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Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early
Modern Tuscany and Eurasia

This book explores how the Medici Grand Dukes pursued ways to expand their
political, commercial, and cultural networks beyond Europe, cultivating complex
relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Islamicate regions, and looking further
east to India, China, and Japan.
The chapters in this volume discuss how casting a global, cross-cultural net was
part and parcel of the Medicean political vision. Diplomatic gifts, items of commercial
exchange, objects looted at war, maritime connections, and political plots were an
inherent part of how the Medici projected their state on the global arena. The eleven
chapters of this volume demonstrate that the mobility of objects, people, and knowledge
that generated the global interactions analyzed here was not unidirectional—rather, it
went both to and from Tuscany. In addition, by exploring evidence of objects produced
in Tuscany for Asian markets, this book reveals hitherto neglected histories of how
Western cultures projected themselves eastwards.

Francesco Freddolini is Associate Professor of Art History at Luther College, University

of Regina, Canada, and Director of the Humanities Research Institute, University of
Regina.

Marco Musillo is an independent scholar.

Routledge Research in Art History

Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the field of
art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering
areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on
art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By mak-
ing these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to
promote quality art history research.

Mural Painting in Britain 1630–1730

Experiencing Histories
Lydia Hamlett

Academies and Schools of Art in Latin America

Edited by Oscar E. Vázquez

The Australian Art Field

Practices, Policies, Institutions
Edited by Tony Bennett, Deborah Stevenson, Fred Myers, and Tamara Winikoff

Lower Niger Bronzes

Philip M. Peek

Art, Mobility, and Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany and Eurasia

Edited by Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo

The Cobra Movement in Postwar Europe

Reanimating Art
Karen Kurczynski

Emilio Sanchez in New York and Latin America

Victor Deupi

Henri Bertin and the Representation of China in Eighteenth-Century France

John Finlay

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-

in-Art-History/book-series/RRAH
Art, Mobility, and Exchange
in Early Modern Tuscany
and Eurasia

Edited by Francesco Freddolini

and Marco Musillo
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Freddolini, Francesco, editor. | Musillo, Marco, editor.
Title: Art, mobility, and exchange in early modern Tuscany and Eurasia /
Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020005110 (print) | LCCN 2020005111 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367467289 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003030690 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Medici, House of. | Art objects—Economic aspects—
History. | Tuscany (Italy)—Commerce—Eurasia—History. |
Eurasia—Commerce—Italy—Tuscany—History.
Classification: LCC DG737.42 .A78 2020 (print) | LCC DG737.42 (ebook) |
DDC 303.48/24550509031—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005110
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020005111
ISBN: 978-0-367-46728-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-03069-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents

List of Illustrationsvii
List of Tablesx
List of Abbreviationsxi
Notes on Contributorsxii
Acknowledgmentsxiv

1 Introduction: Eurasian Tuscany, or the Fifth Element 1

FRANCESCO FREDDOLINI

PART ONE
Mediterranean Connections17

2 Making a New Prince: Tuscany, the Pasha of Aleppo,

and the Dream of a New Levant 19
BRIAN BREGE

3 “To the Victor Go the Spoils”: Christian Triumphalism,

Cosimo I de’ Medici, and the Order of Santo Stefano in Pisa 33
JOSEPH M. SILVA

4 Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles in the Seventeenth

Century: The Cospi Collection 48
FEDERICA GIGANTE

PART TWO
Livorno: Infrastructures and Networks of Exchange67

5 Disembedding the Market: Commerce, Competition,

and the Free Port of 1676 69
COREY TAZZARA
vi Contents
6 Red Coral from Livorno to Hirado: British Early Trading
Networks and Maritime Trajectories, c. 1570–1623 85
TIZIANA IANNELLO

7 Ginori Porcelain: Florentine Identity and Trade With the Levant 100
CINZIA MARIA SICCA

PART THREE
Asian Interactions119

8 Of Rhinos, Peppercorns, and Saints: (Re)presenting India

in Medici Florence 121
ERIN E. BENAY

9 Eurasian Networks of Pietre Dure: Francesco Paolsanti Indiano and

His Early Seventeenth-Century Trade Between Florence and Goa 146
FRANCESCO FREDDOLINI

10 The Fata Morgana of Cosimo III de’ Medici: Giovanni

Gherardini and the Portraits of Kangxi 167
MARCO MUSILLO

11 Postscript: Textual Threads and Starry Messengers: The Global

Medici From the Archive to the Fondaco 187
MARCO MUSILLO

Bibliography194
Index217
Illustrations

1.1 Jacques Callot, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici Overseeing

the Fortification of Livorno, c. 1615–1620, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, DC. Transferred from the Library of Congress,
1986.50.112.2
1.2 Jacopo Ligozzi, Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors,
1591, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 3
1.3 View of the Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 4
1.4 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Ferdinando I
Dominating the Sea, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence. 6
3.1 Church of Santo Stefano, interior, Pisa. 35
3.2 The Pisa Griffin, c. 12th century, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Pisa. 37
3.3 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Cosimo II Receiving
the Victorious Knights of Santo Stefano, 1636–46, Villa La Petraia,
Florence.39
3.4 Bronzino, The Nativity of Christ, c. 1564, Church of Santo
Stefano, Pisa. 41
3.5 Giorgio Vasari, Stoning of Saint Stephen, c. 1569–71, Church of
Santo Stefano, Pisa. 42
4.1 Cospi Museum, Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, in Legati, Mvseo Cospiano,
Bologna 1677. 50
4.2 Salt-cellar, wood, and mother-of-pearl, India. Museo Civico
Medievale, Bologna, inv. no. 1921. 52
4.3 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico
Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292. 53
4.4 Chain with spoon, wood. Museo delle Civiltà–Museo Preistorico
Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, inv. no. 5292. 53
4.5 Muraqqa‘ containing the Gulshan i rāz by Sheikh Mahmoud
Shabistari and parts of sections eighty-two and eighty-three of
Jamshid u Khurshid by Salman Savaji. Biblioteca Universitaria,
Bologna, ms. 3574pp. 54
4.6 Annotation in the Gulshan i rāz by Sheikh Mahmoud Shabistari and
parts of sections eighty-two and eighty-three of Jamshid u Khurshid
by Salman Savaji. Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 3574pp. 55
4.7 Jacopo Tosi, Testacei, cioe Nicchi Chioccioe e Conchiglie di più
spezie con piante marine etc. Regalo del Ser.mo Cosimo III Gran
Duca di Toscana al Senatore, Marchese, Balì e Decano Ferdinando
Cospi. Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna, ms. 4312. 60
viii Illustrations
7.1 Dish with Ginori coat of arms. Chinese (Italian market), ca. 1698,
hard-paste, diam. 34.6 cm. The Metropolitan Museum, New
York, Helena Woolworth McCann Collection. Purchase. Winfield
Foundation Gift, 1962 (62.188), CC0 1.0 Universal (CC01.0)
Public Domain Dedication. 102
7.2 Carlo Ventura Sacconi, Portrait of a Man With Basket of Porcelain,
early 1720, oil on canvas, 85.5 × 70 cm. Villa Medicea di Poggio
Imperiale, Florence. 104
7.3 Mark on underside of pilgrim flask (Florence, Medici factory), ca.
1682–1685, soft-paste porcelain, h. 28.6 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum,
Los Angeles (86.DE.630). 105
7.4 Cristoforo Munari, Still Life With Blue and White Porcelain,
ca. 1690, oil on canvas, 29.8 × 41.3 cm. Nasher Museum of Art at
Duke University, Durham, NC, gift in honor of Marilyn M. Segal
by her children (1998.22.2). 106
7.5 Cristoforo Munari, Melon and an Octagonal Cup on a Silver
Charger, an Upturned Bowl Behind, ca. 1690, oil on canvas
22.2 × 29.9 cm. Formerly Lodi Collection. 106
7.6 View of the Ginori Villa at Doccia, engraving, 18.5 × 44 cm.
From Thomas Salmon, Lo Stato presente di tutti i Paesi e Popoli
del mondo naturale, politico e morale, con nuove osservazioni
degli antichi e moderni viaggiatori. Volume XXI. Continuazione
dell’Italia o sia descrizione del Gran-Ducato di Toscana, della
Repubblica di Lucca, e di una parte del Dominio Ecclesiastico,
Venezia: nella Stamperia di Giambatista Albrizzi, 1757. 107
7.7 Pitcher, Doccia, Ginori, 1750–1760, Pandolfini, Florence, Fascino
e splendore delle maioliche e delle porcellane: la raccolta di Pietro
Barilla ed una importante collezione Romana, 17 May 2017, Lot 109. 109
7.8 Tray, Doccia, Ginori, 1745–1747, decoration attributed to Carl
Wendelin Anreiter von Ziernfeld. Hard-paste porcelain decorated
in polychrome enamels and gold, 3.5 × 30.8 × 23.5 cm. The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1906 (06.
372c). CC0 1.0 Universal (CC01.0) Public Domain Dedication. 111
8.1 Egnazio Danti, PARTE DEL INDIA DENTRO AL GANGE
HO detta INDOSTAN, 1574–75, Guardaroba Nuova,
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. 125
8.2 Anonymous, Saint Thomas, sculptural fragment, c. sixth century (?).
Saint Thomas Mount church, Chennai. 128
8.3 Anonymous, Saint Thomas [left] and King Gondophares [right],
sculptural fragments, c. sixth century. Basilica of Saint Thomas
collection, Chennai. 129
8.4 Anonymous, Baptismal Font, base c. ninth century; bowl
seventeenth–eighteenth century. Saint Thomas Christian Museum,
Kakkanad.130
8.5 Anonymous, Mylapore Casket, (a) back and (b) front, c. 1500. Silver
repoussé. Previously Basilica of Saint Thomas, Mylapore, Chennai,
now lost. 131
 Illustrations ix
8.6 Hanging (kalamkari), one of seven pieces, 1610–20, painted resist
and mordants, dyed cotton, 275 × 95.9 cm, Brooklyn Museum of
Art, Brooklyn, New York. 134
8.7 Tortoiseshell and silver casket, sixteenth–seventeenth century,
Indian (Goa?), Tesoro dei Granduchi, Florence. 135
8.8 Christ as the Good Shepherd, ivory, seventeenth century, Goa,
Tesoro dei Granduchi, Florence. 136
8.9 Virgin and Child, ivory, seventeenth century, Goa (?), Tesoro dei
Granduchi, Florence. 137
8.10 Christ as the Good Shepherd, seventeenth century, ivory, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. 138
9.1 Anonymous, Cameo of Shah Jahan, first half of the 17th century,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 151
9.2 Anonymous, Portrait of Shah Jahan, first half of the 17th century,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 152
9.3 Anonymous, pietra dura panel, c. 1638–1648, Red Fort, Delhi,
India. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections,
UW40555.153
9.4 Giovanni Battista Foggini, Monument to St. Francis Xavier,
1689–1698, Church of Bom Jesu, Goa. 156
9.5 Cristofano Gaffuri, View of the Port of Leghorn, 1604, Galleria
degli Uffizi, Florence. 157
10.1 Imperii Sino-Tartarici Supremus Monarcha (Supreme Monarch of
the Sino-Tartar Empire), engraving from Athanasius Kircher, China
Monumentis, Qua Sacris quà Profanis, Nec non variis Naturæ &
Artis Spectaculis, Aliarumque rerum memorabilium Argumentis
Illustrata, published in 1667, between pages 112 and 113. 168
10.2 Giovanni Gherardini (attributed), Portrait of Kangxi, oil on
painting, 129.6 × 98.2 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 175
10.3 Display of Gherardini’s portrait in the West corridor of the Galleria
degli Uffizi. 178
11.1 Don Mancio (Itō Mansho), Letter to Bianca Cappello, Grand
Duchess of Tuscany, 1585, Archivio di Stato, Florence. 188
Tables

5.1 Commercial indicators in Genoa, 1655–1684 (five-year averages). 73

5.2 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1665–1674 (five-year averages). 74
5.3 Ship arrivals in Livorno by provenance, 1667–1675 (three-year totals). 74
5.4 Commercial indicators in Livorno, 1670–1884 (five-year averages). 76
5.5 Ship arrivals by provenance, 1670–1680 (five-year totals). 76
Abbreviations

AGL Archivio Ginori Lisci

ASB Archivio di Stato, Bologna
ASF Archivio di Stato, Florence
ASP Archivio di Stato, Pisa
ASL Archivio di Stato, Livorno
BU Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Florence
BUB Biblioteca Universitaria, Bologna
MAP Medici Archive Project
MdP Mediceo del Principato
MM Miscellanea Medicea
Corp. Rel. Corporazioni religiose soppresse dal governo francese
Contributors

Erin E. Benay is the Climo Associate Professor of Renaissance and Baroque Art at Case
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Faith, Gender,
and the Senses in Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art: Interpreting the Noli me
tangere and Doubting Thomas (Ashgate, 2015), and Exporting Caravaggio: The
Crucifixion of Saint Andrew at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Giles, 2017). She is
working on her third book project, which will consider artistic exchange and cult
traditions between Italy and India during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Brian Brege is Assistant Professor of History at Syracuse University and received his
PhD in history from Stanford in 2014. An early modern Europeanist with a strong
interest in world history, his research focuses on political and diplomatic history,
especially the relationship between small European states and the broader early
modern world.
Francesco Freddolini is Associate Professor of Art History at Luther College, Uni-
versity of Regina, and Director of the Humanities Research Institute, University
of Regina, Canada. He has received fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian
American Art Museum, the Huntington Library, the Getty Research Institute, and
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Federica Gigante is Curator of the Collections from the Islamic World at the History
of Science Museum in Oxford. She gained her PhD at the Warburg Institute jointly
with SOAS focusing on the collection of Islamic artworks of Ferdinando Cospi, and
has held doctoral fellowships at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence and the
Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations of Koç University, in Istanbul.
Tiziana Iannello received her PhD in modern and contemporary history of Asia from
the University of Cagliari and is a former researcher in East Asian history at eCam-
pus University of Novedrate (Como). Her research focuses on early modern com-
mercial, diplomatic, and cross-cultural relationships between Europe and East Asia.
Marco Musillo is an independent scholar holding a doctoral degree from the School of
Art History and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. He has received
fellowships from the Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco, the Getty
Research Institute and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz.
Cinzia Maria Sicca is a full professor of art history at the University of Pisa. A for-
mer Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, she has held fellowships at the Getty
Research Institute, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National
 Contributors xiii
Gallery of Art, and the University of Leicester. She has received major research
grants, including a Getty Collaborative Research Grant and a number of grants
from the Italian Ministry of University and Research.
Joseph M. Silva teaches courses on medieval and early modern Italian art and archi-
tecture at Providence College and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. He
received his PhD in the history of art and architecture at Brown University and has
held a Newberry Library Fellowship and an Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Proctor-
ship in the Department of Prints, Drawing, and Photographs at the Museum of the
Rhode Island School of Design.
Corey Tazzara received his PhD in 2011 from Stanford University and was a member
of the University of Chicago Society of Fellows. He is currently Assistant Profes-
sor of History at Scripps College in Claremont, California. He is the translator
(with Brad Bouley and Paula Findlen) of the Gusto for Things by Renata Ago. His
first book, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean
World, was published in 2017 from Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments

