Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo

The painting Eleonora of Toledo and her son Giovanni is one of the famous Medici portraits by the Italian artist Agnolo Bronzino and one of the foremost examples of portraiture in general. It was created in 1545 in Florence.

Content

The double portrait shows the wife of the Tuscan Duke Cosimo I de ' Medici, Eleonora of Toledo, and their son Giovanni. Bronzino has twice painted in company with a son while there is no double portrait with a daughter Eleonora. The other double portrait shows her with her ​​first-born Francesco, however, is obtained only the workshop of the thumbnails in Pisa. With the representation of the two male Medici heir in representative government portraits, it was demonstrated that the continuation of the dynasty was assured.

Eleonora of Toledo

Eleonora of Toledo, daughter of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, was married in 1539 to the nineteen -year-old Duke Cosimo at the age of seventeen. The couple had nine children, most of whom died in childhood or adolescence.

Bronzino has repeatedly painted Eleonora of Toledo. Three portraits are recognized as complying by hand from art history, except this double portrait of the two frames in Prague ( 1543 ) and Berlin ( created 1555-1560 ), while they are replicas and student copies of Bronzino workshop at the other pictures. To copy the state portraits, was a common method in the time since the images were sometimes given away for diplomatic purposes.

Giovanni de ' Medici

Giovanni de ' Medici (1543-1562) was the second son of Eleonora. He was baptized in the name of his famous uncle Giovanni de ' Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent to a son. As Pope, he had assumed the name of Leo X.. Also Giovanni was determined for the ecclesiastical career, and apparently represented the hope of the father to an equally brilliant career for his younger son as it was his brother. When Giovanni died at the age of 19, he was already bishop of Pisa and cardinal. From Giovanni, there are other portraits by Bronzino, namely Giovanni with the Goldfinch, Giovanni ( with book and black suit ) of 1550/51 in Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford, and finally the allegorical portrait of Giovanni than John the Baptist of 1560/61 in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, where some of the artists my to recognize a portrait of Giovanni.

Description

The image is a three -quarter portrait. Eleonora is shown seated, the body is turned to the left, but she looks at the viewer. The left arm resting on the skirt of her heavy dress, the right one, it includes the shoulder of her approximately three year old son who dreams with a faraway look in front of him. Giovanni wears an unadorned children dress of dark blue-gold iridescent silk fabric from which the look embroidered with gold thread collar and pleated cuffs of the undergarment.

In contrast, the mother is dressed in the most magnificent in brocade and pearl jewelry that come to its best advantage before the intense blue of lapis lazuli background. The blue of the background is around the head Eleonora increasingly lighter, so it seems surrounded by a nimbus, which additionally ennobled distinguished appearance. The dark hair parted in the middle is held together by a pearled network. In the ears she wears teardrop-shaped beads.

The dress made ​​of silk fabric with weißgrundigem Samtarabesken and a striking pomegranate pattern of gold brocade, has a tight top. The stiff slit sleeves emphasize the striking shoulder line. The straight neckline of the dress is for the most part of a network of brocade cords and beads covered, similar to the hairnet Eleonora. Around the waist she wears a heavy gold chain, at the end of a tassel with close of pearl depends. Eleonora wearing two pearl necklaces, the great reaches to the middle of the chest, the tight necklace has a pendant made of a large faceted topaz and a teardrop-shaped pearl. The fabric was indeed, however woven by Spanish originals in the manufactories of the Medici in Florence. The efficiency of the local textile industry is incidentally set here in the image effectively staged.

Eleonora's face is perfect evenness, as immaculate as the email smooth flesh tones. Under the rigid dress any body shape can be seen, as well as the oval of the face, the upper body geometric shapes is approximated. According to the preferences of Mannerist painting the body proportions are überlängt. Desirability was apparently no detailed portrait of accuracy but rather the presentation of an ideal image.

The image as a state portrait

For all the costliness of jewelry and clothing, where the royal splendor of brocade is attenuated by the cool colors black, white and gold color, Eleonora exudes restraint, dignity, and the sure knowledge of the rank and importance of the House of Medici.

The generous use of lapis lazuli, the most expensive painting material at all, and almost still life -like presentation of a precious piece of clothing with the central eye-catcher of a pomegranate, an ancient symbol of the fullness of life and fertility, and finally the presence of a boy on the picture are hidden clues to the wealth and economic performance of the Medici and their secure rule in Florence.

That Cosimo throughout his reign repeatedly had to re- secure his rule, and that the economic situation because of the costs of war and the cultural ambitions of the Duke was anything but rosy, is another matter.

Eleonora than 40 years, 1560, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie

Bronzino: Giovanni de ' Medici, 1545, Florence, Uffizi Gallery

Giovanni de ' Medici as John the Baptist, Galleria Borghese, Rome

Reception

In 1991, Patrick Raynaud Bronzino's painting as the starting material for an installation in the gallery Langer Fain in Paris:

• Patrick Raynaud: Bronzino's Postcards: Portrait of a Woman, 1991 postcard stand, Cibachrome under plexiglass.. Guendet collection, Paris.