Bronzino

Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, also known as Agnolo Tori, Bronzino (* November 17, 1503 in Monticelli, now a district of Florence, † November 23, 1572 in Florence) was an Italian painter of the Mannerist.

Bronzino was a painter of frescoes, altarpieces, devotional pictures and allegorical and mythological scenes. However, he distinguished himself mainly as an outstanding portraitist. As in the case of Raphael 's works could be disseminated through the new possibilities of printmaking.

Bronzino was a highly educated and well-read painter who knew the works of the great humanist writers of the century, such as Dante, Pietro Bembo or Petrarch well. He was the author of poems and a member of the Florentine Academy.

Giorgio Vasari writes about him:

" Bronzino was and is very gentle, a service willing friend, pleasant in conversation and righteous in all his deeds He was generous and loving rich in communication of what he had, so much like him, it can be considered a fine artist. From quiet disposition, he said something offensive and the other never loved the excellent people in our profession. "

Thus he united in himself all human and moral qualities that were expected from an artist of his time. His nickname Bronzino is possibly an allusion to a dark complexion or a reddish hair color.

Life and work

Florence and Pesaro

Bronzino was a pupil of Raffaellino del Garbo and Jacopo Pontormo. With Pontormo he painted from 1522 to 1525 frescoes in the Certosa of Galluzzo near Florence, from 1535 to 1536 at the Villa Medici di Careggi and 1538-1543 at the Villa Medici di Castello. The resulting 1525-1535 religious and mythological images are strongly influenced by the Mannerist style of painting his master, sometimes both have been working on the same images and the particular write-up is therefore often controversial. 1530, he worked for two years at the court of the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Rovere,. He was involved in the decoration of the Villa Imperiale at Pesaro with allegorical and mythological frescoes. For Guidobaldo II della Rovere, he painted a picture of Apollo and Marsyas and 1532 whose portrait, a genre in which he should be extremely successful later.

The court painter to the Medici

1533 Bronzino went from Urbino to Florence at the court of the Medici, where he was awarded the status of a court painter. Bronzino was there to the small circle of intellectuals, writers and artists who had moved to the Duke. In 1537 he became a member of the St. Luke Society, and he joined the Florentine Academy. During a stay in Rome from 1546 to 1547, he learned of Michelangelo, whom he studied carefully. Apart from another short stay in Pisa 1564-1565 he spent rest of his life in Florence. One of his duties as court painter was making party decorations, such as for the solemn entry of Eleonora di Toledo in Florence on the occasion of their wedding in 1539 with Cosimo I de ' Medici. These and other fixed and theater decorations that Bronzino has made ​​for the Medici and other aristocratic families, but not receive.

In the Palazzo Vecchio he painted from the Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo with scenes from Genesis and various images of saints.

Between 1540 and 1555 he set forth cartons for the Florentine Gobelinwerkstätten, including 16 scenes from the story of Joseph in the Old Testament, where Francesco Salviati was involved. His designs were executed by the Flemish carpet weavers Giovanni Rost and Nicholas Karcher.

At the same time he painted altarpieces for churches of Florence next to some allegorical pictures for the Duke, the most famous among them the allegory of love that gave to the French king Francis I as a diplomatic gift from the Duke.

The portraits

Bronzino painted for the Duke a number of excellent portraits of members of the Medici family, including numerous portraits of children, as well as other Florentine nobles, also by poets, writers and musicians. From many of his Medici portraits exist ( authorized ) replicas and variants that were in his workshop, made ​​with the cooperation of various artists such as Lorenzo di Bastiano Zucchetti, Giovanni Maria butteri and especially by Alessandro Allori, his pupil and later adopted son. Some of his portraits, there are only replicas while the original versions are lost. As examples may be mentioned the portraits of Cosimo de ' Medici in 1555 ( replicas in Turin and Berlin) or the portrait of 1569 (the year in which given the title of Grand Duke was awarded ). What percentage Bronzino at the respective images is, is an ongoing issue for research.

His portraits are usually enriched by the presentation of a background architecture that characterizes the real environment of the portrait, as well as a meticulous reproduction of objects that characterize the person. There it is less important to a character representation or psychological interpretation than on a strict collection of individuality as well as a precise description of the social status. His portraits exude coolness and distance, an impression which is caused by his preference for local color, through the enamel-like luster with which clothing, jewelry and also the physicality of his characters are played. The portraits convey a highly informative - albeit idealized - image of the protagonists of the Florentine aristocracy from the mid-16th century. Bronzino was the media self-representation of the Medici and their political and cultural propaganda their artistic form.

Religious images

Bronzino painted throughout his career again altar images, or religious content, the early altarpieces and frescoes, created 1520-1530 for churches in Florence and an Adoration of the Shepherds by 1539 Mary and the Saints Elizabeth and John in 1540 and a Holy Family also in 1540 an example for the Florentine Mannerism -. using the marble coolness of the figures, the brilliance of the colors, the rich use of precious materials such as lapis lazuli - the Lamentation of 1545 the image that one more. jewel is like as an altarpiece, was a diplomatic gift from the duke to the Cardinal Nicolas de Granvelle, the adviser of Margaret of Austria and Emperor Charles V in 1552, he painted for the Zanchini Chapel in Santa Croce, the image of Christ in Limbo, on the he allegedly portrays some of his friends.

A whole series of altarpieces dates from the last years of Bronzino. In the wake of the Counter-Reformation, the specifications of the Council of Trent on religious art had changed the requirements for altarpieces. Bronzino responded to the changing tastes of his clients, adapting to the new circumstances. The goal of Mannerist painting, the greatest possible technical and pictorial virtuosity and formal inventiveness is abandoned in favor of a narrative clarity and precision of the image. One of his last major tasks in the religious art sector was the completion of his fresco Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in the church of San Lorenzo in Florence. His last altarpiece The awakening of the daughter of Jairus for Santa Maria Novella in Florence, he completed with the assistance of his adoptive son Alessandro Allori.

1572 Bronzino was appointed Consul of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts; he died a few months later, on 23 November 1572 and was buried in the church of San Cristoforo in Florence.

Works

  • Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, at 1530-1532, Florence, Galleria Pitti
  • Eleonora di Toledo, around 1539, Berlin, Staatliche Gemäldegalerie
  • Eleonora di Toledo, 1543, National Gallery in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
  • Lamentation of the Dead Christ, un 1540-1525, Musée des Beaux-Arts et d' archéologie de Besançon, Besançon
  • Andrea Doria as Neptune, by 1540-1550, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
  • Lucrezia Panciatichi, 1545, Florence, Uffizi Gallery
  • Bartolomeo Panciatichi, 1545, Florence, Uffizi Gallery
  • Cosimo I de ' Medici, 1545-1546, Florence, Uffizi Gallery
  • Eleonora of Toledo and her son Giovanni, in 1545, Florence, Uffizi Gallery
  • Stefano Colonna, 1546, Rome, Palazzo Barberini
  • Allegory of Love, 1546, London, National Gallery
  • Ceiling and wall frescoes in the Cappella di Eleonora of Toledo, in 1550, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio
  • Christ in Limbo, 1552, Florence, Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce
  • Raising of the daughter of Jairus; Trinity, 1571, frescoes in the Cappella Gaddi, Florence, Santa Maria Novella

Exhibitions

  • 2010 The Drawings of Bronzino, Metropolitan Museum, New York
  • 2010 Bronzino. Pintore e poeta all corte dei Medici, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
1555
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