Saturday, January 3, 2009: 9:50 AM
New York Ballroom East (Sheraton New York)
My presentation covers the brief time period between 1584 – 1588. During that time Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine merchant, lived in Goa and Cochin on the Indian West coast. He was the official pepper collector of a merchant consortium that traded the pepper for the Portuguese king from India to Lisbon. Scion of an old Florentine merchant family that had reached its financial peak long before Filippo entered business. He was not only trained as a merchant but he had also studied at the University of Pisa. The letters he wrote from India to his friends back in Florence circulated in the local intellectual circles. Before going to India he lived in Spain and Portugal but he never lost touch with the Grand Ducal court and until shortly before his death in India he hoped to return to Florence. Sassetti not only sent back letters from India that contained variegated informations about the cultural, economic and political situation on the Subcontinent but he also sent objects of Asian craftsmanship, plants and medicine to those who had given him money. The largest providers of founds were the Medici brothers the Grand Francesco and Cardinal Ferdinando. n my presentation I will focus on the goods sent back by Sassetti to the Medici court.