In its narratives of the Renaissance, historians often gloss over medieval Florence’s connections with the Islamic world. When I first came to Florence, I didn’t see or hear about it anywhere—it seemed as if the city didn’t have much to do with the Middle East or the rest of the world beyond it. But after some research and a semester full of museum hopping, I was able to learn bits and pieces about the city’s history with reference to the Islamic world.
This section draws its title from Nasser Alzayani’s sketchbook, Finding the Middle East in Florence, that he worked on while residing at NYU Florence. In addition to the following places, Alzayani’s work is a good resource to explore Islam in Florence as well, and he describes some other museums that are not listed below, like the Stibbert and Uffizi museums (reach out to NYU Florence’s library to get a copy).
The Barghello Museum houses a beautiful Islamic collection, with objects from all over Italy and the mediterranean, from Veneto Saraceno plates to ivory caskets from Ummayyad Spain. A collection of Islamic textiles donated by Baron Franchetti of Florence is also on display. Textiles from the Carrand collection include Ottoman textiles in the ‘Italian style’, depicting Florentine influence in Ottoman catmas. These collections speak of an interconnected Mediterranean where art was constantly drawing from multicultural dialogues, whether in Istanbul or Cordoba.
Verrocchio’s David. Notice the Kufic script used at the hem.
The museum also contains many objects with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions, such as Verrocchio’s David. Pseudo-Arabic refers to inscriptions and illustrations that imitate Arabic calligraphy. Many Renaissance artists used it to embellish their pieces, carving halos and seals with the pseudo script. Art historian Wihad al Tawil argues that the ‘pseudo-script works as a visual association with humanism and places Florence— embodied by David himself—at the forefront of the Renaissance as well as a crossroads to the East.’ It was seen as a sign of beauty and power, and was also used by the Medici family (as I describe later on in this page).
The Archaeological Museum of Florence contains a large collection of Egyptian artifacts, second largest in the country after the Egypt Museum in Turin. While the collection itself doesn’t have much to do with Islam, the museum encourages you to think about how archaeology and collecting connected Europe to the Islamic world—in fact, Cyriacus of Ancona, the humanist and antiquarian often called the ‘founding father of modern classical archeology’, started his career collecting artifacts from present-day Turkey and Egypt. Cyriacus himself was a Medici favorite, and even makes an appearance in the famous ‘Adoration of Magi’ fresco of the Medici Chapel. It’s important to question the politics of archaeology and museum curating, especially with regards to many orientalist narratives purported by early archaeologists in the Middle East. Many artifacts in the museum make reference to where and how it was found—they speak of Western ways of collecting and documenting, and of political relations between Egypt and Italy.
Photos from the Egyptian exhibit at the museum.
Like Donatello’s David, this Cathedral contains a peculiar pseudo-Arabic inscription—except on a seal of the Medici family that’s made out of stained glass by the entrance of the cathedral. The coat of arms of Piero di Cosimo de'Medici is surrounded by a stylized Thuluth script that connects the Florentine state to another one across the Mediterranean: the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. It seems that its artist transcribed the Arabic words from some Islamic artwork, perhaps a carpet or a garment, onto the stained glass design. This is an extremely interesting piece that encourages questions about power, aesthetics and cultural dialogue across the Mediterranean world.
The Galileo Museum is dedicated to the history of science, particularly focusing on Galileo’s contributions to it.
The museum is organized chronologically in order to depict the way science took its present shape, and includes many tools invented by medieval Islamic astronomers, such as astrolabes and quadrants.
The museum is also really interesting for its collection of maps and globes: it’s interesting to see how people’s perception of the world changed across time. It’s also worth observing how ideas of science, religion and the occult shaped each other throughout history.