Contending Representations: Questioning Republicanism in Early Modern Genoa (1559-1684)

In the past thirty years, several studies have been devoted to the political and cultural flowering of the republic of Genoa during the so-called ‘siglo de los Genoveses’, between 1528 and 1630, when Genoa became the hub of European trade and an important epicenter of artistic and literary production. Yet little attention has been granted to the cultural and economic crisis that followed or to how Genoese republican state power was represented during the long seventeenth century, especially in relation to neighbouring polities. To address this gap, the conference will explore how the Genoese Republic shaped its political image between 1559 – the year of the publication of Oberto Foglietta’s Delle cose della repubblica di Genova – and 1684, when Genoa was bombed by the French. We intend to address questions such as how did Genoese politicians and men of letters represent their homeland? How was Genoa represented by the Genoese community in Spain or in the Low Countries? How was its political system conceived by other Italian and non-Italian political writers? And how did prevailing depictions of absolutism influence republican rhetoric