Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
Die Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, die 1908 als Publikationsforum des Florentiner Instituts gegründet wurden, gehören heute zu den traditionsreichsten und renommiertesten kunsthistorischen Fachzeitschriften weltweit. Seit 2013 erscheinen die Mitteilungen wieder dreimal jährlich in erneuertem Layout. Sie veröffentlichen neue Forschungen, die der italienischen Kunst von der Spätantike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert sowie ihren globalen Bezügen gewidmet sind; bevorzugt werden dabei Texte mit einem breiteren Fokus, welche der Forschung neue Perspektiven eröffnen. In regelmäßigen Abständen erscheinen Themenhefte, die auch über die Italienforschung hinausgehen und allgemeineren Aspekten der Kunstwissenschaft gewidmet sein können. Alle erschienenen Beiträge werden nach einer Sperrfrist von einem Jahr hier online gestellt. Die aktuellen Hefte der Mitteilungen können bei Centro Di, Florenz (Silvia Cangioli, E-Mail: silvia@centrodi.it) bezogen werden. Die Mitglieder des Vereins zur Förderung des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz (Max-Planck-Institut) e. V. erhalten die Zeitschrift kostenlos.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
Il giogo e il trionfo di Amore nel dipinto di Lorenzo Lotto per Faustina Assonica e Marsilio Cassotti
This article investigates the aborted project for Michelangelo’s house in the Via Laura (today Via della Colonna), to be built at the expense of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore as partial payment for the Apostles cycle for the cathedral commissioned from the artist. Designed in collaboration with Simone del Pollaiolo called Il Cronaca, the house also marks the sculptor’s ﬁrst involvement with architecture. By studying a signiﬁcant number of unpublished or scarcely investigated documents, the aim is to establish the construction history of Michelangelo’s residence, his participation in its design, and its precise location, size, and architectural characteristics. Although the artist eventually abandoned the project after having obtained the patronage of Pope Julius II, the reconstruction of this episode allows us to better understand his social ambitions and to envision how he acquired his knowledge about the art of building that would later enable his career as an architect.
This article explores new documentation regarding the relationship between the Servites of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and Cosimo and Piero de’ Medici, especially their early patronage of the chapel of the Madonna della Nunziata. Furthermore, the article draws attention to a signiﬁcant but little-known manuscript containing the works of the Servite friar Paolo Attavanti, which provides crucial information about the Servites in Florence, the promotion of their blessed and their cults, the intellectual life of Santissima Annunziata, its patronage network, and other topics. Attavanti’s hitherto unknown correspondence with Cosimo the Elder not only reveals new aspects of Medici patronage, but also sheds new light on the author’s biography, the genesis of his works on the history of the order (especially his Dialogus de origine Ordinis Servorum ad Petrum Cosmae ﬁlium Medicem), and in particular the cult of Santissima Annunziata in Early Renaissance Florence. The article thus contributes to acknowledging the diversity of religious orders and their attempts to encourage patronage of their churches during the Renaissance.
With its ‘Islamic’ ornamentation and unmistakably Christian crosses, the ivory casket from Civita di Bagnoregio challenges traditional art-historical categories. The search for possible models and comparisons leads, on the one hand, to a group of ivory boxes usually thought to be of Egyptian or Sicilian provenance, but recently attributed to the Iberian Peninsula; on the other, it brings to light stylistic and iconographic models related to Coptic or Fatimid Egypt as well as to Southern Italy. The complex relationship between the Civita casket and the allegedly Iberian boxes becomes crucial for the identiﬁcation of their production centres, also raising questions about the transfer of models and know-how across the Mediterranean. The detailed analysis of a single object thus becomes an opportunity to explore the recurrent difficulties of attributing a range of precious portable artefacts, emphasising both the variety and the profound entanglements of Mediterranean visual culture between the late tenth and thirteenth centuries. Finally, the investigation of the function of these enigmatic artefacts unveils a variety of intriguing options; in the case of the Civita casket, these range from its use in the pharmaceutical ﬁeld to its conception as a reliquary for fragments of the True Cross.
