Disegni di città e fortezze. Gli interessi politici e culturali deigranduchi Medici di Toscana per le fortificazioni di terra e di maretra ‘500 e ‘600

• Anna Guarducci ^[1]
  1. [1] Università degli Studi di Siena

     Università degli Studi di Siena

     Siena, Italia

     
• Localización: FORTMED2023. Defensive architecture of the mediterranean : vol. XIII, XIV, XV / Marco Giorgio Bevilacqua (dir. congr.), Denise Ulivieri (aut.), 2023, ISBN 978-84-1396-129-3, págs. 153-160
• Idioma: italiano
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• Resumen

  • The interest of the Grand Dukes of the Medici family for geography, cartography and travel reports was really relevant, especially with Cosimo I. In 1561-62 he founded the Order of the Knights of Santo Stefano (war fleet of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany) and commissioned the pictorial cycles with geocartographic and urbanistic subjects on the Wardrobes and on the walls of Palazzo Vecchio (in Florence), by the cosmographer Egnazio Danti and other technicians. This interest, of a cultural, promotional and also political-strategic nature, was addressed, in particular, to the settlements and fortifications and is demonstrated by the extensive documentation, especially iconographic, dating back to the second half of the 16th century and the early 17th century, preserved in some collections of the State Archives of Florence. These documents are historically linked to the dynamics of maritime trade and to the complex geopolitical and military strategies for the use and control of the especially Mediterranean space, starting from the mid-sixteenth century. In this period, in fact, the small Italian states and above all Turkey and France (on the one hand) and Spain (on the other hand), and on certain occasions also England and Holland, are in competition. Unlike many systematic collections, produced by the navies of the modern age of the Italian and European states (such as the French ones presented by the Author in Florence in FortMed 2016), the sixteenthseventeenth-century drawings of cities and fortresses that are considered here they are inhomogeneous, of almost always unknown provenance and most of them manuscripts. They depict, in great detail, settlements and fortifications of land and sea of the Mediterranean, Italy and Europe, sometimes with the military events that involved them. These documents allow – thanks also to the prevalence of the typical pictoriallandscape and perspective language – to perceive immediately the settlements and fortified architectures of this important historical phase, in their urban and construction form.