In collezione. Art itineraries from the 13th to the 20th century (complete and up-to-date version)

complete and up-to-date catalogue of the Art Collection by Fondazione CR Firenze

scientific curation by Carlo Sisi
general coordination by Barbara Tosti

The Fondazione CR Firenze’s has been successfully pursuing its plan to optimise its Art Collection which, while privately-owned, is nevertheless part and parcel of our country’s national art heritage. The bank first started collecting art many years ago when the concept of using works of art purely to adorn business premises was superseded by the notion that banks (and subsequently also the foundations that sprung from those banks) could become ‘art collectors’ in their own right, often establishing fully-fledged museums.

The intent behind this private ‘patronage’ is, in fact, very often driven by specific cultural policies aimed at acquisition campaigns to purchase works of art connected to the cultural history of their own area.
The formation of the Art Collection has also fully fulfilled this policy, following a specific direction that identifies the Collection’s mission in its historical profile of a group of works acquired over time and mainly linked to Florence and Tuscany.

Each ‘room’ in the new exhibition recounts an episode in our figurative history, from old masters such as Giotto, Pacino di Bonaguida and Mariotto di Nardo, to the Renaissance artists such as Filippino Lippi, Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino and Giorgio Vasari, the Macchiaioli painters and naturalists, such as Giovanni Fattori, Odoardo Borrani and Eugenio Cecconi, the 20th century protagonists, such as Lorenzo Viani, Giovanni Colacicchi and Primo Conti, not to mention the extraordinary series of Views of Ancient Florence made between the 17th and 19th centuries, in a new and engaging narrative sequence.

This exhibition therefore represents an intermediate solution that does not anticipate a ‘museum’ as understood in the usual sense, but a ‘common environment’ of artistic excellence, not separate from the everyday life of the Foundation but integrated into it: in the halls and corridors, while in transit and parking, people can admire works of art and simultaneously discuss and develop ideas related to different policy areas of the Foundation, from the arts to science, from care and social assistance to natural resources, and art itself.