without intermediaries, and already in 1597 he had sent letters to the Cardinal
of Seville and the Viceroy of Mexico to ask for rare stones and “Oriental alabasters.”7
A 1609 letter from Spain shows how the mission was carefully prepared and how
the Grand Ducal diplomats worked to obtain all the necessary authorizations from
Philip III.8 However, further archival evidence reveals that for Ferdinando I and his
entourage there was more than pietre dure at stake. Of the several letters exchanged
when the four Grand Ducal agents were in Lisbon,9 one is particularly important. On
24 January 1609, Sallustio Tarugi, Grand Ducal diplomatic envoy to Madrid, wrote:

I saw the letter concerning the men destined to India, and I immediately under-
stood that the objective of looking for stones for the Cappella dei Principi, as
stated in the petition, is not the true and ultimate purpose of their mission, and
I doubt that once the other reason is discovered, it will be difficult to obtain per-
mission because neither the Portuguese, nor the King himself want others to make
mercantile dealings in those areas.10

The eloquent words of this epistle—disclosing the intention to initiate unmediated

commercial relations between Florence and the Indies—are confirmed by another
unpublished document concerning the Grand Dukes’ plans to establish a “compagnia
di commercio” in Lisbon in order to inaugurate commercial relations with the East
and West Indies, as well as with South-East Africa.11
After the first unsuccessful attempts to establish a colony in Brazil, the Medici
wanted to open an independent commercial route to the East Indies, so all the letters
exchanged between Florence, Madrid, and Lisbon in 1608–1609 are evidence of a fer-
vent activity devoted to evaluating a variety of opportunities.12 No longer interested in
actively colonizing new territories, Ferdinando I tried to establish at least institutional
commercial routes from the port of Livorno, and during the last part of his reign (and
in the years immediately following), the Grand Dukes demonstrated a profound inter-
est in Asia.
Ultimately, the artistic objectives officially promoted by Ferdinando I concealed
more lucrative ambitions for the Medici, and the design, construction, and decora-
tion of the Cappella dei Principi became part of a network of global exchanges that
projected Florence on a complex map of mercantile and diplomatic interests spanning
oceans and nations. After the failure of Ferdinando’s attempt to institutionalize a com-
mercial route to Asia, the Medici promoted and tacitly supported individual endeav-
ors in order to avoid Spain’s control. It was Francesco Paolsanti “Indiano” who took
on the role of mobilizing objects across the seas, becoming a major agent acquiring
precious stones and exporting artworks and luxury goods from Florence to Asia.
148  Francesco Freddolini
The Paolsanti Family: Social Ascent and Mercantile Trade
Who was Francesco Paolsanti, and how did he become involved in the trade for lux-
ury goods with India? Before we delve into his activity, some background on his fam-
ily, both within the context of the Medici court and in relation to the trade of pietre
dure with India, is in order.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the memory of Paolsanti was still
quite vivid in Florence, as printed sources demonstrate. Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti,
in his Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia del Cimento (published in 1780), mentioned
Francesco Paolsanti, nicknamed Indiano, for spending 13 years in the Indies and for
his knowledge about precious stones that enabled Paolsanti to serve as an expert on
this matter at court and become a courtier to Ferdinando II.13 Filippo Baldinucci, in
his life of the painter Bartolomeo Fontebuoni, also alluded to Paolsanti’s two trips to
the Indies. Once back in Florence, Paolsanti provided the biographer with first-hand
information on Fontebuoni,14 who, after joining the Jesuits, had moved to India and
pursued his career in various Asian cities.
As we will see, archival evidence confirms these accounts and sheds light on Fran­
cesco Paolsanti’s mercantile trade, as well as on how he operated from Goa, relying on
the presence in Florence of his brother Antonio Paolsanti (documented in the first half
of the seventeenthcentury)15 and his uncle Francesco di Giovanni Paolsanti (1559–
1641). To avoid confusion between Francesco d’Andrea Paolsanti and his uncle Fran­
cesco di Giovanni Paolsanti, I will adopt the name Francesco Paolsanti The Elder for
the latter, and Francesco Paolsanti Indiano for his nephew.
Born in San Casciano, a small community between Florence and Siena, Francesco
The Elder climbed the ladder of court society by exploiting patron-client relationships
with well-established Grand Ducal officers and through an astute marriage policy
supported by Belisario Vinta, the powerful Secretary to Ferdinando I.16 In 1598, Paol-
santi became Aiutante di Camera (Gentleman of the Bedchamber) to the Grand Duke,
a position at court that granted him direct and personal contact with Ferdinando I.
Paolsanti won the Grand Duke’s confidence, and, soon after this appointment, Ferdi-
nando I assigned him the responsibility of entertaining relations with gem merchants
and goldsmiths. For instance, in 1602, Francesco Paolsanti paid the goldsmith Bas-
tiano Fortuni on behalf of Ferdinando I for a jewel and 72 “Borchie per veste,”17
while the following year the courtier was entrusted to show some precious stones to
Ferdinando I before the Grand Duke could buy them.18
Not only involved in the market for gems and jewels, Paolsanti also acquired sculp-
tures for the Grand Duke, as shown by a receipt dated 2 August 1604, for a mar-
ble roundel representing The Holy Family with St. Anne and St. John, which was
bought for Ferdinando I from a Florentine widow.19 Moreover, Paolsanti’s dealings
with sculpture involved mediating the relations between Ferdinando I and Cristoforo
Stati, who after training in Florence under Giambologna moved to Rome and, accord-
ing to the biographer Giovanni Baglione, devoted much of his time to supplying the
Grand Duke with antiquities.20 Indeed, an unpublished letter written in 1602 confirms
the accuracy of Baglione’s words, showing that Francesco Paolsanti The Elder was the
intermediary between the sculptor and Ferdinando I.21
Paolsanti soon became an expert in pietre dure and, as such, played a significant
role in the preliminary stages of the Cappella dei Principi project. As early as 1603,
the painter Jacopo Ligozzi wrote to him, lamenting that a drawing he had proposed
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  149
for the tabernacle of the Cappella dei Principi had been rejected by Ferdinando I, thus
confirming that Paolsanti was the intermediary for the artists seeking employment in
this Grand Ducal endeavor.22 Paolsanti had certainly great influence at court, since
Ligozzi’s letter reveals how he was ultimately able to convince the Grand Duke to
grant the artist 50 Scudi even if the drawing had been rejected.
Francesco Paolsanti The Elder’s interest in the arts, as well as his personal status at
court, led him to become a successful patron in Florence—where he commissioned from
Giovanni Francesco Susini two bronze holy-water stoups for the church of SS. Annun-
ziata (1613–1615)—and in his hometown, where Giovanni da San Giovanni frescoed
the ceiling of his family chapel in the Collegiata, and where he funded a convent.23
In 1608, Francesco Paolsanti The Elder was appointed Secretary to Ferdinando I.24
To further confirm his benevolence towards the courtier, the Grand Duke granted him
the remunerative monopoly on the provision of ice for the city.25 In this capacity as
Grand Ducal Secretary, he became the Florentine point of contact for the members of
the aforementioned mission to the East Indies devoted to procuring pietre dure des-
tined for the decoration of the Cappella dei Principi. All letters sent to Florence by Cris-
tofano Pandolfini to report about their expenses during such a mission were directed
to the Depositario Generale (Minister of Finance), but the missives dealing specifically
with gems and pietre dure for the Cappella dei Principi were addressed to Francesco
Paolsanti The Elder.26 This role gave Paolsanti unparalleled insight into the market
for precious stones and pietre dure, and although the four Medici agents were never
allowed to sail from Lisbon, the 1608 mission inspired further lucrative activities for
Francesco The Elder. In 1611, for example, he sent to Venice a “Turkish knife” deco-
rated with precious stones, hoping to sell it. It was his “dear and long-standing friend”
Vincenzo Dinello, one of the four members of the mission organized in 1608, who
brought the knife to Venice on Paolsanti’s behalf, revealing how they had envisioned
opportunities for trade outside the institutional framework of the Grand Ducal court.27
Paolsanti’s nephew, Francesco Indiano, seized and developed such opportunities
with a much grander vision. In 1613, a receipt for the sale of balas rubies—written in
Portuguese and still preserved in the family papers—mentions their value in “rupias”
and “tangas,” coins used in early modern India.28 This crucial document reveals that
only five years after the Grand Ducal mission, Francesco The Elder’s nephew was
conducting business in Goa. Even if Spanish authorities never allowed an institution-
alized trading route from Livorno to Goa, Paolsanti and the Grand Ducal advisors
understood that private trading initiatives in precious stones were generally toler-
ated.29 Drawing on the Florentine tradition of merchants and travelers to Portuguese
Asia, such as Giovanni da Empoli (1483–1518) and Filippo Sassetti (1540–1588),30
Francesco Paolsanti promoted—with the help of his family and the Grand Duke—a
trade of precious stones, pietre dure, and luxury goods between Florence and the East
Indies in the ensuing years.

Francesco Paolsanti Indiano: Luxury on the Move

In the early modern period, India was the only area where diamonds were mined.
Paolsanti managed to import them to Florence and, further developing the network
established by his uncle, bring diamonds to Venice, as several documents in the family
papers demonstrate.31 By embarking on this trade of diamonds and precious stones,
Paolsanti pioneered a trade centered on Livorno’s maritime networks that was later
150  Francesco Freddolini
developed and controlled by Sephardic merchants based in the Tuscan port.32 How-
ever, the Florentine luxury goods that he traded in India are even more significant in
terms of cross-cultural exchanges. A letter sent from Goa on 15 February 1620 by
Francesco Paolsanti Indiano to his brother Antonio Paolsanti reveals how the three
members of this family had joined forces across continents to promote their endeav-
ors. Francesco had spent seven years in Asia and had acquired precious stones to be
shipped to Florence from Goa, while selling luxury objects (galanterie) that Antonio
had sent from Florence.33
In the same letter, Francesco Paolsanti Indiano announced the shipment to Flor-
ence of a manuscript recording the seven years spent in India; the text could have cast
unparalleled light on his activity, but it is no longer preserved in the Paolsanti papers,
and its whereabouts are unknown.34 Nevertheless, the seven years mentioned in the
letter confirm the chronological span from the earlier-mentioned receipt, written in
1613, to 1620. More significantly, other archival documents enable us to better under-
stand how Paolsanti operated.
Paolsanti was part of a larger network of Florentines in India. Epistles sent home
from Asia by the painter Bartolomeo Fontebuoni, preserved at the Biblioteca Riccar­
diana in Florence, reveal their trade in luxury goods.35 As a letter sent from Cochin
(Kochi) in 1618 shows, Bartolomeo Fontebuoni relied on Francesco Paolsanti to send
gifts and merchandise to his hometown.36 The same letter shows that this shipment
to Florence occurred rather regularly. For example, Fontebuoni mentioned a “pre-
sent from Japan for the Grand Duchess” and in turn asked for reproductions of the
SS. Annunziata, as well as a long list of other objects, confident that he could make
a remarkable profit. These objects included medals, reliquaries made of Crystal, a
watch—he specifically asked for a small Flemish one—agnus dei and other devotional
items, as well as some engraved copper plates, preferably representing the Virgin Mary
and the Child—all to be obtained with the mediation of the Grand Duchess.
A list of luxury goods sent to India by Paolsanti, attached to the 1620 letter he sent
to Florence, mentions “a Christ and St. John in marble,” some paintings on marble,
an agnus dei, a landscape painting, a painting representing Pan, and other paintings
such as a “portrait of a woman at night.”37 Watches (reloggi) were also included,
which confirms the demand for such objects, as stated by Bartolomeo Fontebuoni in
his letter.38
As these documents reveal, instead of dealing with spices (the goods traditionally
imported from Asia), Paolsanti had found a niche for a smaller-scale but profitable
market. The Portuguese community was probably fostering such demand for Euro-
pean commodities, especially in terms of devotional objects. If we read the diary of the
Roman Pietro della Valle, who travelled east in roughly the same years, we get a vivid
picture of Goa as a western enclave in Asia. When della Valle reached Goa after a long
period in Persia, his look and even his body had to change back to western conven-
tions. He carefully described such a transformation, defining himself as “in India, but
not an Indian.”39
However, although Goa was a colonial space and a “stage for constant acts of west-
ernization,”40 the same objects were more probably coveted as valuable and exotic
commodities at the Mughal court. Goa, the commercial hub for many trading routes,
was without a doubt one of the major headquarters for the exchange between the
Mughal Emperors and the “Franks” (Europeans).41 The Jahangirnama, Jahangir’s
memoir, confirms the role of Goa as a commercial node for the Mughal. For example,
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  151
in March 1612, Muqarrab Kahn, a high-ranking court official, traveled to Goa to
procure luxury goods:

I had ordered him to go to the port of Goa on several items of business and see
the vice-rei, the governor of Goa, and to purchase any rarities he could get hold of
there for the royal treasury. . . . Without consideration of cost, he paid any price
the Franks asked for whatever rarities he could locate.42

Mughal emperors were avid collectors of Western art. In addition to painting and
prints, cameos, as well as pietre dure works, became popular during the first half of
the seventeenth century.43 Paolsanti certainly contributed to the supply of such com-
modities at Jahangir’s court, as another document—a list of objects Paolsanti sent in
1621—may suggest.44 This list, an inventory of things on the move, was compiled in
Livorno. It described the cargo of a ship carrying a conspicuous load of luxury goods
carefully boxed, labelled, and assessed for their monetary values. The presence of a
portrait of the Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, in a silver mount suggests that these objects
were ultimately intended for the Mughal court.45 This specific object on the ship may
even lead us to rethink the origin of cameos with portraits of the Mughal emperors,
such as the one with Shah Jahan at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Figure 9.1),46 or
another one representing Jahangir, formerly in the Al Thani Collection, both attrib-
uted to European artists.47 Art historians have postulated the presence of European
artists at the Mughal court, while Ebba Koch has driven attention to the striking simi-
larities between these Mughal objects and Florentine cameos.48 Perhaps these works

Figure 9.1 Anonymous, Cameo of Shah Jahan, first half of the 17th century, Victoria and
Albert Museum, London.
Source: Victoria and Albert Museum.
152  Francesco Freddolini
were indeed made in Florence and then sent to the Mughal court, as in the case of
the one included on this 1621 list. Similarly, sculptural portraits such as a miniature
relief in alabaster portraying Shah Jahan now at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (Fig-
ure 9.2) could come from the same cultural context. Although no authorship can be
determined for this portrait, recent scholarship has hypothesized an Italian origin and
again proposed that it could have been made by a western sculptor working at the
Mughal court.49 However, because its small scale and portability coincides with many
of the objects described in Paolsanti’s cargo list, it seems more plausible that this sculp-
ture was made in Europe for this cosmopolitan Eurasian market.
In addition to the export of luxury commodities to India, the mobility of objects
made in Florence with raw materials imported from Asia is certainly a major reason
for the similarities between Medici Florence and the Mughal Empire during this period,

Figure 9.2 Anonymous, Portrait of Shah Jahan, first half of the 17th century, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam.
Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  153
especially in terms of iconographies and style. Both materials and the objects made with
them, in other words, became potent agents for the formation of connected histories
of art in early modern Eurasia.50 Scholars such as Annamaria Giusti and, more promi-
nently, Ebba Koch have already highlighted iconographic and stylistic similarities and
reciprocal influences between Medici and Mughal pietre dure mosaics.51 Indeed, some
Mughal mosaics on the Delhi Throne depicting flowers resemble contemporary Floren-
tine pietre dure works and many mosaics with birds show surprising similarities with
works made in the Galleria dei Lavori after drawings by Jacopo Ligozzi. As Ebba Koch
has demonstrated, the most famous and intriguing example is the Orpheus on the Shah
Jahan’s Throne in the Audience Chamber of the Red Fort, Delhi (Figure 9.3), showing
strong parallels with the Samson originally made for the Tabernacle of the Cappella dei
Principi (Florence, Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, inv. 461).52

Figure 9.3 Anonymous, pietra dura panel, c. 1638–1648, Red Fort, Delhi, India. University of
Washington Libraries, Special Collections, UW40555.
154  Francesco Freddolini
Scholars have assumed that the pietre dure panels of Shah Jahan’s Throne were
imported from Florence. Such analysis was limited to a stylistic discourse, or to hypoth-
eses of exchange vaguely based on mercantile exchanges. In fact, the lack of specific
documentation concerning any circulation of artists, merchants, or artworks between
Florence and the Indies in the early seventeenth century obliged scholars to speculate
on the visual evidence alone.53 However, if we focus our attention on the trade of pietre
dure and other luxury goods between Florence and India, Paolsanti emerges a key fig-
ure; the shipping list compiled in 1621 is essential evidence of his involvement in that
trade. The documents published in this chapter on the trading activity of Francesco
Paolsanti Indiano in the two decades immediately preceding the making of the Shah
Jahan’s Throne now offer concrete evidence of the circulation of objects and people
between Florence and India. In turn, we may better explain how the exchange of pietre
dure works happened, when it happened, and who made such transactions happen.
The pietre dure inlaid tabletops shipped from Livorno by Paolsanti, or other objects
such as an inlaid pietre dure landscape included in the 1621 shipping list, certainly
inspired Mughal commissions and shaped a taste for such works in South Asia.54
Furthermore, even if we can no longer trace an object to match its description, the
inlaid pietre dure bird in the shipping list of 1621 (n. 5.1) evokes many works made
in the Galleria dei Lavori after drawings by Ligozzi and certainly provides unques-
tionable documentary proof for the stylistic similarities between panels depicting
birds in Grand Ducal Florence and Mughal India that Ebba Koch has thoroughly
explored.55 Even the list of objects attached to the earlier-mentioned letter sent by
Paolsanti Indiano from Goa in 1620 includes an item that, although quite difficult to
decipher, may be part of this story. Paolsanti received “24 little birds on branches”
(occeleti sopra li rami)—a description that seems quite appropriate for either pietre
dure panels or, more likely, drawings such as those produced by Jacopo Ligozzi.56
We know that Mughal artists were inspired by Ligozzi both in regard to pietre dure
mosaics and in relation to watercolor illustrations.57 This was probably the actual
circumstance of how the export of Florentine artworks generated such striking simi-
larities in Mughal art.
Archival sources demonstrate that Paolsanti invested his own money in this trade,
but his involvement with the Galleria dei Lavori for pietre dure objects sent to India
reveals a tacit—but vital—support by the Medici, as we see by an agreement signed on
16 March 1621 between Antonio Paolsanti and Francesco Lazzeri, an artist working
in the Galleria dei Lavori. The agreement notes that “Master Francesco Lazzeri has
sold a table of inlaid marble to Antonio Paolsanti for the price of 260 scudi.”58 This
very table was included in the 1621 cargo list, as the price confirms.59 Furthermore,
the contract with Francesco Lazzeri discloses Matteo Nigetti’s role in this trade. The
court architect and director of the Galleria dei Lavori was actually responsible for
controlling the execution of the work and for guaranteeing the quality of the pieces
delivered to Paolsanti: “he must provide it according to the agreement with Matteo
Nigetti, Architect to His Most Serene Highness, and must deliver it well polished and
cleaned.”60
By overseeing the work of Giovanni Francesco Susini in SS. Annunziata in 1613–
1615, Nigetti had already worked for the Paolsanti family. However, this time, in
acting as Grand Ducal architect supervising a pietre dure commission, his role seemed
more tied to his courtly role of an artist controlling the activity of Grand Ducal
manufacturers. Pietre dure works had a special status in Florence in that virtually
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  155
no artist had the technology to make those works outside of the Grand Ducal labo-
ratories of the “Galleria dei Lavori,” which were established in the Uffizi by Ferdi-
nando I. Furthermore, the Grand Dukes actively prevented an independent market
for the raw materials necessary for these works through a 1602 law prohibiting the
export of pietre dure.61 Because all works produced in the Galleria dei Lavori were
the property of the Grand Duke, their export was essentially a diplomatic affair,
directly controlled by the Grand Duke and his most inner retinue. Pietre dure works
represented quintessential courtly artistic production in Florence, not only for the
materials used, but also because all works were produced within the architectural
space of the court. Despite the disbursement of Paolsanti’s personal funds, we can
assume that the table in the cargo list, as well as all other pietre dure works shipped
in 1621, were indeed produced in the Uffizi, within the physical precinct of the court,
and in a space that could not admit private patronage. These objects were essentially
Grand Ducal luxury goods.
These documents suggest that the Medici seemed to have found a way to export
their signature works on a global scale through their support of private mercantile
trade undertaken by subjects like Paolsanti Indiano. Since Paolsanti bought the works,
he acted not simply as a forwarding agent but as a dealer. Nevertheless, not all items
had the same status even if they were all paid for by Paolsanti. He carefully separated
pietre dure works from other private business, such as for example the “portraits of
ladies,” explicitly shipped “as my property” (per mio conto).62 Although Paolsanti
invested money in the pietre dure works, he did not appear to have full and independ-
ent responsibility for their handling and commercialization. If we consider that the
Grand Duke could not be unaware of this trade involving pietre dure commissions
made by artists active in the Galleria dei Lavori under Nigetti’s supervision, we should
assume that Cosimo II and his entourage played a passive—albeit no less important—
role by tacitly agreeing on the export of such works produced in the Galleria dei
Lavori. Paolsanti’s involvement as a private investor was convenient for his own profit
and, at the same time, avoided any potential diplomatic trouble for the Medici, in case
the Spanish crown decided to stop this trade.
The objects sent to India during the second and the third decades of the seven-
teenth century not only influenced the Mughal production of pietre dure works but
also represented a means to nurture cultural relations between Goa and Florence.
Francesco Paolsanti’s role emerges as that of a key intermediary between the two
centers at the time and—being at once dealer, forwarding agent, and Grand Ducal
courtier—an influential player in international Medicean cultural politics. As we have
seen, Paolsanti continued the tradition of Florentine merchants who entertained com-
mercial relations with Asia,63 while the Medici, in turn, enriched the demand of goods
imported to include pietre dure for the Galleria dei Lavori in addition to traditional
Indian spices, and exploited these commercial routes to export their sophisticated
artistic productions.64
Similar to the pietre dure works, in terms of status and diplomatic function, were
the paintings on stone that Paolsanti shipped in 1621.65 In addition to developing
inlaid pietre dure panels, Florentine court artists such as Filippo Napoletano devel-
oped a technique of paintings on stone—especially pietra paesina—that combined
pigments with the natural chromatic variations of the semiprecious support.66 These
increasingly popular works were mobilized by the Medici and perceived, especially in
Europe, as sophisticated diplomatic gifts.67
156  Francesco Freddolini

Figure 9.4 Giovanni Battista Foggini, Monument to St. Francis Xavier, 1689–1698, Church of
Bom Jesu, Goa.
Source: Dbimages / Alamy Stock Photo.

