Bindo Altoviti
sculptor
Benvenuto Cellini
(Florence, 1500 - 1571, Florence)
Date1549
Place MadeFlorence, Tuscany, Italy, Europe
MediumTin-bronze
Dimensions105.5 x 68.5 x 40.5 cm (41 9/16 x 26 15/16 x 15 15/16 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Accession numberS26e21
eMuseum ID727037
EmbARK ObjectID12375
TMS Source ID1502
Last Updated11/14/24
Status
Not on viewWeb Commentary
Bindo Altoviti (1491–1557) was a prominent banker and art collector. An opponent of the Medici family, which had ruled Florence for generations, Altoviti spent much of his life in Rome where he became a wealthy banker to the popes. He eventually launched an unsuccessful revolt against the Medici.
The sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini worked principally in Florence, but also in Rome and Paris. The bust is one of only two over life-sized portrait busts made by Cellini, and was praised by Michelangelo, who felt it was the equal of celebrated ancient Greek and Roman works. Isabella placed a self-portrait of Cellini’s rival, Baccio Bandinelli nearby.
BibliographyNotesGiovanni Gaetano Bottari. (ed.). Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti scritte da Giorgio Vasari..., vol. 3 (Rome, 1760), p. 271, n2.
Domenico Moreni. Illustrazione storico-critica di una rarissima medaglia rappresentante Bindo Altoviti: opera di Michelangiolo [sic] Buonarroti (Florence, 1824), pp. 55, 104-11.
Francesco Tassi (ed.). Vita di Benvenuto Cellini: orefice e scultore fiorentino, vol. 2 (Florence, 1829), pp. 433-35, n2, ill. (the illustration is a print by Giovanni Paolo Rossi after a drawing by Francesco Sabatelli)
Achille Monti. "Il busto di Bindo Altoviti opera del Cellini." Arte e lettere, vol. 2 (1865), pp. 182-83.
Luigi Passerini. Genealogia e storia della famiglia Altoviti (Florence, 1871), p. 55.
Eugène Plon. Benvenuto Cellini: Orfévre Médailleur, Sculpteur (Paris, 1883), pp. 221-23, pl. 19. (as about 1550)
Domenico Gnoli. "Le demolizioni in Roma. Il palazzo Altoviti." Archivio storico dell'arte, vol. 2 (1888), pp. 210-11, ill.
Émile Molinier. Benvenuto Cellini (Paris, 1894), pp. 64, 86, 88, ill.
Rodolfo Lanciani. Storia degli scavi di Roma e notizie intorno le collezioni romane di antichita, vol. 1 (Rome, 1902), p. 165.
Catalogue. Fenway Court. (Boston, 1903), pp. 20-21. (quoting Michelangelo's letter to Cellini)
M.H. Bernath et al. "Cellini" in Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, et al. (eds.). Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: Unter Mitwirkung von etwa 400 Fachgelehrten, vol. 6 (Leipzig, 1912), p. 274. (as 1550)
Robert H. Hobart Cust. Benvenuto Cellini (London, 1912), pp. 133-34, 176, 179, ill. (as 1550)
Morris Carter. Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston, 1925; Reprint, Boston, 1972), p. 169.
Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan. Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance: the Charles Eliot Norton lectures for the years 1927-1928 (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 238-39, fig. 122. (as about 1550)
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), pp. 217-18, pl. 9. (as about 1550; the base as original)
Coriolano Belloni. Un banchiere del Rinascimento: Bindo Altoviti (Rome, 1935), pp. flyleaf, 45-46, ill. (erroneously reports that the bust was sold to the Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Adolfo Venturi. Storia dell'arte italiana, vol. 10, tome 2: La scultura del Cinquecento, part 2 (Milan, 1936), pp. 471-72, fig. 348.
