Antonio_Ruffo

Antonio Ruffo

Antonio Ruffo

Sicilian nobleman

Antonio Ruffo (1610 or 1611 - 16 June 1678) was an important Sicilian politician, nobleman, patron and collector from the Ruffo di Calabria family. He was probably born in Castle Bagnara or Messina and died in Messina.[1]

Portrait of Antonio Ruffo by anonymous, 1673.

His collections included coins, silverware, paintings by Anthony van Dyck (Saint Rosalie Interceding for the Plague–Stricken of Palermo), Paul Bril, Jacob Jordaens, Abraham Casembroot[2] and others, several Rembrandt etchings and tapestries of The Life of Achilles to designs by Rubens. He commissioned three paintings from Rembrandt (Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, Alexander the Great and Homer Dictating his Verses)[3] and corresponded with Artemisia Gentileschi, Cornelis de Wael and Abraham Brueghel.

He was also the owner of Erminia and the Shepherd (Guercino, 1649), The History of Pythagoras: Buying Fishes and The History of Pythagoras: Coming out of the Cave (Salvator Rosa).[3]

After the earthquake of 1783, his first-born son Giovanni Ruffo rescued 112 paintings and brought them to Scaletta.[3]

Bibliography

  • (in Italian) Vincenzo Ruffo, Galleria Ruffo nel secolo XVII in Messina (con lettere di pittori ed altri documenti inediti), Bollettino d'Arte 10 (1916): 21–64, 95–128, 165–92, 237–56, 284–320, 369–88.
  • (in Italian) Vincenzo Ruffo, La Galleria Ruffo (appendice), Bollettino d'Arte 13 (1919): 3–16; and Corrado Ricci, Rembrandt in Italia (Milan, 1918), 7–53.
  • (in Italian) Rosanna De Gennaro, Per il collezionismo del Seicento in Sicilia: L'inventario di Antonio Ruffo principe della Scaletta, Pisa, 2003.
  • (in Italian) Alessandra Primicerio, Antonio Ruffo principe della Scaletta, Pubblisfera, 2021.

References

  1. [1]
    "RKD entry".
  2. [2]
    "Italian Baroque Art - Antonio Ruffo".
  3. [3]
    Giltaij, Jeroen. "A Note on Rembrandt's Aristotle, Alexander, and Homer". Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art. Retrieved 2023-10-25.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Antonio_Ruffo, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.