Such lavish objects had been appreciated at the Mughal court. This export of lux-
ury objects toward Goa emerges not simply as an episode of commercial and artistic
exchange between Tuscany and Asia but as the origin of a relation between the Medici
and India that lasted until the end of the century. With few exceptions, Giovanni Bat-
tista Foggini’s monument of St. Francis Xavier in Goa (Figure 9.4) has been thus far
considered only a magnificent international commission by Cosimo III de’ Medici but,
as the history unraveled in this chapter reveals, this commission was the culmination
of decades of artistic exchanges between the Galleria dei Lavori and the Indian sub-
continent, endorsed by the Medici and carried out by their courtiers since the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century.68
In light of this transcultural trade, even an exquisitely Florentine artwork such as
the pietre dure view of the Port of Livorno (Figure 9.5), made in the Galleria dei
Lavori by Cristofano Gaffuri after a drawing by Jacopo Ligozzi, can be seen as an
object that exists as part of a more complex, Eurasian cultural milieu.69 Because of
its medium—inlaid pietre dure—this panel may stand as a potent metaphor of Med-
ici’s global networks. Rather than simply representing Livorno and the ships arriving
and departing from the harbor, it suggests how maritime routes provided avenues for
the trade of luxury objects and for the global circulation of Medicean culture. Pietre
dure—objects that encapsulated art production at the Medici court and embodied the
most sophisticated diplomatic gifts—became the perfect material to provide visual
shape for the port envisioned by Ferdinando I. As this chapter has demonstrated,
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  157

Figure 9.5 Cristofano Gaffuri, View of the Port of Leghorn, 1604, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Source: akg-images / Fototeca Gilardi.

pietre dure, the objects made with them, as well as other luxury goods, encompassed
a transcultural trade promoted by the Medici, and the infrastructural node that cre-
ated the circumstances for such trade was the port of Livorno, a constantly fluctuat-
ing place where raw materials arrived and, after being turned into luxury artifacts,
departed again along new and old global routes.70
Appendix

1. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered, Francesco Paolsanti Indiano from Goa to Anto-
nio Paolsanti, 15 February 1620.
“Sig:re Antonio Paulsanti
In questa sarò breue perche spero dal N.ro Sig.re d’esser prima latore d’un’altra tale,
seruirà dunque d’auisare à V.S. del suo successo della Cassa di Galanterie che riceuetti per le
Naue di quest’anno madatimi da V.S. delle quali procurai di fare esito col magg.r prezio che
io ho potuto, cambiandoli con Rubini come V.S. uedrà nel Conto che costì li mando. Ancora
uederà come il S:r Domenico Badinotti ha d’auer in detti Rubini 48. poco più, ò meno per
conto del suo Caraffo, il che meglio opererà nella lista che inuio. Non pensino le Sig:rie loro
con la buona uendita di qualche cosa arrisicar altre perche si troueranno gabbate, che questa
fu una sorte. Non rispondo al Sig:r nostro Zio perche come ho detto spero nel Sig:r d’esser
io l’apportatore, se non morissi per uiaggio.
Di Lisbona il S:r fancisco della Corona manderà à V.S. l’inuolto di detti Rubini sigillato
col sigillo di queste lettere, et colo merecho [?] di quali nella margine del conto uederà V.S.
Di più dell’istessa lisbona il sig.r Niccolò de Viega in sua assenza Bernardo Giorgi e Mortino
Alonso manderanno à V.S. alcune robe mie, si di mano, come di Volumi, che prego V.S. facci
che non si aprino, ne si tocchi nulla fino à tanto che io sia presente, eccetto se hauerà certezza
della mia morte, la quale il Sig:r mi conceda in buona hora. Che però nella Cassa grande ui
è uno srignetto d’Ebano intarsiato d’auorio nel quale V.S. trouerà alcuni plichi, fra li quali
V.S. trouerà il mio testamento oue dichiaro l’ultima uolontà mia, et quello uoglio si faccia di
tutte le mie robbe, et quello che si deue dare ad altre persone, et acciò non ui sia occasione
d’aprirsi, ò uedere nella giudico meglio lasciar star ogni cosa i Liuorno, fin tanto che il Sig.r
mi condica costà, che io spero sarà più presto di quel che io penso arriuerà quesat à V.S. Fra
tanto desidero che sia comune à tutti li parenti pregandoli, che preghino Dio per me, et che
habbino questa per sue.
Inuio una breue relatione di questo discorso di sette anni di questo oriente, non passai
auante perche spero riferire il resto in persona. N.ro Sig.re Goa 15 febbraio 1620.
Francesco Paulsanti.”
2. Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2732, fols. 136r-136v, Bartolomeo Fontebuoni from
Cochin to Anastasio Fontebuoni, 28 October 1618.
“Fo questi pochi rige per darui noue Mie perche non so se terro tempo, se io non lo fo hora,
perche mi ritrouo, in paesi molto lontani, dalla Citta di Goa adoue aportano le naue di por-
togallo. nelle qual’Credo che terro letere Vostre, e se per uentura Mi Capiteranno alle mani
atempo che io posa rispondere o faro.
Lanno passato riceuei 3 letere uostre nele quali mi daua nuoua della morte di nostro
Padre, e madre, nostra sorella maddale staua malata la qual’ spero che Ora terrà la sanita
che io gli desidero. Ancora mi diceua che la granduchessa mi mandaua la untiata di fiorenza
la quale non riceui, non se se si perse Vedetela a chi si dette. Perche francesco paolo santo,
non mi seppe dare ragione della, Lanno passato Vi mandai a dire quelo che doueui fare
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure 159
se uolete mandare alcuna cosa di mercanzia. Sia cosa di poco Volume e non si possino
rompere, ancora Vi mandai a dire quelo che potra tenere di spaccio e quelo che importa
in Caminarlo a buoni rispondenti, e sapere che non abia altri, che mandino la medesima
mercanzia.
Lanno passato ui mandai per uia di francesco Paolo Santi uarie Cose, in una Casetina, ben
acoditionata, e Vnaltra picola di piombo, e la racomandai, in Goa che la mandasino, per
che io non ebi tempo, poi mi scrisono che la in Caminarono per uia di francesco Paolo
Santi, auertite che qual’ molto, perche mi dicono che e piena di pietre bezuar, e che costa
piu di trenta scudi, in Goa, e laltra, non mi costo molto manco e mandatemi a dire se le
auete riceute. E questanno, se trouero comodita di chi leui a Goa ui mandero Vn presente
del Giapone molto bello per alla granduchesa, e credo che la da stimare, perche, la cassina
del Giapone uale piu di 15 scudi in Goa, Ancor mandero, dua pietre bezuar pretiose, che
uagliono 14 scudi, una corona di pece serena che uale piu 8 a fuora altre cose d auorio. On
ande pietre di porco spino per che costa molto perche una grosa poco meno duna noce ual
piu di dugento scudi. E se dio sara seruito che tute queste cose ui uengino alle mane, Vedete
di mandarmi allcuna cosa di bello, quelo che lanno pasato ui chiesi Conuiene essapere meda-
gli reliquiari di Christalli di milano grandi e picoli, uno orologio picolo di fiandra che dia lore
e sia picolino da portare al colo, angnio dei coperti com filo doro, et altre cose di diuozione,
ancora alcune piastre di rame ben fatte e molte divote e sarano dela uergine maria con il
bambino o Crocifisi tuto questo lo potete auere per uia della granduchesa quando gli tenete
presentato le cose che a uoi pararano a proposito e fatelo con buon modo che non si sapia
che io mando queste cose, e abiate molto segreto perche non pregiudichi amme.
Ancora Vi torno a ricordare che mi mandiate Vna nuntiata di fiorenza con l angiolo e
com la prospetiua Si come sta la originale in un pano di quatro palloni molto buono e che
sia ben fatta e quel che importa molto che sia ben secha perche non si aprichi nel camino,
e sia fatta per buo maestro, e con buoni e fini colori e fatta con molta diligenza e se me la
mandarete ui prometo che ui rimandero il Cotra Cambio dopio.”
3. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered
“Ihs: Mra: 1621 em fiorenza
Carrigatione fatta in nome de Dio per francesco Paulsantj Indiano delle Robe soscritte che
manda nella naue S. francesco che Dio Guardi Cap:no Iacopo Flores de Tulone che con nome
de Dio parte di Liuorno per Lisbona, le qual Robe vanno per conto di Compagnia Diego
Giorgi, e francesco Paulsanti detto

N. 1. 1 Cassa marcata della di fuora dentroui vno Tauolino di Pietra

commesso che custò scudi 103 di questa moneta
scudi 103
Per spese di detto Gabelle, porto, et altro scudi 14
Per spese a Liuorno scudi 1
N. 2. 1 Cassa marcata della detta dentroui vno Tauolino di Pietra scudi 260
commesso che costò
Per piu spese gabelle Porto, et altro scudi 20
Per spese a Liuorno scudi 1
N. 3. 1 Cassa marcata della detta dentroui vno tauolino di Pietra scudi 300
commesso, che costò
Per piu spese di Douana gabelle porto, et altro scudi 26
Per piu spese a Liuorno scudi 1
N. 4. 1 Cassa dentroui n.o 14 scatole numerate come segue
n. 2. 1 scatola dentroui dua quadri di Pietra dipintj scudi 12
n. 3. 1 scatola dentroui vn quadro di Pietra dipinto scudi 6
n. 4. 1 scatola dentroui vn quadro di Pietra dipinto scudi 2
n. 5. 1 scatola dentroui vn quadro con un vccello di Pietra commesso scudi 10
160  Francesco Freddolini
n. 6. 1 scatola con vn quadro di Pietra commesso scudi 10
n. 7. 1 scatola dico cassetta con vn quadretto di Pietra commesso con scudi 50
cornice di Ebano, auuertite di leuar la pittura che di sopra fattasi accio
non si veda quello e
n. 8. 1 scatola con vn Paesino di Pietra di commesso scudi 8
n. 9. 1 scatola dentroui noue quadri di Pietra paesi scudi 10
n. 10. 1 scatola con dua Paesini di Pietra scudi 4
n. 11. 1 scatola con dua qadrettj di Pietra scudi 4
n. 12. 1 scatola con dua quadrettj di Pietra scudi 4
n. 13. 14. 2 scatole on due Cane d’Alemagna per mio conto
n. 15. 1 scatola con vn Calamaio di Pietra commesso scudi 6
Per spese di detta Cassa Gabella, et altro scudi 10
_________
scudi 862
Somma la faccia di la, e segue scudi 862
N. 5. 1 Cassa con Il seguente
n. 16. 1 scatola con dua Quadri di Pietra Paesinj scudi 4
n. 17. 1 scatola con dua quadri di Pietra Paesinj scudi 4
n. 18. 1 scatola con dua quadri di pietra dipintj scudi 6
n. 19. 1 scatola con vn quadro di Pietra dipinto scudi 4
1 scatola dentroui vn quadro di Pietra dipinto vn Santo Antonio il quale
lo dona il mio fratello Al Sig.re Padre fra Pietro batista, e serbateglielo
N. B. 1 scatola longa dentrouj 19 vezzi di Perle del magagnatj scudi 60
In detta cassa vno scriptorio di Pietre commesse bello fatto in Galleria scudi 54
In detto scriptorio vi e nelle cassette vno Scatolino di n.o A dentrouj 50 scudi 25
para di Perle dell’Magagnatj
Piu uno scatolino di n.o C dentrouj il Ritratto dell’ mogor guarnito scudi 10
d’argento
Piu vno scatolino con vn Vccello di Pietra commesso scudi 4
9 scatolini di Ritratti di Dame per mio conto
Per spese di detta Cassa Gabelle Porto, et altro scudi 10
Per spese a Liuorno scudi 1
N. 6. 1 Cassa dentroui vno scriptorio di Pietre commesse fatto in Galleria scudi 104
posto in Liuorno
N.o Roma 1. Cassetta con 22 specchj di piu sorte da sole et fuoco scudi 38
___________
scudi 1186”

