Some Interesting Recent History of a Rinuccini Castle - by Tessel Luitjens

Fig. 1 Villa Torre a Cona

This spring I have been a research intern at the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence for the Patrician Patronage Project. The project aims to research the artistic activities undertaken by Florentine patrician families between 1530 and 1670. Allocated to me were the Rinuccini, a family I had never heard of before, but of whom I now speak as “my family”. The Rinuccini came from Cona, a small village in the heart of the Chianti, just ten kilometres south of Florence. Their Villa Torre a Cona is surrounded by a breath-taking scenery of vineyards and olive groves (fig. 1). Today, it houses a wine estate, where we can experience all the good of the Rinuccini in liquid form (although it is no longer in their possession; the last male Rinuccini died in 1848). 

Against the Medici – By Julia Dijkstra

A few years ago, I was one of the first interns of the Patrician Patronage Project (PPP) who had the opportunity to stay in Florence for three months and to discover the magnificent cultural heritage of this city. My assignment was to delve into the art patronage of several Florentine patrician families, and to add all the artworks that were commissioned in the period between 1530 – 1670 to the PPP-database. Furthermore, I was assigned with the ‘special’ task to research three patrons in particular: Niccolò Gaddi (1499 – 1552), Niccolò Ridolfi (1501 – 1550) and Giovanni Salviati (1490 – 1553). Before starting my research, I knew very little about these men. Yet, they seemed to have a lot in common: they were (1) descendants of important Florentine families, (2) cardinals residing in Rome and (3) important art patrons in sixteenth-century Italy. Furthermore, these three cardinals were so-called fuorusciti (exiles), exiled by the Medici family after the fall of the Florentine Republic in 1530.