The rich city was at my feet, the powerful state was in my power, the cellars of the treasury were opened to me alone, full of ingots of gold and silver, precious stones. I took only 200 thousand pounds. Gentlemen, to this day I never cease to be amazed at my own modesty.
Museums of the world. Now, when traveling abroad is hampered by quarantine measures of different countries, we inevitably stay at home, but this does not mean that we cannot access someone else's information space. Still, the information society has its advantages: without leaving home, today we can look into a variety of museums in the world. And each of them is interesting and unique in its own way, but some are more interesting than others. And today we will tell you about one such museum. This is the Stibbert Museum in Florence!
Grandpa Governor General
There is Montugi Hill in Florence, and it is on this hill that the Stibbert Museum is located. It contains over 36,000 inventory numbers (about fifty thousand items), most of which are exhibited in its halls. Moreover, many of them are truly unique. Well, it got its name from the name of its creator Frederick Stibbert (1838-1906), whose grandfather, Gilles Stibbert, became rich as the commander-in-chief of the British East India Company, which operated in Bengal at the end of the 19th century, and then for many years. was the governor-general there. How the British officers serving there got rich is well described in Wilkie Collins' novel The Moonstone. The fate of Sir Robert Clive, also the Governor of Bengal, is indicative in this case. However, Stibbert's grandfather was lucky in every way. He amassed wealth and survived.
Pure British eccentricity
The wealth of his grandfather passed to Frederick's father Thomas, who was a true Briton in all respects, although not without eccentricity: he rose to the rank of colonel of the elite regiment of the Coldstream Horse Guards, but after the Napoleonic company he decided to settle first in Rome, and then in Florence, and even married Italian - Tuscan Julia Cafaggi. However, here he was fully entitled and no one condemned him for this. A man of noble blood, and even with money, he married a beautiful Italian woman. Yes, one could only dream about it! As a British citizen, he was educated at Cambridge, but was extremely intolerant of the strict rules of the college. But he loved Italy sincerely, and was especially attached to the Florentine house of Montugi, which was bought by his mother and became their family hearth.
Happiness is not in money, but in their quantity
Young Stibbert inherited all the fabulous wealth of his family already in 1859, and since then he only did what he spent on his passion, and very expensive: he collected antiques and art. But it cannot be said that he lived all this time in an ivory tower. In 1866 he volunteered for Garibaldi's militia and took part in the campaign in Trentino, for which he was awarded the Silver Medal of Valor. However, this was his only contribution to the military traditions of his family.
Do you want a collection of artifacts? Go to Tuscany
I must say that in the 19th century, Tuscany was distinguished by an incredibly cheap life, and ownerless and completely useless works of art came across here almost at every step. Tourists who came here tore off pieces of marble from antique columns, and carved their names on the legendary walls. Florence at that time was considered a real paradise for collectors, since the impoverished nobility lived there a lot, and its representatives were happy to part with their "antiquities" as soon as possible, especially for good money. This is how not only the Stibbert Museum came into being here, but also the Horp Museum.
The basis of Frederick's collection was the trophies of his grandfather, obtained by him in India and became the basis of the Indian collection of the museum. They were the fruit of the initial collection, which, already completed by Stibbert, was preserved after his death, and not only preserved, but also significantly multiplied by gifts made to the museum and subsequent purchases made by him. The fact is that before dying, Stibbert bequeathed the house and all its contents to the Museum of Florence. And already since 1906, the inhabitants of Florence have been able to use its historical and cultural heritage. Well, it is clear that the museum's income allowed him to acquire interesting artifacts. By the way, Frederick himself, having acquired the collection of his grandfather, then set out to travel around Europe and the countries of the East, and wherever he could, he bought weapons, armor, paintings, items of clothing and porcelain.
How much a person with big money can do
He placed all this in his mother's villa, and when her premises were no longer enough, he invited the architect Giuseppe Poggi, the artist Gaetano Bianchi and the sculptor Passagia to complete the building and decorate all the rooms of the museum in the same style. In total, today there are 60 rooms in which Stibbert's collections are exhibited, collected by him around the world. Many walls are covered with tapestries, upholstered in leather, and decorated with paintings, which, nevertheless, are relatively few. Collections of porcelain, furniture, Etruscan artifacts, Tuscan crucifixes and military uniforms of the Napoleonic army are of considerable value. However, the most in Stibbert's collection of weapons and armor - 16,000 items. I just can't believe that all this (almost all) was collected by the labors of just one person, and not just collected, but cataloged, described and turned into museum exhibits!
Horsemen's Hall: Knights at Arm's Length
The most amazing thing in the museum's exposition is the "Hall of the Horsemen" - a large room that houses statues of equestrian knights and 14 statues of soldiers in full armor. Moreover, and this is very important for museum visitors, they are not placed behind glass, not in cupboards, like similar figures of horsemen in the Paris Army Museum, but literally at arm's length. That is, you can walk past them, inspect both from the front and from behind, photograph small pieces of armor, which are often of great interest, at close range. Stibbert did not like this placement of the armor, and he preferred to arrange spectacular installations out of them. Most of them are dressed in armor of the 16th century, and among them there are both mass-produced, "mass-produced" armor, as well as truly unique samples.
