Marco Campigli - Gondi, a Florentine Dynasty and Its Palace

An art historian, among the most brilliant of the new generation, he has brought back to life the majestic, monumental pietra forte fireplace by Giuliano da Sangallo that presides over the Salone of Palazzo Gondi. He has described the four elements — air, water, fire and earth — that inspired this important work, closely bound to the Gondi coat of arms and to the two statues of Hercules and Samson, the family’s guardian deities, one turned towards the door and the other towards the window, as though shielding the heart of the palace from evil spirits.

Marco Campigli studied at the Universities of Florence and Udine, working chiefly on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sculpture. A lecturer in Museology and Artistic Literature at the Università per Stranieri di Siena, he wrote the volume devoted to the work of the sculptor “Agostino di Duccio, fiorentino di nascita ma per un decennio attivo a Rimini: Luce e marmo” (Ed. Olschki).

He has written two further volumes, “Visibile pregare. Arte sacra nella Diocesi di San Miniato” (Ed. Pacini Pisa), and has recently returned to writing about Rimini and Agostino di Duccio in a volume edited by Antonio Paolucci entitled “Il Tempio Malatestiano” (Ed. Franco Cosimo Panini). He collaborated on the exhibition “Pontormo e il suo seguito nelle terre d’Empoli”. The exhibition devoted to Pontormo forms part of “La città degli Uffizi”, directed by Antonio Natali – director of the Uffizi Gallery and scientific curator of the Casa del Pontormo – and curated by Cristina Gelli. The flagship exhibition is “Pontormo e Rosso Fiorentino. Divergenti vie della maniera”, curated by Antonio Natali, director of the Uffizi Gallery, and by Carlo Falciani, held at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.