Writing, Displaying, and Publishing the History of the Accademia del Cimento in the Enlightenment

The following paper aims to outline the characteristics of my PhD project. In 1780, Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti (1712–1783) published the Notizie degli Aggrandimenti delle Scienze fisiche, the first comprehensive historical account of the Accademia del Cimento (1657–1667) and Tuscan experimental science. A central feature of the work is a set of twelve detailed iconographic plates reproducing scientific instruments used by the Cimento academicians, based directly on original seventeenth-century sources. This visual section made the Notizie not only a textual but also a visual reconstruction of early modern experimental practices. The resulting work has had extraordinary lasting impact: it remains the most frequently cited source in contemporary historiography of 17th century Italian science, yet Targioni Tozzetti himself and the Notizie have received virtually no scholarly attention. My dissertation argues that Targioni Tozzetti’s historiographical enterprise was far from a neutral act of scientific memory. Produced in the wake of Tuscany’s dynastic transition from Medici to Lorraine rule, and under the enlightened leadership of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, the Notizie functioned as a tool of political legitimation. By reviving and monumentalizing the Medici’s scientific legacy the Lorraine administration sought to inscribe itself into a prestigious intellectual lineage