Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia [1 ed.] 2020005110, 2020005111, 9780367467289, 9781003030690

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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 making 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 For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Researchin-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 COREY TAZZARA

69

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

1.2 1.3 1.4 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

4.6 4.7

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 Jacopo Ligozzi, Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors, 1591, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 3 View of the Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 4 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Ferdinando I Dominating the Sea, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence. 6 Church of Santo Stefano, interior, Pisa. 35 The Pisa Griffin, c. 12th century, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Pisa. 37 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Cosimo II Receiving the Victorious Knights of Santo Stefano, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence.39 Bronzino, The Nativity of Christ, c. 1564, Church of Santo Stefano, Pisa. 41 Giorgio Vasari, Stoning of Saint Stephen, c. 1569–71, Church of Santo Stefano, Pisa. 42 Cospi Museum, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, in Legati, Mvseo Cospiano, Bologna 1677. 50 Salt-cellar, wood, and mother-of-pearl, India. Museo Civico Medievale, Bologna, inv. no. 1921. 52 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292. 53 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292. 53 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 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 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

7.2 7.3 7.4

7.5 7.6

7.7 7.8

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Egnazio Danti, PARTE DEL INDIA DENTRO AL GANGE HO detta INDOSTAN, 1574–75, Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 125 Anonymous, Saint Thomas, sculptural fragment, c. sixth century (?). Saint Thomas Mount church, Chennai. 128 Anonymous, Saint Thomas [left] and King Gondophares [right], sculptural fragments, c. sixth century. Basilica of Saint Thomas collection, Chennai. 129 Anonymous, Baptismal Font, base c. ninth century; bowl seventeenth–eighteenth century. Saint Thomas Christian Museum, Kakkanad.130 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 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Commercial indicators in Genoa, 1655–1684 (five-year averages). Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1665–1674 (five-year averages). Ship arrivals in Livorno by provenance, 1667–1675 (three-year totals). Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1670–1884 (five-year averages). Ship arrivals by provenance, 1670–1680 (five-year totals).

73 74 74 76 76

Abbreviations

AGL ASB ASF ASP ASL BU BUB MAP MdP MM Corp. Rel.

Archivio Ginori Lisci Archivio di Stato, Bologna Archivio di Stato, Florence Archivio di Stato, Pisa Archivio di Stato, Livorno Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Florence Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna Medici Archive Project Mediceo del Principato Miscellanea Medicea 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, University 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 eCampus University of Novedrate (Como). Her research focuses on early modern commercial, 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 former 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 architecture 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 Proctorship 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 Professor 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 Universitaria 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 Washington 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 submitting 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 understanding 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 complex, 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 element” and acknowledged its role as commercial and political connector on the Eurasian 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 geopolitical 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 persuasively 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 transcultural interactions. This volume contributes to this historiographical stream by exploring 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 Guardaroba (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 exploration 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 increasingly complex transcultural arena of the early modern period has helped us understand 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 networks 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 networks.”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 encompassing 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 multifaceted 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 distinctively 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 ontological 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 suppliers, 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 Florence. 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 reimagined 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 personifications 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 infrastructural 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 narrative. 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 position 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 information 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 represented 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 understand 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 transnational interactions. World history and global history do not always coincide. As Sebastian 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 courtiers and merchants established connections across cultures to mobilize objects along old and new trade routes enables us to understand Florence, the Medici, their courtiers, 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 different 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 merchants, 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 Tuscan 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 surprisingly, 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 religious 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 Tazzara 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 European 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 interest 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 position 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 different 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 canons 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 maintaining 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 narrative 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 Ferdinand 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 Transformation 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 occidentali. E che possano partire dal porto di Liuorno, e che nell’andare e tornare, possano toccare 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 Pennsylvania 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 (especially 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 Florence, 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 Wonder 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 Inventories: 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 Representation of Nature in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2001); Anne Gerritsen 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 Clarifications,” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996): 373. 19. See for instance: Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Florence: 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, several 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 History?” 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: Commodities 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, Tangible 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 Production 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 Chinese 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 History 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 Eighteenth 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 Ferdinando,” 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 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; 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: University of Toronto Press, 2005); Elizabeth Horodowich, The Venetian Discovery of America: Geographic Imagination and Print Culture in the Age of Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge 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 Atlantic 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 ritirarmi 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 Kunsthistorischen 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, “Contrasting 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 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. 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 Century,” 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 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 Orientalism, 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 movement” see Stephen Greenblatt, “A Mobility Studies Manifesto,” in Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, 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 Navigations, 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 Castignoli, 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 University 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 suddenly 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, Machiavelli warned, generally fails to happen. In 1605–1607, Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha, selfproclaimed 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 marzolino,” 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 (provincial 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 relationship 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 Damascus 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 negotiations 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 twopronged 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 praising 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 content. 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 Tuscany 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 position 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 existence 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 independent Syria. For the Tuscans, Ali Pasha’s compromising defiance made true reconciliation 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 intervention 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 Mediterranean 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 Habsburgs 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 campaigns 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. Benefitting 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 Tuscany 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 diplomatic coup, one made possible by offering appropriate gifts. This was doubtless facilitated 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 everything 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 coherence. 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 seemingly 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 prioritize 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 invasion 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 modest 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 luxury 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 cunningly. 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 rhetorical 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, especially 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 dismemberment 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 Project 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 William 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 Venetians 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 Ottoman administration and the conflicts in Syria up to Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha’s execution 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 activities, and the transformation of the Ottoman Empire see Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman 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 University 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 AbuHusayn, The View from Istanbul: Ottoman Lebanon and the Druze Emirate in the Ottoman 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 honoratissima 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 salutiamo 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 Masters,” 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 Granducato 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 Consequences,” 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 disturbare ogni disegno et ogni forza che il Turco volesse tentare contro al Sig.r [Ali] Giambollat [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 Granducato 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 Florence (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 Granducato 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 Rothman, 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 Institute 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 figure 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 Governatr. 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 tamburo 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 Lettere, 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 Florence, 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 statutes 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 perpetuity.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 territory 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 Mediterranean 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 operative of providing security to Christian coastlines, mercantile vessels, and trade posts. Although membership was restricted to nobles, primarily from Tuscany, the knighthood 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 architecture, 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 ecclesiastic 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 Stefano 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 taking 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 ceremony 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 treatise on ecclesiastic architecture that took into consideration the new liturgical practices 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 Convent . . . 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 displayed 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 nineteenthcentury 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 crusaders.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 knighthood’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 decorative 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 intolerance.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 cathedral (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 conclusion 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 pisanorum 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 stylized 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 “Egyptian letters.”36 Although the sculpture could not be easily seen, it could be heard. Anna Contadini 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 hollow-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 reliquary, the Camposanto, was built to enshrine fifty-three galleys’ worth of the sanctified 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 baptistery, 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 trophies. 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 knighthood’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 procured 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 spectacle 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 spectacle.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 procession 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 galvanizing 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 performances 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 technical 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 celebratory 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 repeatedly, to cleanse the sins of the knights and to recommit them to their faith and mission. 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 martyrdom 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 earlier 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 Christianity, 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 conflation 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 executioners. 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 religious 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 Reformation 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 Unction 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 possession 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 communicated 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 particular 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 military victories for Cosimo I occurred on that saint’s feast day, 2 August: The Battle of Montemurlo 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 marittima 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 Baracchini (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 Cavalieri 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 prestige 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 survivors 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 Publishing, 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 Cavalieri,” in Livorno e Pisa: Due città e un territorio nella politica dei Medici (Pisa: NistriLischi 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 communion, 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 faccia 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 Blewitt, 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 Contest 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 Spolia in Late Antiquity and Contemporary Perception,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation 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 (London: 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 Contadini, 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 Studies 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 egiziache: 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, Volterrano: 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 victory. 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 Warburg 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 political agenda from at least the sixteenth century onwards. Francesco I’s—and later Ferdinando 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 exhibiting 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 compulsory stop for travellers.9 The Medici were also keen keepers of exotic animals. Living 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 animals 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 century 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 relationship 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 diplomatic 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 maritime 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 promote 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 outside 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 counterparts.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 contours 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 Mediterranean 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 collections 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 particularly affectionate towards his family’s old friend Cospi—once writing that “I consider 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 seventeenthcentury 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 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.

