Teorie e immagini del governo "misto" nel Cinquecento: i casi di Gasparo Contarini, Donato Giannotti, Paolo Paruta e Traiano Boccalini

This doctoral dissertation faces the debated topic of the traditions of Republicanism in the Modern Age assuming, as a point of view, the problem of the "mixed" government. The research therefore dwells upon the use of this model in Sixteenth-Century Italy, also in connection with the historical events of two standard Republics such as Florence and Venice. The work focuses on Donato Giannotti (1492-1573), Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) and Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), as the main figures in order to reconstruct the debate on "mixed" constitution: in them, decisive in the attention paid to the peculiar structure of the Venetian Republic, the only of a certain dimension and power to survive after 1530. The research takes into account also the writings of Traiano Boccalini (1556-1613): he himself, though being involved in the same topics of debate, sets for some aspects his considerations in the framework of a new theme, that of Reason of State.

Effetti degli accordi Euro-Mediterrani sul comparto dell'ortofrutta fresca

In 1995, the European Union (EU) Member States and 12 Mediterranean countries launched in Barcelona a liberalization process that aims at establishing a free trade area (to be realized by 2010) and at promoting a sustainable and balanced economic development by the adoption of a new generation of Agreements: the Euro-Mediterranean Agreements (EMA). For the Mediterranean partner countries, the main concern is a better access for their fruit and vegetable exports to the European market. These products represent the main exports of these countries, and the EU is their first trading partner. On the other side, for the EU the main issue is not only the promotion of its products, but also the protection of its fruit and vegetables producers. Moreover, the trade with third countries is the key element of the Common Market Organization of the sector. Fruit and vegetables represent a very sensitive sector since their high seasonality, high perishability, and especially since the production of the Mediterranean countries is often similar to the European Mediterranean’s countries one. In fact, the agreements define preferences at the entrance of the EU market providing limited concessions for each partner, for specific products, limited quantities and calendars. This research tries to analyze the bilateral trade volume for fresh fruit and vegetables in the European and Italian markets in order to assess the effects of Mediterranean liberalization on this sector. Free trade of agricultural products represents a very actual topic in international trade and the Mediterranean countries, recognised as big producers of fruit and vegetables, as big exporters of their crops and actually significantly present on the European market, could be high competitors with the inward production because the outlet could be the same. The goal of this study is to provide some considerations about the competitiveness of mediterranean fruit and vegetables productions after Barcelona Process, in a first step for the European market and then also for the Italian one. The aim is to discuss the influence of the euro-mediterranean agreements on the fruit and vegetables trade between 10 foreign Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Turkey) and 15 EU countries in the period 1995-2007, by means of a gravity model, which is a widespread methodology in international trade analysis. The basic idea of gravity models is that bilateral trade from one country to another (as the dependent variable) can be explained by a set of factors: - factors that capture the potential of a country to export goods and services; - factors that capture the propensity of a country to imports goods and services; - any other forces that either attract or inhibit bilateral trade. This analysis compares only imports’ flows by Europe and by Italy (in volumes) from Mediterranean countries, since the exports’ flows toward those foreign countries are not significant, especially for Italy. The market of fruit and vegetables appears as a high heterogeneous group so it is very difficult to show a synthesis of the analysis performed and the related results. In fact, this sector includes the so called “poor products” (such as potatoes and legumes), and the “rich product”, such as nuts or exotic fruit, and there are a lot of different goods that arouse a dissimilar consumer demand which directly influence the import requirements. Fruit and vegetables sector includes products with extremely different biological cycles, leading to a very unlike seasonality. Moreover, the Mediterranean area appears as a highly heterogeneous bloc, including countries which differ from the others for economic size, production potential, capability to export and for the relationships with the EU. The econometric estimation includes 68 analyses, 34 of which considering the European import and 34 the Italian import and the products are examined in their aggregated form and in their disaggregated level. The analysis obtains a very high R2 coefficient, which means that the methodology is able to assess the import effects on fruit and vegetables associated to the Association Agreements, preferential tariffs, regional integration, and others information involved in the equation. The empirical analysis suggests that fruits and vegetables trade flows are well explained by some parameters: size of the involved countries (especially GDP and population of the Mediterranean countries); distances; prices of imported products; local production for the aggregated products; preferential expressed tariffs like duty free; sub-regional agreements that enforce the export capability. The euro-mediterranean agreements are significant in some of the performed analysis, confirming the slow and gradual evolution of euro- Mediterranean liberalization. The euro-mediterranean liberalization provides opportunities from one side, and imposes a new important challenge from the other side. For the EU the chance is that fruit and vegetables imported from the mediterranean area represent a support for local supply and a possibility to increase the range of products existing on the market. The challenge regards the competition of foreign products with the local ones since the types of productions are similar and markets coincide, especially in the Italian issue. We need to apply a strategy based not on a trade antagonism, but on the realization of a common plane market with the Mediterranean countries. This goal could be achieved enhancing the industrial cooperation in addition to commercial relationships, and increasing investments’ flows in the Mediterranean countries aiming at transforming those countries from potential competitors to trade partners and creating new commercial policies to export towards extra European countries.

