<>: Alessandro Piceller, Corrado Ricci, la monografia su Pintoricchio e la compravendita del Bartolomeo Caporali degli Uffizi

In 1901 Corrado Ricci, at that time director of the Brera Gallery, began his correspondence with Alessandro Piceller, an antique dealer from Perugia who, from the last quarter of the XIXth century, traded in works of art and ancient objects coming from archaeological excavations. At the beginning of their business relationship Piceller helped Ricci to discover two panels on wood by Pintoricchio which were preserved in a private collection near Perugia, and then, in the 1903, when the scholar had already become director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, he offered Ricci the opportunity to purchase an unpublished painting by Bartolomeo Caporali which was at that time on the e market. The risk of the wood panel being bought by some foreign museums was very high and for this reason Ricci, to avoid this masterpiece going out of Italy, decided to buy it without having obtained the permission of the Ministry. The purpose of this essay, thanks to the investigation of three archives (the Archive of the Classense Library, the Piceller family Archive and the Archive of the Uffizi Gallery), is to trace the events leading to the painting being brought to the collection of the Florence Gallery.