He appreciated and bought the artworks of contemporary painters of his time, most of all the genre paintings, historical subjects or romantic views. A series of artworks, which together with his pictorial production, decorated the private rooms of his villa, such as the bedroom, the studio and the living rooms.
Stibbert preferred the fashionable painters of the late nineteenth century that he frequented directly or had seen at the numerous art exhibitions he loved to attend.

The exhibition, conceived in continuity with the rooms of the museum displaying nineteenth-century painting, presents an overview that, starting from Stibbert’s artistic beginnings, analyzes his path as a painter and, at the same time, as a collector of contemporary painting.

After an introduction on the figure of the young Frederick and his pictorial training, some artists of the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence who are apart of the collection are presented. In the following rooms some paintings by Stibbert, divided by genre, are displayed and compared with paintings by other artists depicting the same subject: still life, landscape painting and portraits in ancient costumes.

A part of the exhibition is dedicated to the most successful artist work made by Frederick Stibbert: the illustrated tables for the book on the history of civil and military customs, a work that will follow Frederick’s collecting career and will be published only after his death. Finally, the exhibition shows the drawings and the projects made by Stibbert, the architects and the decorators who worked on the design and decoration of the villa and the museum.

The project has been realized within the context of the “Museum and the Public II” course, organized by the Lorenzo de’ Medici Italian International Institute, as part of the Marist-LdM Master of Arts in Museum Studies, during which students refine and improve the theme of an exhibition, from its creation to its construction and installation, and contribute to the elaboration of its communication strategy.