He lived all his life in Florence, and from his late 30s was kept busy as the court painter ofCosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was mainly a portraitist, but also painted many religious subjects, and a few allegorical subjects, which include what is probably his best-known work,Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, c. 1544–45, now in London. Many portraits of the Medicis exist in several versions with varying degrees of participation by Bronzino himself, as Cosimo was a pioneer of the copied portrait sent as a diplomatic gift.
He trained withPontormo, the leading Florentine painter of the first generation of Mannerism, and his style was greatly influenced by him, but his elegant and somewhat elongated figures always appear calm and somewhat reserved, lacking the agitation and emotion of those by his teacher. They have often been found cold and artificial, and his reputation suffered from the general critical disfavour attached to Mannerism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Recent decades have been more appreciative of his art.
Bronzino was born inFlorence, the son of a butcher. According to his contemporaryVasari, Bronzino was a pupil first ofRaffaellino del Garbo, and then ofPontormo, to whom he was apprenticed at 14. Pontormo is thought to have introduced aportrait of Bronzino as a child (seated on a step) into one of his series onJoseph in Egypt now in theNational Gallery,London.[3] Pontormo exercised a dominant influence on Bronzino's developingstyle, and the two were to remain collaborators for most of the former's life. An early example of Bronzino's hand has often been detected in theCapponi Chapel in the church ofSanta Felicita by thePonte Vecchio in Florence. Pontormo designed the interior and executed the altarpiece, the masterlyDeposition from the Cross and the sidewall frescoAnnunciation. Bronzino apparently was assigned the frescoes on the dome, which have not survived. Of the four empanelledtondi or roundels depicting each of theevangelists, two were said by Vasari to have been painted by Bronzino. His style is so similar to his master's that scholars still debate the specific attributions.[4]
Towards the end of his life, Bronzino took a prominent part in the activities of the FlorentineAccademia delle Arti del Disegno, of which he was a founding member in 1563.
The painterAlessandro Allori was his favourite pupil, and Bronzino was living in the Allori family house at the time of his death in Florence in 1572 (Alessandro was also the father ofCristofano Allori).[5] Bronzino spent the greater part of his career in Florence.
Bronzino first received Medici patronage in 1539, when he was one of the many artists chosen to execute the elaborate decorations for the wedding ofCosimo I de' Medici toEleonora di Toledo, daughter of theViceroy of Naples. It was not long before he became, and remained for most of his career, the official court painter of the Duke and his court. His portrait figures – often read as static, elegant, and stylish exemplars of unemotional haughtiness and assurance – influenced the course of European court portraiture for a century. These well known paintings exist in many workshop versions and copies. In addition to images of the Florentine elite, Bronzino also painted idealized portraits of thepoetsDante (c. 1530, now inWashington, D.C.) andPetrarch.
Bronzino's best-known works comprise the aforementioned series of the duke and duchess,Cosimo andEleonora, and figures of their court such asBartolomeo Panciatichi and his wifeLucrezia. These paintings, especially those of the duchess, are known for their minute attention to the detail of her costume, which almost takes on a personality of its own in the image at right. Here the Duchess is pictured with her second son Giovanni, who died of malaria in 1562, along with his mother; however it is the sumptuous fabric of the dress that takes up more space on the canvas than either of the sitters. Indeed, the dress itself has been the object of some scholarly debate. The elaborate gown has been rumoured to be so beloved by the duchess that she was ultimately buried in it; when this myth was debunked, others suggested that perhaps the garment never existed at all and Bronzino invented the entire thing, perhaps working only from a fabric swatch. In any case, this picture was reproduced over and over again by Bronzino and his shop, becoming one of the most iconic images of the duchess. The version pictured here is in theUffizi Gallery, and is one of the finest surviving examples.[6]
Bronzino's so-called "allegorical portraits", such as that of a Genoese admiral,Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune, are less typical but possibly even more fascinating owing to the peculiarity of placing a publicly recognized personality in the nude as a mythical figure.[7] Finally, in addition to being a painter, Bronzino was also a poet, and his most personal portraits are perhaps those of other literary figures such as that of his friend the poetLaura Battiferri.[8] The eroticized nature of these virile nude male portraits, as well as homoerotic references in his poetry, have led scholars to believe that Bronzino was homosexual.[2]
In 1540/41, Bronzino began work on the fresco decoration of the Chapel of Eleanora di Toledo in thePalazzo Vecchio and an oil on panelDeposition of Christ to be analtarpiece for the chapel. Before this commission, his style in the religious genre was less Mannerist, and was based in balanced compositions of the High Renaissance. Yet he became elegant and classicizing in this fresco cycle, and his religious works are examples of the mid-16th-century aesthetics of the Florentine court – traditionally interpreted as highly stylized and non-personal or emotive.Crossing the Red Sea is typical of Bronzino's approach at this time, though it should not be claimed that Bronzino or the court was lacking in religious fervour on the basis of the preferred court fashion. Indeed, the duchess Eleanora was a generous patron to the recently foundedJesuit order.[9]
Bronzino's work tends to include sophisticated references to earlier painters, as in one of his last grand frescoes calledThe Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo, 1569), in which almost every one of the extraordinarily contorted poses can be traced back toRaphael or toMichelangelo, whom Bronzino idolized . Bronzino's skill with thenude was even more enigmatically deployed in the celebratedVenus, Cupid, Folly and Time, which conveys strong feelings oferoticism under the pretext of a moralizingallegory. His other major works include the design of a series oftapestries onThe Story of Joseph, for the Palazzo Vecchio.
Many of Bronzino's works are still in Florence but other examples can be found in theNational Gallery, London, and elsewhere.
The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (orMadonna Stroganoff) (early 1540s) – Oil on canvas, 117 x 99 cm,Pushkin Museum,Moscow (Inv. 2699)
^Janet Cox-Rearick.Splendors of the Renaissance: reconstructions of historic costumes from King Studio, Italy by Fausto Fornasori. Catalog of an exhibition held at Art Gallery of the Graduate Center,City University of New York, Mar. 10–Apr. 24, 2004. King Studio, 2004.
Carmen C. Bambach (ed.), Elizabeth Pilliod, Marzia Faietti, Janet Cox-Rearick, Philippe Costamagna.The Drawings of Bronzino. Exhibition catalogue.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-300-15512-9.
Maurice Brock,Bronzino, Edition du Régard, Paris 2002,ISBN2-84105-140-4 (French).
"Bronzino" in: Federico Zeri (with Elizabeth E. Gardner).Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Florentine School.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1971, ISBN 0-87099-020-9, pp. 200–204 (atThe Met: Watson Library Digital Collections with book viewer and downloadable PDF).
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