Florence and the Holy Roman Empire in the Sixteenth Century: Material Culture and Artistic Exchange

Fascinating online lecture from the Courtauld Research Forum looking at the effect of a wedding in 1566 on the cultural exchanges between Florence and the Holy Roman Empire.

Adriana Concin led us through some of the themes of the Phd she is working on which looked at the wedding of Francesco de Medici and Johanna of Austria, how Florence  used its cultural capital to raise it’s status in the negotiations, how those negotiations led to an exchange of ideas and artistic practice and how the event introduced the courtiers of the Holy Roman Empire to Florentine art leading to them starting to collect it.

I had not known anything about this and was entranced. It’s so logical that if two courts and mixing in this was that they would exchanges ideas and, just like any of us going on a holiday, how the Austrians would want to take things they had seen back home with them.

Most intriguing was the idea that the artists of the day, including Vasari and Bronzino, built and decorated arches and monuments to decorate the route that Johanna took through the city. We only have descriptions of these, a few possible drawings and the frescos in the room in which she was receipt in the Palazzo Vecchio. Just imagine the spectacle!

 

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