Since mid-2025, the Art&Inequality project has expanded its research eastward to the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). The extensive collection of the State Archives, housed in the Sponza Palace, contains over 7,000 testaments that are being studied for the project. One testament from the mid-15th century is especially interesting because of an enigma: it contains a typically vague bequest seen in the Ragusan wills, but a later note written on the same page reveals it to be one of the most detailed and striking artistic bequests that I have thus far found from the Ragusan testaments.

The quantitative context: I have just finished coding the photographs of parchment testaments from the Archivio di Stato, Firenze [hereafter ASF] Diplomatico of the famous Florentine Dominican friary,...

Dr Matko Marušić holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Zagreb (2019). His work centres on late medieval and early modern art and devotional culture across the wider Adriatic region, with an emphasis on the analysis of archival sources on the lost works of art. He is also interested in the intersections between traditional approaches to research of art, such as connoisseurship, and the technical examination of objects.

Dr Matko Marušić holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Zagreb (2019). His work centres on late medieval and early modern art and devotional culture across the wider Adriatic region, with an emphasis on the analysis of archival sources on the lost works of art. He is also interested in the intersections between traditional approaches to research of art, such as connoisseurship, and the technical examination of objects.

Valentina Costantini & Davide Cristoferi, panel: Pigs in the late Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean Europe: breeding, production and consumption (11th-16th centuries)7th biennial conference of the European Rural History Organisation (EURHO)Coimbra, Portugal10 September 2025 Read more

Presentors: Agenda

Valentina Costantini, presentation of our research project on testaments’ management and inventories from the Florentine hospital of Santa Maria Nuova (14th c.) Beyond the Will: The Execution of Pious Dispositions in the Late Middle Ages: Managing and Governing pro anima Investments through Economy and Pastoral Care, in preparation of a special issue for the journal QRSRM in 2027 Read more

Dr Serena Galasso is a medieval historian specialised in social, economic and gender history. Trained in Italy and France, she studied women's practical writings in late medieval Tuscany, focusing on Florentine women’s account books. Her PhD thesis (Prix de la Chancellerie de Paris) has been published with the title Le droit de compter. Les livres de gestion et de mémoires des femmes (Florence, XV-XVI siècles)

This New Year’s post begins with a homicide. Murder of Abel, detail, British Library, Royal 19 D II, f. 10v In March 1389, early in the morning, the notary Giovanni Gini and the second-hand dealer (rigattiere) Romolo Bartolini were sent by the Florentine hospital of Santa Maria Nuova to the house of Gemina, located opposite the residence of the noble Agnoli family.

Warburg alumna Louisa McKenzie discusses her current research, the impact she hopes it will have and the routes her career has taken since leaving the Institute.

Art & Inequality in the Shadow of the Black Death Collecting and cataloguing art commissions made by members of different social strata - from paupers to the elite - in Europe from 1225 to 1525, to ex...

Why large numbers of testaments are needed and how exceptions to rules can be relevant I have just returned from a short stint in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), 18 September to 2 October. It ...

Why large numbers of testaments are needed and how exceptions to rules can be relevant I have just returned from a short stint in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), 18 September to 2 October. It may be my last archival collecting of testaments for the project, at least in the ASF. The purpose was to increase the sample size of my last quartile of Pisan testaments,1501-25.