The Gran Principe as a Collector
Ferdinando de’Medici, the grand prince of Tuscany (Il Gran Principe), was the son of Cosimo III and Marguerite-Louise of Orléans, the princess royal of France and niece of Louis XIV. For Ferdinando the collection of art played a prominent role. A talented musician, Ferdinando was also an enthusiastic patron of music and of such composers as Handel, Scarlatti, and Albioni. Indeed, he maintained an apartment filled with the most exquisite musical instruments. But above all, he continued to augment his art collection so that, by the time of his death, it numbered some thousand works. His taste, like that of his ancestors and his father, ran to Venetian and Genoese painting, to bozzetti by artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to works from foreign schools including the Dutch and Flemish. However, Ferdinando had a special veneration for the great masters of the past and he sought to obtain large-scale works by them; he was particularly eager to obtain further examples of the altarpieces by famous painters that characterized his family's collection. This zeal was not shared by his father who, after his son’s death, returned several works that had come from local churches. Among his acquisitions were the two Assumptions and the Gambassi Altarpeice by Andrea del Sarto, today still in the Pitti. From del Sarto (the Madonna of the Harpies) to Fra Bartolomeo, from Parmigianino to Rosso Fiorentino and Cigoli, from Francesco Bassano to Rutilio Manetti to Riminaldi, artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are today represented by altarpieces in the holdings of the Pitti Palace, housed in the prince’s apartments. His mania for collecting illustrious examples of painting also compelled Ferdinando to look to nearby schools such as the Bolognese, exemplified by Guercino and Lanfranco, and the Roman. He even made an effort to obtain works his ancestors could not get, such as Parmigianino’s Madonna of the Long Neck. This policy was also justified by the prince on the grounds that he was rescuing paintings that had been found in a state of disrepair.
Ferdinando’s program of collecting was organized along very similar lines to that of his father. In the vast rooms of his apartment in the Pitti were hung altarpieces and other works by the most important sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian and European artists (among these were The Resurrection of Christ and the Consequences of War by Rubens and the Rabbi by Rembrandt). On the mezzanine floors was a collection of bozzetti and works by minor artists. In the villa at Poggio a Caiano he assembled a collection of small-scale works (transferred to the Uffizi in 1778), among which were the small Dutch and Flemish paintings given to the family by the aforementioned palatine elector, including the splendid portrait of Helena Fourment, Ruben’s first wife, painted by the great master of Antwerp, and genre paintings such as the still-lifes painted for him by Cristoforo Munari and Margherita Caffi. At his villa in Pratolino, he kept the great decorative canvases by Gabbiani with portraits of Ferdinando’s musicians and canvases by Orofri, depicting the terrain in which Ferdinando loved to hunt. Ferdinando had developed, as had his uncle Leopoldo before him, a passion for Venetian painting, of which he sought to obtain – though not always with so much success in his choices – examples of the highest quality. He began with Titian ( though his Portrait of Alvise Cornaro -- always considered to be Titian’s masterpiece -- has since been revealed to be merely a ...Tintoretto!), Paolo Veronese, and Giorgione; the work of the last of these -- The Singing Lesson (The Three Ages of Man), in the Pitti – came to the collection as an “unknown work by a fine Lombard hand” and has only in this century been recognized as being by Giorgione.
The prince's fame rests not only in his collection itself but also in his ability to select paintings representing the new artistic trends throughout Italy, in particular the schools of Venice, Genoa, and Bologna. His generous patronage caused artists to court his favor, but in the end Ferdinando’s choice was always entirely his own. In the first years of the eighteenth century, when Florentine painting was keeping up with the times but without any especially dynamic practitioners, Ferdinando saw in the work of Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Sebastiano and Marco Ricci, and Alessandro Magnasco the beginnings of what would be the style of the new century. Without Ferdinando’s intuitive capabilities, Florence would not today enjoy the achievements of these artists, which signified a important development in Italian and European painting of the eighteenth century. Likewise, Ferdinando’s pursuit of the eighteenth-century Genoese school (through such artists as Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Valerio Castello, and Giovanni Battista Langretti) and the corresponding Venetian school (typified by Federico Cervelli and Johann Carl Loth) enabled him to expand the collection. In the end, however, it is the attention he paid to Crespi and to the two Ricci brothers (Marco's landscapes were of particular interest), as well asto the Peruzzini, Magnasco, and Crescenzio Onofri, that most clearly indicates just how greatly Florence benefited from his aesthetic intuition.
On Il Gran Principe’s death in 1714, his father, Cosimo III, inherited this magnificent collection. Its eventual reordering, enriched by other paintings principally from the collection of Cardinal Leopoldo, formed the nucleus of what, a century later, would be the Palatine Gallery.
On Il Gran Principe’s death in 1714, his father, Cosimo III, inherited this magnificent collection. Its eventual reordering, enriched by other paintings principally from the collection of Cardinal Leopoldo, formed the nucleus of what, a century later, would be the Palatine Gallery.
Some Works Acquired by the Gran Principe
Fra Bartolomeo, The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, Pitti
Dated 1512, this altarpiece was executed for the chapel of Santa Caterina in the church of San Marco. In 1690, the Gran Principe claimed it for his apartments in the Pitti Palace, leaving in its place a copy by Anton Domenico Gabbiani. (Gregori, op. cit. p. 183.)
Andrea d'Agnolo, detto Andrea del Sarto, Madonna delle arpie, Uffizi
Commissioned by the sisters of the Florentine convent of San francesco de' Medici in 1515, this work was placed on the church's high altar after its completion in 1517. In 1704, it was requested for the collection of the Gran Principe, who replaced it with a copy by Francesco Petrucci. (Gregori, op. cit., p. 191.)
Francesco Mazzola, detto il Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long Neck, Uffizi
This panel was commissioned in 1534 by ELena Baiardi for her chapel in the church of Santa Maria dei Servie in PArma. The painting remained unfinished due to the death of the artist. It was acquired by the Gran Prinicpe in 1698. (Gregori, op. cit., p. 240-241.)
Raphael, Madonna of the Baldacchino, Pitti
Raphael began this painting in 1507 for the Dei chapel in Santo Spirito, but he left it incomplete on his departure for Rome the following year. It is a very important model for the development of this type of composition. After being in various locations, the panel was acquired by Gran Principe Ferdinando at the end of the seventeenth century. (Gregori, op. cit., p. 168-169.)
Peter Paul Rubens, The Consequences of War, Pitti
Sent to Florence by Rubens in 1638, this painting was sold by the heirs of Justus Sustermans to the Gran Principe in whose collection the painting may have been catalogued beginning in 1691. Requisitioned by the French in 1799, it was reacquired in 1815. (Gregori, op. cit., p. 519).
Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait (The Rabbi), Uffizi
Giorgione, The Singing Lesson, Pitti
This painting was first recorded as a part of the Gran Principe's collection in 1698. It was put up for sale in Venice in 1666 as a part of Nicolò Renieri's collection, and before that was listed in the inventory of 1567-1569 as having belonged to Gabriele Vendramin. It is also known as The Three Ages of Man.
Titian, Portrait of a Gentleman, Pitti
Already in the collection of the Gran Principe in 1698, the work came to the gallery in 1713. The sitter has been identified as the Ferraran jurist Ippolito Riminaldi; the portrait's traditional title, "The Young Englishman" dates only from the end of the nineteenth century. (Gregori, op. cit., p. 266.)
Marco Chiarini, "From Palace to Museum: The History of the Florentine Galleries"; Paintings in the Uffizi & Pitti Galleries, Boston, 1994, pp. 14-16.