(1703 - 78), painter, collector and dealer, 3rd s. of Ignazio Hugford (d. 1719).
1703 - 78 Florence
Ignazio Hugford was born in Pisa and in 1719 entered the studio of the Florentine painter Anton Domenico Gabbiani, where he remained for nine years.1 In 1726, on his master's death, he bought his collection of copies of old masters. Hugford painted several commissions for the Church, in which the influence of his brother Don Enrico was fundamental. He was elected to the Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1729 and became provveditore from 1762 to 1772; he was also elected an honorary member of the Accademia Clementina at Bologna on 26 March 1761.2
Hugford achieved greater recognition, however, as a connoisseur and historian of art. He edited the 6th edition of Vasari's Vite in 1767 - 72 and illustrated the Elogi e Rittratti (degli uomini piu illustri nella Pittura, Scultura e Architettura) [1769 - 75].
By 1737 he was already known as a remarkable collector. Besides the conventional 17th- and 18th-century paintings, he owned several dating from before the 15th century, a period then unfamiliar.3 With his older brother Cosimo, he exhibited 139 pictures in SS.Annunziata in 1729; he contributed to the exhibition in the Accademia del Disegno in 1737 and showed 115 paintings at the Accademia in 1767.4 Joshua Reynolds discovered in 1751 that Hugford had 'a good collection of drawings, principally of the Florentine masters'; no less than 3,100 were bought for the Uffizi from his executor in 1779. Hugford also owned terracottas and wax models.
As a dealer he was (inevitably) not above suspicion; it is known he painted a 'primitive' Madonna for the collegiate church of S.Maria at Impruneta over an entirely blackened panel; he sold at a high price a weak copy as a Titian to the gullible West Indian collector William Young, and sold Henry Blundell a copy as a Veronese; a youthful self-portrait of Filippino Lippi was, apparently, faked.5 When James Martin was shown his pictures in Florence on 30 November 1763 he thought them 'much trash & but very few good ones'.6 But Hugford was also advising on distinguished collections, such as that at Dresden.7 He was a generous friend to artists; he helped Gavin Hamilton, for example, and his pupils Cipriani and Bartolozzi became established in London. In 1758 he had begun to suffer from arthritis which eventually confined him to a chair for the last twelve years of his life. When he died in Florence his reputation stood very high: 'his extraordinary, indeed unrivalled, memory', said his obituary in the Gazzetta Toscana, made him a connoisseur of such standing that 'no one in Italy could equal his skill'.
1. See J. Fleming, Connoisseur, 136[1955]:197 - 206, and Borroni 1983a, 1025 - 56. 2. Note by S. Zamboni. 3. Fleming, 204 - 6, gives a preliminary list of Hugford's collection. 4. Borroni 1974b, 39 - 40, 49 - 51, 57, 150 - 1. 5. B. Cole, U. Middeldorf, Burl.Mag., 113[1971]:500 - 7. 6. Martin jnl.MSS. 7. G. Perini, Burl.Mag., 135[1993]:550 - 9.