in the face of beauty
Dizziness, a racing heart, confusion… It was while visiting the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence in 1817 that the French writer Stendhal experienced this apotheosis of the senses — a loss of control in the face of beauty. Today, the phenomenon is well known as “Stendhal syndrome.” Two hundred and nine years later, at the beginning of this autumn, everything in the capital of the Renaissance seems conducive to producing new victims of the syndrome described by the French writer.
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Florence is in artistic ferment. To coincide with the Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze, a venerable antiques fair now in its 34th edition, the city has gone all out with a host of collateral events.
giotto and Victor Man
It begins, fittingly enough, at the Basilica of Santa Croce, where the sumptuous frescoes by Giotto decorating the Bardi Chapel, painted around 1317, have just been restored and are once again visible.
At the Museo Novecento, on the sublime Piazza Santa Maria Novella, paintings by the highly talented and sought-after Romanian artist Victor Man (born 1974), who lives in Rome, are on view. Around twenty works, executed with great meticulousness over long periods of time, focus on his favorite subject: women. A powerful sense of mystery emanates from these faces immersed in shadowy atmospheres. In June 2023, one painting by the artist, who is represented by the multinational gallery David Zwirner, sold at auction for a record €2 million.
broken
Not far away, Palazzo Strozzi, which has succeeded in establishing its program firmly on the international exhibition calendar, has since September 25 been examining the representation of fragments of the body as works in their own right, from Egyptian and Roman antiquity to contemporary art, via Rodin.
The “universal” argument is convincing, even if one might have wished for more works by Auguste Rodin. A major figure in the history of the fragment, he transformed the severed body part from something associated with weakness into a source of power, as in his fabulous Iris, Messenger of the Gods.
Despite a brilliant narrative, one might also have wished for a chapter devoted to the fragment that obsesses all humanity: sex.
By coincidence, Fondazione Prada in Milan is also thinking on a grand scale with Global Antiquity: 150 works tracing the exchanges between Europe and Asia that were already taking place in antiquity.
baroque grotto
But back to the fair. The setting of the Biennale lives up to the Italian Renaissance tradition: Palazzo Corsini. This Baroque palace, which has belonged to the same family since 1649, contains an artificial grotto conceived at once as a theatrical set and a fantastical garden. Visitors accustomed to art fairs held in soulless convention centers will hardly believe their eyes.
The visit can begin. It has to be said that the quality of the BIAF is relatively uneven, but it contains some genuine gems at widely varying prices.
Carracci
The superstar of the 2026 edition is a rare river landscape by one of the pioneers of Baroque art, Annibale Carracci (1560–1609), offered by the Rimini gallery Alice Fine Art. Carracci revolutionized the painting of his time, among other things by giving nature a leading role rather than reducing it to mere scenery. The asking price, however, is an audacious €7 million, considering that the artist’s auction record reached only €5.3 million in 2019.
medici ambitions
For €6 million less, admirers of handsome young men may be won over at Bruno Botticelli’s Florence gallery by a monumental marble, 2.1 meters high, carved around 1628 by Antonio Novelli (1599–1662) and representing Apollo.
Working in the wake of Medici ambitions, Novelli distinguished himself through grand court decorations without ever becoming truly famous north of the Alps. This particular marble, commissioned by Marie de’ Medici for the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, never actually made it to France. “This marble has not appeared on the market for four centuries,” the dealer says proudly.
kneeling king
Old Master specialist Maurizio Canesso is based in Paris but has not missed a single Florence Biennale since 1998. On his stand is a small gold-ground painting by Paolo Veneziano (c. 1300–c. 1362), The King of Brittany, Father of Saint Ursula. A kneeling king, dressed in a dazzling red tunic, prays over the marriage of his daughter.
“Veneziano is a major artist, the Giotto of Venice,” Maurizio Canesso explains, thereby making a link with the newly restored chapel at Santa Croce. “These are the kinds of paintings collectors are looking for today: rare, precious and in good condition. In cases like this, prices have not fallen at all.”
Discovering the true authorship of a painting comes at a price. The work, measuring just 21.5 by 25.5 centimeters and offered for €480,000, was acquired at auction in Rouen in 2017. At the time, it bore the vague attribution “Northern Italian School, 15th century.”
hideous creatures
One of the most curious paintings at the fair, Two Old People Courting, dates from the 16th century. It shows two hideous creatures with enormous mouths and tongues hanging out, voluptuously clutching at one another. It is signed by Bartolomeo Passerotti (1529–1592), known for his exuberant scenes and grotesque faces. Offered for €180,000 by Carlo Orsi of Milan, it long belonged to one of Italy’s most illustrious contemporary art historians, Federico Zeri (1921–1998). In France, another eminent art historian, former Louvre director Pierre Rosenberg, is also an admirer of Passerotti’s grimacing figures.
glancing sideway
Old Master painting is often described as “classical painting,” a field seemingly condemned to a certain immutability. Yet it too is subject to shifts in taste. Under the impetus of museums such as the Musée d’Orsay, which in 2019 presented the fascinating exhibition Black Models — an examination of the representation of Black figures throughout art history — paintings dealing with this subject are now reappearing on the market.
On the stand of Umberto Giacometti of Naples, for example, there is a striking portrait of a Black woman glancing sideways, painted by the Neapolitan artist Vincenzo Marinelli (1819–1892), known locally for his Orientalist scenes. He is said to have encountered the young woman during his travels in Egypt. The painting is offered for €30,000.
secret compartments
Among the most fascinating objects at the BIAF is a small late-16th-century coin cabinet on the stand of the discreet Florentine dealer Sandro Morelli, designed in the form of a piece of architecture. Made of walnut, it represents the façade of a Bramante palace, with a central staircase, arches, columns and balconies. This extraordinarily ingenious mechanical cabinet contains no fewer than 27 secret compartments. Coming from an Italian family, it is offered for €90,000 — roughly the price of a painting by a contemporary artist only just beginning to gain recognition.
Sandro Morelli makes no secret of the fact that ten years ago this kind of furniture would have been offered at a higher price.
The market for Italian Old Masters deserves to break out of its traditional confines. It offers excellent opportunities for willing victims of Stendhal syndrome.