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 Addition, 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 donations 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 “Damascened knives . . . placed under every niche of the lower shelf”44 in the Tribuna in Florence. 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 “German 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 scimitar 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 craftsmanship, 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. Stephen, 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 missionaries,”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 conducted 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 curiosity 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 seriously 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 patronage, 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 controversially acquired in 1682.81 In April 1683, a few months after receiving Rumphius’s collection 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 prepared 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 bettermade 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, Marchese, 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 willing, 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 reproduction 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 specimens 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 function 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 boundaries. 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 showcase 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 Pubblico of Bologna, the Medici engaged in a very conscious campaign of self-sponsorship, 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 indirect 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 granducali–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 Culture 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 Seventeenth-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, Encounter 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 principato 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, Collecting 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 risparmio, 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 Academic 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 Sultan 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 Garden 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: Ferdinando 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 Aldrovandi, 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, Memorie, 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 During 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 Tongiorgi 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, “Importing, 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 Medici 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 compagnia 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 Antonio 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 sperimentale 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 Giovanni Pagni, Lettere di Giovanni Pagni medico, ed archeologo pisano a Francesco Redi in ragguaglio 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 Marketing 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 presence 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 presence 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 Targioni Tozzetti, Catalogo delle Produzioni naturali che si conservano nella Galleria Imperiale 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 nicchi 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 discusses 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 universitatis singulas materias et imagines eximias etc. (Munich, 1565), classis tertia, inscriptio 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 distortions, to use a modern term. Trading companies and navigation restrictions limited market development, as Adam Smith argued in his famous critique of the mercantilist 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 modern 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 organized 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 maxims 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 unilaterally 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 Mediterranean 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 thirdparty 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 achievement. 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 policy 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 pursued a policy more in tune with the chaotic conditions prevailing in the Mediterranean 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 Livornina, 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 religious 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 important 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 redistribution 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 ‘merchants’ 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 protect 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 merchants 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 farflung 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 governing 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 outlook 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, inhospitable 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 keeping 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 businessmen 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 mercantilist 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 commerce. 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 incentives 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).

1655–69 1660–64 1665–69 1670–74 1675–79 1680–84

Anchorage

Carati (lire)

Navi (Arrivals)

Cabotage (Arrivals)

Navi (Departures)

Cabotage (Departures)

14693 13213 13291 21280 22181 21341

223860 268999 307478c 286601c 282237e 264304d

215 220 179b

1082 1293 1353c

127 187 251 297b 323 312

944 1201 1615c 685b 1411c 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 conduct 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 revenue, 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 associated 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 harbor. Anchorage revenue, which affected local cabotage as well as long-distance ships, Table 5.2 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1665–1674 (five-year averages).

1665–69 1670–74 % Change

Ship Arrivals

Ordinary Revenue (lire)

Anchorage Revenue (lire)

Stallage Revenue (lire)

Extraord. Revenue (lire)

Victual Revenue (lire)

802 551 –31%

748545 800748 +7%

85735 88511 +3%

362237 318915 –12%

815579 775053 –5%

353254.8 352559 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 1670–72 1673–75 % Change (thru 1672) % Change (thru 1675)

230 108 54 –53% –77%

197 172 120 –13% –39%

92 61 59 –34% –36%

29 18 23 –38% –21%

19 21 8 10% –56%

566 379 264 –33% –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 background, had made a fortune in Amsterdam and returned to Tuscany as a kind of commercial 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 transaction 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 fiveyear 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 position 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).

1670–74 1675–79 1680–84 % change (thru 1679) % change (thru 1684)

Ship Arrivals

Stallage (and Ordinary)

Anchorage

Extra

551 749 911 36% 65%

1119663 1476971 1424851 32% 27%

88511 91307 88123 3% 0%

775053 930537 1008227 20% 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 commerce (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 1675–79 % Change