Notes
1. For the mission see Lando Bartoli, “I rapporti tra la Firenze dei Medici e l’India nella prima
metà del XVII secolo,” in Akten del 25. Kongresses für Künstgeschichte. Österreichisches
Nationalkomitee des Comité international d’Histoire de L’Art (C.I.H.A.), 5. Europa und die
Kunst des Islams, ed. H. Fillitz and M. Pippal (Wien, Köln, Graz: Herman Böhlaus, 1985),
57–63; Luigi Zangheri, I rapporti tra la Firenze dei Medici e l’India nella prima metà del
XVII secolo. Ragguagli documentari e ipotesi, 65–71; Lillina di Mucci, “All’inseguimento
delle pietre dure,” OPD Restauro 19 (2007): 337–350; Monica Guarraccino, Le pietre di
Livorno. Transito e lavorazione delle pietre dure per la Cappella dei Principi di Firenze nel
XVII secolo (Livorno: Sillabe, 2009), esp. 25; and Francesco Guidi Bruscoli, “Tra commer-
cio e diplomazia: mercanti fiorentini verso l’India alla ricerca di pietre orientali per la Cap-
pella dei Principi di Firenze (1608–1611),” Archivio Storico Italiano 175, no. 654 (2017):
689–709. The four members of the mission were Captain Cristofano Pandolfini, Giovan
Battista de’ Nobili, Cosimo Guazzoni, and Vincenzo Dinello (Zangheri, I rapporti, 66).
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  161
2. As we will see, Francesco di Andrea Paolsanti was a nephew of Francesco di Giovanni
Paolsanti, who was involved in the 1608 mission as a point of contact based at the Medici
court. On Francesco di Giovanni Paolsanti see Francesco Freddolini, “Two Holy-Water
Stoups by Giovan Francesco Susini and the Lost Paolsanti Tombi in SS. Annunziata, Flor-
ence,” The Burlington Magazine 147, no. 1233 (2005): 817–821 (where several documents
concerning Paolsanti’s trade with India are already cited). The mission failed due to the
Portuguese and Spanish opposition to any foreign institutionalized form of commerce with
its colonies.
3. The bibliography on the cross-cultural collections of the Medici is vast; see the introduction
and the chapter by Federica Gigante for an overview.
4. See for example Jessica Keating, “Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court,” Art History
38, no. 4 (2015): 732–747, or Mika Natif, Mughal Occidentalism: Artistic Encounters
Between Europe and Asia at the Courts of India, 1580–1630 (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2018), especially 110–135.
5. For the Cappella dei Principi see Claudia Przyborowski, “Die Austattung der Fürstenka-
pelle an der Basilika von San Lorenzo in Florenz. Versuch einer Rekonstruktion” (PhD
diss., Berlin, 1982).
6. Di Mucci, “All’inseguimento,” 346.
7. ASF, MdP, 70, fol. 23 and 292, fol. 14v, both transcribed in Przyborowski, Die Austattung
der Fürstenkapelle, 395–396.
8. ASF, MM, 97, ins. 89, fol. 4r. The document is published in Gino Guarnieri, Il Principato
Mediceo nella Scienza del Mare (Pisa: Giardini, 1963), 410–413 and, partially, in Carla
Sodini, I Medici e le Indie Orientali. Il diario di viaggio di Placido Ramponi emissario in
India per conto di Cosimo III (Florence: Olschki, 1996), 33.
9. Zangheri, I rapporti, 66–68.
10. ASF, MdP, 4938, fol. 470r, transcribed in Guidi Bruscoli, Mercanti fiorentini, 701.
11. ASF, Auditore dei benefici ecclesiastici poi segreteria del regio diritto, 5686, fol. unnum-
bered, undated: “In esecuzione dej riueriti Comandi di VS Ill:ma impartitimi per parte del
Ser:mo G.D. mio Sig:r ho fatto reflessioni, e considerato attentamente le tre scritture, che
VS. Ill:ma resto’ servita di lasciarmj l’altr’ieri concernentj la fondaz:ne da farsi di una com-
pagnia di commercio nella citta’ di Lisbona per negoziar nelli Stati dell’Indie Orientali, et
Occidentali, come anco per la Costa di mozzambich, e di Angola.”
12. For the Medici and the Americas, see Lia Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Flor-
ence (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2016); Brian Brege, “Renaissance
Florentines in the Tropics: Brazil, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and the Limits of Empire,”
in The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492–1750, ed. Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia
Markey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 206–222.
13. Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, Atti e Memorie inedite dell’Accademia del Cimento e notizie
aneddote dei progressi delle scienze in Toscana, vol. 3 (Florence: Giuseppe Tofani and Luigi
Carlieri, 1780), 116.
14. Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in Qua, ed. F. Ranalli,
vol. 4 (Florence: Batelli e Compagni, 1846), 337.
15. Antonio di Andrea Paolsanti was a courtier to Virginio Orsini in the first decade of the sev-
enteenth century and then became part of the Medici entourage (ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 10,
fol. unnumbered, 6 December 1607: “M. Antonio di Andrea Paolsanti da S.to Casciano
sotto Cameriere del Sig.re Virginio Orsino”; ASF, Guardaroba Medicea, 304, fol. 2 credit,
[1614]: “Antonio Paul’Santi di Camera del’ Gran’ Duca deue dare adi 4 di Maggio per
l’apie consegnatoli, alla Giornata per tenere In consegna per uso, e seruizio di detta Altezza
com’al’ quaderno A primo”).
16. In 1598 Vinta organized the strategic marriage between the Paolsanti and the Guerrini,
another successful family of courtiers, to foster the career of “his protégé Francesco Paol-
santi”: “A di xx di Luglio 1596 in Firenze Al nome di Dio; dichiarasi per la presente
scritta, come il S.r Caualier Belisario Vinta per la beneuolenza, et protettione, che tiene di
Francesco Paulsanti sua creatura, et di tutte le cose sue, hà concluso Parentado con il mezzo
del S.re Auditore Pietro Cauallo, et di m. Dionisio Faberi Castrucci, frà S. Gio. battista di
Benedetto Guerrini da Marradi, et la Portia d’Andrea Paulsanti da San Casciano Nipote
Cugina del medesimo francesco con l’infrascrite conditioni.” For the Guerrini family, see
162  Francesco Freddolini
Francesco Freddolini, “Mecenatismo e ospitalità. Giovanni Baratta a Firenze e la famiglia
Guerrini,” Nuovi Studi 8, no. 10 (2003): 183–205, and Il Viaggio in Europa di Pietro
Guerrini, ed. Francesco Martelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 2005). For Vinta see Giuseppe
Fusai, Belisario Vinta, ministro e consigliere di stato dei Granduchi Ferdinando I e Cosimo
II de’ Medici (1542–1613) (Florence: Bernardo Seeber, 1905).
17. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 10, fol. unnumbered: “Addi 14 Giug.o 1602 In Siena Io Bast.o for-
tuni orefice, ho riceuto da S.A.S. per le mani di m. franc.o Paol’Santi ducati Cento sette
m.ta di lire 7 per ducato quali sono per la ualuta di vn Gioiello per scudi 21 £ 1 et per n.o
72 Borchie per veste date à S.A.S.”
18. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 10, fol. unnumbered: “Restituzione N.o diciotto pietre di più sorte
portate da Valerio Ruggieri per mostrare a S.A. E consegnate a me fran.co Paulsanti 29
gennaio 1602.” On the Medici taste in—and collecting of—precious stones see Maria
Sframeli, “I diamanti dei Medici,” in Diamanti. Arte, storia, scienza, ed. Hubert Bari,
Caterina Cardona, and Giancarlo Parodi (Rome: DeLuca Editori d’Arte, 2002), 111–129.
19. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 10, fol. unnumbered: “Addi 2 di Ag.to 1604 Io Cosimo Latini o
riceuuto dal S. fran.co paolsanti scudi trenta quali mi a pag.o per S.A.S. per che io li paghi
a una vedoua de pistelli per costo du n’quadro [sic] di marmo di basso rilieuo duna uergine
con s. ana un S. Giuseppe e Cristo e s. Gio: a mezzo tondo con suo adornam.o di nocie
tocco doro per farne la uolonta di S.A.S.”
20. Giovanni Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti. Dal Pontificato di Gregorio
XIII del 1572 In fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano Ottavo nel 1642, ed. Jacob Hess and Her-
warth Röttgen, vol. 1 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1995), 162.
21. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 11, fol. unnumbered.: “Di grandissimo contento me stato il sentire
dal Sig.r Caualier emilio et ancor per una sua lettera che S.A.S. tenga memoria di me e che
si degni di comandarmi del che ringratio V.S. me li abbia recato a memoria ora in casa mi
troua diuerse anticaglie di marmo cioe statue statuette e teste diuerse et in particolare una
d’un marco aurelio un poco maggiore del naturale conseruato e bellissimo e cosa degna di
S.A. mi trouo ancora diuerse urnette di marmo antiche con le sue scrittioni doue gli antichi
vi poneuano le loro ceneri le quali sono tutte intagliate che da letterati in roma se fa gran
conto me trouo ancora un quadro del bassano bello che de borghese da me ma non mi
sono accordato con suoi ministri et o in casa un polo antico storiato della fauola di niobe
lungo tre braccie e largo uno e uno alto conseruato e bello doue piu doue meno ue in roma
un quadro a tempera sicurissimo di luca d’olanda in uendita largo piu di quattro braccia e
alto tre et e quando moise scaturisce l’acqua con la uerga e ben conseruato e ben colorito
che par dipinto a olio e tenuto bellissimo da molti ualenti uomini e giudicato degnio di sua
A.S. Io non mancai subbito chel Sig: Emilio m’ebbe quello che S.A. desideraua da me di
scriuere una lettera a V.S. dandoli conto dell’espresso che al presente li dico, e mi dispiace
non hauer saputo pria l’intentione di S.A. che a quest’ora gli aurei procacciato di molte
cose che ad ogniora mi passano per le mani, ed e tanto grande il desiderio ch’io ò di seruir
sua A. che sio non fusse ne tenpi [sic] strani che noi siamo sarei uenuto immediatamente a
farli riuerenza in quanto al sig.r ambasciadore che uenghi a ueder le cose mie desiderarei
che sua A. mi facesse ordinarlo lei perche non son in lega con lui ma uenendo non mancaro
di fare il debbito mio e con questo li bacio le mani a v.s. pregandola a uoler far riuerenza a
s.a.di mia di Roma questo 25 luglio 1602 Di V.S.I.tre Per seruirla christofano stati.”
22. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea, 251, ins. 6, fol. 530r, published in Przyborowski, Die Austat-
tung der Fürstenkapelle, 639–541; Paola Barocchi and Gaeta Bertelà, eds., Da Cosimo I a
Cosimo II, 1540–1621, Collezionismo Mediceo e Storia Artistica, I, Tomo II (Florence:
SPES, 2002), 597. The document is also extensively discussed in Elena Fumagalli, “On the
Medici Payroll: At Court from Cosimo I to Ferdinando II (1540–1670),” in The Court Art-
ist in Seventeenth-Century Italy, ed. Elena Fumagalli and Raffaella Morselli (Rome: Viella,
2014), 119, and Elena Fumagalli, “Jacopo Ligozzi al servizio dei Medici: le trasformazioni
del ruolo di pittore di corte,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 57,
no. 2 (2015): 170–171.
23. For Paolsanti’s patronage see Freddolini, “Two Holy-Water Stoups.”
24. Paolsanti is for the first time listed as Secretary in ASF, Manoscritti, 321, fol. 357 (1608).
25. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 10, fol. unnumbered, September 5, 1608: “Don ferdinando per la Dio
gr.a Gran Duca di Tosc.na III . . . Mossi dalla n.ra solita benignità, e inclinati alle preci di
m. fran.co Paulsanti dilettiss.o secretario n.ro, attesa la sua assidua, e fedele seruitù intorno
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  163
alla persona n.ra vogliamo, e comandiamo che in l’auuenire a lui solo durante sua vita natu-
rale s’appartenga l’Appalto della neue, e ghiaccio, che si uende in firenze, che gia haueua
Bernardo Buontalenti, e che altri, che d.o Paulsanti, ò chi haueua causa, ò dependenza da
lui non possa venderne, ne condurne in fir.ze per venderne sotto pena di scudi cinquanta.”
26. See for example ASF, MM, 154, fols. 133r, 133v.
27. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 11, fol. unnumbered, Francesco Paolsanti a Donato e Camillo Bagli-
oni in Venice, 16 June 1611: “Anchor che io non habbia conoscienza, non che seruitu
con le SS.rie VV., se non quanto porta la fama loro, nella quale confidato, oltre à quanto
quanto me ne hà potuto dire m. vinc.o di Nello, mio caro, et antico Amico, hò preso ardire
di mandare alle SS.rie VV per mano di d.o m. vinc.o, vn mio Pugnale Turchesco gioiellato
di Rubini, e di Diamanti, che conforme il suo disegno, e fattura, non ue ne manca alcuno.
Et di pregarle ancora, come faccio di tutto cuore, per che le si compiaccino di farmene fare
esito in qual si uoglia modo, e con quel tempo, che parà loro conuenire, pur che alla fine
me ne tornassino in mano scudi Due mila, come io ne hò trouati una uolta, ciò è di lire
sette di m.ta di fiorenza.” Baglioni responded on June 25, 1611: “Il S.r vincenzo di nello
qui comparso con la lett.ra che ci ha presentata di VS.a ci ha anco fatto hauere il pugnale
turchesco mand.ci et in uista ci è parso bene condizionato vediamo q.a sia l’intenzion di
VS.a in la uendita di esso: la qual uendita possiamo quasi dirli che non sia per seguire con
disegno d’hauerne li puri soldi, non ci sendo cui voglia sborsar tanto dann.ro in simil cose.”
Donato and Camillo Baglioni were merchants in Venice with established relations to the
Grand Ducal court (Maartje van Gelder, Trading Places. The Netherlandish Merchants in
Early Modern Venice (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009), 60).
28. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered, “Fran.co Paolsanti entregou aqui quatro mil
sento, e sesenta Sum rupias de quatro tangas cada rupias, etres tangas mas, que disse serem
port tantos que Vendeo obalajo grande da sora condeza delemos, e mais cinco balasos
pequenos soltos, e mais entregou sua pessa com balasci que disse nao pude vender deque
tem passados tres conhuim.dos e por quanto desta contia tem dado satisacad pordem selhe
entregar osseus con huim entor da dita contia empoaoje ad de feuereiro 1613.” Between
1613 and 1615 Francesco Paolsanti The Elder was in Florence, overseeing the commission
of Susini’s two holy-water stoups for the SS. Annunziata Church (Freddolini, “Two Holy-
Water Stoups”); therefore this receipt must refer to Francesco Indiano.
29. Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and
Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven and London: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2009), 234.
30. For Giovanni da Empoli and Filippo Sassetti see Marco Spallanzani, Giovanni da Empoli.
Un mercante fiorentino nell’Asia Portoghese (Florence: SPES, 1999); Barbara Karl,
“ ‘Ga­lanterie di Cose Rare’: Filippo Sassetti’s Indian Shopping List for the Medici Grand
Duke Francesco and His Brother Cardinal Ferdinando,” Itinerario 22, no. 3 (2008): 23–41;
Nunziatella Alessandrini, “Images of India Through the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Floren-
tine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Century,” in Sights and Insights: Interactive Images
of Europe and the Wider World, ed. Mary N. Harris and Csaba Lévai (Pisa: Pisa University
Press, 2007), 43–58; Barbara Karl, “Gardening in Goa: Filippo Sassetti’s Experiences with
Indian Medicine and Plants,” in Early Modern Merchants as Collectors, ed. Christina M.
Anderson (London: Routledge, 2016), 63–79; and Benay in this volume.
31. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered, letter from Alessandro Dinello to Francesco
Paolsanti dated 24 October 1621 (from Venice): “Ricordo di quanto deuo fare per il S.r
Fran.o Paolsanti Ricuperare da Sfogher 2 Diam.ti peri che grezzi pesauono K 7 e piu n.o 4
Diaanti che pesorno K. 10 1/2 piu detti n.o 5 che pesonro K. 10 1/2 che tutto ricupererò e
mandero a legare e conforme quello auiserete farò.
  E da Pompeo Studendoli [?] Diam.ti n.o 4 che pesorno K. 12 3/4 che a conto di detti ha
riceuto per mia mano scudi 20
  E da Berettino n.o 2 Diam.ti tauola che pessare q.ni 17 quali mandera a fiorenza cosi
quanto prima con farli fretta piu che si puole
  E da quel delle Perle riceuere 2 Perle che ui ha promesso
  E da quel del re spechierò piglierò specchi n. 20 di piu sorte a lire 8 l’uno i quadri, et li
tondi a lire 2—dua l’uno, et 2 grandi per meno potro—auendo esso auto a buon conto lire
22 1/2 in una Doppia, e lire 12 1/2 in un Zecc.no
  Et i n.o 3 diam.ti mi restano di K. 6—gli daro a berettino per fornire, e saldare il suo debito
164  Francesco Freddolini
  E piu mi resta un Duam.te di benard.no d’auanzo quale mi paghera per uoi scudi 1.5—
che come gli riceuero glieli daro
  Et un paro di Calze del barbiere sopraene ui deue scudi 2
  Io Alessandro Dinello affermo . . . Questo di 24 di ottobre 1621 In Venezia.” For the early
modern diamond trade between India and Europe see João Teles e Cunha, “Hunting Riches:
Goa’s Gem Trade in the Early Modern Age,” in The Portuguese, Indian Ocean and Euro-
pean Bridgeheads 1500–1800: Festschrift in Honour of Prof. K. S. Mathew, ed. Pius Male-
kandathil and Jamal Mohammed (Tellicherry: Institute for Research in Social Sciences and
Humanities of MESHAR, 2001), 269–304; Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers, 224–
270; Kim Siebenhüner, “Precious Things in Motion: Luxury and the Circulation of Jewels
in Mughal India, in Luxury in Global Perspective: Objects and Practices, 1600–2000, ed.
Bernd-Stefan Grewe and Karin Hofmeester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016),
27–54; and Karin Hofmeester, “Diamonds as Global Luxury Commodity,” 55–90.
32. For this trade in diamonds controlled by Sephardic merchants see Francesca Trivellato,
“From Livorno to Goa and Back: Merchant Networks and the Coral-Diamond Trade in
the Early-Eighteenth Century,” Portuguese Studies 16 (2000): 193–217; Trivellato, The
Familiarity of Strangers.
33. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered, Appendix, 1. The same letter was sent in sev-
eral copies (preserved in the same archival folder), to make sure that at least one reached
Florence. The texts show some minor similarities in the vocabulary, and some contamina-
tions with Portuguese. A version of the letter indicated the box for the rubies as “buselo,”
thus rendering in Italian the Portuguese name of the wooden boxes called bizalhos and
commonly used for the shipment of diamonds and precious stones. On this term, see Trivel-
lato, The Familiarity of Strangers, 233.
34. According to Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti, Atti e Memorie, 116, Giovanni Cinelli mentioned
the manuscript as preserved by the descendants, and discussing both East and West Indies:
“Fece questi due viaggi, uno nell’India Orientale, e l’altro nell’Occidentale, nè quali con-
sumò molti anni, e descrisse molti costumi, prerogative, Medicamenti e varie altre cose di
quei Paesi, intitolando l’uno Viaggio all’Indie Orientali, l’altro Viaggio all’Indie Occiden-
tali, Manoscritti appresso à Figli.”
35. This body of letters, preserved in Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2712, fols. 131–
143, has been first mentioned and partially studied by Enrico Parlato, “Fontebuoni, Barto-
lomeo,” in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 48 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia
Italiana, 1997), 760–762.
36. Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ms. 2172, fols. 136r–136v, Kochi (Cochin) 28 October
1618, Bartolomeo Fontebuoni to Anastasio Fontebuoni, Appendix, 2.
37. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 11, fol. unnumbered.
38. Ibid.
39. “[D]entro all’India, ma non Indiano.” Pietro della Valle, De Viaggi di Pietro della Valle il
Pellegrino descritti da lui medesimo in lettere familiari all’amico Mario Schipano, vol. 3
(Rome: Mascardi, 1653), 97. For Pietro della Valle in Goa see Avner Ben-Zanken, “From
Naples to Goa and Back: A Secretive Galilean Messenger and a Radical Hermeneutist,”
History of Science 47, no. 2 (2009): 147–174.
40. Paulo Varela Gomez, “Portuguese Settlements and Trading Centres,” in Encounters: The
Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500–1800, ed. Anna Jackson and Amin Jaffer (London:
Victoria & Albert Museum Publications, 2004), 130. For a more general overview of early
modern Portuguese Asia see Sanjay Subrahmajnyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia,
1500–1700: A Political and Economic History (London: Wiley, 2012).
41. T.R. De Souza S.J., “Goa-based Seaborne Trade in the Early Seventeenth Century,” The
Indian Economic & Social History Review 12, no. 4 (1975): 438. “Franks” was the generic
label used by the Mughal to identify all Europeans; see Wheeler M. Thackston, ed., The
Jahangirnama. Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press: 1999), xxiii, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Taking Stock of the Franks:
South Asian Views of Europeans and Europe, 1500–1800,” The Indian Economic and
Social History Review 42, no. 1 (2005): 69–100.
42. Thackston, The Jahangirnama, 133.
43. Natif, Mughal Occidentalism, 110–151.
 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure  165
44. ASF, Corporazioni religionse soppresse dal governo francese, 229, 12, fol. unnumbered,
Appendix, 3. Francesco Paolsanti Indiano operated with a business partner, Diego Giorgi,
and the cargo was destined to Lisbon, the mandatory port of call in the route from Livorno
to the Indies. (See for example ASF, MdP, 4938, fol. 86r: “In Lisbona si armano quindici,
o sedici Naui et galeoni per mandar all’India, che leueranno le solite mercantie per quelli
posti, et il denaro per la compra de pepi, et circa seimila soldati per rinforzar quei presidij,
et per seruire in quelle armate di mare contro a olandesi, il tutto però andaua lentam.te per
falta di denari, et in fine hanno mandato ordine di qua, che si seruino per quelle spese del
proueduto de pepi, facendoli comprare per forza à quei negotianti di lisbona a ragione di
32 schudi il cantaro, sborsando prontam.te il denaro, et dicesi ancora, che habbin man-
dato di qui un liberam.to di 500 V. scudi sopra quel denaro della compositione de cristiani
nuovi”). From there the same objects were probably transferred to a Portuguese ship to
reach Goa. For the Italian community in Lisbon and its commercial networks, see Nun-
ziatella Alessandrini et al., Di buon affetto e commerzio: relações luso-italians na idade
moderna (Lisbon: Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Centro de História de Além-Mar, 2012);
Nunziatella Alessandrini, “Mercadores italianos na Lisboa de quinhentos. Redes comerci-
ais e estratégias mercantis,” Revista International em Língua Portuguesa, 3rd series, 28/29
(2015): 121–134.
45. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered, Appendix, 3.
46. For the Shah Jahan Cameo, see Robert Skelton, “The Indian Collections: 1798 to
1978,” The Burlington Magazine 120, no. 902 (1978): 304, and fig. 64 and Ebba Koch,
“Le pietre dure e altre affinità artistiche tra le corti dei Moghul e dei Medici,” in Lo spec-
chio del principe. Mecenatismi Paralleli: Medici e Moghul, ed. Dalhu Jones (Rome: Edizioni
dell’Elefante, 1991), 30–32.
47. For the Jahangir Cameo see, Amin Jaffer and Amina Taha-Hussein Okada, Des Grands
Moghols aux Maharajahs. Joyaux de la Collection Al Thani (Paris: Réunion des musées
nationaux, 2017), 30. I am grateful to Amin Jaffer for letting me know that this cameo has
been deaccessioned by the Al Thank Collection.
48. Ibid.
49. Stephanie Schrader, “Rembrandt and the Mughal Line: Artistic Inspiration in the Global
City of Amsterdam,” in Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India, ed. Stephanie Schrader
(Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018), 14–15.
50. For the concept of connected histories I am relying on Sanjay Subramanhyam, “Connected
Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian
Studies 31, no. 3 (1997): 735–762.
51. Annamaria Giusti, “Pietre dure tra occidente e oriente,” in Lo specchio del principe, 37–46,
and Koch, “Le pietre dure,” 17–36.
52. Ebba Koch, “Pietre Dure and Other Artistic Contacts Between the Court of the Mughal
and That of the Medici,” Marg 39, no. 1 (1985) 33–35; Ebba Koch, “The Mughal Emperor
as Solomon, Majnun, and Orpheus, or the Album as a Think Tank for Allegory,” Muqar-
nas 27 (2010): 277–311.
53. Susan Stronge, “Europe in Asia: The Impact of Western Art and Technology in South Asia,”
in Encounters, 290.
54. Appendix 3, nos. 6.1, 7.1, 8.1.
55. See, for example, Koch, “Pietre dure,” 44, figs. 21, 22.
56. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered. In the Portuguese version of the same letter and
list the same item is described as “passaros sobre os ramos.”
57. Koch, “Pietre Dure,” 47–49.
58. ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered.
59. Ibid., Appendix, 3. The table is the item 2.1 in the list. Two years later, on 14 Febru-
ary 1623, Paolsanti Indiano and Paolsanti The Elder jointly bought another pietre dure
table that had been already sent to Seville (ASF, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered:
“Adi 14 febraio 1622 in firenze Dichiarasi per la presente scritta come Gioua ba.ta di Pietro
Martire sassi per se, et sua heredi da et uende al s.r fran.co d’Andrea Paulsanti la terza parte
d’uno tauolino di Pietra comesso che detto sassi ha insieme per le dua altre terze parte ad
il s.r fran.co di Giouani Paulsanti et in effetto tutte le ragioni che ha d.o sassi sopra d.o
ta­uolino et rata di esso”). This contract further confirms that the three members of the family,
166  Francesco Freddolini
Francesco The Elder, Francesco Indiano, and Antonio Paolsanti collaborated on this trade
of luxury goods.
60. ASFi, Corp. Rel., 229, 12, fol. unnumbered: “la deue fornire come e restato dacordo con il
S.r Matteo Nigetti Architetto di S.A.S. et consegnarla bene fornita et bene pulita conforme
l’accordo.”
61. For the establishment of the Grand Ducal Galleria dei Lavori see Annamaria Giusti, “Orig-
ine e sviluppi della manifattura granducale,” in Splendori di pietre dure. L’Arte di Corte
nella Firenze dei Granduchi ed. Annamaria Giusti (Florence: Giunti, 1988), 10–23. The
text of the edict is entirely transcribed in Antonio Zobi, Notizie storiche sull’origine e
progresso dei lavori di commesso in pietre dure (Florence: Stamperia Granducale, 1853),
217–220, and is discussed by Giusti, “Origine e sviluppi,” 13.
62. Appendix, 3.
63. For a general overview of Florentine merchants in India during the sixteenth century see
Marco Spallanzani, “Mercanti fiorentini in India nel XVI secolo,” in Lo Specchio del Principe.
Mecenatismi a confronto: Medici e Mughal, ed. Dalhu Jones (Rome: Edizioni dell’Elefante,
1991), 48–55.
64. On pietre dure as Medici signature objects used as gifts for other courts, see for instance
Annamaria Giusti, Pietre Dure: The Art of Semiprecious Stonework (Los Angeles: The
J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), 70.
65. Appendix, 3, box no. 4.1, nos. 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 9.1 10.1, 11.1, and 12.1.
66. For Filippo Napoletano see Marco Chiarini, Teodoro Filippo di Liagno detto Filippo
Napoletano, 1589–1629 (Florence: Centro Di, 2007). For paintings on stone, see Piers
Baker-Bates and Elena M. Calvillo, eds., Almost Eternal. Painting on Stone and Material
Innovation in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
67. Anne-Laure Collomb, “Dall’ardesia alle pietre semipreziose. La pittura su pietra in Italia
nel XVI e XVII secolo,” in Lapislazuli. Magia del blu, ed. Maria Sframeli et al. (Livorno:
Sillabe, 2015), 111–120.
68. For this monument see Klaus Lankheit, Florentinische Barockplastik. Die Kunst am Hofe
der letzten Medici 1670–1743 (Munich: Brückmann, 1962), 102–109, 303–305; Sodini,
I Medici e le Indie Orientali; Claudia Conforti, “Cosimo III de’ Medici patrono d’arte a
Goa: la tomba di San Francesco Saverio di Giovanni Battista Foggini,” in Lo specchio del
Principe, 109–121; Annamaria Giusti, “Ritorno in India: di nuovo l’Opificio e il mau-
seoleo di San Francesco Saverio a Goa,” OPD Restauro 11 (1999): 278–289; Claudia
Conforti, “Il Castrum Doloris (1689–1698) per San Francesco Saverio al Bom Jesus di Goa
di Giovanbattista Foggini. Dono di Cosimo III de’ Medici, granduca di Toscana,” in The
Challenge of the Object, ed. G. Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch, vol. 4 (Nuremberg:
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2013), 1436–1440.
69. For this work see Annamaria Giusti, in Jacopo Ligozzi: “pittore unversalissimo”, exhibi-
tion catalogue, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, Lucilla Conigliello, and Marzia Faietti (Florence:
Giunti, 2014), 142; Hannah Baader and Gerhard Wolf, “A Sea-to-Shore Perspective: Lit-
toral and Liminal Spaces of The Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean,” Mitteilun-
gen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 56, no. 1 (2014): 3–16; Hannah Baader,
“Livorno, lapislázuli, geología y los tesoros del mar en 1604,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma:
Historia del Arte 5 (2017): 141–167.
70. For the importance of the “physical, infrastructural, and institutional conditions of move-
ment” see Stephen Greenblatt, “A Mobility Studies Manifesto,” in Cultural Mobility: A Man-
ifesto, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 250.
10 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III
de’ Medici
Giovanni Gherardini and the Portraits
of Kangxi
Marco Musillo

