May 29th marks the inauguration of ‘The Age of Splendour and Reason. Art in eighteenth century Florence’ held in the temporary exhibitions rooms of the Uffizi Gallery: an itinerary in history and taste through the century that witnessed the end of the Medici dynasty and the appearance in Florence of Enlightenment culture. This exhibition of works of art, some of them inedited, from Italian and foreign museums and collections is a precious opportunity to discover the epoch of Florentine culture drawn into focus for the first time with the exhibition The Last Medici of 1974, Today, this epoch is revisited to also embrace, between the ‘splendour’ of the late-Baroque taste and ‘reason’ that determined the outcomes of Neoclassicism, all the artistic manifestations fuelled by grand-ducal patronage – first by the Medici and then by the Lorraines – and by the minds of refined pundits who renewed the image of Florence, drawing it in line with the cultural and aesthetic trends of Enlightenment Europe. The breadth of the studies conducted to date on eighteenth century Tuscan art and the exhibitions organised through time on specific aspects of the art of this period – the most recent being the exhibition Art and Court Manufacture in Florence from the decline of the Medici to the Empire, held in Palazzo Pitti in 2006 – today enable us to draw on a rich repertory of materials and tokens capable of showing that even in the eighteenth century, Florence maintained a position of considerable prestige in the panorama of Italian art, continuing to manifest its vocation as a city open to the contributions of ‘foreigners’ and the opportunities of the grand tour.

Curated by Carlo Sisi and Riccardo Spinelli, and promoted by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali with the Direzione Regionale per i Beni Culturali e Paesaggistici della Toscana, the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale Fiorentino, the Uffizi Gallery, Firenze Musei and the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, the exhibition with its more than 140 works of art presents paintings, sculptures, art objets, sacred and profane fittings, and represents the first systematic exhibition of the principal artistic events of eighteenth century Florence. It is divided into nine sections: The magnificent legacy of the Medici Baroque, The masters of the new generation, The ‘foreigners’ in Florence and the renewal of the genres, Mythology and history seen through the eyes of the Rococo style, New perspectives in historical painting and religious art, Curiosities and ‘galanterie’ in the Age of Enlightenment, The landscape between memory and objectivity, Classical ideals and Enlightenment Culture in the Florence of Pietro Leopoldo, and Late eighteenth century international Neoclassicism. With a selection of works of fundamental quality and importance, the exhibition aims to summarise the major events of the entire century and the fascinating interlacement of figurative themes, which contributed to renewing genres and updating the artistic debate.

The late-Baroque phase corresponds to the reign of Cosimo III whose firstborn son, Grand Prince Ferdinando, a great patron of the arts, gave impetus to a figurative season that was esteemed throughout Europe for the magnificence and quality of its manufactures. The beginning of the century indeed witnessed the debut of original painters like Francesco Conti, Giovan Domenico Ferretti, Matteo Bonechi and Ranieri Del Pace, in addition to sculptors Giovacchino Fortini and Agostino Cornacchini, and excellent artisans tied to the renowned “gallery workshops”.

Ferdinando, who predeceased his father, was a “total” patron of the arts and his interests also extended to music and the theatre. He was responsible for the arrival in Florence of artists who, under his farsighted direction and that of the aristocracy tied to the court, produced some of their masterpieces. Suffice it to recall, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sebastiano Ricci from Venice (1659-1734), Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747) from Bologna, and Alessandro Magnasco (1667-1749) from Genoa, who brought to Florence the regional interpretations of a style that was evolving away from the Baroque matrix towards the many manifestations of Rococo.

Grand prince Ferdinando’s preference for secular, mythological and allegorical subjects, and for the modern artistic “genres”, encouraged the consolidation of this innovative trend which was beautifully expressed in the many frescoed ceilings of the grand ducal residences, in the palaces and villas of the Florentine aristocracy (documented in the exhibition by the preparatory cartoons of Ferretti, Bonechi, Gabbiani, Sagrestani), and in “picture gallery” paintings. It was also revealed in incomparably beautiful medium and small-sized marble, terracotta and bronze sculptures in the full international style that was spread through Europe by “translations” into porcelain by the Manifattura Ginori of Doccia. It was precisely in the field of sculpture – a sector particularly privileged in eighteenth century Florence – that outstanding personalities like Giovanni Battista Foggini and Massimiliano Soldani Benzi continued to operate, especially in small and medium-sized works of bronze and commemorative medals, obtaining extraordinary success among the European courts and the principal collectors of the time who secured for themselves many of their works, thus continuing an illustrious tradition already begun in the sixteenth century with Giambologna.

