Next Book Project: In the past two year, Dr. Fiorani has been fully engaged in the research and writing of her next book project, which deals with global networks of exchange around the year 1500. If focuses on Portugal, West Africa, the Indian Ocean, cartography, and a variety of artifacts made both for local consumption and export in a deliberate attempt to redirect the field of Renaissance art history and offer a more inclusive and diverse account of the period. The book is provisionally titled

Next Essays. Dr. Fiorani is writing two essays on different aspects of the relationship between art, science, and technology in the early modern period.

One essay is tentatively titled Leonardo da Vinci and the Mechanics of Water Flows. It addresses themes of environmental history with a specific focus on water, water management, landscape, and art. It builds on Dr. Fiorani’s recent presentation at the Kennedy Center, her Kress Lecture in Italy for the Italian Art Society, and her study of Leonardo’s Codex Leicester.

Another essay--Maps of Africa at the Medici Court in the Sixteenth Century--builds on Dr. Fiorani’s long-standing interest in cartography and, more specifically, in the Medici map room in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, which she consider also in relation to a recent work by the Congolese artist Sammy Baloji.

New Research Area. Dr. Fiorani is conducting research on non-fungible token (NFT) technology applied to the arts, with specific analysis of the legal and preservation issues that this new technology presents for art works owned by museums, for looted art meant to be restituted, and for works of art traveling for exhibitions.