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art and craftMinor arts raised to great art

Arts & Crafts at the Court
[Susan Glasspool]

The high quality of the decorative arts under the Medici did not decline when they were succeeded by the Lorraines, if anything, they were greatly encouraged, especially the art of hard stone inlay. In the 18th century this art became so important that it was considered a major rather than a minor art, both in Florence and abroad.

This importance was helped by several factors, one of which was the nomination of Frenchman Louis Siries, formerly goldsmith to Louis XV of France and later to the Medicis, as head of the Grand Ducal workshops, Siries, and later his son and grandson, called in some of the finest artists of the time to create designs for the objects in hard stone, and often the results were not only extraordinary but also almost revolutionary.
The popularity of hard stone was also helped by the fact that the Lorraine’s were related to half of Europe and in particular with the Viennese Court, which made Florence a popular point of call for cosmopolitan society at the turn of the century and in the early Napoleonic period. The extensive artistic sphere that revolved around the extremely active Ducal workshops, its illustrious patrons and its directors, artists themselves, included such personalities as Giuseppe Zocchi, a protagonist of Florentine painting in the mid-century; Antonio Cioci, whose decorative ideas in early Neo-classical taste found international success and interest; Lombard Giovan Battista dell’Era, a fine portraitist and author of conversation pieces, spent the last few years of his short life collaborating with the Florentine workshops.

The roughly 180 works on display therefore include paintings, sculpture, gold and silverware, jewellery, porcelain, inlays and naturally hard stones. Many on loan from Italian and foreign collections, they not only illustrate the work carried out in the Court workshops but also link it with more specific sectors, for example, like the pieces of goldsmithery Louis Siries carried out by for the last of the Medicis and the cameos he made for Maria Teresa of Austria; paintings and decorations by Giuseppe Zocchi, and his successors; Leopoldian Neo-classicism and its influences in the applied arts; the decorative magnificence of the Empire style.

The exhibition therefore illustrates the Florentine cultural and artistic background of the time with a selection of works that cover a period of almost a century and, until now, rarely used as a subject for an exhibition.

Palazzina della Meridiana,
Pitti Palace, Piazza Pitti

Info: tel. 055.2388713
Hours: 8.45am-1.50pm. Closed 2nd, 4th Sunday & 1st, 3rd, 5th Monday of the month.
Entrance: Euro 5.00 / 2,50
From May 16th to November 5th
www.sbas.firenze.it


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