Mesoamerican objects in the Armeria of the Uffizi between the 16th and the 18th centuries

Abstract

In 1972, Heikamp published his research on objects from the Americas and present in the Medici collection, inducing, in the following years, several other scholars to analyze the works of art of the New World. This thesis proposes to grasp the value of the Mesoamerican objects exhibited / included in the Uffizi Armory in the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the relationship between the Medici dynasty and the Habsburg Empire, through the exchange of objects from afar. The aim of the work is to overcome the idea of "exotic" that informs Heikamp's research in the direction of what DaCosta Kaufmann (2017) calls "geo-historiography of art", investigating the different forms of value attributed to the objects present in the collection.