This project originated from Florentine exchanges between the editors, which mostly
unfolded within the inspiring space of the Kunsthistorisches Institut’s garden. These
conversations, centered on the possibilities of a global history of Medici Tuscany, led
to three panels at the Renaissance Society of America conference, held in Boston in
2016. Some of the papers presented there became the backbone for this book, while
other important contributors joined the project at a later stage.
During the preparation of this volume, our research and writing have benefitted
from the support of many institutions and funding agencies, among which we would
like to mention the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Biblioteca degli Uffizi, Biblioteca Uni-
versitaria Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Musei
Civici di Bologna, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz,
Luther College at the University of Regina, University of Pisa, University of Washing-
ton Libraries, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Gerald Hill helped with a first round of copy editing of our volume before submit-
ting the manuscript and prepared the index, while Isabella Vitti and Katie Armstrong
at Routledge provided enthusiastic support for the publication of our volume.
We are indebted to many colleagues that have answered questions and entertained
conversations on our book, and especially to Matteo Bellucci, Amy Buono, Dominic
Brookshaw, Jeffrey Collins, Sylvain Cordier, Gail Feigenbaum, Elena Fumagalli, Amin
Jaffer, Mark MacDonald, Lia Markey, Julia McClure, Eugenio Menegon, Annalisa Raho,
Federica Rossi, and Scott J. Wilson.
1 Introduction
Eurasian Tuscany, or the Fifth Element
Francesco Freddolini

Jacques Callot’s print depicting Ferdinando I overseeing the fortification of the Port
of Livorno visualizes a political dream in the making (Figure 1.1).1 Engraved between
1615 and 1620, this posthumous image celebrated the creation of the infrastructures
that provided Florence full access to the Mediterranean and, through a network of
diplomatic and commercial relations, the oceans.2 The dates are significant for under-
standing how this image resonates with a period of fervent interest in global networks
at the Medici court. In 1612, only a few years after Ferdinando’s death, his successor,
Cosimo II, received a report from his secretary, Orso D’Elci, outlining the nautical
connections between the Grand Duchy, the East Indies, and the West Indies.3 The com-
plex, ten-paragraph document revolving around the centrality of Livorno as a node
within a larger maritime network aimed to obtain a license from the King of Spain for
unmediated access to the oceans. A key passage in D’Elci’s text explains that

The question to ask His Catholic Majesty for the business in the Indies is to obtain
a license to send ships to the said Indies, East and West. [These ships] should be
able to leave from the port of Livorno, and on both ways they should be able to
dock at any port in France, England, and the Low Countries, without prejudice,
and there have permission to load and unload merchandises.4

After Ferdinando I expanded the port and the city of Livorno to grant the Medicean
state full access to maritime routes, the time was ripe to explore opportunities beyond
the European continent and the Mediterranean basin.
This volume explores how the Grand Dukes pursued ways to expand their political,
commercial, and cultural networks beyond Europe, cultivating complex relations with
the Ottoman Empire and other Islamicate regions, and looking further east to India,
China, and Japan. The chapters that follow show how casting a global, cross-cultural
net was part and parcel of the Medicean political vision. Diplomatic gifts, items of
commercial exchange, objects looted at war, maritime connections, and political plots
were an inherent part of how the Medici projected their state on the global arena.
Once again, the arts conceptualized this vision with unparalleled lucidity. In 1592,
Jacopo Ligozzi signed a monumental painting on slate representing Pope Boniface
VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors (Figure 1.2). The work was made for the Salone
dei Cinquecento, the hall in Palazzo Vecchio that Giorgio Vasari envisioned as a visual
journey into the formation of the Ducal (and later Grand Ducal) political identity
of the Tuscan state.5 The subject is Pope Boniface VIII’s legendary reception, held in
1300, of twelve ambassadors from various parts of Europe and Asia. Upon realizing
2 Francesco Freddolini

Figure 1.1 Jacques Callot, Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici Overseeing the Fortification of
Livorno, c. 1615–1620, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Transferred from
the Library of Congress, 1986.50.112.
Source: Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington.

that all ambassadors were Florentines, the Pope defined Florence as the “fifth ele-
ment” and acknowledged its role as commercial and political connector on the Eura-
sian scale. This episode, becoming popular in the sixteenth century, was celebrated
by Michelangelo Buonarroti and Benedetto Varchi as a mark of Florentine identity.6
Ligozzi added another layer, transporting the narrative into the temporal and geo-
political context of Grand Ducal Florence. In the background, a painting within the
painting portrays Tuscany seated on a throne in an ideal dialogue with Asia, Europe,
Africa, and America. Tuscany wears the Grand Ducal insignia; it is, unmistakably,
Medici Tuscany vis-à-vis the continents. The visual centrality of Tuscany evokes the
political ambition to become an independent and central interlocutor with the four
continents—the “fifth element” of Boniface’s embassy, a node within a larger, and
now truly global, network.
As Lia Markey has demonstrated, visualizing America at the Medici court became
a way to conceptualize Florence’s identity within a dramatically expanding world.7
Colonization, either real or “vicarious,” as Markey has defined Florence’s colonizing
efforts, is crucial for understanding transatlantic histories of the Medici state. Once we
direct our gaze eastwards, however, we are faced with a different gamut of historical
and historiographical problems. A longer tradition of interreligious tensions, dating
 Introduction 3

Figure 1.2 Jacopo Ligozzi, Pope Boniface VIII Receiving Twelve Ambassadors, 1591, Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

back at least to the crusades, shaped the Medici relations to the Ottoman Empire and
coexisted with commercial relations that never stopped. These were further enriched
by the long-standing trade routes that had been already established with Asia, which
in turn became more multifaceted through the mediation (or lack thereof) of Russia,
especially over the course of the seventeenth century. As Geoffrey C. Gunn has per-
suasively argued, although vast peripheral areas of Asia were subjugated and radically
transformed by European colonization, “in Asia the Europeans entered elaborate and
mannered trading networks.”8
The connective, transnational tissue of the Eurasian cultural and geographical
region has recently proven to be an extremely productive area for studying transcul-
tural interactions. This volume contributes to this historiographical stream by explor-
ing how the Grand Dukes promoted such connections. Exchanges were crucial for
Florence when looking East, and a network of political and infrastructural relations
was essential to support them.9 The document penned by D’Elci in 1612 could be seen
as the culmination of the late-sixteenth-century strategy to connect Florence with the
global world, a vision that started with Cosimo I and was fostered by the ruling family
as part of a political plan. Courtly spaces articulated this strategy through images and
objects on display. The maps of the Sala delle Carte Geografiche in the Medici Guard-
aroba (Figure 1.3), painted in two phases by Egnazio Danti (1563–1575) and Stefano
Bonsignori (1576–1586), prompted the Grand Dukes, their courtiers, and their guests
to understand the Ducal (and later Grand Ducal) territories in relation to the global
4 Francesco Freddolini

Figure 1.3 View of the Guardaroba Nuova, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.

world, metaphorically projecting the Medicean state into a growing network of explo-
ration and colonial aspiration, as well as mobility of people, objects, and knowledge.10
In a similar vein, Ludovico Buti portrayed exotic worlds on the ceilings of the
Armeria (1588),11 and the Grand Dukes avidly collected exotic objects from Asia,
the Islamicate world, and the Americas.12 It is well known that the aspirations to
establish colonies across the Atlantic and open direct maritime routes from Livorno
to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans soon vanished due to the opposition of the true
global maritime powers13—Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, and Britain—but the
Medici still participated in the main networks of interactions by making Livorno a
node of larger commercial exchanges. Livorno—as the chapters by Tazzara, Iannello,
and Sicca demonstrate—epitomizes the ambition of the Grand Dukes, whose strategy
was to find a role within exchanges that transcended the Mediterranean. Livorno,
furthermore, shows that global interactions for the Medici were a political affair that
required a strategy to finally turn the Tuscan state into the “fifth element.”
A growing interest in how objects and knowledge were exchanged in the increas-
ingly complex transcultural arena of the early modern period has helped us under-
stand the agency of things and the importance of their social life.14 Seminal scholarship
by Paula Findlen and Pamela Smith, as well as more recent studies by Giorgio Riello,
Anne Gerritsen, Meredith Martin, and Daniela Bleichmar among others, have helped
shape this field.15 Our book also explores objects—it is the central methodological
tenet that informs most of the art history and material culture approaches in the
 Introduction 5
chapters that follow—but our aim is different from the one adopted in most of the
aforementioned studies exploring the social lives of things along the lines of broad net-
works of exchange.16 As Paula Findlen reminds us, “the global lives of things emerge
within and at the interstices between local, regional, and long-distance trading net-
works.”17 In order to delve deeply into such interstices, we have chosen to focus on a
specific geopolitical entity—the Medicean state—and explore how actants—objects,
networks, infrastructures, and people—instantiated its interactions with the Levant
and Asia.18 Our book, in other words, is about Grand Ducal Tuscany; our aim is to
situate the Medici politics during the Grand Ducal period within a larger map encom-
passing the Eurasian space.
With a few exceptions—for example Marco Spallanzani’s studies on maiolica and
oriental carpets in Renaissance Florence, Francesco Morena’s work on porcelain, or
some articles addressing focused case studies—this early modern global history of the
Grand Duchy has only recently emerged.19 Studies on Florentine merchant networks
in the Mediterranean Basin and Asia have paved the way to understanding the multi-
faceted relations between the Medici and the Orient, while work specifically inspired
by the vast diplomatic correspondence in the Grand Ducal archive has recently cast
new light on the relations between the Tuscan dynasty and the Levant.20
One feature of Grand Ducal Tuscany that offers a distinctive lens through which to
study early modern Italy in relation to global interactions is its archival repositories.21
A methodology of inquiry based on archival research has enabled most of the authors
in this volume to delve deeply into the histories of individual objects, merchants, and
political agendas. Objects, biographies, and histories of local infrastructures such as
the port of Livorno enable us to connect the local (Grand Ducal Tuscany) with the
global (the Eurasian context) by way of what Francesca Trivellato has recently defined
as “global microhistories.”22 As Trivellato argues, this method stemming from a dis-
tinctively Italian historiographical tradition has great potential for casting light on
how localized facts—for example one object, or one biography—are nodes within
complex networks. A local fact can have connections with much larger contexts, and
things mutate—physically, semantically, and ontologically—through space and time
and in relation to cross-cultural exchanges. For the authors in this volume, the archive
is a means to explore the social life of things on the move across cultures, to show how
regimes of value and meanings change through exchange, and to reveal how the onto-
logical status of objects is modified by their display or use within new frameworks of
social and religious rituals.23
By centering our attention on Grand Ducal Tuscany, the chapters in this volume
forge connections between objects and contexts. We can follow Islamicate objects
reaching Florence and then transitioning to Bologna, while Islamic banners are given
a new ontological status in Pisa—almost forced to convert, as Joseph M. Silva argues.
At the same time, British merchants establish commercial agreements with coral sup-
pliers, thanks to privileged conditions in the port of Livorno. Through the letters of
Sassetti, the printing of Giampiero Maffei’s Istoria delle Indie Orientali by Filippo
Giunti in 1589, or the Ivories at the Museo degli Argenti described by Erin E. Benay,
we can explore how India was perceived, consumed, and shaped as a narrative in Flor-
ence. Further primary sources reveal how the Medici exported luxury objects to Asia,
while quenching their thirst for knowledge about China through a myriad of routes,
objects, and people by way of Russia. In this volume, the oscillation between micro
and macro is essential for understanding Medicean Tuscany as a Eurasian entity.
6 Francesco Freddolini
An important methodological premise is our understanding of the Medicean state
as a whole, to focus especially on the triad of cities that projected the Medici towards
the seas: Florence, Pisa, and Livorno. Most studies have focused on Florence and the
Medici family as the exclusive center of interest; however, to understand the Grand
Duchy as a complex geopolitical entity, our study explores how the cities of Pisa and
Livorno played a crucial role in positioning the Medicean state vis-à-vis the global
world.24 This approach, grounded in the history of the Grand Duchy, stems from the
political identity that the Grand Dukes personally promoted for their state.25 In fact,
when the painter Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, celebrated the era of
Ferdinando I in the Medici villa of La Petraia between 1636 and 1646, he reimag-
ined Giovanni Bandini’s statue in Livorno to function as a proxy of the Grand Duke
himself—standing on the shore and dominating the sea, accompanied by Neptune
(Figure 1.4). However, the Grand Duke was not alone. The painter included the per-
sonifications of Livorno and Pisa, which highlights how the Medici’s political agenda
was clearly based on the interactions between the capital—Florence—and these two
cities.26
Florence alone, in other words, was not the Medici state. The visual and material
culture of spolia in Pisa, where the Medici and their Knights of St. Stephen performed
rituals that reminded them of their role as defenders of the Christian faith, as well
as the ubiquitous presence of Livorno in almost all chapters as the essential infra-
structural and institutional context for the mobility of objects and people, show how

Figure 1.4 Baldassare Franceschini, called Il Volterrano, Ferdinando I Dominating the Sea,

