The Gran Principe's Mezzanine
I Mezzanini
Between the end of the 1680s and 1693, Anton Domenico Gabbiani was charged with one of the most difficult projects commissioned by the Gran Principe Ferdinando, the decoration of the “mezzanini” of Palazzo Pitti, destined to contain that part of the Gran Principe’s collections devoted to pictures of a smaller size and small bronzes. The heir apparent’s incessant desire to acquire objects of art began in the last decade of the century and continued until his death in 1713. His zeal for collecting was fueled additionally by a wide net of dealers and agents with whom he corresponded constantly, and by a not always exemplary practice of expropriating important altar pieces in the ecclesiastical territory over which his father ruled.
The assignment of the decoration of the mezzanines fell to the grand duke’s architect, Giovan Battista Foggini He was assisted by Jacopo Chiavistelli, who was involved in the decoration of at least three important areas, one of which was destroyed during the Lorraine’s expansion efforts. In the vaulted room called “della Meridiana’ used by Galileo’s disciple Vincenzo Viviani in 1696, Gabbini painted a ceiling based on a complex iconographic program designed to honor Galileo: Time, dragging with it all the Arts, exalts Science and tramples Ignorance distainfully. The decoration, owing quite a bit to Pietro da Cortona’s nearby Room of Mars, shows that the painter’s classical orientation was updated with developments from Rome and Venice, along with happy dynamic solutions and stage lighting that move hand in hand with the rigorous and well-nurtured designs themselves. To the drawings already published with respect to the “della Meridiana” ceiling – among which are 9877F, 15477F, 15493 F (fig. 2), 9863 F (fig. 3) and 15964 F from the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi – are added at least six more sheets of drawings all from the Florentine collection and, until now, unpublished: there is one preparatory drawing for the figure of Time, where the arm, the hand, and the lovely ‘all’antica’ head are repeated; a figure study for, perhaps, Amerigo Vespucci; two sheets that refer to the redrawing of the Seasons; one for the bust and feet of the young girl represented in the figure of Spring; another with a youth seen from the back, personifying Summer; and finally, a study of hands with cymbals, for one of the bacchus figures celebrating Arts and Science in front of the Temple of Glory. To the group at the Uffizi can be added another sheet which came onto the market in 1982, with a study for a figure with the ears of an ass, lying with a broken column, comparable to the figure of Ignorance trampled by Time. These sheets of drawings exemplify Gabbiani’s clear and precise style, derived from classical sources and the constant repetition of antique Roman sources. More diligent in his adhesion to the baroque than the “classical’, Gabbiani was, in fact, a model member of the Medici Academy in Rome that focused chiefly on the study of ancient sources. To this can be added his formative experience with Vincenzo Dandini that marked a preference for drawing from the nude that has always been Gabbiani’s graphic basis, even when, in some drawings, he shows a preference for a dynamism and a morbid chiaroscuro.
Another area of the mezzanine that is well-preserved is the gallery decorated with the trompe-l’oeil subject executed by Jacopo Chiavistelli, with six medallions in chiaroscuro of mythical subjects by Gabbiani, who is also responsible for the central, oval depiction of Doctrine, aided by Wisdom, overcomes passions, which is iconographically congruent with the Sala della Meridiana. A third area that faces the piazza, today lost, was the true center of the Gran Principe’s collection of smaller pictures and bronzes. Foggini had the difficult task of dealing with a very narrow space and an insidious “impediment of a pile of stone arising from the nearby Boboli Garden that needed to be leveled out”. There, in a bewildering space, Gabbiani designed a theatrical solution, a fresco called The Fall of the Giants, which allowed him to incorporate the actual space into his pictorial space. Nothing remains of this except the comments of Foggini, Gabbiani, and the Gran Principe, who was apparently inspired by the work of his favorite artist, Pietro da Cortona, in his Minerva Fights the Giants, on the ceiling at Palazzo Barberini in Rome. It was also yet another tribute by Gabbiani to the work of Berrettini, copying scrupulously the Florentine frescoes that he often quoted.
