Join SCAD FASH and Italian Renaissance scholar Sarah Mellott Cadagin for her talk Moda Alla Medici: Fashioning the Self in Renaissance Florence. Set against the backdrop of the exhibition Fashioning Art from Paper, which features meticulously re-created Medici family finery by Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave, Cadagin contextualizes the family’s elaborate dress within the wider visual and material culture of the Italian Renaissance.

Often called the “godfathers of the Renaissance,” the Medici were the most powerful political brokers and most influential patrons of art in 15th- and 16th-century Italy. Family patriarch Cosimo the Elder worked closely with the renowned sculptor Donatello (1386–1466) as well as the celebrated architect of the Florence cathedral dome, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446). Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, was the patron of Botticelli (1445–1510) and gave a young Michelangelo (1475–1564) his first sculptural commission for the family’s Florentine palace garden. Later Medici family members, as the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, established a glittering court culture in Florence, where some of the first ballets and operas were performed. The Medici’s vast art collections were carefully curated to showcase the family’s power and elite taste. Fashion was no exception to the family’s artistic commissions and was essential to their lavish identity.

About Sarah Mellott Cadagin

Sarah Mellott Cadagin is a professor of art history at SCAD Atlanta. A specialist in Italian Renaissance art, she concentrates on the intersections of religion, theology, and piety, with expertise in 15th-century panel and fresco painting in Florence and Tuscany. Currently at work on a manuscript exploring the altarpieces of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), Cadagin has authored articles for the Italian art journal Predella as well as the collected volumes The Interaction of Art and Relics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Brepols, 2019) and More than Merely Passive: Addressing the Early Modern Audience (Taylor & Francis, forthcoming).

This event is free for museum members and SCAD Card holders and open to the public with the cost of admission.

For more information, email [email protected].