Stuart Preston. "Bindo Altoviti" in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed.). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), p. 29, ill. (as about 1550)
Ettore Camesasca. Tutta l'opera del Cellini (Milan, 1955), pp. 24, 46, 67, pls. 66-67. (as 1550)
Aldo Stella. "Bindo Altoviti" in Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (ed.). Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 2 (Rome, 1960), pp. 574-75.
William N. Mason. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 6, no. 5 ([30 Sept.] 1962), p. 2.
John Pope-Hennessy. Italian High Reniassance and Baroque Sculpture (London, 1963), vol. 1, p. 95, fig. 122; vol. 3, p. 69. (as about 1550)
Rollin Hadley. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 7, no. 22 (26 Jan. 1964), p. 2. (excerpting Eric MacLagan, p. 238)
Detlef Heikamp. Benvenuto Cellini, I maestri della scultura, vol. 30 (Milan, 1966), pl. 66.
George L. Stout. Treasures from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1969), pp. 184-85, ill. (as probably 1550)
Carlo Pietrangeli et al. Guide rionali di Roma, vol. 5, part 3: Rione V - Ponte (Rome, 1974), p. 11, ill.
John Pope-Hennessy. "The Forging of Italian Renaissance Sculpture." Apollo, vol. 99 (1974), pp. 262, 267, n115. (as by Cellini)
Cornelius C. Vermeule III et al. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1977), pp. 122-25, no. 151. (about 1550)
Charles Avery. "Benvenuto Cellini's Bronze Bust of Bindo Altoviti" in James Thomas Herbert Baily (ed.). The Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors, "Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum" (London, 1978), pp. 62-72, nos. 1-4. (as about 1550)
Rollin van N. Hadley. Museums Discovered: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1981), pp. 178-79, ill. (as about 1550)
Charles Avery et al. L'opera completa del Cellini (Milan, 1981), pp. 98-99, no. 65, pl. 62. (as about 1550)
Marco Collareta. "Introduzione" in John Shearman. Il Manerismo (Florence, 1983), pp. xxii-xxiii
John Pope-Hennessy. Cellini (New York, 1985), pp. 218-21, 308, n12, pls. 123-26. (as possibly 1546, reportedly 1550; the base as original)
Rollin van N. Hadley (ed.). The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner 1887-1924 (Boston, 1987), pp. 142-46, 150, 152, 155-57, 202, 206.
Donatella Pegazzano. Bindo Altoviti: committenza e mecenatismo di un banchiere del Cinquecento. PhD Diss. (Florence: Università degli Studi di Firenze, 1988), pp. 95-103
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt. "Mrs. Gardner's Renaissance." Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy. Fenway Court, vol. 23 (1990-1991), pp. 13-15, fig. 5. (as about 1550)
Hilliard Goldfarb. Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy. Exploring Treasures in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum III. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1992), pp. 25-28, 47, ill. (as about 1550)
Alan Chong et al. (eds.) Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 2003), pp. 86-88, ills. (as about 1550)
Alan Chong et al. Raphael, Cellini & A Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 2003), pp. xi, xiv-xvi, xvii, xxi-xxii, 40-41, 80-82, 115, 125-28, 133-43, 162-64, 224, 237-62, 265, 267, 374, 399, 404-05, figs. 64, 67, 140, cat. 20. (as between January 1549 and the following spring; the base as not original)
Donatella Pegazzano et al. Benvenuto Cellini (Rome, 2005), pp. 162-166, 186, no. 17. (as 1549)
Cynthia Saltzman. Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 90, 92.
Alan Chong. "Isabella Gardner, Bernard Berenson, and Otto Gutekunst" in Jeremy Howard (ed.). Colnaghi: The History (London, 2010), p. 29, fig. 6.