1636–46, Villa La Petraia, Florence.
Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
 Introduction 7
studying these cities together is key for understanding Medici politics. This is true not
only within the local history of Tuscany but, more importantly, as part of Grand Ducal
Tuscany’s international—indeed Eurasian—history.
A selective focus on Florence, to the detriment of other cities in Tuscany, has been
especially prominent in the field of art history—a consequence of studies largely
devoted to the history of collecting, exploring objects imported by the Medici, or to
the representation of other cultures at the Grand Ducal court. This volume aims to
counterbalance this approach, not only in terms of its geopolitical emphasis, but by
revealing how the flow of objects towards Florence represents only half of the narra-
tive. As the chapters in this volume collectively argue, mobility was not unidirectional.
The consumption of objects from the Eurasian context in Florence coexisted with the
projection of Medicean influence on other cultures and the export of Grand Ducal
commodities to other regions. As such, a twofold way of examining exchanges—to
and from Tuscany—becomes both the object of our study and the methodological
choice that enables us to better situate the Medici Grand Dukes within a narrative of
global interactions.27
Several chapters explore evidence of objects produced in Tuscany for Asian markets
and reveal hitherto neglected histories of how Western cultures projected themselves
eastwards. Most studies on global circulation of objects—art, or material culture—
tend to privilege a mobility towards Europe, exploring the often unstable ontological
status of objects and their agency within Europe and investigating how non-European
communities developed infrastructures for the production and commercialization of
things for western consumption.28 By focusing on the Eurasian context, however, we
note more complex trajectories of interactions: the Mughal emperors and their avid
demand for European objects, the Ottoman Empire as both a market for western
luxury objects and a door towards markets further east, Goa as a hub for commercial
relations in Asia, China and its curiosity towards Europe, Russia and its unstable posi-
tion between Europe and Asia—all topics that emerge in the chapters in this volume.29
Together with chapters that explore collecting practices by the Medici and their
courtiers, such as Ferdinando Cospi, or the reception and representation of India
at the Medici court, this volume includes contributions on how the Medici, helped
by their entourage, found ways to export luxury objects far beyond the boundaries
of Europe, creating the conditions for their production and commercialization, and
exchanging information on the objects that could be more marketable in Asia. Ample
historiography has shown how Florentine merchants and agents—Andrea Corsali or
Filippo Sassetti, just to mention two prominent protagonists of this story—sent infor-
mation on distant lands, shaping narratives of alterity and fostering the demand for
exotic objects.30 A complementary though less studied chapter of this story is repre-
sented by the letters of the Jesuit Lay Brother Atanasio Fontebuoni urging the Medici
to send devotional and luxury objects to Asia, confident in the profits to be made by
meeting an avid local demand.31
Many objects—the fountain sent to Ali Pasha and discussed by Brian Brege; coral,
porcelain, and pietre dure discussed by Iannello, Sicca, and Freddolini; as well as books
such as the Trattato della Direzione de’ Fiumi that we find in seventeenth-century
­Beijing—were made in Florence and found their ways to Istanbul, the Mughal court,
or China. Studies that tackle the presence of western commodities in Asian cultures
often explore such objects at their point of arrival and provide important reflection
on such objects’ status in the cultures of destination but rarely discuss how western
8 Francesco Freddolini
cultures catered to such global markets.32 By focusing on this theme, we can under-
stand how promoting global interactions was part of the Medici’s political agenda.
Several authors of the chapters in this volume are concerned with the circumstances
of production of these luxury objects and on the networks of mobility that enabled
them to travel and become transcultural agents. Supported by the Medici, Tuscan
merchants and courtiers or British ships stopping in Livorno could carry such objects
and export Medicean signature works across long trajectories. It was, of course, a
profitable market, but at the same time—and perhaps more importantly—a means to
establish an identity on the international political arena.
Even though we are limiting our scope to the Eurasian context, our approach shapes
a global history of Medicean Tuscany in terms of methodology, especially by looking
at how the Grand Duchy contributed to—and existed as a node of—complex transna-
tional interactions. World history and global history do not always coincide. As Sebas-
tian Conrad has articulated, global history “is both an object of study and a particular
way of looking at history: it is both a process and a perspective, subject matter and
methodology.”33 Therefore, studying the networks that linked the port of Livorno to
the East India Company in the seventeenth century or exploring how Florentine cour-
tiers and merchants established connections across cultures to mobilize objects along
old and new trade routes enables us to understand Florence, the Medici, their courti-
ers, and the Grand Duchy as a significant part of a dynamic system of interactions.
It is precisely this multidirectional flow of things and people along the lines of a
complex infrastructure of mobility, instantiated by Livorno and fostered by the Medici
politics, that lets the specificity of Grand Ducal Tuscany emerge. Tuscany tells a dif-
ferent story from Venice, for example, whose relations with the East had been shaped
by long-standing transcultural relations based on Venice’s geographical position and
commercial history, and whose print industry mediated the reception of the Americas
for most of the early modern armchair travelers.34
The Medici had virtually no rivals among the other rulers of the Italian peninsula in
terms of collecting across cultures. At the same time, they succeeded in developing a
network of commercial and diplomatic relations that projected the Grand Ducal state
in a global context.35 Livorno, an entangled ethnoscape shaped by the presence of mer-
chants, agents, as well as slaves from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds,36
played a crucial role in developing such networks, as did the presence of Florentine
merchants in key outposts located in colonial states such as Portugal, Spain, and the
Dutch Republic. The Medici expanded these traditional merchant networks operating
along international routes. Such networks, and such a tradition, survived the Tus-
can dynasty, as Cinzia Sicca in this volume shows. When in the late 1740s Marquis
Ginori succeeded in the export of his porcelain to Constantinople, he relied on a solid
network of diplomatic and mercantile relations, especially with the British, whose
presence in Livorno dated back to the seventeenth century and, as Tiziana Iannello’s
chapter demonstrates, included the Tuscan port within a larger infrastructural and
financial network for maritime trade. Ginori’s entrepreneurial efforts, as Sicca argues,
were also a way to reclaim a tradition by establishing a new—but quintessentially
Florentine—post-Medici mercantile identity for the Tuscan ruling families, again in a
context of cross-cultural exchange.
In addition to merchants and, of course, diplomats, the Medici cultivated networks
among the religious orders, especially the Jesuits, to obtain information and have
 Introduction 9
trustworthy agents even in areas under the control of Spain or Portugal. Letters sent
to Florence by the earlier-mentioned Jesuit painter Bartolomeo Fontebuoni, who made
a career in Asia, show how he maintained relations with his family and the Medici
court, conveying information and requesting objects from Florence.37 More famously,
when the Jesuit Johannes Grueber arrived in Livorno in 1666, he was welcomed by
Florentine courtiers—especially by Lorenzo Magalotti, who eventually published a
Relazione della China based on Grueber report.38 Later, in 1667, a letter sent from
Goa to Cosimo III by Tomaso Da Costa, who wanted to build a church in India in
honor of St. Thomas, offers expressions of gratitude for the support received.39 Da
Costa’s letter shows that the interest in St. Thomas’ presence in India, explored in this
volume by Erin E. Benay, went beyond the sixteenth century, developing into an overt
intention to establish a Medici presence through art patronage in the territories related
to the Apostle.
Art patronage helped establish a firm Medicean presence well beyond Italian or
European boundaries. For example, in 1587 Ferdinando I—whose vision for a global
reach of Florence laid the foundations for most of the stories unfolding in the pages
that follow—commissioned from Giambologna a series of reliefs for the altar of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.40 Almost exactly a century later, Cosimo III
shipped from Florence all the bronze ornaments made by Giovanni Battista Foggini
for the Altar of St. Francis Xavier in the Church of Bom Jesu in Goa (1689–1698).41
In 1688, the Superior General of the Jesuits, Tirso González de Santalla, thanked
Cosimo III for his intention to “extend his royal liberality to the New World, to enrich
St. Francis Xavier’s sepulchre.”42 The Medici coat of arms marked the Grand Ducal
presence in places that were not simply geographically distant from Florence (and
from each other) but also represented symbolic outposts of Christianity within spaces
of emblematic religious, cultural, and colonial tensions. On the one hand, the altar of
the Holy Sepulchre stands as a material counterpart to the Islamic spoils looted and
displayed in Pisa by the Knights of St. Stephen (examined here by Joseph M. Silva). On
the other hand, the altar of St. Francis Xavier in Goa encapsulated the deep interests
in the Indian subcontinent cultivated by the Medici since the late sixteenth century,
as the letters by Filippo Sassetti have shown,43 and as Erin E. Benay’s chapter and my
own confirm.
Our volume is divided into three spaces of discussion: Mediterranean Connections;
Livorno: Infrastructures and Networks of Exchange; and Asian Interactions. Brian
Brege’s chapter, opening the first section, casts light on how Ferdinando I—quite sur-
prisingly, considering his self-fashioning as a champion of a renewed crusade spirit—
supported Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha in his rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
Political schemes that could have led to profitable commercial interactions were behind
the support offered by Ferdinando I to the Pasha of Aleppo—an example of how reli-
gious conflicts were complicated by the political agenda on a transnational scale, and
an illuminating case study showing the multifaceted relations between the Medici and
Islam.44
The following chapter, by Joseph M. Silva, elucidates how Pisa, the city where the
headquarters of the Knights of St. Stephen were located, became a privileged space
to reconfigure Islamic spoils with new Christian and triumphalistic meanings. The
third chapter of this section exploring various aspects of Mediterranean interactions is
devoted to the collecting of Islamic artworks at the Medici court. Its author, Federica
10 Francesco Freddolini
Gigante, explores how the route to Florence was orchestrated by a courtier and agent,
Ferdinando Cospi, who not only procured objects for Ferdinando II de’ Medici but also
selected them and contributed to the reshaping of meanings associated to such objects.
The following section is specifically devoted to Livorno, its port, and its mercantile
role, exploring infrastructures and networks of cross-cultural exchange.45 Corey Taz-
zara highlights how the political vision of the Medici established Livorno’s primacy
within the Mediterranean after decades of fruitful trade. In 1676, the creation of the
free port became a model for other countries and challenged the role of major Euro-
pean ports. Livorno is the real protagonist of Tiziana Iannello’s narrative, in which the
red coral harvested in the Tyrrhenian Sea prompted British merchants to exploit their
growing presence in Livorno to export such a luxury commodity to East Asia. The
last two decades of the sixteenth century coincided with an expanding British inter-
est in East Asia that eventually led to the establishment of the East India Company.46
In 1583 and in 1586, Queen Elizabeth sent letters to the Chinese Emperor, trying to
establish privileged reciprocal commercial relations.47 In the first letter, she wrote, “We
are borne and made to have need one of another, and . . . we are bound to aide one
another.”48 Understanding the potential of this trade while lacking both an adequate
fleet and financial power needed for ventures into the oceans, the Medici fostered the
leading role of the East India Company and, by doing so, strengthened Livorno’s posi-
tion as a node of global interactions.
Cinzia Sicca’s chapter on the Ginori porcelain exported to Constantinople in 1748
concludes this section. Examining a wealth of archival materials that cast further light
on the networks linking Florence, Livorno, and the British, her study highlights how,
after the Medici, the former courtiers turned into successful entrepreneurs, paving
the way for the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century development of fondachi and
warehouses in Livorno.49 The establishment in Livorno of the Oriental Company in
1749—by Carlo Ginori with the Alexander Drummond, English Consul in Aleppo,
and Richard Bourchier, British Governor of Bombay—shows that in the long term,
the idea of asserting independent, Tuscan control of the export of merchandise to the
Orient eventually succeeded.
The third section of the volume explores long-distance interactions, especially with
the Indian subcontinent and China. In her chapter, Erin E. Benay analyzes how India
was represented at the Medici court and how information about the continent—­
especially about the churches and relics related to St. Thomas—reached Florence,
shaping ideas about distant lands. Moreover, this chapter reveals the longue durée
of global interactions, further problematizing the assumption that early modern
exchanges emerged from “the acceleration of a process of interactions between dif-
ferent parts of the world that had been in place for centuries.”50 The monuments
Benay describes predate any early modern long-distance interaction and, as the author
argues, their style and their meanings are neither local nor colonial. In fact, Benay
elaborates on the notion of untranslatable images, devised by Alessandra Russo, to
interpret early modern objects made in the Americas, prompting us to reconsider can-
ons of transcultural artistic relations.51 My chapter complicates the relation with the
Indian subcontinent, showing how a family of courtiers and merchants mobilized a
fruitful trade of pietre dure, gems, diamonds, and other luxury goods between Goa
and Florence, in part redirected to the court of the Mughal Emperors. In light of this
global exchange, even a quintessentially Florentine work, such as the Cappella dei
Principi and its interior decoration, is here construed as an integral part of a larger
 Introduction 11
cross-cultural framework, rather than simply the visual and material expression of
a Medici Tuscan local identity. Marco Musillo’s chapter, concluding the section and
the book, explores the mobility of both artists and artworks—the painter Gherardini
from Europe to China and back, and his portrait of Kangxi sent to Florence—and the
fluctuations of meanings related to objects, styles, and iconographies. Furthermore,
this chapter explores the role played by the tsar in mediating the interactions between
the Qing and Medici courts and reflects on how the cultures, the languages, and the
social status of travelers, intermediaries, and agents shaped interactions, regimes of
values, and semantic interpretations of objects and texts.
As recent historiography shows, and as the chapters in this volume further confirm,
by being omnivorous collectors, by investing in infrastructures for mobility, by main-
taining epistolary relations with agents worldwide, by commissioning and exporting
artworks and luxury goods to distant places, and by interacting with dynasties beyond
the European scope, the Medici conceived their Grand Duchy as a node of a complex
system of transnational and transcultural dialogues.
The Florentine myth of the “fifth element,” evoked in early modern histories of
Florence and visualized by Jacopo Ligozzi in the space that celebrated the creation of
the Medicean state, became instrumental in constructing an identity for Grand Ducal
Tuscany as an interlocutor with the global powers of the early modern period. We
argue that this myth reflected a vision that the Medici nurtured through their politics
of Eurasian exchange, and the chapters in this volume aim to find a thread—in the
archives, through objects, and the protagonists involved—to unravel the global narra-
tive of Eurasian Tuscany.

