ABSTRACT

Scholarly interest in the impact on Florentine culture and society of the reign of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici has resulted in a number of interesting publications in recent years, focusing on Cosimo’s aptly named ‘cultural politics’ and the effect of his programme of reforms on various important institutions in the city.1 In particular, attention to the constitution and output of the Florentine Academy in the 1540s and 1550s has revealed a picture of both capitulation and resistance, as academicians ceded to the increasingly close control of the academic environment by their duke, no doubt recognizing the very real benefits of his patronage, while simultaneously working to define the limits of their intellectual, religious and creative freedoms within the privileged academic space.2 One recent study by Domenico Zanrè has underlined the failure by Duke Cosimo to impose cultural hegemony upon Florence (if indeed that was ever his intention), the Academy in particular serving to exemplify the continued co-existence of more mainstream and alternative modes of intellectual and literary self-expression in the mid-century.3