Introduction

Jacques Callot’s print depicting Ferdinando overseeing the fortification of the Port of Livorno visualizes a political dream in the making. 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. Once again, the arts conceptualized the Medicean political vision with unparalleled lucidity. Ligozzi added another layer, transporting the narrative into the temporal and geopolitical context of Grand Ducal Florence. The connective, transnational tissue of the Eurasian cultural and geographical region has recently proven to be an extremely productive area for studying transcultural interactions. 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.