A delightful small exhibition at Palazzo Pitti in Florence (until 11th September) of genre paintings and portraits from the mid-16th century to the early 18th illustrates the protagonists of the comic, sometimes bizarre side of court life in Florence in those years, which was otherwise locked away from public view. Visitors are asked to be prepared to see the ironic humour in the works displayed. The new director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi (which now includes all the museums in Palazzo Pitti), Eike Schmidt, plans this as one of a series of exhibitions of works from the gallery’s important deposits (which include some 1,200 paintings) that will give curators a welcome opportunity to study them and restore them. Schmidt gave due credit to the late Marco Chiarini, for many years director of the Galleria Palatina, for having planned the exhibition (the lovely small catalogue is dedicated to his memory). Schmidt also invited the President of the Italian association dedicated to those affected with achondroplasia (the condition which causes dwarfism) to speak at the opening and he gave a moving account of how ‘diversity’ can be equated with value.

The exhibition occupies a suite of rooms on the landing known as the Andito degli Angiolini, below the entrance to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, and has excellent labelling together with some delightful quotes from the literature of the times, including Castiglione and Bernardo Ricci (‘……everyone needs happiness and laughter’). It takes up just five well-arranged small rooms. The importance of comedy and laughter to the Medici is illustrated by the official court painter, Suttermans’s portrait of the court jester. There are also portraits of six jolly members of the ducal household in the servants’ hall after a hunt; as well as a remarkable painting of two elderly peasant women, one holding a duck and one a basket of eggs, accompanied by a black page with a pearl earring (the label records that the names of all three of these people are known to us since they frequently appear in Ferdinando II’s account books). Other well-known painters of the time whose works are included in the exhibition include Anton Domenico Gabbiani (a portrait of four Medici servants), Cesare Dandini (a young shepherd with a hornpipe) and Niccolò Cassano (two court jesters from Prince Ferdinando’s inner circle dressed as huntsmen). But the most important painting is Bronzino’s well-known portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici’s favourite dwarf, Baccio di Bartolo (ironically nicknamed after the giant Morgante), painted on both sides so seen both from front and back, and which includes extraordinary botanical details.

The exhibition also includes paintings by lesser-known masters such as Faustino Bocchi, who was at work in the late 17th century (a delightful, playful painting of dwarves bathing beneath huge passion flowers; and a queen riding a cat cheered on by a crowd of dwarves). There are also paintings by unknown artists, of which one of the most memorable is the portrait from the first half of the 17th century of a player of the ball game known as pallottola: the protagonist is shown dressed in magnificent breeches as he tosses the ball beneath his leg. Although not strictly related to the theme, the superb painting by Joseph Heintz the Younger entitled Orpheus in the Underworld has been included as it was owned by the Medici and shows the astonished young hero standing in a magical setting with creatures all around him in a performance which, as the label suggests, is reminiscent of a modern-day musical.

The exhibition extends into the Boboli Gardens, where the sculpture of the nude Morgante riding a tortoise is one of Florence’s most famous statues (it is by Valerio Cioli and dates from around 1564; his statue of another dwarf, Pietro Barbino, made around the same time, can be seen in the Kaffeehaus, which has been opened specially for the exhibition). They are just some of the many statues of peasants, players and jocose figures which adorn the beautiful gardens behind Palazzo Pitti.

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence.

For anyone in Florence, there are only a few more days left to catch this important exhibition at the Galleria dell’Accademia (closes 9th November) dedicated to art inspired by Italy’s most famous saint. Unfortunately it has limited space and the crowds of visitors who come to the Accademia just to see Michelangelo’s David produce an atmosphere anything but an inducement to a peaceful quiet study of the pieces on exhibition—but don’t be put off!

The first exhibit is an ivory horn which almost certainly belonged to Francis himself. Tradition says that it was given to him by the learned Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, an extremely cultured man, whom Francis is known to have met on his visit to Egypt during the troubled times of the Fifth Crusade. Francis had sailed from Ancona in 1219 and was in Egypt that summer and managed to obtain an audience with the Sultan who received him kindly and with due respect in the presence of his most learned councillors. It was at this meeting that Francis walked across fire unscathed (trial by fire was recognized as a means of solving disputes), but the costly gifts the Sultan offered to Francis were all refused except this hunting horn, since Francis had seen its utility when in Egypt and decided he could use it when back in Italy to call his brothers to prayer. It became one of the most precious relics associated with him (today it is  preserved in Assisi). The silver mount was added some hundred years after the saint’s death.

A simple 13th-century bronze reliquary chest from Ognissanti in Florence, which once contained the habit Francis was wearing when he received the stigmata at La Verna, is displayed beside the horn (part of the habit, after many vicissitudes, is supposed to be that preserved at La Verna today). The V& A have lent a precious little 14th-century seal which depicts the vision of a Englishman, Aimone (Haymo) born in Faversham (Kent), who had a vision in 1222 of Francis lowering his knotted girdle to two fishermen in a boat (the scene is charmingly depicted on the seal). As a result Aimone became a Franciscan and his fame was such that he even succeeded Fra’ Elia as minister general of the Order in 1240 and remained in Italy, where he died four years later.