All weapons of Europe
This part of the collection was created by Stibbert himself from start to finish, and he worked on it during his activity as a collector from 1860 until the end of the century. It displays many examples of both cold and firearms dating back to the 16th-18th centuries, as well as individual artifacts from the 15th and 19th centuries, and a number of archaeological finds. 16th century weapons and armor were made by Italian, German and French craftsmen. Among them are both combat and tournament armor.
The Turks sold, but Stibbert bought
Two museum halls are dedicated to the collection of Islamic weapons, whose homeland is the Muslim Near and Middle East. Certainly, Stibbert got some artifacts from his grandfather, but he bought a significant part of the collection at the end of the century in the arsenal of St. Irene in Istanbul, which was disbanded, and the weapons stored there were sold.
One of the best Japanese collections
The museum has three rooms for weapons and armor of Japan, and at first it was conceived that they would display a collection of European weapons and armor. However, around 1880, Stibbert became interested in Japan's weapons, which became available after its integration into the world community following the events of 1868. It is noted that this collection is today one of the most significant collections among all those outside Japan.
There are 95 sets of complete samurai weapons, 200 helmets, as well as 285 other exhibits, more than hundreds of long and short swords and various polearms. Here you can also see 880 tsub (hilt guards) and many other attributes of samurai of extremely fine workmanship. Almost all objects belong to the intermediate time between the Momoyama and Edo periods (1568-1868), but there are also very ancient ones, dating back to the XIV century.
Canvases as illustrations
A feature of the paintings in the Stibbert Museum Art Gallery is the many portraits of various historical characters in costumes from the era between the 16th and 18th centuries. Moreover, many of them are valuable precisely because they reproduce both civilian and military costumes of those years in the most detailed way, which turns them into wonderful pictorial additions to the corresponding collections of artifacts.
Among them are very interesting paintings such as "Madonna" by A. Allori, several portraits of the Medici family, two paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, as well as a series of still lifes exhibited in the dining room of the villa, where two large canvases by Luca Giordano hang.
At one time, it also kept the "Madonna" by Sandro Botticelli, "Two Saints" by the Venetian Carlo Crivelli, the painting "Madonna and Child" by the maestro from Verrocchio and a beautifully executed portrait of Francesco de Medici, whose authorship is attributed to Agnolo Bronzino. But then they ended up in other museums.
Sets from the Marquis
The porcelain in the Stibbert collection is truly royal. It contains items from the 19th century and the Chudi collection, donated to the museum in 1914. It contains ancient exhibits from various porcelain manufactories, and its adornment: beautiful three large and very rich sets from Ginori, issued in 1750. They are also interesting for their history. After all, this production was founded by the Marquis Carlo Andrea Ginori, who launched the Doxie Manufactory in Doxie, in the villa of the family estate, back in 1735!
Outfit based on palm trees
There is a hall in the Stibbert collection called "The Small Suit of Italy". Its exhibits are periodically replaced, but the main thing in it is that it is very rich - it is the richest collection of clothes not only from Europe, but also from the Near, Middle and Far East. Moreover, Indian clothes are also displayed in the hall where Indian weapons and armor are displayed, and clothes from Japan, China and Korea are placed next to the armor of samurai and Chinese and Korean soldiers.
The final persona of the collection of clothes was none other than Napoleon I, and all because Stibbert had a keen interest in his personality. And he eventually poured into a whole hall, so many interesting artifacts associated with this great man he managed to collect.
First of all, the outfit that the emperor wore on the occasion of the coronation, ascending to the throne of the kingdom, is on display here. It combined green (the color that symbolizes Italy) with embroidery with motifs of palms, ears, bees and the letter "N" - the big emblem of the little Corsican.
After walking around the museum, you can then go to the park
The museum building is indeed surrounded by a beautiful park, designed by the architect Giuseppe Poggi. As was customary in English parks, it has small temples, mysterious shady grottoes and picturesque fountains.
In the park there is a neoclassical lemon garden by the same architect, where lemons and various rare plants were grown. There is a Hellenistic temple and an Egyptian temple that fully meets the tastes of an Egyptian (built by Stibbert between 1862 and 1864), as well as a stable, reconstructed in 1858 at the request of Stibbert and his mother, who, among other things, were also fond of expensive horses! And all, all this Stibbert handed over to the city of Florence as a public museum! And after that there are still people who dare to say that wealth is bad, poverty is good. Even many thousands of loaders and workers, working around the clock, could not create such a museum. And Stibbert did and ended up giving it to all of us!
P. S. On the territory of the museum there is also a cafe and a bookstore. And the entrance fee is only 8 euros!
