Portrait of Giovan Battista Niccolini

In 1827 the playwright Giovan Battista Niccolini had his tragedy Antonio Foscarini staged at the Teatro del Cocomero in Florence. It told of a Venetian nobleman executed in 1622 on a false charge of treason, and the public took it as an attack on tyranny. That same year Bartolini carved this bust, almost in one sitting according to the museum. It is small, about 30 centimetres high, and shows Niccolini with a slightly rueful expression and a soft fringe of hair falling on his forehead, the one informal touch in an otherwise classical head. Niccolini belonged to the academy this museum grew out of. He taught history and mythology at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and served as its secretary and librarian. The plaster model, identical except in size, is in the Gipsoteca. The theatre took the playwright's name in 1861, the year he died, and this marble came to the museum recently as a gift from its Friends association.