Anonimo pittore toscano del XVII secolo, Banchetto grottesco, 1630 - 1640 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi
FLORENCE - The exhibition presents some of the most bizarre and unexpected recurring figurative subjects in the Medici collections, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, they found significant, and sometimes curious, artistic representations.It is so-called 'gender' scenes, a figurative universe that clearly established the hierarchy of the Baroque painting, with an illustration, often with moral or didactic intent, several comic aspects of social life and of the court, those issues considered, ie, otherwise low and devoid of decoration, unworthy of a high painting of sacred subjects, mythological or historical.
The selected works, about thirty, for the most part come from the deposits of the Palatine Gallery and the Gallery of the Statues and paintings (both part of the complex of the Uffizi Gallery created by the recent reform), and to the visitor marginal and deviant characters as clowns, ignorant peasants or grotesque, dwarves and practitioners from time lawful games that illegal. In apparently immobile society of the old regime, which give a face in the Pitti rooms portraits of the Grand Dukes and gentlemen of the court, the 'genre' painting becomes a critical tool that allows you to tap, through art, the more diverse reality of the world.
Maestro dell’Incredulità di San Tommaso (Jean Ducamps?) (attivo a Roma fra la fine del secondo decennio e la fine del quarto decennio del XVII secolo), Suonatore di chitarra, 1620 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
A colorful samples, and unexpected, the characters of the Medici court, embodies the ambivalent world of buffoonery, the rusticitas and play. Are often people actually lived, which were entrusted entertainment and amusement gentlemen, antidote to boredom always lurking in the mesh of the rigid ceremonial spagnolesco. So demonstrate the grotesque most unpleasant of Nano Morgante Bronzino and, conversely, the affectation courtesan Servers 'Cosimo III de' Medici.
The comedy of these subjects, not free even from deep dramatic implications or at least melancholy, declines in professional clowns, here represented in three types: the word - skilled in verbal acrobatics and wit improvisations -; the physical - the anomaly of achondroplasia and deformed -; and finally, mental deviance as the Meo Matto Just Suttermans.
Pittore emiliano del XVIII secolo Nano dormiente (Il nano bocciolo), 1700 - 1710 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
"Given the same way as living toys, wonders of nature worthy of a Wunderkammer, but also realized directors with special licenses with respect to the label of the court, these clowns, dwarfs, jugglers emerge from archive documents with a definite identity: they are in fact remembered for businesses (and sometimes misdeeds) that insert them as real people in the life of the court, whose biography can be dotted with savory details, and many can clarify the high human and cultural depth. The position of buffoons, midway between the fun and the speaking consciousness of the Lord, elevates them to the protagonists of an art playful and bizarre, which also allows the artist very happy expressive freedom and worth as an example the portraits of the dwarf Morgante Bronzino and Valerio Cioli, the caramogi in Seasons of Faustino Bocchi, the Meo Matto Suttermans and many others present in this exhibition, in addition to the sylvan figures and occupied in strange activities that sprout unexpected between the hedges of the Boboli Gardens. "(ED Schmidt , Director of the Uffizi Galleries)
Justus Suttermans (Anversa, 1597 - Firenze, 1681), Ritratto di un buffone (Meo Matto), ante 1640, olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
They also participate in the antics some rustic, like the old wedding dress, pathetic suitors of a young boy, unmasked by a dwarf mercilessly witty in a beautiful picture of the late seventeenth century, but of uncertain origin, or as the peasant Sunday from Cascine, depicted by Suttermans - official portrait of the Grand Dukes - in the framework of the same name, which happens from time to time salaried by the court for performance of a "buffoon".
They belong instead to the world of clowning craft Alberto Tortelli and Giuliano Baldassarini depicted by Niccolo Cassana in as hunting, therefore, suspended between the figurative level of the setting Arcadian, not otherwise qualified signs alluding to the role played at court, and that of biographical truth ce returns them to the craft workers in the fun of Grand Prince Ferdinando. Series of servants is also part of the wonderful fourfold portrait of the Servants of the Medici court in which Anton Domenico Gabbiani provides a kind of document summary of forms and themes, here anthologized in the bizarre collection of characters - including a dwarf, a hunchback, a Moor - all really documented as 'the employees', servile or clownish, at the palace.
