Agenda

Sara Mansutti, University College Cork 

Abstract
This talk presents the findings of my PhD research on Cosimo Bartoli, the Medici’s agent in Venice between 1562 and 1572, and his role in the city’s news circulation network. While
Bartoli has been studied from a biographical perspective and for his widespread intellectual and technical interests and production, his activity as an informant has received little
attention. At that time, Venice was one of the main information centres of early modern Europe, witnessing the rise of periodic handwritten newsletters (avvisi in Italian) and the
emergence of new professional figures, the newswriters. Using digital methods to transcribe and analyse over 1,200 letters and newsletters written by Bartoli and preserved at the State Archives in Florence, this research answered several key questions: how and from whom did Bartoli obtain information? What was his role in composing the newsletters? What was the relationship between his letters and newsletters? How did he assess the reliability of news? The talk will present both the digital methods employed and the main findings, as well as discuss the replicability of this approach for other corpora of handwritten letters and newsletters and the new research paths it opens.

Bio
Sara Mansutti recently completed a PhD in Digital Humanities at University College Cork. She holds an MA in Italian Studies from the University of Udine and a Diploma in Archival,
Palaeographical, and Diplomatic Studies from the State Archives of Trieste. Her doctoral research was conducted within the EURONEWS project, funded by the Irish Research Council and led by Professor Brendan Dooley. It investigates the circulation of news in early modern Europe, focusing on the rich collection of manuscript newsletters gathered by the
Medici Grand Dukes. She currently works as a Customer Success Manager at READ-COOP, the European Cooperative Society that develops the Transkribus platform.

Registration for online participation: link

The event is part of the seminar series organized by the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH), Department of Humanities, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.