Bartolomeo Ghetti - Career in France and Florence

Career in France and Florence

Ghetti can almost certainly be identified with the painter and illuminator “Barthélemy Guéty” who is named in a number of payment records surviving from the court of François I. From these we learn that Ghetti had already worked for François at some time before his accession in 1515, and that the painter received payments and salary as court painter and valet de chambre in 1519 and between 1521 and 1532. The payments records reveal that, together with Matteo dal Nassaro, Ghetti designed the rich set of hangings, with subjects drawn from Virgil’s Bucolics, that were produced to decorate a so-called Chambre verte in 1521. Further payments from the French king survive from 1528 and 1529. He was still producing pictures and also illuminating manuscripts for the king in 1532, when François paid him 300 écus for two designs of figures from histories and poetry, satyrs and nymphs, that the king wished to decorate the Hall of jeu de paulme of the Louvre (possibly cartoons for tapestries) and for two Books of Hours. Ghetti received a donative from the king in April 1532, recorded in a document that indicates that François was hoping by this means to keep him his court: “par forme de pention et bienfaict, et pour s’entretenir à son service.”

Ghetti must have traveled between Florence and France a number of times over the course of his career, as indicated by the document that record his presence in both locations. Though, as we have seen, he worked for François I before 1515, “Bartholomeus Zenobii Ghetti” was present at a meeting of the Florentine Compagnia di San Jacopo, called “La Sgalla” on 1 January 1516 (modern style). He may have worked in France for a considerable period during the years between 1516 and 1524, during which time there is no documentation for his presence in Italy. In 1525, though, Ghetti was again in Florence, where he made payments to the Compagnia di San Luca and was recorded in the books of yet another Florentine confraternity, the Compagnia di San Sebastiano. In the same year the Compagnia di San Giovanni of Fucecchio decided to commission an altarpiece for their oratory, which Ghetti would subsequently execute (his sole surviving large-scale work). In 1527we find the artist engaged in a dispute with the rector of San Pietro a Selva (near Malmantile) over some work he had recently done for that church. He appointed a procurator in Florence in May 1528, undoubtedly with a view to returning to France; as noted, his presence at the court of François I is documented later in the same year and into 1529. It would appear that the painter returned definitively to Florence some time between his receipt of the 1532 donative from the French king (which in the end failed to achieve its aim) and 7 December 1533, when, as a new document reveals, he appears on the membership rolls of the Florentine confraternity, the Compagnia dello Scalzo. Antonio Mini’s letter mentioning Ghetti, quoted earlier, may have been occasioned by the painter’s definitive return to Florence, where a succession of documents confirm his presence in Florence between 1535 and his death (which occurred around June 1536).