Bartolomeo Ammannati

Centenaries and anniversaries represent an occasion not only for academic research to deepen our appreciation and extend our knowledge: documentary photography too can draw advantage from these celebratory occasions. So, as part of preparations for the important exhibition at the Museo del Bargello that recently celebrated the fifth centenary of the birth of Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511-2011), the Photo Library of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz was invited by Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi to collaborate in the project by carrying out a photographic campaign whose exceptional nature consists in the particular conditions made possible by the Bargello itself. Some of Ammannati’s sculptures have in fact been transferred from their traditional sites in the museum, with a view to a rearrangement of some of its displays and the virtual reconstruction of the Fontana di Sala Grande group. In particular, some figures have been temporarily detached from the walls on which they had been displayed for decades. This permitted the photographer Roberto Sigismondi to conduct a photographic campaign truly in the round, which offers scholars various novel points of views and which can be consulted in its entirety in the Digital Photo Library. Our tribute to Ammannati is not limited just to his sculptural output, but is completed by a series of photographs that document one of his main architectural achievements, and now the seat of the Photo Library itself: the Palazzo Grifoni.

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