Friends of Friends: Early Renaissance Florence and Beyond

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
CEU Community + Invited Guests
Building: 
Nador u. 11
Room: 
Hanak Room
Thursday, December 5, 2013 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Thursday, December 5, 2013 - 5:30pm to 6:30pm

Title:

Friends of Friends: Early Renaissance Florence and Beyond

Name:

Katalin Prajda

Affiliation:

CEU-IAS; Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Image:

Masolino: Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha, Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine Church, Florence

Bio:

Katalin Prajda earned her PhD in 2011 from European University Institute, Florence. Her thesis won the Sahin-Tóth Péter Prize in Hungarian history. Katalin has been a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study - Central European University, at the Institute of History – Hungarian Academy of Sciences, at the New Europe College – Institute for Advanced Study, Bucharest and a scholar in residence at the Vittore Branca International Center for the Study of Italian Culture, Venice. She has published several essays on artistic, economic and political  connections between the Republic of Florence and the Kingdom of Hungary during the early Renaissance period. Her research interests include merchants networks, artistic exchanges and social dynamics in late medieval-early modern Italy and beyond.

Abstract:

How did Florentines choose their friends? What was the practical impact of friendship ties on public and private life in Early Renaissance Florence? How do academic friendships influence our interpretation of the past? Besides these general questions, fundamental to our understanding of human interactions now and then, the lecture also focuses on the specific case of Florentine merchants in the Kingdom of Hungary during the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The study reveals that friendship networks of businessmen dominated politics, economy and artistic patronage in early Renaissance Florence, intersections which were undeniable in the city-republic, but are closely monitored in modern societies.