Bronzino

The Italian painter Bronzino (1503-1572) was one of the leaders of the second generation of Florentine mannerists. He is noted chiefly for his stylized portraits, cold in color but impeccable in realism of detail.

Born at Monticelli near Florence on Nov. 17, 1503, Angelo di Cosimo, called Bronzino was trained principally under Raffaellino del Garbo and Pontormo. According to Giorgio Vasari, Bronzino's portrait appears in Pontormo's Joseph in Egypt (ca. 1515). In his earliest works, often produced in collaboration with Pontormo, Bronzino's style reconciles influences from his two masters. Intellectual dependence on the late-15th-century style of Raffaellino prevented Bronzino from fully understanding the visionary imagination of Pontormo, and Bronzino's fresco St. Benedict (ca. 1526-1530) in the Badia, Florence, with its hard modeling, classicizing types, and objectivity of form and detail shows the beginnings of his lifelong academicism.

After the siege of Florence in 1530 Bronzino fled to Urbino, but he was soon recalled to collaborate again with Pontormo on the frescoes for several Medici villas. Bronzino's contributions to the ceremonial decorations for the triumphal entry of Eleanor of Toledo into Florence in 1539 resulted in his appointment that year as official court painter to the grand duchy of Tuscany. The autocratic, sophisticated atmosphere of Cosimo I's court, precisely reflected in Bronzino's formal and frigid portraits of the 1540s, was already hinted at in the detached impersonality of the still-Pontormesque Ugolino Martelli (ca. 1535-1538). In Eleanor of Toledo and Her Son (ca. 1545) the emotionless, carved faces are set off against a brittle, cold display of color and brilliantly observed realistic detail. Such portraits, and works like the Allegory with Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time (ca. 1546), disturbing in its ice-cold, fragile sensuality, had a farflung impact in courtly circles throughout Europe.

Although his study of Michelangelo's Florentine works was evident in Bronzino's works of the 1530s when he was forming his court style, later on Bronzino developed comparatively little within the general tendencies of painting under the repressive conditions of the Counter Reformation, even remaining apparently unaffected by such revolutionary works as Michelangelo's Last Judgment. The academic, as opposed to imaginative, qualities of Bronzino's style, clearly dominant in the confused compositions and overdesigned figures of such late narrative works as the fresco Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (1565-1569) in S. Lorenzo, Florence, brought him into sympathetic contact with such Florentine academic mannerists as Vasari and Francesco Salviati, who were, like Bronzino, prominent members of the Florentine Academy. Bronzino died in Florence on Nov. 23, 1572.

Further Reading

The standard monograph on Bronzino is in Italian. In English see Arthur McComb, Agnolo Bronzino: His Life and Works (1928). Useful background material is in Giuliano Briganti, Italian Mannerism (trans. 1962).

Additional Sources

McCorquodale, Charles, Bronzino, New York: Harper & Row, 1981. □

Bronzino, Agnolo ( Agnolo di Cosimo) (b Monticelli, nr. Florence, 17 Nov. 1503; d Florence, 23 Nov. 1572). Florentine Mannerist painter, the pupil of Pontormo, who virtually adopted him as a son and introduced his portrait as a child into his painting Joseph in Egypt (c.1518, NG, London). The origin of Bronzino's nickname (literally ‘bronze-coloured’) is uncertain, but possibly derived from his having a dark complexion. He was deeply attached to Pontormo and his style was heavily indebted to his master (in paintings of c.1530 it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the hand of one from the other). However, Bronzino lacked the emotional intensity that was such a characteristic of Pontormo's work, his colouring and brushwork were typically harder, and he excelled as a portraitist rather than a religious painter. In 1539 he first worked for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and he spent most of the rest of his career in his service, becoming the leading painter in Florence and creating an unforgettable array of images of his patron's family and courtiers—immaculately polished works that convey the splendour and formality of the sophisticated world in which they lived.

Bronzino was also a poet, and his most personal portraits are perhaps those of other literary figures (Laura Battiferri, c.1560, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence). With few exceptions he was less successful as a religious painter, tending towards empty, elegant posturing, as in the Martyrdom of St Lawrence (1569, S. Lorenzo, Florence), in which almost every one of the extraordinarily contorted poses can be traced back to Michelangelo, whom Bronzino idolized, or to Raphael. It is the type of work that got Mannerism a bad name and has been described as a ‘fusion of ballet and Turkish bath’.

