Opening exhibition 'Commodities and Environments'

Maarten Draper

Maarten Draper

— 1 min read
Opening exhibition 'Commodities and Environments'
Relatione del reame di Congo et delle Circonvicine Contrade Tratta Dalli Scritti e Ragionamenti di Odoardo Lopez Portoghese per Filippo Pigafetta, Rome: B. Grassi, 1591 (Ricc. Stamp 16387).

On 19 November 2024, the President of the European University Institute, Patrizia Nanz, inaugurated the exhibition 'Commodities and Environments: Florence and the Indo-Atlantic Worlds, 1500-1800' at the Biblioteca Riccardiana, in Florence together with the director of the library Roberta Masini and the CAPASIA PI Giorgio Riello. The exhibition was curated by the CAPASIA team and EUI PhD student Simone Zirolia and explores the knowledge that Europeans gained from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries about different environments and the flora and fauna of the Indo Atlantic world through the lens of the collection of this historic library

CAPASIA's PI Giorgio Riello speaking at the opening of the exhibition.

The exhibition consists of twenty-five books and manuscripts exploring the themes of animals, spices, the marine world, stimulants, crops, and materials & productions. One of the amazing works on display is Filippo Pigafetta’s Relazione del Reame di Congo from 1591, which contains the very first European visual representation of a zebra (image above). 

The exhibition is connected to the conference ‘Commodities and Environments in Early Modern Global Asia, 1400–1800’ that took place on the 13-15 November 2024, and runs from 19 November 2024 to 10 January 2025 and is freely accessible during library opening hours (click here). More information on the exhibition and the catalogue can be found here.  

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