ABSTRACT
In a recent book on The Medici and the Levant, Maurizio Arfaioli and Marta Caroscio remind the readers that the epistolary archive of the Medici family alone comprises 6,400 volumes containing three million letters that span an impressively long period, from 1537 to 1743. Hence, even the first choice requires passing through the stillness of the inside, that dark bundle of texts which contains the instructions to proceed towards wider spaces of cultural interactions. Although declaring one’s own scholarly identity is empowering, in using the archive we should not identify our research with a specific field of study such as intellectual history, art history, or whatever sounds proper to describe our activity. The archive is a primary instrument that allows scholarship to position objects in spaces and contexts of use. The indexes take us to the privileged position of thinking about our historiographical narrative.