The main part of the exhibition is naturally devoted to images of St Francis and this is an opportunity to see the numerous different ways he was portrayed from the 13th to the 15th century. One of the earliest and most important paintings, dating from c. 1230, is from Pisa showing Francis surrounded by six scenes of his miracles by Giunta Pisano (properly called Giunta di Capitino), who worked for the Franciscans for some 30 years. Dating from around 20 years later, the painting of St Francis with eight stories from his life is a well-known work from Pistoia (where the Franciscans were established by 1232), and has many similarities with the earlier panel. A series of paintings all dating from the mid-13th century show Francis surrounded by little scenes from his life. Another familiar mid-13th century icon of the saint is that first produced by Margarito d’Arezzo and five of these are displayed together: Francis is depicted standing in his habit with a hooded cowl holding a book, and showing the signs of his stigmata. This became a prototype and many replicas were made (as well as fakes) of this image. But the most striking portrait of St Francis is that by the great painter Cimabue, dating from 1280 and still preserved in Assisi: it shows the poverello standing and bare-headed in a simple pose holding a book bound in red. This is generally considered to be one of the most authentic portraits to have survived from this time.

After Francis received the stigmata from the Cross, painted Crosses naturally became very popular and were always in need to decorate Franciscan churches. Beautiful examples in the exhibition include one (c. 1236, now in Assisi) of the three still extant signed by Giunta di Capitino. Another one from Faenza is by a master named the ‘Maestro dei Crocifissi Francescani’ because he became so well known for Crosses like this one.

The rule of the Order sanctioned by Honorius III in 1223 specified that the friars should also be concerned with preaching to the Saracens and non-Christians. Some of the friars’ travels through Asia as far as China, and the history of their encounter with the Mongols, are documented in the excellent catalogue. The Franciscans also have a centuries’-old role as custodians of Christian sites in the Holy Land (by 1348 we know that 20 Friars Minor were living in Bethlehem). On display from their museum in Jerusalem are sculptural fragments, antiphonals, pilgrims’ lamps and ampullae for Holy Oil, and a crosier in gilded copper with enamel decoration. Inscriptions in Arabic have been lent by another Franciscan Museum on Mount Tabor in Galilee. But these pieces only underline how little we know in Europe about the Franciscans in the East.

Later works include an exquisite small Crucifixion painted by Ugolino di Nerio (from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) and a superb large Maestà (c. 1320) by a painter who is known as the ‘Maestro di Figline’ from this work and which is here because it shows St Elizabeth of Hungary and St Louis of Toulouse (who is trampling his crown underfoot), both of them Franciscan saints, suitably dressed in the Franciscan habit. This comes from the small Tuscan town of Figline and is one of the most beautiful paintings in all Italy of its date. Another lovely painting on display, but dating from the late 15th century, is St Francis receiving the Stigmata by Bartolomeo della Gatta (from the little town of Castiglion Fiorentino on the southern border of Tuscany), which shows the saint in the presence of the astonished Fra’ Leone, in a beautiful rocky landscape recalling La Verna with a barn owl looking on as the golden stigmata descend from the  Cross in the sky to end in bright stars (instead of the more usual macabre ‘holes’) on the saint’s hands and feet. La Verna (described in detail in Blue Guide Tuscany and Blue Guide Central Italy) in the Casentino near Florence was where Francis received the stigmata in 1224.

There is also a room devoted to works made for Florence’s great Franciscan church of Santa Croce. These include the little painted panels in gilded quatrefoil frames which were once part of a huge sacristy cupboard and which illustrate the life of Christ in parallel to that of St Francis. These are now preserved in the Galleria dell’Accademia itself, although four of them were lost to Munich and Berlin in the 19th centuryand only one has been lent for the exhibition (but it is the one which shows the Trial by Fire before the Sultan). Also here is the fascinating fresco which was detached from the first cloister of the church and is of particular interest because it includes one of the very first views of the Baptistery beside the old façade of the Duomo, but is here because it portrays the arrival of the Friars Minor in Florence in the winter of 1209 led by the first follower of St Francis, Fra’ Bernardo da Quintavalle: the group of Franciscans are shown refusing charity from officers in the cathedral who have failed to recognize them. For this occasion the fresco has been given a new attribution to the little-known Pietro Nelli.

Arguably the most beautiful of all paintings of St Francis (which includes 20 stories from his life) has also been brought here from Santa Croce (the Bardi Chapel). Dating from the 1240s, it provided the most complete illustration of episodes in the saint’s life before Giotto’s frescoes in the upper church in Assisi, and includes the scene of him preaching before the Sultan and a group of Muslims in their turbans, as next to the more familiar scene of him preaching to the birds. Its attribution to Coppo di Marcovaldo, the most important painter in Florence before Cimabue, is now generally accepted, and seems more than ever likely now the panel has been beautifully restored especially for this exhibition.

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence and many other Blue Guides to Italy.