Notes
1. The print is based on a drawing by Matteo Rosselli. On the dating of this series of prints see
Jules Lieure, Jacques Callot, 3 vols. (Paris: Editions de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1927),
152; Shelley Perlove, “Callot’s ‘Admiral Inghirami Presenting Barbary Prisoners to Ferdi-
nand I’,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 58, no. 2 (1980): 98.
2. Major studies on the Port of Livorno include Fernand Braudel and Ruggiero Romano,
Navires et marchandises a l’entrée du port de Livourne (1547–1611) (Paris: A. Colin,
1951); Jean Pierre Filippini, II porto di Livorno e la Toscana (1676–1814) (Napoli: Edizioni
scientifiche italiane, 1998); Corey Tazzara, The Free Port of Livorno and the Transforma-
tion of the Mediterranean World, 1574–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
3. ASF, MM, 370, ins. 7, Orso d’Elci, Note sulla navigazione tra Firenze e le Indie orientali e
occidentali.
4. Ibid. “La domanda che si deue fare a S.M.ta Catt.ca per il negozio dell’Indie, sia di hauere
un priuilegio di poter mandare due Naui alle dette Indie, tanto orientali, quanto occiden-
tali. E che possano partire dal porto di Liuorno, e che nell’andare e tornare, possano toc-
care in qualsiuoglia porto di Francia, Inghilterra, et Paesi Bassi, senza alcun pregiudizio, et
in quelli caricare e discaricare mercanzie.”
5. For this painting, see Ettore Allegri and Alessandro Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici:
guida storica (Florence: Studio per edizioni scelte, 1980), 372–374; Gerhard Wolf, “Ligozzi,
Miniator,” in Jacopo Ligozzi, “altro Apelle”, ed. Maria Elena De Luca and Marzia Faietti
(Florence: Giunti 2014), 13–17.
6. Claudia Tripodi, “I fiorentini ‘quinto elemento dell’universo’: L’utilizzazione encomiastica
di una tradizione/invenzione,” Archivio Storico Italiano 3 (2010): 491–515, especially 501.
7. Lia Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence (University Park, PA: The Pennsyl-
vania State University Press, 2016).
8. Geoffrey C. Gunn, First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500–1800 (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 3.
12 Francesco Freddolini
9. On Eurasia as a region of transcultural exchange see Gunn, First Globalization (espe-
cially 8–10 as a historiographical category, and 113–144 in terms of how it was mapped,
and therefore identified, in early modern Europe), as well as Zoltàn Biedermann, Anne
Gerritsen, and Giorgio Riello, eds., Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in
Early Modern Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Anna Grasskamp
and Monica Juneja, eds., EurAsian Matters: China, Europe and the Transcultural Object,
1600–1800 (Berlin: Springer, 2018).
10. For the maps in the Medici Guardaroba, see Mark Rosen, The Mapping of Power in
Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Flor-
ence, 29–45.
11. Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence, 93–117.
12. After the pioneering work by Detlef Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici (Florence: Edam,
1972), the scholarship on Medicean cross-cultural collecting has only recently flourished
with major studies including Francesco Morena, Dalle Indie orientali alla corte di Toscana:
Collezioni di arte cinese e giapponese a Palazzo Pitti (Florence: Giunti 2005); Adriana
Turpin, “The New World Collections of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and Their Role in the
Creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio,” in Curiosity and Won-
der from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Robert John Weston and Alexander
Marr (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 63–85; Adriana Turpin, “The Display of Exotica in the
Uffizi Tribuna,” in Collecting East and West, ed. Susan Bracken, Andrea M. Galdy, and
Adriana Turpin (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 83–118;
Jessica Keating and Lia Markey, “Indian Objects in Medici and Austrian-Habsburg Inven-
tories: A Case Study of a Sixteenth-Century Term,” Journal of the History of Collections
23, no. 2 (2011): 283–300; Markey, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence.
13. Brian Brege, “Renaissance Florentines in the Tropics: Brazil, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany,
and the Limits of Empire,” in The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492–1750, ed.
Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017),
206–222.
14. Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
15. Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce and the Rep-
resentation of Nature in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2001); Anne Ger-
ritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., Writing Material Culture History (London and New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2015); Meredith Martin and Daniela Bleichmar, “Introduction:
Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World,” Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 604–619;
Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture
of Connections in the Early Modern World (London and New York: Routledge, 2016);
Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello, Global Gifts. On the specific Eurasian Grasskamp and
Juneja, EurAsian Matters.
16. The study of material culture, especially at the intersection between history, art history
and anthropology, is a growing field. To name just a few examples: Jules D. Prown, Art
as Evidence: Writings on Art and Material Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2001); Lorraine Daston, ed., Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (New
York: Zone Books, 2004); Daniel Miller, ed., Materiality (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005); Paula Findlen, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800
(London: Routledge, 2013); and Gerritsen and Riello, The Global Lives of Things.
17. Pamela Findlen, “Afterword: How (Early Modern) Things Travel,” in Gerritsen and Riello,
The Global Lives of Things, 244.
18. On the term “actant” see Bruno Latour, “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifica-
tions,” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996): 373.
19. See for instance: Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche orientali a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Flor-
ence: Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, 1978); Marco Spallanzani, Ceramiche alla corte dei
Medici nel Cinquecento (Modena: Panini, 1994); Marco Spallanzani, Mercanti Fiorentini
nell’Asia Portoghese (Florence: SPES, 1997); Morena, Dalle Indie orientali alla corte di
Toscana; Francesca Trivellato, “From Livorno to Goa and Back: Merchant Networks and
the Coral-Diamond Trade in the Early-Eighteenth Century,” Portuguese Studies 16 (2000):
 Introduction 13
193–217; Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora,
Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2009); Kaled El Bibas, L’emiro e il granduca. La vicenda dell’emiro
Fakhr ad-Dīn del Libano nel contesto delle relazioni fra la Toscana e l’Oriente (Florence:
Le Lettere, 2010); Irene Backus, “Asia Materialized: Perceptions of China in Renaissance
Florence,” PhD Diss., University of Chicago, 2014; Markey, Imagining the Americas in
Medici Florence; Maurizio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio, eds., The Medici and the Levant:
Material Culture, Diplomacy, and Imagery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Turnhout:
Harvey Miller, 2016); Horodowich and Markey, The New World in Early Modern Italy;
Mahnaz Yousefzadeh, “The Sean of Oman: Ferdinand I, G. B. Vecchietti, and the Armour
Of Shah ʽAbbās I,” Rivista degli studi orientali 90, no. 1–4 (2018): 51–77.
20. Arfaioli and Caroscio, The Medici and the Levant.
21. On the scale of Medicean archives see Arfaioli and Caroscio, The Medici and the Levant,
and Musillo’s Post Scriptum to this volume. Although Italy was not a political entity, sev-
eral historiographical cases have been made to study the Peninsula as a whole in relation to
global interactions. See for example, Giuseppe Marcocci, “L’Italia nella prima età globale
(ca. 1300–1700),” Storica 20, no. 60 (2014): 7–50; Horodowich and Markey, The New
World in Early Modern Italy.
22. Francesca Trivellato, “Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global His-
tory?” California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2011). Reflecting on Trivellato’s article, Paula
Findlen proposes the phrase “material microhistories” (Findlen, “Afterword,” 244).
23. For the use of the phrase “regimes of value” see Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Com-
modities and the Politics of Value,” in Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 15.
24. See especially the chapters by Joseph M. Silva, Corey Tazzara, Tiziana Iannello, and Cinzia
Sicca in the present volume.
25. On the formation of the Grand Ducal state see Elena Fasano Guarini, Lo stato mediceo di
Cosimo I (Florence: Sansoni, 1973).
26. For the monument, which included four bronze statues cast by Pietro Tacca, see Anthea
Brook, Pietro Tacca a Livorno: Il monumento a Ferdinando I de’ Medici (Livorno:
Debatte, 2008); Mark Rosen, “Pietro Tacca’s Quattro Mori and the Conditions of Slavery
in Early Seicento Tuscany,” Art Bulletin 97, no. 1 (2015): 34–57; Steven F. Ostrow, “Pietro
Tacca and His Quattro Mori: The Beauty and Identity of the Slaves,” Artibus et Historiae
36, no. 71 (2015): 145–180. For Volterrano’s fresco, see Riccardo Spinelli, “Gli affreschi di
Baldassarre Franceschini, il Volterrano, a villa ‘La Petraia’: Iconografia medicea e orgoglio
dinastico,” in Fasto di Corte. L’età di Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1628–1670) ed. Mina
Gregori (Florence: Edfir, 2006), 13–30.
27. After pioneering studies such as Claire Farago, ed., Reframing the Renaissance (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), important recent work discussing the
complexities of “circulations” in art history include Liselotte E. Saurma-Jeitsch and Anja
Eisejbeiβ, eds., The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations: Art and
Culture Between Europe and Asia (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010); Thomas DaCosta
Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Punel, eds., Circulations in the Global
History of Art (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015). On Eurasian exchanges see Michael North and
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, eds., Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in
Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014); Petra Chu and Ding Ning, eds.,
Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges Between China and the West (Los Angeles: Getty
Research Institute, 2015); Grasskamp and Juneja, EurAsian Matters; Marco Musillo, Tan-
gible Whispers, Neglected Encounters: Histories of East-West Artistic Dialogues 14th–
20th Century (Milan: Mimesis, 2018).
28. See for example Giorgio Riello and Tirthankar Roy, eds., How India Clothed the World:
The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850 (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Ellen C. Huang,
“From the Imperial Court to the International Art Market: Jingdezhen Porcelain Produc-
tion as Global Visual Culture,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 115–145; Anne
Gerritsen and Stephen McDowall, “Global China: Material Culture and Connections in
World History,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 3–8; Anne Gerritsen and
Stephen McDowall, “Material Culture and the Other: European Encounters with Chi-
nese Porcelain,” Journal of World History 23, no. 1 (2012): 87–113; Stacey Pierson, “The
14 Francesco Freddolini
Movement of Chinese Ceramics: Appropriation in Global History,” Journal of World His-
tory 23, no. 1 (2012): 9–39. A relevant exception is Biedermann, Gerritsen, and Riello,
Global Gifts, where the mobility of European objects is considered within the framework
of diplomacy, rather than commerce.
29. Mika Natif, Mughal Occidentalism: Artistic Encounters Between Europe and the Courts
of India, 1580–1630 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018); Tülay Artan, “Eighteenth-Century
Ottoman Princesses as Collectors: Chinese and European Porcelains in the Topkapi Palace
Museum,” Ars Orientalis, Vol. 39, Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eight-
eenth Century (2010): 113–147; Kristina Kleutghen, “Chinese Occidenterie: The Diversity
of ‘Western’ Objects in Eighteenth-Century China,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 47, no. 2
(2014): 117–135.
30. Marco Spallanzani, Giovanni da Empoli: Un mercante fiorentino nell’Asia Portoghese
(Florence: SPES, 1999); Barbara Karl, “ ‘Galanterie di Cose Rare’: Filippo Sassetti’s Indian
Shopping List for the Medici Grand Duke Francesco and His Brother Cardinal Ferdi-
nando,” Itinerario 22, no. 3 (2008): 23–41; Nunziatella Alessandrini, “Images of India
Through the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Cen-
tury,” in Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World, ed. Mary
N. Harris and Csaba Lévai (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2007), 43–58; Barbara Karl, “Gar-
dening in Goa: Filippo Sassetti’s Experiences with Indian Medicine and Plants,” in Early
Modern Merchants as Collectors, ed. Christina M. Anderson (London: Routledge, 2016),
63–79; Benay in this volume.
31. See my chapter in this volume.
32. Important exceptions are Timon Screech, “The Cargo of the New Year’s Gift: Pictures from
London to India and Japan, 1614,” in The Power of Things, 114–134; Jessica Keating,
“Metamorphosis at the Mughal Court,” Art History 38, no. 4 (2015): 732–747; Jessica
Keating, Animating Empire: Automata, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Early Modern
World (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018), especially
77–119; Kyoungjin Bae, “Around the Globe: The Material Culture of Cantonese Round
Tables in High-Qing China,” in Eurasian Matters, 37–56.
33. Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 11.
34. Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian
Architecture 1100–1500 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000); Bronwen
Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City, and Early Modern Identity (Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press, 2005); Elizabeth Horodowich, The Venetian Discovery of America:
Geographic Imagination and Print Culture in the Age of Encounters (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2018).
35. On cross-cultural collecting in the early modern period see Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C.
Mancall, eds., Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlan-
tic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
36. For Livorno in a global commercial context, see especially the important studies by
Francesca Trivellato mentioned earlier (note 19). An overview of the social and religious
panorama of Livorno in the early modern period is in Adriano Prosperi, ed., Livorno
1606–1806: Luogo d’incontro tra popoli e culture (Turin: Allemandi, 2009). On the term
“ethnoscape” see Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural
Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society 7 (1990): 295–300.
37. These letters have been discovered and partially studied, especially in relation to the factual
information that they can provide, by Enrico Parlato, “Fontebuoni, Bartolomeo,” in Dizionario
Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 48 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997), 760–762.
38. Lorenzo Magalotti, Relazione della China (Milan: Adelphi, 1974).
39. ASF, MdP, 1605, fol. 199r: “Io come dissi a V.A. vado meditando il luogo in cui possa riti-
rarmi per servire Dio, e tutta quella pocha fabrica che potrò fare in S. Tomaso mia Padria
la riconoscerò nella liberale mano di V. A. come quella che sarà fabricata con li denari che
in elemosina mi diede.”
40. The reliefs were cast by Fra Domenico Portigiani. See Avraham Ronen, “Portigiani’s Bronze
‘Ornamento’ in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthis-
torischen Institutes in Florenz 14, no. 4 (1970): 415–442; Massimiliano Rossi, “Emuli di
Goffredo: epica granducale e propaganda figurative,” in L’arme e gli amori. La poesia di
 Introduction 15
Ariosto, Tasso e Guarini nell’arte fiorentina del Seicento, ed. Elena Fumagalli, Massimiliano
Rossi, and Riccardo Spinelli (Livorno: Sillabe, 2001), 35; and Susan B. Butters, “Contrast-
ing Priorities: Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Cardinal and Grand Duke,” in The Possessions of
a Cardinal. Politics, Piety, and Art, 1450–1700, ed. Mary Hollingsworth and Carol M.
Richardson (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 188.
41. Klaus Lankheit, Florentinische Barockplastik. Die Kunst am Hofe der Letzten Medici,
1670–1743 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1962), 102–109; Carla Sodini, I Medici e le Indie Orien­
tali. Il diario di viaggio di Placido Ramponi emissario in India per conto di Cosimo III
(Florence: Olschki, 1996); Claudia Conforti, “Cosimo III de’ Medici patrono d’arte a Goa:
la tomba di San Francesco Saverio di Giovanni Battista Foggini,” in Lo specchio del Prin­
cipe, 109–121; Annamaria Giusti, “Ritorno in India: di nuovo l’Opificio e il mauseoleo di
San Francesco Saverio a Goa,” OPD Restauro 11 (1999): 278–289; Claudia Conforti, “Il
Castrum Doloris (1689–1698) per San Francesco Saverio al Bom Jesus di Goa di Giovan-
battista Foggini. Dono di Cosimo III de’ Medici, granduca di Toscana,” in The Challenge
of the Object, ed. G. Ulrich Großmann and Petra Krutisch, vol. 4 (Nuremberg: Germanis-
ches Nationalmuseum, 2013), 1436–1440.
42. The hitherto unpublished letter is in ASF, MdP, 1171, fol. 96r: “Dal P. Francesco Sarmento,
Procuratore della Prouincia nostra di Goa, hò intesa la generosa, e pia intentione, che V.A.
Seren:ma hà di stendere la sua reale beneficenza sino al nuovo Mondo, per nobilitare il
Sepolcro di San Francesco Sauerio.”
43. For Sassetti see Karl, “ ‘Galanterie di Cose Rare’,” 23–41; Alessandrini, “Images of India
Through the Eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist Merchant in the 16th Cen-
tury,” 43–58; Barbara Karl, “Gardening in Goa: Filippo Sassetti’s Experiences with Indian
Medicine and Plants,” in Early Modern Merchants as Collectors, ed. Christina M. Ander-
son (London: Routledge, 2016), 63–79; and Erin E. Benay in this volume.
44. See for example Christopher Pastore, “Bipolar Behavior: Ferdinando I de’ Medici and the
East,” in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750. Visual Imagery Before Ori-
entalism, ed. James Harper (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 129–154, and consider the role of
the Typographia Medicea, established and supported by Ferdinando I to translate religious
texts in Oriental languages (See Sara Fani and Margherita Farina, eds., Le vie delle lettere:
La Tipografia Medicea tra Roma e l’Oriente (Florence: Mangragora, 2012).
45. For the importance of the “physical, infrastructural, and institutional conditions of move-
ment” see Stephen Greenblatt, “A Mobility Studies Manifesto,” in Cultural Mobility: A Man-
ifesto, ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 250.
46. Marguerite Eyer Wilbur, The East India Company (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1945).
47. The letters never reached China. See Nicholas Koss, “Matteo Ricci on China via Samuel
Purchas: Faithful Re-Presentation,” in Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific
Age, 1522–1657, ed. Christina Lee (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 88.
48. Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations: The Third Volume of the Principal Naviga-
tions, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation [. . .] (London: George
Bishop, 1600), 83, as quoted in Koss, “Matteo Ricci on China,” 88.
49. On the market for luxury goods sent from Livorno in the late eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, see Cinzia M. Sicca, “Livorno e il commercio di scultura tra Sette e Ottocento,”
in Storia e attualità della presenza degli Stati Uniti a Livorno e in Toscana, ed. Paolo Cas-
tignoli, L. Donolo, and Algerina Neri (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2003), 275–297; Cinzia
M. Sicca, “Il Negozio di Giacinto Micali e figlio in Livorno ove si trovano ogni sorte di
Mercanzie e oggetti di Belle Arti in Marmo,” in Carrara e il mercato della scultura. Arte,
gusto e cultura materiale in Italia, Europa e Stati Uniti tra XVIII e XIX secolo, ed. Luisa
Passeggia (Milan: Federico Motta: 2005), 78–85; Cinzia M. Sicca and Alessandro Tosi,
ed., A Window on the World: Il mercato internazionale delle stampe nella Livorno del
Settecento (Florence: Edifir, 2019).
50. Marcocci, “L’Italia nella prima età globale,” 8: “l’accelerazione di un processo d’interazione
tra le diverse parti del mondo già in atto da secoli”, expanding on Charles H. Parker,
Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2010), 1–2.
51. Alessandra Russo, The Untranslatable Image: A Mestizo History of The Arts in New Spain
1500–1600 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014).
Part One

Mediterranean Connections
2 Making a New Prince
Tuscany, the Pasha of Aleppo,
and the Dream of a New Levant
Brian Brege

Then again, governments set up overnight, like everything in nature whose growth
is forced lack strong roots and ramifications. So they are destroyed in the first bad
spell. This is inevitable unless those who have suddenly become princes are of
such prowess that overnight they can learn how to preserve what fortune has sud-
denly tossed into their laps, and unless they can then lay foundations such as other
princes would have already been building on.1

For a rebel to become a recognized prince, his regime must survive. This, Machi-
avelli warned, generally fails to happen. In 1605–1607, Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha, self-
proclaimed Ottoman governor of Aleppo and scion of a powerful northern Syrian
Kurdish clan, rebelled against an Ottoman Empire beset by foreign wars and other
rebellions, and formed a fledgling state.2 Perhaps unexpectedly, the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany took the lead in attempting to make his new title a reality, as he was styled in
his treaty of alliance with Tuscany, “Prince and Protector of the Kingdom of Syria.”
This chapter considers part of that project.3
Tuscany’s effort to support this aspirant prince promised to be difficult. As a draft
of the Tuscan ambassador’s instructions explained,

And already it is understood here, that the Turk has been preparing himself with
very large forces to overcome them and principally the Pasha of Aleppo, for being
of the lineage of the great lords of Syria, and of those particularly that gave to the
Ottoman House.4

