ABOUT pupilli
PUPILLI – Domestic Inventories of Early Modern Florence engages with more than 3,000 household inventories to reconstruct domestic and urban spaces in Early Renaissance Florence between 1382 and 1530. It provides both qualitative and quantitative data for scholars and students to map specific domestic architectural spaces and general trends in both urban and rural settings during the period considered. PUPILLI employs domestic inventories found in the archival collection of the Magistrato dei Pupilli avanti il Principato, a public office in the city of Florence that managed properties left to widows and orphans until a male heir became legally adult. This rich documentation has served as a starting point for publications on the dissemination of works of art and related collection practices, the circulation of manuscripts, the presence of weapons and slaves, and the division of the household into gendered spaces.
future online database
The Pupilli project will be incorporated into the publicly accessible online database Florence Illuminated, based on OCHRE technology and hosted at the University of Chicago. From the same webpage, users will be able to search records that include data from the inventories of Pupilli, tax declarations from the 1427 Catasto, family and funeral monuments from Digital Sepoltuario, works of art and 3D architectural models from Florence As It Was, and military records from Militia. For the first time in the history of traditional and digital scholarship on Renaissance Florence, the city is approached in its entirety. Instead of studying single buildings (churches, major palaces), this project examines every single property, regardless of the social class, occupation, or origin of the household members. The result is a comprehensive understanding of the fabric of Florentine society in all its complexities.
archival collection
The Magistrato dei Pupilli Avanti il Principato
