Robert Dudley: an Englishman in Tuscany

The “great benefit” of an Englishman in Tuscany

Robert Dudley, an Englishman, had penetrated the inner circles of Medici family.

He was born in 1574 at Richmond Palace in Surrey and was the powerful favourite of Queen Elizabeth I of England. The young man inherited important estates and titles like Earl Leicester and Earl of Warwick and his early career was in privateering directed at Spanish galleons in the Atlantic. In 1605 after the conversion to Catholicism he ran off to France to marry his third wife, Elizabeth Southwell.

By 1607 Dudley went to live at Villa Rinieri, near Florence, where he disclosed to Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici the secrets of maritime technology, navigation and Atlantic geography, discovered at court of King of England, James I, who declared him an outlaw and confiscated his estates and transferring titles.

Here he involved designing warships for the Tuscan arsenal, helping in the development of Livorno’s breakwater and harbour fortifications and then he designed a gallerata, a galleon for use as a merchant ship.

From letter of Alessandro Senesi, who was a secretary at the Medici court, to Caterina de’ Medici, we can know Dudley was dabbling in a rather new form of medicine based on chemical compounds. He was helped by Marco Cornacchini, a professor at the University of medicine in Pisa, who described in his book the powers of Dudley’s medicinal powder. He wasn’t worried about the collateral effects and shakered “great benefit” in Florence and Mantua.

Valentina Bacherini & Sara Tassi