The Florence Antiques Biennale closes with more than 28,000 visitors.

The Florence Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato ended with more than 28,000 visitors and a rich cultural program.This XXXI edition presented the public with more than 5,000 works of the highest quality and elegant and sophisticated displays. Numerous collectors, curators, national and international museum directors and specialized journalists enlivened the event at Palazzo Corsini.

Secretary General Fabrizio Moretti called the Biennale “a museum for sale.” Among the first to buy at the 2019 BIAF was the director of the Uffizi Galleries, Eike Schmidt: in fact, the Florentine museum venue was enriched by Daniele da Volterra’s Madonna and Child, St. John and St. Barbara, the Portrait of sculptor Antoine Denis Chaudet by Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet, the artist’s wife, and the Bust of Virgil by Carlo Albacini.

The director of the Borghese Gallery in Rome has launched an appeal for international fundraising to purchase Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Bust of Urban VIII Barberini, in which the Barberini Corsini National Galleries are also interested; the work has a cost of 10 million.

All 77 exhibitors present said they were very satisfied. The young gallery owners Caretto & Occhinegro sold eight of the fifteen works on display already during the opening evenings: including the oil on panel Landscape Littoral with Saracen Tower by Roelandt Sa very and Jacob Savery II and the oil on copper The Family of Darius at the Feet of Alexander by Frans Francken II.

The Simon C. Dickinson Gallery sold a Venetian Veduta with San Giorgio Maggiore from Giudecca by Francesco Guardi, an oil on canvas valued at more than £1 million.

Other paintings sold included a Veduta di Firenze dal Ponte Vecchio, oil on canvas by Giovanni Signorini; anAllegoria della Pazienza, oil on panel attributed to Giorgio Vasari; and an oil on canvas with Natura morta di fiori e frutta by Andrea Belvedere; Inside the Bazaar, oil on canvas by Ippolito Caffi; La siesta, oil on canvas by Joseph Edouard Stevens; and again, an oil on canvas with Harlequin Rejected by his Lover by Giovan Domenico Ferretti; Apollo and the Muses by Antiveduto Gramatica; and Blind Love: A Man Playing Draughts with a Courtesan, oil on panel by Angelo Caroselli.

Among the sculptures sold instead were two rare gargoyle heads, Tigress Attacking an Elephant by Iginio Montini and After the Pose or Maiden Combing Her Hair by Paolo Troubetzkoy; two busts of the ancient philosophers Heraclitus and Democritus by Antonio Gai.

Surface 607, a 1967 work in cork on gold-laminated faesite by Giuseppe Capogrossi, attracted much interest.

The new installation curated by designer Matteo Corvino, who installed two imposing chandeliers made by Carlo Scarpa in the 1960s at the entrance of Palazzo Corsini, was much appreciated, and the two exhibitions Universo Bardini, set up in the alcove of Palazzo Corsini, and the photographic exhibition Biennale in black and white 1959-1983 set up in the foyer of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino were also successful.

Image: Entrance to Palazzo Corsini Ph.Credit Marco Mori

The Florence Antiques Biennale closes with more than 28,000 visitors.

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