Stefano Bardini
Encyclopedia
Stefano Bardini was an Italian
connoisseur and art dealer in Florence
who specialized in Italian paintings, Renaissance
sculpture, cassoni
and other Renaissance and Cinquecento furnishings and architectural fragments that came on the market during the urbanistic reorganization of Florence in the 1860s and 70s.
Trained as a painter and expert copyist at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze
from 1854, Bardini received increasing commissions as a restorer and expanded into selling works of art from 1870 onwards.
Working as a restorer Bardini, who successfully removed some Botticelli frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, was commissioned to remove the frescoes commissioned by Jakob Salomon Bartholdy
from several of the German Nazarene
circle of painters from Casa Bartholdy, Rome, which had been purchased by Berlin, in 1886–87. His esthetic, barely distinguishable restoration of Simone Martini
's Saint Catherine of Alexandria, now in the National Gallery of Canada
, has been examined as an outstanding example of the seamless restorations that his generation preferred.
Many well-known works of Renaissance art bear a Bardini provenience. The National Gallery of Art
, Washington DC, has some twenty works that passed through his hands, notably the Benedetto da Maiano
Madonna and Child, the Bernardo Daddi
Saint Paul and the Portrait of a Youth by Filippino Lippi
. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
conserves eight paintings that Bardini once owned, including Veronese's Boy with a Greyhound, and Giovanni di Paolo
's Coronation of the Virgin from the Robert Lehman
collection, as well as the baroque portrait bust of Ferdinando de' Medici by Giovanni Battista Foggini
and an eagle lectern by Giovanni Pisano
. Bardini's connections with Bernard Berenson
resulted in several of Bardini's purchases finding their way to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
, Boston, where Berenson was the guiding light; among them are two North Italian Romanesque stylobate, column-supporting lions and a basin, purchased from Bardini in 1897.. The much-damaged marble of a curly-haired youth from the Borghese collection, employed by Stanford White
as a fountain figure in the Payne Whitney house at 972 Fifth Avenue, New York City, which remained in situ as the house was bought for the French Cultural Services, then made headlines in 1996 when it was attributed as a youthful work of Michelangelo
. belonged to Bardini, Stanford White's mainstay in Florence for panelling, paintings and sculpture and Renaissance furnishings, who supplied White with two 16th-century wooden ceilings reinstalled in Whitney's palazzo among the caseloads of works of art he shipped across the Atlantic to White.
In the decades after 1860 he was also responsible for the transformation of many painted cassone panels that had been previously removed from the furniture, which was considered valueless, by creating new carved and part gilded walnut cassoni in the pristine condition that was required of furniture for grand houses. Of such [cassoni, the quantity that came onto the market were astonishing: the German art historian Paul Schubring was shown an outbuilding, probably at Bardini's Torre del Gallo
, that consisted of a single room in which he counted some 200 cassoni. The archives of the Museo Bardini make it clear that the free restorations and adaptations and imitations sold by Bardini were not misattributed; "confusion set in only half a century later when the heirs of the original owners came to sell the pieces," Ellen Callmann observes. Not all Bardini's cassoni were heavily restored: the famous cassone painted with The Conquest of Trebizond from Palazzo Strozzi
, with Strozzi armorial bearings, one of the minority of cassone panels remaining integral to its cassone, is conserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
.
In 1881 Bardini acquired the deconsecrated church and convent of San Gregorio facing piazza dei Mozzi in the Oltrarno
and set about transforming it into his opulent residence and restoration studio, Palazzo Bardini, now housing the Museo Bardini, with his collections of paintings, sculpture, most notably a marble Charity by Tino da Camaino, 15th and 16th century Italian furniture, ceramics, tapestry, arms; stringed and keyboard musical instruments, including one of only two surviving oval spinet
s by Bartolomeo Cristofori
; Roman and Etruscan antiquities and 15th and 16th century architectural fittings, including paneled and painted ceilings, chimneypieces and door surrounds. His example inspired his most successful protégé, Elia Volpi, to purchase and freely restore Palazzo Davanzati
in the heart of Florence, and fill it with a similar range of art.
