Florentine Patricians and Their Networks

Book excerpt: In Florentine Patricians and Their Networks, Elisa Goudriaan presents the first comprehensive overview of the cultural world and diplomatic strategies of Florentine patricians in the seventeenth century and the ways in which they contributed as a group to the court culture of the Medici. The author focuses on the patricians’ musical, theatrical, literary, and artistic pursuits, and uses these to show how politics, social life, and cultural activities tended to merge in early modern society. Quotations from many archival sources, mainly correspondence, make this book a lively reading experience and offer a new perspective on seventeenth-century Florentine society by revealing the mechanisms behind elite patronage networks, cultural input, recruiting processes, and brokerage activities.