The art market was born in Florence in the early 1900s.
The greatest dealer of all times: Stefano Bardini.
With his charm and expertise, he managed to attract the most important customers from all over the world to Florence, who, not only did appreciate the city, but did shop works of art for their private collections.
Florence has always been teeming with antique and artisans shops, which, in addition to its architectural splendor, have made it unique in the world.
Florence is a dream, an experience not to be narrated, but to be lived.
In the following years, the predominant figure was the one of Contini Bonacossi who managed to convert the American entrepreneur Kress into a patron of the highest level and whom, thanks to the law on de-fiscalization, enriched many American museums, first of all, the National Gallery of Washington.

Florence was responsible for the birth of the first major art fair conceived by the very talented Bellini Brothers who, for the first time, enclosed in a palace (at the time Palazzo Strozzi) one hundred among the greatest antique dealers in the world.
It was 1959 and it was a universal success!
A new way to compare merchant and customer. In this way began the art market in a contemporary key, in which social mixes with collecting.
From that moment on, there have existed the great galleries of which both Florence and the great European capitals were rich, but also the great art fairs, which exactly from that moment will be leading in our world still nowadays.

Today the Biennale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze, a leader in Italian art, is held at the prestigious Palazzo Corsini and is pleased to welcome you in September 2021 for an edition full of masterpieces and above all positivity. Art is an antidepressant!

Fabrizio Moretti