Stefano Bardini

For more than fifty years, Stefano Bardini transacted incredible quantities of Italian Renaissance art and decorative art on the global art market. On the basis of new archival research, this talk examines Bardini’s strategies for branding and marketing, as well as his techniques for creating the aura of authenticity.

Smuggling the Renaissance: The Illicit Export of Artworks Out of Italy, 1861-1909 explores the phenomenon of art spoliation in Italy following Unification (1861), when the international demand for Italian Renaissance artworks was at an all-time high but effective art protection legislation had not yet been passed. Making use of rich archival material Joanna Smalcerz narrates the complex and often dramatic struggle between the lawmakers of the new Italian State, and international curators (e.g., Wilhelm Bode), collectors (e.g., Isabella Stewart Gardner) and dealers (e.g., Stefano Bardini) who continuously orchestrated illicit schemes to export abroad Italian masterpieces. At the heart of the intertwinement of the art trade, art scholarship and art protection policies the author exposes the socio-psychological dynamics of unlawful collecting.

https://books.google.pl/books/about/Smuggling_the_Renaissance.html?id=EfHJDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Gli Amici dell'Ermitage per Firenze: un dialogo di culture Amici dell'Ermitage (Italia) La passione di Stefano Bardini per la scultura: pietre, marmi e terrecotte rinascimentali nel panorama del mercato antiquario di fine Ottocento e il collezionismo delle 'teste' all'antica

Nel crescente dibattito sul restauro delle pitture murali che vide protagonista Firenze a metà del XIX secolo, Stefano Bardini, il "principe" degli antiquari italiani, maturò le sue conoscenze in materia di "stacchi" e "strappi" in veste prima di artista accademico, poi di restauratore e infine, ovviamente, in qualità di mercante. Un percorso professionale che avviò quando oramai in città la prassi estrattista stava conoscendo una inedita fortuna. Con la chiamata in Santa Maria del Fiore del centese Giovanni Riz-zoli, poi con i primi stacchi operati in Santa Maria Novella da Gaetano Bianchi, e infine con l'arrivo del conte Giovanni Secco Suardo, nel 1864 incaricato di tenere il corso di aggior-namento per restauratori alle nuove tecniche di trasporto del colore da lui sviluppate. A quel particolare clima di fiducia verso la prassi estrattista deve perciò essere ricondotto l'interesse di Bardini verso il distacco degli affreschi, tecnica che cominciò a sperimentare con successo allo scoccare dell'ultimo quarto del secolo. E se del suo ruolo di antiquario e collezionista di sculture e dipinti rinascimentali molto si è detto negli scorsi due decenni, ancora poco scandagliata risulta la sua lunga attività di estrat-tista, ma anche quella, ancor più interessante, di mercante di affreschi staccati. Su quella porzione della vita professionale di Bardini prova a fare chiarezza questo volume, grazie al contributo di studiosi ed esperti del settore che hanno indagato un periodo fonda-mentale della sua biografia e delle sue connessioni con la sto-ria del restauro, del gusto, della tutela e del collezionismo, non solo italiano, ma anche europeo e statunitense.

Just around the turn of the century, the desire on the part of wealthy American and European collectors for Italian art was exorbitant.  Operating out of Florence, the dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) succeeded in matching that demand by stocking collections with ample quantities of high quality supply.  Moreover, Bardini deftly cultivated a taste for certain kinds of objects which have since moved into public view in museums around the world.  However, as far as the Americans were concerned, Italian art of the Trecento was not especially the objects of desire. On the basis of much newly discovered archival material concerning transactions of art from ca 1870-1900 it can be demonstrated that the transatlantic market was ripe for specifically art of the late fifteenth century, that is, for objects which evoked of the age of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  This paper examines this phenomenon, the possible reasons behind it, and how Bardini effectively exploited these conditions.  In addition, using a case study which involves Bardini, Wilhelm Bode (1845-1929) and the Bostonian Quincy Adams Shaw (1825-1908) it can be demonstrated that this was the generation that refined the relationships among the collector, the dealer and the academic expert/connoisseur. The result was the birth of the business model upon which the younger Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) would build his career.  Moreover, as a complex transatlantic synergy, it ultimately provided the very impetus required for Italian trecento art to enter mainstream American collecting and academic discourse in the early twentieth century.