Francesca G. Brewer et al. "The Portrait Busts of Cosimo I & Bindo Altoviti from the Inside Out." Marks of Identity: New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Italian Sculpture. Fenway Court, vol. 32 (Boston, 2012), pp. 62-81, figs. 2, 6, 8-9, 12-13, 15, 18. (as finished around 1550; the base as later)
Antonia Boström. "Kinship and Art: The Patronage of the Soderini and Ridolfi Families in Florence and Rome." Marks of Identity: New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Italian Sculpture. Fenway Court, vol. 32 (Boston, 2012), p. 99. (as 1549-1550, according to Dimitrios Zikos)
Jeremy Howard. "Colnaghi, Bernard Berenson and Mrs. Gardner's first Botticelli" in Colnaghi. Colnaghi Past, Present, and Future: An Anthology (London, 2016), pp. 21, 74-75, fig. 14.
Carl Brandon Strehlke. "Bernard and Mary Collect: Pictures Come to I Tattti" in Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls. The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at Villa I Tatti (Milan, 2015), pp. 28, 43.
Joseph Connors. "The Berenson Collection: A Guide." I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Fall 2016), p. 254.
Jeremy Howard. "Selling Botticelli to America: Colnaghi, Bernard Berenson and the Sale of the Madonna of the Eucharist to Isabella Stewart Gardner." Colnaghi Studies 4 (March 2019), p. 137.
Peta Motture. The Culture of Bronze: Making and Meaning in Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London: V&A Publishing, 2019), pp. 105, 220, pl. 3.42.
Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani (ed.). The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512-1570 (New Haven, Yale University Press: Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021), pp. 288, cat. 91
Domenico Moreni. Illustrazione storico-critica di una rarissima medaglia rappresentante Bindo Altoviti: opera di Michelangiolo [sic] Buonarroti (Florence, 1824), pp. 55, 104-11.
Francesco Tassi (ed.). Vita di Benvenuto Cellini: orefice e scultore fiorentino, vol. 2 (Florence, 1829), pp. 433-35, n2, ill. (the illustration is a print by Giovanni Paolo Rossi after a drawing by Francesco Sabatelli)
Achille Monti. "Il busto di Bindo Altoviti opera del Cellini." Arte e lettere, vol. 2 (1865), pp. 182-83.
Luigi Passerini. Genealogia e storia della famiglia Altoviti (Florence, 1871), p. 55.
Eugène Plon. Benvenuto Cellini: Orfévre Médailleur, Sculpteur (Paris, 1883), pp. 221-23, pl. 19. (as about 1550)
Domenico Gnoli. "Le demolizioni in Roma. Il palazzo Altoviti." Archivio storico dell'arte, vol. 2 (1888), pp. 210-11, ill.
Émile Molinier. Benvenuto Cellini (Paris, 1894), pp. 64, 86, 88, ill.
Rodolfo Lanciani. Storia degli scavi di Roma e notizie intorno le collezioni romane di antichita, vol. 1 (Rome, 1902), p. 165.
Catalogue. Fenway Court. (Boston, 1903), pp. 20-21. (quoting Michelangelo's letter to Cellini)
M.H. Bernath et al. "Cellini" in Ulrich Thieme, Felix Becker, et al. (eds.). Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart: Unter Mitwirkung von etwa 400 Fachgelehrten, vol. 6 (Leipzig, 1912), p. 274. (as 1550)
Robert H. Hobart Cust. Benvenuto Cellini (London, 1912), pp. 133-34, 176, 179, ill. (as 1550)
Morris Carter. Isabella Stewart Gardner and Fenway Court (Boston, 1925; Reprint, Boston, 1972), p. 169.
Sir Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan. Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance: the Charles Eliot Norton lectures for the years 1927-1928 (Cambridge, 1935), pp. 238-39, fig. 122. (as about 1550)
Gilbert Wendel Longstreet and Morris Carter. General Catalogue (Boston, 1935), pp. 217-18, pl. 9. (as about 1550; the base as original)
Coriolano Belloni. Un banchiere del Rinascimento: Bindo Altoviti (Rome, 1935), pp. flyleaf, 45-46, ill. (erroneously reports that the bust was sold to the Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Adolfo Venturi. Storia dell'arte italiana, vol. 10, tome 2: La scultura del Cinquecento, part 2 (Milan, 1936), pp. 471-72, fig. 348.
