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Consumption and trade of art between Italy and England in the first half of the sixteenth century: the London house of the Bardi and Cavalcanti company
Author(s) -
Sicca Cinzia M.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
renaissance studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 16
eISSN - 1477-4658
pISSN - 0269-1213
DOI - 10.1111/1477-4658.00010
Subject(s) - reign , supporter , art , monarchy , art history , thriving , performance art , humanities , classics , history , law , sociology , archaeology , political science , politics , social science
Scattered passages in Vasari's Lives of the Artists testify to the trade of artworks outside Italy at the hands of the Florentine merchants. One such merchant‐venturer, Giovanni di Lorenzo Cavalcanti, is explicitly mentioned by Vasari in connection with commissions for Henry VIII. Documents found in private and public Italian archives shed light on Cavalcanti's activity, on the increasingly important role he came to play during the first half of the reign of Henry VIII. A strong Medici supporter, gentleman usher to Pope Leo X, Cavalcanti acted as a link between the Curia and the English monarchy, in a capacity which combined a semi‐diplomatic function with a thriving trading and banking activity in partnership with Pierfrancesco de' Bardi. In par‐ticular, the paper focuses on an analysis and discussion of the function of the firm's London house, as it can be evinced from a copia di masserizia (household inventory) drafted in 1523, when for six and a half months Gregorio da Casale (permanent English representative at the Curia) and Gabriello Cexano (Cardinal Giulio de Medici's secretary) lived in the house. The document affords an unprecedented insight into an early sixteenth‐century Italian household in London, its internal distribution, furnishings and works of art on display.