LIVESTREAM OF Murray Seminar, Sarah McBryde
When:
—
Venue:
Online
People with dwarfism were frequently employed as attendants in courts across Europe from the Medieval period until the eighteenth century and their presence is recorded in contemporary artworks and written sources. Despite their popularity, traditional academic approaches tended to marginalise court dwarfs and, until recently, little consideration was given to the possibility that they could have made any significant contribution to court life. This seminar takes a fresh look at the court dwarf tradition in sixteenth-century Florence by investigating the pictorial and archival evidence regarding Morgante, a notable figure in the ducal household of Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Spanish-Neapolitan consort Eleonora di Toledo. Morgante is the most famous of the Medici’s dwarf attendants due to his prominence in the historical record. He was the subject of numerous portraits by the pre-eminent court artists of the time, including Agnolo Bronzino, Valerio Cioli and Giambologna, and was also immortalised by the Florentine academician Antonfrancesco Grazzini in two satirical poems. The seminar assesses biographical information from archival and other written sources, along with analyses of Morgante’s surviving portraits, in order to provide new perspectives on his life, both inside and outside the court, and examine his role as jester-entertainer to the Medici grand dukes.
Contact name: Allison Deutsch
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