As impending destruction approached, Ali Pasha looked abroad for succor. That he
should do so is unsurprising, given his peril.5 Perhaps more surprising is that it should
come from Michel Angelo Corai—who had been born in Aleppo with the name
Fathullah Qurray—operating on behalf of the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany.6 The
full measure of Tuscany’s extensive ambitions in the Levant and relationship with Ali
Pasha requires extended treatment; here, I propose to consider one aspect of the effort
to make the pasha a king.7 This aspect is the “List of the items that were of necessity
that Sir Michelangiolo agreed with this Most Serene Pasha,” which included both
“Five pieces of field artillery and accompanying battery” and “a great barrel of mar-
zolino,” a type of Florentine cheese.8 The list of diplomatic gifts offers a window into
Tuscany’s goals and methods in seeking to make a new prince. Before delving further,
though, a brief account of the complex situation in Syria is in order.9
20 Brian Brege
Beset by a grinding two-front war with the Habsburgs in the Balkans and, from
1603, the Safavids in northwestern Iran and the Caucasus, the Ottomans state began
to buckle under the pressure. This allowed numerous, disruptive rebel groups called
celâlîs to wreak havoc in Anatolia. In northern Syria and eastern Anatolia, near the
front with the Safavids, different tiers of the Ottoman military and political system—
from the janissaries posted to Damascus and Aleppo through the beylerbeyis (pro-
vincial governors) of Aleppo, Damascus, and Tripoli to the serdar commanding the
Ottoman army on the eastern front—proved fractious, engaging in violent personal
rivalries and armed confrontations.10 These were exacerbated by the fraught relation-
ship with figures outside the standard hierarchy, especially hereditary local emirs and
celâlîs, armed bands, usually a few dozen strong but sometimes much larger. Both
the emirs and celâlîs possessed militarily powerful, but problematic, forces that were
sometimes co-opted into the Ottoman military system to meet immediate threats. The
celâlîs could be bandits, destructive of the peace and competent with weapons but
undisciplined and self-seeking, making them unreliable on the battlefield. Ambitious
emirs might possess more disciplined and effective forces, but such emirs usually had
local ambitions for autonomy, resources, and recognition that did not always mesh
well with the needs of grinding campaigns in the devastated lands on the empire’s
eastern frontier. Out of this welter of leaders claiming authority and backed by their
armed forces emerged a series of armed confrontations in Syria, including in Damas-
cus and Aleppo, concentrating on the right to hold governing posts in the Ottoman
administration. In Aleppo—a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants—the dispute
between the Istanbul appointee Nasuh Pasha (d. 1614) and the Kurdish emir of
Kilis, Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha (d. 1605), a friend of the serdar Cağalazade Sinan
Pasha (d. 1605), over the city’s governorship resulted in a siege by the emir’s forces
in 1604 that ended in Nasuh Pasha’s exit. With a hereditary Kurdish emir and his
well-equipped forces now in charge of Aleppo, the serdar expected support on his
campaigns against the Safavids. Following the stinging, career-ending defeat of the
Ottoman army under the serdar’s command by Shah Abbas (1571–1629) at Sufiyan in
November 1605, the retreating serdar encountered Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha with
his army intact at Van. Rashly, the serdar had Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha executed
for dilatoriness in the discharge of his duties.11
Faced with the legally dubious execution of his uncle, Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha
(d. 1610) raised a cry of vengeance that met with initial sympathy. Aligning himself
with major celâlîs and local rebels, especially Çemsid, Pasha of Adana, Ali quickly
moved to assume his uncle’s position in Aleppo. Through a rapid campaign against
existing Ottoman leaders in Tripoli and Damascus, which included winning a pitched
battle at Hama on 24 July 1606, Ali consolidated control of Syria. Leading as many
as 60,000 troops in the summer of 1606 and surrounded by a network of allies and
protégés, Ali played a double-game, professing loyalty to the Ottoman Empire in
some venues yet simultaneously taking the fateful step of proclaiming independence,
in coinage, Friday prayers, and even a foreign treaty. An initially propitious set of
circumstances for this move slowly disintegrated, as the Ottomans came under the
firm leadership of Kuyucu Murad Pasha (d. 1611). After negotiating peace with the
Habsburgs at Zsitvatorok in 1606, Murad Pasha rose steeply in rank. The death of
Lala Mehmed in June of 1606 and the execution of his successor, Derviş Pasha, in
December, led to Murad Pasha’s elevation to the Grand Vizierate. Proceeding carefully
 Making a New Prince 21
and skillfully, Murad Pasha assembled an overwhelming Ottoman field army using the
newly available Ottoman forces in Europe.
The Grand Vizier proceeded to snuff out or neutralize the celâlîs of Anatolia as he
marched relentlessly eastward. With the collapse of Ali Pasha’s allies in Anatolia and a
simultaneous rebellion in Baghdad, he was left to face the main Ottoman field army on
unfavorable ground at Oruç Ovası on 24 October 1607. Though the Ottoman force
of 75,000 was nearly double his, Ali Pasha’s army acquitted itself well for two days.
On the third, however, Ali’s army was decisively defeated, sustaining catastrophic
losses in battle and subsequent executions. Ali Pasha fled, attempting to secure his
family in Aleppo’s castle before making his way on a complex journey starting with
Baghdad. This plan failed. Canbulad property was confiscated, Aleppo fell swiftly,
and Ali’s family and supporters suffered grievous losses in a wave of executions. Ali’s
own fate was more complicated, involving rejection by Shah Abbas, failed negotia-
tions with the major celâlîs in Anatolia, and a nominal and controversial in-person
reconciliation with Sultan Ahmed I (1590–1617). Appointed beylerbeyi of Temeşvar
but never accepted as reconciled by substantial portions of the Ottoman elite, Ali fled
to Belgrade in April 1609. The end was near. Murad Pasha, returning west, ordered
Ali’s execution, which took place around 1 March 1610.12

Making a Prince
In 1606 and for much of 1607, the creation of an independent Syria ruled by
Canbuladoğlu Ali Pasha seemed a real possibility. Well informed about Levantine
affairs and keenly interested in all anti-Ottoman projects, Medici Tuscany sought,
in 1607, to transform the rebel pasha into a sovereign prince. They did so as part of
a broader project to destroy the Ottoman Empire, with which Medici Tuscany had
persistently dreadful relations after repeated failed efforts at reconciliation.13 Aware
that the Austrian Habsburgs and Safavids had battered, but not seriously breached,
Ottoman defenses, the savvy Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I (r. 1587–1609),
appreciated the futility of a direct assault. Instead, the Medici state pursued a two-
pronged strategy. Tuscany would assiduously seek to form a coalition to attack the
Ottoman Empire on as many fronts as possible, stretching the empire’s resources
and preventing its pre-eminent army from concentrating its might against a single
foe. Simultaneously, Tuscany would seek to ally with the local leaders of subjected
religious and ethnic communities to carve out independent or at least autonomous
polities. In Tuscan plans, the empire would then crumble into its constituent pieces.
Grateful for outside support, these would form manageable successor states granting
favorable arrangements to the Tuscans. To this end, the instructions to the lead Medici
ambassador, Michel Angelo Corai, state,

And assure the said Pasha and all of the other leaders, that the Christian princes
will not have any greediness to acquire countries in the land of Asia, but that their
principal intention is, that everyone works together to finish the destruction of the
said Ottoman Empire.14

By disavowing territorial ambitions, the Medici could and did act effectively as a
safe source of support. Tuscany’s relatively modest military power lent credibility to
22 Brian Brege
the claim that the Medici simply sought the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and
favorable commercial, diplomatic, and religious arrangements in the Levant.
A draft of the letter to the pasha of Aleppo preserved among the Medici state papers
in Florence concisely lays out the basis of Medici action:

To the most high and powerful Lord Ali Pasha, of the most honorable lineage of
Zambollat, Protector of Aleppo, Damascus, and Tripoli in Syria, and of all the Holy
Land. After you declared yourself opposed to the tyranny of the Ottoman house,
you in such matter reconciled the spirits of the Christian Princes, which all are prais-
ing and honoring your generous resolution, desiring also the augmenting of your
power and glory. And We that continually endeavor with Our galleys and ships to
trouble this great Tyranny, we are also ready to help all those that seek to offend
them. So that returning in this same province the honored man Sir Michelag.lo Corai
of the City of Aleppo, very well known and loved by Us, we have given him some
commissions to treat secretly with you for the common service. Therefore, it will
please you to listen to him, and then let us understand that which from here we will
be able to do for your service, and to end we salute you with all our spirit.
Most prompt for any service to you15

Tuscan offers of material support on these terms were so acceptable to the rebel
pasha that he signed a treaty of alliance with Tuscany. The opening sentences of the
main body of the treaty recount its origins:

According to the relation that we have from the Most Serene Grand Duke of
Tuscany, and which was given by Sir Signor MichelAngiolo Corai[,] a Gentleman
of Aleppo, sent to Us, as express ambassador of His Most Serene Highness in
the name of whom he has presented to us a most cheerful letter, to Us the above
letter [is] most gratifying for We have had great pleasure in this, the great desire
that His Most Serene Highness has to contract with Us a perfect Friendship. We
declare that about this, Our wish is not a minor point, and that we are most con-
tent. Therefore, we accept willingly his most powerful and inviolable Friendship,
assuming that it is truly offered; of which we are certain, that he will accept Our
lofty and irrevocable Friendship, the which we offer to him with great chains of
obligations and affection, that tighten a true eternal Friendship, foreseeing the
infinite good that ought to result for both parties.16

The treaty then outlines detailed commercial and diplomatic arrangements under the
rubric of “capitulations,” a standard term for such an agreement; the terms gave Tus-
cany a remarkably privileged position.17 Given the desperateness of Ali Pasha’s plight,
the attractiveness of paper promises when immediate material assistance was on offer,
and the relatively low cost of privileging the Tuscans, the pasha readily agreed. Under
the treaty, Tuscany’s merchants and diplomats would quite simply have the best posi-
tion of any Europeans in the region, from special rights of supervision of disputes in a
Jerusalem open to Catholic pilgrims to free commerce throughout the pasha’s lands.18
These rights were conceded in part in the expectation that

if perhaps the Most Serene Grand Duke condescends to such a great friendship
with Us, the Holiness of the Most Blessed Pope Paul Vth vicar of the Omnipotent
 Making a New Prince 23
God among the Christians, and the Majesty of the Most Glorious and Catholic
Don Philip III King of Spain Ze’ and other Potentates and Christian Princes, will
all agree to make a League with Us.19

Tuscany’s position in this arrangement was as a special interlocutor. No matter how

enthusiastic the Tuscans were in their support of Ali Pasha, they lacked the forces to
turn the tide against even a severely weakened Ottoman host. Among the Christian
powers, only Spain, Venice, and France had the combination of naval and ground
forces to intervene in strength in Syria. The immediate purpose of involving Tuscany’s
allies, then, was clearly military.
Syria was not a remote frontier region the Ottomans could afford to let slip into
the control of a local dynasty that only occasionally heeded the wishes of the Sultan.
Sitting at the crossroads among continents, Syria possessed a central commercial and
strategic importance for any empire with aspirations for control in the Middle East.
Aleppo, in particular, played a vital role in the lucrative silk trade.20 As the very exist-
ence of this treaty of friendship constituted an act of defiance against the Ottomans,
the signatories had little reason to attempt to conceal their goals. Accordingly, the
treaty specifies the purpose of this new league in no uncertain terms:

And this great Friendship and League among Us, is not for any other effect, but to
abase and destroy, as [much] can be with divine help, the Ottoman Empire, and
to increase the Power of the House of Giampulat and particularly to raise up Our
illustrious person.21

The purpose of the treaty from the perspective of Ali Pasha, then, is clear. He and his
house sought large-scale Christian intervention to defeat the Ottomans, which would
allow the House of Giampulat (Canbulad) to become the ruling dynasty of an inde-
pendent Syria. For the Tuscans, Ali Pasha’s compromising defiance made true recon-
ciliation with the Ottomans and betrayal of the Tuscans impractical. This would have
had the effect of signaling to Tuscany’s allies, weary of endless over-optimistic reports
of discontented locals ready to rebel, that Ali Pasha was fully committed. Whatever
his later protestations to the Ottomans, his actions indicate that the rebellion was,
indeed, in earnest. It was certainly substantial enough that major European interven-
tion might well have secured Syrian independence, at least for a time.
This intervention, the Tuscans were optimistic, would be forthcoming. Indeed, on 6
April 1607, a letter from the Grand Ducal court in Tuscany to Michel Angelo Corai
recounts the gathering of the fleet of the Catholic alliance.22 As in decades past, the
Spanish ships from Sicily (12), Naples (12), and Spain (40), allied ships from Genoa
(8), Don Carlo Doria (14), Malta (5), the Papacy (5), and Savoy (2) were to gather in
Messina; less Venice, this was the Lepanto coalition.23 Tuscany was to provide its own
force of eight galleys and fifteen galleons or bertoni (roundships) “armed with good
men and many artillery.”24 Optimism about the enthusiasm of the Spanish alliance
for an all-out naval campaign against the Ottoman Empire proved to be misplaced,
though not for lack of Tuscan effort.
In 1607, Grand Duke Ferdinando I dispatched a fleet of eight galleys and nine other
ships, carrying more than 2,200 soldiers and substantial amounts of weapons and
munitions, to Cyprus to take Famagusta in response to secret intelligence from there.
The Tuscans were to be supported by 6,000 Greeks in the attack on Famagusta. The
24 Brian Brege
Tuscan ambassador to Syria, Michel Angelo Corai, was intimately involved in this
project, dispatching an encouraging, partially enciphered message from Cyprus on 1
March 1607.25 Cyprus was to have been a base for the execution of the plans for Syria,
but the attack failed because the fleet was scattered in the voyage, which prevented the
Tuscans from using their entire force in the first blow, and because the Greeks were
not as disposed to help as had been promised.26
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s ability to engage so actively in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean reflected an unusual moment in Tuscan history. The period from the expulsion
of the Medici in 1494 to the conquest of the Republic of Siena in 1554–1559 had seen
devastation wreaked by the sieges of Pisa, Florence, and Siena and the sack of Prato.
Following these traumas, Florence enjoyed a robust recovery.27 Flush with the success
of unifying most of Tuscany in an absolutist, bureaucratic, and centralized polity at
peace with its immediate neighbors, the Medici could devote considerable resources
to expeditionary forces. The heavy fortification of Tuscany—it has been likened to
Vauban’s later fortification of France—and Medici alliance with the Spanish Habs-
burgs meant that this force could be used with impunity.28 Medici security and prestige
depended on their relationship with Spain and the Papacy. Joining their allies in cam-
paigns for Mediterranean defense against an aggressive Ottoman Empire, the Medici
developed both the Tuscan fleet and the maritime crusading Order of Santo Stefano,
which operated at a high tempo.29 Tuscany benefitted from its middle position. It was
strong enough to resist coercion and to intervene by sea in the Eastern Mediterranean,
but not so large or close as to have interests or ambitions that might spark suspicion
among allies or provoke a strong Ottoman reaction against Tuscany itself.

