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THE MEDICI ARCHIVE PROJECT
THE FLORENTINE STORY
The Medici Archive Project (MAP) was founded by Edward Goldberg and Hester Diamond in the early 1990s to foster the study of the Mediceo del Principato, the epistolary collection of the Medici Grand Dukes, dating from 1537 to 1743. The Medici were the most famous and influential family in Renaissance and early modern Italy. For two centuries they ruled Tuscany as sovereign grand dukes, and their activity is the focus of intense interest of historians, especially of scholars in the history of art, music, theater, literature, diplomacy, natural science, material culture, medicine, wine and gastronomy as well as gender studies and Jewish studies.
The Mediceo del Principato has survived virtually intact, offering the most complete record of any princely regime of the period. Comprising more than four million letters, the Mediceo del Principato should be considered a global, local, and personal archive. Penned by an extensive network of Medici diplomats and informants, circa three million letters chronicle the political and cultural developments in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Mediceo del Principato also records the vicissitudes of the Medici themselves and events at their court. We learn of their passions and ambitions, their education and scholarship, their patronage and taste, their physical maladies and religious observance, and their everyday interactions with each other and with the world inside and outside their palaces and villas.
THE DIGITAL APPROACH
A Bit About BIA & MIA
In order to facilitate access to the vast content of this archival collection, MAP constructed BIA in December of 2012 and MIA in July 2020. These interactive digital platforms, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, enables scholars from all over the world to view the letters in not only the Mediceo del Principato, but also seven million other documents in other collections. This online archive is the most interactive and ambitious project of its kind.
THE MEDICI MUSIC PROGRAM
Since 2018, the Music Program at the Medici Archive Project in Florence has been working to research, document, perform and publish hitherto unknown sacred works from C16th Florence during the time of the Medici Grand Dukes. This period is of course famous for the extraordinary flourishing of the arts which took place, and yet while the great choral traditions of Venice and Rome are well celebrated, what about the city which had been the very epicentre of the Renaissance itself, Florence? The Medici Archive Project Music Program aims to find this out.