Introduction
The series of portraits known as the Collezione Aulica, housed in the Uffizi Gallery
in Florence, includes a portrait of Kangxi, who reigned over China from 1661 to
1722. This Manchu emperor is often considered the first Chinese ruler who enjoyed
widespread popularity among the European elites in the Early Modern period.1 Part
of Kangxi’s fame is owed to his patronage of European arts and sciences—especially
mathematics—that resulted in the employment of Jesuit missionaries and lay broth-
ers for astronomy, cartography, and painting. At the end of the seventeenth century,
the Qing emperor was also well known for his Edict of Toleration issued in 1692, in
which he promoted Christianity to the status enjoyed by Daoism and Buddhism, the
two official religions.2 One of the earliest European portraits of Kangxi, that initially
referred to the Shunzhi emperor, but which later emerged as representation of his
son, came from Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit who never went to China but who had
access to material arriving from his fellow Jesuits based in the Chinese capital. In his
Latin treatise China Monumentis, Qua Sacris quà Profanis, Nec non variis Naturæ &
Artis Spectaculis, Aliarumque rerum memorabilium Argumentis Illustrata, published
in 1667, an illustration depicts the emperor standing in the foreground, assuming a
pose similar to a European monarch, as he accompanies the eye towards another scene
in the background; there the imperial persona is seated in front of his ministers (Fig-
ure 10.1).3 In the same year that Kircher’s book was published, the future Grand Duke
of Tuscany Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642–1723) was in Amsterdam, on one of the most
important stops of his tour around Europe. We do not know if the prince purchased
China Monumentis in the United Provinces, but a letter dictated to his secretary Apol-
lonio Bassetti (1631–1699) in 1682, mentions that, in Florence, the Grand Duke
later owned a copy of Kircher’s text.4 This letter was addressed to Andreas Winius
(1641–1717), who was the postmaster of Muscovy and head of the Siberian chancel-
lery, the Sibirskii Prikaz: an office with a view on China.5 In this message, the Grand
Duke thanked Winius for a package received from Moscow that, among other items,
contained a drawing representing the Chinese emperor which still has not been identi-
fied. However, Cosimo III would have to wait almost a decade to receive the best of
Kangxi’s effigies, a portrait “dal vero” made by Giovanni Gherardini (1655–1729c.),
an Italian painter from Modena who resided in Beijing as imperial artist from 1700
to 1704. Although the portrait, which soon found its way into the Collezione Aulica,
perhaps fulfilled Cosimo III’s curiosity for Kangxi, it can also be seen as the starting
point of a problematic and erratic trajectory, one that defines the framework in which
the Medici, and especially Grand Duke Cosimo III, moved in their efforts to reach
168  Marco Musillo

Figure 10.1 Imperii Sino-Tartarici Supremus Monarcha (Supreme Monarch of the Sino-Tartar

Empire), engraving from Athanasius Kircher, China Monumentis, Qua Sacris quà
Profanis, Nec non variis Naturæ & Artis Spectaculis, Aliarumque rerum memora-
bilium Argumentis Illustrata, published in 1667, between page 112 and 113.
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 169
East Asia and China. This framework is composed by a dialogue between nearness
and distance not only though mercantile or geographical coordinates but through an
historiographical narration in which proximity is modulated by a cultural knowledge
difficult to measure and always in movement. Far from being just a global projection,
the interplay between closeness and distance allowed China to be well represented in
the Grand Duke’s Florence by objects, texts, and pictures. However, at the same time,
Cosimo longed for an empire too distant to be even imagined, and to him Russia
seemed to represent the proper gate to China, a road without obstacles to the Qing
empire that was strikingly accessible to the powerful Medici family.

Projections of China: Agents, Gifts, and Missionaries

at the Medici Court
It came to my mind that the khans [Turkic and Mongolian title for rulers, also
used for the Qing-Manchu emperors] are already on the scenes of our musical
dramas (I have gained such knowledge from a libretto of an opera that was per-
formed in Vienna).6

These are the words that at the beginning of the eighteenth century appeared in the
autobiography of Filippo Balatri (1676–1756), a castrato singer from Pisa who lived
at the court of Peter the Great from 1699 to 1701. Balatri found himself in a very
particular position, being a gift, a talented singer, and an informant of the Medici
Grand Dukes. In fact, in the Fall of 1698 Cosimo III offered the services of Balatri
to the Russian Monarch through one of his boyars (боя́ре: aristocratic order), Petr
Alekseevich Golitsyn (1660–1722), who had passed through Florence during his Ital-
ian tour.7 Before sending off his singer to Moscow, the Grand Duke ordered him to
keep a diary, now lost, of what he would see and experience in that vast empire.
Cosimo III’s order resulted from his interest in new commercial routes to China
through Russian territory: the overland passage, which was a very popular topic at
the turn of the eighteenth century.8 And in looking for such a route, the Grand Duke
either employed his global network of diplomats, trading agents, and courtiers like
Balatri, or he recruited individuals who could play all three roles at once.9 Balatri first
left Moscow in 1699, when he joined a diplomatic mission lead by Petr Alekseevich
Golitsyn’s brother Boris (1654–1714). This expedition, which lasted from 7 April
to 12 July, was directed to the Khan Ayuki (1669–1724), leader of the Törghüts, a
Western Mongol tribe that inhabited the borders between the Qing empire and Rus-
sia.10 Therefore, the khans that Balatri had in mind were not only the ones represented
on the stage but rulers he met personally. The mission of Boris Alekseevich Golitsyn
gave Balatri the chance to sing in front of the khan Ayuki; the performance was so
successful that the khan proposed an exchange of six of his best horses for the Italian
castrato. In his lyrical manner the singer describes the event as follows: “[the khan]
proposed an exchange: me for six horses. The ambassador, who is very fond of these
animals, made me fear that he would go crazy and accept such a deal.”11 Fortunately
for the singer, the Russian ambassador refused, and Ayuki answered by making the
beau geste of bestowing Balatri with one of his valuable horses and other precious
objects.12 However, even with first-hand reports, such as the narratives coming from
adventurous characters like Balatri, Cosimo III did not succeed. Despite the fact that
under his rule the diplomatic and trading exchanges with Russia increased, he was
170  Marco Musillo
never able to reach China commercially through the mediation of the tsars. Russia
nourished its own political and trading channels with the Qing empire, and, although
the exchange of information with European counterparts was often ruled by forms of
reciprocity, the tsars protected their geopolitical theatre from external interference.
Furthermore, at the end of seventeenth century, it was difficult even for European rul-
ers like Cosimo III, who had traveling experience and a good knowledge of the rising
global-market dimension, to completely comprehend the complexity and fluidity of
the eastern Russian borders. Seventeenth-century Russia was an expanding nation,
increasingly incorporating diverse ethnicities and religions. This cultural and political
complexity was well expressed at a later moment by Catherine the Great (Catherine II,
Yekaterina Alekseyevna, r. 1762–1796), who chose to present herself as the guardian
of Buddhism when communicating to her Kalmyk subjects from the Öirats, an alliance
of four tribes of the Western Mongols.13
The end of the seventeenth century saw the expansion of both the Qing empire
towards the west and the Russian empire towards the east: the meeting of the two
powers gave origin to a conflict mostly located in the basin of the Amur river (Heilong
Jiang in Chinese). Skirmishes between the Qing imperial army and the Cossacks devel-
oped into a tense confrontation.14 Years before Balatri’s journey, the conflict ended
in 1689 with the treatise of Nerčinsk (or Nibuchu in Chinese), in which the borders
between the two powerful empires were partially set, with the exclusion of the fluc-
tuating territories of Outer Mongolia and Siberia.15 The Nerčinsk summit saw the
participation of a group of Europeans who were also indirectly part of Cosimo III’s
intelligence network, that is, the Jesuit missionaries coming from Beijing. During this
important meeting, the Jesuits acted as translators and diplomats for the emperor
Kangxi. As stated by Peter Perdue, “the actions of these mobile people made just as
much difference to the motivations of the Qing and the Russians as did the actual
negotiators of the treaty.”16 Although Cosimo III was not in direct contact with the
two Jesuits who actively participated in the Nerčinsk talks, the Florentine documents,
which are still waiting to be explored, indicate a great number of threads connect-
ing Medici Tuscany to China through the Jesuit channel.17 For example, we know
very little of the conversations that the Grand Duke had in 1685 and 1689 with two
Jesuits arriving from the Beijing mission, the Flemish Philippe Couplet (1623–1693)
and the Italian Claudio Filippo Grimaldi (1638–1712). As Jesuit Procurator of the
Chinese mission, Couplet arrived in Rome in 1684 and was received by Cosimo III in
December of the following year. He presented the Grand Duke with gifts from China,
mostly books, among which was an old Bible dated 1230–1240 that he found in
Nanjing province, today in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence, where it is known
as the “Marco Polo Bible,” a name found in Couplet’s notes inside the volume.18 In
exchange, the Grand Duke gave Couplet a pendulum clock for Kangxi, who was fond
of this type of object.19 Unfortunately we do not know if the gift arrived because the
missionary died while navigating back to China. It is clear that Couplet was carrying
something that the Grand Duke believed to be much more precious than diplomatic
gifts: the up-to-date knowledge of China.20 Couplet had arrived in China in 1659, and,
when in 1681 he was sent back to Europe in order to enlist a group of French Jesuits
for the Beijing mission, he already had an extensive knowledge of the Qing empire
and its imperial government.21 It is also worth mentioning that Couplet (known in
Chinese as Bai Feili) was also the editor of the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, the
first European translation of three of the four Confucian Classics, published in Paris in
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 171
1687 with the support of the king, two years after the meeting with the Medici Grand
Duke.22 This means that whatever question Cosimo III would have formulated on
matters of Chinese religion, philosophy, geography, or arts, the Flemish Jesuit would
have had a conversant answer.
The second Jesuit, Grimaldi (in China called Min Mingwo Dexian), represented
an even more valuable source for the Grand Duke since his passage through Florence
was part of a complex global diplomatic mission for the Chinese emperor, involv-
ing the tsar and other European rulers such as the Holy Roman emperor Leopold
I and the king of Poland Jan III Sobiesky.23 Before his European journey, Grimaldi
had already gained a particularly influential position at the Beijing court after 1671,
when he began working under Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688), a Flemish Jesuit who
was diplomatic translator, advisor of Kangxi, and one of the initiators of the scien-
tific exchange between Europe and China at the Qing court. When in 1688 Verbiest
died and Grimaldi was in Europe, Kangxi decided to promote the Italian as Calendar
Administrator (zhili lifa, 治理曆法), the position held by his Flemish companion.24
Significantly, Grimaldi came to Florence with memories of the events in which China
and Russia had met, the kind of territory explored by Cosimo III’s curiosity. In 1676
Grimaldi was in Beijing with Verbiest when the Russian ambassador Nicolae Milescu
Spathary (also written as Spătarul, 1636–1708) met Kangxi. This diplomatic meeting
represented the first step towards the agreement reached in Nerčinsk in 1689, and
Verbiest played a crucial role in its unfolding.25 The Jesuit acted as linguistic media-
tor, since the language employed by the Russian envoy was Latin, then translated into
Manchu for the emperor; more importantly, Verbiest also translated the letter that
the tsar Aleksej Michajlovič (Alexis of Russia, 1629–1676, predecessor of Peter the
Great) had written in Latin for Kangxi the year before.26 Thus, when Grimaldi reached
Florence, he had the entire diplomatic process between Russia and China clear in his
mind, and thanks to the mediation of the powerful Verbiest, he was an active subject
as Kangxi’s envoy. As explained by Joseph Sebes, Grimaldi travelled to Europe with
two missions: he was to act as personal ambassador of Kangxi, and he was also cho-
sen by Verbiest as his chargé d’affaires. In this role, his main task was to meet Peter
the Great, give him a letter by Kangxi, and obtain the permission to return to Beijing
by passing through Siberia.27 For the missionaries, the passage through Russia meant
circumventing the long sea routes subjected to the monopolies of various nations and
authorities and perhaps gaining some forms of influence on a geographically large
region, also comprising the northern borders of Persia. Surely such a route represented
an extremely valuable commercial avenue for both the Russians and the Chinese.
For Cosimo III, Grimaldi was thus one of the players in a complicated negotiation
in which the overland passage to China through Russia represented a crucial issue.
However, it was too late for the Jesuit’s mediation when he met the Grand Duke in
December 1689, since the Nerčinsk treatise had been signed in August.28
Although ultimately useless, Grimaldi’s efforts to go to Moscow included meeting
Leibniz in Rome during the summer in order to be introduced to various European
courts—Paris, Munich, Cracow, Vienna—which he eventually visited the following
year. In turn, the letters written by emperor Leopold I and the king of Poland Jan III
Sobiesky allowed Grimaldi to return to China by passing through Persia, then gov-
erned by Shah Sulayman II (r. 1666–1694), who had good relations with the mentioned
rulers. Thus, Grimaldi meeting Cosimo might have represented the first and most
important attempt to reach Moscow; in fact, the Grand Duke vainly recommended
172  Marco Musillo
the Jesuit to the Russian rulers, as shown by letters dated from November to Decem-
ber 1689.29 The tsar refused to meet Grimaldi because, having successfully engaged
with the Qing dynasty, the Russians were interested in promoting the activities of the
Orthodox church in China and not the missionary enterprise of the Jesuits. This was
also indirectly triggered by Kangxi’s bequest of a Buddhist temple in Beijing that at the
end of the 1680s was converted into a chapel dedicated to Saint Nicholas and given
to a group of Cossacks who accepted serving the Qing dynasty after being defeated in
1685 at Albazin, a Siberian outpost.30 Of course, the protection of the Russian com-
mercial trade with China was also of primary importance.31

Cosimo III and the Vanishing Portrait of Kangxi in the Uffizi

Beyond Grimaldi’s diplomatic mission, the Jesuit Father’s meeting with Cosimo III
and the epistolary exchanges with Russia deserve to be analyzed with more attention.
In fact, today it is still commonly believed that the Grand Duke was looking at China
(and Asia) with a “provincial eye,” guided by ethnographic curiosities and a collector’s
needs.32 Quite the opposite: his engagement followed diverse trajectories, blossoming
from different forms of knowledge acquired in various ways, the encounter with sub-
jects who had been living in Beijing and holding imperial positions demonstrating
just this. Although the “Medici and China” topic does not have a firm position in the
domain of Medici studies—if not for cabinets of curiosities filled with porcelains and
their related catalogues33— it is evident that, in the future, such a focus will allow cru-
cial pieces of historiography to be added to the global dimension of the Medici family,
and thus to the history of Early Modern Europe in its liaisons with East Asia. Paths
that did not find a destination are as important as paths that have starting points,
destinations, and intentions. For example, although the Medici did not have a role in
the construction of hydraulic facilities in Qing China, we know that this was one of
the topics discussed by the Grand Duke and Grimaldi during their meeting. Among his
tasks as imperial mathematician and astronomer, Grimaldi was also involved in flood
and river control, a very important issue in China. More than seventy years before,
during the Ming dynasty, the Jesuit Sabatino de Ursis (1575–1620, Xiong Sanba), who
was in Beijing from 1607, wrote the Taixi shuifa (泰西水法), or Western Techniques
of Hydraulics, together with the mathematician Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). During the
Kangxi period, when Grimaldi was at court, European trigonometry—first introduced
in the 1650s—was used in flood control and canal upkeep.34 Coincidentally, this field
of enquiry was very well known in Florence. The Grand Ducal capital is crossed by
the Arno, an unpredictable river that has always represented one of the main dangers
for the city. Also, from the end of the sixteenth century, Florentine rulers began to
transform the Tuscan waterways, as the excavation of the Navicelli under Cosimo
I demonstrates.35 Completed in 1576, the Navicelli were a 22-kilometer-long channel
connecting Pisa to Livorno, which also uses the waters from the Arno. This hydraulic
construction saw the later involvement of Cosimo III and of figures such as the Dutch
engineer Cornelis Meyer (1629–1701).36
Thanks to this tradition and personal knowledge, Cosimo III answered Grimaldi
by donating an important text on river control, the 1664 Trattato della Direzione
de’ Fiumi (Treatise on the Direction of Rivers) by Famiano Michelini, who was court
mathematician under Ferdinando II de’ Medici. This book was in fact listed in the col-
lection of the Jesuit libraries in Beijing.37 Later, another book would follow, appearing
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 173
in Beijing as a present to Grimaldi; this time, it was a work dedicated to Cosimo III by
Vincenzo Viviani, a disciple of Galileo Galilei, the Discorso al Serenissimo Cosimo III
Granduca di Toscana, intorno al difendersi de Riempimenti e dalle Corrosioni de’
Fiumi applicato ad Arno in Vicinanza della Citta’ di Firenze (Treatise Dedicated to
Cosimo III Grand Duke of Tuscany on the Protection From the Flooding and the
Erosion of Rivers, Employed for the Arno in the Vicinities of Florence).38 This inter-
esting exchange is evidence of the fact that beyond a mere ethnographic curiosity,
Cosimo III was following the local intellectual tradition of looking towards China,
a tradition that began with Ferdinando II (1610–1670). This is best embodied by
the dialogue between the Austrian Jesuit Johann Grueber (1623–1680), who at the
beginning of 1665 stopped in Florence on his return journey from China, Carlo Dati
(1619–1676), member and secretary of the Accademia della Crusca (founded between
1570 and 1580), and Lorenzo Magalotti (1637–1712), who in 1660 was secretary
of the Accademia del Cimento, a scientific society founded in 1657 by Leopoldo de’
Medici (1617–1675).39 The dialogue was published in 1672 by Lorenzo Magalotti
as an interview with the Austrian Jesuit on different aspects of Chinese culture and
society.40 Considering that Magalotti was part of a milieu connected to the Euro-
pean network of scientific academies, and that adopted the new experimental method
promoted by Galileo, it is evident that Cosimo III looked at China with the hope to
engage with a broader conceptual framework.41 From this perspective, science, art,
and diplomatic dialogues were never completely separate. For example, in another
letter to Grimaldi, Cosimo III asked the Jesuit that he send information and materials
for making Chinese lacquer to Florence once he was back in China.42 Like emperor
Kangxi, the Grand Duke was trying to accumulate technological and cultural knowl-
edge and not only objects.
Even from the perspective of a demanding buyer, Cosimo III had something that
set him apart from most princely collectors. In fact, when in 1670 Cosimo became
Grand Duke, he had already acquired a specific understanding of Chinese artistic
productions that he could not have obtained by merely looking at the Chinese objects
on display in his family’s collections; instead, it came from extensive travels across
Europe. Cosimo III gained a broader knowledge of such objects while still a prince,
especially during his earlier-mentioned journey through the United Provinces from
October 1667 to September 1668.43 In Amsterdam, the Grand Duke looked through
the warehouse of the Dutch East India Company and in the shops of merchants dis-
playing objects from East Asia; there, he witnessed a new European knowledge of
China taking form.44 For example, in the afternoon of 29 December 1667, Cosimo
was entertained in the house of Pieter Blaeu (1637–1706), bookseller, expert of curios-
ities, correspondent of the Grand Duke’s librarian Antonio Magliabechi (1633–1714),
and son of Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571–1638), founder of one of the most famous
printing houses in seventeenth-century Europe.45 In Pieter’s house, Cosimo looked
at “illustrated books where one can see the garments and customs of many Indian,
Chinese, and Japanese populations.”46 After viewing, Cosimo purchased the books
that he had admired with his host; the evening was devoted to discussion with Petrus
Schaack (1632–1708), the head librarian working in the municipal and university
library, who was expert of oriental languages.47 Surely, for Cosimo the Netherlands
were the place to find information on China and discover the links between various
European cultural milieus involved in the representation of the Qing empire, which
had been founded in 1644. In the late seventeenth century, Amsterdam embodied a
174  Marco Musillo
new European cosmopolitanism, partly based on trading practices, that had as its
core a cultural toleration that allowed the publication of writings that in Catholic
Europe—and especially in Italy—would not have encountered friendly reception. The
Dutch city also had a superb cartographic production and a commercial framework
enriched by the circulation of news from the countries reached by the powerful V.O.C.
network.48
Thus, one would assume that all the channels that Cosimo III explored in order to
find objects or to retrieve knowledge about China would have set the stage for the
reception of a “dal vero” portrait of Kangxi made by an Italian artist. However, the
evidence that survives today offers us a different and somewhat enigmatic picture,
because the image entered the Medici’s collection almost unnoticed, having not been
commented on or described in detail. As mentioned earlier, other images of emperor
Kangxi appeared early in the 1680s, a couple of decades before Cosimo III received
the portrait by Gherardini.
In 1682, Cosimo wrote two letters—one in July and one in September—to Gioac-
chino Guasconi (1636–ca.1698) in Amsterdam in order to contact Gioacchino’s
brother, Francesco Guasconi (1640–ca.1708), in Moscow. Gioacchino was one of
the official agents of the Grand Duke and soon became the Medici’s link to Russia
through his brother Francesco, who moved to the Russian capital in around 1666.49 In
the first letter, the Grand Duke expressed his interest in having a Circassian slave sent
to Florence, and in the second he requested some diplomatic or commercial reports
with descriptions of land journeys from Russia to China.50 While the slave arrived in
Florence only in 1699, Cosimo obtained a prompt reply to the second request from a
very important contact of the Guasconi brothers, the aforementioned Andreas Win-
ius.51 In 1683, Winius replied to Cosimo through Gioacchino in Amsterdam by send-
ing a collection of presents, including an account of a Russian embassy to China made
in the 1660s, a map of the embassy, ginseng, a piece of asbestos fabric (that would not
burn if put in the fire), and a drawing portraying emperor Kangxi.52 Concerning the
portrait of Kangxi, Winius proudly affirms that both the map and the portrait were
unknown in Europe and thus represent fresh and very valuable material.53 Cosimo III
answered after three months with a letter dated 3 August having received the package
from Moscow. In this message he thanked Winius and affirmed that “he welcomed the
portrait of the Tartar Prince Emperor of China, although this had already been seen
in Italy years ago, through the illustrations contained in the relation on the Chinese
empire by Athanasius Kircher.”54
Later, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Grand Duke received a portrait
of emperor Kangxi made by a Qing imperial painter who was exceptional for various
reasons, the Italian Gherardini (Figure 10.2). Without having found decisive evidence,
we can hypothesize that the portrait was sent to Florence from Beijing by Grimaldi,
who met Gherardini in the Chinese capital. Before going to Beijing and after a first
period in Italy, Gherardini moved to France in 1680. There he executed frescoes in the
Jesuit house in Paris and in the church of Saint Pierre in Nevers. Later, he decided to
join the French mission to Beijing led by the Jesuit Father Joachim Bouvet, who offered
the Italian artist an opportunity to work as painter for the Qing emperor Kangxi.55 In
1698, Gherardini arrived in China, and after four successful years at court, he decided
to go back to Europe. During his stay in the Chinese capital he gained commissions,
and he was assigned a group of local students who received the imperial order to learn
European painting techniques. In Beijing Gherardini also decorated the cupola of the
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 175

