History

Pandolfini Casa d'aste was founded in the early nineteen hundreds by Cavalier Luigi Pandolfini.
Born in Florence on 19 April 1887, he began his working life in 1924 by selling furniture, furnishings and works of art entrusted to him by various customers.
In the second half of the Forties, Pandolfini Casa d'Aste began, with increasing frequency, to organize auctions of furniture, furnishings, and old and nineteenth-century paintings, coming from big hotels, the homes and villas of Florentine nobles and important private collections.

In this period, auctions were held directly in the place where the objects for sale originated or were transferred, for the occasion, to different auction rooms chosen each time in connection with the kind of objects proposed.

In the early Fifties, as the quality level of the objects put up for sale began to grow and auction sessions became more frequent, it became necessary to search for a more prestigious main office, where the art and antiques auctions could be held.

It was in these years that Pandolfini Casa d'Aste moved to Palazzo Ramirez Montalvo at 26 Borgo degli Albizi, the rooms of which were occasionally used to organize auctions of considerable importance.

The courageous choice of Luigi Pandolfini to transfer his headquarters to such a prestigious location was the result of a carefully calculated decision: to arrive at a higher-end target of clientele.

All this was joined by new commercial strategies, while further reinforcement was provided by more precise catalogs with more accurate descriptions.

In the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s extremely successful auctions were held by the son of Luigi, Cirano Pandolfini, his brother-in-law Remo Rega and the nephew  Sergio Pandolfini
The beginning of 2000 saw a generational changeover take place in the company, with Pietro De Bernardi, the grandson of, Cirano Pandolfini, taking over as the new CEO.

This change in management kicked off a pronounced structural change, an evolution that relaunched the company’s image, with a more aggressive commercial policy, a managerial orientation in the administrative and commercial sector, increasing the number and quality of the staff, along with a customer-specific business orientation characterized by company policies aimed at improving services.

The results achieved up until now have been very satisfactory.

Pandolfini, after experiencing constant double-digit growth in sales, in 2019 achieved a new sales record of over 43 million euros in revenue. This auction house has always positioned itself in first place among other Italian auction houses for sales volume, and in fact, in 2019, it succeeded in achieving the exceptional result that then allowed it to become one of the top 10 European auction houses in terms of sales volume.

 

Especially important for both the Italian and international market have been the many auctions organized by the auction house in recent years in all sectors, always with maximum attention to the quality of the lots proposed.

In fact, according to the data supplied by the Corriere della Sera and Sole 24Ore, Pandolfini always has the best lot average (understood as average value of lots sold) out of the first three Italian auction houses and arrives at this annual result with the fewest number of lots sold.

This result has been achieved thanks to the attentive selection of works proposed in the catalogs that the auction house’s specialists put together year-after-year, increasingly improving the offering for buyers and collectors.

Pandolfini is also recognized as the first undisputed leading reality in Italy in the fields of Old Master paintings, nineteenth and twentieth-century paintings, Asian art, and Jewellery and wristwatches, achieving a total sales revenue over the last three years well beyond that of its Italian competitors, which has also positioned it among the leading auction houses in Europe.

Finally, Pandolfini, after having carefully studied trends in international art markets, is the only one of its kind in Italy to have created a catalog like that of “Masterpieces from Italian Collections”, dedicated to works of exceptional quality and rarity that are accompanied by an export license. 

The auction rooms in Italy are located in ROME, FLORENCE, and MILAN, and the auctions are held in Milan and Florence with the lots from the catalog on display in both Italy and LONDON in the auction house’s available spaces.

In recent years, Pandolfini has also cemented relationships with institutions, foundations, and Italian and foreign museums, offering consultancy, sales and appraisal-related services. As examples, we can first mention the two sales to the Gallerie degli Uffizzi in 2017 - (the Self-Portrait of Michelangelo Cerquozzi in September and Armida by Cecco Bravo). Then there was the inventory and appraisal of the collections in  the Museo di Doccia prior to the recent sale of the museum to the Italian Government as agreed by the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and the owners of the Manifattura di Doccia.