Cabinet of Natural History Collections

The Bardi collections

The Florentine nobleman Girolamo de ‘Bardi was the director of the Imperial Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History in Florence from 1806 to 1829. He bequeathed all his assets and scientific collections to an Institute (Pio Istituto de’ Bardi) which he had founded to offer free teaching for the preparation of future artisans. There, he collected ancient instruments, book collections and naturalistic collections accumulated over the course of his life.

In 1892, the original purpose of the Pio Istituto de ‘Bardi ceased and this material was entrusted to various institutions, including the Technical Institute, which received much of the scientific heritage.

Among the material acquired, there are various fossil specimens of Pliocene mammals, a collection of about 600 shells, a collection of over 3,000 samples of minerals and rocks expertly assembled with scientific but also aesthetic criteria.

There is also a nucleus of 17th-18th-century material, composed of three herbaria, a terrestrial globe by Guglielmo Blaeuw and a pair of globes, one terrestrial and one celestial, made in 1695 by the Officina Calcografica de’ Rossi, based on the matrices, dated 1636, by Matthäus Greuter.

Draftsman and engraver from Strasbourg who moved to Rome, Greuter was highly regarded for the production of books, art prints and celestial and terrestrial globes. The latter had a considerable diffusion, thanks to the aesthetic quality and the particular technique used, which included the possibility of producing hollow spheres, to considerably reduce their weight.

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