Stuart Preston. "Bindo Altoviti" in Alfred M. Frankfurter (ed.). The Gardner Collection (New York, 1946), p. 29, ill. (as about 1550)
Ettore Camesasca. Tutta l'opera del Cellini (Milan, 1955), pp. 24, 46, 67, pls. 66-67. (as 1550)
Aldo Stella. "Bindo Altoviti" in Alberto Maria Ghisalberti (ed.). Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 2 (Rome, 1960), pp. 574-75.
William N. Mason. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 6, no. 5 ([30 Sept.] 1962), p. 2.
John Pope-Hennessy. Italian High Reniassance and Baroque Sculpture (London, 1963), vol. 1, p. 95, fig. 122; vol. 3, p. 69. (as about 1550)
Rollin Hadley. “Notes, Records, Comments.” Gardner Museum Calendar of Events 7, no. 22 (26 Jan. 1964), p. 2. (excerpting Eric MacLagan, p. 238)
Detlef Heikamp. Benvenuto Cellini, I maestri della scultura, vol. 30 (Milan, 1966), pl. 66.
George L. Stout. Treasures from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1969), pp. 184-85, ill. (as probably 1550)
Carlo Pietrangeli et al. Guide rionali di Roma, vol. 5, part 3: Rione V - Ponte (Rome, 1974), p. 11, ill.
John Pope-Hennessy. "The Forging of Italian Renaissance Sculpture." Apollo, vol. 99 (1974), pp. 262, 267, n115. (as by Cellini)
Cornelius C. Vermeule III et al. Sculpture in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1977), pp. 122-25, no. 151. (about 1550)
Charles Avery. "Benvenuto Cellini's Bronze Bust of Bindo Altoviti" in James Thomas Herbert Baily (ed.). The Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors, "Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum" (London, 1978), pp. 62-72, nos. 1-4. (as about 1550)
Rollin van N. Hadley. Museums Discovered: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 1981), pp. 178-79, ill. (as about 1550)
Charles Avery et al. L'opera completa del Cellini (Milan, 1981), pp. 98-99, no. 65, pl. 62. (as about 1550)
Marco Collareta. "Introduzione" in John Shearman. Il Manerismo (Florence, 1983), pp. xxii-xxiii
John Pope-Hennessy. Cellini (New York, 1985), pp. 218-21, 308, n12, pls. 123-26. (as possibly 1546, reportedly 1550; the base as original)
Rollin van N. Hadley (ed.). The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Isabella Stewart Gardner 1887-1924 (Boston, 1987), pp. 142-46, 150, 152, 155-57, 202, 206.
Donatella Pegazzano. Bindo Altoviti: committenza e mecenatismo di un banchiere del Cinquecento. PhD Diss. (Florence: Università degli Studi di Firenze, 1988), pp. 95-103
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt. "Mrs. Gardner's Renaissance." Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy. Fenway Court, vol. 23 (1990-1991), pp. 13-15, fig. 5. (as about 1550)
Hilliard Goldfarb. Imaging the Self in Renaissance Italy. Exploring Treasures in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum III. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 1992), pp. 25-28, 47, ill. (as about 1550)
Alan Chong et al. (eds.) Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, 2003), pp. 86-88, ills. (as about 1550)
Alan Chong et al. Raphael, Cellini & A Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 2003), pp. xi, xiv-xvi, xvii, xxi-xxii, 40-41, 80-82, 115, 125-28, 133-43, 162-64, 224, 237-62, 265, 267, 374, 399, 404-05, figs. 64, 67, 140, cat. 20. (as between January 1549 and the following spring; the base as not original)
Donatella Pegazzano et al. Benvenuto Cellini (Rome, 2005), pp. 162-166, 186, no. 17. (as 1549)
Cynthia Saltzman. Old Masters, New World: America’s Raid on Europe’s Great Pictures (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 90, 92.
