FLORENTINE BOTANICAL GARDEN MEMBERSHIP CERTIFICATE

ACCADEMIA DEI GEORGOFILI DI FIRENZE.

Honorary membership admission certificate for Jacob Gråberg Christiansson.

Florence, 1835

Large engraved sheet, 65 x 46.5 cm, surrounded by an elegant floral border. Three small marginal tears, skillfully restored. The upper half is occupied by a view of an Italian garden surrounded by a rural setting with trees, leaves, fruit, etc. The lower half is taken up by the admission text, partly engraved and seamlessly completed in ink to include the name of “Sig. Conte Jacopo Gråberg De Hemsö” being accepted as an ordinary member on 8 April 1835, signed by Giovanni Battista Lapi, Secretary and by Cosimo Ridolfi, President and one of the leading agronomists of the time.

The Accademia dei Georgofili, established in Florence in 1753, is an educational institution for promoting the study of agronomy, forestry, economy, geography and agriculture; it is still active today. The figurative portion of the certificate, drawn and engraved with great finesse by Leonard Frati (active ca. 1801-1813), depicts the Orto Botanico di Firenze, created in 1545 by Cosimo I de’ Medici. In 1753, after the founding of the Società Botanica, the garden’s focus shifted to experimental agriculture. Subsequently, in 1783, the Giardino dei Semplici ( or Orto dei Semplici) in 1783 was transferred to the Accademia dei Georgofili, which transformed its layout to accommodate the experimental agricultural garden. It opened to the public in the mid-19^th century.             

Jacob Gråberg Christiansson (1776-1847) was a Swedish-Italian count. After a career in seafaring that took him to the Mediterranean, England and the Americas, Gråberg settled in Italy and became personal secretary to the Swedish head of mission in the Ligurian Republic in Genoa in 1800.   During the 1830s Gråberg was chamberlain and chief librarian at the Pitti library of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was elevated by the Republic of San Marino to a noble patrician, and in 1834 he was appointed by the Pope as a Knight of the Papal Order of the Golden Spur with the title of count ("comes palatinus"), with the predicate "di Hemsö," a variant of the Gotland parish of Hemse. He died in Florence in 1847.

Gråberg achieved renown as a great collector—his personal library comprised some 5,000 volumes, 2,300 ancient and modern coins, and about 150 ancient stones—and as a member of about a hundred academies and learned societies in addition to the Accademia dei Georgofili, including the Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Wits, and the Physiographic Society in Lund.

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