Abstract

This article will proceed in four parts. After initially sketching out the political and institutional background of river administration in the early Duchy of Florence (which in 1569 would become the Grand Duchy of Tuscany), it will examine flood reporting in two sections. The first of these describes how such reports were commissioned in the first place and analyzes their conventional language, while the subsequent section assesses common visual strategies used by capomaestri to frame floods as actual or potential disasters. It concludes by considering how these images may have provoked a response from the ducal government in the form of increasingly centralized policies of alluvial control and territorial consolidation.