M. Chiarini Biography
Marco Chiarini was born in Rome in 1933 and received his education in a family environment, thanks to his father Luigi, an authoritative film critic and theorist who founded the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1935. Chiarini graduated from the La Sapienza University of Rome under the guidance of Mario Salmi, then deepening his research on view and landscape drawings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at the National Prints Cabinet of Rome. This historical period remained the object of his interests even later and led to his participation in numerous scientific contributions, including the exhibition "Roman views. Drawings from the 16th to the 18th century" in 1971.
In 1964 Chiarini was selected as an art historian inspector and moved to Florence to the Superintendence, where in 1969 he became the director of the Palatine Gallery and the Monumental Apartments. Chiarini never strayed from this position until his retirement in 2000, shaping the Gallery into one of the most important venues internationally. During his direction, he carried out protection and restoration interventions, scientifically cataloged works of art and organized numerous exhibitions and scientific publications on Medici collecting, painting and landscape drawing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as on the relationships between the artists of Northern Europe and Florence.
Among the many exhibitions organized by Chiarini are those on the last Medici in 1974, on still life in 1998 and on Filippo Napoletano in 2007. In 1996 Chiarini founded the Association of Friends of Palazzo Pitti, of which he became honorary president . His hard work has earned him a series of honors and recognitions, including the gold medal for Meritorious Art and Culture awarded by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Legion of Honor awarded by the French government. Marco Chiarini was an art historian of great breadth in the broadest sense of the term: he has always stood out for his breadth of interests, for the quality and originality of his research, for the importance and effectiveness of his results. He deserves the credit of having first made the Palatine Gallery known and appreciated on an international level, and with it the entire Pitti and Boboli complex. His publications are numerous; for the professional and scientific quality of his work the Ministry for Cultural Heritage awarded him the gold medal of Meritorious for Art and Culture.
