Il Rinascimento italiano nella collezione Rothschild del Louvre

edited by Catherine Loisel

exhibition catalogue: Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 27 May-14 September 2009

The exhibition at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence (27 May–14 September 2009) has finally given the Italian public the chance to admire the enormous and priceless collection bequeathed to the Louvre in 1935 by the heirs of Baron Edmond de Rothschild. It boasts rare and exquisite nielli and drawings by extraordinary artists of the calibre of Pisanello, Benozzo Gozzoli, Maso Finiguerra, Leonardo, Fra Bartolomeo, Raphael, Battista Franco, Perino del Vaga, Nicolò dell’Abate and Cavalier d’Arpino.

The essay by Pascal Torres Guardiola, who heads the collection, sketches out the historical and biographical aspects of the spirit that inspired the baron, a man whose entire life was devoted to “actions intuitively guided by the desire to achieve perfection and the inner awareness that he would leave his mark on the history of Western art”.

The editor of the catalogue, Catherine Loisel, conservateur en chef for the Louvre’s Département des Arts Graphiques, dwells above all on the Bonfiglioli-Sagredo-Rothschild Album, composed chiefly of intense and fascinating views of Gothic architectural works, and the Rothschild book of models, an intriguing notebook with animal figures that offers valuable testimony of the graphic activities of Florentine workshops in the mid-15th century.

The reproductions of the works on display are described in entries by Marzia Faietti, Varena Forcione, Catherine Loisel, Lucia Marabini, Pietro C. Marani, Lorenza Melli and Pascal Torres Guardiola.