ABSTRACT
This case study examines the collecting activity of the last member of the Medici family, Anna Maria Luisa (1667–1743), who is best known for the Patto di Famiglia: the order that after her death, the vast collections inherited from her family had to remain in Florence. It is items from this collection that, today, form the basis of so many of the city’s museums. Schmiedel focuses on three paintings showing extraordinary specimens of citrus fruit brought to Anna Maria Luisa and subsequently ‘portrayed’ by Bartolomeo Bimbi (1648–1729), who had long specialized in that genre. The citrus paintings not only recall similar pieces in the collections of Anna Maria Luisa’s father and great-uncles, they also bear testimony to a long tradition of citriculture as practiced at many early modern courts, and especially fostered by the Medici since the fifteenth century. It is not by chance that sometimes the Palle on the Medicean coat of arms were referred to as oranges (Mala Medica). Bartolomeo Bimbi’s citrus paintings from 1723–1728 reflect the Elettrice Palatina‘s unbroken taste for the pictorial documentation of natural curiosities.