Among the numerous paintings by artists chosen by the Gran Principe, none was seen more often than the work of Livio Mehus. Among these was a work that the Gran Principe managed to get ten years after the death of the Flemish master. This work, described in the inventory of 1713 as “the fall of the giants struck by thunder by Jove, who is in the clouds along with an eagle “ is based on an engraving by Cosimo Mogalli of a design by Francesco Petrucci in the Raccolta di quadri printed in Florence in 1778. On the frontispiece of the Raccolta there is a curious error in the table of contents that lists, beside the Fall of the Giants by Livio Mehus, the phrase “Pittura fresco ne’mezzanini del Real Palazzo”, confusing , apparently, the painting by Mehus with the fresco by Gabbiani , two artists who are very close, even beyond their similarities in style. Anton Domenico, as Hugford has written, was more a friend than a copier of his older colleague. He turned to him for every sort of advice before he left for Venice . They were also in friendly competition for the painting of a portrait for Cardinal Francesco Maria de’Medici. Following Gabbiani, he chose to engrave, based on designs by Francesco Salvetti, two paintings by Mehus, a Navitiy and an Annunciation in the Gran Principe’s mezzanine, for the Breviario Ecclesistico and, finally, copies of two other pictures, The Marriage of Santa Caterina, and the Adoration of the Shepherds.
It was also Anton Domenico, advisor and broker for the Gran Principe who always consulted him on his acquisitions, who gave his blessing for the acquisition of the Fall of the Giants, that, along with other paintings by Mehus, entered the Gran Principe’s collection through an heir of Alessandro del Borro. Alessandro had been a companion at arms of Mattias de’Medici. He was a soldier, a student, and an inventor, who eventually became of the Governor of Livorno, a job he held until his death in April of 1701. He had put together a collection of precious objects, some of which were sold at auction upon his death, while others were given to the Case Pie of Livorno. Still, his son, connected to the Gran Principe by a feeling of friendship as his father had had with prince Mattias, wanted to leave to Ferdinando two paintings by Mehus. When Ferdinando realized what he had inherited (in fact there were several more pictures by Mehus), he sent Gabbiani to Livorno to value the lot.
Checking the inventory of 1713 at the Gran Principe’s death, we find that at least seven pictures by Mehus entered the Gran Principe’s collection, while a few others were rejected. Those accepted included The Fall of the Giants, the pendants The Rape of Helen and The Burning of Troy, and the series of The Four Seasons. The Gran Principe’s affection for the painter is confirmed by his charge to Gabbiani to dedicate a funeral monument to Mehus in the Cathedral of Livorno. The Gran Principe’s choice of an artist for this commission fell, not unexpectedly, on Foggini who created, in the first years of the new century, a monument that is still visible today, even if only as a fragment because of the damage during the war. It is located on the right of the entrance to the cathedral.
The assignment of the decoration of the mezzanines fell to the grand duke’s architect, Giovan Battista Foggini He was assisted by Jacopo Chiavistelli, who was involved in the decoration of at least three important areas, one of which was destroyed during the Lorraine’s expansion efforts. In the vaulted room called “della Meridiana’ used by Galileo’s disciple Vincenzo Viviani in 1696, Gabbini painted a ceiling based on a complex iconographic program designed to honor Galileo: Time, dragging with it all the Arts, exalts Science and tramples Ignorance distainfully. The decoration, owing quite a bit to Pietro da Cortona’s nearby Room of Mars, shows that the painter’s classical orientation was updated with developments from Rome and Venice, along with happy dynamic solutions and stage lighting that move hand in hand with the rigorous and well-nurtured designs themselves. To the drawings already published with respect to the “della Meridiana” ceiling – among which are 9877F, 15477F, 15493 F (fig. 2), 9863 F (fig. 3) and 15964 F from the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi – are added at least six more sheets of drawings all from the Florentine collection and, until now, unpublished: there is one preparatory drawing for the figure of Time, where the arm, the hand, and the lovely ‘all’antica’ head are repeated; a figure study for, perhaps, Amerigo Vespucci; two sheets that refer to the redrawing of the Seasons; one for the bust and feet of the young girl represented in the figure of Spring; another with a youth seen from the back, personifying Summer; and finally, a study of hands with cymbals, for one of the bacchus figures celebrating Arts and Science in front of the Temple of Glory. To the group at the Uffizi can be added another sheet which came onto the market in 1982, with a study for a figure with the ears of an ass, lying with a broken column, comparable to the figure of Ignorance trampled by Time. These sheets of drawings exemplify Gabbiani’s clear and precise style, derived from classical sources and the constant repetition of antique Roman sources. More diligent in his adhesion to the baroque than the “classical’, Gabbiani was, in fact, a model member of the Medici Academy in Rome that focused chiefly on the study of ancient sources. To this can be added his formative experience with Vincenzo Dandini that marked a preference for drawing from the nude that has always been Gabbiani’s graphic basis, even when, in some drawings, he shows a preference for a dynamism and a morbid chiaroscuro.