Wilhelm von Bode’s spirit of acquisition in turn-of-the-century Berlin would result in forming a significant and comprehensive collection of Donatelloesque plaquettes, here explored for their function and influence in the genesis of plaquettes as a genre of sculpture.

The paper deals with the oddities and peculiarities of critical history of a bronze bust representing Francesco del Nero (1487-1563). Formerly in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, Berlin, and long considered lost in the fire of Friedrichshain bunker in May 1945, it has recently resurfaced in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, in custody there since 1946. The dramatic history of the bust, acquired in 1895 for Berlin Museums by Wilhelm von Bode himself, is examined in detail, along with that of a plaster cast of the aforementioned work also in Moscow, acquired around 1899 in Berlin by the founder of the Moscow museum Ivan Tsvetaev. New material available at hand and a critical analysis of the sources allows the author to effectively challenge the attribution to Giulio Mazzoni from Piacenza (1525 – 1618), together with the long-held assumption of the bust being the original after which a marble effigy in the roman church of Santa Maria Minerva was made, thus raising important concerns about the work’s provenance and authenticity.

11/12/2020 please consider that erroneous keyword Micheli is present, instead of correct "Danieli" - Inside PICTRIX research, some attention is devoted also to artists not related to Bologna; the present essay is the 14th in this current. Here artists lead to Parma or Ferrara, and mainly Romagna, and are noteworthy for quality, provenance or attribution. In some cases, references to anonymous artists (Maestro dei Magi Campana, Maestro dell'Idillio Wallace) substitute well-known painters (Mazzolino, Nicolò Pisano); however brand-new attributions are rare. An addition to Maestro di Castel Bolognese, a kindred artist if compared to Bagnacavallo senior, could lead to new ideas about Maestro delle Ore Barbazza

Bardini & Co.: The Archive:  Secrets & Scandals. Season I; Episodes I, II & III

19th April, I: Before Bardini, there was Bastianini. In 1866, at the very beginning of his career, the young Stefano Bardini traveled from Florence to Paris where he was immediately confronted with the prestigious sale of a spectacular 15C Florentine terracotta bust to Alfred Nieuwerkerke, the superintendent for Imperial Museums under Napoleon III.  But, Bardini well knew that the bust had only recently been made in Fiesole by the sculptor Giovanni Bastianini. For Bardini, this type of transaction would become part of a business model that he would use for the rest of his career.


17th May, II: Bardini & Co.:  Making 15C sculpture in the 19C.  Among the 300 people employed by Bardini were exceptionally talented artists. Archival material has helped to identify some of these men who have successfully created so many Italian Renaissance masterpieces‐‐Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Mino da Fiesole‐‐that continue to occupy privileged plinths in world class museums of today.


14th June, III:  Bardini & Co:  The Art of Staged Discoveries.  Nearing the turn of the century, and the rapid rise of the modern art market, provenance came to replace connoisseurship as the leading indicator of authenticity. Adept at negotiating changing tides, Bardini evolved strategies to evoke convincing provenance, from fake certificates of authenticity, to planting objects in villas and chapels so that they might be discovered "in situ."

This article, based on recently discovered material in several archives, tells the story of the bronze doors of the Morgan Library.[1] It narrates the travel of the allegedly Renaissance bronze doors from their acquisition in Florence in 1901, to their brief sojourn in London before arriving in New York to adorn the principal façade of McKim, Mead & White’s building. This case study also addresses the attribution of the work to Thomas Waldo Story (1855–1915) and analyzes his position within the complex social microcosm of the art market in which the acquisition of J. Pierpont Morgan’s doors took place.

This essay focuses on the international Art Market in Rome, exploring the complex relationships between dealers, collectors and connoisseurs around 1900. Drawing from unpublished material dating from the 1880s to 1914, this essay presents a picture of the global art business in the newly elected capital of Italy, showing how this art market was as important as Florence and Berlin. The central role of the Eternal City in the emerging global art market is outlined  through an analysis of Wilhelm von Bode and Stefano Bardini's networks in Rome. The revival of their relationships with characters like artist-dealer Attilio Simonetti and archeologist Ludwig Pollak provides an engaging view of this unique time. This examination shows how the role of the dealer, the agent and the connoisseur were highly interconnected even when acting in different capacities.

