Resumen de Nuovi retratti di Giulio Pignatti per la società fiorentina del Settecento
Giulio Pignatti or Pignatta (1679-1751), a painter from Modena who specialized in portraiture, arrived in Florence in 1706 with Cristoforo Munari, and remained there until his death. During the forty-five years he spent in the Tuscan capital, Pignatti had occasion to make contact with the last members of the Medici dynasty, with Grand Tourists (as attested by the "Portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine with four friends in the Tribuna of the Uffizi", dated 1715, a precursor of Johann Zoffany's depiction of the gallery's "Tribuna"), and with numerous Florentine noble families.
Pignatti's slender oeuvre can now be expanded by six portraits commissioned by the Strozzi family and now displayed in the Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati in Florence, as well as four other paintings (two housed in the Corsi Collection of the Museo Stefano Bardini, one in the Museo di Casa Martelli and one formerly on the art market). These works contribute to a more accurate chronology, and give us a more precise and concrete sense of the artist.
