Paolo Marini, Enrico Parlato, Paolo Procaccioli
Paolo Marini, Fausto Nicolai, Enrico Parlato, Paolo Procaccioli, Pietro Giulio Riga
There is a planned progressive implementation of the database in the years to come; likewise, ongoing editorial initiatives of the “Biblioteca Farnesiana” series connected to the project.
EF (https://farnese.org/) is an open-access database aimed at systematically cataloging individuals, events, places, and objects that are products or expressions of the world of the Farnese family, whether they are linked to the dynasty or connected in any way to the domains and history of the dynasty. Given the importance of the family, the portal effectively serves as a gateway to the history of Italian society and culture from the late Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. The research addresses the need to offer a common horizon to the many Farnese domains, scattered across a multitude of local realities of very different ranks. In the correspondence, the textual tool capable of capturing the family’s governance action is identified, rendering it in its continuity and articulations, and returning with the words of the protagonists and their collaborators the dialectics born within and outside the courts and secretariats. The primary objective of the scientific project underlying EF is therefore the sharing of study initiatives that, starting from the taking charge of the topic – understood in the plurality of its cultural components: historical-political, urbanistic, architectural, artistic, literary, etc. – follow its developments from a multi and interdisciplinary perspective. EF presents itself as a bibliography, a library, an archive, and a museum dedicated to where, progressively acquired and critically assessed, everything produced over time by the Farnese family or about the Farnese family can find a place.
Ad hoc agreements have been established with the State Archives of Parma and the State Archives of Naples, the main archival deposits for the reconstruction of Farnese history; agreements are being finalized with the École Française de Rome and an inter-university agreement involving 11 Italian universities for the establishment of an Inter-University Center for Farnese Studies (CISFAR). In the academic year 2022-23, the research group also promoted the PCTO path “Tuscia Farnesiana. Places, objects, memory” for secondary school students in collaboration with the “Mariano Buratti” Classical Lyceum, the IIS “Francesco Orioli” of Viterbo, and the IIS “Antonio Meucci” of Ronciglione and Bassano Romano (https://unitusorienta.unitus.it/course/tuscia-farnesiana-i-luoghi-gli-oggetti-la-memoria/)
The project was initiated with the remaining funds from PRIN 2015 – Prot. 2015EYM3PR (Repertory of Sixteenth-Century Letters. Theories, language, practices of a genre [Bibbiena, Della Casa, Bernardo and Torquato Tasso, Marino]), led by Paolo Procaccioli; two distinct project proposals submitted for the PRIN 2022 and PRIN 2022 PNRR calls are currently under evaluation.