Antiques dealer Fabrizio Moretti opens new gallery in London on July 1.

Antiquarian Fabrizio Moretti, patron of Moretti Fine Art, a gallery specializing in Old Master founded paintings and sculptures, opens a new location on July 1 on Duke Street in London’s St. James’s neighborhood. Located at 12-13 Duke Street, the new gallery is spread over two adjacent historic buildings and three floors totaling about 800 square meters of gallery and office space. The inaugural exhibition will reflect the specialization in Italian painting and sculpture from the 14th to the 17th century for which the gallery is world-renowned, presenting works by Sano Di Pietro, Giovanni Baronzio, Nicolo dell’Abate, and Canaletto. The two historic buildings on Duke Street date back to 1674 and have been home to art dealers since 1910. The renovation project involved a complex and almost total demolition of the interiors, and consequently extensive work to construct one large space to harmonize the two buildings, of which the front facade and part of the rear wall were preserved. Connected by two main staircases at each end of the building and a central elevator, the ground and second floors are designed as exhibition spaces while the second floor houses offices and meeting rooms for the gallery.

“This gallery is exactly how I wanted it, for almost three years I followed all aspects of it from the initial design to the small details, all always having in mind to enhance the works. I didn’t want simply a beautiful and elegant place,” Fabrizio Moretti explains. Visitors enter a double-height space that visually connects the exhibition space on the second floor to the entrance below, while at the back of the building a similar double-height space pushes natural light from the galleries on the ground floor to the library and archives in the basement. The entire project, by the London-based architecture and interior design firm Tomèf, is intended to emphasize the very generous height and width of the walls, which allow for the hanging and display of large-scale artworks, as well as for the creation of different atmospheres, including the use of velvet or silk wall coverings to enrich old master paintings and natural herringbone oak floors, which can themselves be embellished with fine antique carpets.

Moretti Fine Art will also open as a virtual gallery in the metaverse in the near future through a partnership with Virtual Pangea, a blockchain company that is developing a multilayered metaverse ecosystem. By entering this digital world, Moretti Fine Art customers will have the opportunity to experience a new kind of exhibition, interact in virtual spaces, and ultimately purchase NFT of Moretti Fine Art masterpieces.

Moretti Fine Art Gallery

The Moretti Gallery was founded in 1999 by Fabrizio Moretti in the heart of Florence, between Palazzo Strozzi and Santa Maria Novella with exhibition the inaugural From Bernardo Daddi to Giorgio Vasari and immediately distinguished itself by specializing in ancient Italian paintings. Since then, internationally renowned art historians have collaborated on numerous projects curated by the gallery. Moretti Fine Art has sold numerous works over the years to major museums including Gallerie degli Uffizi, Galleria dell’Accademia, Museo di San Marco, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, Louvre, Louvre Abu Dhabi, and National Gallery in London.

Moretti Fine Art opened in London in 2005 and quickly became a point of reference for collectors seeking a confidential and discreet approach. In December 2011, the gallery moved to St James’s, in the heart of the international art market, a space closed in 2019 to focus on the construction project of its major new gallery on Duke St.

The gallery has exhibited regularly at TEFAF Maastricht, Frieze Masters in London, and the Florence International Antiques Biennale. Collaboration with Andrew Butterfield Fine Arts has led to several exhibitions co-curated in New York, including Body and Soul: Masterpieces of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture and A Rediscovered Masterpiece by Antonio Corradini.

The Gallery’s philanthropic activities have led to the publication of several important monographs on Italian painters, including Spinello Aretino, Carlo Dolci, Bartolomeo della Gatta, Angelo Caroselli, Johannes Hispanus and Simone dei Crocifissi. Moretti Fine Art has also funded scholarships at various institutions and sponsored the restoration of paintings including Pontormo’s The Visitation. Moretti Fine Art is a member of the Associazione Antiquari D’Italia, Federazione Italiana Mercanti D’Arte, Associazione Antiquari Fiorentini, The Society of London Art Dealers and The British Antiques Dealers Association.

Owner Fabrizio Moretti, born in Prato in 1976, graduated in Literature from the University of Florence, where he opened Galleria Moretti in 1999 at the age of 22. In addition to galleries in Florence and London, in 2017 Moretti opened an exhibition space at Park Palace in Monaco.

Moretti has served on the Executive Committee of TEFAF and Frieze Masters. Since 2014 he has been Secretary General of the Florence Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato for which, in 2015, he invited Jeff Koons to temporarily install some of his works in Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio. In 2016 he became a member of the Paintings Council of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In 2017, still as part of BIAF, Urs Fischer created a sculpture titled Marsupial depicting Fabrizio Moretti installed in Piazza della Signoria in Florence. In 2019, Moretti was appointed a member of the Scientific Committee of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, and the Nouveau Musée in Munich dedicated an exhibition to him entitled Step by Step. Visions from an Art Dealer’s Collection that testified to Moretti’s passion for modern and contemporary art and Old Masters. The exhibition included several major artists such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Alighiero Boetti, Guido Cagnacci, Jacopo Carucci known as Pontormo, George Condo, Thierry De Cordier, Pedro de Mena y Medrano, Andrea and Giovanni della Robbia, Lucio Fontana, Wade Guyton, Martin Kippenberger, Jannis Kounellis, Jan Lievens, Glenn Ligon, Albert Oehlen, Richard Prince, Guido Reni, Gerhard Richter, Jenny Saville, and Bartolomeo Vivarini.

His numerous awards include the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Art et des Lettres conferred by the French Minister of Culture in 2004 and the Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Culturel awarded by the Princess of Hanover in 2019. In 2015, he received The Keys to the City of Florence from Mayor Dario Nardella. Moretti has donated several works to international museums such as the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum. One project that is particularly close to Moretti’s heart is the Fabrizio Moretti Foundation, a charity dedicated to supporting people with disabilities. The first project, now in its final stages, is the construction of a center dedicated to children and the effects of hippotherapy in his hometown of Prato, Italy.

Pictured: Fabrizio Moretti

Antiques dealer Fabrizio Moretti opens new gallery in London on July 1.

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