9B Alternate view.
Notes
1. There were strong connections among Palazzo Davanzati, Stefano Bar
dini, and Elie Volpi around the turn of the twentieth century. In the late
1860s Bardini was the most important antique dealer in Italy. With the
financial difficulties caused by changes in the economy and in inheri
tance laws after Unification in 1861, many noble Italian families chose
to sell parts of their collections to have money on hand. Bardini took
advantage of this situation, having access, as he did, to the palaces and
villas of many important Florentine families such as the Strozzi, Torri-
giani, and Capponi. Bardini's clients included Wilhelm Bode, Oscar
Hainauer, and Albert Figdor. Elie Volpi was hired by Bardini during this
period to restore and copy works of art. Working for Bardini was excel
lent training for Volpi's future career as antique dealer in Florence, an
activity that caused Volpi to fall out of Bardini's favor. As a dealer,
Volpi's clients included J. Pierpont Morgan, Sr., Enrico Caruso, Joseph
Widener, William Randolph Hearst, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. After buying the Palazzo
Davanzati in 1904, Volpi restored it and made it a private museum ded
icated to the Florentine house of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. In
terest in the Palazzo Davanzati helped promote an active and profitable
market for Volpi, especially in the United States in the first decades of
the twentieth century. After changes in the public's taste and scandals
involving the production of fakes, Volpi sold Palazzo Davanzanti in
1926. The structure fell into disuse before reopening in 1956 as the
present Museo Statale della Casa Fiorentina Antica (see Ferrazza 1994).
The Machiavellian world of today's art market is not new: a 1923 cable
sent from the Paris office of Duveen Brothers (another very prominent
art dealership at the time) to their office in New York states, "Bardini
going to Volpi's in March. We must be careful... get friendly with
Volpi" (Duveen 1876-1981, box 260, folder 18).
2. For more on this mark, see Cora 1973, 1: 39 n. 2; 2: pi. 350 (M225);
see also no. 8 above.
3. Inv. 1124-1904; Rackham 1940, 1: no. 41, pi. j} 2: 11; Conti et al.
1991, 256, no. 81.- For examples, see Cora 1973, 2: figs. 99c, 101c, io2a-c, 103a, 103c,
io4a-b, 106, 107a, 107c; sale cat., Semenzato, Florence, November 11,
1987, lot 290; Conti et al. 1991, 250, 261, nos. 20-26, 119-23. - Anna Moore Valeri (1984, 486-87) has suggested that the so-called a
goccioloni pattern on Florentine zaffera wares may derive from the me
dieval vair, or squirrel pelt, which commonly served to line cloaks and
appears as a motif on furriers' coats of arms.
64 Relief-Blue Jar with Dots