Figure 10.2 Giovanni Gherardini (attributed), Portrait of Kangxi, oil on painting, 129.6 ×

98.2 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

Bei Tang, the French missionary church that opened in 1703. Gherardini’s last years
in Paris are still awaiting more archival research, but it is reasonable to infer that once
back from China, he did not find the support and the professional success that he had
hoped for before his transoceanic journey. Gherardini’s artistic roots are particularly
interesting; he was part of the second generation of the school of quadraturismo from
Bologna, whose initiators were Agostino Mitelli (1609–1660) and Angelo Michele
176  Marco Musillo
Colonna (1600 or 1604–1687). Gherardini was one of Colonna’s pupils, and later he
specialized as quadraturista—a painter who created the general structure of painted
architecture—before the figure painter specialized in panting human figures, animals
and plants would fill the space framed by the illusionistic framework. As a quadratu­
rista, Gherardini did not particularly focus on portraiture, although the figures of the
frescoes in the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris, the former Jesuit house, show a confident
hand and an impeccable palette. However, in Beijing the Modenese artist achieved a
certain fame as a portrait painter.56
In terms of authorship, the portrait of Kangxi in the Serie Aulica represents a valu-
able pictorial source when compared with the portrait attributed to Gherardini today
in the Palace Museum in Beijing, a hanging scroll (137 × 106 cm) representing the
emperor reading and surrounded by books. Apart from the similar size and the same
subject wearing the same outfit, the two paintings have important differences regard-
ing composition and materials employed. The scroll is painted with mineral colors
on silk, while the picture in Florence is an oil painting on canvas.57 Although in both
paintings the emperor is portrayed frontally, in the Beijing scroll the sitter is seated
cross-legged on a kind of platform called kang, with a book open in front of him, while
in the Florence portrait the sitter is standing and framed in an oval. Also, while in the
portrait from Beijing Kangxi sits in front of two book shelves—probably in one of his
studios in the Forbidden City—in the other portrait the background is left empty, with
only a timid curtain on the side and without any sign of a recognizable space. The two
paintings have almost the same dimensions, 138 × 106.5 cm for the Chinese scroll and
129.6 × 98.2 cm for the Florentine canvas. In both the emperor wears the same outfit,
an informal blue summer-damask-robe with metal buttons, and dragon medallions,
topped with the same red-fringe summer hat with a big pearl on the front. It is not
that evident that the hand who painted the two portraits is the same, although the
same subject, the Italian brushwork technique, and the fact that both the pictures were
made in the first years of the eighteenth century strongly support the involvement of
Gherardini in both of them. While we wait for results from further research, it seems
that the portrait in the Uffizi is by Gherardini, while the scroll from the Forbidden
City was made by Gherardini together with Chinese students. The intervention of the
students is especially visible in the emperor’s face, which was delineated by a modest
drawing and rendered with marble-like textures, while the robe shows Gherardini’s
competent hand in the rendering of the folds, the coloring, and the chiaroscuro. We
can thus infer that the painting of the Uffizi was a copy made by Gherardini from the
scroll commissioned by Kangxi, and adapted to Italian taste.
The first mention of this painting during the reign of Cosimo III can be found in the
inventory of the Medici guardaroba, in a note written in 1709 for Francesco Bianchi,
the keeper of the collection in the Uffizi.58 The note indicates that the painting was
sent from the Grand Duke’s chamber to the guardaroba in order to be framed, with-
out mentioning the painter; and, curiously, its subject is described not as the emperor
of China but as a Chinese “Manderino, ò sia altro personaggio Cinese” (Mandarin
or other Chinese character).59 This note is somehow in contradiction with the later
positioning of the painting in the Serie Aulica, a collection of big format portraits
of political personalities of the Western world, which implied that the sitter was a
ruler.60 It thus seems that the gift’s arrival was not a significant event, and the Grand
Duke had silently placed it in the collections. It is worth mentioning, however, that
the reordering of the Grand Ducal collections, which would eventually lead to the
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 177
creation of the museum of the Uffizi, began around 1713.61 It is possible that more
information about the subject was gathered during the framing of the painting, proof
that the picture was prepared for final display in the corridor of the Uffizi. In fact,
later, the painting is mentioned as a portrait of Kangxi in two manuscript catalogues
of the Uffizi by Giuseppe Bianchi, the keeper of the collection. One dates to 1754, and
the other was written between 1759 and 1764, using material collected by his father
Sebastiano (1662–1738). Also, in the later inventory of 1764, there is a sketch show-
ing the painting’s position in the West part of the corridor.62 The portrait stood above
a statue of a faun and between an Hercules, on the viewer’s right, and a Diana on the
left.63 According to the sketch, on the wall opposite to Kangxi, there was a portrait of
Anne Von Sachsen Lauenburg of Saxony (painted by Giovanni Domenico Gabbiani
in 1726), then substituted in 1740 by a copy of the portrait of Johann Wilhelm II,
Elector Palatine (1658–1716) by Jan Frans Van Douven (1656–1727), which remains
in front of the Qing ruler still today.64 The portrait by Gherardini is also crowned by
the ceiling frescoes representing the Tuscan city of Montepulciano, as well as the pic-
torial renderings of philosophy and law.65 In Bianchi’s sketch of this part of the cor-
ridor, the subject is well identified with emperor Kangxi as “Camtchi imperatore della
China,” but Gherardini’s name does not appear. The name of the Modenese painter,
indeed, will never appear in the Uffizi catalogues: its first occurrence is in the short
note published after the restoration of the painting in 1997, in which Caterina Caneva
indicates Gherardini as possible author of the picture—information that also appears
today on the label on display in the gallery.66 The portrait of Kangxi returned to the
West corridor in 1997 (Figure 10.3) after an extensive reorganization of that part
of the museum; in this period the paintings from the Serie Aulica were positioned
according to the description of the gallery given by Benedetto Vincenzo de Greyss
(1714–c. 1775) in his illustrated inventory in four volumes produced between 1748
and 1765.67 Interestingly, in the nineteenth century knowledge of Kangxi’s portrait
was not enriched by more information, and it was even dispossessed of what was
already known by its eighteenth-century owners. In fact, in the two inventories of
1880 and 1890, the painting is described as “male portrait in Chinese costume.” The
emperor thus disappeared once again.68 Finally, in the description of 1974, Stefano
Turrini curiously affirms that “perhaps” what the sitter is wearing is a vest from the
Far East (“forse un costume dell’Estremo Oriente”).69
Indeed, in Florence the painting by Gherardini has been living a very peculiar life:
its artist was not mentioned for more than two centuries, and its subject—emperor
Kangxi—surfaced intermittently in the museum inventories. However, it was also put
on display as part of the Collezione Aulica, and it strikingly embodies the only Chinese
emperor in a pictorial parade of European rulers.70 Therefore, the portrait of Kangxi
in Florence is not evidence of a universal and complete knowledge but of an ongoing
dialogue between knowing and not knowing, distance and closeness. Different narra-
tives constantly reshaped interpretation of the links that connected very diverse cul-
tural frameworks: China, Italy, Russia, the Netherlands, France, and so on. Because
in his Florentine library he could already gaze at the picture of Kangxi as illustrated
in Kircher’s book, Cosimo III was not impressed by a sketch of the Qing emperor sent
from Russia. This indicates that the Grand Duke was more interested in the way the
Qing emperor was presented than in how faithful the descriptions of his appearance
were, and if they were based on real encounters. In fact, if the portrait of Kangxi
received as a present from Winius came—as it seems—from Spathary’s mission, it was
178  Marco Musillo

Figure 10.3 Display of Gherardini’s portrait in the West corridor of the Galleria degli Uffizi.
Source: Marco Musillo.

a faithful reproduction of the imperial persona, since on 15 May 1676 the Russian

diplomat met Kangxi in person in Beijing.71 The same happened later with the portrait
painted by Gherardini; the Modenese artist was often in the company of the emperor,
and during his four years of residence in China he had the chance to view the real
appearance of his subject. However, the ambiguity about the sitter’s identity surfacing
from the Uffizi documents is evidence of eyes looking somewhere else. Perhaps that
casual vest worn by Kangxi, on which the imperial dragons with their five claws are
rendered in a delicate damask-pattern, obscured the viewer’s recognition of a state-
ment of political power. Differently, the portrait of the Qing emperor as displayed in
Kircher’s book is a completely imaginary figure, a dummy only employed to display to
European readers the imperial status through the robe, the posture, and an idealized
space alluding to the Forbidden City.
This painting therefore epitomizes an impossible accord between different voices
and thus hints to a striking commercial and intellectual framework in which knowl-
edge is never completely acquired, and the flow of information coming from commer-
cial practices may not always become part of a cultural exchange. On this stage we
find three characters: Cosimo III, a traveler and collector, who looked at China from
many variable and complex points of view; Gherardini, a painter who profession-
ally experienced two completely different artistic traditions; and Kangxi, an emperor
with the capacity and the curiosity to learn about Europe to the extent that he had
an Italian painter and European literati working at his court. In the Uffizi these three
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 179
characters became estranged—as they are today—by means of a defect in detecting
cultural distances, which is the only move that allows the creation of new connections:
Gherardini, who is the only one who connects by moving through space and painting
cultures, disappears; the Grand Duke—who has the knowledge of multiple sources
coming from Russia, China, and the Netherlands—neglects the links; and Kangxi,
whose effigy joins many European rulers in Florence, is not aware of such a celebra-
tion. However, at the same time, he is the only one of the three who has the power to
patronize a painter from outside his empire and to send European subjects to Europe
in order to act as his imperial messengers.72 If one day we will value works of art by
the degree of cultural and geographical distance and encounters needed to produce
their descriptions, the portrait of Kangxi painted by Gherardini could become a star
of the Uffizi, and perhaps after being recognized as such, it may disappear again.

