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Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-07 11:09 pm (UTC)For example, I know I didn't reply in full to your Alessandro de' Medici post, considering I asked you read the book, but I'm now reading a book on the Medici, and I have learned at least one thing relevant to salon!
Anna Maria Luisa, the dowager Palatine Electress who is Gian Gastone's sister, the one that Cosimo tried to make it so she could inherit but everyone said no, and who was the last of the grand ducal line of the Medici (GG died in 1737, she died in 1743), is this author's favorite Medici and gets a whole chapter. And Selena had told us that one of the few things Gian Gastone actually bothered to get involved with when he became Grand Duke, aside from revoking Dad's crazy laws, was to separate Medici property from state property, so he'd have something to leave her.
So what I've learned from this book, which Wikipedia seconds, is that Anna Maria Luisa, was responsible for the Medici family pact. It ensured that all the Medicean art and treasures collected over nearly three centuries of political ascendancy remained in Florence. Cynthia Miller Lawrence, an American art-historian, argues that Anna Maria Luisa thus provisioned for Tuscany's future economy through tourism. Sixteen years after her death, the Uffizi Gallery, built by Cosimo the Great, the founder of the Grand Duchy, was made open to public viewing.
Quote from Wikipedia. The author of the book I'm reading claims that the Lorrainers (FS's agents) came in and promptly illegally took as much of the art as possible to Vienna.
However. I should point out that the author is Lorenzo de' Medici, a modern-day representative of a side branch of the Medici family that did not die out, and his Medici are the Best Family Ever, they do no wrong, and they are far superior to their contemporaries in every possible way.
Selena, do you have a counter perspective on this, or is the illegal seizing and exporting of treasures a thing that FS did the moment he got the chance?
Hilariously, while modern-day Lorenzo de Medici's favorite famous Medici family member is Anna Maria Luisa, he's not a fan of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and only devotes a couple pages to the most famous Medici. He made me laugh when he said, "Look, when you go your whole life hearing, 'Oh, Lorenzo de Medici, like the Magnificent!' you start to think, 'Yes, unfortunately.'"
Lol, you have my sympathy. But not my trust in your scholarship, sir. (I wouldn't have bothered with this book, but it was 1) short, 2) $8 on Kindle, 3) translated into German, and 4) very simple prose, so excellent for German practice while I wait for Horowski's next book to come out. Hopefully on Kindle in the US!!)
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-08 08:44 am (UTC)Honestly, I have no idea. I don't recall it from the MT and Joseph biographies that I've read, but then it's not something important to either of their lives, so their biographers would have no need to mention it. I really should get around to that FS biography his German wiki entry mentions anyway. And/or to a Leopold biography since you want me to read one anyway, because without having any date to back this up, my instinct is to point out that Leopold, who actually lived in Tuscany most of the time for decades before becoming Emperor, would have had far more opportunity and motive to select art treasury to take with him to Vienna than FS, who didn't live in Tuscany and thus would have to rely on minions to make a good selection. (For a given value of "good".) One possible source to look at would be the catalogue of the various art and treasury collections in the various palaces (Schönbrunn, or the one in Innsbruck which was also a former Lorraine owned seat and FS' favourite) which these days usually lit the provenience (i.e. where a given painting came from, and when).
I could see arguments either way, especially considering the common attitude for non Italian aristocrats visiting Italy in the 18th century was "cheap Italian art to be had! Yay!" (see also Wilhelmine writing to Fritz that she'd send him so many more things if it weren't for the cost of transport, because you could get the most amazing things for a bread and butter, and of course Sir William Hamilton taking a lot of antiquities to Britain over the decades), and FS when becoming Duke of Tuscany was also just newly married to MT, heiress of the Empire (with A LOT of debts as she'd find out), had to trade away his own duchy and yet would end up a very wealthy man indeed. Yes, most of that money came from manufacturing and great investments, but he had to get a starting capital somewhere. And he did like art (and jewelry).
