Cornici dei Medici / Medici frames: La fantasia baroccaal servizio del potere / Baroque Caprice for the Medici Princes

Sixty-three original frames, most previously unpublished, from the Palatine Gallery, the Museo degli Argenti in Pitti Palace, the Uffizi Gallery and Villa Poggio a Caiano are described in this volume. All were commissioned by the Medici from the 16th century onwards for paintings, as they entered their collections. Invented by masters such as Ammannati and Buontalenti, the decorative motifs of Mannerism were combined to form the lobate style. With the evolution of the baroque frame, however, Buontalenti's volutes were transformed into scrolls and cartouches flanked by details, prevalently zoomorphic in appearance, inspired by the drawings of artists such as Callot and Stefano della Bella, whose fantastical sketches also illustrate this volume. In addition to many famous artists who designed frames, including Volterrano and Foggini, new attributions (to Pietro da Cortona and Ciro Ferri) and new names of carvers, including Antonio Mancini, Luca Boncinelli, Jacopo Sani, and Carlo Galestruzzi, were discovered in the course of this detailed study carried out in the State Archive of Florence. This volume is a stimulating and useful contribution not only for art historians but also for those interested in the history of the Medici collections and the development of museums in Italy from the 16th to 18th centuries. Presentazioni di / Forewords by Cristina Acidini, Edoardo Speranza, Antonio Paolucci. Testi in italiano e in inglese / Italian and English text Traduzione di / Translation by Eve Leckey, Francoise Chiarini.