The Traditio Legis Relief in San Marco in Venice
Ancora sulla lettera di Annibale del 1608: l’uso delle fonti in Malvasia e una nota sul cantiere del Quirinale
Filippo Lippi’s Frescoes at Spoleto, Cardinal Eroli, and the Immaculate Conception
Agnes and Dora Bulwer’s landscape photographs of the Roman countryside from the 1890s through to circa 1913 offer a vision that challenged the dominant gaze as developed in Grand Tour photography, traditional vedutas of Rome and surrounding environments, or documentation of archaeological sites. Unfettered by the archaeologist’s need for ascetic facts or the romantic’s aspiration to isolated ruins, their extensive body of work offers an unusual perspective of urban views of Rome as well as landscapes of the Roman Campagna and beyond. Living within the progressive international environment of post-unification Italy, Agnes and Dora Bulwer often photographed women, whether Italian peasants or travelling companions from their own social group, adopting a socially engaged and gendered gaze. The analysis of their photographs helps us to reconsider their work in the light of a dawning international humanitarianism. In spite of their legacy of more than 1200 original prints and nearly 890 nitrate negatives to the British School at Rome, Agnes and Dora Bulwer remain relatively unknown in the growing group of rediscovered early female photographers connected to archaeology or travel photography. This article discusses their work within a cross-cultural and art historical analysis and seeks to contribute to the history of British landscape photography in Italy at the turn of the century.
Famiglia e identità sociale nella biografia di Giuliano e Antonio da Sangallo
This paper explores the private dimension of the biographies of Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo on the basis of a series of unpublished documents, which reveal some aspects of the life of these two brothers and their ancestors, in particular their father Francesco di Bartolo. Francesco was the first family member to work as a legnaiolo (woodworker), and his profession certainly exerted a great influence on Giuliano and Antonio. Equally important in their formation must have been the place where the two brothers passed the first part of their lives and where they recognised their origin: the village of San Gallo, located outside one of the gates of Florence. These bonds, typical of medieval craft environments, seem to have been accompanied by the desire, especially on Giuliano’s part, to interpret his own professional condition differently from the traditional one. The intellectual and artistic maturation of the brothers proceeded in parallel with their ascent up the social ladder, then favoured by precise behaviours and strategies. These are vividly testified by Piero di Cosimo’s double portrait of Francesco and Giuliano and the testaments dictated by the two brothers in 1512 and again in 1525 by Antonio alone, now published for the first time. All of this material helps to better understand the condition and social aspirations not only of the Sangallo, but of artists in general in the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Pale d'altare composite e culto dei santi
This paper investigates the diffusion in Siena of a particular composite type of altarpiece, namely painted altarpieces in whose central compartment a sculpture took the place of the panel painting. These works were somewhat at odds with the dominant model of the entirely painted polyptych, of which Siena had been a centre of development and export. The article therefore investigates the reasons why the composite typology spread precisely in Siena. Thanks also to new archival documents, it first shows that more than ten examples were produced in Siena between the beginning of the fifteenth and the second decade of the sixteenth century. The key to understanding the success of the typology lies in the analysis of the patrons and contexts of destination, i.e. the functions of these works. While in an early phase (ca. 1400–1450) the choice of composite altarpieces corresponded above all with the desire for social self-promotion of the guilds and confraternities, later on (ca. 1450–1510) they were exploited especially by the mendicant orders for the promotion of the cult of saints, in particular those recently canonised, such as Bernardino, Catherine of Siena, Nicholas of Tolentino, or Vincent Ferrer. In these cases, the statue of the titular saint to a certain extent also compensated for the absence of his bodily relics.
Botticelli, Ugolino di Nerio and a Sassetti Memorial Portrait
Una conferma per Pietro Lombardo a Bologna
I Ginori in Spagna e Portogallo tra XVII e XVIII secolo
This article discusses for the first time the collecting activities of members of the Ginori family in the Iberian Peninsula during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Because some of them were Florentine consuls, they also acted as envoys on behalf of Cosimo III, which enabled them to develop a profound ability to use works of art as diplomatic instruments. The abundant unpublished documentation found in the Archivio Ginori Lisci makes it possible to correct, clarify, and deepen our understanding of the family’s trade relations, which previous scholarship had developed mainly based on the Mediceo del Principato fund of the Archivio di Stato in Florence. In addition, this essay examines the import of artworks by the Ginori from the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies for their Florentine residence. Some of these works are still preserved today and are introduced here for the first time, with particular attention to their artistic display in the Palazzo Ginori from the moment of their arrival in Italy.
