With the return of the Florence International Antiques Biennial (BIAF), we take a look at three of the city’s distinguished antique dealers that are proudly participating in the globally renowned event.
Antichità Bacarelli
Antichità Bacarelli has been a firm fixture on Florence’s antiquarian scene since 1923. A proudly family business, the gallery was founded by grandfather Rizieri before his son, Benvenuto, bolstered the company’s reputation and Riccardo subsequently took over the reins. Riccardo’s son, Lapo, joined the business in 2011. Situated in the historic Palazzo della Manifattura Arte della Seta Lisio (via dei Fossi 45R), the Bacarelli family focuses on Italian antique paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance to Neoclassicism. Having participated in the Florence Antiques Biennial since 1961, the gallery boasts a strong international presence, organizing art exhibitions and taking part in renowned art fairs such as London Art Week and Masterpiece London.
Exhibiting at BIAF 2024: Ambrogio Borghi’s La Chioma di Berenice is a gypsum sculpture that derives from the famous marble sculpture that the artist presented at the 1878 Paris Exposition, which was described as “the most beautiful body of a young woman that has ever come out alive and vibrant from a block of Carrara”.
Botticelli Antichità
Franco Botticelli’s enterprising spirit and passion for the arts led him to found Botticelli Antichità (via Maggio 40R) in 1959. Initially a painter and art collector, Franco orchestrated a career change into antiques dealing, opening his gallery on via Maggio. After Franco’s death, his children, Eleonora and Bruno, decided to follow in their father’s footsteps, specializing in sculpture and “alta epoca” furniture. With a penchant for the uncommon, Eleonora and Bruno expanded their father’s expertise to include Renaissance sculptures, Wunderkammer objects, ancient fabrics and primitive paintings. Since their BIAF debut in the 1960s, Botticelli Antichità continues to reflect Franco’s passion for 20th-century Tuscan art, merging Renaissance and medieval art, while exhibiting young contemporary artists in partnership with Galleria Continua.
Exhibiting at BIAF 2024: This Madonna and Child by the Lombard artist, referred to as Primo Maestro della Loggia degli Osii, is a beautiful 14th-century sculpture measuring 80x43x30 centimetres. Hailing from a private collection, the work was carved from a single wooden trunk and was originally entirely painted, traces of which remain today.
Tettamanti Antichità
Born in Switzerland and Florentine by adoption, Massimo Tettamanti established his namesake antiques gallery, Tettamanti Antichità, in a long and narrow premises along via Maggio in 1998. With a historical, almost scientific, approach, the focus here is on applied arts, especially Italian, with furniture, marble inlay and cabinetry lining the walls in conversation with figurative arts dating to the 18th and 19th centuries. Whiling away an hour in this busy gallery is like stepping back in time and space.
Exhibiting at BIAF 2024: Eliseo Sala’s oil portrait, signed and dated 1854, depicts Giovanni Timoteo Calosso, better known as Rustem Bey, who wrote Mémoires d’un vieux soldat, one of the most reliable and authoritative accounts of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe.
