‘Malachite Rooms’ of Villa San Donato: The Reconstruction of the Ensembles and the Attribution of the Pieces

Abstract

Demidoff’s villa San Donato near Florence, in the middle of the 19th century, was one of the most interesting phenomena of European artistic life. The richest collection, acquired by the two generations of the family and opened for the choice public at the end of the 1850s, was attractive not only for the curious tourist by also for the specialists in the history of art. This collection gives his influence for the collecting of the second half of the 19th century The total liquidation of the 1860s–1880s destroyed this ensemble. However, thanks to the sales catalogues, some detailed descriptions of the interiors of San Donato and the archive’s documents, unique pictures, it becomes possible to restore not only the list of this collection but to try to understand the taste of these collectors. At the end of the 1850s at the rooms of Villa San Donato was amassed one of the most important collections from Russian malachite. Those pieces reflected two main styles applied by European and Russian artists. One of the rooms was decorated by the pieces created in the first third of the 19th century in empire taste. The second interior, remarkable by the concentration of the malachite pieces realized in the middle 19th century was known only by a description completed by the malachite pieces in the second rococo taste. The decoration of this room was destroyed by the sales. However, the study of the descriptions of 1858 and 1864, archive documents, sale catalogues and previous research permit to reconstruct of the main elements of one of the main interiors of the Florentine villa of the Demidoff family and to talk about the very special taste of his members.