Stradano’s Allegorical Invention of the Americas in Late Sixteenth-Century Florence*
This essay situates Giovanni Stradano’s engravings of the discovery of the Americas from the Americae Retectio and Nova Reperta series within the context of their design in late sixteenth-century Florence, where the artist worked at the Medici court and collaborated with the dedicatee of the prints, Luigi Alamanni. Through an analysis of the images in relation to contemporary texts about the navigators who traveled to the Americas, as well as classical sources, emblems, and works of art in diverse media — tapestry, print, ephemera, and fresco — the study argues that Stradano’s allegorical representations of the Americas were produced in order to make clear Florence’s role in the invention of the New World.