Gifts for the Pasha

Tuscany’s ambitions throughout the Mediterranean relied on not just a willingness
to deploy naval force, but also an astute recognition of its partners’ priorities. Ben-
efitting from excellent information and an illustrious tradition of diplomacy, Tuscan
diplomats soothed concerns and lined pockets even as they negotiated favorable treaty
terms. To secure the extraordinarily generous provisions of the treaty between Tus-
cany and Ali Pasha, Ambassador Corai offered rich gifts.30 On a short-term basis,
Tuscany agreed to pay Ali Pasha with real items of value in exchange for nothing
more than paper promises. Had the rebellion been a success, though, this might well
have seemed a light price to pay for the generous privileges envisioned by the treaty.
What were gifts next to the right of the Florentine consul in Aleppo to judge foreign
civil and criminal cases, as the treaty envisaged?31 Indeed, under the treaty, the Tuscan
community was to be a self-governing affair, practically immune from local laws and
officials and governed by resident diplomats accorded extensive rights.32
To secure these privileges for such a modest military power as Tuscany was a diplo-
matic coup, one made possible by offering appropriate gifts. This was doubtless facili-
tated by Tuscany’s lead diplomat’s origins in Aleppo. Ambassador Corai’s extensive
experience both in the Middle East and in Italy gave him the cross-cultural knowledge
to understand both what Tuscany could give and what Ali Pasha needed to make a
regal court.33 Fortunately, the terms agreed have come down to us:

Copy of the League and Chapters that were made and agreed in Aleppo between
the Most Serene Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Third, and the Most Serene Prince
Alij Giampulat Governor of the Kingdom of Syria34
 Making a New Prince 25
List of the items that were of necessity that Sir Michelangiolo agreed with this
Most Serene Pasha
Five pieces of field artillery and accompanying battery
Barrel of the arquebus of the measure of 5 palms of a design that Hippolito35
has in his trunk of ———— number 1000—
Jackets / Mail shirts of the fashion [or fashionable jackets] of the measure that
the said Hippolito has in his trunk, that ten conform to the said measure and the
others in the best fashion that can be found of ————— number 100—
Columns of white marble and marmo mischio, as knows the bearer, that
4 white and the others motley [mischie] and having to serve for a fountain 8
columns———
A Lion carved in white marble that would have the two white parts in front [/]
above the body of an ox and the other a type of prey with the mouth open from
where would be able to exit the water having to serve for a fountain
Two robes of finished velvet on the outside and plush inside of the color as will
be most liked, except for black or melancholy colors, having to serve for the Most
Serene Pasha and the other for his married wife
A great barrel of marzolino [a type of Florentine cheese]
A gardener and a gunner
Four marked for the checchià of rich velvet, in the hand of which remains eve-
rything and governs all, of the color green, peacock-colored, red, and sky blue
A dozen gilded pistols of one palm that are found at Vienna of Hungary of the
price of an unghero each
Two wheel-lock arquebuses
Cuts of ermine or satin for five, or six robes for various officials36

Though the list of items to be transferred initially appears to be eclectic, ranging

from gilded pistols to marble columns, as a group the items have a measure of coher-
ence. While not sufficient in and of themselves, the listed items represent a significant
contribution to the equipment of a new royal court. This is most evident in the fine
clothing—for the pasha, his wife, and his officials—and in the carved lion and eight
marble columns intended for an apparently elaborate fountain.37 Yet even the seem-
ingly more martial items—the five pieces of field artillery, the 1,000 arquesbuses, the
dozen gilded pistols, and the two wheel-lock arquebuses—seem to be court pieces.38
With the possible exception of the artillery, they represented a militarily trivial amount
of weaponry for any confrontation with an Ottoman imperial field army, as must soon
have been expected. A thousand arquebuses and five field guns may have served well,
however, for a palace guard. Likewise, the ambiguously named jackets, or mail coats,
may well have been war materiel, given that the Tuscans agreed to transfer 100 of
them; in the absence of the design referenced it is difficult to tell.39 As with the guns,
though, the quantity seems to have been enough for no more than a court guard. The
handful of fine pistols and arquebuses was presumably reserved for the pasha and
those close to him. Interpreting the list as items for a fledgling court has the added
attraction of explaining curious items—the great barrel of cheese and the gardener
and gunner—that otherwise seem out of place. The barrel of cheese might have served
for a feast while the gardener and gunner would have served on a palace staff.40
Notably absent from the list of items is a sense of urgency, or the need to prior-
itize military items to meet the coming military challenges. For instance, the cost and
transport space required by the eight marble columns might, it would seem, have been
26 Brian Brege
replaced with weapons, ammunition, or money, any of which might have aided the
rebellion’s military fortunes.41 Like the provisions of the treaty that laid out in detail
the future framework within which Tuscans might trade, pray, and conduct diplomacy
in the Levant, this request for columns for a fountain seemed to assume success. For
an established sovereign like the Safavid Shah, who might expect to have a court and
empire even if the fortunes of war turned against him, such a request might simply
have been part of the normal currency of diplomatic exchange. But for a rebel whose
dominions were by no means securely held and who might expect an immediate inva-
sion and dreadful consequences in case of defeat, the request for columns bespeaks a
striking degree of insouciance. Perhaps the pasha thought to behave as a sovereign as
part of his claim to legitimacy. Or perhaps he expected that the opportunity cost of
requesting columns was acceptably low or that the Tuscan aid would arrive too late to
make a military difference. Though if he expected the latter, why begin with requests
for weapons? In any case, the pasha certainly expected to enjoy the benefits of power
through a flow of luxuries from the alliance.
The agreed items, both military and otherwise, are revealing of the currency of
Tuscan diplomacy and what was ultimately valued in the Levant. As in Tuscany’s
similarly dubious dealings in Morocco, Tuscan marble was prized.42 The listed items
allow us to conjure up a fountain with eight Tuscan marble columns, four white and
four motley (marmo mischio), with a sculpted lion from which water was to emerge.43
The Tuscans could offer to clothe and arm the sovereign and his household and to
provide some of the experts with which to run his court and artillery train.44 Of mod-
est military utility, Tuscan aid was primarily political.
As a partner during peacetime, then, Tuscany could offer the luxury goods to help
create a dazzling court. Relying on the Galleria dei Lavori, which Ferdinando I had
established in the Uffizi as part of the Guardaroba, the Medici possessed both ample
collections of court finery and the ability to produce high-quality clothing and lux-
ury goods. Tuscany, therefore, was especially well prepared to equip a prince and his
court.45 To enjoy such a court, though, a ruler had to hold power. For Ali Pasha, this
was a doubtful proposition indeed. Insouciance would cost all involved dearly, for
Ali Pasha lost his war, as we have seen.46 Perhaps, then, the Medici and their Syrian
ally would have done better to turn to the writings of another Tuscan who knew the
bitterness of defeat, Niccolò Machiavelli. Nearly a century before, he had advised a
previous Medici of the fragility of a new prince’s hold on power.47 The Medici might
well have benefitted also from Machiavelli’s advice in the Discourses—“One Should
Never Risk One’s Entire Fortune and Not One’s Entire Army, So Defending Passes Is
Often Harmful”—and concentrated their efforts on the main chance in Syria, rather
than fruitlessly attack Cyprus.48
The first decade of the seventeenth century was perhaps the closest the Ottoman
state came to falling apart in the early modern period. The Long Turkish War against
the Austrian Habsburgs (1593–1606) left the Ottomans vulnerable to celâlî rebellion
in Anatolia, Safavid invasion, rebellion in Syria, sedition in Lebanon and the Greek
world, and political turmoil at the center.49 The Ottoman Empire did not, of course,
fall apart. Indeed, it may not have been all that close to it. Contemporaries, however,
thought they smelled blood and felt that a final push might have done the trick. They
could not have known this would be a 300-year chimera; for them it was new. This
last points to two key problems. First, nearly all dreams of destroying the power of the
Ottomans depended on rallying an implausibly large group of allies, many of whom
 Making a New Prince 27
were perfectly happy to see the powerful Ottomans fighting someone else. Philip III
of Spain, for instance, was in no need of new wars, having plenty of other problems.
Second, in light of the Ottoman Empire’s power and internal diversity, plans for its
destruction nearly always featured optimistic expectations about the prospects for
massive rebellion in support of outside intervention. Exiles kindled such hopes. Yet,
exiles can be dangerous guides to policy, as Machiavelli perspicaciously noted in his
Discourses in the section “How Dangerous It Is to Believe Exiles,”

As for vain promises and expectations, their desire to return home is so great that
they sincerely believe many things that are false and add many things to them cun-
ningly. Consequently, between what they believe and what they say they believe,
they fill you with such expectations that, if you rely on them, either you incur
futile expenses or you engage in an undertaking that destroys you.50

Even in the case of its support for one of the largest rebellions that the Ottoman
Empire faced in the early modern period, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany might have
been wise to remember not just the examples from classical antiquity on which Machia­
velli drew, but also the history of the many generations of illustrious Tuscan exiles
produced by centuries of political turmoil. Dreams are powerful things, however, and
exiles can be spellbinding.
Lured by the dream of what a new Middle East of friendly successor states would
mean for their power, wealth, and faith, Tuscan diplomats and envoys sought to
assemble coalitions to act in alliance with Ottoman rebels. In so doing, the Tuscans
easily and pragmatically crossed religious, linguistic, ethnic, and cultural boundaries
to form an alliance against the diverse Ottoman state. For all the differences between
Tuscany and its partners, all parties shared an understanding of power and its rhe-
torical and material cultural manifestations. Both Tuscany’s grand strategy and Ali
Pasha’s willingness to sign an alliance depended on this. If this cross-cultural military
alliance had triumphed, Tuscany would have assumed leadership in brokering the
relationship between Europe and the Levant. If only the Tuscans could fashion a new
prince, albeit here a Syrian rather than Tuscan one, then Florence could solve its core
problems and prosper in the way Venice had once done; if only.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to the participants in the workshop Conversations in Conflict Studies, PARCC,
Maxwell School, Syracuse University—at which I presented “The Syrian Civil War and
Western Intervention, 1606–1607”—for their feedback on a version of this chapter;
particular thanks are due to Professor Timur Hammond for his invaluable advice, espe-
cially on bibliography. Responsibility for all remaining deficiencies remains my own.

