Agnolo Bronzino

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Lucrezia Panciatichi by Agnolo Bronzino (ca.1540)
Bartolomeo Panciatichi by Agnolo Bronzino

Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, also Agnolo Tori called Bronzino , (* 17th November 1503 in Monticelli , a modern suburb of Florence ; † 23. November 1572 in Florence) was an Italian painter of Mannerism .

Bronzino was a painter of frescoes, altarpieces, devotional images, and allegorical and mythological scenes. Above all, however, he distinguished himself as an outstanding portrait painter . As in the case of Raphael , his works could be spread through the new possibilities of printmaking .

Bronzino was a very educated and well-read painter who knew the works of the great humanist authors of the century, such as Dante , Pietro Bembo and Petrarca well. He was an author of poems and a member of the Florentine Academy.

life and work

Florence and Pesaro

Bronzino was a student of Raffaellino del Garbo and Jacopo Pontormo . With Pontormo he painted frescoes between 1522 and 1525 in the Charterhouse of Galluzzo near Florence, 1535 to 1536 in the Villa Medici di Careggi and between 1538 and 1543 in the Villa Medici di Castello. The religious and mythological pictures created between 1525 and 1535 are strongly influenced by the mannerist painting style of his master, in some cases both worked on the same pictures and the respective attribution is therefore often controversial. In 1530 he worked for two years at the court of the Duke of Urbino , Francesco Maria I della Rovere . He was involved in furnishing the Villa Imperiale near Pesaro with allegorical and mythological frescoes. For Guidobaldo II della Rovere he painted a picture of Apollo and Marsya and in 1532 his portrait, a genre in which he would later be extremely successful.

The court painter of the Medici

Portrait of Cosimo I de 'Medici , 1545

Around 1533 Bronzino went from Urbino to Florence to the Medici court, where he received the status of court painter. Bronzino was one of the small circle of intellectuals, writers and artists whom the Duke had drawn to himself. In 1537 he became a member of the Saint Luke Society and he joined the Florentine Academy. During a stay in Rome from 1546 to 1547, he got to know works by Michelangelo , which he carefully studied. Apart from another brief stay in Pisa between 1564 and 1565, he spent all of his subsequent life in Florence. One of his tasks as a court painter was the production of festive decorations, e.g. B. for the solemn entry of Eleonora di Toledo into Florence on the occasion of her wedding in 1539 to Cosimo I de 'Medici . However, these and other festival and theater decorations that Bronzino made for the Medici and other aristocratic families have not survived.

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

Between 1540 and 1555 he made cardboard boxes for the Florentine tapestry workshops, including 16 scenes from the Joseph story in the Old Testament , in which Francesco Salviati was also involved. His designs were carried out by the Flemish carpet weavers Giovanni Rost and Nicholas Karcher.

At the same time, in addition to altarpieces for Florentine churches, he painted some allegorical pictures for the Duke, the most famous of which was the Allegory of Love , which the Duke gave to the French King Francis I as a diplomatic gift.

The portraits

Eleonora of Toledo and her son Giovanni
Andrea Doria as Neptune

Bronzino painted a number of outstanding portraits of members of the Medici family, including numerous portraits of children, as well as of other Florentine nobles, as well as of poets, writers and musicians for the Duke. There are (authorized) replicas and variants of many of his Medici portraits , which were made in his workshop with the participation of various artists, such as Lorenzo di Bastiano Zucchetti, Giovanni Maria Butteri and, above all, Alessandro Allori , his pupil and later adoptive son. There are only replicas of some of his portraits, while the original versions have been lost. Examples are the portraits of Cosimo de 'Medici from 1555 (replicas in Turin and Berlin) or the portrait from 1569 (the year in which he was awarded the title of Grand Duke). How large Bronzino's share of the respective pictures is is a constant topic for research.

His portraits are usually enriched by the representation of a background architecture that characterizes the real environment of the person being portrayed, as well as by a meticulously accurate reproduction of objects that characterize the respective person. He is less concerned with a character representation or psychological interpretation than with a strict assessment of individuality and a precise description of the respective social status. His portraits radiate coolness and distance, an impression that is caused by his preference for local colors , the enamel-like sheen with which clothes, jewelry and the physicality of his figures are reproduced. The portraits convey a highly informative - albeit idealized - picture of the protagonists of the Florentine aristocracy from the mid-16th century. Bronzino gave the Medici self-portrayal in the media and their political and cultural propaganda their artistic form.

Religious images

Lamentation of the dead Christ (approx. 1540–1545), Besançon
The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence , Basilica di San Lorenzo , Florence

During his entire career, Bronzino repeatedly painted altarpieces or pictures with a religious content, such as the early altarpieces and frescoes that were created between 1520 and 1530 for churches in Florence or an Adoration of the Shepherds around 1539, Mary with Saints Elizabeth and John around 1540 and a Holy Family also around 1540. Exemplary for Florentine Mannerism - with the marble coolness of the figures, the brilliance of the colors, the rich use of valuable materials such as B. Lapis lazuli - is the Lamentation of Christ from 1545. The picture, which looks more like a jewel than an altarpiece, was a diplomatic gift from the Duke to Cardinal Nicolas de Granvelle, adviser to Margaret of Austria and Emperor Charles V, he painted in 1552 for the Zanchini Chapel in Santa Croce the picture Christ in Limbo , in which he allegedly portrayed some of his friends.

A whole series of altarpieces comes from Bronzino's last years. In the aftermath of the Counter-Reformation , the guidelines of the Council of Trent for religious art changed the requirements for altarpieces. Bronzino reacted to the changed tastes of his clients and adapted to the new circumstances. The goal of mannerist painting, the greatest possible technical and painterly virtuosity and formal inventiveness, is abandoned in favor of narrative clarity and unambiguity of the picture. One of his last great tasks in the religious art sector was the completion of his fresco Martyrdom of St. 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 help of his adoptive son Alessandro Allori.

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

criticism

Giorgio Vasari writes about him:

“Bronzino was and is very meek, a willing friend, pleasant to talk to, and honest in everything he did. He was generous and loving in communicating what he had, as much as a noble artist like him can be. Quiet in disposition, he never said anything offensive to others and loved the excellent people of our profession. "

Accordingly, he combined in himself all human and moral qualities that were expected of an artist of his time. His nickname Bronzino may be a reference to dark complexion or reddish hair color.

Works

Allegory of Love , detail, around 1546

Exhibitions

literature

  • Maurice Brock: Bronzino . Paris: Flammarion 2002, ISBN 2-08-010877-8
  • Charles McCorquodale: Bronzino . Chaucer Press 2005, ISBN 1-904449-48-4
  • Palazzo Strozzi: Bronzino. pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici. Exhibition catalog. Mandragora, Firenze 2010, ISBN 978-88-7461-153-9 .
  • Giorgio Vasari: The life of Montorsoli and Bronzino and the artists of the Accademia del Disegno . Edited by Alessandro Nova, edited and newly translated into German by Hana Gründler u. Katja Lemelsen. Berlin 2008

Web links

Commons : Agnolo Bronzino  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The small encyclopedia , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 1, page 235
personal data
SURNAME Bronzino, Agnolo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cosimo, Agnolo di; Tori, Agnolo; Bronzino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1503
PLACE OF BIRTH Monticelli (Florence) , today Florence
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1572
Place of death Florence