THE BARBERINI CIRCLE: Some Exchanges between Peiresc, Rubens, and their Contemporaries

Abstract

This paper explores the wide-ranging exchanges of research information between early seventeenth-century European scholars. The focus of the enquiry is a Frenchman, Peiresc, who maintained an extensive correspondence with colleagues across Europe. His links with certain scholars in Italy (including members of the circle of the Barberim pope, Urban VIII) and Rubens, the famous painter from the Spanish Netherlands, will be explored. The collaborating participants called this network the Republic of Letters: their letters illustrate their ideas and pursuits. Books and manuscripts, together with casts and drawings of curiosities and antiquities, were dispatched to illustrate these discussions. A chronologically arranged appendix of letters is referred to in the text by calendar date.