Alan Chong. "Isabella Gardner, Bernard Berenson, and Otto Gutekunst" in Jeremy Howard (ed.). Colnaghi: The History (London, 2010), p. 29, fig. 6.
Francesca G. Brewer et al. "The Portrait Busts of Cosimo I & Bindo Altoviti from the Inside Out." Marks of Identity: New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Italian Sculpture. Fenway Court, vol. 32 (Boston, 2012), pp. 62-81, figs. 2, 6, 8-9, 12-13, 15, 18. (as finished around 1550; the base as later)
Antonia Boström. "Kinship and Art: The Patronage of the Soderini and Ridolfi Families in Florence and Rome." Marks of Identity: New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Italian Sculpture. Fenway Court, vol. 32 (Boston, 2012), p. 99. (as 1549-1550, according to Dimitrios Zikos)
Jeremy Howard. "Colnaghi, Bernard Berenson and Mrs. Gardner's first Botticelli" in Colnaghi. Colnaghi Past, Present, and Future: An Anthology (London, 2016), pp. 21, 74-75, fig. 14.
Carl Brandon Strehlke. "Bernard and Mary Collect: Pictures Come to I Tattti" in Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls. The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at Villa I Tatti (Milan, 2015), pp. 28, 43.
Joseph Connors. "The Berenson Collection: A Guide." I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Fall 2016), p. 254.
Jeremy Howard. "Selling Botticelli to America: Colnaghi, Bernard Berenson and the Sale of the Madonna of the Eucharist to Isabella Stewart Gardner." Colnaghi Studies 4 (March 2019), p. 137.
Peta Motture. The Culture of Bronze: Making and Meaning in Italian Renaissance Sculpture (London: V&A Publishing, 2019), pp. 105, 220, pl. 3.42.
Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani (ed.). The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512-1570 (New Haven, Yale University Press: Exh. cat. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021), pp. 288, cat. 91
MarksNotesMark (on the base): [the rampant wolf of the Altoviti arms]
ProvenanceNotesProbably installed in the scrittoio of Palazzo Altoviti, Rome before spring 1550, where it was apparently seen by the Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).
Included in the 1644 inventory of Palazzo Altoviti.
Remained in Palazzo Altoviti, until its demolition in 1888.
Transfered by the Altoviti family to another house near Monte Giordano, Rome, about 1888.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to the South Kensington Museum, London for 20,000 scudi (the price was raised several times) in 1870, through the art collector Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820-1899). Unsold.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to the German art historian and curator Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) for 400,000 lire (raised from 100,000 lire) in 1873, through an agent of the Altoviti family. Unsold.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to several Italian museums throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Unsold.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1898, through the American art collector Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928). Unsold.
Purchased by the Belgian manager of Colnaghi & Co. Edmond Deprez from the Altoviti family for 140,000 lire in October 1898, through Edward Perry Warren.
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the art dealers Colnaghi & Co., London for £10,000 on 29 September 1898, through the American art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959).
Included in the 1644 inventory of Palazzo Altoviti.
Remained in Palazzo Altoviti, until its demolition in 1888.
Transfered by the Altoviti family to another house near Monte Giordano, Rome, about 1888.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to the South Kensington Museum, London for 20,000 scudi (the price was raised several times) in 1870, through the art collector Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820-1899). Unsold.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to the German art historian and curator Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) for 400,000 lire (raised from 100,000 lire) in 1873, through an agent of the Altoviti family. Unsold.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to several Italian museums throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Unsold.
Offered for sale by the Altoviti family to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1898, through the American art collector Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928). Unsold.
Purchased by the Belgian manager of Colnaghi & Co. Edmond Deprez from the Altoviti family for 140,000 lire in October 1898, through Edward Perry Warren.
Purchased by Isabella Stewart Gardner from the art dealers Colnaghi & Co., London for £10,000 on 29 September 1898, through the American art historian Bernard Berenson (1865-1959).
