Description
The Museo Stefano Bardini is a civic museum in Florence's Oltrarno, between Via de' Renai and Piazza de' Mozzi. It holds more than 3,600 works collected by the antiques dealer who built it: sculptures, paintings, weapons, rugs and furniture.
The building is a collage. Around 1881 Bardini put it up on the site of the old church of San Gregorio della Pace, reusing pieces bought on the market: the window frames come from a church in Pistoia, the coat of arms above the big window from the cathedral of Fiesole.
Inside, the rooms were designed to hold ceilings taken from old buildings, reassembled staircases and fragments set in everywhere. The walls are a deep blue, the Bardini blue, rediscovered in the 2009 restoration that put everything back as it was in 1922.
The two rooms on the ground floor tell the story of Florence through works rescued from its streets. The Boar by Pietro Tacca is the original of the Porcellino fountain. Then there is the Marzocco, the lion that once stood on the architrave of Palazzo Vecchio.
Among the masterpieces are Donatello's Madonna of the Ropemakers, Tino di Camaino's Charity and Antonio del Pollaiolo's Archangel Michael. Upstairs you will find paintings, bronzes, Tintoretto's Martyrdom of a Saint and thirty drawings by Tiepolo. On the mezzanine a large medieval wooden crucifix dominates the room.
Antique rugs hang along the grand staircase. One of them, 7.5 meters long, was unrolled during Hitler's visit to Florence in 1938. The building, after all, was born with a strange destiny.
Florentines gave it a cold welcome. A critic in 1885 wrote that no part of it "fits with the other." Bardini didn't care and filled the rooms with works from the ancient world to the Baroque, with a fondness for the Renaissance.
When he died in 1922, he left everything to the City of Florence. And the city promptly did something he would never have approved of: it painted the blue walls he loved so much with ochre.
The blue, perhaps inspired by the palaces of Saint Petersburg that Russian clients had described, pleased foreign collectors and less so the Florentines. That is why it stayed hidden almost until our own day, helped back to the surface by a letter in which Bardini revealed its secret.
Don't miss
• Pietro Tacca's Boar.
• Donatello's Madonna of the Ropemakers.
• Pollaiolo's Archangel Michael.
• The Bardini blue.
Did you know?
• Bardini revealed the secret of his blue in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, the American collector.
• In 1937 the museum was enriched by the Corsi collection, more than six hundred works from the 13th to the 19th century.
The building is a collage. Around 1881 Bardini put it up on the site of the old church of San Gregorio della Pace, reusing pieces bought on the market: the window frames come from a church in Pistoia, the coat of arms above the big window from the cathedral of Fiesole.
Inside, the rooms were designed to hold ceilings taken from old buildings, reassembled staircases and fragments set in everywhere. The walls are a deep blue, the Bardini blue, rediscovered in the 2009 restoration that put everything back as it was in 1922.
The two rooms on the ground floor tell the story of Florence through works rescued from its streets. The Boar by Pietro Tacca is the original of the Porcellino fountain. Then there is the Marzocco, the lion that once stood on the architrave of Palazzo Vecchio.
Among the masterpieces are Donatello's Madonna of the Ropemakers, Tino di Camaino's Charity and Antonio del Pollaiolo's Archangel Michael. Upstairs you will find paintings, bronzes, Tintoretto's Martyrdom of a Saint and thirty drawings by Tiepolo. On the mezzanine a large medieval wooden crucifix dominates the room.
Antique rugs hang along the grand staircase. One of them, 7.5 meters long, was unrolled during Hitler's visit to Florence in 1938. The building, after all, was born with a strange destiny.
Florentines gave it a cold welcome. A critic in 1885 wrote that no part of it "fits with the other." Bardini didn't care and filled the rooms with works from the ancient world to the Baroque, with a fondness for the Renaissance.
When he died in 1922, he left everything to the City of Florence. And the city promptly did something he would never have approved of: it painted the blue walls he loved so much with ochre.
The blue, perhaps inspired by the palaces of Saint Petersburg that Russian clients had described, pleased foreign collectors and less so the Florentines. That is why it stayed hidden almost until our own day, helped back to the surface by a letter in which Bardini revealed its secret.
Don't miss
• Pietro Tacca's Boar.
• Donatello's Madonna of the Ropemakers.
• Pollaiolo's Archangel Michael.
• The Bardini blue.
Did you know?
• Bardini revealed the secret of his blue in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner, the American collector.
• In 1937 the museum was enriched by the Corsi collection, more than six hundred works from the 13th to the 19th century.