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Speakers: Paula Findlen (Stanford University), Brian Brege (Syracuse University) and Giorgio Riello (EUI)
What is “global” about Florence? In spring 2022, I Tatti hosted a workshop to facilitate the first publication from a multi-year collaborative project on the Florentine merchant, Francesco Carletti (ca. 1573-1636) and his accidental circumnavigation of the world in 1594-1602, followed by his return to Florence in 1606. The resulting publication edited by Brian Brege, Paula Findlen, Luca Molà, and Giorgio Riello, Trading at the Edge of Empires: Francesco Carletti’s World c. 1600 (I Tatti/Officina Libraria, 2026), emerged as the first phase of this project. This seminar reflects on the process of turning collaborative scholarship into public history in the form of an exhibition that has just opened at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Global Florence: The World of Francesco Carletti, ca. 1573-1636 (October 9, 2026-January 9, 2027) and a new English translation of Carletti’s Ragionamenti that is now underway.
This seminar explores the fortunes of Carletti’s account of his voyages, unpublished until 1701, in light of how the Grand Duchy of Tuscany understood and interacted with different parts of the world in the era in which Livorno became a free port. Based on our experience of working with curators in different libraries, archives, and museums, what material traces remain of Florence’s ambitions to engage the world? What can we learn from one singular instance of a Florentine merchant acquiring certain kinds of “global” knowledge?
Image: Urbano Monti, Map of the World, 1587. David Rumsey Map Collection.
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