This study presents a neglected painting that could be important for recognizing some aspects of the Florentine religious imagination in one of its most elusive periods. The panel depicts Christ as the Source of Life and is an authentic iconographic novelty based on various biblical passages, especially from the Gospel of John, the Apocalypse, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The aim of this article is to attribute its invention to Baccio Bandinelli, connecting it to the contemporary debate on the sola fide justification: the image visualizes the justice obtained by sinners who approach the Messiah with faith and are restored by his gift, a belief that was especially advanced by the Italian spirituali. It is suggested here that the painting was commissioned by Eleonora di Toledo in 1557, thus confirming her sympathies with this movement.
This essay traces the biographical and intellectual profile of Ottaviano de’ Medici (1482–1546) along with his activities as a patron and collector. Ottaviano hailed from a cadet branch of the Medici family and became a political and cultural adviser to Alessandro de’ Medici, the first Duke of Florence. He collected paintings by Lorenzo di Credi, Fra Bartolomeo, and Andrea del Sarto, among others, alongside an important gallery of dynastic portraits by Pontormo, Raphael, Titian, and Vasari. Despite the significance of his endeavors, Ottaviano has received scant scholarly attention. In addition to providing a revised and updated biography of him, this article examines why he has been marginalized in Medici historiography through the analysis of previously unpublished archival documents and the writings of Giorgio Vasari, who was closely associated with Ottaviano during his early years at the Medici court. Vasari’s texts also constitute a key source to reconstruct Ottaviano’s art collection, especially his portrait gallery, which can be viewed as the precursor to the series of Medici portraits known as the Serie Aulica, now exhibited at the Uffizi Galleries.
This paper investigates the intricate history of the decoration of the east apse of Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma. It forms an emblematic case study of a complex artistic commission in which the aims of painters, religious and secular authorities, and heterogeneous groups of citizens intertwined and sometimes conﬂicted with each other. By situating the sources concerning the construction and decoration of the church in their social and historical context, the paper highlights a distinctive approach of patrons handling commissions at the “discretion of many brains”, which allows us to reframe the problems which occurred ﬁrst with Parmigianino and later with Giulio Romano and Michelangelo Anselmi. Discussion then focuses on the work of the latter two artists, and proposes, along with some stylistic and chronological clariﬁcations, the ﬁrst iconographical analysis of what is revealed to be a highly sophisticated lost project by Giulio, recorded in a drawing by Federico Zuccari. A comparison between the drawing and the fresco offers a solution to the long-debated question of Giulio and Anselmi’s respective contributions to the decoration and to unlock the signiﬁcance of the changes and censorship ordered by the patrons in 1547. The paper further considers the criticisms sparked by both the project and the fresco in the light of the lively debate on religious images which spread through Italy during the 1540s.
This study is devoted to the double-bay Chapel of Cosmas and Damian in San Lorenzo, Florence, which despite its Medici patronage has attracted few scholarly interest, and its relationship with the neighboring Old Sacristy. It aims to demonstrate that the chapel was begun later than the sacristy and built in two stages: Filippo Brunelleschi, who had designed the new transept of San Lorenzo on commission from Giovanni de’ Medici, was involved only with the first stage. After he had built the external walls and begun the one towards the interior of the church, around 1428 Giovanni’s son Cosimo took over, bringing in his favored architect Michelozzo di Bartolomeo. He must have been responsible for the demolition of the unfinished internal wall and the adaption of its pilaster and pier into an entrance to the chapel’s inner chamber. With its tympanum featuring a scallop shell, the portal is identical in appearance to the one Michelozzo built contemporaneously at the sacristy entrance, thereby creating a symmetrical façade that unites the chapel and the sacristy into a Medici spiritual compound. It is argued here that this type of scallop shell was alien to Brunelleschi’s architectural language and that its introduction in the lantern of the cathedral was due to Michelozzo as well; in San Lorenzo it must have been chosen also for its funeral symbolism, in a space that was to contain the tombs of both Giovanni and Cosimo de’ Medici. Moreover, this article analyzes the reasons for the awkward placement of the entrance to the Old Sacristy, which cuts off the folded angular pilaster. It maintains that Brunelleschi’s entrance must have been contained within the thickness of the wall and that only the wooden door installed in the 1450s forced its enlargement, thereby damaging the sacristy’s carefully thought-out architectural system.
