Elisa Goudriaan wins Ted Meijer Prize
The KNIR has awarded Elisa Goudriaan the Ted Meijer Prize for her dissertation The Cultural Importance of Florentine Patricians. Cultural Exchange, Brokerage Networks, and Social Representation in Early Modern Florence and Rome (1600-1660).
The Ted Meijer Prize is a research grant of
€ 3,000.00 and is awarded to the best thesis or dissertation in the humanities that relates to Italy and especially Rome. The prize is a commemoration to Dr. Ted Meijer (1940-1997), former director of the KNIR.
Thanks to the prize, Goudriaan can stay at the KNIR in Rome to do further research. Elisa Goudriaan completed her PhD on 30 April 2015. Following the publication of a short article on the university's website and in the LUCAS newsletter, publishing house Brill in Leiden has shown interest in publishing her dissertation (in the series Rulers & Elites). Additionally, Goudriaan spoke about her research to a wider audience during EenVandaag on NPO Radio 1.
Dissertation
Her PhD research focused on what the cultural and diplomatic contribution of the Florentine patricians was to the cultural success and functioning of the Medici court in the period 1600-1660. Goudriaan: "Important were especially the Florentine patricians, who stayed at various European courts as ambassadors for the Medici. I focused on two of these ambassadors Giovanni Niccolini (1544-1611) and Piero Guicciardini (1569-1626), whose correspondence I read next to several other archival records, such as detailed reports about their stay in Rome.”
More Ambassadors
At the KNIR in Rome and in other libraries and archives, Goudriaan would like to delve further into the life and work of Florentine ambassadors in Rome in the seventeenth century.
Goudriaan: "I would like to broaden my research to other ambassadors like Francesco Niccolini (1584-1650) and Gabriello Riccardi (1606-1675) and read more documents from Niccolini and Guicciardini. I will look particularly for patterns in the activities of all these ambassadors. The focus of my research will be on the importance of the position of Florentine patricians as ambassadors at various European courts for the cultural exchange of objects, information and people between Rome and Florence and between Florence and other European courts."