Bardini's extensive connections among impecunious patricians and with dealers and restorers opened many avenues for acquiring works of art. Works of art from the Giampietro Campana collection
, dispersed in 1858, later passed, probably indirectly, through Bardini's hands. In 1892 Bardini was commissioned to oversee the dispersal of a major part of the Borghese Collection
in Rome. In the spring of 1892 Bardini prepared a lavish catalogue for an auction sale of pieces from his own collection, held at Christie's
.
In 1902 he purchased the Torre del Gallo
at Pian de' Giullari, in the hills of Arcetri
, on top of a ridge with a panoramic view over the city. There he undertook neo-medieval restorations that were carried out between 1904 and 1906.
In winding down his activities, Bardini organized a sale in New York in 1918 that dispersed his sculpture and furniture into American private collections, and which eventually came to American museums. Among the works was a polychromed terracotta of the Virgin and Child that remains firmly attributed to Donatello
, "in the small class of autograph Donatello reliefs", as John Pope-Hennessy observed. Lot 427 in the sale was of two Polyclitan
marble fragments, a Diadoumenos torso associated with a head possibly of Hermes
, both fine Roman copies: they are now in the Walters Art Museum
, Baltimore.
His bequest to the city of Florence resulted in the opening of the Museo Bardini in 1923; the Giardino Bardini across from it is also his legacy.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
connoisseur and art dealer in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
who specialized in Italian paintings, Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
sculpture, cassoni
Cassone
Among furniture in Italy, a cassone or marriage chest is a rich and showy type of chest, which may be inlaid or carved, prepared with gesso ground then painted and gilded. The cassone was one of the trophy furnishings of rich merchants and aristocrats in Italian culture, from the Late Middle Ages...
and other Renaissance and Cinquecento furnishings and architectural fragments that came on the market during the urbanistic reorganization of Florence in the 1860s and 70s.
Trained as a painter and expert copyist at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze
Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze
The Accademia di Belle Arti is an art academy in Florence, Italy and it is now the operative branch of the still existing Accademia delle Arti del Disegno that was the first academy of drawing in Europe.-History:The Accademia delle Arti del Disegno The Accademia di Belle Arti ("Academy of Fine...
from 1854, Bardini received increasing commissions as a restorer and expanded into selling works of art from 1870 onwards.
Working as a restorer Bardini, who successfully removed some Botticelli frescoes from the Villa Lemmi, was commissioned to remove the frescoes commissioned by Jakob Salomon Bartholdy
Jakob Salomon Bartholdy
Jakob Salomon Bartholdy was a Prussian diplomat, born Jakob Salomon in Berlin of Jewish parentage, and educated at the University of Halle...
from several of the German Nazarene
Nazarene
Nazarene may refer to:* Nazarene , a title applied to Jesus of Nazareth* Nazarene , a sect of 4th century Christianity described by Epiphanius* Church of the Nazarene, modern Christian Pentecostal denomination...
circle of painters from Casa Bartholdy, Rome, which had been purchased by Berlin, in 1886–87. His esthetic, barely distinguishable restoration of Simone Martini
Simone Martini
Simone Martini was an Italian painter born in Siena.He was a major figure in the development of early Italian painting and greatly influenced the development of the International Gothic style....
's Saint Catherine of Alexandria, now in the National Gallery of Canada
National Gallery of Canada
The National Gallery of Canada , located in the capital city Ottawa, Ontario, is one of Canada's premier art galleries.The Gallery is now housed in a glass and granite building on Sussex Drive with a notable view of the Canadian Parliament buildings on Parliament Hill. The acclaimed structure was...
, has been examined as an outstanding example of the seamless restorations that his generation preferred.
Many well-known works of Renaissance art bear a Bardini provenience. The National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
, Washington DC, has some twenty works that passed through his hands, notably the Benedetto da Maiano
Benedetto da Maiano
Benedetto da Maiano was an Italian sculptor of the early Renaissance.Born in the village of Maiano , he started his career as companion of his brother, the architect Giuliano da Maiano. When he reached the age of thirty he started training under the sculptor Antonio Rossellino...