The 1860’s saw the first successes of Stefano Bardini’s dealing career as well as the proliferation of professional academic expertise and its concomitant expression in publications.  From the early 1870s, Bardini maintained an active and energetic relationship with Wilhelm von Bode, first, because Bode had an ambitious collecting agenda on behalf of the German museums, as well as on behalf of several wealthy collectors.  Just as important was Bode’s prolific scholarly publication record which laid the foundations for what continue to be the norms for attribution as well as the practice of connoisseurship of Italian Renaissance sculpture.  Bode’s numerous publications promoted his professional expertise, which in the late nineteenth-century art market was an ever increasingly valuable commodity in Europe and abroad. And every bit as much, it promoted all of the Bardini objects which heavily populated the writings of Bode.  Circuitously, Bardini would then go on to cite the published authority of Bode, while at the same time, provide comparisons to other versions of objects—extant siblings, as it were—that Bardini had also put into circulation.  On the basis of archival material in Florence and Berlin, using the example of the so-called Pazzi Madonna, this paper reconstructs, in part, the microhistory of its transaction and the concomitant issues of branding, marketing, provenance, attribution and authenticity.

Stefano Bardini, "il principe degli antiquari", fine conoscitore degli interessi dei maggiori collezionisti dell'epoca, costruì un vero impero sulla vendita di rilievi mariani in marmo, terracotta, stucco e cartapesta, in un momento in cui, a cavallo tra Otto e Novecento, il collezionismo di sculture raffiguranti Madonne col Bambino del Quattrocento fiorentino rappresentò un fenomeno di assoluta rilevanza nel mercato dell'arte europea.
Il presente volume vuole raccontare una parte della storia del collezionismo europeo attraverso un repertorio per autori che raccoglie circa 80 esemplari di rilievi raffiguranti Madonne con Bambino del secondo Quattrocento fiorentino, acquistati e venduti dal celebre antiquario.
Grazie alle carte inedite conservate nell'Archivio Storico Eredità Bardini, situato nelle Gallerie degli Uffizi, e nel Fondo Bardini, custodito presso la Biblioteca delle Oblate, è stato possibile ricostruire la storia delle transazioni effettuate dall'antiquario fiorentino. Di particolare rilevanza sono i rapporti commerciali con le più importanti nobili famiglie di Firenze, da cui il mercante acquistò la maggior parte delle opere che espose nel suo atelier, e con i suoi clienti, tra cui spiccano personaggi di rilievo come Wilhelm von Bode, il principe Johann II del Liechtenstein, Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Beginning in 1866 and for more than fifty years, the dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) operated his business headquartered in Florence, but also from his temporary display spaces in Paris and London.  He attracted private and institutional clients in most major European and American cities, amassing more than 500 of them by c1880.  At the height of his career, Bardini employed some 300 people, building an enterprise that ultimately transacted thousands of objects of fine and decorative art.  These objects were of the highest quality, thus insuring their permanent presence in esteemed collections, and in so many cases, until this day.  Bardini’s business model took its impetus from the national climate during the Unification of Italy.  The designation of Florence as capital of the new kingdom in 1865 served to heighten the cultural appropriation of a very specific glorious past time—the golden age of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  Bardini’s career began during the city’s widespread campaign of urban renewal and completion of unfinished projects, such as the façade of the cathedral, all of which were done with an eye to the art, decorative art and architecture of 15C Medicean Florence.  Bardini took advantage of this revitalization, marketing 15C Florentine style objects, thereby gaining a tremendous amount of art market exposure and free advertising.  These years also saw an uptick in the competition among European institutional collections as well as private collectors.  Bardini was quick to take advantage of this by proffering high quality objects in several comparable versions to several prospective buyers simultaneously. The audaciously high market prices his objects commanded had the overall effect of increasing the buyers’ perception of quality, and no less, authenticity.  At the same time, Bardini recognized the business potential of the recently arriving, newly wealthy, Gilded Age American shoppers, who along with their dollars, brought a largely uneducated eye as they sought to emulate European aristocracy.  Bardini had little trouble cultivating their acquisition taste for his brand of objects, and moreover, he cleverly insinuated them into the network of European collections which he was actively populating.  In turn, this tactic had the effect of convincing the Americans that their acquisitions were world-class.  Alongside this strategy, institutional collectors were enticed to advise and assist private collectors for the promise of an eventual bequest.  This paper examines Bardini’s market strategies which guaranteed him incredible market power as one of the most successful dealers in the late 19C.

