Collect Locally, Rule Globally: The Art of Empire and Uses of Local Antiquities

• In Event: Collecting and the Peripheries

Abstract

Republican and (grand) ducal Florence, sought role models to create an appropriate cultural identity for its city and for its ruling house. Antiquities collections displayed in palazzi and artists’ studios, helped to develop a diverse perception of Greek, Roman and Etruscan as well as pagan and early Christian antiquity, underpinned by antiquarian engagement with an equally diverse and fast-growing historiography. After Cosimo I’s succession to the ducal title in January 1537, the model of Emperor Augustus exercised a major influence on the duke’s collections of antiquities and artistic commissions. Nonetheless, the idea of ancient empire as continued by the Holy Roman Empire was no less inspirational. My paper will depart from traditional notions and tie the Florentine renaissance court, its politics and culture, to imperial precedence from Augustus to Maximilian I and Charles V to collections of ancient remains of people in the antiquarian peripheries such as Celts and Etruscans.

Author

• Andrea M. Gáldy, Seminar on Collecting and Display