138 271 97%

257 228 –11%

104 79 –24%

27 120 344%

25 51 107%

551 749 36%

1671–75 1676–80 % Change

130.2 325.8 150%

223.92 252.88 13%

101 88 –13%

32 109 241%

20.28 54.92 171%

507.4 831 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 citizenship 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 entangled in matters of personal identity and affiliation; they were not about goods in the abstract. Much commercial competition was over attracting merchants from specific 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 economistic 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 hinterland.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 willingness 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 commodity 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 minimum. In modern times the process of commodification has more often involved the privatization of hitherto public goods or the transformation of real objects into simplified 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 competition 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 Mediterranean, 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 powerful 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 “translate” Italian methods into the larger world.40 Successful colonial trading projects ultimately 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 history of liberalism but also reconstructed the Grand Duchy’s global city. If the dynamics 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 portsof-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 documentation 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 documents; 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 possible 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 commerce, 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 surprisingly, the cargo lists that accompanied the Florentine portate show some substantial 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 pepper), 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 documents do not indicate anything about exports—a double loss for Livorno, which reexported 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 shipping 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 combined with the ordinary (import/export) duties to get a better sense of the overall commercial 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 compiling 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 comparison 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 multipliers: 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 convoy 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 Capitalism (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 JointStock 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 commerce, vol. 2 (Paris: Jacques Estienne, 1723), 1777–1778; and in general, see Corey Tazzara, “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 universitaires 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 medicea (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: NistriLischi 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 predicatori 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 Fischer and Stefano Villani, “ ‘People of Every Mixture’: Immigration, Tolerance and Religious Conflicts in Early Modern Livorno,” in Immigration and Emigration in Historical Perspective, 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 Boundaries 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 documents 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 Toscana 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 Genovese (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 History 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, Corruption: 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 storia e letteratura, 2007), part 1; Guillaume Calafat, “Un mer jalousée: Juridictions maritimes, 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 mediterraneo 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 eighteen 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 possibility of more impersonal forms of trade must lead to more modern (i.e. corporate) business 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, Merchants, 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). Fortunately, 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 disagree 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 procedures 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 uneven 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 extraEuropean commercial exchanges.1 Especially from the mid-sixteenth century until the first decades of the seventeenth century, the trades from the Italian peninsula influenced 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 international 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 Mediterranean to northern Europe, the Levant, the Maghreb, and the Baltic Sea. Not surprisingly, 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, epitomized by ports like Lisbon, Seville, Amsterdam, or London, represented the great commercial 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,” foreigners 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 markets 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, confirms Livorno’s strategic role as an international free port linked to large-scale commercial 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 Holland, 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, especially 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 Mediterranean 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 commodity 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 business, 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 Mediterranean 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 Mediterranean.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 British 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 appreciated 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 century, 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 purposes, 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 seventeenthcentury 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 saffron 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-ofeight, 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 fashioned 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 commercial 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 Tunisia 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 commercial network embracing the spice routes and following a series of maritime trajectories 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, becoming 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 freedom 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 shipment 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 Commander and Company of Merchants of London trading to the East Indies, concerning 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 Company 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 British 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 quantities 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 Marseilles, 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 message 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 minute 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 turning 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 Masulipatam 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 factory 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 transactions 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 politics 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 maritime 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 commercial 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 undeveloped 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 precious 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 midseventeenth 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 markets. 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 commercial 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 Mediterranean 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 commercial 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 viaggiatori 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 fiorentini 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, egemonie (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 Democratica 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 Conway,” 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 (Firenze: 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, Toscana 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 Mineccia, “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 (London: 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 Conflict, 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 settembre 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 Foundation 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 (London: 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: British 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 Erikson, 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 Century,” 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 Transformation from Marine Animal into Jewellery and Craftwork,” in A Biohistory of Precious Corals, 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 registered 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 Connections in the Early Modern World, ed. Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (London: Routledge, 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 Reinvestigation 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; Roderich 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 Singapore 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, Familiarity. 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 genovese 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 Curiosties 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 merchants 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 earthenware 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 acumen. 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 subjects 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 Bourchier, the British Governor of Bombay.7 Ginori represents, therefore, the eighteenth-century counterpart to Francesco Paolsanti 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. Notwithstanding 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 produced luxury goods made from precious metals, rock crystal, richly coloured hardstones, 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 composed of a white, slip-covered frit paste rather than porcelain. Marco Spallanzani’s archival research has shown that sixteenth-century inventories do not clearly distinguish 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, primarily 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 chemistry 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 entrepreneurial skills, and a sense for what was fashionable and marketable on the international 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 Collection. 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 Oriental 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 collections 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. Magalotti 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 LorraineHapsburg dynasty.

Ginori Porcelain 105

Figure 7.3 Mark on underside of pilgrim flask (Florence, Medici factory), ca. 1682–1685, softpaste 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, Limoges, 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 display 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 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).