Madonna and Child, the Bernardo Daddi
Bernardo Daddi
Bernardo Daddi was an early Italian renaissance painter and apprentice of Giotto. He was also influenced by the Sienese art of Lorenzetti....
Saint Paul and the Portrait of a Youth by Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi
Filippino Lippi was an Italian painter working during the High Renaissance in Florence, Italy.-Biography:...
. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
conserves eight paintings that Bardini once owned, including Veronese's Boy with a Greyhound, and Giovanni di Paolo
Giovanni di Paolo
Giovanni di Paolo di Grazia was an Italian painter, working primarily in Siena. He may have apprenticed with Taddeo di Bartolo, becoming a prolific painter and illustrator of manuscripts, including Dante's texts....
's Coronation of the Virgin from the Robert Lehman
Robert Lehman
Robert Lehman was an American banker, head of Lehman Brothers for decades and a notable race-horse owner, and important art-collector and philanthropist.-Biography:...
collection, as well as the baroque portrait bust of Ferdinando de' Medici by Giovanni Battista Foggini
Giovanni Battista Foggini
thumb|Tomb of [[Galileo Galilei]] in [[Santa Croce, Florence]].Giovanni Battista Foggini was an Italian sculptor active in Florence, renowned mainly for small bronze statuary.-Biography:...
and an eagle lectern by Giovanni Pisano
Giovanni Pisano
Giovanni Pisano was an Italian sculptor, painter and architect. Son of the famous sculptor Nicola Pisano, he received his training in the workshop of his father....
. Bardini's connections with Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson
Bernard Berenson was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".-Personal life:...
resulted in several of Bardini's purchases finding their way to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Court, as the museum was known during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime, is a museum in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts and near the Back Bay Fens...
, Boston, where Berenson was the guiding light; among them are two North Italian Romanesque stylobate, column-supporting lions and a basin, purchased from Bardini in 1897.. The much-damaged marble of a curly-haired youth from the Borghese collection, employed by Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
as a fountain figure in the Payne Whitney house at 972 Fifth Avenue, New York City, which remained in situ as the house was bought for the French Cultural Services, then made headlines in 1996 when it was attributed as a youthful work of Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
. belonged to Bardini, Stanford White's mainstay in Florence for panelling, paintings and sculpture and Renaissance furnishings, who supplied White with two 16th-century wooden ceilings reinstalled in Whitney's palazzo among the caseloads of works of art he shipped across the Atlantic to White.
In the decades after 1860 he was also responsible for the transformation of many painted cassone panels that had been previously removed from the furniture, which was considered valueless, by creating new carved and part gilded walnut cassoni in the pristine condition that was required of furniture for grand houses. Of such [cassoni, the quantity that came onto the market were astonishing: the German art historian Paul Schubring was shown an outbuilding, probably at Bardini's Torre del Gallo
Torre del Gallo
The Torre del Gallo is a historical building located in Florence, Italy, located at Pian de 'Giullari, in the hills of Arcetri, on top of a ridge overlooking the city where there is a magnificent panorama.-Origins:...
, that consisted of a single room in which he counted some 200 cassoni. The archives of the Museo Bardini make it clear that the free restorations and adaptations and imitations sold by Bardini were not misattributed; "confusion set in only half a century later when the heirs of the original owners came to sell the pieces," Ellen Callmann observes. Not all Bardini's cassoni were heavily restored: the famous cassone painted with The Conquest of Trebizond from Palazzo Strozzi
Palazzo Strozzi
Palazzo Strozzi is a palace in Florence, Italy.-History:The construction of the palace begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Maiano, for Filippo Strozzi the Elder, a rival of the Medici who had returned to the city in November 1466 and desired the most magnificent palace to assert his family's continued...
, with Strozzi armorial bearings, one of the minority of cassone panels remaining integral to its cassone, is conserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
.
