Praise be to you, O Breg, - to you in the valley
Arno caresses for so many years in a row, Gradually leaving the glorious city, In whose name the thunder of Latin roars.
Here they took out anger on ghibelline
And Guelph was given a hundredfold
At your bridge, which is glad
A refuge to serve the poet now.
Sonnet by Hugo Foscolo "Towards Florence". Translated by Evgeny Vitkovsky
Museums of the world. And it so happened that when on May 26 on "VO" my material "Stibbert Museum in Florence: knights at arm's length" came out, there was a knowledgeable person who wrote to me that, in addition to this museum and among many other museums in Florence, there is another very interesting museum with medieval weapons and armor - the Bardini Museum. Having received this information, I immediately contacted the administration of museums in Florence and asked for what I always ask for: information and photos, or permission to use photographs of museum exhibits from his website. It's just wonderful that the administration answered me, connected with the curator of this particular museum. Quite lengthy negotiations followed: what, why, where and in what form. It's good that it's in English. The result was an impressive stamp paper (this is the first time this happens to me!), In which I was given permission to use museum photographs for an article on Military Review. So everything that you, dear readers, will see here is used on a completely legal basis and without violating anyone's copyright. It's nice that in Italy, museum workers take such requests so seriously!
So, today we will visit one of the very interesting, albeit minor, museums in Florence. Tourists, and our Russians are no exception, once in this city, first of all go to Santa Maria del Fiore, and then to the Uffiza gallery. For the same Stibbert Museum, few people already have enough strength. And the same can be said for the Bardini Museum. Meanwhile, it is worth visiting.
It is located on Via de Renai on the corner of Piazza de Mozzi in the Oltrarno area and is one of the richest so-called "minor" museums in the city.
It is unusual already in that, like the Stibbert Museum, it is the “bequest” of the antiquary and the most influential collector of Italy Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) to the municipality of the city of Florence.
And it so happened that at the end of the 19th century, namely in 1880, he bought out the palazzo, where the church of San Gregorio della Pace used to be, built between 1273 and 1279 on land belonging to the Mozzi bankers, at the direction of Pope Gregory X to celebrate peace between Guelphs and Ghibellines, and turned it into a Neo-Renaissance palace. Moreover, his building accommodated not only a stunning art gallery, but also laboratories for the restoration of tapestries, which Bardini himself sold to collectors around the world. The museum contains magnificent examples of Italian furniture of the 15th-16th centuries, paintings by Donatello, Michelangelo, Pollaiolo, Tino da Camaino, fine carpets, old string and keyboard musical instruments, and even … a small but very interesting armory.
In general, the palace turned out to be quite eclectic in all respects: stones of medieval and Renaissance buildings were used for its construction, carved capitals, marble fireplaces and stairs were arranged in it, as well as painted coffered ceilings, and there are simply a great many caissons in them.
However, the real estate complex in Bardini is not really limited to just one house. It also includes a park that stretches over four hectares on the slopes of the Belvedere hill (the famous "Bardini Garden") and which has recently been restored and offers a magnificent view of the city. It also houses the Villa Bardini with a panoramic loggia. In short, Bardini left a very good memory in Florence. Well, after his death in 1922, the museum was inherited by the city municipality, which is now its rightful owner. For a long time, namely from 1999 to 2009, this museum was closed for renovations, but today it is open to the public.
Now let's gossip a little and first of all find out where he got the money for all the antiques he collected. And it so happened that, having completed his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 1854, he began to receive large commissions as a restorer of works of art, and from 1870 he began to sell them himself. While working as a restorer, Bardini successfully removed some of Botticelli's frescoes from Villa Lemmy, and received an order to remove frescoes commissioned by Jacob Salomon Bartholdi from Casa Bartholdi in Rome. Well, his restoration of St. Catherine of Alexandria by Simone Martini, now in the National Gallery of Canada and executed so masterfully that it is almost indistinguishable, in 1887 was called the most outstanding example of seamless restoration of its time.
So many famous works of Renaissance art bear the imprint of Bardini's brush. In the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, there are about twenty works that have been transferred into his hands for restoration. In particular, Benedetto da Maiano "Madonna and Child", Bernardo Daddi and "Portrait of Youth" by Filippo Lippi. The Metropolitan Museum houses eight paintings that Bardini once owned, including the Veronese Boy with a Greyhound and The Coronation of the Virgin by Giovanni di Paolo from the collection of Robert Lehmann, as well as a Baroque portrait bust of Ferdinando de Medici. Bardini's connections with Bernard Berenson led several of Bardini's purchases to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; among them are two North Italian stylobates supporting a column of lions and a pool purchased from Bardini in 1897. The badly damaged marble head of a curly-haired young man from the Borghese collection, used by Stanford White as a figure for a fountain in Payne Whitney's house # 972 on Fifth Avenue in New York: in short, he not only collected himself, but also enriched many famous museums with his restored works the world.
It should be noted that the collection of the museum, the collection of which consists of more than 3600 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, armor, musical instruments, ceramics, coins, medals and antique furniture, is very eclectic in nature. Since he bought a lot from the local ruined aristocrats, what floated into his hands, he bought. And he kept something he liked for himself, and carefully restored everything else (which increased the value of these artifacts dozens, if not hundreds of times!) And sold them to museums and collectors in Europe and America. Many famous Renaissance artworks bear the imprint of Bardini's brush.
The National Gallery of Art in Washington has about twenty works that were given to him for restoration. In particular, it is Benedetto da Maiano's painting "Madonna and Child", altars and paintings by Bernardo Daddi and "Portrait of a Young Man" by Filippo Lippi. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York houses 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 Lehmann collection, as well as a Baroque portrait bust of Ferdinando de Medici. Several of Bardini's purchases ended up in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; among them are two North Italian stylobates supporting a column of lions and a pool purchased from Bardini in 1897.
He also had the badly damaged marble head of a curly-haired youth from the Borghese collection, used by the architect Stanford White as a figure for a fountain at 972 Whitney Payne's house on Fifth Avenue in New York. In a word, he not only collected artifacts himself, but also enriched many famous museums around the world with his restored works.
Some of the exhibits in this museum are simply unique. For example, there is a medieval wooden crucifix and a collection of wedding chests. And also antique carpets, including 7, 50-meter, which was used on the occasion of Hitler's visit to Florence in 1938.
After the death of Bardini, as is very often the case, the museum underwent significant rearrangements, which did not at all correspond to its original appearance. For example, the walls were repainted there. The magistrate did not like their color, and the old blue color was replaced by ocher. Therefore, when the restoration of the museum premises began, it was decided to restore its interiors exactly as they were during the life of Bardini himself. Interestingly, other collectors liked this color "Bardini blue" very much, on the contrary, and they copied it in their homes, which later also became museums, such as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston or the Jacquemart-André Museum in Paris. During the restoration, this color was restored from the old plaster on the walls preserved under new layers of paint, as well as thanks to a letter from Isabella Stewart Gardner, in which Bardini revealed the secret of his color.
Interestingly, in 1918, shortly before his death, Bardini organized a sale in New York of some of his sculptures and furniture that ended up in American museums in this way: the Metropolitan in New York and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. However, what remained in his house in Florence was so great that in 1923 a museum named after him was opened in Florence. And, of course, the beautiful "Bardini Gardens" remain his legacy.
P. S. The author and the administration of the site are sincerely grateful to Dr. Antonella Nezi and the curator of the Museum Gennaro De Luca for the information and photographs used in this article.