The depiction of radiance was a major challenge both to painters’ means and the limits of their materials in the early decades of the fifteenth century. Yet, because it falls outside the obvious analytical grasp of other types of figuration, radiance or shine often escapes critical attention. Focussing on Fra Angelico’s Paradise altarpiece from Sant’Egidio, Florence, this article explores the facture, optical effects, and varied meanings of radiance in the hands of a painter who was sensitive to the character of radiant light in biblical, Christian, and poetic sources. A distinctive strand of brilliant radiance, similarly using tooled gold leaf, is addressed in Fra Angelico’s small triptych of the Last Judgement for a Roman patron. Finally, the legacy and variants of gilded splendour are shown in a number of later fifteenth-century Florentine altarpieces of the Coronation of the Virgin. In exploring a historical material practice applied to visionary, heavenly, and apocalyptic themes, the analysis also acknowledges the appeal and affect of moving light, a phenomenon experienced differently, but still actively, in the present.
Raphael's Unexecuted Resurection of Christ and Santa Maria della Pace
In the commentary to the life of Mariotto Albertinelli in the 1851 edition of Vasari’s Vite, among the works not mentioned by the biographer is a tondo the curators accurately describe then in the palace of Francesco del Vernaccia in Borgo Pinti, Florence. This painting, representing a Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, has never been considered or traced by scholars and can now be recognized in a panel preserved in excellent condition in a private collection. Comprehensive documentation found in various archives has made it possible to reconstruct its entire collection history. The Tondo Riccardi del Vernaccia is not only a very high-quality addition to the artist’s catalogue, but also a fundamental piece of evidence for understanding Albertinelli’s development during the last years of the first decade of the sixteenth century. In particular, the fact that it is based on a design by Raphael sheds new light on the relationship between the two artists.
Due estremi per il Vecchietta intagliatore
The objective of this article is twofold. On the one hand, it promotes the reattribution to Vecchietta of a wooden statue of the Risen Christ in the Chigi Zondadari collection – currently attributed to Domenico di Niccolò dei Cori –, connecting it to a documented commission from 1442. On the other hand, it suggests a change in chronology for the artist’s wooden Pietà, usually dated to the end of the 1440s but more convincingly placed in the artist’s late period, after 1472. As a result, Vecchietta’s entire career as a wood sculptor ought to be reconsidered with strong repercussions on the history of fifteenth-century Sienese wood sculpture as a whole. New evidence about Vecchietta’s work for the Martinozzi family and his Roman stay of 1460 is also presented here for the first time.
This article explores the performativity of images and script in late medieval Florence. It offers a new interpretation of the Intercession of the Virgin and Christ, a late-fourteenth century cloth painting from Florence attributed to Lorenzo Monaco, today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It considers new evidence in favor of its long-debated early function as a banner, arguing that the painting’s highly sophisticated use of text and image might be linked directly to its role in processions. Central to this hypothesis is the painting’s theme, as it was understood in relation to liturgical feasts and crisis processions in fourteenth-century Florence and, in particular, the form, placement, and language of the words painted on its surface. These inscriptions recall the songs and sounds of litany. This proposition is further supported by the later fifteenth-century visual quotations in paintings in and around Florence, attesting to the multisensorial dimensions of its imagery within the ritual environment of the city. Focusing on the dialectics between image and script in the Intercession, it shows how the performative aspects of this work broaden our understanding of traditional iconographies and contribute to wider discussions on the role of image and script in the definition of ‘public’ ritual practices.
Since the late eighteenth century, studies of the baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence have built their chronologies around one or both of two well-known reference points: a consecration by Pope Nicholas II in 1059 and the transfer of the baptismal font from Santa Reparata to San Giovanni in 1128. Both originate in a 1684 history of Florence by Ferdinando Leopoldo Del Migliore. A close examination of manuscript sources reveals both to be spurious. Freed of these constraints, we find multiple lines of evidence to support dating the origin of the project to the 1070s and the completion of its most important elements by the 1090s. Consequently, it is possible to propose a new perspective on the development of early Romanesque architecture in Florence. Santi Apostoli, San Giovanni, and San Miniato, likely all works of the same architect, seem to represent not an organic development but an extrinsic current introduced into a visual culture for which the antique had been only one of many formal sources. The similarity in plan between San Miniato and the Roman church of Santa Maria in Portico consecrated by Pope Gregory VII and the extraordinary reference San Giovanni makes to the Pantheon, then reserved for papal masses, are among the pieces of evidence adduced for the involvement of Roman church reformers in Florentine architecture. The article furthermore explores the support of the Tuscan margravine and the role of Bishop Ranieri in the conception and realization of the baptistery.