Notes
1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003),
22–23.
2. See Colin Imber, “The Battle of Sufiyan, 1605: A Symptom of Ottoman Military Decline?”
in Iran and the World in the Safavid Age, ed. Willem Floor and Edmund Herzig (New
York: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 96–98. With reference to the execution of Canbuladoğlu Ali
28 Brian Brege
Pasha’s uncle, Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn, following the Ottoman defeat at Sufiyan on 6–7
November 1605, Imber argues that this “was the pretext for the rebellion of his nephew
Canbuladoğlu Ali of Aleppo, a revolt which for a while seemed to herald the dismember-
ment of the empire,” (98). See also, Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the
Ottoman Empire 1300–1923, 2005, paperback ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 179
and Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The Ottoman City Between East
and West: Aleppo, Izmir, and Istanbul, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 29–33.
3. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r. “Casa Giampulat, e in partic:re di Noi Alij Giampulat, Principe e
Protettore del Regno di Soria”.
4. ASF, MdP 4275, 51r. “et già s’è inteso qui, ch[e] il Turco si preparava con grandme. forze
p[er] debellargli [??] et principalmte. il Bascia d’Aleppo, p[er] esser di stirpe di grn̓ sigri. dlla
[della] Sorìa, et di quei proprij ch[e] la diedero alla Casa Ottoma̓ na: onde ta[n]to piu è
necissa. la d.a unione, perch[e] il Turco conservi instatamte. di separarli concedendo à ciascn̉
Capo tutte le condizioni ch[e] chied[e]ranno, p[er] no[n]le mantener poi loro, come fu à
molti, et come hanno fatto i suoi Antecessori.”
5. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179.
6. Federico M. Federici, “A Servant of Two Masters: The Translator Michel Angelo Corai as
a Tuscan Diplomat (1599–1609),” in Translators, Interpreters, and Cultural Negotiators:
Mediating & Communicating Power from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, ed. Fede­
rico Federici and Dario Tessicini (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 81–82.
7. For a recent collection of essays on the Medici and the Eastern Mediterranean, see Mauri­
zio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio, eds., The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant: Material
Culture, Diplomacy, and Imagery in the Eastern Mediterranean, The Medici Archive Pro-
ject Series (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2016).
8. Multiple versions of this list of items to be transferred appear in ASF, MdP 4275. ASF,
MdP 4275, 103r-104r appears to be the final version. “Listra d[el]le robe ch’ è stato di
necessità che l sr Michelang:lo accordi con questo S:mo Bascia.” “Cinque pezzi d’Artiglierie
da campagno ɛ batteria scompartito” and “Un bariglione di marzolini—.” John Florio
defines “Marzolino” as “that is sowed or groweth in March. Also a kind of daintie cheese
made about Florence,” in Queen Anna’s New World of Words or Dictionarie of the Italian
and English Tongues . . . (London: Printed by Melch. Bradwood for Edw. Blount and Wil-
liam Barret, 1611), 302. On Italian cheese see Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and
the World Around It (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 141. Faroqhi cites Benjamin Arbel,
who shows that the Venetians exported fine Italian (though the example is not Florentine)
cheese to Istanbul for Ottoman pashas. Benjamin Arbel, Trading Nations: Jews and Vene-
tians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean (New York: Brill, 1995), 15–16 and 16
n.12 citing Marin Sanuto, I diarii, vol. 58 (Venice: Fratelli Visentini, 1879–1903). So, this
was well-informed, not eccentric, gift giving.
9. For this I rely primarily on William J. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion: 1000–
1020 / 1591–1611, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, vol. 83 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag,
1983), but also on background in Finkel, Osman’s Dream. Griswold also discusses the
activities of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, but I rely on my own research and Federici’s
recent “A Servant of Two Masters” instead.
10. A beylerbey (beglerbeg) served as governor of the largest Ottoman administrative unit, the
beylerbeylik (beglerbegilik); there were more than thirty in the Ottoman Empire at the end
of the sixteenth century. A serdar (serdâr) was usually the ranking general officer on the
military frontier. Appointed by the sultan to lead a campaign, he had sweeping powers of
appointment and was accountable to the sultan. For the foregoing see Selcuk Aksin Somel,
Historical Dictionary of the Ottoman Empire (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 6,
41, 43, 268 and Jane Hathaway with contributions by Karl K. Barbir, The Arab Lands
Under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800 (New York: Pearson, 2008), 296.
11. The standard work on the rebellion in Syria on which much else is still based is Griswold,
The Great Anatolian Rebellion: 1000–1020 / 1591–1611. The foregoing relies primarily
on Griswold’s essential work, especially Chapters III and IV (pp. 60–156) but also draws
on Chapters I and II for reference. Chapter III (pp. 60–109) provides the detail on Otto-
man administration and the conflicts in Syria up to Canbuladoğlu Hüseyn Pasha’s execu-
tion shortly after the Battle of Sufiyan in 1605. Husëyn’s name is alternatively rendered,
 Making a New Prince 29
“Canpoladzade Husëyin Pasha.” For this spelling, further discussion of this family’s activi-
ties, and the transformation of the Ottoman Empire see Baki Tezcan, The Second Otto-
man Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 145, 149–151, 161–162, 173. For the celali, banditry,
and the Ottoman state see Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route
to State Centralization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), especially Chapter 5,
“Celalis: Bandits without a Cause?” For the Long Turkish War see Peter H. Wilson, The
Thirty Years War: Europe’s Tragedy, (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2009), Chapter “4 The Turkish War and its Consequences” (pp. 76–115).
On the Safavid situation see, Imber, “The Battle of Sufiyan, 1605,” 96–98. For translated
primary documents on the Ottoman administration in Lebanon, see Abdul-Rahim Abu-
Husayn, The View from Istanbul: Ottoman Lebanon and the Druze Emirate in the Otto-
man Chancery Documents, 1546–1711 (New York: I.B. Tauris in Association with the
Centre of Lebanese Studies, 2004), 94.
12. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, Chapter IV (pp. 110–156) provides the basis
for this narrative. However, for the account of the decisive battle see also, ASF, MdP 4275,
124r–124v. The whole letter is ASF, MdP 4275, 124–127; it is partially enciphered. It
was sent by Tuscan ambassador Michelangiolo Corai from Aleppo on 6 December 1607.
Murad Pasha took Aleppo almost immediately after arriving on 8 November 1607, but
the castle only fell after a treacherous negotiation led to its surrender and the execution
of many of its occupants (Griswold, 148). See also Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179; Barkey,
Bandits and Bureaucrats, 215–217; Hathaway, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule,
1516–1800, 72. For a recent work on Aleppo that briefly mentions Tuscany’s role see
Philip Mansel, Aleppo: The Rise and Fall of Syria’s Great Merchant City (New York: I.B.
Tauris, 2016). See also, Edhem Eldem, Daniel Goffman, and Bruce Masters, The Ottoman
City Between East and West, especially Bruce Master’s section on, “Aleppo: The Ottoman
Empire’s Caravan City,” pp. 17–78.
13. For one Tuscan effort at diplomatic rapprochement that foundered on Tuscan bad faith
in 1577, see Riguccio Galluzzi, Storia del Granducato di Toscana, 11 vols., vols. 3 and
4 bound together, Nuova Edizione (Firenze: Leonardo Marchini, 1822), Vol. 4, Lib IV,
Cap. III, 66–71, years 1577 and 1578. For the failure of more conciliatory Tuscan efforts
in 1598 see National Archives at Kew, SP 98/1, Bundle 1, 122r–122v. There is another copy
of the letter on 123r–123v. Galluzzi, Storia del Granducato di Toscana, Vol. 5, Lib. V, Cap.
VIII, 212–214, year 1598. For an alternative reading of these same events, see F. Özden
Mercan, “Medici-Ottoman Diplomatic Relations (1574–1578): What Went Wrong?” in
Arfaioli and Caroscio, eds., The Grand Ducal Medici and the Levant, 19–31. Whereas
Tuscany failed to address the problem of the Knights of Santo Stefano, France squared
the circle of Ottoman alliance and Christian militancy. Suraiya Faroqhi argues that French
nobles joining the Knights of Malta provided countervailing prestige among Christians for
France after its controversial alliance with the Ottomans, Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire
and the World Around It, 8.
14. ASF, MdP 4275, 51v. “Et assicurate pure il detto Bascia et ogn ˙altro di quei capi, ch[e] i
Principi Ʌchristiani no[n] havranno mai avidità di guadagnar paesi neˋ Terre in Asia, ma ch[e]
la principal intenzione loro è, ch[e] ognuno concorra à finir di distruggere il detto Imperio
Ottomanno”.
15. ASF, MdP 4275, 56r-v. 56r. “Al molto alto et potente Signore Halj Bascia, della honoratis-
sima stirpe di Zambollat, Padrone di Aleppo, Damasco, e Tripoli di Sorìa, et di tutta la
Terra Santa. Doppo che voi vi dichiaraste contro alla tirannide della casa Ottomảna, vi
sete talmente conciliato gli animi de Principi christiani, che tutti lodando et magnificando
la vostra generosa risoluzione, vi desiderano ancora augume[n]to di potenza et di gloria.
et Noi ch[e] tuttavia ci ingegniamo con le Nostre Galere et Navi di travagliare questo gran
Tiranno, siamo anch pronti ad aiutare tutti quelli ch[e] corcano di offenderlo. onde torna[n]
dosene in cotesta provincia”. 56v: “il Cav.re li honorato huomo m Michelag.lo Corai della
Città di Aleppo, molto conosciuto et amato da Noi, gli habbiamo dato alcune commessioni
da trattar segretamente con esso voi per servizio comune. Però vi piacerà d’ascoltarlo, et
farci poi intendere quello che di qui potremo fare per vostro servizio, et per fine vi salu-
tiamo con tutto l[’]animo. Prontissimo p[er] ogni vri servizio”. The word “corcano” poses
certain problems for translation. Florio’s dictionary, defines “Corcáre” (p. 123) as: “to lie
30 Brian Brege
downe or along, to squat downe. Also to doubt. Also to bray as a stag or bucke.” Since this
makes little sense in the context of the rest of the sentence, I have assumed for the purposes
of the translation that “cercano” was intended.
16. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r. “Per la relazione che Noi habbiamo havuta del Sermo Gran Duca di
Toscana, e che c’è stata data dal Cavalre Sigr MichelAngiolo Corai Gentilhuomo d’Aleppo,
spedito à Noi, per Ambasc:re espresso da S.A.S.ma à nome della quale ci ha presentato una
giocondiss:ma lettera, à Noi sopramodo gratiss:ma per haver visto con gran piacer Nostro in
essa, il grand:mo desiderio che ha S.A.S. di contrarre con esso Noi una perfetta Amicizia.
Noi dichiaramo che intorno à questo, non punto minore è il desiderio Nostro, et che ne
siamo contentissimi. Però accettiamo volontieri la sua potentiss:ma & inviolabile Amiciza,
secondo che la c’è stata realmente offerta; si come siam sicuri, che l’accettarà l’eccelsa &
inrévocabil Amicizia Nostra, la quale le offeriamo con quei maggiori vincoli d’obligo &
affezione, che possino stringere una vera Amicizia eterna, antivedendo dover risultarne per
ambele parti infinito bene.”
17. The treaty uses the word “Capitolazioni” in article 3 and again in article 5, ASF, MdP
4275, 113v–114r. Griswold, The Great Anatolian Rebellion, 128–132 discusses the treaty
and diplomatic mission, but this has been superseded. Federici, “A Servant of Two Mas-
ters,” 91–96 is right to see Corai, not Leoncini, as the head of the mission, as a perusal of
the documents in ASF MdP 4275 makes clear. For a lengthy discussion of this, see my “The
Empire That Wasn’t: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Empire, 1574–1609,” PhD diss.,
Stanford University, 2014.
18. ASF, MdP 4275, 113–117. For a brief account of the treaty see, Galluzzi, Storia del Grandu-
cato di Toscana, vol. 6, lib. V, cap. XI, 75–76, year 1607.
19. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r. “si fa forse il Sermo G.D. di far condescendere à tanta Amcizia Nr̓ a,
[Nostra] la Santtà del Beatmo Papa Paolo V.o vicario dell’ Omnipotentmo Dio fra Christiani,
e la Maiestà del Gloriosiss:mo ɛ Cattico Don Filippo iij̊ Re di Spagna Ze’. et altri Potentati e
Principi Cʰra̓ ni [Christiani], i quali tutti concorderanno à far una Lega con esso Noi.”
20. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, 179 sees the economic role of Aleppo as the motivating factor
behind Tuscan involvement. For a sense of the scale of this trade see E. K. Faridany, “Signal
Defeat: The Portuguese Loss of Comorão in 1614 and Its Political and Commercial Conse-
quences,” in Acta Iranica: Portugal, the Persian Gulf and Safavid Persia, ed. Rudi Matthee
and Jorge Flores, Iran Heritage Foundation and Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2011), 123 n. 15, who estimates
annual raw silk exports from Iran to Europe via Aleppo at above 200 metric tons in 1600.
21. ASF, MdP 4275, 113r.
22. MAP Doc ID 21027, entry for ASF, MdP 4275, 134. Unsigned letter from the Grand Ducal
Court in Florence to Michelagnolo Corai, 6 April 1607.
23. Niccolò Capponi, Victory of the West: The Great Christian-Muslim Clash at the Battle of
Lepanto, 2006, paperback ed. (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2007), 331, Appendix 1; Roger
Crowley, Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest
for the Center of the World (New York: Random House, 2008); Victor Davis Hanson,
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, 2001, paperback
ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 238.
24. MAP Doc ID 21027, entry for ASF, MdP 4275, 134. Unsigned letter from the Grand Ducal
Court in Florence to Michelagnolo Corai, 6 April 1607. The relevant portion of the MAP
Transcription is, “Et se al Gran Duca [Ferdinando I] riuscirà l’impresa che quest’anno ha
mandato a tentare, egli ha pensiero di conservarla, et vi terrà 8 galere armate et 15 tra
galeoni et bertoni armati di brava gente et di molta artigliera, et sarà sempre pronto per dis-
turbare ogni disegno et ogni forza che il Turco volesse tentare contro al Sig.r [Ali] Giambol-
lat [Pasha of Aleppo], et contro ai ribelli, con i quali S. A. terrà sempre buona amicizia et
intelligenza, et starà unito con loro ai danni del Turco.” On the Tuscan bertoni see Gregory
Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts,
1560–1800 (New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1998), 13, 40.
25. ASF, MdP 4275, 64r–64v, 65r.
26. The foregoing summary of events on Cyprus closely follows Galluzzi, Storia del Grandu-
cato di Toscana, vol. 6, Lib. V, Cap. XI, year 1607, 77–78. See also the brief comment
in Niccolò Capponi, “Le Palle di Marte: Military Strategy and Diplomacy in the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany Under Ferdinand II de’ Medici (1621–1670),” The Journal of Military
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Title: Profili e paesaggi della Sardegna

Author: Paolo Mantegazza

Release date: January 5, 2024 [eBook #72631]

Language: Italian

Original publication: Milano: Brigola, 1869

Credits: Barbara Magni and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This transcription was
produced from images generously made available by
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek / Bavarian State Library.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PROFILI E

PAESAGGI DELLA SARDEGNA ***
PROFILI E PAESAGGI
DELLA

SARDEGNA
PROFILI E PAESAGGI
DELLA
SARDEGNA
DI

PAOLO MANTEGAZZA

MILANO
PER L’EDITORE G. BRIGOLA.
1869
 Proprietà Letteraria.
Milano. — Ditta Wilmant.
INDICE
Man möchte glauben, dass
diese Insel gar nicht in Europa
läge, so wenig kümmert man
sich um sie.
Si potrebbe credere che
quest’isola non fosse in
Europa, tanto poco ce ne
occupiamo.
Barone di Maltzan.
 UNA PAROLA AL LETTORE

Questo scritterello tirato giù alla buona, più col cuore che colla
squadra, era destinato ad uscire modestamente in qualche rivista:
ma in questi nostri tempi anche le riviste hanno i loro regolamenti, le
loro frontiere, le loro dogane; e il mio lavoro, già piccino per sè, fece
il caparbio e il superbuzzo, nè volle rassegnarsi a comparir pei
giornali tagliato a fette, nè ci son riuscito a condurlo a più modesti
consigli. Ecco perchè un libro, che non è un libro, vi compare
impaginato, col suo frontispizio e il suo indice, col nome dell’editore
nella prima pagina e colla triste parola di fine nell’ultima. Non badate
però alla veste superba, perchè sotto la scorza c’è un galantuomo,
che chiacchiera con voi senza pretensione di scrittore che voglia dir
cose nuove o ripeter cose vecchie meglio degli altri.
Amando il vero più che il brevetto d’invenzione, io godrò assai di
ripetere sulla Sardegna cose già dette da altri; ma ad un patto solo,
ch’io sia riuscito cioè a farvi amare un’isola bellissima e infelicissima,
che noi altri italiani abbiamo il torto di dimenticar troppo e di amar
troppo poco.
Io poi vorrei dirvi un’altra parola che mi riguarda, e per farmela
perdonare voglio rubarla al nostro Giusti. Voi sapete che l’Io è come
le mosche, più le scacci e più ti ronzan d’intorno; sicchè devo
confessare che ho scritto questo libro non libro per amor mio, per
pagare almeno in parte un debito di riconoscenza verso i Sardi così
cortesi, così ospitali, così delicatamente generosi. Mi parve che a
saldare il conto non dovesse bastare quel po’ di lavoro utile che
potrò fare in Palazzo Vecchio come membro della Commissione
d’inchiesta e come deputato. Mi parve che fosse mio dovere scrivere
una parola calda d’affetto per la Sardegna, farla conoscere anche a
quei molti italiani che non possono leggere e studiare le grandi opere
che son privilegio delle biblioteche e dei pochi signori che comprano
i libri grossi e costosi.
Può darsi che la mia parola riesca qua e là severa od acerba; ma
son sicuro che i miei amici di Sardegna non vi troveranno ombra di
fiele. Chi molto ama, molto castiga; ed io amo fortemente quell’isola,
così povera di presente, così ricca d’avvenire; e in nome di questo
affetto fraterno, confido che l’asprezza sarà interpretata come
burbera tenerezza d’un galantuomo, come rabbuffo amoroso
d’amico ad amico.
Rimini, 2 agosto 1869.
 CAPITOLO I.

La Sardegna vuol essere amata. — Le città della

Sardegna. — Cagliari. — I giardinetti e un pazzo di San
Bartolomeo. — Sassari e una lezione di storia. — Le
grandi e le piccole borgate della Sardegna. — I villaggi e
gli stazzi.

Ho messo il piede in Sardegna con viva curiosità e dopo un lungo

giro ho lasciato quell’isola con caldo amore: prima di conoscerla, era
per me cosa curiosa; dopo averla conosciuta era per me cosa cara.
Gli Italiani della penisola hanno un grave torto di dimenticare questa
gemma del Mediterraneo; essi devono studiarla ed amarla; gli Italiani
di Sardegna hanno il grave torto di spegnere la loro energia in
queruli lamenti, cercando fuor di sè stessi l’origine e il rimedio dei
loro mali. Or conviene che isola e penisola si perdonino a vicenda i
loro peccati, e stringendosi in un potente amplesso, si preparino a
tempi nuovi, e si mettano con forze comuni a fecondare una terra
quasi deserta e che ha dinanzi a sè un avvenire senza confini, più
splendido del suo passato ai tempi di Roma. Io sento nel cuore molti
debiti verso la Sardegna e i suoi cortesi abitanti: come membro della
Commissione d’inchiesta farò coi colleghi quanto sta in me, perchè il
nostro lavoro non riesca infecondo; come operaio della penna vorrei
con queste poche pagine far amare la Sardegna da tutti gli Italiani,
invitarli a studiarla, ad accarezzarla. Io ho viaggiato gran parte del
nostro pianeta e ho portato il piede in regioni quasi ignote a calcagno
europeo: eppure ho trovato in questa italianissima nostra isola molte
cose nuove, e belle e originali; e più d’una volta coi miei cari
compagni di viaggio ho dovuto esclamare in coro: Oh perchè mai gli
Italiani ignorano queste bellezze della loro patria? Oh perchè mai
non vi portano i loro occhi per ammirare, le loro braccia per lavorare,
il loro oro per raddoppiarlo?
La Sardegna è pur terra feconda e originale! Quasi ignota alle
invasioni germaniche, è tesoro per l’etnografo e l’archeologo; e
altrove non si saprebbero trovare alcuni tipi che in quell’isola
rimasero purissimi, segregati dall’incrociamento moltiforme del
medio evo. Un filologo e un antropologo troverebbero nello studio
comparato dei dialetti e dei cranii sardi tali tesori da farne una
scienza nuova e da ricostruire con facile e feconda fatica la fisiologia
delle più antiche stirpi italiane. L’amante del bello trova in Sardegna
paesaggi svariatissimi: coste dentellate come le foglie delle mimose;
vergini foreste; pianure e stagni; colli e vere Alpi, dove il granito
mostra i più bei fianchi ch’io m’abbia veduti al mondo. Costumi
pittoreschi intatti da più secoli: tipi umani profondamente scolpiti;
poesia popolare, passioni calde; rozze e ardenti nature poco o nulla
mutate dagli attriti sociali, nè lisciate dalla pialla della moda francese;
scene della natura geologica e umana, quali è difficile trovare altrove
e ai tempi nostri; tutta una tavolozza di colori vivi e svariati che può
dare materia d’opere immortali al poeta, allo scrittore, all’artista.
E poi in questo secolo affamato d’oro, tu trovi in Sardegna monti
solcati da cento e mille filoni di piombo e sul piombo strati di zinco; e
presso il piombo e lo zinco altri metalli che non aspettano che la
mano del minatore per versare una larga vena di ricchezza nel
sangue italiano. E su quei monti una terra che scalda e profuma i
pampini delle vigne di Spagna e di Portogallo e promette in epoca
non lontana una mina a fior di terra più ricca di quella metallica che
s’addensa nelle viscere dei monti. E nel piano una terra che per
ritornare ad essere granaio d’Italia, non aspetta che la magia d’una
parola, il drenaggio.
Su questa terra benedetta dal sole, ricca di metalli, e di vino; di biade
e di poesia, batte l’ali fuligginose un triste vampiro, la malaria; ma
questa può e deve esser vinta dall’uomo, purchè il voglia. Nelle vene
dei Sardi, intelligenti e morali, serpeggia un veleno più infesto della
malaria alla salute di un popolo, ed è l’inerzia: malaria ed inerzia, le
due grandi malattie della Sardegna; ma malattie curabili, perchè
l’organismo è robusto e malgrado la ricca storia, ancor giovine;
perchè quest’isola dà già segni di reazione della natura medicatrice;
perchè quest’isola incomincia a voler essere medico di sè stessa.
Anche Londra aveva la malaria e per opera dell’uomo è fra le città
più salubri del mondo: anche i Tedeschi furono per anni e secoli
inerti; ma l’inerzia fu vinta; e la Germania, dopo essersi messa a
capo della scienza, ha fatto Sadowa.

