The Villa of Poggio a Caiano was one of the favourite residences of the Grand Prince Ferdinando de’ Medici (1663 – 1713), son of the Grand Duke Cosimo III and destined to succeed his father in the government of Tuscany.

In concomitance with the major exhibition devoted to the Grand Prince in the Uffizi Gallery, the idea is to recall the figure of Ferdinando in the site of his favourite villa too. It was here that Ferdinando spent the spring and autumn, riding his Berber horses, attending sophisticated concerts and operas performed in the theatre of the villa and devoting himself to the organisation of his own particular collection of miniature paintings, the so-called “Gabinetto di opere in piccolo” which went on to become a famous example of a late seventeenth-century collection.

Significant evidence of Ferdinando’s commissions for the Villa of Poggio has fortunately survived in the large fresco dating to 1698 by Anton Domenico Gabbiani showing Cosimo de’ Medici being presented to Jupiter by Florence, which can be seen on the ceiling of the dining room on the first floor. This painting shows the celebratory and official side of court taste, but other aspects of the personality of Ferdinando, who was a curious man, interested in a wide range of artistic genres, also deserve to be explored.

An itinerary extending through fourteen rooms of the Still Life Museum is devoted to the Grand Prince as a collector of Still Lifes, highlighting the works that were certainly part of his collection. At the end of this itinerary is a room devoted to two different aspects of his tastes as a collector: the miniatures and the genre paintings, comprising in the latter group the views, the bambocciate and the grotesque and humorous paintings portraying pygmies and dwarves, or the whimsical caramogi.

The Grand Prince Ferdinando was attracted not only by great figure painting and by the works of the most famous painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Titian, Parmigianino and Sebastiano Ricci), but also by artists engaged in collateral aspects and genres that can certainly not be defined as minor, since they made a very particular and novel impression on seventeenth-century taste: the flower painters, the painters of vedute, the Dutch petits maîtres, the bamboccianti painters of everyday life and the caricaturists.

The inventory of the assets of the Grand Prince drawn up at his death in 1713 records no less than sixteen paintings depicting caramogi (deformed, dwarf-like figures)   intent upon various games and activities, for one of which the author’s name is specifically mentioned: the Brescia artist  Faustino Bocchi, a renowned specialist in ‘the painting of pygmies’ who appears to have sojourned at the grand ducal court, and whom Ferdinando may in any case have met during a trip to Veneto and Lombardy in 1688. His interest in this particular grotesque genre can be linked to the recollections of Ferdinando as a passionate lover of amusing sonnets, ‘burlette burlesche’, of poets in ottava rima, comedians and ham actors.

The small collection of works displayed in the room dedicated to the Grand Prince Ferdinando in the Still Life Museum of the Villa of Poggio a Caiano offers a synthetic overview of the vedute, the bambocciate and the caramogi that he loved, displaying works not normally visible to the public since they are conserved in the repositories of the Florentine Galleries and of other institutions. Also on display is an as yet unpublished painting by Bartolomeo Ligozzi on which the date and signature have been discovered.

The show is rounded off by a selection of ancient manuscripts and printed books connected with the eclectic personality of Ferdinando: a cultured, passionate and curious collector who is also remembered as a cordial and affable man with a great sense of humour. As one of the manuscript memoirs recalls: “With his departure, spirit and joy too took their leave of Florence and Tuscany”.