Since 2010, Lynn Catterson (PhD, Columbia University) has been digging nonstop in the 100 years of material held in the state archive of the family and business of the Florentine dealer Stefano Bardini, the Archivio Storico Eredità Bardini (ASEB) and the Archivio Fotografico Eredità Bardini (AFEB), as well as the Archivio Musei Comunali Fondo Stefano Bardini (AMCFiFSB). This has been combined with work done in the Zentralarchiv in Berlin (SMB-SPK ZAB), as well as the archives of the Florentine Accademia di Belle Arti, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London National Gallery, the Oxford Ashmolean Museum, the Archives of American Art, the Frick Collection, the Morgan Library, the Metropolitan Museum, the New York Historical Society, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, Columbia University Avery Library, Smith College and Princeton University. The result is several publications, including the four most recent listed here. There have been many surprises along the way, as well as the identification of an ever-growing historical social network of 19C art market agents—dealers, decorators, collectors, craftsmen, sculptors, painters and photographers, as well as the occasional smuggler, forger and felon. All told, the research stands to correct much of the often repeated urban legend that has surrounded Bardini and to bring to light previously unknown aspects of the functioning of his business and the life of objects as they moved over time and space.
Lynn Catterson, “Art Market, Social Network and Contamination: Bardini, Bode and the Madonna Pazzi Puzzle,” in Lynn Catterson, ed, Florence, Berlin and Beyond: Social Network and the late 19C Art Market, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020. https://brill.com/view/title/56528
Lynn Catterson, “Stefano Bardini, His Conservative Side and the Protection of Frescoes,” in Stefano Bardini ‘estrattista;’ affreschi staccati nell’Italia Unita fra antiquariato, collezionismo e musei, Luca Ciancabilla and Cristiano Giometti, eds, Edizioni ETS Pisa, 2019, pp. 79-92.
Lynn Catterson, “Duped or Duplicitous? Bode, Bardini and the many Madonnas of South Kensington,” Journal of the History of Collections, Spring 2020.
Lynn Catterson, “From visual inventory to trophy clippings: Bardini & Co. and the use of photographs in the late 19C art market,” from the conference, The Art Market in Italy Around 1900: Actors, Archives, Photographs / Il mercato dell’arte in Italia intorno al 1900. Protagonisti, archivi, fotografie, (Florence, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut and Fondazione Federico Zeri, Bologna, 14-15 November 2017), Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz,” Summer 2020.
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