La rotella Odescalchi dipinta da Giovanni Stradano nel 1574

The conference, starting with the precious artifact preserved in Palazzo Venezia, traces the great iconographic fortune of the victory depicted there, won at Marciano on August 2, 1554, by imperial and Medici troops over the French and exiled Florentines. The event was decisive for the outcome of the Sienese War, and Duke Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned the Flemish painter Jan van der Straet, Italianized Giovanni Stradano, to portray it for the first time, on site, with great accuracy, in a painting thought to be lost but later rediscovered in the storage rooms of the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti. The battle held a place of honor in Cosimo's chamber and in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio, as well as being depicted several times in prints, based on drawings by the same Flemish artist. Biography Alessandro Cecchi, who graduated in 1976 with Mina Gegori, served the Italian state as an art historian from 1980 to 2014, concluding his career as director of the Galleria Palatina at Palazzo Pitti. He is a scholar of 15th- and 16th-century art in Florence, with research on graphics, painting, applied arts, and patronage, as reflected in his numerous publications, monographs, and exhibitions he curated or collaborated on.