Medici Archive Project

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The Medici Archive Project (MAP) is an initiative which is building an electronic database of material related to the Medici Granducal Archival Collection in Florence, Italy.

History and development

Since its foundation in the early 1990s, the Medici Archive Project (MAP) has been developing new strategies for research in the Humanities, merging archival exploration with computing innovations. MAP’s foundational mission has been to build a searchable electronic database of scholarly assessments of each document in what is one of the world’s most exhaustive and complete archives: the Medici Granducal Archival Collection (Mediceo del Principato). This archival collection ― covering the years 1537 to 1743 ― contains over four-million letters and occupies a mile of shelf space in the state archive of Florence. It documents the political, diplomatic, gastronomic, economic, artistic, scientific, military and medical culture of early modern Europe.

Nearly half the contents of the MAP database were put online, freely accessible to the entire world, in August 2011. At this time, the MAP database in its entirety contained over 21,000 letters, 15,000 biographical entries, and 80,000 geographical and topographical tags; it is still growing. The online version of the database receives an average of 20,000 monthly hits, mostly from scholars and students, but also from people of all walks of life who are curious about the world of the past.

During the past two years, MAP has dramatically expanded its range of activities in fulfillment of its aspiration to become a full-fledged research institution. It has created two independent research programs, the Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists, and the Jewish Studies Program. It has organized its own international conferences and it actively participates in those of other institutions. A scholarly book series under the Medici Archive Project name has been established at the publisher Viella Editore. It developed a curriculum of graduate-level courses on archival studies that are regularly taught in English by its staff, both online and on site. An active internship program was forged (bringing 8 interns to MAP in 2012 alone) as were partnerships with numerous local and international academic institutions and research departments.

To bring the MAP’s computing technology up to par with the latest digital humanities developments and to expand its utility in the large spectrum of activities that the MAP now carries out, the decades-old database is being replaced on 27 November with “BIA,” an on-line Digital Interactive Platform funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Faster, bigger, more flexible, and amenable to a wide range of research strategies, the Digital Interactive Platform will also finally enable scholars to view the digitized images of the archival documents, employing innovative visualization software and digital images of an astounding resolution level. Moreover, the database will enable community crowding for the future extension of the database, and provide live forums for scholarly exchange on a global scale. The management and elaboration of the database, once only possible on site at the State Archive in Florence, can now be performed by researchers called Distance Fellows, who will work on assigned digitized documents from anywhere in the world.

Relations with the US, Italy and the world

Governed by an American Board of Trustees, the Medici Archive Project is a non-profit cultural foundation 501(c) (3) in the United States that has operated out of the Florentine State Archive since the early 1990s. Beginning in the MAP’s earliest years, the National Endowment for the Humanities has provided generous and crucial financial resources as well as guiding directives. Over the course of these past twenty years, dozens of post-doctoral fellows from the US, Ireland, UK, Germany, Spain, Australia, and Italy have been sponsored by the NEH and numerous other American Foundations, including the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the DeRoy Testamentary Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Foundation, the Florence Gould Foundation, the Eugene and Emily Grant Family Foundation, the International Music and Art Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition, many private American citizens have made substantial personal donations.

The MAP’s work and success would not be possible without the essential cooperation and support from public and private Italian entities. In 2001, MAP concluded a formal agreement with the State Archive in Florence, ratified by the National Directorship of Archives and the Ministry of Culture, to create an official collaboration and to allow MAP exclusive use of a large workroom within the Archivio di Stato. Here MAP researchers work closely with the community of international scholars who study in the Archive, as well as in cooperation with the Staff of the Archivio itself. In return, MAP makes an annual contribution to the State Archive in Florence to digitize documents for preservation purposes. This is the first agreement of its kind between an Italian national entity and a private foundation. In 2010, a landmark agreement was struck between MAP and the Italian Ministry of Culture allowing MAP to digitize documents at the Archivio di Stato for the population of its BIA database; the ownership of the digitized images remains with the Archivio di Stato. Important financial underwriting for the work of the post-doctoral fellows has come from Italian entities such as the Compagnia di San Paolo and the Fondazione Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

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