Notes
1. The circulation of pictures of Qing emperors in Early Modern Europe has been well stud-
ied with regard to the French milieu, and other contexts are still waiting for scholarly
attention; although one exception is represented by Edward Malatesta and Yves Raguin,
Images de la Chine: le contexte occidental de la sinologie naissante (San Francisco: Ricci
Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, 1995). For a detailed study on the French
framework, see Laura Hostetler, “A Mirror for the Monarch: A Literary Portrait of China
in Eighteenth-Century France,” Asia Major 19, no. 1–2 (2006): 349–376.
2. The edict was later described by Charles Le Gobien in his Histoire de l’édit de l’empereur
de la Chine en faveur de la religion chrestienne, avec un éclaircissement sur les honneurs
que les Chinois rendent à Confucius et aux morts (Paris: chez Jean Anisson, 1698). See
also Nicolas Standaert, “The ‘Edict of Tolerance’ (1692): A Textual History and Reading,”
in In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor: Tomas Pereira, SJ (1645–1708), the Kangxi
Emperor and the Jesuit Mission in China, ed. Antonio Vasconcelos de Saldanha and Artur
K. Wardega (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 308–358.
3. Athanasii Kircheri E Soc. Jesu China Monumentis, Qua Sacris quà Profanis, Nec non variis
Naturæ & Artis Spectaculis, Aliarumque rerum memorabilium Argumentis Illustrata, aus-
piciis Leopold Primi, Roman, Imper. semper Augusti, Munificentißimi Mecænatis (Amster-
dam: Janssonius, Weyerstraet, 1667), illustration between page 112 and 113.
4. The entire letter is reproduced in Francesco Bacci, “Cosimo III e Pietro il Grande,” Gior-
nale di Bordo 4 (1970): 325–334, 332–333. The epistle is in ASF, MdP, 4263, fol. 729 r.
5. Known in Moscovia as Andrei Andreyevich Vinius. He was the son of a Dutch merchant,
Andries Dionyszoon, who became a Russian subject. From 1664 he served as an interpreter
at the Diplomatic Chancellery and then worked in the diplomatic service from 1672 to
1674. In 1685 he was ennobled; and among other positions, he served as Deputy head of
the Diplomatic Chancellery from 1689 to 1695, then Duma Secretary in 1695, and head of
the Siberian Chancellery from 1697 to 1703. See Jarmo T. Kotilane, “Winius, Andries Dio-
nyszoon,” Encyclopedia of Russian History (2004) Encyclopedia.com. (11 March 2016).
www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404101481.html.
6. Filippo Balatri and Karl Vossler, ed., “Cademi in mente il dir che i Kam istessi/son nelle
Opere nostre posti in scena, /(avendone io di già contezza piena/da un libretto di Vienna,
che pria lessi),” in Frutti del Mondo autobiografia di Filippo Balatri da Pisa (1676–1756)
(Palermo: Remo Sandron, 1924), 71. As personifications of the Manchu ruling China from
1644 to 1911, the “tartars” appeared on stage long before the period in which Balatri
wrote this passage. For example, the play The Conquest of China by the English playwright
Elkanah Settle dates to 1675, and it was based on the Jesuit Martino Martini’s description
of the defeat of the Ming dynasty by the Manchu, the De Bello Tartarico Historia, first
published in Antwerp in 1654. See Jeannie Dalporto, “The Succession Crisis and Elkanah
Settle’s ‘The Conquest of China by the Tartars’,” The Eighteenth Century 45, no. 2 (2004):
131–146.
180  Marco Musillo
7. In 1701, Golitsyn became Russia’s first diplomat to the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna,
taking Balatri with his family. In 1703 Balatri returned to Italy, and subsequently he trav-
elled for musical performances in England, France, Germany, and Austria. See Daniel L.
Schlafly, “Filippo Balatri in Peter the Great’s Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteur-
opas 45, no. 2 (1997): 181–198, 181–182. Also on Balatri, see: Maria Di Salvo, “Vita e
viaggi di Filippo Balatri,” Russica Romana 6 (1999): 37–57 and on Russian sources, see
Yu I. Gerasimova, “Vospominaniya Filippo Balatri—novyj inostrannyj istočnik po istorii
Pëtrovskoj Rossii (1698–1701),” Zapiski Otdela Rukopisei Biblioteka SSSR Imeni V. I.
Lenina 27 (1965): 164–190. Also see the recent Christine Wunnicke, Die Nachtigall des
Zaren: das Leben des Kastraten Filippo Balatri (München: Claassen, 2001). For an exhaus-
tive bibliography on the Russian legations in seventeenth-century Tuscany, see Stefano Vil-
lani, “Ambasciatori Russi a Livorno e rapporti tra Moscovia e Toscana nel XVII secolo,”
Nuovi Studi Livornesi 14 (2008): 37–95.
8. The entire route from Moscow to China is described in a manuscript in the Archivum
Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), from the collection Japonica Sinica 105 I. Here in the sec-
tion “Acta Legati Magni Ducis Moschovia in Regia Pekinensi. Iter è Moschovia in Sinas”
from folio 96 v. to 115 r. is the Descriptio Itineris ex Moschovia in Sinas to which is attached
a map of the route titled Tabula Itineris ex Moschovia in Chinam a Moschis Facta, sketched
by the Polish Jesuit Thomas Ignatius Szpot Dunin (c. 1645–1713): for the map see f. 98,
and for the description of the overland route see ff. 100 v.–102 r. The map is reproduced in
Joseph Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689): The Diary of
Thomas Pereira S. J. (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1961), appendix, unpaged.
9. Balatri’s mission was not an isolated case. For example, another castrato from the Medici
court, Domenico Melani (1629–1693), supervised the diplomatic exchange between the
Florentine court and the Elector in Dresden. See Barbara Marx, “Medici Gifts to the Court
of Dresden,” Studies in the Decorative Arts 15, no. 1 (2007–2008): 46–82.
10. For the context of this mission see Michael Khodarkovsky, “Uneasy Alliance: Peter the
Great and Ayuki Khan,” Central Asian Survey 7, no. 4 (1988): 1–46. Boris Alekseevich
Golitsyn became court chamberlain in 1676, and in 1690 was created boyar; later between
1695 and 1696 he participated in the Azov campaign during the Russo-Turkish war
(1686–1700).
11. “Gli fa propor di voler far baratto/di me con sei cavalli di sua razza./ L’ambasciador, che per
cavalli impazza, mi fa temer che cada a far il matto,” Balatri and Vossler, Frutti del Mondo, 66.
12. See Schlafly, “Filippo Balatri in Peter the Great’s Russia,” 184.
13. Also called Kalmuk, Kalmouk, or Qalmuq. See Marlène Laruelle, “ ‘The White Tsar’:
Romantic Imperialism in Russia’s Legitimizing of Conquering the Far East,” Acta Slavica
Iaponica 25, no. 1 (2008): 113–134. For the Kalmyk in Russia see Dittmar Schorkowitz,
Staat und Nationalitäten in Rußland: Der Integrationsprazeß der Burjaten und Kalmücken,
1822–1925 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag, 2001), 283; Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two
Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–1771 (Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1992).
14. See Vincent Chen, Sino-Russian Relations in the Seventeenth Century (The Hague: Marti-
nus Nijhoff, 1966), 21; and for the Chinese interest in Russian matters, see the case-study
in Vladimir S. Miasnikov, “First Chinese Russologists,” Cina 21 (1988): 233–244.
15. The Treaty of Nercinsk (Нерчинский договор; 尼布楚條約; Níbùchǔ Tiáoyuē) was signed
on August 27, 1689. For the most comprehensive study of the treatise see Yoshida Kin-
ichi, Roshia no Toho Shinshutsu to Neruchinsuku Joyaku (Tokyo: Kindai Chugoku Senta,
1984). Also see Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689).
16. Peter C. Perdue, “Boundaries and Trade in the Early Modern World: Negotiations at
Nerčinsk and Beijing,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, no. 3 (2010): 341–356, 342. Karl
Ernst von Baer suggests that the Edict of Toleration in favor of the Catholic religion was
issued by Kangxi in order to repay the Jesuits for the services given during the Nerčinsk
negotiations; see Karl Ernst von Baer and Gregor von Helmersen, “Peter’s des Grossen
Verdienste um die Erweiterung der geographischen Kenntniss,” Beiträge zur Kenntniss des
Russischen Reichs und der angränzenden Länder Asiens (St. Petersburg: Eggers, 1872),
14–16. This exchange is also analyzed in Theodore Treutlein, “Jesuit Missions in China
During the Last Years of K’ang Hsi,” Pacific Historical Review 10 (1941): 435–446,
441–443.
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 181
17. The main figures among the Jesuits during the Nerčinsk consultations were the Portuguese
Tomé Pereira (1645–1708) and the French Jean-François Gerbillon (1654–1707). For the
broader context of the Qing court in relation to such personalities, see Vasconcelos de
Saldanha and Wardega, In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor, 2012. The Grand Duke
also had a dialogue with the Franciscan Antonio Laghi (1668–1727) from Castrocaro in
Tuscany, from 1715 the Apostolic Vicar for Shensi and Shansi. In 1717 the missionary
wrote to Cosimo III asking for a donation in order to erect a church in the city of Xi’an,
promising in exchange that the Grand Duke’s coat of arms would be on display in the
building. For this and a broader survey on the Medici family and China, see the seminal
study by George R. Loehr, “The Medici and China,” Art and Archaeology Research Papers
6 (1974): 68–77, 75.
18. See Riccardo Saccenti, “Europa e Cina nel Medioevo: la Bibbia di Marco Polo,” Prato
storia e arte 112 (2012): 117–126; Boleslav Szcześniak, “A Note on the Laurentian Manu-
script Bible of the Franciscan Missionaries in China (14th Century),” Monumenta Serica
16, no. 1–2 (1957): 360–362.
19. See Paolo Segneri, Lettere inedite di Paolo Segneri al Granduca Cosimo terzo, ed. Silvio
Giannini (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1857), 46–47.
20. At that time, the knowledge arriving to Europe from missionaries like Couplet was con-
stantly enriched by the network of European intellectuals such as Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz (1646–1716), or by the first sinologists, such as Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) or
Melchisédech Thévenot (c. 1620–1692).
21. For this mission and the general context about the French support of the Jesuit mission
see Isabelle Landry-Deron, “Les Mathématiciens envoyés en Chine par Louis XIV en
1685,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 55, no. 5 (2001): 423–463. For Couplet’s
life and oeuvre see Jerome Heyndrickx, Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693): The Man Who
Brought China to Europe (Nettetal: Steyler, 1990).
22. The three classics were Lun Yu (Edited Conversations), Zhongyong (Doctrine of Mean),
and Daxue (Great Learning); while the Mengzi (the collection of writings by Mencius)
was excluded. Together with Couplet, the text was translated and commented by the
missionaries Prospero Intorcetta (1626–1696), Christian Herdtricht (1625–1684), and
François de Rougemont (1624–1676). See Confucius Sinarum Philosophus; sive, Scientia
Sinensis Latine Exposita . . . (Paris: Danielem Horthemels, 1687). The book also con-
tained the appendix of the Tabula chronologica Monarchiae sinicae juxta cyclos annorum
LX, ab anno ante Christum 2952 ad annum post Christum 1683 compiled by Couplet.
With regards to the Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, it is worth mentioning that the other
important mission of Couplet in Europe was to discuss the issue of the Catholic liturgy in
the Chinese language.
23. King Sobiesky sent one of his portraits to Kangxi to foster diplomatic relations, and the pic-
ture was well received. See Walter M. Drzewieniecki, “The Knowledge of China in XVII–
Century Poland as Reflected in the Correspondence Between Leibniz and Kochański,” The
Polish Review 12, no. 3 (1967): 53–66, 59.
24. In the interim the position was filled by Antoine Thomas (1644–1709) and Tome Pereira
(1645–1708). See Catherine Jami and Han Qi, “The Reconstruction of Imperial Math-
ematics in China During the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722),” Early Science and Medicine 8,
no. 2 (2003): 88–110, 99. Once back in China, Grimaldi occupied this position until 1707
and then again from 1709 to 1712.
25. For the Qing sources on this embassy see Lo-shu Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-
Western Relations, 1644–1820 (Tucson: Association for Asian Studies, University of
Arizona Press, 2003), 49. The original report of the embassy written by Spathary was
translated into English by John F. Baddeley, in Russia, Mongolia, China Being Some Record
of the Relations Between Them From the Beginning of the XVIIth Century to the Death
of the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, A.D. 1602–1676 (London: Macmillan, 1919); and for the
Russian description, Yü. V. Arsen’ev, “Статейный список посольства Николая Спафария
в Китай (1675–1678 гг.),” Вестник археологической комиссией Рос. Археологического
общества 17, no. 1 (1906): 6–178, 2, 162–339.
26. The role of translator was not secondary, considering that Russian authorities did not have
the possibility to translate documents in Chinese. As discussed by Daniela Dumbravã, the
letter by the tsar to Kangxi specified that any request written in Chinese that arrived in
182  Marco Musillo
Moscow would remain incomprehensible because of the language. See Daniela Dumbravã,
“Nicolae Milescu in Asia Settentrionale (1675). Preliminari alla sua missione diplomatica
presso la corte imperiale dei Qing,” Studia Asiatica. Revue internationale d’études asia-
tiques International Journal for Asian Studies 10, no. 1–2 (2009): 167–232, 213.
27. Joseph Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689), 1961, 101–
102. For the relationship between Verbiest and Grimaldi, see for example Ferdinand Ver-
biest, “A Voyage of the Emperor of China, into the Western Tartary, in the Year, 1683,”
Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775) 16 (1686): 52–62.
28. For the period before the treatise see Vincent Chen, Sino-Russian Relations (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1966), 88. For the Jesuit engagement in the overland passage from Europe to China,
see for example Frederik Vermote, “The Role of Urban Real Estate in Jesuit Finances and
Networks Between Europe and China, 1612–1778” (PhD diss., University of British Colum-
bia, 2013), 96–99; and for a case-study, see Ronald S. Love, “A Passage to China: A French
Jesuit’s Perceptions of Siberia in the 1680s,” French Colonial History 3 (2003): 85–100.
29. The group of dispatches to support Grimaldi’s travel to Russia written by Cosimo III to the
two co-rulers, the tsars Ivan V Alekseyevich (Иван V Алексеевич) and Peter Alexeyevich
(Пётр Алексе́евич, the future Peter the Great), and to the regent Sophia Alekseyevna
(Со́фья Алексе́евна, ruler from 1682 to 1689) are in ASF, Miscellana Medicea 102, insert
3, fols. 7–8, 9–10, 11–12, 13–14, 15–16. These documents are also in Michail Dmitrievitch
Boutourline, ed., Documenti che si conservano nel R. Archivio di stato in Firenze, Sezione
medicea, riguardanti l’antica Moscovia (Russia) (Mosca: Gracieff e comp., 1871), 31–40.
The letters of Cosimo III to Grimaldi are in ASF, MdP, 1578, fols. 689r-690r, and fols.
711r–711v. For this exchange, see Villani, “Ambasciatori Russi a Livorno e rapporti tra
Moscovia e Toscana nel XVII secolo,” 37–95, 52–55, 80, 161–162, 83.
30. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind
from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
2010), 140–141.
31. For the Russian presence in the Chinese capital in relation to commerce between seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries see Meng Ssu-ming, “The E-lo-ssu kuan (Russian Hostel)
in Peking,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 23 (1960–1961): 19–46; Natalia Platonova,
“Le commerce des caravanes russes en Chine du XVII siècle à 1762,” Histoire, Économie
et Société 30, no. 3 (2011): 3–27.
32. Stefano Villani, for example, refers to Cosimo III’s scientific and ethnographic interests as
“morbid.” See Villani, “Ambasciatori Russi a Livorno e rapporti tra Moscovia e Toscana
nel XVII secolo,” 51.
33. For example see the important catalogue by Francesco Morena, ed., Dalle Indie orien-
tali alla corte di Toscana. Collezioni di arte cinese e giapponese a Palazzo Pitti (Florence:
Giunti, 2005).
34. See Benjamin A. Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 100, 195.
35. For an overview on the Navicelli see Marcella Previti, Il canale dei Navicelli. Un legame
d’acqua tra Pisa e Livorno (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2006).
36. Mayer published important books such as for example L’arte di restituire a Roma la tral-
asciata navigazione del suo Tevere (Rome: Lazzari Varese, 1685; the first edition, not com-
plete, was published in 1683), with illustrations of artists among which were Giovanni
Battista Falda (1643–1678) and Gaspar van Wittel (1653–1736).
37. Famiano Michelini, Trattato della Direzione de’ Fiumi (Firenze: Nella Stamperia della
Stella 1664). See Verhaeren Hubert, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque du Pé-T’ang (Pékin:
Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1949), 3366, 980–981. Grimaldi also asked for a lathe as gift
for Kangxi. On the Jesuit libraries in Beijing see Noël Golvers, “The Pre-1773 Jesuit Librar-
ies in Peking as a Medium for Western Learning in Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-
Century China,” The Library 16, no. 4 (2015): 429–445.
38. The book was published in Florence in 1688 by Pietro Matini. See Verhaeren, n.3538,
1125; and also ASF, MdP, 1606, fol. 311.
39. Grueber may be considered the first amateur painter working at the Beijing mission: he
worked as mathematician for the Emperor Shunzhi from 1659 to 1661. In particular see
George Robert Loehr, “European Artists at the Chinese Court,” in The Westward Influence
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 183
of the Chinese Arts from the 14th to the 18th Century, ed. William Watson (London:
University of London, 1973), 33–42, 33–34. Grueber was also one of the most important
correspondents of Athanasius Kircher.
40. This first publication of 1672 appeared with the title Viaggio del P. Giovanni Grueber
tornando per terra da China ad Europa, in the anthological collection by Melchisédec
Thévenot Relations de divers voyages curieux: qui n’ont point esté publiées, est qu’on a tra-
duit or tiré des originaux des voyageurs françois, espagnols, allemands, portugais, anglois,
hollandois, persans, arabes & autres orientaux (Paris: Thomas Moette, 1672), 1–18 (but
each essay has its own t.p.). The dialogue was then anonymously published in Florence
with the title Notizie Varie Dell’Imperio Della China E Di Qualche Altro Paese Adiacente
Con La Vita Di Confucio Il Gran Savio della China, e un saggio della sua Morale (Flor-
ence: Manni, Carlieri, 1697).
41. For what regards the European framework, the Accademia del Cimento, and in particular
Magalotti, had important exchanges with the English milieu. For example, see Anna Maria
Crinó, ed., Lorenzo Magalotti: Relazioni d’Inghilterra 1668 e 1688 (Florence: Olschki,
1972); Stefano Villani, “La religione degli inglesi e il viaggio del principe. Note sulla relazi-
one ufficiale del viaggio di Cosimo de’ Medici in Inghilterra (1669),” Studi secenteschi 45
(2004): 175–194; Stefano Miniati, “Lorenzo Magalotti (1637–1712): rassegna di studi e
nuove prospettive di ricercar,” Annali di Storia di Firenze V (2010): 31–47.
42. See ASF, MdP, 1578, fols. 689r–690r, and fols. 711r–711v.
43. See for example Serenella Rolfi, “Il difetto di lontananza. Appunti sui viaggi di Cosimo III
de’Medici nel Nord Europa,” Ricerche di Storia dell’Arte 54 (1994): 53–68.
44. Cosimo also visited the workshops of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), and of Willem
van de Velde the Elder (1611–1693); and during a second visit to the Netherlands in 1668,
in Leiden he went to see the studios of Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) and Gerard Dou
(1613–1675). According to the report of Cosimo Prie, the Grand Duke bought Chinese
silk for the drappeggiamento of his bed. See Viaggio fatto dal Ser:mo Principe Cosimo
Terzo di Toscana, di Alemagna, e de Paesi Bassi, ASF, MdP, 6384, 209. Francesco Feroni
(1614–1696) was one of the Florentine merchants who in Amsterdam took Cosimo around
and hosted him in his house located on the Keizersgracht, one of the city’s most prominent
canals. Later in 1673, Feroni would go back to Florence, appointed as Depositario Gen-
erale (Minister of Finance), and there he would have an important role in reshaping the
commercial operations of the port of Livorno. For Francesco Feroni, see Paola Benigni,
“Francesco Feroni, empolese, negoziante in Amsterdam,” Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato
48 (1988): 488–517; Hans Cools, “Francesco Feroni (1614/16–1696): Broker in Cereals,
Slaves and Works of Art,” in Your Humble Servant: Agents in Early Modern Europe,
ed. Hans Cools, Maria Keblusek, and Badeloch Noldus (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren,
2006), 39–50.
45. For the relationships between Magliabechi and Blaeu, see Alfonso Mirto and Henk Th. Van
Veen, eds., Pieter Blaeu: Lettere ai Fiorentini. Antonio Magliabechi, Leopoldo e Cosimo III
de’ Medici e altri, 1660–1705 (Florence, Amsterdam, and Maarssen: Istituto Universitario
Olandese di Storia dell’Arte, Firenze and Apa-Holland University Press, 1993), 71–253. For
the importance of Dutch cartography especially in relation to Asia see Günter Schilder and
Hans Kok, Sailing for the East: History and Catalogue of Manuscript Charts on Vellum of
the Dutch East India Company (VOC) 1602–1799 (Houten: Hes & De Graaf, 2010).
46. “[L]ibri d’imagini, che dimostrano gli abiti e azzioni di molti popoli indiani, chinesi e
giapponesi”; Godefridus Joannes Hoogewerff, De twee reizen van Cosimo de’ Medici prins
van Toscane door de Nederlanden (1667–1669) (Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1919), 67.
For the commerce of books and book sellers between Tuscany and the Netherlands see
Alfonso Mirto, Stampatori, editori, librai nella seconda metà del Seicento (Florence: Cen-
tro Editoriale Toscano, 1989), 8–23.
47. Hoogewerff, De twee reizen van Cosimo de’ Medici, 76.
48. This climate is best epitomized by the work of the French writer Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
and especially his Dictionnaire historique and critique (Rotterdam: Leers, 1697). Bayle,
who in 1681 moved as professor in Rotterdam, defended religious tolerance and atheism.
For what regards news from China, the most important example is perhaps represented
184  Marco Musillo
by the publication of the narrative by the Jesuit Martino Martini on the fall of the Ming
dynasty in 1644, titled De bello tartarico historia and printed in Antwerp in 1654.
49. The Guasconi family has recently received the attention of scholars; see for example
Ingeborg van Vugt, “Bound by Books: Giovacchino Guasconi as Book Agent Between
the Dutch Republic and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany” (Master thesis, Leiden University,
2013); Maria di Salvo, “Florence, Amsterdam, Moscow: An Italian Merchant in Peter the
Greats Time,” in Italia, Russia e mondo slavo: studi filologici e letterari, ed. Alberto Alberti
and Maria di Salvo (Florence: Florence University Press, 2011), 137–144. Francesco traded
in Russian caviar for the Italian market, and in Muscovy he sold luxurious Italian textiles.
Usually the commercial exchanges between Tuscany and Moscovia were attained through
Dutch ships connecting Livorno to Archangel on the White Sea. See Maria di Salvo, “The
‘Italian’ Nemetskaia Sloboda,” in Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in
Memory of Lindsey Hughes, ed. Simon Dixon (London: UCL School for Slavonic and East
European Studies, 2010), 98–109, 100.
50. The two letters, one dated 22 September 1682 and one 17 July 1682, are in Francesco
Bacci, “Cosimo III e Pietro il Grande” (1970); see 326 and 328.
51. Winius was already known in the Grand Ducal court thanks to Cosimo’s Dutch informant,
the philologist Nicolaas Hensius (1620–1681), who in 1680 had already contacted the
tsar’s postmaster for the Grand Duke. See Henk Th. van Veen and Andrew P. McCormick,
Tuscany and the Low Countries: An Introduction to the Sources and Inventory of Four
Florentine Libraries (Florence: Centro Di, 1985), 38. Hensius visited Florence in 1646,
and he remained in contact with a group of intellectuals from the Florentine scene among
Carlo Dati (1619–1676), pupil of Galileo, and the musicologist Giovanni Battista Doni
(1594–1647). After the death of Hensius in 1681, the Florentine merchant Francesco Guas-
coni became Cosimo’s main contact to reach Russia.
52. The list is in the letter dated 9 May. Cosimo thanked Winius with a diamond, which the
Gand Duke ordered to be sent from Amsterdam. The letter by Winius is followed in the
same year by a letter of Gioacchino Guasconi dated 9 July, in which he listed the gifts
from Winius that the brother Francesco sent from Moscow. The two letters are entirely
reproduced and commented in Bacci, “Cosimo III e Pietro il Grande,” 329–332. For the
exchange between Cosimo and Winius, see also Tatiana Lekhovich and Roberta Orsi
Landini, “Ambascerie russe in Italia nel XVII secolo e rapporti fra ‘teste coronate’,” in
Lo Stile dello Zar. Arte e Moda tra Italia e Russia dal XIV al XVIII secolo, ed. Daniela
Degl’Innocenti and Tatiana Lekhnovich (Genevre-Milan: Skira, 2009), 49–55.
53. It is worth mentioning that through the Russian channel, Cosimo III also received pieces
of Chinese art that were usually not commercialized in Europe. For example, in the first
decade of the eighteenth century, the tsar Peter the Great sent precious kesi textiles (silk
tapestry weave), which during the Qing dynasty were produced only for imperial use. For
this and other important pieces of Chinese art at the Medici court, see Morena, Dalle
Indie orientali alla corte di Toscana, 86–87. Today the kesi are kept in the Museo degli
Argenti at Palazzo Pitti in Florence. For a list of Chinese objects in the collection of Peter
the Great during the age of Cosimo III, see William Richardson, Anecdotes of the Russian
Empire (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1784), 132–133; Brigitte Buberl, ed., Palast
des Wissens: die Kunst- und Wunderkammer Zar Peters des Großen, 2 vols. (München:
Hirmer, 2003).
54. ASF, MdP, 4263, fol. 729. The letter is of course written by the Grand Duke’s Secretary
Apollonio Bassetti. See Bacci, “Cosimo III e Pietro il Grande,” 332–333.
55. For the complete bibliography on Gherardini see Elisabetta Corsi, “Gherardini Giovanni,”
in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, 1999),
liii, 596. For the Italian training of Gherardini and his Chinese engagement see Marco
Musillo, The Shining Inheritance: Italian Painters at the Qing Court, 1699–1812 (Los
Angeles: Getty Research Institute Publications, 2016), 33–38, 158; Marco Musillo, “意
大利Quadratura和18世纪清代北京的视幻画：新探索与方法论的视角” (Italian Quadra-
tura and Qing Illusionistic Painting in Eighteenth-Century Beijing: New Explorations and
Methodological Perspectives), in Wei Shang, papers collected from Palace Museum/Ren-
min University/Columbia workshops on Qing dynasty court theater, Nanging University
Press, 2018.
 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici 185
56. For this commission see Denis Lavalle, “Les décors peints de Giovanni Gherardini pour la
maison professe des Jésuites, à Paris,” in Le Marais mythe et réalité, ed. Jean Pierre Babelon
(Paris: Caisse nationale des monuments historiques et des sites, 1987), 197–200.
57. For the comparison between these two paintings also see the recent article by Guo Mei-
jia, “论17–18 世纪天主教会对清宫西洋画家的选派” (On the European Catholic Church
Dispatching Painters to Qing Court in the 17th–18th Centuries), Gugong bowuyuan yuan-
kan 3, no. 185 (2016): 115–129, 119. The author also proposes a possible Chinese name
employed for Gherardini according to Chinese sources: Nie Yunlong 聂雲龍; see n. 3, 116.
58. It is interesting to notice that the painting of Gherardini is not listed in the inventory made
by the gallery keeper Giovan Francesco Bianchi between 1704 and 1714. See Inventario
generale di tutto quanto fu consegnato a Giovan Francesco Bianchi custode della Galleria
di S.A.R. dopo la morte del di lui genitore, dal 1704 al 1714, Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Flor-
ence, ms. 82, fols. 292–301.
59. “Da S. A. Ducale mandatoci di camera Un quadro in tela alto 3 ¼ e largo 2/3 Dipintovicesi
un Manderino, ò sia altro personaggio Cinese con veste paonazza e berretta rossa in testa
con adorn.te d’albero scorniciato liscio dorato in parte. A Francesco Bianchi custode della
Galleria.” ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 1171, 7 December 1709, fol. 69 r.
60. Francesco I de Medici was the ruler who conceived the Uffizi as a museum beginning in
1580. See Enrica Castellucci and Maria Letizia Marcucci, “I soffitti affrescati dei corridoi
superiori degli Uffizi,” Bollettino della Società di Studi Fiorentini 22 (2013): 384–397.
61. See Marco Chiarini, “La memoria storica attraverso le collezioni di ritratti di Cosimo III
de’Medici,” in Il ritratto e la memoria, ed. Augusto Gentili, Philippe Morel, and Claudia
Cieri Via (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 1993), 217–226, 217–218.
62. The same author mentions Kangxi as “Cam=hi” in the manuscripted inventory titled
Inventario delle preziose antichità ed insigni memorie che si conservano nella magnifica
imperiale Galleria di Sua Maestà Cesarea compilato dal primo guardaroba per ordine di
Bernardino Riccardi in data 1 dicembre 1753, data in cui fu conferito a Giuseppe Bianchi
l’incarico di nuovo custode di Galleria al posto del defunto Francesco Bianchi suo zio,
1753. Here the painting is described as: “Un quadro in Tela . . . dipintovi: più che mezza
figura il ritratto di Cam=hi Imperatore della China con veste lunga all’Indiana e berretto
rosso a imbuto in capo con adornamento fiorinato tinto di nero ed in parte dorato con
cartella sopra scrittovi il di lui nome.” See Biblioteca degli Uffizi, ms. 95, n. 141.
63. Giuseppe Bianchi, Catalogo dimostrativo della Reale Galleria Austromedicea di Firenze
come era nell’aprile dell’anno MDCCLXVIII (Biblioteca Uffizi, ms. 67). For the sketch
representing the last part of the West corridor with Gherardini’s portrait see c. 28. For
a useful study of the manuscript see Piera Bocci Pacini and Francesco Petrone, “Per una
storia visiva della galleria Fiorentina: Il catalogo dimostrativo di Giuseppe Bianchi del
1768,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Classe di Lettere e Filosofia 24,
no. 1 (1994): 397–437. Giuseppe Bianchi also wrote the Ragguaglio delle antichità e rarità
che si conservano nella Galleria mediceo-imperiale di Firenze (Florence: Tommaso Giotti
alla Condotta, 1759); but in this text he only mentions the number of paintings—478—
that composed the two collections, the Aulica and the Gioviana, displaying the portrait of
famous personages; see 43–44. For the Bianchi family that for two centuries was respon-
sible for the Uffizi gallery, see Edward L. Goldberg, Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 9.
64. In 1996 the painting of Gherardini as the sixth of the Serie Aulica, on the side of the win-
dows of the West corridor departing from the roof of the Lanzi’s loggia, was put back on
display in the position occupied in the middle of the eighteenth century. The Aulica was
considerably increased in Cosimo III’s age. In 1762 the West corridor was hit by a fire that
destroyed some paintings, and it is possible that the bad conditions in which the portrait
was found were caused by this event.
65. For the description of the wall paintings and the corridor, see Enrica Castellucci and Maria
Letizia Marcucci, “I soffitti affrescati dei corridoi superiori degli Uffizi,” Bollettino della
Società di Studi Fiorentini 22 (2013): 384–397, 387–388.
66. Caterina Caneva, “Un’imperatore della Cina agli Uffizi,” Il Giornale degli Uffizi 11 (1998): 2.
67. Benedetto Vincenzo de Greyss, “Galleria Imperiale di Firenze,” is the title of the frontis-
piece of the inventory today in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi, n. 4582 F. See
186  Marco Musillo
also the document about drawing n. 4541 in the GDSU Euploos catalogue (www.polomu-
seale.firenze.it/gdsu/euploos/#/autori:@526f875a8a36c410ec80371c), which indicates the
copy in pencil of Gherardini’s portrait by Tommaso Arrighetti, in the catalogue made for
Francis of Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany. On the inside of the front cover is a note in
pencil “Reçeu le 6 me juin 1759.”
68. The inventories are mentioned in the description made for the archive of the Soprint-
endenza in Florence. See the folder n. 09/00035046, 1974.
69. Ibid.
70. All the non-European rulers and personalities are in fact collected in the Collezione Giovi-
ana also displayed in the Uffizi corridors, and of a smaller size. See Silvia Meloni Trkulja,
“La Collezione Iconografica,” in Gli Uffizi. Catalogo generale, vol. II (Florence: Centro Di,
1979), 601–761, 601–602.
71. The Statejnij spisok (Official Report) of Spathary describing his meeting with Kangxi was
translated into English by John Frederick Baddeley in Russia, Mongolia, China; Being
Some Record of the Relations Between Them From the Beginning of the XVIIth Century
to the Death of the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, A.D. 1602–1676, 2 vols. (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 1919), 237–284, 420–422.
72. In the Early Modern era, perhaps the only statement about forms of cultural appropria-
tion that link China to Europe was expressed by Catherine the Great, who, when buying
fragments of mosaics from Rome, affirmed that the high price was fair as in the past the
mosaics served the emperor Claudio, now herself, and in the far future would be taken by
a Chinese emperor. I thank Federica Rossi for signaling me this remarkable passage, which
is quoted in her important book Palladio in Russia: Nikolaj L’vov architetto e intellettuale
russo al tramonto dei lumi (Venice: Marsilio, 2008), 177–178. For the Chinese collections
of the Empress see Maria Menshikova, “Oriental Rooms and Catherine’s Chinese Collec-
tion,” in Treasures of Catherine the Great: From the Hermitage Museum, ed. Geraldine
Norman (St. Petersburg and London: Thames & Hudson, 2001), 201–250.
11 Postscript
Textual Threads and Starry Messengers:
The Global Medici From the Archive
to the Fondaco
Marco Musillo

