Disegni oltremontani nella collezione di Ignazio Enrico Hugford

Ignazio Enrico Hugford (1703-1778) was a painter of English origin who was trained under Anton Domenico Gabbiani. As art dealer and connoisseur, he was among the most important collectors of works on paper in eighteenth-century Florence and had prolific and wide-ranging contacts throughout Europe. He was in close touch with Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, and his correspondents also included Pierre Jean Mariette and Giovanni Gaetano Bottari. Among the over three thousand drawings bequeathed to his heirs and acquired in 1770 for the Uffizi by its director Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni, one hundred and five sheets were attributed to artists of non-Italian schools. The attentive descriptions of Pelli’s inventory, the characteristic framing applied by Hugford and his inscriptions on some of the sheets have made it possible to identify almost all of these drawings, now in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi. Research has also revealed Hugford’s talent as connoisseur, his interest in certain artists, and how Northern European drawings were regarded in the Florence of his time. This group includes sheets attributed to the Germans Dürer and Holbein, the Flemings Spranger and Lucas van Leyden, the French Callot and La Fage, and the Portuguese Francisco Vieira. Although many of these attributions are no longer acceptable, the identification of individual drawings has made it possible to confirm their authorship, and in some cases to suggest new attributions.