Benedetto Luti

Ignazio Enrico Hugford (1703-1778) was a painter of English origin who was trained under Anton Domenico Gabbiani. As art dealer and connoisseur, he was among the most important collectors of works on paper in eighteenth-century Florence and had prolific and wide-ranging contacts throughout Europe. He was in close touch with Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, and his correspondents also included Pierre Jean Mariette and Giovanni Gaetano Bottari. Among the over three thousand drawings bequeathed to his heirs and acquired in 1779 for the Uffizi by its director Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, one hundred and five sheets were attributed to artists of non-Italian schools. The attentive descriptions of Pelli’s inventory, the characteristic framing applied by Hugford and his inscriptions on some of the sheets have made it possible to identify almost all of these drawings, now in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi. Research has also revealed Hugford’s talent as connoisseur, his interest in certain artists, and how Northern European drawings were regarded in the Florence of his time. This group includes sheets attributed to the Germans Dürer and Holbein, the Flemings Spranger and Lucas van Leyden, the French Callot and La Fage, and the Portuguese Francisco Vieira. Although many of these attributions are no longer acceptable, the identification of individual drawings has made it possible to confirm their authorship, and in some cases to suggest new attributions.

A review of the exhibition catalogue Antonio Balestra. Nel segno della grazia (winter 2016) can carry out a new crit- ical point of view on this 18th century acclaimed painter in Venice, where he lived up to 1718, and in Verona, his birthplace.
About his Roman formation, Balestra’s relationship with the learned Francesco Bianchini and the rapports of the latter with the circle of Cardinal Ottoboni should be point- ed up. In Rome, Balestra studied old and contemporary paintings, from Raphael to Carracci and Lanfranco, from his teacher Maratti to Luca Giordano, Baciccio and Sebas- tiano Ricci: at the same time, the young artist could have considered the two canvases painted by Ludovico Antonio David for the church of Sant’Andrea al Quirinale. Throughout his Venetian years, Balestra was recorded as a “noble” master. He was a close friend of Rosalba Carriera and her ‘clan’: in 1701, he sketched on the retro of a let- ter to Rosalba a humoristic drawing, a particular figurative category linked to caricaturist production of another friend of them, Anton Maria Zanetti di Girolamo. The latter’s al- bum in Giorgio Cini Foundation contains caricatures of three men entitled “del Balestra”. Otherwise, the sources state that Zanetti was a pupil of Balestra, evidence now attested by the etchings after Saint John the Baptist for San Nicolò in Verona and after a Charity, maybe the painting formerly in Algarotti’s collection.
The autobiography sent to Lione Pascoli remains an im- portant document. This manuscript mentions a painting for Camaldoli Abbey, today in the Diocesan Museum of Pi- enza. Other archival records are related to the friendship between the Veronese painter and Gabriel Mesquida, an artist born in Maiorca: the so-called self-portrait of Bal- estra in Castelvecchio Museum, not exposed in the exam- ined exhibition, seems to be a portrait of Mesquida.
The cousin of Zanetti, Anton Maria Zanetti di Alessandro, wrote in 1771 that Antonio Balestra had a “school” in Venice. The well-known Giambattista Tiepolo sheet Scu- ola del Nudo (1716-18 ca.) represents a classroom with two teachers, here identified as Gregorio Lazzarini and Balestra (the “corrector” named by Morassi in 1971). Following an educational assignment started in 1690, the couple of Venetian painters are leading a life drawing class: among the participants, Tiepolo, the genial pupil of Lazzarini.

«Spero che non fra molto, a Lisbona le spalle a Roma il volto», said the young Francisco de Matos, aka Vieira Lusitano (Lisbon, 1699-1783) to his friend and colleague Agostino Ratti (Savona, 1699- Genoa, 1775). He put into words his wish to returning to Rome the city where he has studied. That quote comes from a letter part of the rich epistoclar exchange over the years between both friends. The aforementioned correspondence is known to us through Bottari's Raccolta. It allows us to understand the professional and friendship network built by Vieira during his stay in Rome.

