Giusto Utens

Who was Giusto Utens?

Giusto Utens or Justus Utens was a Flemish painter who is remembered for the series of Medicean villas in lunette form that he painted for the third grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I, in 1599–1602.

He moved to Carrara about 1580, where he married, and where later he returned and died.

The Medici villas illustrated by Utens from a bird's-eye perspective are:

Villa Medici del Trebbio

Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo

Palazzo Pitti, the Boboli Gardens and Fort Belvedere

Villa Medici di Castello

Villa Medici La Petraia

Villa Medicea di Pratolino

Villa Medici dell'Ambrogiana

Villa Medici di Lappeggi

Villa Medici di Poggio a Caiano

Villa Medici di Serravezza

Villa Medici La Magia

Villa Medici di Marignolle

Villa Medici di Montevettolini

Villa Medici di Colle Salvetti

The three missing lunettes are thought to be the Villa di Artimino and perhaps the Villa Medici di Careggi. In the early twentieth century an anonymous artist completed the scheme, based on eighteenth-century vedute illustrating the villa at Careggi, that at Cerreto Guidi and Poggio Imperiale, which in the sixteenth century was still the Villa di Poggio Baroncelli.