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 manufactory 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 independence from Vienna. The idea of perpetuating Medici traditions was also recognizable 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 porcelain sculptures reproducing pieces from the tradition of late Renaissance and Baroque Florentine sculpture made by court sculptors such as Giambologna, Foggini, and Soldani 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 following 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 “Oriental 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 interfered 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 imagination 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 (Alexandretta) laden with silk cloth, coral artefacts, and silverware, which were then distributed 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 Rondinella 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 introduced to the Court and to those Ministers capable of easing their mission.37 A successful 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 Florentine 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 investment 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 diameters 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 handpainted (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 collezione 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-andwhite 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 Worinnen 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 decorations 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 navigations, 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 manuscript still survive in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Figure 7.8), but it is not possible 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 “Chicchere 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 warehouse 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 piastre, 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 scrutiny. 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 former 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 representatives 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 associated 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 Doccia 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 Fanciullacci 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 porcelain could be refashioned as cross-cultural luxury commodity by establishing connections to foreign productions and consumers’ milieus, while remaining faithful to a centuries-old local tradition. Quintessentially Florentine, and at the same time competing 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 particolarmente 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 introducendosi 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 direttamente 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 facilitating 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 coordinated 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 representatives; 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 beautiful 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 company 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 (London: 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 Dowall, “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, “Chinese 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 potteries. 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 service 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 porcellane 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 (Florence: 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 responsible 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 ostentatious 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 comunemente 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 Fabbrica 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 Porcellane 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 published 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 fervore 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 Introducendoli 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 fiducia 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 Doccia. 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 rhinoceros sent to Leo X by the Portuguese king inspired the canonical woodcut by Albrecht 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 following 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 centuries, 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 fragrant 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 maneating 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 assemblage 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 Thomas’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 readers away from geography and toward ethnography, but these ideas were not necessarily 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 conventionally 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 Christians” 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 “Concerning 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 tradition 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, authorial voice that he employs to describe (at great length) the tarantulas of India’s tropical 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 experiences 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 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Unlike the missionary accounts that preceded his Descrizione, Marco Polo is more eclectic in his approach to popular beliefs and customs; while Odorico da Pordenone condemns the heretical practices of Thomas Christians, 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, republished 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 experience 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 perpetuated 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 commodities 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 Navigationi 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 Coromandel 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, including “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 Coromandel 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 “Malipur.” 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 edition 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, devotion 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 pyramids, 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 passage 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 published 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 success 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 information 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 volumes 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 resurrection (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 Chennai (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 prevalence 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 Renaissance 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 architectural 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 strategy from a much earlier date. Liturgical devices often accompanied the granite crosses that serve as the simple decorative 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 fragments, 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 iconography 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 decorative 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 Barbosa’s arrival in Mylapore that was used as a precious container for these relics (Figure 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 resurrection 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. Previously 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 Hinduism.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 missionaries, or alternately commissioned by a missionary from a local artist, this unusual 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 casket 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 particular 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 untranslatable, 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 collections 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 tracing 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 description 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 textile 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 washing 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 stylus (kalam) and that could have served a number of functions, including that of a bedcover.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 traders and influenced by the designs such merchants provided, textiles like the Tommasan kalamkari were neither Indian, nor were they European in manufacture. Like a wellpreserved 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 contributed 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 production of luxury items and was familiar to wealthy Europeans.75 Nevertheless, large sheets of tortoiseshell were harder to manufacture and involved heating the pliant layers 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 represent 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 established 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 statuettes 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 Buddhist 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 (Figure 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 rockeries. 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 decoration 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 supporting 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 “connective 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 recognizable 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 enduring 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 stylistic 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 communicating 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 written 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 pilgrimage site and succulent fruit groves cohabitate. Similarly, textiles and statuettes from “Christian India” appeared alongside other curiosities in the Medici collections during 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 “heathen” 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 Biblioteca 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 Castello,” 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 pensato 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 Ferdinando,” 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 CrossCultural 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, Corriere grosso, Martin pescatore, Ran verde, [Black-winged stilt, ring-necked plover, Eurasian kingfisher, ‘edible frog’] c. 1577–1587, Fondo Mediceo), and Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Ornithologiae (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 AustrianHabsburg Inventories: A Case-Study of the Sixteenth-Century Term,” Journal of the History 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 Christianity 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 translated and published by Sir Henry Yule in 1913, Cathay and the Way Thither: being a collection 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 (University 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 University 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 sections 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 Ethnography 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. Harris, 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 imagined 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 Compagnia 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 pietre 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. Harris 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 Coromandel 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 probable (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 correspondence, 25 January 2017). 46. In Kerala Saint Thomas churches (and Saint Thomas crosses) exist in Kakkanad, Malayattoor, 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 silversmiths, 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 Convergence,” 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 Fracanzio 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 seventeenth 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 Literature 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 iconographies were not altogether uncommon in this context; see Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge 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: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 47. 61. See Keating and Markey, “ ‘Indian’ Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inventories,” 283–300; Barbara Karl, “ ‘Marvelous Things Are Made with Needles’: Bengal colchas 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 Tommaso 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 chronicles 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 Century: 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: Technique and Trade in Early Indian Dyed Cotton Textiles, ed. Mattiebelle Gittinger (Washington, 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 containers 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 Mission 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 Foundation, 1991). Several of these types of ivories also appeared in the exhibition (and catalogue), 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 celebrated 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 Collection, 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: European 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 aesthetic 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 commercial 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 Florentine artworks exported; on the artists involved; on how the Paolsanti family orchestrated 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 collecting 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 relation 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 Ferdinando 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 Cappella 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 understood 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 permission 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 fervent 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 interest in Asia. Ultimately, the artistic objectives officially promoted by Ferdinando I concealed more lucrative ambitions for the Medici, and the design, construction, and decoration 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 commercial route to Asia, the Medici promoted and tacitly supported individual endeavors 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 luxury goods with India? Before we delve into his activity, some background on his family, 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, Paolsanti 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, Ferdinando I assigned him the responsibility of entertaining relations with gem merchants and goldsmiths. For instance, in 1602, Francesco Paolsanti paid the goldsmith Bastiano 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 sculptures for the Grand Duke, as shown by a receipt dated 2 August 1604, for a marble 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, according 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. Annunziata (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 destined for the decoration of the Cappella dei Principi. All letters sent to Florence by Cristofano 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” decorated 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 institutionalized trading route from Livorno to Goa, Paolsanti and the Grand Ducal advisors understood that private trading initiatives in precious stones were generally tolerated.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 However, 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 endeavors. 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 Florence 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 understand 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 “present 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 European 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 conventions. 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 westernization,”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 commodities 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 attributed 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 similarities 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 (Figure 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 sculpture 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 prominently, 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 Florentine 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 hypotheses 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 figure; 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 unquestionable 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 similarities 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 laboratories of the “Galleria dei Lavori,” which were established in the Uffizi by Ferdinando 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 independent 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 seventeenth 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 commercial 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 developed 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 luxury 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 Battista 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 subcontinent, endorsed by the Medici and carried out by their courtiers since the beginning 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 Medici’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 created the circumstances for such trade was the port of Livorno, a constantly fluctuating 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 Antonio 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 portogallo. 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

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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 medagli 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 Per spese di detto Gabelle, porto, et altro Per spese a Liuorno N. 2. 1 Cassa marcata della detta dentroui vno Tauolino di Pietra commesso che costò Per piu spese gabelle Porto, et altro Per spese a Liuorno N. 3. 1 Cassa marcata della detta dentroui vno tauolino di Pietra commesso, che costò Per piu spese di Douana gabelle porto, et altro Per piu spese a Liuorno N. 4. 1 Cassa dentroui n.o 14 scatole numerate come segue n. 2. 1 scatola dentroui dua quadri di Pietra dipintj n. 3. 1 scatola dentroui vn quadro di Pietra dipinto n. 4. 1 scatola dentroui vn quadro di Pietra dipinto n. 5. 1 scatola dentroui vn quadro con un vccello di Pietra commesso

scudi 103 scudi 14 scudi 1 scudi 260 scudi 20 scudi 1 scudi 300 scudi 26 scudi 1 scudi 12 scudi 6 scudi 2 scudi 10

160  Francesco Freddolini n. 6. 1 scatola con vn quadro di Pietra commesso n. 7. 1 scatola dico cassetta con vn quadretto di Pietra commesso con 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 n. 9. 1 scatola dentroui noue quadri di Pietra paesi n. 10. 1 scatola con dua Paesini di Pietra n. 11. 1 scatola con dua qadrettj di Pietra n. 12. 1 scatola con dua quadrettj di Pietra n. 13. 14. 2 scatole on due Cane d’Alemagna per mio conto n. 15. 1 scatola con vn Calamaio di Pietra commesso Per spese di detta Cassa Gabella, et altro 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 n. 17. 1 scatola con dua quadri di Pietra Paesinj n. 18. 1 scatola con dua quadri di pietra dipintj n. 19. 1 scatola con vn quadro di Pietra dipinto 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 In detta cassa vno scriptorio di Pietre commesse bello fatto in Galleria In detto scriptorio vi e nelle cassette vno Scatolino di n.o A dentrouj 50 para di Perle dell’Magagnatj Piu uno scatolino di n.o C dentrouj il Ritratto dell’ mogor guarnito d’argento Piu vno scatolino con vn Vccello di Pietra commesso 9 scatolini di Ritratti di Dame per mio conto Per spese di detta Cassa Gabelle Porto, et altro Per spese a Liuorno N. 6. 1 Cassa dentroui vno scriptorio di Pietre commesse fatto in Galleria posto in Liuorno N.o Roma 1. Cassetta con 22 specchj di piu sorte da sole et fuoco