Otoh: Florence does still have most of those Medici treasures for tourists to admire. If FS' Lorraine minions grabbed what they could get once Gian Gastone kicked it, when were they restituted, and why? Because that usually only happens if the grabber later loses a war. (See also, Napoleon, where only a part from all the art he freely helped himself to in both Italy and Germany was restituted, while some remains in the Louvre to this day. But some was indeed brought back. Jacob Grimm of fairy tale fame as a young man had among other things the job to track down the art from Hessen Kassel and see it was transported back there, for example. He got ca. 350 of ca 900 items.) And by the time Italy got sort of, kinda, independent, it still wasn't in a position to demand art from Vienna. The first heavyweight who could have done it when Austria was down and he was up was Mussolini, and he was more into styling himself as the heir of the Romans.
But like I said: all of this is speculation, and right now, I can only offer guesswork.
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-08 11:31 pm (UTC)You should! I was thinking yesterday that one of us should read an FS bio, and since one of us is a whoooole lot better at reading German as well as at writing summaries, we know who the one should be. ;)
And yes, I want to read a Leopold bio, and it's a whole lot easier if you tell me which one is good before I go wrestle with it. :) In the nearer term, an August the Strong bio awaits you!
see also Wilhelmine writing to Fritz that she'd send him so many more things if it weren't for the cost of transport
I was remembering her buddying up to the pope and his minions so she could smuggle antiquities out illegally, yes!
without having any date to back this up, my instinct is to point out that Leopold, who actually lived in Tuscany most of the time for decades before becoming Emperor, would have had far more opportunity and motive to select art treasury to take with him to Vienna than FS, who didn't live in Tuscany and thus would have to rely on minions to make a good selection
I went and reread the passage in question, and with the heavy qualification that the author's not a scholar and not very impressive, he actually says MT got in on the action too, just after she became empress.
Google translated for
It is known that the new Grand Duke did not respect this "family pact" signed in Vienna on October 1737 - three months after Gian Gastone's death and confirmed in her will on April 5, 1739 -. As soon as he was in possession of the property, while Anna Maria Luisa was still alive, and not very discreetly, he began to sell large parts of it. When Maria Theresa became Empress of Austria, she had a large part of the donation transported to Vienna, including the Florentino, the famous Medici diamond, which was considered the largest in the world at the time. This diamond later mysteriously disappeared and was never heard of again. Many of the crown jewels and Anna Maria Luisa's personal jewelry were sold, which also violated the "family pact". After the First World War in 1918, the "Family Pact" signed two centuries earlier in the Treaty of Saint-Germain was declared absolutely valid, and Austria returned the few pieces of jewelry that Anna Maria Luisa had left to Florence. [109] Thanks to information from the Tuscan diplomacy, Anna Maria Luisa had known for a long time that the Lorraine people urgently had large debts to pay and hoped to raise large sums of money by selling the jewels of the Tuscan state and the masterpieces from the art collections. [110 ] Perhaps this is where their contempt for the new rulers stems from: "You can expect little consideration and decency from these greedy people."[111] Weapons collection, the silver, valuable tapestries and paintings. From the window of her apartments in the Pitti Palace, which had been assigned to her by the new Grand Duke, Anna Maria Luisa watched as numerous boxes were carried out of the palace at night. She knew what was happening, just as she knew that her angry protests were of no use. Who would listen to her? She received information from loyal servants that carriages full of Medici treasures made their way to Vienna at night from the Vecchio Palace. At least she managed to inform the French ambassador at the court of Florence about the events. It is only thanks to the intervention of French diplomacy that the old statues were not also transported to Vienna.
Notes 109 and 110 cite S Casciu, A.M.L. de Medici. Note 111 cites a letter from AML to Count Rinuccini.
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-09 04:18 am (UTC)(The other thing that cracks me up about „French diplomacy“ as the saviour of Italian art remaining in Italy is, again, I‘ve been to the Louvre.)
On yet another hand, the whole Vecchio vs Pitti thing makes me wonder where Leopold resided once he actually lived there with his increasingly large family. Maybe he used the old Medici countryside villa at Poggio a Caiano, who knows. Anyway, Leopold inherits Tuscany from FS in 1765, and given there was this whole argument with Joseph about what should become of FS‘s personal financial heritage which Joseph ended up using for the 7 Years War debts, I would assume there were records showing in detail what was at this point in TuscanyI/Florence and what wasn‘t.
