Address: Piazza de' Mozzi
This is found in a fine palace built by Stefano Bardini at the
end of the nineteenth century and left by him to the Florentine
Town Council at his death in 1922. Bardini was a dealer of almost
legendary fame who apart from stocking many foreign museums with
pieces of first quality also assembled for himself through his
almost frenetic activity a collection of objects of widely
varying periods and quality. His palace itself is remarkable in
its use for doors, windows and mouldings of old fragments from
destroyed churches and villas. Even the ceilings are magnificent
examples of Venetian and Tuscan woodwork of the fifteenth to the
seventeenth centuries.
The collection comprises sculptures, paintings, furniture,
ceramics, tapestries, arms, carpets, and also fragments saved
from the destruction of the old centre of Florence: these are all
displayed on the ground and first floors with a taste which
reflects the picturesque preferences of a private collector.
Apart from Roman sarcophagi, capitals, Roman and Gothic reliefs,
sculpture is well represented in the work of Della Robbia
(fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), pieces attributed to Donatello
and Nine or Giovanni Pisano, and the famous and beautiful Charity
by Tino di Camaino (c. 1280-1337).
A large room in imitation of a crypt provides the setting for
tombstones and funerary monuments, and the musical instrument
collection is also important. The star of the collection is the
St. Michael Archangel on panel by Antonio Del Pollaiolo
(1431-1498), but other priceless objects are also found among the
arms, fifteenth century polychrome stuccoes and wooden sculpture.
