Florence is almost always associated with the Renaissance, but until relatively recently the focus of Florentine history was on the quattrocento (1400s) and Republican Florence.

Eric Cochrane’s groundbreaking work, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (1973), charted a new course toward studying the history of the princely state of Florence and Tuscany and its Medici rulers.

Eric Cochrane was a professor of History at the University of Chicago and shaped a generation of graduate students and scholars in Renaissance studies there. Cochrane’s book helped to question definitions of the Renaissance and inspired a new wave of interdisciplinary Renaissance studies in the 1990s and beyond.

The Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library is organizing a roundtable discussion of Eric Cochrane’s landmark study.

The roundtable will be held online via Zoom on Friday 25 February 2022 at 12 noon (Central Time).

Here is the announcement from the Center for Renaissance Studies:

It has been nearly 50 years since Professor Eric Cochrane of the University of Chicago published Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (1973), a book that has inspired generations of scholars. This interdisciplinary roundtable in Professor Cochrane’s honor examines the state of research on the Medici Grand Duchy today, considering in particular how the lenses of gender, globalization, and race have revitalized the scholarship on Florence in the late Renaissance.

Co-organized by Friends of the Medici Archive Project. The Center for Renaissance Studies is grateful to an anonymous donor for inspiring this event.

For more information about this event and a link to the webinar, please visit the calendar page here: https://www.newberry.org/02252021-medici-florence-today-roundtable-honor-eric-cochrane