ABSTRACT
Goa in 1586 amidst the cosmopolitan swirl of peoples from around the Indian Ocean and beyond stood a garden. In the tropical heat and humidity, where a nearly infinite supply of water and abundant sun made nature particularly fecund, a Florentine merchant named Filippo Sassetti set out to pursue one of the most exciting and politically cherished sciences of the late Renaissance: botany. Sassetti’s correspondence presents a typically early modern puzzle. The body of published letters is substantial, quite incomplete. The high degree of polish that most of the letters display, and the internal commentaries in his letters noting, for instance, that the first part of a letter was written in a different place than the second, point to the limited usefulness of the letters’ written dates. Literary and scientific, performative and practical, public and private, Sassetti’s letters operate in different registers and address multiple audiences.