La cerchia di Giulio Clovio: gli incontri, i viaggi, le amicizie di un artista europeo

La tesi riguarda il miniatore Giulio Clovio (Grižane, Croazia, 1498 – Roma, 1578), considerandolo come il fulcro di una rete di relazioni tra committenti, artisti e letterati. È divisa in tre parti, seguendo la vita dell’artista: giovinezza (1498-1534), maturità (1534-1561) e vecchiaia (1561-1578). Tra i committenti più significativi: Domenico e Marino Grimani e il cardinale Alessandro Farnese. Tra gli artisti italiani: Giulio Romano, Girolamo dai Libri, Valerio Belli, Sofonisba Anguissola. Tra gli artisti europei: Francisco de Hollanda, Pieter Brueghel il Vecchio, Bartholomeus Sprangher, El Greco e Lampsonio.

Keplero e la musica. Il Libro III dell'Harmonice mundi (Linz, 1619): traduzione e Introduzione

Questo lavoro si concentra su un particolare aspetto della sfaccettata ricerca scientifica di Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), ossia quello teorico-musicale. I pensieri dell’astronomo tedesco riguardanti tale campo sono concentrati – oltre che in alcuni capitoli del Mysterium cosmographicum (1596) ed in alcune sue lettere – nel Libro III dell’Harmonices mundi libri quinque (1619), che, per la sua posizione mediana all’interno dell’opera, tra i primi due libri geometrici e gli ultimi due astronomici, e per la sua funzione di raccordo tra la «speculazione astratta» della geometria e la concretizzazione degli archetipi geometrici nel mondo fisico, assume la struttura di un vero e proprio trattato musicale sul modello di quelli rinascimentali, nel quale la «musica speculativa», dedicata alla teoria delle consonanze e alla loro deduzione geometrica precede la «musica activa», dedicata alla pratica del canto dell’uomo nelle sue differenze, generi e modi. La tesi contiene la traduzione italiana, con testo latino a fronte, del Libro III dell’Harmonice, e un’ampia introduzione che percorre le tappe fondamentali del percorso biografico e scientifico che hanno portato alla concezione di quest’opera – soffermandosi in particolare sulla formazione musicale ricevuta da Keplero, sulle pagine di argomento musicale del Mysterium e delle lettere, e sulle riflessioni filosofico-armoniche sviluppate negli anni di ricerca – e offre gli elementi fondamentali per poter comprendere l’Harmonice mundi in generale e il Libro III in particolare. A ciò si aggiunge, in Appendice, la traduzione, anch’essa con testo latino a fronte, della Sectio V, dedicata alla musica, del Liber IX dell’Almagestum novum (1651) di Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671), interessante sia dal punto di vista della recezione delle teorie di Keplero che dal punto di vista della storia delle idee musicali.