Bronzino

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Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572), usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino (mistaken attempts also have been made in the past to assert his name was Agnolo Tori and even Angelo (Agnolo) Allori), was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. The origin of his nickname, Bronzino is unknown, but could derive from his dark complexion, or from that he gave many of his portrait subjects.

Contents 1 Life 2 Use in popular culture 3 Selected works 4 Gallery 5 References 6 Notes

[edit] Life

Bronzino was born in Florence. According to his friend Vasari, he was a pupil first of Raffaellino del Garbo, and then of Pontormo, who was the main influence on his style. Pontormo introduced his portrait as a child into one of his series on Joseph in Egypt in the National Gallery, London.

Bronzino first received Medici patronage in 1539 to carry out the decorations for the wedding of Cosimo de' Medici with the beautiful and rich Eleonora di Toledo, the daughter of the Viceroy 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, static and stylish, with unemotional haughtiness and assurance, influenced the course of European court portraiture for a century. These also exist in many workshop versions and copies. He also painted idealized portraits of poets of the past, Dante and Petrarch. He took a prominent part in the activities of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, of which he was a founder member in 1563. The painter Alessandro 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 of Cristofano Allori).^[1] He had rarely left Florence.

His famous series of aloof portraits of Cosimo and Eleanora , and figures of their court like Bartollomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia, are his best known works. The Genoese admiral Andrea Doria as Neptune, a less typical work, is also very successful. Most of his best works are in Florence, but examples are in the National Gallery, London, and elsewhere. Bronzino was also a poet, and his most personal portraits are perhaps those of other literary figures such as Laura Battiferri, (Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, c. 1560). During two years spent in Rome (1546–1548) he carried out a series of religious paintings such as Resurrection of the Virgin Mary (1552), which appear to be suffering from the effects of a moral crisis: this was, after all, the period in which the atmosphere of Counter-Reformation austerity held full sway.

His religious paintings sometimes resulted in elegant posturing, as in The Martyrdom of San Lorenzo (1569), in which almost every one of the extraordinarily contorted poses can be traced back to Raphael or to Michelangelo, whom Bronzino idolized. When attempting to display strong emotion, his Mannerism becomes unconvincing, verging on Academic art. Bronzino's skill with the nude was better deployed in the celebrated Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, which conveys strong feelings of eroticism under the pretext of a moralizing allegory. His other major works include frescoes for the chapel, and the design of a series of tapestries on The Story of Joseph, for the Palazzo Vecchio.

[edit] Use in popular culture

• Terry Gilliam from British comedy group Monty Python famously used Cupid's right foot from Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time for crushing down the titles on Monty Python's Flying Circus.
• American photographer David LaChapelle created his own version of the painting Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time.

[edit] Selected works

• Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo (c. 1545) - Uffizi, Florence
• Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (c. 1545) - National Gallery, London

[edit] Gallery

A portrait of Bia de Medici	A portrait of Giuliano di Piero de' Medici	Deposition, now in Besancon	The Holy Family with St. John and St. Ann
Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi	The Israelites passing through the Red Sea	Portrait of a young man with book	Cosimo I de' Medici in Armour by Bronzino

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

[edit] Notes