"I Medici": an Audiovisual Fiction. From (Local) Fascism to (Global) Westernist Sterotyped.

This article examines I Medici as a multimedia cultural text that reinterprets the Italian Renaissance through a global audiovisual lens. In the Introduction, the study situates the series within a broader genealogy of cultural reconstruction, from Fascist appropriations of Medicean symbolism to contemporary strategies of national rebranding. The article analyzes the industrial, political, and narrative mechanisms that shape the series: transnational production contexts; the Bernabei legacy and its pedagogical ethos; and the transition from local memory to global heritage branding. The central discussion highlights how the show adopts AngloAmerican prestige-TV conventions to construct Lorenzo de’ Medici as a heroic archetype while deploying genre-driven strategies—thriller pacing, melodrama, and selective authenticity—that mediate historical knowledge for global audiences. In the Discussion, the article examines representational dynamics related to gender, multiculturality, and Western stereotypes, showing how the series navigates contemporary identity politics while departing from historiographical consensus. The analysis also explores the role of soft power and national branding in transforming the Renaissance into a transnational cultural product shaped by global market expectations. The Conclusion argues that I Medici exemplifies how modern historical dramas simultaneously democratize access to the past and generate mythologized narratives that blur fact and fiction. Through such processes, the Renaissance emerges as a fluid, internationally co-produced heritage construct. References include primary historical sources, media-industry documents, and secondary scholarship from cultural studies, historiography, adaptation theory, and memory studies.