The foreigners who had been brought to Florence by the Grand Prince Ferdinando had a lasting impact on the local artists. The elegant “historical” paintings by Sebastiano Ricci in Palazzo Marucelli Fenzi set the example for Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, for the very young Giuseppe Zocchi, and even for Foggini. In the field of religious art, between the second and sixth decades of the eighteenth century, the luminous and languid renderings of themes such as mystical ecstasy and martyrdom by Ferretti and Conti became highly significant. In the context of the period’s religious art, two themes were dear to the devotion and spirituality of Cosimo III and belong to a separate chapter. The Death of Saint Joseph who became the patron saint of Tuscany in 1719, is represented here in the versions by Antono Domenico Gabbiani of Maratta’s school, by the eccentric Ranieri Del Pace and in sculpture by one of Massimiliano Soldani Benzi’s most outstanding achievements. The other theme is the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, that we see here in the paintings by Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani and Francesco Conti, next to Massimiliano Soldani Benzi’s interpretations in wax, bronze and in porcelain, from the factory at Doccia, displayed together for the first time in an emotionally concise, yet eloquent dialogue.

The playful and ironic, popular trend that had been peculiar to a specific part of seventeenth century Tuscan figurative culture, and had been brilliantly interpreted by Jacques Callot, Giovanni da San Giovanni and Baccio del Bianco, did not dry up with the end of the century. On the contrary, it enjoyed great success in eighteenth century Florence thanks to renewal brought about by the artist from Genoa, Alessandro Magnasco. From the middle of the eighteenth century, through the works of the vivacious and light-hearted Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, this style turned to modern themes and fashions and found fertile, expressive ground in harlequinades and masquerades.

Among the genres that came to the fore already in the first years of the eighteenth century, the veduta was a phenomenon linked to the by now popular grand tour with Florence a central stop on the “required” trip to Italy. Gaspare Vanvitelli and from the middle of the century, Bernardo Bellotto of Venice, the naturalized Englishman Thomas Patch and the Florentine native Giuseppe Zocchi were the versatile artists – in painting and engraving – who were able to satisfy the need to document and “remember” the places in the city as well as its surroundings visited by European gentlemen during their sojourns in Florence and Tuscany. It was also an opportunity to see art masterpieces close up, as well as a way to stock up on rare and precious objects like those produced by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure.

The Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Habsburg Lorraine arrived in Florence in 1765, and immediately demonstrated his commitments to reform and progress by establishing the Accademia di Belle Arti (1785), which was organized on the basis of the most famous Italian and European models. With the freshly recovered vitality of the Classical ideals – which the paintings of Pompeo Batoni upheld in an exemplary manner and at the highest level – the Florentine artists adapted to the Neoclassical canons that were brought into the academy’s classrooms by the teachings of Pietro Pedroni, formerly of Rome and then court painter from 1781, and of Innocenzo Spinazzi, whose Roman experience brought both the appreciation of antiquity and the latest developments on the aesthetic debate that was swirling around the theories of Winckelmann and Mengs to Florence. The grand duke launched huge worksites, in the Palazzo Pitti, in the villa at Poggio Imperiale and in the Uffizi, employing the painters and sculptors of the new generation such as Francesco Carradori who, together with the Albertolli brothers and Tommaso Gherardini, worked on the decorations in the Niobe Room, showing that he was capable of combining his own classical background with the delicate naturalism of the sixteenth century Florentine tradition. Furthermore, the Enlightenment bore other fruits during the last two decades of the century, with the coexistence of the dominant ‘archaeological trend’ and the open-minded analysis of the portraits by Johann Zoffany – which along with those sculpted by the resident Englishmen Joseph Wilton and Francis Harwood, contributed to putting Florence into the European circuit of the new aesthetic canons. There were also narrative paintings with a noble historical-literary matrix as we clearly see in Ignazio Hugford’s Contessa Matilda, or the unexpected purist interpretations of sixteenth and seventeenth century models which, albeit in different ways, characterise the Virgin by Gherardini and Santi Pacini’s painting of Saint Romuald.

While the painters, Pietro Benvenuti and Luigi Sabatelli were winning distinction among the eminent members of the recently established Accademia, much was being said in Florence about the success achieved by the Lombard artist Luigi Ademollo in the 1788 competition for the decorations of the Teatro degli Immobili (today’s Teatro della Pergola). The artist submitted a very expressive interpretation of Neoclassicism which greatly pleased Grand Duke Ferdinando III who succeeded his father to the throne in 1791. The grand duke commissioned Ademollo to fresco the Palatine Chapel as part of the project modernizing the decorations in Palazzo Pitti that involved many of the new generation artists such as Giuseppe Maria Terreni. During the last decade of the century, Ferdinando III welcomed to Florence the artists who had fled from Rome following the anti-French uprisings, favouring a colony that would decisively characterise Florentine culture in the late eighteenth century: Nicolas Didier Boguet brought his Lorrain style landscapes, updated in the English atmospheric style, Louis Gauffier became the sought-after portraitist of the grand tour as well as the “exclusive” painter of Vallombrosa landscapes; François-Xavier Fabre, a pupil of David and frequent visitor to Alfieri’s home, consolidated his international prestige as a painter of portraits and historical scenes with dominant literary aspects.