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Journeys of (Re)Discovery: Renaissance Academies & their Archives
16 September @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Ready to take your next journey of Discovery? The Renaissance: Journeys of Discovery at BRLSI is a yearlong programme of talks and events exploring the many joys, discoveries and something of the broader cultural legacy of a movement still making waves in the 21st century. Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Martin Luther, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Machiavelli, Hieronymus Bosch, if you love culture then you’ll love our new talks series!
An upcoming talk looks at how archives unlock the mysteries of Renaissance academies and their role in shaping society.
More than spaces of learning, academies were sites of influence, places where ideas were shaped, alliances forged, and cultural authority contested. They were vital arenas in the Renaissance’s journeys of discovery: not only intellectual and artistic, but also deeply social and political.
Starting with the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, the first official academy of artists in the Western world, this talk draws on previously overlooked and understudied archival collections to explore a wider constellation of literary, theatrical, linguistic, and scientific academies that emerged across Renaissance Europe. By situating academies within wider networks of patronage, politics, and culture, this talk will reconsider their place in mapping the intellectual topography of Renaissance Europe, revealing how they drove innovation, shaped identity, and redefined the possibilities of collective thought during this remarkable era of transformation.
Dr Carlotta Paltrinieri, Royal Holloway University of London
Carlotta Paltrinieri is Lecturer in Early Modern Italian Studies, focusing on literature and art history of Renaissance Italy. Her most recent publications focus on the study of art academies, and of the rhetoric of early modern newsletters. Carlotta has studied and held fellowships in the US, UK, Ireland and her native Italy, and is a sought-after speaker in the sphere of digital humanities, contributing to workshops and conferences on wider trends along with her own projects, including an ongoing digital edition of a 16th century manuscript treatise on humoral theory, held at the National Library of Florence.
