Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

The TV series ‘I Medici’ (producers: Lux Vide of the Bernabei family and Frank Spotniz) aired for 3 seasons (2016-2019) and was a ‘global’ success. This product is positioned as a contemporary way of telling the story of the Renaissance family. Since 1918, films have been produced on the generations and illustrious personalities associated with the Florentine family. The contribution intends to compare this television series (also aired on the national public television network, RAI 1) with (in particular) the film ‘Lorenzino de’ Medici’ shot in 1935 (director: Guido Brignone). The two products are very different but, above all, they ‘celebrate’ two different moments in life (especially politics) coeval with their accounts of the city. While the 1935 film celebrated a Florence subjugated to a ‘mestizo’ and also for this reason terrible Alessandro de’ Medici (from whom it freed itself, thanks to the ‘revolt’ of the bourgeoisie, as in Fascism) and the Florence of the artisans and artists (which wanted to recall the Florence of the Fascist guilds of the secretary of the provincial federation of the Fascist Party, Alessandro Pavolini), in the 2000s, the stereotype of Florence as the ‘founder of the republic’ par excellence and at the centre of the model of what would become the West: finance, power struggle, power of beauty) is being retraced. A crowdfunding is already being prepared to make a film starring Alessandro (the villain of 1935), which is supposed to extol the alleged Afro-descent of one of the founders of the dynasty.