Premium Featured Accommodation

The 17th Century in Tuscany Italy

In a world divided into large and powerful states, Tuscany tried hard to maintain a leading role. At the beginning of the XVII th century the florentine "virtue" weakened in any field. The intellectual and artistic life still flourished but the Medicis' popes tried to give Rome a wider cultural relevance, attracting there the most outstading Florentine representatives (in Rome, 1564, Michelangelo, the last distinguished artist from Florence, died and his death marjìked the end of the grandeur for Florence).

Of the seven granddukes of the Medicis only a few showed relevant qualities: among them, Ferdinando Ist (1587-1609) followed the policy of Cosimo I st and revived the most important work of the granduchy: the harbour of Livorno. That harbour, thanks to the free calls granted: to foreign ships and goods, rapidly became a large mediterranean trading centre. Livorno became the secon town in the granduchy alter Florence for the number of its inhabitants and the productivity of its enterprises.

Florence, as a manufacturing centre, maintained a certain superiority over the other towns and this was also due to the privileges granted to the guilds. In the other towns the administration wsa centered on an oligarchy that became, little by little, a small town aristocracy and received titles of nobility (counts, marquesses, barons). The most outstading members of this aristocracy engaged in battle against the Turks (Tuscany was allied with the Empire) or in defense of freedom of navigation in the Tyrrhenian sea (in agreement with the order of the knights of St.Stephen in Pisa) Some princes of the Medicis develop their time to Studying, research and collecting works of art. Many Academies flourished in Florence; their members were scholars interested in determining the standards of artistic and literary genres.

Since then the Academies spread alla over the world: Among the ones established in Florence, the most well-known was (and still is), the "Academy della Crusca", that published the first dictionary of the Italian language in 1612.

We should also mention three Universities in Tuscany. Among these, in the XVIIth century, the most active was Pisa, also sipported with the allowances granted by Ferdinando Iind (1621-1670) whodefended the famous Galileo Galilei, from Pisa.

Articles