Listen to the audio of this program.
The first full-length study of the impact of European contact with the Americas on Italian Renaissance art and culture, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence demonstrates that the Medici grand dukes of Florence were not only great patrons of artists but also early conservators of American culture.
In collecting New World objects such as featherwork, codices, turquoise, and live plants and animals, the Medici grand dukes undertook a "vicarious conquest" of the Americas. As a result of their efforts, Renaissance Florence boasted one of the largest collections of objects from the New World as well as representations of the Americas in a variety of media. Through a close examination of archival sources, including inventories and Medici letters, Lia Markey uncovers the provenance, history, and meaning of goods from and images of the Americas in Medici collections, and she shows how these novelties were incorporated into the culture of the Florentine court.
This volume presents a vivid exploration of the New World as it existed in the minds of the Medici and their contemporaries. Scholars of Italian and American art history will especially welcome and benefit from Dr. Markey’s insight.
Imagining the Americas will be available for purchase in the Newberry Bookstore at the discounted price of $65 (list price $79.95). Your purchase helps support the Newberry Library and this program’s featured author.
Download a PDF flyer of this program to post and distribute.
Lia Markey is Director of the Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University and has held fellowships at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.