agnolo bronzino

Agnolo di Cosimo (November 17, 1503 – November 23, 1572), also known as Agnolo Bronzino, Agnolo Toriand even Angelo (Agnolo) Allori, was a Florentine Mannerist painter. The origin of his nickname, Bronzino is unknown, but could derive from his dark complexion.

Biography

Bronzino was born in Florence. He was pupil and adopted son of Pontormo, who introduced his portrait as a child into his painting Joseph in Egypt (National Gallery, London).

Bronzino first came to the Medici patronage in 1539 to carry out the decorations for the wedding of Cosimo de' Medici with the beautiful and rich Eleonora of 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 portraits, imbued with unemotional haughtiness and assurance, influenced the course of European royal portraiture for a century. He also painted idealized portraits of poets of the past, Dante and Petrarch. His famous series of aloof portraits of Eleanora da Toledo and Cosimo I de' Medici, Bartollomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia, of Florence, or Andrea Doria as Neptune, outshine his studied allegorical nudes. 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 pupil and adopted son.

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). Two years spent in Rome (1546–1548) induced him to carry out a series of ecclesiastic paintings (the 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 austerity and Counter-Reformation held full sway.

His lack of real feeling as a religious painter 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. These affected exercises in posture exemplify the artifice of Mannerism, a style viewed as devoid of naturalism. Bronzino's skill with the nude was better deployed in the celebrated but crowded Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, which conveys strong feelings of eroticism under the pretext of a moralizing allegory. His other major works include the design of a series of tapestries on The Story of Joseph for the Palazzo Vecchio.

Bronzino's style was indebted to Pontormo. However, he lacked the emotional intensity characteristic of his master's work, and excelled as a court portraitist rather than a religious painter.

He died in Florence in 1572.

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.

Selected works

• Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo (c. 1545) - Uffizi, Florence

Gallery