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-09 04:52 pm (UTC)After the extinction of the Medici, the gems and all objects that were not strictly works of painting and sculptures were explicitly excluded from the legacy of Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici , so they entered the possession of the Habsburg-Lorraine . The gem in particular passed to the Empress Maria Theresa of Habsburg and her husband Francesco Stefano di Lorena and was then placed together with the other jewels of the imperial crown in the Hofburg in Vienna. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 , the gem followed the Habsburg family into their exile in Switzerland , but was stolen and probably cut out during the 1920s.
So possibly FS and MT are being slandered by the modern-day Medici!
I'm also reminded by Stollberg-Rilinger that both of them went to Florence in the late 1730s to accept homage and do some ruling, so during AML's lifetime they would have been on site to pick out what they wanted. But if Wikipedia is to be trusted, they were only taking what they were allowed to!
As for the effect of French diplomacy, I was assuming that the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) was meant. Googling supports this hypothesis, as multiple sources are telling me that the impact of the treaty on Tuscany was that it remained an independent principality, unlike several other parts of Italy. An art history master's thesis says that had Aix-la-Chappelle allowed Tuscany to be absorbed into the HRE, or Spain, or anyone else, there's no way the art would have remained there. Oh, ha, the source is another modern-day Medici.
Anyway, this thesis was written by an art history student, not a history student (we saw what happened with the music student's dissertation on Fritz and music), and it uses exclusively English language sources, so take all this with a grain of salt. But since we know that Tuscany did remain independent and a secundogeniture after 1748, I'm willing to believe the French diplomacy may have been involved during the negotiations. But not because they cared about Florentine cultural treasures, more because they wanted to limit the amount of territory the Habsburgs got (always a French concern).
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-10 06:03 am (UTC)I must say, "Francesco Stefano di Lorena" sounds even better than Francois Etienne in the Madame de Gravigny articles. It's only Nancy Goldstone going all Francis on him that rattled me. :) Anyway, thank you for looking this up and (likely) exculpating FS and MT from jewelry stealing!
BTW, I dimly recall that Harold Acton told us one of the many ways in which Marguerite-Louise (Anna Maria Luisa's mother) intentionally infuriated her husband and the rest of the Medici as part of her "I want to return to France!" campaign was by trying to take those jewels and smuggle them out of the country...
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-10 04:18 pm (UTC)Hee! I warn you that he's still Francis in my head, though, because we went straight to calling him FS, which means your German spelling never had a chance to override the number of English books I read. :)
intentionally infuriated her husband and the rest of the Medici as part of her "I want to return to France!" campaign was by trying to take those jewels and smuggle them out of the country...
Oh, I'd forgotten, you're right! Ha.
I tried to order a bio of Anna Maria Luisa (in Italian, ofc), btw, but that was the one the seller couldn't find his copy of, and I don't see any other copies for sale anywhere on the internet. But I'm keeping an eye out! Sadly, the bio of Anna Maria Franziska, Gian Gastone's "no way, no how am I leaving Bohemia for this useless gambling drunk" wife, was supposed to arrive by yesterday, having been ordered at the beginning of September, and I suspect it's lost to the overseas mail. I *also* can't find another copy of it.
Oh well. Keeping an eye out! (At this rate, I plan to learn Italian by reading about the fascinating gossipy trainwreck that is the dying out of the Medici grand ducal family. Honestly, the trainwreck that has been trying to get books about these people (one book the seller couldn't find, one is probably lost, one I missed my chance to order the only copy for sale of, and one I was sent the wrong book) has been reminding me of the historical characters involved! There's a definite lack of fecundity in both cases. :P)
ETA: Anna Maria Franziska arrived just now!
I'm currently leaning toward:
1. Learn German well enough to read comfortably.
2. Quickly improve Italian on some gossipy Medici sensationalism, but without needing to read it comfortably. (I'll do that when I get back to studying Renaissance Florence.)
3. Improve French, hopefully to the point of reading comfortably.
4.
5. Profit!!
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-11 05:28 am (UTC)Which gem? Just, I mean, wondering :) (yep, you can tell this is me ;) )
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-11 03:53 pm (UTC)When Maria Theresa became Empress of Austria, she had a large part of the donation transported to Vienna, including the Florentino, the famous Medici diamond, which was considered the largest in the world at the time. This diamond later mysteriously disappeared and was never heard of again.
Re: Medici digression
Date: 2021-11-20 06:21 am (UTC)