Niccolò Gaddi’s 16th-Century Art Library. New Archival Evidence for a Lost Ensemble

The fame of Niccolò di Sinibaldo Gaddi’s (1537-1591) gallery and library persistently inhabited the memory of Florence from the owner’s death onwards. Down in the heart of the city, in via del Giglio, Gaddi’s urban palace, the so-called Casa dell’Orto, contained family’s books and artworks, while the suburban residence, Fontallerta, near Fiesole, contained scarcely known frescoes. Despite Niccolò’s fedecommesso, the Casa dell’Orto and its content, were endangered by the voracity of local and foreign buyers, until the mid of the 18th century. In 1755 the Gaddi library was secured to Florence by a policy of preservation enacted by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena, twenty years before the acquisition of the rests of the Gaddi gallery in 1778. In the first section, the Gaddi library will be introduced within the circumstances of its acquisition, tracing four art-related texts through the three inventories preserved in Archivio di Stato (ASFi) and in Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (BNCF) in Florence. From the general to the particular, following the traces of a lost collection, the third section will introduce two manuscripts by Agostino Cesareo that relates with Niccolò Gaddi’s patronage between 1570/1590 at the Villa di Fontallerta.