Anna Maria Ambrosini Massari
University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy
Johann Zoffany’s famous painting of the Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772-8, Royal Collections, UK) does not portray that room as it was, but sums up a number of classical models of paramount importance in the artistic and social education of any well-cultivated person in eighteenth-century Europe.
This German artist long active in Hannoverian Britain provides further opportunities of appreciating how classical art inspired European collectors, such as in his Charles Townley’s Library (1782, Burnley, Townley Hall Art Gallery and Museum). Nevertheless undoubtedly the Tribuna provides a perfect list of essential models, to the point of suggesting an unforgettable scene in Stanley
Kubrick’s 1975 movie Barry Lyndon, when Barry visits a first-rank English collection. He reminds us of Valentine Knigthley of Fawsley admiring the sculpture of the so-called Dancing Faun in the Tribuna.
With reference to the international, lively circle gathered around Zoffany in Florence when he was working at his Tribuna, from 1773 to 1777, there is now a chance of shedding new light on a less known episode which deserves greater attention. It concerns the portraits painted by Zoffany for two very important Russian grandees: the Orlov brothers, namely Prince Gregory, who had
been Catherine the Great’s lover, and Count Alexis. It was most probably through one of the Orlovs that the Empress heard of the Tribuna, a painting that according to some sources she tried to obtain for her prominent collections at the Hermitage. Zoffany’s portraits of the Orlovs are as yet untraced, but their complete story can now be reconstructed thanks to notable written sources, some copies and derivations and other connected works. This reconstruction opens up a really interesting view on contemporary continental art-market and the cultural exchanges between Italy and Russia, with special focus on classical art. It might also help to retrieve the original portraits of the Orlovs, which probably still hang unacknowledged somewhere in Russia.