ENGLISH VERSION Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, Catalogo delle pitture della Regia Galleria compilato da Giuseppe Bencivenni già Pelli. S.P.E.S, 2004

Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
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Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni
Catalogo delle pitture della Regia Galleria compilato da Giuseppe Bencivenni già Pelli [Catalogue of the paintings of the Royal Gallery compiled by Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni]

Gli Uffizi alla fine del Seicento [The Uffizi at the end of the 17th Century]

Edited by Miriam Fileti Mazza and Bruna Tomasello

S.P.E.S editore, 2004


[1] Let's face it: every time one hears mentioning Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, pulling a face may be almost instinctive. We immediately think of his highly troubled relationship with Abbot Luigi Lanzi, the author of the Storia pittorica (History of Painting), and the picture that emerges is that of a grey bureaucrat who would do anything to put a spoke in the wheels of his great rival, and subordinate in rank. There is no doubt that Pelli Bencivenni would only be dwarfed by a comparison with Lanzi, and everything that the latter represented for modern art history. And yet, we are not faced with an insignificant rubber-stamper. Miriam Fileti Mazza and Bruna Tomasello - who had the nerves to explore the extremely large Pelli Fund, owned by the Region of Tuscany – have the merit to have carried out a valuable and patient work of revaluation of Pelli’s work in recent years.

[2] Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni was appointed director general of today's Uffizi in 1775 and remained there until 1792. His only publication, as a director, was the Saggio Istorico (Essay on the History of the Royal Gallery) in 1779 . "Until now we believed that the Saggio Istorico... represented an isolated occurrence, too many times lagging behind and limited in comparison with the more structured and well-known production by Luigi Lanzi, his antagonist ever. In the light of this research, it became clear that Giuseppe Pelli had conceived instead, from the first months of his duties, a complex and global process. He started with a first historiography chapter to provide a complete description of the Gallery, followed by a detailed analysis of each individual and specialized sector of the vast and composite Medici-Lorraine heritage. However, he found himself to manage such an endeavour alone, deprived of that 'assistant antiquarian’ who – according to the same decree of appointment – would have accompanied him for the entire duration of his term. The Catalogo dei quadri (Catalogue of the paintings) is therefore ... the most challenging part of this universal avenue of work, which solicited continuous linkages with and enhanced passions for other disciplines (numismatics , graphics, glyptic) " (pp. XIII- XIV).

[3] The first draft of the Catalogo dei quadri is probably ready in the summer of 1779, but here begins a long period of second thoughts, of new interpretations, of amendments, which are all often customary in the activity of the scholar. A few years pass, until the ‘misconduct’ happens in the course of 1782: Luigi Lanzi, his associate antiquarian, publishes La Real Galleria di Firenze The Royal Gallery of Florence in the Giornale de’ Letterati of Pisa. An open war erupts. Fileti Mazza and Tomasello describe it at p. 100 of their work Galleria degli Uffizi 1775-1792. Un laboratorio culturale per Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni (The Uffizi Gallery – A cultural laboratory for Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni): "Among the documents of the Library of the Uffizi his complaint is preserved, raising ‘two hundred doubts’ on the work of the antiquarian, and confirming thereby his mood. Practically the main charge was that Lanzi had not worked on a daily basis in cooperation with those who worked in the Gallery, had attended the museum's rooms during the hours in which the Director was not present "corrupting" the entire staff to get access to the Cabinets, denying any coordination and bringing forward the conclusion of the catalogues and inventories, when they were still work in progress." The publication of Lanzi’s catalogue did nothing else but causing further delay. Only in 1791 Pelli Bencivenni requested the new Grand Duke Ferdinand III, to publish the text in three volumes. The answer was negative. The following year, Pelli Bencivenni left his position as director. The catalogue of the paintings was due to remain unpublished until the present work.

[4] The Catalogue is reflected in the Pelli Fund in two manuscript versions (Archivio della Biblioteca degli Uffizi, ms. 463 ins., And 10 ins. 4). "This volume presents a single transcription that, starting from the first version, is integrated with the second ... Some sections, such as those on sculptures, inscriptions, sarcophagi, and in general the ancient artefacts, exist only in the second edition "(p. xii). In his preface to the work Pelli Bencivenni speaks of an index of authors that was not found in the archive. The index which can be consulted in the book is the work of the curators.

[5 ] For more information about the Pelli Fund it is useful to refer to the writings of Gli scritti di Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni. Anagrafe storica con Cd-Rom (Writings by Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni. Historic registry, §01444§ by the same authors and published by the Pagnini publisher in 2005. Finally, it is worth mentioning that Miriam Fileti Mazza published with SPES, in 2004, the Fortuna della Glittica nella Toscana Mediceo-Lorenese e storia del Discorso sopra le gemme intagliate di G. Pelli Bencivenni (The Fortune of Glyptic in Tuscany of the Medici –Lorraine, and history of the Discourse on the carved gems of G. Bencivenni Pelli). Many of Pelli's manuscripts can be consulted today in the website of the Fondazione Memofonte at the address http://www.memofonte.it/autori/giuseppe-pelli-bencivenni-1729-1809.html. The Efemeridi are available at http://pelli.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/it/progetto.html.