Marcello Simonetta, Università la Sapienza (Roma), The Medici Archive Project (Florence), The American University (Paris), is the invited speaker of the first conference organized by Maria de Lurdes Rosa under the ERC VINCULUM project. This session will be held in Lisbon, next October 28, at Colégio Almada Negreiros (Room 306), starting at 6 pm and it has free entrance but limited to room capacity.

In this seminar I will examine the richest troves of documents about the Medici family and its opponents besides the Mediceo del Principato. The Mediceo Avanti Principato contains mostly letters from early 15th century to the late 1537. We will approach it focusing on case studies in diplomatic and economic history, and even cryptography and conspiracy. Then we will take a closer look at the Carte Strozziane, which I consider the missing link of the Medici history. It preserves a wealth of papers coming from or purchased by the Strozzi family, both adversaries and allies of the Medici. We will study some examples of private and public records, as well as unique literary autographs (such as Machiavelli’s letters).

Biographical note:

Marcello Simonetta [https://independent.academia.edu/MarcelloSimonetta] (Yale Ph.D, 2001) is a historian based in Paris. He has published widely about the Italian and European Renaissance. Among his books, Rinascimento segreto: il mondo del Segretario da Petrarca a Machiavelli, Milan: Franco Angeli, 2004; L’enigma Montefeltro, Milan: Rizzoli, 2008 (translated in English, Japanese, and Portuguese by Record, Rio de Janeiro, and lately in French by Albin Michel, 2018 and in Spanish by El Ateneo, Buenos Aires, 2019); Volpi e Leoni. I Medici, Machiavelli e la rovina d’Italia, Milan: Bompiani, 2014, (2nd reprint as Volpi e Leoni. I misteri dei Medici, Milan: Rizzoli, 2017; translated as Les renards et les lions, Paris: Albin Michel, 2019); Caterina de’ Medici. Storia segreta di una faida famigliare, Milan: Rizzoli, 2018 (forthcoming in French, 2020).