In the course of sorting research for an article on the bronze doors of the Morgan Library which were transacted from Stefano Bardini’s Villa Marignolle in 1901, several figures came to populate the immediate social network of that particular art market vignette.  Upon the basis of additional research in several other archives, this paper offers a first sketch of some of the many agents and intermediaries involved in a cluster of questionable activity with respect to American collectors in search of European acquisitions shortly after the close of the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900.

On the surface, the agency of Bardini can be seen to portray the epitome of the wholesale and flagrant exportation of much important Italian cultural patrimony in the late nineteenth century.  However, after years of sifting through the material in the Archivio Storico Eredità Bardini, it is possible to isolate and identify sensibilities that can probably be attributed to Bardini himself, as distinct from the many men of Bardini & Co.  And in general, it seems that for him, there were two classes of objects—objects destined for the marketplace, or not, as the case may be, and masterpiece objects or works deserving of proper conservation and protection.  Marketplace objects were subjected to the entire range of physically altering interventions, from cleaning to repainting to pastiching, to outright fabrication.  For these objects, one gets the sense that when the exportation permission was requested, more often than not, the condition of the object was sufficiently deplorable so as to allow for export, and this is notwithstanding that there were probably “friends” in the exportation office and that Bardini was a professional at finding ways to beat the system.  Other objects that could potentially be flagged as important patrimony, were often smuggled in order to circumvent the law.  As for objects that were not “marketplace,” incredibly, Bardini shows himself to be remarkably conservative.  Using the case study of a restoration of Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in SM Novella, this essay demonstrates Bardini’s conservative side.

In November 1888, writing to the German museum official, Wilhelm Bode (1845-1929), the dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) stated that he was certain that “eight marbles and 12 terracottas” in South Kensington (V&A) were fake, and that without doubt, upon further study, there is “much to be found rotten.” He mused to Bode of other doubts, that he would not discuss until he had inspected them himself. Four days later, Bode responded that, for the most part, he agreed with Bardini. However, Bode disagreed with Bardini that two of the Madonnas—a marble attributed to Donatello and a relief in gilded terracotta—were fakes. Bode concluded by telling Bardini that he would be very happy if Bardini could induce South Kensington to sell them as fakes, as he would happily buy them.
Drawing upon the one hundred years’ worth of archival material in the Archivio Storico Eredità Bardini (ASEB) and the Archivio Fotografico Eredità Bardini (AFEB), in Florence under the jurisdiction of the Polo Museale Toscano, identified are Bardini’s strategies for branding, marketing and transacting hundreds of Italian Renaissance objects that were made in the nineteenth century. The end result is the establishment of a rubric, or a formula per se, along which lines his fakes can be identified and located with predictability. Also discussed are issues of contamination of the canon and scholarly literature along with the associated complicity that necessarily insures the continued opacity of the situation today.

(selected papers from the conference, Images of the Art Museum: Connecting Gaze and Discourse in the History of Museology, Florence, 26-28 September 2013, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz-Max-Planck-Institut)
From the 1860s until his death in 1922, Stefano Bardini sold many thousands of objects of fine and decorative art and architectural fittings from his Florentine showrooms to private and institutional collectors around the world.  In many cases these objects represent the core of current day collections as in, for example, the Boston MFA and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Bode Museum and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the V&A in London, the Jacquemart-André in Paris, and the now widely dispersed collections of the Princes of Liechtenstein.  So successful were Bardini’s installation showrooms that clients sought to duplicate the Bardini look back at home, whether in the precise configuration for object groupings or the very particular blue color of the walls on which they hung.  Bardini’s own cultural predisposition, formed at the Accademia delle Belle Arti during the Risorgimento, made him uniquely disposed to branding and marketing, in particular, large quantities of art and artifact specifically evocative of late quattrocento Florence.  Especially for sculpture, cost effective global transactions required certain types of objects which were better suited for export.  Consequently, low reliefs and portrait busts constituted the vast majority of the marble he successfully transacted.  Bardini would diversify and pad his inventory with less expensive and less weighty objects in glazed terracotta, cartapesta, and wood. Exported to Europe and America at a fraction of the cost of full figural objects or whole sarcophagi, these kinds of things would travel to embellish the homes of the wealthy and in turn enter public collections by eventual bequest.  On the basis of new archival material, this paper examines Bardini’s contribution to the evolution of the taxonomy of “Italian Renaissance Sculpture,” codified by the then emergent art historian expert, and the realization of this competitively formed canon in major institutional collections just before the turn of the century.

