Florence: Museo Stefano Bardini

Florence has a number of very good smaller museums that have originated from private collections. I have previously discussed the Museo Horne, where we can admire the collection of the Englishman Herbert Percy Horne (1864-1916). Another post was about the collection of Salvatore Romano (1875-1955), which can be found in the former refectory next to the church of Santo Spirito. This is a post about the museum that houses the collection of Stefano Bardini (1836-1922). Bardini was a man of many talents. He was an Italian patriot, painter, restorer, art dealer, art collector and photographer. The collection that we find in the museum is simply huge. In this post I will therefore confine myself to discussing a couple of highlights.

Stefano Bardini

In 1854 Stefano Bardini began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts. He took painting lessons, but does not seem to have had a very successful career as a painter. Very few of his works survive, and the museum tells visitors the rather sentimental story of how his masterpiece – a painted curtain for the theatre of Florence – was lost in a fire in 1864. Bardini quickly discovered that he could make much more money by restoring, buying and selling works of art. He gained a reputation for acquiring new artefacts and had contacts with famous museums in Europe and the United States. One of the reasons for his success was the fact that the art dealing business had hardly been regulated at the time. Regulations for the export of Italian cultural heritage were still a thing of the future in those days. This changed at the start of the twentieth century, a time when Bardini also began facing more competition from other art dealers. In 1922 he died, aged 86. He left his collection to the city of Florence, and in 1925 the Museo Stefano Bardini opened its doors.

The museums is housed in a building that Bardini bought in 1881 from the De’ Mozzi family. The site had originally been occupied by the church and convent of San Gregorio alla Pace. Church and convent had been founded in 1273 to confirm the temporary peace between the pro-papal Guelphs and the pro-imperial Ghibellines in Florence (hence the addition “alla Pace”). The church was deconsecrated in 1775 and the adjacent convent was used as a hatmaker’s workshop for a long time. Bardini turned the complex into a nice palazzo that served as his showroom. The interior of the palazzo was fitted out in accordance with a carefully drafted plan, something which was unfortunately not recognised after his death. As a consequence, many objects were moved. Thanks to photos – and so thanks to the fact that Stefano Bardini was a pioneer in photography – the original interior of the palazzo has been restored. Let us therefore go and have a look at the objects on display at the Museo Stefano Bardini.

The collection

The first object that caught my attention was the wall tomb of a bishop. The man has been identified as Jacopo da Castelbuono, who in 1286 served as bishop of Florence for a few weeks only. The deceased was a member of the Order of the Dominicans, which must have been the reason he was buried in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, which was the original location of the wall tomb. The museum highlights strong similarities between this tomb and the surviving parts of the tomb of Pope Honorius IV (1285-1287), which are currently in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome. The tomb of Jacopo da Castelbuono is therefore often attributed to assistants of Arnolfo di Cambio (ca. 1240-1300/10), the famous Florentine sculptor and architect who made the tomb of the aforementioned pope.

Another well-known work in the museum is the personification of Charity (Caritas) by the sculptor Tino di Camaino (ca. 1285-1337). Charity is a woman breastfeeding two hungry children. She has an impossibly long face, but that is probably because people were meant to view the statue from down below. The statue was likely placed inside a niche, as its back has not been completed. Stefano Bardini found or purchased the statue at a time when provenance was not yet considered important. As a consequence many stories circulate about how he acquired the statue. As regards dating, we know that the object was made somewhere between 1311 and 1323.

A very special object in the collection is a sculpted window from the middle of the sixteenth century. it comes from a palazzo in the Sardinian town of Sassari and represents a triumph. Sardinia had been conquered by the kings of Aragon (in present-day Spain) in a series of wars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It had then been added to the so-called “Crown of Aragon”. The triumph that has been depicted is that of a certain Angelo Marongiu, who had defeated a rebel army in 1478. The reliefs of the sculpted window were executed in the Catalan-Gothic style that we also know from Sicily. The city depicted above the triumph is Sassari, which is surrounded by walls and towers. In 1720 Sardinia was acquired by the House of Savoy in exchange for Sicily. The Dukes of Savoy thus also became Kings of Sardinia. These kings were subsequently involved in the Italian wars of independence in which Stefano Bardini also fought. In 1861 the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, became the first king of a unified Italy. It is an intriguing thought that the Sardinian connection might explain Stefano Bardini’s interest in the sculpted window.

Another top piece of the museum is the Porcellino (“little pig”), a bronze statue of a boar by Pietro Tacca (1577-1640). The statue is based on a marble Roman statue (which is itself probably a copy as well) that is currently in the Uffizi. The marble statue was found in 1556 in Rome. Pope Pius IV (1559-1565) donated it to Cosimo I, Duke of Florence and later Grand Duke of Tuscany. Pietro Tacca was presumably commissioned to make a bronze copy by Cosimo II, the grandson of the first Cosimo. Tacca completed the model for the statue before 1620, but then got so many other commissions that he only got round to casting the bronze boar around 1633. As far as we know Cosimo II never complained about the belated completion (he had passed away in 1621). In 1640 the statue was set up at the Loggia del Mercato Nuovo in the centre of Florence, where shopkeepers and local residents soon began calling it Porcellino. Visitors will immediately notice the smooth and shiny snout of the animal. This we may blame on the persistent belief that rubbing the snout brings good luck.

In the dark Sala dei Dipinti we find the most important paintings from the collection. I thought the most beautiful work in this room was an enormous crucifix by Bernardo Daddi (ca. 1290-1348), which comes from the cathedral of Florence. The crucifix is 4.76 metres high and 4.20 metres wide, making it the largest crucifix in all of Florence according to the museum. Daddi must have painted it around 1340, and less than a hundred years later it disappeared from the cathedral again for unknown reasons. We also do not know how Stefano Bardini acquired the work, nor how much he paid for it. It is on the other hand clear that he had the outer ends of the crucifix with the images of the Virgin Mary and Saint John replaced with similar images from another fourteenth-century painter. This led to a mix of elements that is called a pastiche. For Bardini this was a common way of restoring items, and in his museum we find many examples of pastiches.

Daddi did paint the skull at the foot of the cross, as well as the pelican above it that feeds her young with her own blood. I have not found a definite answer to the question who the men on either side of the body of Christ are. The writing men on the right are probably the four evangelists. The men on the left have illegible text on their scrolls, probably an attempt to replicate Hebrew. It is therefore logical to assume that these men are prophets from the Old Testament, for instance Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel and Daniel. I personally thought the crucifix was the most impressive painting in the museum. Also worthwhile are a painting of Saint Michael the Archangel by the brothers Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1431-1498) and Piero del Pollaiuolo (1443-1496), and a Madonna and Child with a rabbit (!) by the Flemish-French painter Hans Clemer (died ca. 1512).

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More information: Bardini Museum – Florence (museumsinflorence.com)