Anonimo fiorentino del XVII secolo, Ritratto del nano Gabriello Martinez, 1640 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
Among the amusements a place no less significant than that occupied by arousing the rice had the games, in numerous cases as those of speech, board - particularly the cards - and those strictly physical. Not lacking pictorial evidence, as well as literary, of various members of the court intent exercise of a gymnastic game, like the enigmatic Portrait of a player with the ball. The scenario less lawful and courtly entertainment, the seedy tavern on the edge of the 'regular' confines of society, exerts a fascination on the court that it acquires the research and representations to their collections, as in Guitar Player, attributed to the Master of 'Doubting Thomas (alias Jean Ducamps?), in which the player / musician Squaderno shamelessly on the table, which rests, are strictly prohibited the dice and a deck of cards. Similarly intriguing, in their capacity as 'illegal characters', and therefore 'attracted' to the occasion of this exhibition, the protagonists of the bustling gaming scene and palm reader in the act of reading the hand of Nicolas Regnier or erring humanity and ragged Two storytellers of vagrants, or one just more reassuring of hawkers Bernhard Keil.
Eberhard Keilhau detto Monsù Bernardo (e bottega) (Helsingør, 1624 - Roma, 1687), Venditori ambulanti, 1660 - 1680 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
The forms of the comic is therefore built in the path that is proposed, because of the counterpoint between norm and deviations, regulates and disproportions, high and recklessness registry. In this game (s) proportions, the bustling and frenetic crowd of affaccendatissimi pygmies in some works by Faustino Bocchi, including the procession of La masquerade gnomes (The cat Mammone) and lowercase nudity de Dwarves to the bathroom immersed in emptiness the nocturnal abyss of blackboard on which are painted, is the extreme outcome of the grammar of the distortions, in which Brescia was master. There is even a lightning demon that companies often attributed with enormous cruelty, the ugly nature nell'inquietante grotesque banquet of more or less human beings and equipped with horns and in overtime of Orpheus in Hades infernal musical by Joseph Heintz the young, where caramogi and dwarves dancing on a staircase that rivals the best of Broadway stage. Alongside the paintings on display are the musician in the Nano marble sculptures of Agostino Ubaldini and the Dwarf with Andrea rattles Michelangelo Ferrucci, besides the bronze statue by Giambologna depicting the Fowler, from the National Museum of the Bargello.The engraving with portrait of Bernardino Ricci said Tedeschino, to which Stefano della Bella has entrusted the story of one of the most interesting personalities of the profession buffoonery to the Medici family in the early seventeenth century, complete - in terms of confrontation and completion - the issues represented by the paintings.
Domenico Casini (Firenze, 1588 - 1660) & Valore Casini (Firenze, 1590 - 1660) (qui attr.), Ritratto di Odoardo Farnese con un nano e un cane, 1620 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
In support of the exhibition has been prepared an itinerary in the Boboli Gardens, where all these characters, peasants, farmers and dwarves, players and caramogi come alive, though petrified, and hide in the woods and in the clearings as escaped from the universe painting that created them, to await the visitors with figurative puns and comical expressions.
On the occasion of this exhibition were made the restoration of 14 paintings, sculptures and two different frames retrieved from deposits.
The exhibition curated, as the catalog published by Syllables, Anna Bisceglia, Matteo Ceriana and Simona Mammana, is promoted by the Ministry of goods and cultural activities and tourism with the Uffizi Gallery and Florence Museums.
19 May to 11 September 2016
Faustino Bocchi (Brescia, 1659 - 1741), L’Estate, L’Autunno, L’Inverno, 1690 - 1695 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
Anton Domenico Gabbiani (Firenze, 1652 - 1726), Quattro servitori alla corte dei Medici, 1684 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi.
Anonimo pittore fiorentino della prima metà XVII secolo, Ritratto di nano con mazza ferrata e cane al guinzaglio, 1620 - 1630 ca., olio su tela. Firenze, Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria Palatina e Appartamenti Reali, depositi