Stefano Bardini

[1] Trained as a painter and expert copyist at the Accademia di Belle Arti Firenze from 1854,[2] Bardini received increasing commissions as a restorer and expanded into selling works of art from 1870 onwards.

The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, has some twenty works that passed through his hands,[8] notably the Benedetto da Maiano Madonna and Child, the Bernardo Daddi Saint Paul and the Portrait of a Youth by Filippino Lippi.

[20] In 1881 Bardini acquired the deconsecrated church and convent of San Gregorio facing piazza dei Mozzi in the Oltrarno and set about transforming it into his opulent residence and restoration studio, Palazzo Bardini, now housing the Museo Bardini, with his collections of paintings, sculpture, most notably a marble Charity by Tino da Camaino, 15th- and 16th-century Italian furniture, ceramics, tapestry, arms; stringed and keyboard musical instruments, including one of only two surviving oval spinets by Bartolomeo Cristofori; Roman and Etruscan antiquities and 15th- and 16th-century architectural fittings, including paneled and painted ceilings, chimneypieces and door surrounds.

[21] His example inspired his most successful protégé, Elia Volpi, to purchase and freely restore Palazzo Davanzati in the heart of Florence, and fill it with a similar range of art.

[23] In 1902 he purchased the Torre del Gallo at Pian de' Giullari, in the hills of Arcetri, on top of a ridge with a panoramic view over the city.

[25] Lot 427 in the sale was of two Polyclitan marble fragments, a Diadoumenos torso associated with a head possibly of Hermes, both fine Roman copies: they are now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Lynn Catterson, “American collecting, Stefano Bardini & the Taste for TreQuattrocento Florence,” Discovering the Italian Trecento in the 19th Century, dedicated issue of Predella.it, 2017 n.41-42 (freely available online).

Lynn Catterson, Editor and Introductory essay, Dealing Art on Both Sides of the Atlantic, 1860 to 1940, The Netherlands: Brill, 2017 (some chapters on Google Books).