RISK is a six years project (2018-2024) supported by the European Research Council and based at the University of Padova. By taking into account a multidisciplinary corpus of sources, including both texts and images (praising poems, festival books, civic orations, paintings and engravings), RISK investigates Republican pageantry and encomiastic production from late 16th- to early 18th-century, with regard to the Republics of Venice, Genoa, Lucca, Ragusa, and the Dutch Republic. The goal is to comprehend how and to what extent the absolutist framework influences the representation of ideals such as freedom, equality, and the common good, and to understand how a power that does not apply to someone (the King), but rather to something (the Republic and Republican virtues) can be celebrated in the Europe of absolute monarchies.