Bagazzano
Egisto Fabbri was an enthusiastic amateur architect but limited his activities to projects for his family and friends. He restored the facade of the villa at San Martino alla Palma near Scandicci, belonging to his brother-in-law Piero Antinori, designed a chapel for La Farge in Connecticut, and in 1914 went to New York to advise his sister-in-law Edith Shepard on her new house. He rebuilt the church at Serravalle in the Casentino in the romanesque style, and restored his villa at Bagazzano, near Settignano. He had acquired the simple and unadorned fifteenth-century villa following his return from Paris and it became his refuge.

Visitors from abroad
Bagazzano received many visitors from among the growing international community of intellectuals and artists who came to Florence. Lured here by Italian culture, the warm climate and the low cost of living their lives are described in the pages of Henry James. Visitors would stroll over from the neighbouring hills: Bernard Berenson from the Tatti, the Romanian princess Jeanne Ghyka from Villa Gamberaia, Violet Page (the writer who adopted the pseudonym Vernon Lee) from Villa Palmerino. Others would stay at Bagazzano on their leisurely trips to Europe: Bancel and Mabel La Farge, son and daughter-in-law of John La Farge, the painter Maurice Denis, and the French writer and millionaire André Germain.

The Serravalle project, the sale of the Cézannes
From 1923 until his death ten years later Egisto Fabbri devoted his time and resources to the reconstruction of the village of Serravalle in the Casentino destroyed by an earthquake and to establishing a school for Gregorian Chant there. This project, together with the purchase of Palazzo Capponi in Florence for the family, forced him to sell thirteen of the most important Cézannes in his collection. They were bought by the French collector Paul Rosenberg and his partner Georges Wildenstein for seven million francs.

An International event at the Lyceum in Florence
“The First Italian Exhibition on Impressionism”

Soffici prepares the exhibition in Paris
Soffici and his friend Giovanni Papini had dreamed for years of putting on an exhibition of French painting in Florence. They went to Paris in the early spring of 1910 to collect the Impressionist paintings and sculptures by Rosso for the “First Italian Exhibition on Impressionism”. It opened in Florence in April of the same year with the invaluable assistance of Giuseppe Prezzolini.

The Lyceum
The exhibition was held in via Ricasoli 28, at the Lyceum Club of Florence, the first women’s cultural association in Italy. It was founded in 1908 as a private circle to encourage women to further their literary, scientific and artistic interests, and to provide intellectually stimulating events. There were also branches of the Lyceum in London, Paris and Berlin: the staging of such an innovative exhibition clearly shows that the club’s activities were not strictly restricted to the emancipation of women.

The exhibition
Soffici was bent on being provocative. The artists were chosen to shake the Florentines out of their complacency: Paul Cézanne, Jean-Louis Forain, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Medardo Rosso, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Vincent van Gogh. The most important Florentine collectors lent their works: Fabbri his Country near Bellevue by Cézanne and his Portrait of a woman by Degas, Bernard Berenson gave his Trees near Melun by Matisse and a Landscape by Pissarro; and among other works, Gustavo Sforni offered the exhibition his Gardener by Van Gogh.

No Picasso
In Paris Soffici tried to persuade Picasso to lend some paintings but, still smarting perhaps from the rejection of two of his works by the Venice Biennale in 1905, Picasso changed his mind at the last minute. Best represented were Paul Cézanne, with four oil paintings, a lithograph and six photographs and Medardo Rosso with eighteen sculptures.