Another area of the mezzanine that is well-preserved is the gallery decorated with the trompe-l’oeil subject executed by Jacopo Chiavistelli, with six medallions in chiaroscuro of mythical subjects by Gabbiani, who is also responsible for the central, oval depiction of Doctrine, aided by Wisdom, overcomes passions, which is iconographically congruent with the Sala della Meridiana. A third area that faces the piazza, today lost, was the true center of the Gran Principe’s collection of smaller pictures and bronzes. Foggini had the difficult task of dealing with a very narrow space and an insidious “impediment of a pile of stone arising from the nearby Boboli Garden that needed to be leveled out”. There, in a bewildering space, Gabbiani designed a theatrical solution, a fresco called The Fall of the Giants, which allowed him to incorporate the actual space into his pictorial space. Nothing remains of this except the comments of Foggini, Gabbiani, and the Gran Principe, who was apparently inspired by the work of his favorite artist, Pietro da Cortona, in his Minerva Fights the Giants, on the ceiling at Palazzo Barberini in Rome. It was also yet another tribute by Gabbiani to the work of Berrettini, copying scrupulously the Florentine frescoes that he often quoted.
Among the numerous paintings by artists chosen by the Gran Principe, none was seen more often than the work of Livio Mehus. Among these was a work that the Gran Principe managed to get ten years after the death of the Flemish master. This work, described in the inventory of 1713 as “the fall of the giants struck by thunder by Jove, who is in the clouds along with an eagle “ is based on an engraving by Cosimo Mogalli of a design by Francesco Petrucci in the Raccolta di quadri printed in Florence in 1778. On the frontispiece of the Raccolta there is a curious error in the table of contents that lists, beside the Fall of the Giants by Livio Mehus, the phrase “Pittura fresco ne’mezzanini del Real Palazzo”, confusing , apparently, the painting by Mehus with the fresco by Gabbiani , two artists who are very close, even beyond their similarities in style. Anton Domenico, as Hugford has written, was more a friend than a copier of his older colleague. He turned to him for every sort of advice before he left for Venice . They were also in friendly competition for the painting of a portrait for Cardinal Francesco Maria de’Medici. Following Gabbiani, he chose to engrave, based on designs by Francesco Salvetti, two paintings by Mehus, a Navitiy and an Annunciation in the Gran Principe’s mezzanine, for the Breviario Ecclesistico and, finally, copies of two other pictures, The Marriage of Santa Caterina, and the Adoration of the Shepherds.
It was also Anton Domenico, advisor and broker for the Gran Principe who always consulted him on his acquisitions, who gave his blessing for the acquisition of the Fall of the Giants, that, along with other paintings by Mehus, entered the Gran Principe’s collection through an heir of Alessandro del Borro. Alessandro had been a companion at arms of Mattias de’Medici. He was a soldier, a student, and an inventor, who eventually became of the Governor of Livorno, a job he held until his death in April of 1701. He had put together a collection of precious objects, some of which were sold at auction upon his death, while others were given to the Case Pie of Livorno. Still, his son, connected to the Gran Principe by a feeling of friendship as his father had had with prince Mattias, wanted to leave to Ferdinando two paintings by Mehus. When Ferdinando realized what he had inherited (in fact there were several more pictures by Mehus), he sent Gabbiani to Livorno to value the lot.
Checking the inventory of 1713 at the Gran Principe’s death, we find that at least seven pictures by Mehus entered the Gran Principe’s collection, while a few others were rejected. Those accepted included The Fall of the Giants, the pendants The Rape of Helen and The Burning of Troy, and the series of The Four Seasons. The Gran Principe’s affection for the painter is confirmed by his charge to Gabbiani to dedicate a funeral monument to Mehus in the Cathedral of Livorno. The Gran Principe’s choice of an artist for this commission fell, not unexpectedly, on Foggini who created, in the first years of the new century, a monument that is still visible today, even if only as a fragment because of the damage during the war. It is located on the right of the entrance to the cathedral.
Novella Barbolani di Montauto, “Livio Mehus and Anton Domenico Gabbiani per il Gran Principe: note sui mezzanini di Palazzo Pitti”; Arte Collezionismo Conservazione; Firenze, 2004, pp. 64-70.