BIAF XXXIV Edition
Palazzo Corsini Firenze
A Tribute to Florence
For our gallery this edition
of BIAF is intended as
a tribute to the magnificent
city that hosts us: Florence.
Florentine sculpture and
works of art will be presented
in a stand specifically designed
as a space where each
individual work can reveal
its very essence and purpose.
I'm delighted to meet you at
BIAF XXXIV Edition
Stand 9 – Ground Floor
from 26 September
to 4 October 2026
Palazzo Corsini Firenze
Friday, 25 September 2026 – from 12 PM to 7:30 PM / preview of the Exhibition for invited guests
Friday, 25 September 2026 – 10.30 AM / access reserved to holders of VIP card
From 26 September to 4 October 2026
Open to the public non-stop from 10:30 AM to 7:30 PM
Lorenzo Merlini e
il Cosimo III di Villa Vitelli
A masterpiece of late seventeenth-century Florentine sculpture, the monumental Portrait of Cosimo III de’ Medici (1694; marble, h. 205 cm) is one of the earliest independent achievements of Lorenzo Merlini (1666–1745), a pupil of Giovanni Battista Foggini, and at the same time one of the outstanding masterpieces of his career. The Grand Duke is shown full-length, in antique dress and in an attitude of command: Merlini combines the celebratory rhetoric of the state portrait with striking physiognomic truth, achieving a highly personal synthesis of the ancient and the modern. Commissioned by Marquis Clemente Vitelli, the statue was installed in 1695 in the great hall of his villa at San Domenico in Fiesole, an exceptional setting for a grand-ducal portrait of such scale and ambition.
