Giuseppe Zocchi Florence 1716/17 - 1767

Acquired by George, 3rd Earl of Ashburnham (1760-1830), while living in Florence at the villa Pasquale (now the villa Pratolino), probably some time in the 1780s;
Thence by descent to his eldest son by his second marriage Bertram, 4th Earl of Ashburnham (1797-1878), Ashburnham House, Dover Street, 1873, and later at Ashburnham Place, Sussex (where it hung on the lower register in the Great Entrance Hall);
Thence by descent to his eldest son Bertram, 5th Earl of Asburnham (1840-1913), Ashburnham Place, Sussex;
Thence by inheritance to his daughter Mary Catherine Charlotte (called "Lady Catherine") Ashburnham (1890-1953), Ashburnham Place, Sussex;
Sold by Order of the The Trustees of the Ashburnham Settled Estates and the Executors of Lady Catherine Ashburnham, London, Sotheby’s, 24 June 1953, lot 51, for £550 to Hallsborough;
With William Hallsborough Ltd., 1953;
Acquired by Sir Edward Donner, Berkshire;
With Harari & Johns, Ltd., London, 1984, from whom acquired by the present owner.

Florence, Forte di Belvedere, Firenze e la sua immagine. Cinque secoli di vedutismo, 29 June – 30 September 1994, cat. no. 82.

1830 Ashburnham Inventory, where the provenance is listed as being "from Villa Pasquale", (as listed in the 1953 sale catalogue, see Provenance);
C. Hussey, "Ashburnham Place, Sussex – II", in Country Life, vol. CXIII, no. 2936, 23 April 1953, p. 1249, reproduced p. 1247, fig. 3;
Advertisement in Connoisseur, December 1953, reproduced;
Exhibition of Works of Art from private collections in the North West and North Wales, exhibition catalogue, Manchester, Manchester City Art Gallery, 21 September – 30 October 1960, under cat. no. 131;
A.Morassi, "Circa alcune opere sconosciute di Giuseppe Zocchi", in Bollettino dei musei civici veneziani, vol. 7, 1962, no. 1, p. 8;
M. Gregori, in Firenze e la sua immagine. Cinque secoli di vedutismo, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Forte di Belvedere, 29 June – 30 September 1994, p. 147, cat. no. 82, reproduced pp. 148-149;
M. Gregori & S. Blasio, Firenze nella Pittura e nel Disegno dal Trecento al Settecento, Florence 1994, pp. 192, 213, footnote 73, reproduced in colour pp. 196-197, fig. 250;
M. Gregori, in Firenze e la sua immagine. Cinque secoli di vedutismo, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Forte di Belvedere, 29 June – 30 September 1994, p. 147, cat. no. 82, reproduced pp. 148-149;
A.Tosi, Inventare la Realtà. Giuseppe Zocchi e la Toscana del Settecento, Florence 1997, pp. 81, 100, footnote 65, reproduced in colour p. 77;
R. Contini, The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Italian Painting, London 2002, pp. 370, 372, and 431;
Y. Elet, "Seats of Power. The Outdoor Benches of Early Modern Florence", in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, December 2002, reproduced (detail) p. 447, fig. 6.

Zocchi’s view of the Piazza della Signoria is topographically accurate and it seems more than likely that he must have used preparatory drawings, probably carried out in situ, for the composition. Indeed the scene is loosely based on a study from Zocchi’s series of seventy-seven drawings representing views of Florence and Tuscany, carried out in preparation for a series of engravings, today in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (fig. 1; also reproduced in Gregori & Blasio, see Literature, p. 184, fig. 231). The drawing was engraved by Carlo Gregori (1718-1759) and published by Gerini in Florence in 1744. The artist has taken the same viewpoint in both scenes and though the buildings are almost identical, the staffage has been substantially changed. The most significant difference is that whereas the figures in Zocchi’s drawing are celebrating the Festival of Homage ("Festa degli Omaggi nella Solennità di S. Gio. Batista Protettore della Città"), those in the painting are shown in a more sparse arrangement, in the piazza as it must have looked every day. This alteration may have been at the behest of the patron who commissioned the work, and the inclusion of an elegantly dressed bystander at the left of the composition would suggest that it may have been intended for (if not commissioned directly by) a foreign patron.

The Piazza della Signoria is one of the three principal piazze in Florence and it takes its name from the Palazzo Vecchio (or Palazzo della Signoria), which from the 13th century was the meeting-place for government and is still used as the town hall of Florence today. Straight ahead is the 14th-century Loggia dei Lanzi (1376-82), so named after Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Swiss lancers (Lanzichenecchi). Its function as an open-air sculpture gallery persists today, and Cellini’s Perseus (1545) and Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine (1583) are still on display on the same sites. Other sculptures visible in the painting are still in situ today: Giambologna’s equestrian statue of Cosimo I (1587-94), Ammannati’s fountain of Neptune (1565-75), Michelangelo’s David (albeit a cast of the original; 1501-4), and Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus (1534). The building seen sharply receding left of centre is a wing of the Uffizi, as it would have appeared in the 18th century, whilst the buildings at the right of the composition have since been modified.