Albert E. Harnisch (1843 - 1918), the sculptor and painter born and trained in Philadelphia, relocated in 1869 to Rome.  There he enjoyed no small success, including commissions from America, among them the first bronze monument to the anti-abolitionist John Calhoun in Charleston, which he cast in Rome.  His legacy includes many high quality signed and dated bronze and marble figurative sculptures which were sent abroad to America.  Harnisch was deeply embedded in the American ex-pat community in Rome and part of the lively social circle surrounding the sculptor William Wetmore Story.  Immediately following the poor reception back home of his Calhoun Monument in 1887, until his death in 1918, that is, for the last 31 years of his life, only one signed work can be located.  Following the failure of the monument, Harnisch moved to Florence and worked for the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) for the rest of his life as a manager of the business and as an important point man for luring clients visiting Florence from outside of the peninsula and from across the Atlantic.  At the same time, it turns out that Harnisch was also deftly producing “Italian Renaissance” works which Bardini then transacted in the emergent global art market and for export out of Italy.  This paper proposes a new category of production by nineteenth century sculptors, who confronted the fifteenth century master Florentine sculptors and brilliantly channeled them, producing new compositions, as distinct from copies.  From this intimate rapprochement, they were able to create countless very high quality, newly made “Italian Renaissance” sculptures for collectors and collections outside of Italy.

In November 1888, writing to the German museum official, Wilhelm Bode (1845-1929), the dealer Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) stated that he was certain that “eight marbles and 12 terracottas” in South Kensington (V&A) were fake, and that without doubt, upon further study, there is “much to be found rotten.”  He mused to Bode of other doubts, that he would not discuss until he had checked them out. Four days later, Bode responded that, for the most part, he agreed with Bardini.  However, Bode disagreed with Bardini that a marble Madonna attributed to Donatello and a gilded terracotta relief, also of a Madonna, were fakes.  Bode concluded by telling Bardini that he would be very happy if Bardini could induce South Kensington to sell them as fakes, as he would happily buy them.
  Drawing upon the one hundred years’ worth of archival material in the Archivio Storico Eredità Bardini (ASEB) and the Archivio Fotografico Eredità Bardini (AFEB), in Florence under the jurisdiction of the Polo Museale Toscano, this paper identifies Bardini’s strategies for branding, marketing and transacting hundreds of Italian Renaissance objects that were made in the nineteenth century.  The end result is the establishment of a rubric, or a formula per se, along which lines his fakes can be identified and located with predictability.  Also discussed are issues of contamination of the canon and scholarly literature along with the associated complicity that necessarily insures the continued opacity of the situation today.

Better known for his proclivity for detaching frescoes destined for clandestine export out of Italy, Bardini possessed at the same time an extremely conservative view regarding the treatment of other frescoes.  The paper will present Bardini's assessment and opinion regarding a recently begun cleaning of Ghirlandaio's frescoes in the Tornabuoni Chapel in S. M. Novella and his plea for the urgency of an intervention to Paolo Uccello's frescoes in the Chiostro Verde.

From unpublished material in the state archive of the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini (1834-1922), several case studies can be constructed which illustrate the many techniques Bardini used to present convincing provenances for the scores of high quality objects he transacted.  By and large, these provenances were entirely fictive.  This paper discusses Bardini’s strategies to create provenances which were cleverly cloaked with staged discoveries, pretend smuggling, invoked primary source associations (e.g., Vasari and Baldinucci), and contamination of archival material.  Evidence also suggests that he extorted financially beleaguered noble families to house foster objects furnished by Bardini, as well as to issue phony certificates for their authenticity.

Object provenance is often approached as a linear chain of ownership. Recent increasing interest and research in art market studies—the dealers, mediators, advisors, taste makers, etc.—indicate the transaction of art and decorative art is anything but linear. This volume takes as its point of departure two of the most active agents of the late 19C: the German Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and the Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), whose immensely successful careers depended upon vast and intricate social and professional networks which heavily overlapped. Both men were responsible for placing thousands of objects in public and private collections throughout Europe and America. Although both Bardini and Bode distinguished themselves in terms of sheer quantity of transactions and expertise, they also defined themselves by the high quality of the objects and the sophistication of their mutual global network. On the basis of archival material, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of the behind-the-scene aspects of object transaction within their broader context. In doing so, they offer alternative areas of inquiry for the mapping of objects as they were exchanged over time and place.

