Pietro Neri Scacciati

(Florence 1684–1749)
Native and exotic birds from the aviaries of Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany,
oil on canvas, 144 x 232 cm, framed

Provenance:
probably comissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo III de Medici of Tuscany (1642–1723) or Gian Gastone de Medici (1671–1737) for the Villa Ambrogiana;
sale, Herman Combé, 4 November 1966, lot 359;
Private Collection, Germany

We are grateful to Alberto Cottino for confirming the attribution and for his help in cataloguing the present painting. His written analysis is available.

This painting is a significant rediscovery and probably formed part of the celebrated series of animal paintings commissioned by the last two Medici grand dukes - Cosimo III and his son, Gian Gastone.

The series of approximately a hundred pictures, was painted by Bartolomeo Bimbi and Pietro Neri Scacciati during the first four decades of the eighteenth century and were destined to be displayed in the princely setting of the Medici Villa Ambrogiana. The two artists drew their inspiration both from living and from taxidermy animals in the Medici’s collections, to create pictures that portray very vividly and diversely the relationship between animal collecting and the use of rare fauna as an art subject within the context of the Florentine grand-ducal court. The animal “portraits” Bimbi painted for Cosimo III are very precise and analytical in their anatomical naturalism, and these pictorial characteristics are linked to Cosimo III’s interests in natural history, his promotion of zoological research and his desire to catalogue and to classify the living fauna and flora in his domain according to his unique sense of the macrocosmic order. The zoological paintings Scacciati created for Gian Gastone display a departure from the traditions of mimetic naturalism; instead they reveal an intriguing connection with scientific advances in taxidermy, which made it possible to preserve rare specimens from the princely menagerie.

This development anticipated the conception of natural history museums during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and in the context of the Medici court, Scacciati’s paintings signaled the end of zoological collecting, as well as the decline of the Medici dynasty. Many of the specimens depicted in the present painting appear in other works by Bimbi or Neri Sacacciati, demonstrating the intense level of preparation that both artists made for this important commission (fig. 1 showing a study for the golden pheasant, made by Bimbi, also included in the present composition). A comparable painting of equally important proportions was on the German Art Market, whilst Alberto Cottino compares it to a similar composition, today at Poggio a Caiano in the Villa Medicea, which also features the lower left group of the two cockerels and a pheasant depicted in the present painting.