«Spero che non fra molto, a Lisbona le spalle a Roma il volto». Con estas palabras trasladaba el joven Francisco de Matos, más conocido como Vieira Lusitano (Lisboa, 1699-1783), a su amigo y compañero de fatigas Agostino Ratti (Savona, 1699- Génova, 1775) su deseo de regresar a la ciudad en la que se había formado. Esa carta es el inicio de un conspicuo intercambio epistolar enriquecido con dibujos y grabados que a lo largo de los años compartirían y del que se tiene constancia gracias a la Raccolta de Bottari . Esta fuente permite reconstruir parcialmente las relaciones profesionales y amistosas que Vieira desarrolló en su estancia en Roma y que habrían de servirle en su exordio en el panorama internacional.

Any researcher interested in this work please contact me. This article deals with the brief existence of the Royal Academy of Portugal in Rome and with the several misunderstandings that have grown around this legendary institution in the Portuguese historiography. This study is supported by new documentary evidence, which provides a deeper understanding of the academy within the Roman context of national academies and artistic training, as well as its meaning in John V’s cultural and diplomatic policy.

This article examines the collection of the neglected nobleman Fabio Fani, based on the evidence of his inventory drawn up in 1730. Housed in his Roman palace facing Piazza Borghese, Fabio’s collection consisted of more than 400 paintings, including works by notable artists. Prominent among them were two unusually monumental cycles by Benedetto Luti and Luigi Garzi, which now can be reconstructed and partly identified with paintings in public and private collections. In Fani’s palace there was also a cabinet of curiosities featuring naturalia, artificialia and objects from distant lands, as well as two rooms in which books on a variety of subjects were kept. A study of the display of art in Fabio’s residence and its dialogue with the space of the palace, the objects in the cabinet and the books furthers our understanding of collecting and display in early modern Rome.

Il libro indaga l’attività di mediazione nel commercio artistico svolta dal pittore e restauratore emiliano Carlo Cesare Giovannini (Parma 1695 - Bologna 1758) con la corte di Sassonia, tra il 1750 e il 1756. La base su cui il testo si sviluppa sono i carteggi del pittore con i dignitari della corte di Augusto III, conservati nella Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio di Bologna e nell'Hauptstaatsarchiv di Dresda, allegati al testo come appendice documentaria: manoscritti che delineano i caratteri di una figura finora poco conosciuta nei suoi giudizi critici straordinariamente aggiornati, nei suoi viaggi d’affari tra lo Stato Pontificio e la Germania e nei suoi rapporti con l’ambiente culturale ed antiquario italiano.

«Spero che non fra molto, a Lisbona le spalle a Roma il volto», said the young Francisco de Matos, aka Vieira Lusitano (Lisbon, 1699-1783) to his friend and colleague Agostino Ratti (Savona, 1699- Genoa, 1775). He put into words his wish to returning to Rome the city where he has studied. That quote comes from a letter part of the rich epistoclar exchange over the years between both friends. The aforementioned correspondence is known to us through Bottari's Raccolta. It allows us to understand the professional and friendship network built by Vieira during his stay in Rome. «Spero che non fra molto, a Lisbona le spalle a Roma il volto». Con estas palabras trasladaba el joven Francisco de Matos, más conocido como Vieira Lusitano (Lisboa, 1699-1783), a su amigo y compañero de fatigas Agostino Ratti (Savona, 1699- Génova, 1775) su deseo de regresar a la ciudad en la que se había formado. Esa carta es el inicio de un conspicuo intercambio epistolar enriquecido con dibujos y grabados que a lo largo de los años compartirían y del que se tiene constancia gracias a la Raccolta de Bottari . Esta fuente permite reconstruir parcialmente las relaciones profesionales y amistosas que Vieira desarrolló en su estancia en Roma y que habrían de servirle en su exordio en el panorama internacional.