In a recent book on The Medici and the Levant, Maurizio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio
remind the readers that the epistolary archive of the Medici family alone (the so-called
Mediceo del Principato) comprises 6,400 volumes containing three million letters that
span an impressively long period, from 1537 to 1743.1 If we add to this corpus other
archival and artistic collections from the Florentine libraries and museums, we are faced
with a mare magnum of documents in which finding a working thread is an arduous
enterprise. In addition to such a challenging search, we have to decide if we want to
look at our topics from the perspective of sources collected outside Florence, or if we
want to remain within the magnificent palace of the city’s history and perhaps occa-
sionally approach one of its many windows for a glance over the outside world. Both
choices are valid. The thorny part is that without first standing inside the palace, we will
not be able to make sense of the archival threads that take us outside, around the globe.
Hence, even the first choice requires passing through the stillness of the inside, that
dark bundle of texts which contains the instructions to proceed towards wider spaces
of cultural interactions. This is true not only for Florentine archives but for every
archive in the broad sense of the term—from oral memories preserved in a specific
community to the archive as we visualize it, with rooms, folders, and indexes belong-
ing to a community, city, or nation. Such collections represent more than repositories.
They are like ports where documents are vessels that, once understood, can navigate
across vast oceans. One of these vessels at anchor in the archive is for example a letter
sent by the Japanese ambassador Mancio Itō Sukemazu (c. 1569–1612) to the Grand
Duchess Bianca Cappello (1548–1587) (Figure 11.1).2 Mancio was, together with
Miguel Chijiwa Seizaemon (1569–1632), the legate of the famous Tenshō embassy,
organized by the Jesuit missionaries. In 1585 a group of noble Japanese converted to
Christianity visited the courts of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, before and after meeting
Pope Sixtus V. The text in Japanese and Spanish, written on Japanese red paper, is
a letter of thanks and praise to the Grand Duchess Bianca Cappello. Together with
the Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici, she hosted the Japanese legation that had
just landed in Livorno on 1 March 1585. Among recalling the Tuscan gathering and
expressions of praise is an interesting passage. Mancio evokes the visit to the Grand
Duchess’ cabinet, and without mentioning any specific objects on display, he referred
to them as joyas. He affirms that the collection made the Japanese so ecstatic because
it would be difficult to find so many diverse objects “even divided within the entire
globe” (con dificultad se poderian hallar divididas por todos el mundo). This hyper-
bolic expression points to the fact that the collection is made by specimens from all
over the globe but at the same time that these are objects difficult to find even for a
188  Marco Musillo

Figure 11.1 Don Mancio (Itō Mansho), Letter to Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
1585, Archivio di Stato, Florence.
Source: Francesco Freddolini.

traveler who would search for and select them one by one in diverse countries. So the
astonishment does not come from the fact that many objects exist in the world, but
that they are kept together in one place. It is a perfect and striking metaphor for the
archive from where Mancio’s letter comes from: the documents are all in the same
place but do not “originate” from the same land; they are now Florentine but may
come, as in this case, from a Japanese hand. From the meeting of visions displayed by
this letter, many are the possible paths, and it is up to us to decide if we want to focus
on the raw materials, the politics, the social and cultural issues, or whatever may link
these frameworks together. It is also important to state that in this exchange the Grand
Duchess is as much enigmatic as the Japanese legate: what did she know about Japan,
what objects attracted her attention, what was her taste about the raw materials from
East Asia?3 Both Mancio and Bianca Cappello were foreigners of the space created
by their ephemeral gathering: we don’t know anymore which words were exchanged
between the two, but the letter is evidence that these words pointed to meaningful
issues about world views composed by objects and people travelling.
A document like this one is a powerful reminder that once in the archive, we must
decide about our course of action. We need a beginning, not only in the sense of docu-
ments to start with, but we need an ontological beginning, followed by a narrative
core in order to avoid the universalization of our own study, primarily to avoid the
laughable situation in which a label, for example “global,” is the identity we claim
before considering the real nature and quality of our research. We should, in fact, state
where we are going. With a beginning in mind, any local archival source may become
the magnificent palace from which a journey towards the meaningful outside can be
planned.
 Postscript 189
First it is the beginning, when we account for the existence of something and in turn
for its relationship to the rest: “I want to go to India on an elephant,” one can hear
from Erin E. Benay’s study. She met, in fact, one such animal in her research; it had a
name, Hanno. She knew where to go along a trajectory of knowledge visible through
relations between India and Florence, and not only of documents describing objects
and single events. The authors of the present collection accepted the challenge of the
archive by going into Medici history to see beyond texts and objects, thus building up
the possibility to interpret. Linking commercial indicators to the history of commodi-
ties and within transcultural encounters is, for example, what Corey Tazzara achieved
by displaying a dense framework of ideas that can be even employed to look at today’s
world. And through Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha, Brian Brege demonstrates how diplo-
matic events may represent evidence of material exchanges that substantiated outside
official descriptions, and how fluid and unpredictable were the dialogues connecting
the Italian peninsula to the Middle East and to East Asia.
As shown by these and other authors of this volume, more studies are needed to take
the Medici archival inheritance beyond the borders of Tuscany. It is a movement that
may also contain the danger of thinking about the emblematic weight of only single
cases without being able to reach the bigger picture. How to avoid such an impasse is
explained by Francesco Freddolini in his study on Francesco Paolsanti, the “India­no,”
a Medici agent whom the author follows outside the documents. However, by starting
from them, he delves into exchanges in which the mobilization of knowledge, objects,
and aesthetic practices becomes key to discovering a wider framework. It is a lesson
that requires experience in navigating that mare magnum of sources mentioned earlier,
and that in the end provides new research perspectives on the international legacy of
the Medici.
Although declaring one’s own scholarly identity is empowering, in using the archive
we should not identify our research with a specific field of study such as intellectual
history, art history, or whatever sounds proper to describe our activity. The archive
is a field of fragile indexes (both directories and marks of something not governed by
fixed categories) always exposed to the possibility of getting lost forever or of becom-
ing something different, of persisting for a long time, or of ephemerally sprouting in
the hands of its students. For scholars, being lost among the archive’s indexes is a state
of grace. It is the requirement to find something, to think about the journey to take,
and to rethink the real life of objects through their descriptions. And the objects alone,
even if infused with that anthropological agency so much in fashion today, do not offer
important evidence if devoid of texts and contexts. This is also what characterizes this
volume’s contributions. All authors have kept in mind that international exchanges
of commodities do not automatically indicate transcultural dialogues, no matter how
convoluted the trading channels that distributed objects to different national markets.
The archive is a primary instrument that allows scholarship to position objects in
spaces and contexts of use. The indexes take us to the privileged position of thinking
about our historiographical narrative. We may, for example, collect all the documents
that refer to objects arriving in Florence from different nations across different histori-
cal periods, or hunt for textual typologies, or trace back international connections,
or study groups of documents written in languages that were foreign to Florentine
readers. We may examine and interpret evidence according to conceptual standpoints
originating from different fields of inquiry and with a transnational scope. Often,
even if placed inside a collector’s cabinet, objects remain in motion, as they have not
190  Marco Musillo
received the privilege of being still. In other words, many of the items described in
archival documents have not yet received an identity within established written his-
tory—this is the task of researchers—so they are in a state of indeterminate display.
It follows that writing an art history that simultaneously focuses on diverse cultural
spaces is indeed a matter of perspective and not of objects and subjects of study. It is
a fluid stance that entails a constant engagement with the text and not only with the
object. First comes the description of the object, then the object. We can write, for
example, “a foreign object is foreign,” “a foreign object is now native,” or “a foreign
object is global,” and so on. The great difference among these statements does not
stem from the object but from the text we write and read in connection to spaces and
ephemeral events now lost.
We should also acknowledge that people have always been engaged in international
or interregional exchanges before any archive was established and thus that in the
archive we are not searching for the definitive textual evidence of global exchanges but
for the traces of now-invisible dialogues that made transcultural integrations possible.
And here the term “dialogues” comprehends any form of negotiation and confronta-
tion, from facts of colonial violence and war to symmetrical co-operation producing
peaceful cultural exchanges.
Such confrontations might also have occurred within the space of a single city. Take
the case of Pisa. From medieval times to the early modern period, invisible threads
connected the spoils from battles against the Ottoman empire to, at the beginning of
the twelfth century, booty from the fight to conquer Majorca, then under Muslim con-
trol, or in campaigns in Tunisia and Sicily. As the study of Joseph M. Silva shows, the
presence of the object itself can be problematic in the same way that its absence would
be. In looking at descriptions of the display of Ottoman spoils in the Church of Saint
Stephen in Pisa, or in cogitating on the links between the flag of the galley Sultana
captured in the battle of Lepanto and the medieval bronze griffin of Islamic origin,
placed above the apse of the city’s Cathedral, we are in front of invisible confronta-
tions and striking leaps, from the texts describing objects to real spaces and events.
This kind of leap challenges our methodologies by implicitly requiring us to be philo-
logically aware, for example by placing the individual documents and objects in their
appropriate historiographical position and not considering them exclusive sources of
knowledge. Secondly, it illuminates an important aspect of cultural exchanges that are
also built by fractures, misunderstandings, and failed translations.
This approach helps us to understand that when all the evidence we have collected
is pinned on a world map, there remains the crucial work of interpreting the material,
which is what we had been searching for since the very first day we stepped into the
archive. The same may be said of a Wunderkammer, in which it is not the different
provenance of objects that makes the collection somehow “global,” but the collector’s
capacity to display or narrate diversity, which includes the power to mark what is
unknown. And it is a diversity that in some cases was also formed by naturalia—the
natural specimens—escaping cultural confrontations but returning in fact to cultures
through the archive. The archive, in this case, was constructed through the procedures
developed by the Medici to increase their collections, which created a tension towards
the outside world—a dialogue between museum specimens and collecting practices
illustrated by Federica Gigante engaging with the collection of the Bolognese Fer-
dinando Cospi in relation to Medici patronage. Here the “outside-Florence” or the
 Postscript 191
“outside-Bologna” became ideal spaces that had to be kept neat and efficient like the
display cabinets in the university museums and in the galleries of the princely palaces.
Between the arrival of an “exotic” specimen and the political profit obtained by the
correct display of the object, the neat space is there, ready to include narrations of
colonial conquests, scientific studies, and cultural translations, all of which are domi-
nated by the interplay between knowledge and ignorance.
When “art” crosses cultures, the circumstances of the exchange, and with them
the poetics and the aesthetic of the encounters, become more indistinct. Within this
framework, thinking about labels and use of language is of great relevance, because
the act of naming things is an act of displaying ownership, which often covers up a
great distance from the object just named. It is like the main satellites of Jupiter, named
Astri Medicei (Medicean Stars) by Galileo Galilei in 1610 to celebrate Cosimo II de
Medici. The Medici family, of course, did not own these distant stars, and did not
even know how to describe them, yet they had their name assigned to the four moons
(today called Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto). However, as proven by the title of
the famous text Sidereus Nuncius (the Starry Messenger), in which Galilei reported
this discovery and celebrated his patron, Cosimo could leave his imprint on unknown
planets because a “messenger” (Galilei) patronized by the Medici was able to connect
the space around Jupiter to his Florentine rulers.
In order to be visible, the unknown “stars” of our global histories, whether they be
spices or objects of pietre dure between India and Tuscany, Islamic spoils, paintings
crossing canons, trading contracts, or corals, need a “starry messenger”—a thread
in the archive—that will help us construct the entire framework of exchange, not
a description of the object and its authors. Also, our messenger will show the frac-
tures of the same cultural exchange marking the distance between the known and the
unknown. Once the messenger is identified, we find ourselves in front of a repertoire
that is very similar to an album filled with photographs of family holidays. If we
are lucky, we may recognize the characters, the occasion, and the place. However, if
we did not take part in the events portrayed or no longer remember them, we would
not be able to connect the different images to the places and to the moments of life in
order to form a coherent narrative. Even with emblematic and striking single images,
the album in its entirety would remain silent.
Like a photo album in which the original view is lost, when studying the transcul-
tural and international framework of the Medici we need to search for evidence that
captures the moment in which the object or text passes from one crucial stage to
another, that is, from a state of movement to being recorded in a description. This
may be a written order containing the reason for shipping a diplomatic gift or an
epistle of a merchant informing the collector that something interesting has arrived. If
the exchange was successful, “translations” and official descriptions will follow. The
concepts of mobility and exchange are therefore not only applied to traveling goods
sent by traders from one point to another but to traveling ideas, views, and practices.
For such an endeavor, the places where the exchange is visible in all its facets become
key for linking the diverse threads. As this collection of studies demonstrates, the best
place to start and to finish may be in fact the port and its spaces, where merchants
and goods have short but significant existence. At the end of the sixteenth century in
Livorno, as explained by Tiziana Iannello, the establishment of merchant communities
took shape by means of the Livornine, charters promoted by Ferdinando I de’ Medici,
192  Marco Musillo
which turned the city into an important commercial center collecting and distributing
goods produced and consumed worldwide. One of these valuables passing through
Livorno was coral, a multifaceted natural specimen that, as shown by Iannello, glob-
ally connected diverse centers. We can follow the trajectories of such a luxury com-
modity and find ourselves in Medici Florence, or in Aceh, Indonesia, or in Guangzhou
in south China.
More than a cabinet of curiosities or a princely collection, the archive brings us into
a port seen as a pandokeion, a Greek term designating a space “welcoming and con-
taining everyone and everything”. From this word comes the Arab funduq—in Italian
fondaco—the warehouse, an Arab institution assimilated into the civic life of Medi-
terranean Europe. This was a place where goods were stored before being shipped or
after being received and where foreign merchants resided. It was thus a space charac-
terized by the gathering of information to make business possible and profitable for
everyone.4 The fondaco—and not the collection—is the place that we have to reach
from the archive, its indivisible other half; there is the treasure. This, however, is not a
material treasure but the fortune of receiving the overall view of a meeting place where
cultures finally remain separated in the same room having been granted the right to
be there together. In other words, it is a place that allows us to hear the dissonance of
knowledge and ignorance, which is what could be defined as “real” global exchange.
There is no exchange without the awareness of a missing knowledge, which may
be technological know-how, an aspect of a spoken language that defines the use and
aesthetics of certain objects, or unwritten rules for absorbing foreign artistic forms
into established canons. In turn, exchange is characterized by the tension between
an established local identity and its need to expand, to find new forms. How far can
Florentine ideas, art, and knowledge go? What can be transformed? This is perfectly
explained by Cinzia Sicca’s exploration of the commercial movements established
by Carlo Ginori, who in 1747 organized the shipping of porcelains and pietre dure
to Istanbul. However, Ginori’s business was a key part of a complex framework of
exchange involving English merchants and diplomats—a striking image of a Floren-
tine enterprise composed by non-Florentine elements.
The transcultural and international dimension of an important part of the Medici’s
history analyzed in the present collection of chapters is about dialogues characterized
by new languages and actions for linking diverse forms of knowledge. Their actors—
Medici rulers, agents, traders, artists, and intellectuals—entered into frameworks of
exchange by adapting to circumstances of political, artistic, and mercantile milieus,
which are all important aspects of the same scene. And there they met their foreign
counterparts—other rulers, agents, artists, etc.—who had the same capacity to reach
the territories of exchange. The frameworks explored here also compose a historio-
graphical space in which scholars of Medici history embark on the search for links
that are not always visible or previously experienced. The journey from the archive to
the fondaco remains incomplete, but like the earliest Tuscan merchants crossing the
Mediterranean Sea, one can encounter a dense network of trade that comprehended
the fondachi of different populations such as Catalans, Genoese, Turks, Moors,
Tatars, and Venetians. It is on this fertile ground that new cultural-material dialogues
expanded and perished as they produced yet another set of traces revealing a legacy of
artistic exchanges that was both ephemeral and permanent.
 Postscript 193
Notes
1. Maurizio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio, eds., The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant: Mate-
rial Culture, Diplomacy, and Imagery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Turnhout, Bel-
gium: Brepols Publishers, 2016), 3.
2. ASF, MdP, 4274A.
3. The encounter between the Japanese legates and Bianca Cappello is discussed through the
lenses of a dancing party by Marco Musillo in Tangible Whispers, Neglected Encounters:
Histories of East-West Artistic Dialogues 14th–20th Century (Milan: Mimesis, 2018), 96–98.
4. Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade,
and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 306.
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Index

Note: Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations.