scudi 10 scudi 50 scudi 8 scudi 10 scudi 4 scudi 4 scudi 4 scudi 6 scudi 10 _________ scudi 862 scudi 4 scudi 4 scudi 6 scudi 4 scudi 60 scudi 54 scudi 25 scudi 10 scudi 4 scudi 10 scudi 1 scudi 104 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 commercio e diplomazia: mercanti fiorentini verso l’India alla ricerca di pietre orientali per la Cappella 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, Florence,” 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 Fürstenkapelle 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. unnumbered, 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 compagnia 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 Florence (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 seventeenth 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 Paolsanti”: “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 fortuni 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 Herwarth 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 Austattung 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 Artist 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 naturale 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 Baglioni 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 HolyWater 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 University 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 Florentine 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 European Bridgeheads 1500–1800: Festschrift in Honour of Prof. K. S. Mathew, ed. Pius Malekandathil 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 several 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 contaminations 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 Trivellato, 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 consumò 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 Occidentali, 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, Bartolomeo,” 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 mandato 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 Nunziatella 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 comerciais 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 specchio 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,” Muqarnas 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 February 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, “Origine 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 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 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”, exhibition catalogue, ed. Alessandro Cecchi, Lucilla Conigliello, and Marzia Faietti (Florence: Giunti, 2014), 142; Hannah Baader and Gerhard Wolf, “A Sea-to-Shore Perspective: Littoral and Liminal Spaces of The Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean,” Mitteilungen 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 movement” see Stephen Greenblatt, “A Mobility Studies Manifesto,” in Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, 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 brothers 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 (Figure 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 Apollonio 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 chancellery, 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 identified. 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 memorabilium 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 performed 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 Italian 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 Russia.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 rulers 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 developed 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 fluctuating 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 connecting 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, involving 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 scientific 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 mediator, 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 chosen 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 governed 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 December 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 commercial 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 subjects 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 crucial 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 collection 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 interesting 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 European 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 knowledge 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 displaying 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 curiosities, 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 Gioacchino 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 Winius.51 In 1683, Winius replied to Cosimo through Gioacchino in Amsterdam by sending 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 valuable 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 regarding 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, without 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 showing 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 pictorial renderings of philosophy and law.65 In Bianchi’s sketch of this part of the corridor, 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 narratives constantly reshaped interpretation of the links that connected very diverse cultural 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 statement 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 knowledge is never completely acquired, and the flow of information coming from commercial 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 professionally 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 celebration. 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 studied 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, auspiciis Leopold Primi, Roman, Imper. semper Augusti, Munificentißimi Mecænatis (Amsterdam: Janssonius, Weyerstraet, 1667), illustration between page 112 and 113. 4. The entire letter is reproduced in Francesco Bacci, “Cosimo III e Pietro il Grande,” Giornale 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 Dionyszoon,” 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 travelled for musical performances in England, France, Germany, and Austria. See Daniel L. Schlafly, “Filippo Balatri in Peter the Great’s Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 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 exhaustive bibliography on the Russian legations in seventeenth-century Tuscany, see Stefano Villani, “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 section “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: Martinus 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; Níbùchuˇ Tiáoyuē) was signed on August 27, 1689. For the most comprehensive study of the treatise see Yoshida Kinichi, 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 Manuscript 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 constantly 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 contained 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 picture 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 Mathematics 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 SinoWestern 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 asiatiques 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 Verbiest, “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 Columbia, 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 seventeenth 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 orientali 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 tralasciata navigazione del suo Tevere (Rome: Lazzari Varese, 1685; the first edition, not complete, 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 Libraries in Peking as a Medium for Western Learning in Seventeenth and Early EighteenthCentury 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 traduit 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 (Florence: 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 relazione 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 Generale (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: Centro 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 Guasconi 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 Quadratura and Qing Illusionistic Painting in Eighteenth-Century Beijing: New Explorations and Methodological Perspectives), in Wei Shang, papers collected from Palace Museum/Renmin 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 Meijia, “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 yuankan 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, Florence, 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 responsible 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 windows 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 frontispiece 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.polomuseale.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 Soprintendenza 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 Gioviana 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 appropriation 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 Collection,” 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 occasionally 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 belonging 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 hyperbolic 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 documents 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 commodities 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 diplomatic 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 becoming 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 historical 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 history—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 confrontation, 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 control, 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 confrontations 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 philologically 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 Ferdinando 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 dominated 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 fractures 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 transcultural 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, globally connected diverse centers. We can follow the trajectories of such a luxury commodity 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 containing everyone and everything”. From this word comes the Arab funduq—in Italian fondaco—the warehouse, an Arab institution assimilated into the civic life of Mediterranean 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 characterized 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 Florentine 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 historiographical 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: Material Culture, Diplomacy, and Imagery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Turnhout, Belgium: 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 Accademia della Crusca 173 Ahmed I (Sultan) 21 Aldrovandi, Ulisse 49, 57, 60 Aleppo 9 – 10, 19 – 24; and silk trade 23; see also Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha) Alexis (Tsar of Russia) 171 Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha) 7, 9, 19, 189; campaign against Ottoman leaders 20 – 21, 23; defeat and execution 21; gifts for 24 – 26; treaty of alliance with Tuscany 19, 22 – 23; see also Corai, Michel Angelo (Fathullah Qurray) America 2, 4, 8, 10, 78, 85 Amsterdam 75, 77, 79, 85, 167; Cosimo III travel to 173 – 174; exemplar of free trade 69; hub for Medici collecting 58 – 59 Anatolia 20 – 21, 26 Ancona 85 Angelo, Isaac d’ 100, 108 Angelo, Moisé d’ 100, 108 Armeria, the 48 Averani, Giuseppe 102 Ayuki, Khan 169 Baglione, Giovanni 148 Balatri, Filippo 169 – 170 Baldinucci, Filippo 148 Bandini, Giovanni 6 Baptismal Font (Kakkanad) 128 – 130, 130 Barbosa, Duarte 124, 130 Bassetti, Apollonio 167 Battle of Piombino 36 Beijing 7, 167, 178; Jesuits in 170 – 176 Bianchi, Francesco 176 Bianchi, Giuseppe 177 Bimbi, Bartolomeo 103 Blaeu, Pieter 173 Blaeu, Willam 173 Bologna 5, 49, 176, 191; and Cosimo III shell collection 59 – 61; as Medici collecting

outpost 56 – 57; museums in 51 – 52; see also Cospi Museum, the Bonfil, Saul 100, 108 Boniface VIII (Pope) 1 – 2 Bonsignori, Stefano 3 Borromeo, Carlo 34 Botanical Garden of Pisa, the 48, 51 – 52 Bourchier, Richard 10, 100 Bouvet, Jaochim 174 Bracciolini, Poggio 123 Bregans, Benedikt 102 Bronzino, Agnolo di Cosimo 40, 41, 43 Buonarroti, Michelangelo 2 Buonsignori, Egnazio 124 Buonsignori, Stefano 124 Buontalenti, Bernardo 70 Buti, Ludovico 4 Cádiz 58, 87 Cağalazad Sinan Pasha 20 Cagliari 89 Callot, Jacques 1 Cameo of Shah Jahan 151, 151 canale dei navicelli (Livorno) 70 Canbuladoğlu Hűseyn Pasha 20 Cappello, Duchess Bianca 187 Cappella dei Principi 10, 149; decoration of 146 – 147 Cardinal of Seville 147 Carletti, Francesco 93, 121, 124 Catherine II (Empress of Russia) 170 Çemsid Pasha 20 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 33 China 1, 5, 10, 11; curiosity toward Europe 7 Christ as the Good Shepherd (Boston) 136 – 137, 138 Christ as the Good Shepherd (Florence) 136, 136 – 137 Church of Santo Stefano 34; altarpieces 40 – 43; interior 35; spoils of war in 35

