Abstract
In the second half of the sixteenth century, a series of world maps started to pop up in palaces and public buildings across Italy, the most famous case being the Stanza della Guardaroba in the Palazzo Vecchio. Focusing on their multi-layered contexts of production, this talk will show the multiple meanings and aims of these visual sources, as well as the complex network of informers that made it possible to realize them. They were travellers, missionaries, merchants and chroniclers, who, usually through the Iberian Peninsula, set the conditions for surprising connections between contexts, materials and peoples in Asia or the Americas on the one hand, and a variety of Italian localities, a few of which are rarely considered in a global perspective, on the other hand. The analysis will also address the relationship between world maps and the collections of objects and materials from outside Europe, which were present in the same palaces and public buildings, as well as the patronage of world histories that involved the promoters of the maps under consideration.
