My research interests focus on the political, social and cultural history of Renaissance and early modern Italy, with an emphasis on military history. In particular, I study the rise of the Florentine military system under the reign of Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574), and the role played by the Italian troops in Spanish service in early modern European conflicts.

I have also been studying military iconography in frescoes, paintings and engravings, as well as the imagery in contemporary epic poetry, as historical sources. I study the relationship between such works and the public for which they were created – a public well-acquainted with military symbolism and culture.

All my publications are based on archival research in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Great Britain and I am also interested in the development of new IT tools to make archival manuscript sources more accessible.

Long personal experience in archival investigation has provided me with the necessary expertise to collaborate on innovative historical projects at research institutes worldwide. As an example may serve my three years as researcher at the Medici Archive Project, a period that was divided between archival research and database entry of original Italian, Spanish, French and Latin documents from the Mediceo del Principato archival corpus.