Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles in the Seventeenth Century: the Cospi Collection

This essay examines the circulation of Islamic artworks at and beyond the Medici court in the seventeenth century. It will focus in particular on the types of artefact that were imported from the Islamic world, the routes that they took to reach Italy as well as the trading mechanisms that brought them to Italy. The paucity of surviving Islamic artefacts from the Medici collections and the related dearth of documentation of their provenance have thus far precluded scholarly exploration of this aspect of the Medici's seafaring activities, in particular as regards the seventeenth century. This essay overcomes these obstacles by focusing not on the Medici collection proper but on its offshoot: the Cospi Collection.