218  Index Cochin 126, 133, 134, 150 Cocks, Richard 93 Collezione Aulica (Uffizi, Florence) 167, 177 Colonha, Angelo 176 Constantinople see Istanbul Conti, Niccolo de’ 121, 123 – 124 Corai, Michel Angelo (Fathullah Qurray) 19, 21 – 24 coral 5, 7, 192; Florence 89, 93, 95; Genoa 89 – 92, 94 – 95; India 86 – 96; Japan 88, 90 – 94; see also red coral (Corallium rubrum or nobilis) Corsali, Andrea 7, 85, 121, 124, 127 Cosimo II Receiving the Victorious Kings of Santo Stefano (Franceschini) 39 Cospi, Ferdinado 7, 10, 191; and Cosimo III 54 – 56, 58 – 61; reliance on the Medici 49 – 51 Cospi Museum, the: appeal for Medici patronage 49 – 51, 61; bizarre items 51 – 56; Museo Cospiano 50; natural curiosities 57 – 58; shells 58 – 61; weaponry 56 – 57 Council of Trent 33 – 34, 40 Couplet, Philippe 170 – 171 crusade, support for 33 – 34 Cyprus, attack on 23 – 24, 26 Da Costa, Tomaso 9 Damascus 20, 22 Danti, Egnazio 3 Dati, Carlo 173 De Brosses, Charles 71 de Couture, Jacques 88 – 89 Derviş Pasha 20 Descrizione del mondo see Polo, Marco Dinello, Vincenzo 149 Dish with Ginori coat of arms 102 Doccia factory 103, 105, 107, 111; scale of production 110 Drummond, Alexander 10, 100 Du Paquier, Claude 101, 110 Dürer, Albrecht 121 East India Company 8, 10, 87; Anglo-Dutch rivalry 94; base in Japan 93 – 94; Jewish families and 94; quantities and prices for coral 92; trade in East Indies 91 – 93 EIC see East India Company Elci, Orso D’ 1, 3 Elizabeth I (Queen of Great Britain) 10 Empoli, Giovanni da 85, 149; travels through India 121, 124, 127 Enrico I (King of Portugal) 126 Estremoz 103 Eugenius IV (Pope) 123

Ferdinando I Dominating the Sea (Franceschini) 6 Feroni, Francesco 75 fifth element 2, 4, 11 Florence 2, 5, 24, 35, 55, 77, 179; commercial relations with Goa 10, 146 – 147, 152, 154; coral trade in 89, 93, 95; and Cospi Museum 49 – 51; and Paolosanti family 148 – 150; and pietre dure 146 – 150; in triad of cities with Pisa and Livorno 6 – 7; see also Medici; Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini) Foggini, Giovanni Batista 9, 156 fondachi 10, 192 Fontana, Fulvio 39 – 40 Fontebuoni, Atanasio 7 Fontebuoni, Bartolomeo 9, 148, 150 Franceschini, Baldassare (Il Volterrano) 6, 39 free port rivalries 70, 72 – 73, 78 – 79; see also Livorno, port of Galilei, Galileo 173, 191 Galleria dei Lavori 111 Genoa 70, 77, 78, 85, 86; and coral trade 89 – 92, 94 – 95; free port law (1670) 73 Gherardini, Giovanni 11, 167, 177 – 179; career 174 – 176; see also Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini) Giambologna 9, 148 Ginori, Lorenzo 102 Ginori, Marquis Carlo 8, 10, 100 – 105, 110, 192; acquisition of villas and workforce 105, 107; family’s interest in porcelain 102; success in Ottoman market 100, 109 – 112 Goa 7, 9, 132, 135, 146; cultural relations with Florence 155 – 156; and Paolsanti, Indiano 148 – 149; rockeries in 137 – 139; and Thomas Christians 128 – 130; as western enclave 150 – 151 Gollitsyn, Alekseevich 169 Gollitsyn, Boris 169 Grand Ducal Tuscany see Medici Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici Overseeing the Fortification of Livorno (Callot) 1, 2 Grand Dukes see Medici Grimaldi, Claudio Filippo 170, 172, 174; as linguistic mediator 171 – 172 Grotto of the Animals 49 Grueber, Johann 9, 173 Guangzhou (Canton) 90, 93, 192 Guardaroba Nuova 26, 124, 176; maps in 3 Guasconi, Francesco 174 Guasconi, Gioacchino 174 Gussoni, Andrea 101

Index 219 Hama 20 Hanging (kalamkari) 133, 134 Hanno 121, 189 Hibsch, Federigo 100, 108 Hirado: coral trade in 90, 93 – 94 Hollanda, Francisco d’ 121 Holy Family with St. Anne and St. John 148 Hunger, Christoph Konrad 101 India 1, 5, 7, 10, 78, 85, 112, 189, 191; coral 86 – 96; Medici interest in 9 – 10; trade in luxury goods 146 – 153, 155 – 156; see also Paolsanti, Francesco (Indiano) Istanbul 7, 8, 10, 100, 109, 192; porcelain trade 107 – 108, 110 – 112 Istoria delle Indie Orientali (Maffei) 5 Jahangir (Mughal Emperor) 151 Jahangirnama, the 150 Jan III Sobiesky (King of Poland) 171 Japan 1, 85, 110, 150, 188; coral trade 88, 90 – 94; see also Letter to Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany Jesuits 39, 126, 129, 133, 148, 167, 187; in Goa 135, 139; as Medici intelligence network 8 – 9, 170 – 173 Kangxi (Manchu emperor) see Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini) Kircher, Athanasius 167, 174, 177; Supreme Monarch of the Sino-Tartar Empire 167, 168 Kuyuco Murad Pasha 20 Lala Mehmed 20 Langlois, Peter 100, 108 La Rondinella 108, 110 lavoranti delle Cerniere 111; see also Ginori, Marquis Carlo Lazzeri, Francesco 154 Leopold I (Holy Roman emperor) 171 Leo X (Pope) (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici) 49, 121 Lepanto, battle of 190 Lepanto coalition 23 Letter to Bianca Cappello, Grand Duchess of Tuscany 187 – 188, 188 Levant Company, the 87 Ley, James 91 Ligozzi, Jacopo 1 – 2, 11, 110, 148, 153, 154 – 155, 156 Lisbon 85, 87, 90, 146 – 147, 149 Livornina (Livornine), the 70 – 72, 85, 192 Livorno 6, 151, 154, 172, 187; British presence in 5, 8, 10, 86 – 87, 93; cargo of shells 58 – 59; coral trade in 91, 93 – 94, 191 – 192; decline of long-distance commerce (1669–1775) 74;

