Abitare il Rinascimento. Il gusto Bardini e la geografia del collezionismo tra Ottocento e Novecento

This paper will explore the impact of the revival of interest in Renaissance art in 19th and 20th century Italian private museums. Newly established European governments, such as the French Third Republic (1870) and the German Empire (1871), looked to the accomplishments of Renaissance art and society, and identified that glorious period as a Golden Age and exemplar for their own countries. In Italy, this renewed interest in the Renaissance style was aligned to the process of unification and the quest for a truly national identity. Art collectors fully embraced this trend. Together with other dealers and collectors, prominent art dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) exerted great influence in the field of collecting in Europe and in the United States. As an innovative promotional strategy Bardini created an inspiring stage set for his inventory of Renaissance decorative arts. Artworks in his Florence showroom were displayed in the manner of an imagined private domestic setting, thus marketing a lifestyle as much as the objects themselves. That strategy was to have significant impact on public and private display strategies in the following decades. Bardini’s archive helps document a widespread network of dealers, collectors, advisors, museum curators and artisans, revealing the complex and often controversial relationships existing in the art world of his day. His address books, together with an array of other archival material, map the growth and diversification of the art market and of collecting practices in Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.