In 1881 Bardini acquired the deconsecrated church and convent of San Gregorio facing piazza dei Mozzi in the Oltrarno
Oltrarno
The Oltrarno is a quarter of Florence, Italy. The name means beyond the Arno ; it is located south of the River Arno. It contains part of the historic center of Florence and many notable sites such as the church Santo Spirito di Firenze, Palazzo Pitti, Belvedere, and Piazzale Michelangelo.-...
and set about transforming it into his opulent residence and restoration studio, Palazzo Bardini, now housing the Museo Bardini, with his collections of paintings, sculpture, most notably a marble Charity by Tino da Camaino, 15th and 16th century Italian furniture, ceramics, tapestry, arms; stringed and keyboard musical instruments, including one of only two surviving oval spinet
Oval spinet
The oval spinet is a type of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Italian instrument maker who later achieved fame for inventing the piano. The oval spinet was unusual for its shape, the arrangement of its strings, and for its mechanism for changing...
s by Bartolomeo Cristofori
Bartolomeo Cristofori
Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.-Life:...
; Roman and Etruscan antiquities and 15th and 16th century architectural fittings, including paneled and painted ceilings, chimneypieces and door surrounds. His example inspired his most successful protégé, Elia Volpi, to purchase and freely restore Palazzo Davanzati
Palazzo Davanzati
Palazzo Davanzati is a palace in Florence, Italy. It houses the Museum of the Old Florentine House.-History:Palazzo Davanzati was erected in the second half of the 14th century by the Davizzi family, who were wealthy members of the wool guild. In 1516 it was sold to the Bartolini and, later that...
in the heart of Florence, and fill it with a similar range of art.
Bardini's extensive connections among impecunious patricians and with dealers and restorers opened many avenues for acquiring works of art. Works of art from the Giampietro Campana collection
Giampietro Campana
Giampietro Campana , created marchese di Cavelli , was an Italian art collector who assembled one of the nineteenth century's greatest collection of Greek and Roman sculpture and antiquities. The part of his collection of Hellenistic and Roman gold jewellery conserved in the Musée du Louvre...
, dispersed in 1858, later passed, probably indirectly, through Bardini's hands. In 1892 Bardini was commissioned to oversee the dispersal of a major part of the Borghese Collection
Borghese collection
The Borghese Collection is a collection of Roman sculptures, old masters and modern art collected by the Roman Borghese family, especially Cardinal Scipione Borghese, from the 17th century on. It includes major collections of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian, and of ancient Roman art...
in Rome. In the spring of 1892 Bardini prepared a lavish catalogue for an auction sale of pieces from his own collection, held at Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
.
In 1902 he purchased the Torre del Gallo
Torre del Gallo
The Torre del Gallo is a historical building located in Florence, Italy, located at Pian de 'Giullari, in the hills of Arcetri, on top of a ridge overlooking the city where there is a magnificent panorama.-Origins:...
at Pian de' Giullari, in the hills of Arcetri
Arcetri
Arcetri is a region of Florence, Italy, in the hills to the south of the city centre.-Landmarks:A number of historic buildings are situated there, including the house of the famous scientist Galileo Galilei ,...
, on top of a ridge with a panoramic view over the city. There he undertook neo-medieval restorations that were carried out between 1904 and 1906.
In winding down his activities, Bardini organized a sale in New York in 1918 that dispersed his sculpture and furniture into American private collections, and which eventually came to American museums. Among the works was a polychromed terracotta of the Virgin and Child that remains firmly attributed to Donatello
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...
, "in the small class of autograph Donatello reliefs", as John Pope-Hennessy observed. Lot 427 in the sale was of two Polyclitan
Polyclitus
Polyclitus may refer to:* Polykleitos, Ancient Greek sculptor** Polykleitos the Younger, the Greek sculptor's son* Polyclitus , freedman of the Roman emperor Nero...
marble fragments, a Diadoumenos torso associated with a head possibly of Hermes
Hermes
Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...
, both fine Roman copies: they are now in the Walters Art Museum
Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, located in Baltimore, Maryland's Mount Vernon neighborhood, is a public art museum founded in 1934. The museum's collection was amassed substantially by two men, William Thompson Walters , who began serious collecting when he moved to Paris at the outbreak of the American...
, Baltimore.
His bequest to the city of Florence resulted in the opening of the Museo Bardini in 1923; the Giardino Bardini across from it is also his legacy.