The 1860’s saw the first professional successes of the Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini, as well as the birth of scholarly expertise and publications.  One of Bardini’s first clients was Wilhelm Bode, who was charged to stock the German museums with world-class art and decorative arts.  Bode was also ambitious with respect to advising wealthy collectors, with the hope that they would make bequests to the museums.  At the same time, Bode maintained a prolific scholarly publication record which laid the foundations for what is still the practice of connoisseurship of Italian Renaissance sculpture.  And those numerous publications promoted all of the Bardini objects which heavily populated the writings of Bode.  Bardini would then go on to cite the published authority of Bode, while at the same time, provide comparisons to other versions of objects—siblings, as it were—that Bardini had also put into art market circulation.  On the basis of archival material, this talk discusses the “poster child” of the current exhibition in Palazzo Strozzi, the so-called Pazzi Madonna, deconstructing the microhistory of its transaction from Bardini to Bode, along with the issues of branding, marketing, provenance, attribution and authenticity.    https://www.britishinstitute.it/en/news-events/events/wednesday-lectures/581/stefano-bardini-wilhelm-bode-the-madonna-pazzi-puzzle

Deriving from material in the state and city archive of the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini, as well as material from the Berlin Zentralarchiv, this paper presents a case study that illustrates the ways in which Bardini & Co. contaminated the canon.  The bas-relief of the so-called Madonna della Rosa exists in at least five versions.  Four have a provenance no earlier than the nineteenth century (there is no provenance information given for fifth version).
This particular composition was first published by Wilhelm von Bode in 1894 with an attribution to Donatello. The literature was thereafter amended to accommodate art market tastes. Archive evidence suggests that, from the combined use of photographs and plaster casts, Bardini & Co. produced at least some of the versions.  This is but one example of the numerous times that dubious objects were put into circulation by Bardini, and then written into the scholarly literature by Bode, which in turn raises questions about their relationship and the real agency of Bode.

The article introduces a previously unknown group of Medieval erratic sculptures that can be referred on stylistic grounds to the Byzantine, Venetian and Upper Adriatic areas. Their acquisition by Stefano Bardini, a Florentine collector and art dealer active in the Venetian area, dates back to the end of the nineteenth and the begining of the twentieth centuries. Now housed in the storage of Bardini's own palace, these sculptures were included in the rich portion of Bardini's inheritance that was acquired by the Italian State and never exposed to the public view. The author analyzes the stylistic and iconographical features of these works, comparing them with contemporary sculptures. Particularly relevant in this analysis is the fourteenth century bust that was once part of the funerary monument of the doge Michele Morosini in  the Basilica dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice.

In 1896, in trying to sell a “Verrocchio” to Quincy Adams Shaw, the Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini explained that although of museum quality he could only sell it privately—a tactic to enhance Shaw’s perception of the quality and authenticity of the object in question.  The importance of dealers in the formation of collections cannot be underestimated, yet this topic is infrequently addressed in studies on collectors and collections. This session will explore the methods and means of transactions of fine and decorative art in the global art market from 1860 1940 from the perspective of the supplier. We are also interested in the many other functionaries who participate in this network, among them, agents, scouts, intermediaries, restorers, fakers, decorators, and advisers. We welcome case studies as well as papers treating the various aspects of supply−from branding to marketing, from inventory to display, from restoration to pastiche to fabrication.

Object provenance is often approached as a linear chain of ownership. Recent increasing interest and research in art market studies—the dealers, mediators, advisors, taste makers, etc.—indicate the transaction of art and decorative art is anything but linear. This volume takes as its point of departure two of the most active agents of the late 19C: the German Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and the Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), whose immensely successful careers depended upon vast and intricate social and professional networks which heavily overlapped. Both men were responsible for placing thousands of objects in public and private collections throughout Europe and America. Although both Bardini and Bode distinguished themselves in terms of sheer quantity of transactions and expertise, they also defined themselves by the high quality of the objects and the sophistication of their mutual global network. On the basis of archival material, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of the behind-the-scene aspects of object transaction within their broader context. In doing so, they offer alternative areas of inquiry for the mapping of objects as they were exchanged over time and place.

