Ships in a Storm

Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Tuscany had spent fifteen years off his throne, displaced by the French and brought back to Florence in 1814. In 1823, the year before he died, he bought this storm for the palace, and the purchase is still recorded in the gallery's papers. The picture was already more than 150 years old when he got it, painted in Amsterdam in 1669 by a marine specialist who had come down from Emden in East Frisia.

The state catalogue gives it at 67 by 80 and a half centimetres and dates it 1669 flat, where several other listings say 1667. Down in the lower left corner a dark barrel is riding the swell, and the letters LB are painted on it in a running hand. That is how Bakhuizen signed, with his initials set into the water alongside the ships.