Renaissance Florence: Playground of Hedgehogs and Foxes

My lecture discusses four ongoing research projects I am currently involved in, all of which focus on significant, yet understudied aspects of Florentine history. The research project, developed in cooperation with John Padgett (University of Chicago), deals with political participation in republican Florence between the Black Death (1348) and the foundation of the Duchy of Florence (1530). Using the result of this study, another project of mine looks at the practice of Florentine taxation and double-entry bookkeeping, which served later on as prototypes for the development of modern taxation and the accounting systems of business companies. In the framework of Géza Pálffy’s “Holy Crown” Research Team (Hungarian Academy of Sciences), I investigate Florentine diplomacy toward Hungary between the mid-14th and the late 17th centuries. Meanwhile my most recent, independent research project analyzes the social network of artistic production in Early Renaissance Florence in order to explain the extraordinary success of Florentine artisans of the period.