On the occasion of the exhibition ”Giovanni Stradano. Le più strane e belle invenzioni del mondo”, curated by Alessandra Baroni and held at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence (17 November 2023-18 February 2024), the Netherlands Interuniversity Institute for Art History (NIKI) organises an international conference on Johannes Stradanus and on the many ways in which the artist from Bruges,“with the flowers of his art, made Florence appear even more beautiful” (Van Mander).

The conference focuses on the Italian Renaissance artists’ workshop practice. The conference focuses on the Italian Renaissance artists’ workshop practice. While many scholars consider the work made in artists’ workshops and much recent scholarship seeks to attribute the outputs of the assistants of well-known painters and sculptors, there are still many questions concerning quotidian life in the workshop that have attracted little scholarly attention, and about which we know very little – or practically nothing.