cahn | 18th-Century Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 32

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:) Still talking about Charles XII of Sweden / the Great Northern War and the Stuarts and the Jacobites, among other things!

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From:

mildred_of_midgard

Ah, Italian Wikipedia on the Florentino has a different perspective on this:

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).

From:

selenak

And vice versa, says Emperor Maximilian I., glowering in the French direction, adding something about wife attackers, daughter dumpers and bride stealers under his breath, while his grandson Charles V. adds "don't worry, I got this, Granddad".

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...

From:

mildred_of_midgard

It's only Nancy Goldstone going all Francis on him that rattled me. :)

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!!

Edited Date: 2021-11-10 06:56 pm (UTC)

From:

cahn

The gem in particular

Which gem? Just, I mean, wondering :) (yep, you can tell this is me ;) )

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Hee! Our shiny things

cahn. :) This is the Florentino, the gem whose web page I was looking at. According to the allegations of modern-day Lorenzo de' Medici that I pasted up-thread:

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.