Object provenance is often approached as a linear chain of ownership. Recent increasing interest and research in art market studies—the dealers, mediators, advisors, taste makers, etc.—indicate the transaction of art and decorative art is anything but linear. This volume takes as its point of departure two of the most active agents of the late 19C: the German Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) and the Florentine Stefano Bardini (1836-1922), whose immensely successful careers depended upon vast and intricate social and professional networks which heavily overlapped. Both men were responsible for placing thousands of objects in public and private collections throughout Europe and America. Although both Bardini and Bode distinguished themselves in terms of sheer quantity of transactions and expertise, they also defined themselves by the high quality of the objects and the sophistication of their mutual global network. On the basis of archival material, the essays in this volume examine the minutiae of the behind-the-scene aspects of object transaction within their broader context. In doing so, they offer alternative areas of inquiry for the mapping of objects as they were exchanged over time and place.

Albert E. Harnisch (1843 - after 1918), the sculptor and painter born and trained in Philadelphia, relocated in 1869 to Rome.  There he enjoyed no small success, including commissions from America, among them the first bronze monument to John Calhoun (1876-1887) in Charleston, which he cast in Rome.  His legacy includes many high quality signed and dated bronze and marble figurative sculptures which were sent abroad to America.  Harnisch was deeply embedded in the American ex-pat community in Rome and part of the lively social circle surrounding the sculptor William Wetmore Story.  Immediately following the poor reception back home of his Calhoun Monument in 1887, until his death in c.1918, that is, for the last 31 years of his life, Harnisch ceased to produce any signed works. 
As part of my larger project concerning the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini (1836-1922) (Florence, Archivio Storico & Fotografico Eredità Bardini, Soprintendente Polo Museale Toscano).  I have located evidence that, following the failure of the Calhoun Monument, Harnisch moved to Florence and worked for Bardini for the rest of his life as a manager of the business and as an important point man for luring clients visiting Florence from outside of the peninsula and from across the Atlantic.  At the same time, it turns out that Harnisch was also deftly producing “Italian Renaissance” works which Bardini then transacted in the emergent global art market and for export out of Italy.  This paper proposes a new category of production by 19C  sculptors, who confronted the 15C master Florentine sculptors and brilliantly channeled them, producing new compositions, as distinct from copies.  From this intimate rapprochement, they were able to create countless very high quality, newly made “Italian Renaissance” sculptures for collectors and collections outside of Italy.

Deriving from material in the state archive of the Florentine dealer, Stefano Bardini, this paper presents a case study in order to illustrate the ways in which Bardini & Co. contaminated the canon.  The so-called Madonna della Rosa exists in at least five versions:  a marble in the Victoria & Albert Museum, a painted papier-mâché in the Bode Museum, a stucco in the Acton collection in Villa la Pietra, a terracotta in the Giovanni Morelli collection in the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, and one in a tabernacle sold in 1916 by a protégé of Bardini’s, Elia Volpi.  Of these, none has a provenance prior to the 19C; the one in London possesses the earliest provenance, as having been purchased in Florence in 1863.  Bode purchased the Berlin version from Bardini in 1887, and Morelli bought his in Florence in 1891.  The Madonna of the Berlin and Bergamo versions holds a rose, as does that in a gesso copy in the Bardini deposito, whereas the versions in London, the Acton and Morelli collections do not.
This particular composition was first published by Bode in 1894 with an attribution to Donatello. By 1903 (Lord Balcarres), and then in 1907 (Schubring), the Berlin version was connected in print to the marble version in London, which itself was declared a fake.  Whereupon, in 1913, Schottmüller amended the attribution from fake to Donatello.  Archive evidence suggests that, from a photograph of the one in London, Bardini & Co. produced at least some of the versions.  This is but one example of the numerous times that dubious objects were put into circulation by Bardini, and then written into the scholarly literature by Bode, which in turn raises questions about their relationship and the real agency of Bode.

In 1901 the New York financier William Salomon visited Florence in order to acquire art and decorative furnishings for his future mansion at 1020 Fifth Avenue. He visited the collections of the Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini, on display in both the Galleries in Piazza Mozzi and his Villa Marignolle. Among Salomon’s purchases were the ‘Ghiberti-style’ bronze doors that now adorn the Morgan library.