Berlin He was one of the most important art dealers of the late 19th century and a taste pioneer of great influence. Stefano Bardini (1836 –1922) ran a prosperous trade in Italian Gothic and Renaissance works in Florence from 1870 onwards. The dealer even shaped the direction and appearance of a number of prestigious museums. But he was also a turnneck in art strategy.
Trained as a painter, Bardini mutated into a restorer in the 1860s. With this prior knowledge, the much more lucrative art trade could be pursued. He succeeded in transforming a hitherto immature market into a thriving one. It is true that the Roman Alessandro Castellani (1823 – 1883), who came from a dynasty of goldsmiths, was already a well-known art dealer who operated in Paris and Naples.
But with Bardini’s wide network of informants about works of art throughout Italy, with his rigorous buying and selling policy and with the trend-setting presentation of his art objects, Bardini was an unrivaled representative of his craft for more than thirty years.
Bardini’s connoisseurship was undisputed: works of art that he rejected were considered unsaleable. As a passionate photographer, he was the first dealer to archive his objects before and after restoration with photos and to send photo catalogs to customers.
Bardini’s activities unfolded as Florence experienced a substance-destroying wave of modernization. Old houses and palazzi were demolished to widen streets, and an entire neighborhood was sacrificed for the construction of the railway line. Bardini was the beneficiary of this leveling wave.
From 1870 to 1881 the merchant became so rich that he was able to buy the church and convent of San Gregorio della Pace. A little later he acquired the adjacent Palazzo Mozzi with a garden, which served him as a colossal storeroom.
This is how the light but intense wall color blue is called. It lets the old art shine.
(Photo: Leonardo Morfini)
This imposing building on the Piazza de’ Mozzi, which the art dealer equipped with a Neo-Renaissance façade, still today, as a donation to the city of Florence, announces Bardini’s status as a dealer, collector and organizer. In the 1950s, the “Museo Bardini” was transformed into a municipal museum. In the meantime, it has been renovated and furnished according to old photos and inventories in the same way it used to attract customers from Europe and overseas with its showrooms and objects during the art dealer’s lifetime.
The so-called “Blu Bardini”, a light, intense blue – the model of which can be found in the Sala dei Gigli of the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio – covers the walls of the museum. Pictures and sculptures can magically unfold against this color background in the large showroom or in the Madonna room. Even mediocre or over-restored pieces gain a compelling aura here.
Bardini loosely grouped works of art from different periods and genres in front of this blue so that the eye could focus on individual works. This new, personal method became a taste-historical ‘non plus ultra’. Crowded picture walls were common at the time. Bardini’s clear arrangement stands in clear contrast to this.
Bardini’s approach can still be experienced today in three institutions: in Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Paris’ Musée Jacquemart André and in Berlin’s Bode Museum, the former Kaiser Friedrich Museum opened in 1904.
View of the painting room.
(Photo: Leonardo Morfini)
The Berlin museum director Wilhelm von Bode had been visiting Bardini regularly since 1872 and acquired from him masterpieces that crown the Berlin collections. In his memoirs, Bode gives ample space to the collaboration with Bardini. There he also complains that the dealer would have used the knowledge of a Berlin purchase loan against Bode. Bardini offered the sculptures to the wealthy collector Baron Alphonse de Rothschild for a higher sum, indicating Bode’s interest.
Nevertheless, the connection to Bardini was a long-term symbiosis for the Berlin museum director. It is undeniable that as a result of their mutual connoisseurship, the dealer and the art historian became partners, above all in the appreciation of the Florentine Renaissance. Among other things, Bode acquired from Bardini the attractive portrait of a woman by Sandro Botticelli, which today hangs in the Berlin Picture Gallery.
In his obituary of Bardini in the trade journal Kunstchronik und Kunstmarkt, Bode combines praise with criticism. He certifies that he has an excellent eye. “A special skill was that he knew how to gain access to the most distinguished families and to gain their trust”. Bode brought him some well-funded collectors, but: “Of course, he didn’t show himself grateful for it, but rather tried to play off one buyer against the other, one museum against the other.”
Bode only talks about the great transformator Bardini in a subordinate clause, in which he mentions that the art dealer employed restorers for decades, from whom he “occasionally had the furniture, paintings and sculptures composed”. That’s a rather subtle remark. Even prominent exhibits in the Museo Bardini are amalgamations of different epochs and artists’ hands. But this is by no means kept secret in the museum today.
In the largest hall, an “adicule”, a door frame with a gable, leads into a cabinet with Gothic sculpture and architectural elements. Some of them were composed from works from different localities. Thus, a brilliant restorer assembled this aedicule from 13th-century Genoese, Sienese, Tuscan and Pisan elements.
Some of the sculptures that Bardini sold to museums were meticulously reworked. This is shown by archive recordings of Donatello’s “Pazzi” Madonna and Benedetto da Maiano’s clay bust of Filippo Strozzi, taken in Florence before the restoration, both of which are still in the Bode Museum’s collection today. Former breaks and flaws are hardly recognizable even for the trained eye.
Bardini’s fine taste won over connoisseurs and private collectors such as Baron de Rothschild, Prince Johannes Liechtenstein, Nélie Jacquemart, Oskar Hainauer, Albert Figdor and Grigory Stroganoff. They were his richest customers. Like the burgeoning museums of Berlin, London, and Paris, they made use of his expertise and network, even when he played them off against one another.
Orchestrating his objects in historical spaces into a compelling whole is part of an overpowering strategy. She still deserves, if not admiration, then respect.
Museo Stefano Bardini, Via dei Renai 37 at the Ponte alle Grazie, Florence; Open: Friday to Monday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m
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