Bartolomeo Bimbi

Bartolomeo Bimbi painted fruit and flowers for the Medici almost as a botanical record. His large canvases line up dozens of varieties of citrus, grapes, pears, figs and cherries against open landscape, documenting what grew in the grand-ducal gardens, and include curiosities such as giant citrons and oddly shaped vegetables.

Born in Settignano near Florence in 1648, he trained with Lorenzo Lippi and then Onorio Marinari, and travelled to Rome with Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici before joining the Florentine court. Although trained as a figure painter, he became known almost only for still life, working above all for Grand Duke Cosimo III. Many of his works are still in Florence, at the Palazzo Pitti, in the university’s botanical museum and in the still life museum of the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano. He died in Florence in 1729.

Large Citron in a Landscape shows how he could turn a single fruit into a portrait.