Cagliari e Sassari son le due gemme della Sardegna, e son gemme

rivali, e di un’antica rivalità, come già lo scrisse Cattaneo col suo
scalpello da scultore. «Il solo vincolo che unisce le città sarde, era
quello della rivalità anzi dell’odio. La stessa mano che fomentava
altrove i rancori tra Palermo e Messina, tra Milano e Pavia,
opponeva studiosamente Cagliari e Sassari, Sassari e Alghero. In
Alghero si fece statuto, che i Sassaresi non vi si potessero mostrare
colla spada al fianco; e in Sassari vi si rispose argutamente,
ordinando che li Algheresi non potessero venire a Sassari se non
cinti di due spade. La vita delle nazioni era concentrata nei pochi
municipi. Cagliari fondava un’Università, e Sassari non rimaneva
indietro, e ne fondava un’altra.» — Ed io aggiungerò, che al dì d’oggi
la rivalità fra le due prime città dell’isola non è astiosa, e va
assottigliandosi di giorno in giorno coi contatti cresciuti; finchè le
ferrovie la facciano sparire del tutto.
Del resto Cagliari non può essere confrontata a Sassari, così come
una bella bruna non può compararsi con una bella bionda. Cagliari
ha più pittoresca posizione e s’adagia in un panorama più grandioso;
Sassari è più lieta e si circonda di più amena cornice di colli e di
oliveti. La prima città è più severa, più accigliata e più sporca;
Sassari è più vivace, più rumorosa, più pulita. Cagliari è città
ufficiale, burocratica, con tinta soffusa di orientale e di spagnolesco;
Sassari è città più italiana, d’aspetto più moderno, di tinta siciliana; e
mi si perdoni il pericoloso confronto in nome dell’amor grandissimo
che porto alla Sardegna. L’Italia è così ricca di belle e svariate città,
che si dovrebbe poter ragionar senza fiele di ogni gemma che
adorna il nostro ricco diadema.
Quando si contempla il golfo di Cagliari dall’alto del bellissimo
giardino pubblico, o del castello, o meglio ancora dalla torre di San
Pancrazio, si gode d’uno dei bellissimi fra i belli spettacoli che
offrono al viaggiatore le cento città d’Italia. Un golfo ampio, dinanzi a
cui l’uomo deve arrossire col microscopico porto che offre alle navi;
e il faro lontano, e le saline, colle loro piramidi bianchissime, quasi
tende di un guerresco accampamento; e gli stagni vicini, veri laghi,
popolati da grosse borgate; e il promontorio di Sant’Elia col Bagno di
San Bartolomeo; e la città che dal Castello scende a Stampace e
alla Marina, quasi volesse imbarcarsi sul mare, e la vasta fascia di
agavi americane che cingono il Castello d’una fortezza primitiva; e i
lontani gruppi di palme e i tamarischi e le altre piante tropicali danno
all’occhio infinita ricchezza di sensazioni; e l’occhio beato si riposa
lungamente e amorosamente su quelle mille incantevoli bellezze.
Il Castello è il quartiere più alto e più salubre della città, e
s’arrampica sopra un alto colle: ha vie dirette da nord a sud, poco
larghe, ripide, con case alte. E strette sono anche le vie di Cagliari
alla Marina: vecchia abitudine dei nostri padri, che, vivendo giorni e
mesi all’aria libera, volevano nelle loro case ombra e frescura più
che aria e luce. Nel quartiere del Castello avete la Cattedrale
dedicata a Santa Cecilia e sette altre chiese.
Discendendo dal Castello per la piccola porta del Balice, vi trovate
nel quartiere di Stampace, che è il centro del commercio e degli
affari. Se per la via di Yenne vi dirigete verso il mare, guardando a
destra e a manca le migliori botteghe della città, giungerete alla
piazza di San Carlo, che si continua in quella del mercato; e là vi
convien sorridere, ma di un sorriso senza amarezza, guardando
sopra un gran piedestallo di granito, un re Carlo Felice, fatto di
bronzo, con elmo, corazza e paludamento; graniti e bronzi e vesti
romane che, davvero, poco convengono ad un re pacifico; due volte
pacifico.
Quando siete in Stampace non avete a dimenticare il mercato, che è
sempre uno dei quadri più importanti di una città. Vi troverete molto
pesce; montagne di arancie dorate e profumate raccolte sotto
capanne pittoresche, quasi indiane; vedrete il ricco e svariato
selvaggiume della Sardegna. Vi offriranno una pernice per una lira,
una beccaccia per dieci soldi; filze di otto tordi polputi e grassi,
lessati nelle montagne e ravvolti nel mirto: filze degne di Nembrodde
e di Lucullo e che i Sardi chiamano taccole. Fra le capanne dei
venditori d’arancie, e le botteghe a ciel sereno dei pesciajuoli, dei
salumieri e dei beccai vedrete aggirarsi la gente minuta coi suoi
costumi variopinti, quasi sempre pieni di gusto.
Le case di Cagliari son popolate da cento balconi e in molte di esse
ogni finestra è un balcone, ciò che non è bello a vedersi, ma è
comodo assai per le fanciulle e le signore, che escono assai poco di
casa e da quei loro osservatorii studiano il mondo esterno e fanno
all’amore. L’amore onesto si fa anzi da una signora che guarda dal
balcone e da un giovinotto che impavido e instancabile passa le ore
inchiodato nella via come una statua, contemplando la fiamma del
suo cuore. E come sia cosa seria il far l’innamorato in Sardegna, lo
vedremo più innanzi.
Se dalle vie principali della città vi addentrate nei viottoli e più ancora
se cercate i più poveri quartieri, il naso si arriccia e l’igiene pubblica
fa sentire i suoi lamenti. Nel quartiere di Villanuova ho veduto le vie
convertite in fogne, e anche in alcune case di Stampace ho veduto
atrii che devono essere molto pericolosi agli uomini di corta vista. In
Villanuova la vita del povero è pubblica nel senso più preciso della
parola. Le case per lo più non hanno finestre; e l’aria, la luce e gli
sguardi dei curiosi entrano liberissimamente a spiare i costumi degli
abitanti. Quando il tempo è buono, non fa bisogno neppure di
spinger lo sguardo oltre la soglia delle case, perchè tutta la famiglia
si rovescia nella via, dove si lavora, si chiacchiera e si mangia. In
Villanuova io mi credevo davvero in Africa, e le donne che mi
parevan tutte sorelle, avean gli occhi orizzontali e piccoli, il colorito
terreo e quella fisonomia di obelisco che ci hanno tramandati i
monumenti egiziani.
E quella gente dal volto egiziano è cortese e sorride al forestiero.
Colle migliori grazie del mondo mi lasciarono entrare in casa e mi
accorsi che molte di quelle abitazioni sembravan fatte per una cosa
sola, adatte ad una sola industria, quella del mugnaio. Le sedie son
poche e spesso brillano per la loro assenza, e così dei tavoli e degli
altri mobili; ma la nostra attenzione è tutta attratta da un asinello
grullo grullo, arruffato, poco più grosso d’un mastino e che così poco
rassomiglia a cosa viva da sembrar di legno, quando si arresta nel
suo monotono, sempiterno giro intorno alla macina che muove.
Quell’animaluccio, il dio penate, la prima ricchezza della casa, costa
da cinque a dieci lire, è più parco di un arabo; e divide il tetto col
padrone e i suoi figliuoli. Fabbrica il pane alla famiglia e produce
spesso il piccolo frutto di macinar il grano ai vicini, industria rovinosa
che speriamo veder scomparire dalle classi povere della Sardegna.
Le donne della casa son occupate per tre e fin quattro giorni della
settimana a fabbricare la farina che stacciano e raffinano con infinite
cure per mezzo di crivelli e stacci puliti, fini ed eleganti, intrecciati a
varii colori con cannucce di paglia e fibre di palma e che vedete
appiccati al muro della casa, di cui insieme a qualche immagine di
Santo formano l’unico ornamento.
Il mulino casalingo della Sardegna è la mola asinaria o machinaria
degli antichi: poco diversa dalla χειρομύλη dei Greci. Potete vedere
in Vaticano sopra un bassorilievo una mola machinaria romana,
dove anche il cavallo che la muove ha gli occhi coperti come i
rachitici asinelli macinatori della Sardegna. Se son rachitici e nani,
son però valenti e pazienti, perchè lavoran fin quindici e diciassette
ore al giorno, e Matzan aggiunge, ridendo a proposito, che quei
somarelli devono esser anche grandi filosofi, dacchè Pittaco di
Mitilene passava molte ore, macinando colla χειρομύλη, movimento
che aveva trovato favorevole alla meditazione.
Quando si pensa però che tutte le donne e spesso anche i fanciulli
d’una famiglia sono occupati in null’altro che a far pane, è a
desiderarsi che la legge del macinato abbia almeno in Sardegna
questo vantaggio di far sparir la falsa e fatale industria dei mulini
casalinghi.
Cagliari può vantarsi di possedere nel suo Museo un vero tesoro
archeologico, a nessuno secondo e che è opera quasi intiera di un
solo uomo, il Canonico Giovanni Spano, una delle prime glorie della
Sardegna; più che instancabile, miracoloso nella sua attività e
ardentissimo e innamoratissimo illustratore del suo paese.
L’Università di Cagliari e la sua minore sorella di Sassari sono una
vera vergogna per l’Italia. Non è lecito ad un governo, per quanto
povero, lasciare queste larve di insegnamento superiore, dove la
povertà dei mezzi concessi alla scienza fiacca e avvilisce i migliori
ingegni e la volontà dei buoni è spesso impotente e rabbiosa contro
le lesinerie burocratiche dell’alta sfera governativa. Speriamo che
per onor nostro questo obbrobrio sarà cancellato. Ho conosciuto a
Cagliari e a Sassari ottimi uomini che pur vorrebbero studiare;
giovani intelligenti e operosi che pur potrebbero far avanzare la
scienza, ma li ho veduti aggirarsi come larve irrequiete per quei muti
corridoj e quelle aule deserte che con superba parola si chiamano
Università: veri idalghi spagnuoli che domandano l’elemosina con
piglio altero e i vestiti laceri.
La penna irata mi richiama alla mente un tristo ricordo di Cagliari, ed
è la mia visita all’Ergastolo di San Bartolomeo; primo passo in una
via crucis che dovetti percorrere in Sardegna, visitando tutte le
carceri e tutte le galere.
A San Bartolomeo si sta assai bene, molti assassini vi ingrassano a
meraviglia, nel lavoro salubre delle saline, negli ampii dormitorii e
con sani alimenti. In altre carceri però e specialmente a San
Pancrazio in Cagliari e a Sassari e altrove sentii il tanfo di una lenta
asfissia e mi si inchiodò nel capo un pensiero che non mi abbandona
mai, ed è questo che la società si vendica col suo codice delle pene
assai più spesso di quel che si difende; incrudelisce assai più di
quello che educa.
Nell’Ergastolo di San Bartolomeo si fondò una colonia agricola
penitenziaria che promette assai per l’avvenire. Dinanzi al palazzo
della vendetta vedete giardini fioriti che appartengono agli impiegati
della galera: ho veduto bambine rosee nel volto, coi nastri rosei
pendenti da un lindo cappellino di paglia di Firenze correre per
quelle aiuole fiorite dietro le farfalle; mentre uomini dalla faccia
patibolare passavano dinanzi a quei giardinetti e coi loro sguardi
contaminavano quelle bambine.
E quei galeotti avevano diversi berretti, dacchè anche fra essi v’ha
una gerarchia. L’uomo è un animale da gerarchia e pur che ne
abbiate tre riuniti avete subito: plebe, aristocrazia e mezzo ceto; è
privilegio di tutte le bestie sociali e socievoli e possiamo menarne
vanto. Il berretto rosso vuol dire condanna a tempo, berretto verde
condanna a vita, fiocco nero omicidio e così via. Le bambine dai
nastri rosei conoscono tutte queste differenze e ve le spiegano; e il
Procuratore del re, passeggiando col sorriso sul volto mi diceva:
stanno benissimo: la è gente fortunata, che mangia e lavora e gode
di ottima salute. Nell’ultima epidemia di febbri miasmatiche in
Cagliari ebbero tutti la febbre e questi galeotti si serbarono
sanissimi; ed egli rideva.
Io però, passeggiando nelle sale destinate ai malati, mi fermai
dinanzi ad un volto che parea impietrito nel dolore; un Laocoonte del
cuore; sempre vivo e sempre tormentato. Era melanconico e
tormentato tratto tratto da accessi di delirio di persecuzione credeva
che tutti lo volessero ammazzare. Era divorato dai rimorsi. Era un
povero muratore, che, trovandosi senza pane, andò dal suo antico
padrone, chiedendogli lavoro. Gli fu negato; ritornò più volte e
sempre invano. Un giorno la fame era maggiore del solito: era
rabbiosa; egli insiste nell’implorare il lavoro: Ho sei figliuoli; signor
padrone. — Oh va all’inferno, tu e i tuoi figliuoli. — Una mazza era
sul suolo fra vari attrezzi di muratore e un momento dopo il padrone
era steso al suolo cadavere: e il povero muratore condannato nella
galera di San Bartolomeo è pazzo di dolore e di rimorsi [1]. —
A San Bartolomeo però si sta bene e si ingrassa; e i giardinetti degli
impiegati sono fioriti. Io vi ho vedute le più belle viole del mondo e vi
ho colta una rosa più profumata di quelle d’Arabia; i bambini vi
acchiappano le più brillanti farfalle; ma a due passi v’è un uomo
pazzo di dolore, perchè la società si vendica più di quel che si
difende. I nostri figliuoli, però, ne son sicuro, prepareranno ai posteri
una giustizia più umana.

Quando voi avete percorso le noiose, lunghe e tristi lande sterili che
separano Bosa da Macomer e avete attraversati i paesaggi poco
interessanti di Torrealba e i rari boschi di quercie che trovate nella
monotona pianura; voi vi accorgete di esser vicini a Sassari, quando
la natura diviene ridente; quando i monti, rizzandosi più alti intorno a
voi, frastagliano il cielo e la terra in modo da formare quadri svariati
e pittoreschi. Ascendete un monte tutto pieno di magnifici olivi,
coltivati colla stessa sollecitudine e tenerezza con cui si coltiva un
orto cittadino. Io percorsi quei boschi d’argento nel tempo della
raccolta e vidi liete schiere di fanciulle e di ragazzi che raccoglievano
il frutto in lindi canestri, e a quando a quando interrompevano il
lavoro per cantare e ballare. Parevano stormi di passerotti vivaci e
protervi; e raccoglievano le olive colla stessa cura e lo stesso amore
con cui si farebbe bottino di cosa carissima e preziosissima. E
davvero che l’olivo è per Sassari una mina d’argento: mi si diceva
che in quest’anno, fortunato fra gli altri, si farebbero 200,000 barili
d’olio, che è quanto dire una bella cifra rotonda di sette ad otto
milioni di lire. Di questa ricchezza mi accorsi anche entrando in
Sassari, dove molte case nuove si stavano rizzando ed erano le
olive trasformate in muri e marmi. L’olio di Sassari potrebbe esser
fatto meglio: se ne manda a Nizza, dove raffinato cresce di valore e
piglia un nome che per la sua squisitezza nativa ben si ha meritato.
L’olivo dovrebbe anche esser difeso nei dintorni di Sassari dai