as hub of global interactions 1, 4, 10, 85 – 86; influence on European neighbours 70, 77; porcelain trade in 100 – 101, 108, 110, 111; port of 1, 5, 70 – 73, 78 – 79, 146, 149; rebound of commerce (1675–1680) 75; see also Oriental Company of Livorno, the; red coral (Corallium rubrum or nobilis); reform of 1676 Lomellini family 90 London 85 – 87, 89, 91 – 94 Lorraine-Hapsburg dynasty 101, 103 – 104 Macau 90, 93 Machiavelli, Niccolò 19, 26 – 27 Madrid 147 Maffei, Giampietro 5, 125 – 126; account of Christianity in southern India 126; Historie delle Indie 126; Indicarum Historiarum libri 126 Magalotti, Lorenzo 9, 103, 173 Magliabechi, Antonio 173 Mahmoud I (Sultan) 107 Manuel I (King of Portugal) 49, 121 Marco Polo Bible 170 Marseille 70, 77, 86, 95; coral trade 89 – 91; free port of 72 – 73, 75 Martino, Giovanni di 112 Medici: accounts of India travel 121 – 122; archival repositories 5, 187 – 192; and British maritime expansion 86 – 87; collecting across cultures 4, 8, 11, 102, 121, 146, 190; and coral trade 89 – 91, 93 – 95; defenders of Christendom 6, 43 – 44, 57; and exotic collectibles 48 – 50, 61 (see also Cospi Museum, the); and India 121, 122, 126 – 127, 127, 129, 132 – 135, 140, 146 – 147, 156; interactions among Florence, Pisa, Livorno 6 – 7; and Jesuit intermediaries with China 170 – 171, 173; and porcelain trade 101 – 103, 109 (see also Ginori, Marquis Carlo); support of private mercantile trade 155 (see also Paolsanti, Francesco (Indiano)); vision of global network 1 – 4, 7 – 11, 147, 156, 157 Medici, Alessandro de’ (archbishop of Florence, later Pope Leo XI) 49, 56, 121 Medici, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ 49, 51 – 52, 56 – 58, 61 Medici, Cosimo de’ (the Elder) 48, 124 Medici, Cosimo I de’ 3, 70, 124; and ecclesiastical architecture 34; link between medieval Pisa cathedral and modern church 38; as modern crusader 36; ties to Roman church 33 – 34; see also Church of Santo Stefano; Order of Santo Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo Stefano)

220  Index Medici, Cosimo II de’ 2, 39, 71, 78, 155, 191 Medici, Cosimo III de’ 50, 103, 109, 140, 176 – 177; and China 169 – 171, 172 – 174; donation to Cospi Museum 54 – 55; and India 9, 156; interest in shells 58 – 61; and port of Livorno 75, 77; transformation of Tuscan waterways 172 – 173; travels across Europe 167, 173; see also Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini); reform of 1676 Medici, Costanza de’ 49 Medici, Ferdinando de’ (Grand Prince) 50 Medici, Ferdinando I de’ 6, 9, 101, 132 – 133, 148 – 149; anti-Ottoman strategy 21 – 24, 26 – 27, 39 (see also Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha); Order of Santo Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo Stefano)); collecting, interest in 48, 121, 155; mission to India 146 – 147; overseas trade, interest in 89, 93, 95; and port of Livorno 1, 70 – 71, 87, 157, 192; support for texts on India 125 – 126 (see also Maffei, Giampietro); see also Livornina (Livornine), the Medici, Ferdinando II de’ 10, 57, 140, 148, 172 – 173 Medici, Francesco I de’ 48 – 49, 70, 104, 121, 187, 192; and development of Tuscany’s ports 87; “F,” the 103 – 104; see also Cappella dei Principi Medici, Francesco Maria de’ 103 Medici, Giuliano de’ 127 Medici, Leopoldo de’ 173 Medici, Lorenzo de’ (the Magnificent) 48 Medici, Luisa, Anna Maria de’ 102 – 103 Mediceo del Principato 187 Mediterranean Sea, commercial importance of 85 Melon and an Octagonal Cup on a Silver Charger, an Upturned Bowl Behind (Munari) 106 Meyer, Cornelius 172 Michelini, Famiano 172 Mitelli, Agostino 176 Montaigne, Michel de 70 Monument to St. Francis Xavier (Foggini) 156 Moscow 167, 169, 171 – 172, 174 Mughal court 7, 10, 146, 150 – 152, 154 – 156; and appreciation for luxury objects 156; and collection of Western art 152; and production and commercialization of western objects 146 Munari, Cristoforo 103, 106 Muqarrab, Kahn 151 muraqqa’ 54, 55 Mylapore 121 – 123, 126 – 127, 130 – 134, 140 Mylapore Casket 130 – 132, 131

Naples 85, 90, 94 Napoletano, Filippo 155 Nativity of Christ, The (Bronzino) 41 Navicelli, the 172 Navigationi et viaggi (Ramusio) 88; and Thomas Christians 124 Nerčinsk, treatise of 170 – 171 Nigetti, Matteo 155 objects: agency of 4 – 5; and contexts 5, 7, 188 – 190; multidirectional mobility of 6 – 8; see also Cospi, Ferdinado; specific objects Őirats 170 Order of the Golden Fleece, the 33 Order of St. Stephen see Order of Santo Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo Stefano) Order of Santo Stefano (Cavalieri di Santo Stefano) 24, 37, 48, 57, 70 – 71; triennial convocation 39 – 40; see also Church of Santo Stefano; Medici, Ferdinando I de’, anti-Ottoman strategy Oriental Company of Livorno, the 10, 108, 112 Orpheus 153, 153 Ottoman Empire 7, 27, 33, 43, 190; acquisition of luxury goods 100, 107 – 108, 110; Barbary corsairs 33, 71; and free port of Livorno 70; Medici, relations with 1, 3; rebellion against 9, 19 – 24, 26; see also Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha) Pagni, Giovanni 57 painting on stone (pietra paesina) 155 Palazzo Pubblico (Bologna) 49, 61 Pandolfini, Cristofano 149 Paolsanti, Antonio 148, 150, 155 Paolsanti, Francesco (Indiano) 100, 155, 189; family background 148; list of luxury goods sent to India (1620) 150, 154; list of pietre dure works sent to India (1621) 153, 154 – 155; trader in luxury goods 146 – 147, 149 – 153, 154 – 155 Paolsanti, Francesco di Giovanni (The Elder) 100; influence at Medici court 148 – 149 Parte del India Dentro al Gange Ho(ggi) detta Indostan 124, 125 Paul III (Pope) 33 Peter the Great (Tsar of Russia) 11, 169, 171; refusal to meet Jesuits 172 Philip II (Spain) 36 Philip III (Spain) 27, 147 pietre dure 7, 146, 149; Mughal collection of 10, 146, 153 – 156, 191; as quintessential courtly artistic production 155; for the Sultan 100, 107 – 112, 192

