Pietro Leopoldo as a Collector
After more than twenty years of regency, the state of Tuscany in 1765 welcomed its first Austrian grand duke, Pietro Leopoldo, cadet son of the Empress Maria Teresa and Francesco Stefano di Lorena. An able reformer, he reordered the Florentine collection in a complex design, just as he reordered the organs of the state. Helping him in this task was Luigi Lanzi, the first Italian art historian, and their combined effort aimed to rationalize the organization of the Medici collection along didactic lines.
In this new scheme the Uffizi was no longer prinicpally a gallery of statues (emphasizing its archaeological holdings) but rather assumed the aspect of a gallery of paintings ordered in accordance with historical criteria, divided by schools or trends, anticipating all the nineteenth-century organizations of this type. While the Pitti collection and those of the villas became exalted reservoirs for everything that was left over, the Uffizi came to be representative of the “Gallery of the Prince,” the public place where one might see the grand-ducal treasures.
The Accademia has an important place in the history of Italian painting, having been conceived as a teaching institution for students of the fine arts. The endeavor began with the acquisition of some of the oldest types of paintings, those characterized as “primitive,” which were obtained from the monasteries and convents after the Napoleonic suppression. These constituted the first examples of the ”pictorial history” that Lanzi had written in his corollary to the museographic reordering.
The Leopoldian approach to the Florentine collections was for a long time the standard by which other European collections were judged, so that, for instance, Zoffany, writing in 1778, could describe the Tribune to Queen Caroline of England as the highest paradigm of a princely collection. Consumed as he was with his reorganization, Pietro Leopoldo did not have much time to make acquisitions of his own to augment the Medici picture collection; it was left to his successors, Ferdinando III and Leopoldo II, to sift through the pictures of increasing significance that were now being offered to Florence. The direct relationship between the courts of Tuscany and Vienna meant that advantageous exchanges could be arranged with the Viennese Belvedere collection for examples of the Italian baroque. Seventeenth-century roman, Florentine, and Bolognese paintings – including works by Pietro da Cortona, Salvator Rosa, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, and Francesco Furini – were thus sent to Vienna, while Florence in turn received exceptional material from the German school (by Durer and Cranach), the Venetian school (by Bellini, Titian, and Veronese), and the seventeenth–century French school (by De Crayer, Seghers, and Rubens and his circle).
In this new scheme the Uffizi was no longer prinicpally a gallery of statues (emphasizing its archaeological holdings) but rather assumed the aspect of a gallery of paintings ordered in accordance with historical criteria, divided by schools or trends, anticipating all the nineteenth-century organizations of this type. While the Pitti collection and those of the villas became exalted reservoirs for everything that was left over, the Uffizi came to be representative of the “Gallery of the Prince,” the public place where one might see the grand-ducal treasures.
The Accademia has an important place in the history of Italian painting, having been conceived as a teaching institution for students of the fine arts. The endeavor began with the acquisition of some of the oldest types of paintings, those characterized as “primitive,” which were obtained from the monasteries and convents after the Napoleonic suppression. These constituted the first examples of the ”pictorial history” that Lanzi had written in his corollary to the museographic reordering.
The Leopoldian approach to the Florentine collections was for a long time the standard by which other European collections were judged, so that, for instance, Zoffany, writing in 1778, could describe the Tribune to Queen Caroline of England as the highest paradigm of a princely collection. Consumed as he was with his reorganization, Pietro Leopoldo did not have much time to make acquisitions of his own to augment the Medici picture collection; it was left to his successors, Ferdinando III and Leopoldo II, to sift through the pictures of increasing significance that were now being offered to Florence. The direct relationship between the courts of Tuscany and Vienna meant that advantageous exchanges could be arranged with the Viennese Belvedere collection for examples of the Italian baroque. Seventeenth-century roman, Florentine, and Bolognese paintings – including works by Pietro da Cortona, Salvator Rosa, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, and Francesco Furini – were thus sent to Vienna, while Florence in turn received exceptional material from the German school (by Durer and Cranach), the Venetian school (by Bellini, Titian, and Veronese), and the seventeenth–century French school (by De Crayer, Seghers, and Rubens and his circle).
Some Works Acquired by Pietro Leopoldo
Andrea del Sarto, Pietà with Saints, Pitti
After moving to Luco di Mugello in 1523 to escape the plague that had broken out in Florence, Andrea executed this altarpiece for the high altar of the town church dedicated to St. Peter. In 1782 the work was acquired by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo who exhibited it in the Tribune in the Uffizi and left a copy by Santi Pacini in its place. (Gregori, op. cit., p. 194.)
Marco Chiarini, "From Palace to Museum: The History of the Florentine Galleries"; Paintings from the Uffizi & Palatine Galleries, Boston, 1994, p. 16.