Late in life, Bronzino (like Ammanati) seems to have had a crisis of conscience about the use of naked figures in religious works, thinking that they tended to inspire lewd thoughts rather than holy ones, and his skill with the nude was certainly better deployed in the celebrated Allegory with Venus and Cupid (c.1545, NG, London), which conveys a feeling of icy eroticism under the pretext of a moralizing allegory (one of the subsidiary figures has recently been interpreted as symbolizing the effects of syphilis). His other major works include the design of a series of tapestries on the story of Joseph (1545–55) for the Palazzo Vecchio. He was a much respected figure who took a prominent part in the activities of the Accademia del Disegno (see academy), of which he was a founder member in 1563. His pupils included Alessandro Allori, who—in a curious mirroring of his own early career—was also his adopted son.

Bronzino, Agnolo ( Agnolo di Cosimo) (1503–72). Florentine Mannerist painter, the pupil of Pontormo, who virtually adopted him as a son and introduced his portrait as a child into his painting Joseph in Egypt (c.1518, NG, London). The origin of Bronzino's nickname (literally ‘bronze-coloured’) is uncertain, but possibly derived from his having a dark complexion. He was deeply attached to Pontormo and his style was heavily indebted to his master (in paintings of c.1530 it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the hand of one from the other). However, Bronzino lacked the emotional intensity that was such a characteristic of Pontormo's work, his colouring and brushwork were typically harder, and he excelled as a portraitist rather than a religious painter. In 1539 he first worked for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and he spent most of the rest of his career in his service, becoming the leading painter in Florence and creating an unforgettable array of images of his patron's family and courtiers —immaculately polished works that convey the splendour and formality of the sophisticated world in which they lived. Bronzino was also a poet, and his most personal portraits are perhaps those of other literary figures (Laura Battiferri, c.1560, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence). With few exceptions he was less successful as a religious painter, tending towards empty, elegant posturing, as in the Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo (1569, S. Lorenzo, Florence), in which almost every one of the extraordinarily contorted poses can be traced back to Michelangelo, whom Bronzino idolized, or to Raphael. It is the type of work that got Mannerism a bad name and has been described as a ‘fusion of ballet and Turkish bath’. Late in life, Bronzino (like Ammanati) seems to have had a crisis of conscience about the use of naked figures in religious works, thinking that they tended to inspire lewd thoughts rather than holy ones, and his skill with the nude was certainly better deployed in the celebrated Allegory with Venus and Cupid (c.1545, NG, London), which conveys a feeling of icy eroticism under the pretext of a moralizing allegory (one of the subsidiary figures has recently been interpreted as symbolizing the effects of syphilis). His other major works include the design of a series of tapestries on the story of Joseph (1545–55) for the Palazzo Vecchio. He was a much-respected figure who took a prominent part in the activities of the Accademia del Disegno (see Academy), of which he was a founder member in 1563. His pupils included Alessandro Allori, who—in a curious mirroring of his own early career—was also his adopted son.

Il Bronzino , 1503-72, Florentine painter, an important mannerist (see mannerism ), whose real name was Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano. Bronzino was a pupil and adopted son of Jacopo da Pontormo. Continuing the tradition of his master, he specialized and excelled in portraiture. He depicted many elegant and celebrated men and women of the time; his portraits included Cosimo I de' Medici and his wife Eleanor of Toledo (both: Uffizi); Lodovico Capponi (Frick Coll., New York City); and Portrait of a Young Man (Metropolitan Mus.). In 1540 he became court painter to Cosimo I. Bronzino's sophisticated portraits are cold, unemotionally analytical and painted in a superbly controlled technique. The long, chilly faces and postures of his aristocratic subjects express an undisguised arrogance popular in the mannerist period. Bronzino's work had an influence on court portraiture throughout Europe and extended even to Elizabethan England. His Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time (National Gall., London) conveys an eroticism beneath a moralizing allegory. Of his religious works, The Descent of Christ into Limbo (Uffizi) is the most famous.

Bibliography: See study by C. H. Smyth (1972).

Bronzino, Agnolo (1503–1572)

A painter of Florence, Agnolo di Cosimo earned his nickname of Bronzino from his dark, “bronzed” complexion. He was the adopted son of the painter Jacopo Pontormo, whose pupil he became and who had a strong effect on his style. He became the official court painter to Cosimo de' Medici, creating portraits of the duke and his family that were imitated throughout Europe long after the close of the Renaissance. He lived for two years in Rome, where he created religious paintings in the emotionally cold, brightly colored and precisely drawn “mannerist” style that was then in vogue. His famous works include Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, an allegorical account of love that Cosimo de' Medici presented as a gift to King Francis I, and Eleanora Toledo and Her Son, a portrait of de' Medici's wife and son. He helped to found the Academy of Design in Florence in 1563.