Accademia del Cimento 57, 173 outpost 56 – 57; museums in 51 – 52; see
Accademia della Crusca 173 also Cospi Museum, the
Ahmed I (Sultan) 21 Bonfil, Saul 100, 108
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 49, 57, 60 Boniface VIII (Pope) 1 – 2
Aleppo 9 – 10, 19 – 24; and silk trade 23; see Bonsignori, Stefano 3
also Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha) Borromeo, Carlo 34
Alexis (Tsar of Russia) 171 Botanical Garden of Pisa, the 48, 51 – 52
Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha) 7, 9, 19, Bourchier, Richard 10, 100
189; campaign against Ottoman leaders Bouvet, Jaochim 174
20 – 21, 23; defeat and execution 21; gifts Bracciolini, Poggio 123
for 24 – 26; treaty of alliance with Tuscany Bregans, Benedikt 102
19, 22 – 23; see also Corai, Michel Angelo Bronzino, Agnolo di Cosimo 40, 41, 43
(Fathullah Qurray) Buonarroti, Michelangelo 2
America 2, 4, 8, 10, 78, 85 Buonsignori, Egnazio 124
Amsterdam 75, 77, 79, 85, 167; Cosimo III Buonsignori, Stefano 124
travel to 173 – 174; exemplar of free trade Buontalenti, Bernardo 70
69; hub for Medici collecting 58 – 59 Buti, Ludovico 4
Anatolia 20 – 21, 26
Ancona 85 Cádiz 58, 87
Angelo, Isaac d’ 100, 108 Cağalazad Sinan Pasha 20
Angelo, Moisé d’ 100, 108 Cagliari 89
Armeria, the 48 Callot, Jacques 1
Averani, Giuseppe 102 Cameo of Shah Jahan 151, 151
Ayuki, Khan 169 canale dei navicelli (Livorno) 70
Canbuladoğlu Hűseyn Pasha 20
Baglione, Giovanni 148 Cappello, Duchess Bianca 187
Balatri, Filippo 169 – 170 Cappella dei Principi 10, 149; decoration of
Baldinucci, Filippo 148 146 – 147
Bandini, Giovanni 6 Cardinal of Seville 147
Baptismal Font (Kakkanad) 128 – 130, 130 Carletti, Francesco 93, 121, 124
Barbosa, Duarte 124, 130 Catherine II (Empress of Russia) 170
Bassetti, Apollonio 167 Çemsid Pasha 20
Battle of Piombino 36 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 33
Beijing 7, 167, 178; Jesuits in 170 – 176 China 1, 5, 10, 11; curiosity toward Europe
Bianchi, Francesco 176 7
Bianchi, Giuseppe 177 Christ as the Good Shepherd (Boston)
Bimbi, Bartolomeo 103 136 – 137, 138
Blaeu, Pieter 173 Christ as the Good Shepherd (Florence) 136,
Blaeu, Willam 173 136 – 137
Bologna 5, 49, 176, 191; and Cosimo III Church of Santo Stefano 34; altarpieces
shell collection 59 – 61; as Medici collecting 40 – 43; interior 35; spoils of war in 35
218  Index
Cochin 126, 133, 134, 150 Ferdinando I Dominating the Sea
Cocks, Richard 93 (Franceschini) 6
Collezione Aulica (Uffizi, Florence) 167, 177 Feroni, Francesco 75
Colonha, Angelo 176 fifth element 2, 4, 11
Constantinople see Istanbul Florence 2, 5, 24, 35, 55, 77, 179;
Conti, Niccolo de’ 121, 123 – 124 commercial relations with Goa 10,
Corai, Michel Angelo (Fathullah Qurray) 19, 146 – 147, 152, 154; coral trade in 89,
21 – 24 93, 95; and Cospi Museum 49 – 51; and
coral 5, 7, 192; Florence 89, 93, 95; Genoa Paolosanti family 148 – 150; and pietre
89 – 92, 94 – 95; India 86 – 96; Japan 88, dure 146 – 150; in triad of cities with Pisa
90 – 94; see also red coral (Corallium and Livorno 6 – 7; see also Medici; Portrait
rubrum or nobilis) of Kangxi (Gherardini)
Corsali, Andrea 7, 85, 121, 124, 127 Foggini, Giovanni Batista 9, 156
Cosimo II Receiving the Victorious Kings of fondachi 10, 192
Santo Stefano (Franceschini) 39 Fontana, Fulvio 39 – 40
Cospi, Ferdinado 7, 10, 191; and Cosimo Fontebuoni, Atanasio 7
III 54 – 56, 58 – 61; reliance on the Medici Fontebuoni, Bartolomeo 9, 148, 150
49 – 51 Franceschini, Baldassare (Il Volterrano) 6, 39
Cospi Museum, the: appeal for Medici free port rivalries 70, 72 – 73, 78 – 79; see also
patronage 49 – 51, 61; bizarre items 51 – 56; Livorno, port of
Museo Cospiano 50; natural curiosities
57 – 58; shells 58 – 61; weaponry 56 – 57 Galilei, Galileo 173, 191
Council of Trent 33 – 34, 40 Galleria dei Lavori 111
Couplet, Philippe 170 – 171 Genoa 70, 77, 78, 85, 86; and coral trade
crusade, support for 33 – 34 89 – 92, 94 – 95; free port law (1670) 73
Gherardini, Giovanni 11, 167, 177 – 179;
Cyprus, attack on 23 – 24, 26
career 174 – 176; see also Portrait of
Kangxi (Gherardini)
Da Costa, Tomaso 9
Giambologna 9, 148
Damascus 20, 22
Ginori, Lorenzo 102
Danti, Egnazio 3
Ginori, Marquis Carlo 8, 10, 100 – 105, 110,
Dati, Carlo 173
192; acquisition of villas and workforce
De Brosses, Charles 71 105, 107; family’s interest in porcelain
de Couture, Jacques 88 – 89 102; success in Ottoman market 100,
Derviş Pasha 20 109 – 112
Descrizione del mondo see Polo, Marco Goa 7, 9, 132, 135, 146; cultural relations
Dinello, Vincenzo 149 with Florence 155 – 156; and Paolsanti,
Dish with Ginori coat of arms 102 Indiano 148 – 149; rockeries in 137 – 139;
Doccia factory 103, 105, 107, 111; scale of and Thomas Christians 128 – 130; as
production 110 western enclave 150 – 151
Drummond, Alexander 10, 100 Gollitsyn, Alekseevich 169
Du Paquier, Claude 101, 110 Gollitsyn, Boris 169
Dürer, Albrecht 121 Grand Ducal Tuscany see Medici
Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici
East India Company 8, 10, 87; Anglo-Dutch Overseeing the Fortification of Livorno
rivalry 94; base in Japan 93 – 94; Jewish (Callot) 1, 2
families and 94; quantities and prices for Grand Dukes see Medici
coral 92; trade in East Indies 91 – 93 Grimaldi, Claudio Filippo 170, 172, 174; as
EIC see East India Company linguistic mediator 171 – 172
Elci, Orso D’ 1, 3 Grotto of the Animals 49
Elizabeth I (Queen of Great Britain) 10 Grueber, Johann 9, 173
Empoli, Giovanni da 85, 149; travels through Guangzhou (Canton) 90, 93, 192
India 121, 124, 127 Guardaroba Nuova 26, 124, 176; maps in 3
Enrico I (King of Portugal) 126 Guasconi, Francesco 174
Estremoz 103 Guasconi, Gioacchino 174
Eugenius IV (Pope) 123 Gussoni, Andrea 101
 Index 219
Hama 20 as hub of global interactions 1, 4, 10, 85 – 86;
Hanging (kalamkari) 133, 134 influence on European neighbours 70, 77;
Hanno 121, 189 porcelain trade in 100 – 101, 108, 110,
Hibsch, Federigo 100, 108 111; port of 1, 5, 70 – 73, 78 – 79, 146, 149;
Hirado: coral trade in 90, 93 – 94 rebound of commerce (1675–1680) 75; see
Hollanda, Francisco d’ 121 also Oriental Company of Livorno, the; red
Holy Family with St. Anne and St. John 148 coral (Corallium rubrum or nobilis); reform
Hunger, Christoph Konrad 101 of 1676
Lomellini family 90
India 1, 5, 7, 10, 78, 85, 112, 189, 191; coral London 85 – 87, 89, 91 – 94
86 – 96; Medici interest in 9 – 10; trade in Lorraine-Hapsburg dynasty 101, 103 – 104
luxury goods 146 – 153, 155 – 156; see also
Paolsanti, Francesco (Indiano) Macau 90, 93
Istanbul 7, 8, 10, 100, 109, 192; porcelain Machiavelli, Niccolò 19, 26 – 27
trade 107 – 108, 110 – 112 Madrid 147
Istoria delle Indie Orientali (Maffei) 5 Maffei, Giampietro 5, 125 – 126; account
of Christianity in southern India 126;
Jahangir (Mughal Emperor) 151 Historie delle Indie 126; Indicarum
Jahangirnama, the 150 Historiarum libri 126
Jan III Sobiesky (King of Poland) 171 Magalotti, Lorenzo 9, 103, 173
Japan 1, 85, 110, 150, 188; coral trade 88, Magliabechi, Antonio 173
90 – 94; see also Letter to Bianca Cappello, Mahmoud I (Sultan) 107
Grand Duchess of Tuscany Manuel I (King of Portugal) 49, 121
Jesuits 39, 126, 129, 133, 148, 167, 187; Marco Polo Bible 170
in Goa 135, 139; as Medici intelligence Marseille 70, 77, 86, 95; coral trade 89 – 91;
network 8 – 9, 170 – 173 free port of 72 – 73, 75
Martino, Giovanni di 112
Kangxi (Manchu emperor) see Portrait of Medici: accounts of India travel 121 – 122;
Kangxi (Gherardini) archival repositories 5, 187 – 192; and
Kircher, Athanasius 167, 174, 177; Supreme British maritime expansion 86 – 87;
Monarch of the Sino-Tartar Empire 167, 168 collecting across cultures 4, 8, 11, 102,
Kuyuco Murad Pasha 20 121, 146, 190; and coral trade 89 – 91,
93 – 95; defenders of Christendom 6,
Lala Mehmed 20 43 – 44, 57; and exotic collectibles 48 – 50,
Langlois, Peter 100, 108 61 (see also Cospi Museum, the); and India
La Rondinella 108, 110 121, 122, 126 – 127, 127, 129, 132 – 135,
lavoranti delle Cerniere 111; see also Ginori, 140, 146 – 147, 156; interactions among
Marquis Carlo Florence, Pisa, Livorno 6 – 7; and Jesuit
Lazzeri, Francesco 154 intermediaries with China 170 – 171, 173;
Leopold I (Holy Roman emperor) 171 and porcelain trade 101 – 103, 109 (see also
Leo X (Pope) (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Ginori, Marquis Carlo); support of private
Medici) 49, 121 mercantile trade 155 (see also Paolsanti,
Lepanto, battle of 190 Francesco (Indiano)); vision of global
Lepanto coalition 23 network 1 – 4, 7 – 11, 147, 156, 157
Letter to Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Medici, Alessandro de’ (archbishop of
Tuscany 187 – 188, 188 Florence, later Pope Leo XI) 49, 56, 121
Levant Company, the 87 Medici, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ 49, 51 – 52,
Ley, James 91 56 – 58, 61
Ligozzi, Jacopo 1 – 2, 11, 110, 148, 153, Medici, Cosimo de’ (the Elder) 48, 124
154 – 155, 156 Medici, Cosimo I de’ 3, 70, 124; and
Lisbon 85, 87, 90, 146 – 147, 149 ecclesiastical architecture 34; link between
Livornina (Livornine), the 70 – 72, 85, 192 medieval Pisa cathedral and modern
Livorno 6, 151, 154, 172, 187; British presence church 38; as modern crusader 36; ties to
in 5, 8, 10, 86 – 87, 93; cargo of shells 58 – 59; Roman church 33 – 34; see also Church
coral trade in 91, 93 – 94, 191 – 192; decline of Santo Stefano; Order of Santo Stefano
of long-distance commerce (1669–1775) 74; (Cavalieri di Santo Stefano)
220  Index
Medici, Cosimo II de’ 2, 39, 71, 78, 155, 191 Naples 85, 90, 94
Medici, Cosimo III de’ 50, 103, 109, 140, Napoletano, Filippo 155
176 – 177; and China 169 – 171, 172 – 174; Nativity of Christ, The (Bronzino) 41
donation to Cospi Museum 54 – 55; and Navicelli, the 172
India 9, 156; interest in shells 58 – 61; and Navigationi et viaggi (Ramusio) 88; and
port of Livorno 75, 77; transformation of Thomas Christians 124
Tuscan waterways 172 – 173; travels across Nerčinsk, treatise of 170 – 171
Europe 167, 173; see also Portrait of Nigetti, Matteo 155
Kangxi (Gherardini); reform of 1676
Medici, Costanza de’ 49 objects: agency of 4 – 5; and contexts 5, 7,
Medici, Ferdinando de’ (Grand Prince) 50 188 – 190; multidirectional mobility of
Medici, Ferdinando I de’ 6, 9, 101, 6 – 8; see also Cospi, Ferdinado; specific
132 – 133, 148 – 149; anti-Ottoman objects
strategy 21 – 24, 26 – 27, 39 (see also Ali Őirats 170
Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha); Order Order of the Golden Fleece, the 33
of Santo Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo Order of St. Stephen see Order of Santo
Stefano)); collecting, interest in 48, 121, Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo Stefano)
155; mission to India 146 – 147; overseas Order of Santo Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo
trade, interest in 89, 93, 95; and port of Stefano) 24, 37, 48, 57, 70 – 71; triennial
Livorno 1, 70 – 71, 87, 157, 192; support convocation 39 – 40; see also Church of
for texts on India 125 – 126 (see also Santo Stefano; Medici, Ferdinando I de’,
Maffei, Giampietro); see also Livornina anti-Ottoman strategy
(Livornine), the Oriental Company of Livorno, the 10, 108,
Medici, Ferdinando II de’ 10, 57, 140, 148, 112
172 – 173 Orpheus 153, 153
Medici, Francesco I de’ 48 – 49, 70, 104, 121, Ottoman Empire 7, 27, 33, 43, 190;
187, 192; and development of Tuscany’s acquisition of luxury goods 100, 107 – 108,
ports 87; “F,” the 103 – 104; see also 110; Barbary corsairs 33, 71; and free port
Cappella dei Principi of Livorno 70; Medici, relations with 1, 3;
Medici, Francesco Maria de’ 103 rebellion against 9, 19 – 24, 26; see also Ali
Medici, Giuliano de’ 127 Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha)
Medici, Leopoldo de’ 173
Medici, Lorenzo de’ (the Magnificent) 48 Pagni, Giovanni 57
Medici, Luisa, Anna Maria de’ 102 – 103 painting on stone (pietra paesina) 155
Mediceo del Principato 187 Palazzo Pubblico (Bologna) 49, 61
Mediterranean Sea, commercial importance Pandolfini, Cristofano 149
of 85 Paolsanti, Antonio 148, 150, 155
Melon and an Octagonal Cup on a Silver Paolsanti, Francesco (Indiano) 100, 155,
Charger, an Upturned Bowl Behind 189; family background 148; list of luxury
(Munari) 106 goods sent to India (1620) 150, 154; list of
Meyer, Cornelius 172 pietre dure works sent to India (1621) 153,
Michelini, Famiano 172 154 – 155; trader in luxury goods 146 – 147,
Mitelli, Agostino 176 149 – 153, 154 – 155
Montaigne, Michel de 70 Paolsanti, Francesco di Giovanni (The Elder)
Monument to St. Francis Xavier (Foggini) 156 100; influence at Medici court 148 – 149
Moscow 167, 169, 171 – 172, 174 Parte del India Dentro al Gange Ho(ggi)
Mughal court 7, 10, 146, 150 – 152, detta Indostan 124, 125
154 – 156; and appreciation for Paul III (Pope) 33
luxury objects 156; and collection of Peter the Great (Tsar of Russia) 11, 169, 171;
Western art 152; and production and refusal to meet Jesuits 172
commercialization of western objects 146 Philip II (Spain) 36
Munari, Cristoforo 103, 106 Philip III (Spain) 27, 147
Muqarrab, Kahn 151 pietre dure 7, 146, 149; Mughal collection of
muraqqa’ 54, 55 10, 146, 153 – 156, 191; as quintessential
Mylapore 121 – 123, 126 – 127, 130 – 134, 140 courtly artistic production 155; for the
Mylapore Casket 130 – 132, 131 Sultan 100, 107 – 112, 192
 Index 221
Pisa 85, 169, 172; Islamic spoils, display of Rome 44, 71, 123, 128, 148, 171
9, 36, 190; maritime history of 34; and Rumphius, Georg Eberhard 59
Medici, global projection of 5, 6 Russia 3, 5, 7, 177; Medici link to 20,
Pisa cathedral 36 – 39, 121, 190; construction 169 – 172, 174, 179
36; representation of Jerusalem in 38; see
also Pisa Griffin, The Sacconi, Carlo Ventura 103
Pisa Griffin, The 36 – 38, 37 Safavids 20 – 21, 26
Pitcher 109 Saint Laurent, Johannon de 107
Pius IV (Pope) 33 Saint Stephen, Church of 190; see also
Pius V (Pope) 36, 42 Vasari, Giorgio
Poggetti, Francesco 111 St. Stephen, Knights of 6, 9
Polo, Marco 123 – 124 Saint Thomas Basilica, museum of (Chennai)
Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve 127, 129
Ambassadors (Ligozzi) 1 – 2, 3 Saint Thomas Christians see Thomas
porcelain 7, 10; as luxury good 100, Christians
107 – 112; as mark of Medicean identity Saint Thomas Mount, church of (Chennai)
100, 101 – 107, 112; soft-paste 103 – 104 127, 128
Pordenone, Odorico da 122 – 123 Salla delle Carte Geografiche 3
Portigiani, Domenico 121 Santella, Tirso González de 9
Portoferraio 85 Saris, Captain John 93
Porto Pisano 70, 85 Sassetti, Filippo 5, 7, 9, 124, 134, 148;
Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini) 11, 167, description of Thomas Christians 121,
174, 175; as accord among different voices 127, 132
178 – 179; comparison to scroll in Palace Schaack, Petrus 173
Museum in Beijing 176; installation in the Scott, Captain John 87
Uffizi 176 – 177, 178 Seizaemon, Miguel Chijiwa 187
Portrait of a Man With Basket of Porcelain Seville 85, 147
(Sacconi) 104 Shah Abbas 20 – 21
Portrait of Shah Jahan 153 – 154, 152 Shells of various kinds. . . 59 – 60, 60
Portuguese: coral fishery 90 – 91; in India Sixtus V (Pope) 187
121, 126 – 127, 129, 135, 139, 150 Spathary, Nicolae Milescu 171, 178
Princes of the Blood 105 SS. Annunziata 150, 154
Stati, Cristoforo 148
Qaitbay (Sultan of Egypt) 49 Stephen, Francis 100, 108
Qing dynasty (China) 11, 167 – 170, 173; Still-Life With Blue and White Porcelain
construction of hydraulic facilities 172; (Munari) 106
trade and conflict with Russia 170 Stoning of Saint Stephen (Vasari) 42 – 43, 42
quadraturismo, school of 175 – 176 Sukemazu, Mancio Itō 187
Quiccheberg, Samuel 60 Sultana, the: flag of 190
Susini, Giovanni Francesco 149, 154
Racein, Jean-François 111 Syria 19, 24; rebellion in 20 – 21; strategic
Ragusa 89 importance 23; see also Ali Pasha
Ramusio 88, 90 (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha)
red coral (Corallium rubrum or nobilis) 10,
86, 91, 94; in Eurasian cultural milieu Tabarca island 90
87 – 89, 94; mentions in travel accounts 88; Tafur, Pedro 124
trade in the Mediterranean 89 – 91; see also Talamone 85
East India Company Tarugi, Sallustio 147
Redi, Francesco 57 Thomas, Saint: Biblical narrative 127,
reform of 1676 69; disembedding the 130 – 132; relics 10, 122, 124, 126 (see
marketplace 76 – 78 also Mylapore Casket); see also Thomas
Relazione della China 9 Christians
Richecourt, Emmanuel de 108 Thomas Christians 121, 122, 126, 132, 139,
rockeries 137 – 139 140; as congenial to Christian ideals 123;
Roe, Sir Thomas 93 and early modern maps of India 124, 140;
Romano, Giulio 121 as inversion of “authentic” Christianity
222  Index
123; merging of Hindu and Christian Varchi, Benedetto 2
iconographies 127 – 129, 130 – 132, 134, Varthema, Lodovico di 85, 124
135 – 139; St. Thomas altars 127 – 128; St. Vasari, Giorgio 1, 34, 36; depiction of
Thomas crosses 127; see also Polo, Marco martyrdom of St. Stephen 42 – 44; plans for
Tortoiseshell and silver casket 135 church in Pisa 34
Tozzetti, Giovanni Targioni 102, 148 Vendor of Porcelain, A see Portrait of a Man
Trattato della Direzione de’ Fiumi (Michelini) With Basket of Porcelain (Sacconi)
7, 172 Venice 23, 27, 85, 101, 124, 149;
travel literature 123; blurring line between and commercial organization in the
clerical and secular 124, 127; mixture of Mediterranean 77 – 78; Far East, relations
exotic and familiar in 139; as new genre 122; with 8, 70
see also Navigationi et viaggi (Ramusio) Verbiest, Ferdinand 171
Tray 111 Vezzi, Francesco 101
Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Free Trade, the Viceroy of Mexico 147
100, 107 View of the Ginori Villa at Doccia 107
Tribuna, the 48, 56 – 57 View of the Port of Leghorn
Tripoli 20, 22 (Gaffuri) 156
Vignola, Jacopo 128
Udine, Giovanni da 121 Vinta, Belisario 148
Uffizi, the 26, 48, 155, 167; Galleria Virgin and Child 136
dei Lavori 26, 154 – 155; Serie Aulica Viviani, Vincenzo 173
176 – 177; Tesoro dei Granduchi (formerly
Museo degli Argenti) 122, 134 – 136; Winius, Andreas 167, 174, 178
see also Guardaroba Nuova; Portrait of Wool Guild of Florence, the 75
Kangxi (Gherardini) Wyche, Sir Peter 86
Ursis, Sabatino de 172
Xu Guangqi 172
Valle, Pietro della 150
Valori, Baccio 127 Zsitvatorok 20