Vulgarity and the Masterly Manner: Annibale Carracci Cites His Sources
Epistolary Criticism, the Minerva Christ, and Michelangelo’s Garzone Problem
“Broken into pieces and its head thrown into the square”: The Numerous Failures of Michelangelo’s Bronze Statue of Pope Julius II
“Che non l’arebbe fat’a pena Cuio”. Porte, apparati e facciate ﬁorentine in tre testi pasquineschi dello Zoppo Carrozziere e dell’Etrusco
Effimere saette: sﬁde e limiti di una Kunstliteratur satiricoburlesca
The Fiascos of Mimesis: Ancient Sources for Renaissance Verse Ridiculing Art
Giudizi negativi e stime d’artista nel mondo di Vasari e Michelangelo
Bad Reception and the Renaissance Altarpiece
Italian Renaissance Portraits that Disappoint: Isabella d’Este, Francesco del Giocondo, and Other Displeased Patrons
Bad Reception in Early Modern Italy: An Introduction
Studien zur mediceischen Glaskunst, Archivalien, Entwurfszeichnungen, Gläser und Scherben
Copyright (c) 2024 Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
Jacopo Vignola, Alessandro Manzuoli und die Villa Isolani in Minerbio: zu den frühen Antikenstudien von Vignola
A New Look at Three Drawings for Villa Madama, and Some Related Images
Das Thema der "Konstantinschlacht" Piero della Francescas
Das Davanzati-Grabmal in S. Trinita zu Florenz
Alcune note ed una proposta per Giovanni Bandini
Der Vertrag mit Andrea del Sarto für die Fresken des Atriums der SS. Annunziata in Florenz vom 30. Juli 1509
Abschied von der Symmetrie. Zur Binnengliederung des "Castrum Imperatoris" in Prato
Der Palazzo Spinelli di Tarsia in Neapel: Domenico Antonio Vaccaro und die Kunst des Barocchetto
Der Maestro di Gherarduccio kopiert Giotto. Zur Rezeption der Arena-Fresken in der oberitalienischen Buchmalerei zu Beginn des 14. Jahrhunderts
"Ad instar S. Marie Maioris de Urbe": Der Dom von Orvieto und S. Maria Maggiore in Rom
Baccio Bandinelli e Benvenuto Cellini tra il 1540 ed il 1560: disputa su Firenze e su Roma
Die Madonna von Nicotera und ihre Kopien. Vier unerkannte Madonnenstatuen des Benedetto da Maiano in Kalabrien und Sizilien
Zur frühen Schongauer-Rezeption in Florenz: Ein Verrocchio-Nachtrag
La fortezza di San Nicolò presso Sebenico. Un'opera importante di Giangirolamo Sanmicheli
Il Trionfo di Tamerlano. Una nuova lettura iconografica di un cassone del Metropolitan Museum of Art
Zwei weitere Madonnenstatuen des Benedetto da Maiano in Kalabrien. Ergänzungen zu: Die Madonna von Nicotera und ihre Kopien
Giovan Battista Bertani. Miti classici e rivisitazioni giuliesche in disegni per committenze ducali mantovane
Ein Entwurf Michelangelos für den Tondo Pitti und seine Beziehungen zu Leonardo da Vinci, zu antiken Werken und zu Raffael
An Unknown Crucifix by Baccio da Montelupo
Lorenzo Sirigatti: gli svaghi eruditi di un dilettante del Cinquecento
Nuove indagini sui disegni di Paolo Uccello agli Uffizi: disegno sottostante, tecnica, funzione
Leone Aretino: New documentary evidence of Leone Leoni's birthplace and training
Die Büsten im Kranzgesims des Palazzo Spannocchi in Siena
Dokumente zu Banner und Tabernakel der Florentiner Compagnia di Santa Maria e San Zanobi im Trecento
Michelangelos Statuen des 'Apollo Pubes' und Raffaels 'Apollo Citharoedus' in der Schule von Athen
Immagini casuali, figure nascoste e natura antropomorfa nell'immaginario artistico rinascimentale
Bartolomeo Ammannati e le statue degli Apostoli in Santa Maria del Fiore: ipotesi e acquisizioni documentarie
All'ombra della Loggia. Storia dell'iconografia fotografica della fiorentina Loggia della Signoria
Der 'fliegende Kartograph'. Zu dem Federico da Montefeltro und Lorenzo de' Medici gewidmeten Werk "Le septe giornate della geographia" von Francesco Berlinghieri und dem Bild der Erde im Florenz des Quattrocento
L'educazione di Masaccio. Documenti, problemi, proposte
Königin in einer Republik. Projekte für ein Grabmonument Caterina Corners in Venedig