Index 221 Pisa 85, 169, 172; Islamic spoils, display of 9, 36, 190; maritime history of 34; and Medici, global projection of 5, 6 Pisa cathedral 36 – 39, 121, 190; construction 36; representation of Jerusalem in 38; see also Pisa Griffin, The Pisa Griffin, The 36 – 38, 37 Pitcher 109 Pius IV (Pope) 33 Pius V (Pope) 36, 42 Poggetti, Francesco 111 Polo, Marco 123 – 124 Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors (Ligozzi) 1 – 2, 3 porcelain 7, 10; as luxury good 100, 107 – 112; as mark of Medicean identity 100, 101 – 107, 112; soft-paste 103 – 104 Pordenone, Odorico da 122 – 123 Portigiani, Domenico 121 Portoferraio 85 Porto Pisano 70, 85 Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini) 11, 167, 174, 175; as accord among different voices 178 – 179; comparison to scroll in Palace Museum in Beijing 176; installation in the Uffizi 176 – 177, 178 Portrait of a Man With Basket of Porcelain (Sacconi) 104 Portrait of Shah Jahan 153 – 154, 152 Portuguese: coral fishery 90 – 91; in India 121, 126 – 127, 129, 135, 139, 150 Princes of the Blood 105 Qaitbay (Sultan of Egypt) 49 Qing dynasty (China) 11, 167 – 170, 173; construction of hydraulic facilities 172; trade and conflict with Russia 170 quadraturismo, school of 175 – 176 Quiccheberg, Samuel 60 Racein, Jean-François 111 Ragusa 89 Ramusio 88, 90 red coral (Corallium rubrum or nobilis) 10, 86, 91, 94; in Eurasian cultural milieu 87 – 89, 94; mentions in travel accounts 88; trade in the Mediterranean 89 – 91; see also East India Company Redi, Francesco 57 reform of 1676 69; disembedding the marketplace 76 – 78 Relazione della China 9 Richecourt, Emmanuel de 108 rockeries 137 – 139 Roe, Sir Thomas 93 Romano, Giulio 121

Rome 44, 71, 123, 128, 148, 171 Rumphius, Georg Eberhard 59 Russia 3, 5, 7, 177; Medici link to 20, 169 – 172, 174, 179 Sacconi, Carlo Ventura 103 Safavids 20 – 21, 26 Saint Laurent, Johannon de 107 Saint Stephen, Church of 190; see also Vasari, Giorgio St. Stephen, Knights of 6, 9 Saint Thomas Basilica, museum of (Chennai) 127, 129 Saint Thomas Christians see Thomas Christians Saint Thomas Mount, church of (Chennai) 127, 128 Salla delle Carte Geografiche 3 Santella, Tirso González de 9 Saris, Captain John 93 Sassetti, Filippo 5, 7, 9, 124, 134, 148; description of Thomas Christians 121, 127, 132 Schaack, Petrus 173 Scott, Captain John 87 Seizaemon, Miguel Chijiwa 187 Seville 85, 147 Shah Abbas 20 – 21 Shells of various kinds. . . 59 – 60, 60 Sixtus V (Pope) 187 Spathary, Nicolae Milescu 171, 178 SS. Annunziata 150, 154 Stati, Cristoforo 148 Stephen, Francis 100, 108 Still-Life With Blue and White Porcelain (Munari) 106 Stoning of Saint Stephen (Vasari) 42 – 43, 42 Sukemazu, Mancio Itō 187 Sultana, the: flag of 190 Susini, Giovanni Francesco 149, 154 Syria 19, 24; rebellion in 20 – 21; strategic importance 23; see also Ali Pasha (Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha) Tabarca island 90 Tafur, Pedro 124 Talamone 85 Tarugi, Sallustio 147 Thomas, Saint: Biblical narrative 127, 130 – 132; relics 10, 122, 124, 126 (see also Mylapore Casket); see also Thomas Christians Thomas Christians 121, 122, 126, 132, 139, 140; as congenial to Christian ideals 123; and early modern maps of India 124, 140; as inversion of “authentic” Christianity

222  Index 123; merging of Hindu and Christian iconographies 127 – 129, 130 – 132, 134, 135 – 139; St. Thomas altars 127 – 128; St. Thomas crosses 127; see also Polo, Marco Tortoiseshell and silver casket 135 Tozzetti, Giovanni Targioni 102, 148 Trattato della Direzione de’ Fiumi (Michelini) 7, 172 travel literature 123; blurring line between clerical and secular 124, 127; mixture of exotic and familiar in 139; as new genre 122; see also Navigationi et viaggi (Ramusio) Tray 111 Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Free Trade, the 100, 107 Tribuna, the 48, 56 – 57 Tripoli 20, 22 Udine, Giovanni da 121 Uffizi, the 26, 48, 155, 167; Galleria dei Lavori 26, 154 – 155; Serie Aulica 176 – 177; Tesoro dei Granduchi (formerly Museo degli Argenti) 122, 134 – 136; see also Guardaroba Nuova; Portrait of Kangxi (Gherardini) Ursis, Sabatino de 172 Valle, Pietro della 150 Valori, Baccio 127

Varchi, Benedetto 2 Varthema, Lodovico di 85, 124 Vasari, Giorgio 1, 34, 36; depiction of martyrdom of St. Stephen 42 – 44; plans for church in Pisa 34 Vendor of Porcelain, A see Portrait of a Man With Basket of Porcelain (Sacconi) Venice 23, 27, 85, 101, 124, 149; and commercial organization in the Mediterranean 77 – 78; Far East, relations with 8, 70 Verbiest, Ferdinand 171 Vezzi, Francesco 101 Viceroy of Mexico 147 View of the Ginori Villa at Doccia 107 View of the Port of Leghorn (Gaffuri) 156 Vignola, Jacopo 128 Vinta, Belisario 148 Virgin and Child 136 Viviani, Vincenzo 173 Winius, Andreas 167, 174, 178 Wool Guild of Florence, the 75 Wyche, Sir Peter 86 Xu Guangqi 172 Zsitvatorok 20