Thesis title: Collezionismo e prospettive intellettuali nella Siena della seconda metà del XVI secolo. Il caso di Ippolito Agostini e del suo museo
The thesis investigates the political relationships expressed through a museum of naturalia—through its construction, modes of display, and the specimens it contains. The chosen case study, the Sienese museum of the lord of Caldana, Ippolito Agostini, made it possible to observe the role played by the palace where the collections were housed, where Agostini carried out his savant activities, and where he received distinguished visitors, within the processes of cultural and political hegemony set in motion by the Medici. This is particularly evident given the dual identity of the Sienese collector, who was closely connected to all the Grand Dukes of Tuscany.
The research revealed that this duality also manifests itself in Agostini’s cultural production, in which a fragile balance emerges between, on the one hand, the exaltation of Siena’s past artistic and linguistic glory—an identity stronghold—and, on the other, the explicit adoption of Medicean display models, which played a significant role in the Medici’s strategies of political affirmation.
Beyond political ties, the study of the activities conducted within Ippolito Agostini’s palace opened an important window onto the production of knowledge in Siena—linguistic, naturalistic, and antiquarian. Moreover, it allowed reflection on the crucial network of connections that the lord of Caldana and the members of his academy established with writers, collectors, and scholars throughout the Italian peninsula—individuals capable of integrating their own knowledge with that produced in Siena, influencing it and being influenced in turn.
These relationships are also examined within the Sienese context itself, with the aim of understanding the role played by Palazzo Agostini as a site of knowledge within Siena’s broader intellectual landscape, in relation to other spaces already explored by historiography—such as the university or local academies—and others less studied, such as the Jesuit college and the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala.
Finally, a pivotal focus of this research concerns the relationship between Siena—particularly the figures and spaces frequented by Ippolito Agostini—and the forms of knowledge about nature arriving from extra-Italian contexts, such as Bohemia, Poland, Spain, France, and Germany, as well as from extra-European ones, paying particular attention to the close ties with Japan and to the widespread contemporary interest in the New Worlds.