bronzino, agnolo, featured paintings in detail (3)
TRANSCRIPT
BRONZINO, Agnolo
Featured Paintings in Detail
(2)
(Paintings of religious subject, Paintings of allegories)
BRONZINO, AgnoloAdoration of the Shepherds1539-40Oil on wood, 65 x 47 cmSzépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
BRONZINO, AgnoloAdoration of the Shepherds (detail)1539-40Oil on wood, 65 x 47 cmSzépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
BRONZINO, AgnoloAdoration of the Shepherds (detail)1539-40Oil on wood, 65 x 47 cmSzépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
BRONZINO, AgnoloAdoration of the Shepherds (detail)1539-40Oil on wood, 65 x 47 cmSzépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest
BRONZINO, AgnoloHoly Familyc. 1540Oil on wood, 117 x 93 cmGalleria degli Uffizi, Florence
BRONZINO, AgnoloHoly Family (detail)c. 1540Oil on wood, 117 x 93 cmGalleria degli Uffizi, Florence
BRONZINO, AgnoloHoly Family (detail)c. 1540Oil on wood, 117 x 93 cmGalleria degli Uffizi, Florence
BRONZINO, AgnoloHoly Family (detail)c. 1540Oil on wood, 117 x 93 cmGalleria degli Uffizi, Florence
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupido and Satyr 1553-1555 Oil on wood, 135 × 231 cm Palazzo Colonna, Rome
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupido and Satyr (detail)1553-1555 Oil on wood, 135 × 231 cm Palazzo Colonna, Rome
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupido and Satyr (detail)1553-1555 Oil on wood, 135 × 231 cm Palazzo Colonna, Rome
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupido and Satyr (detail)1553-1555 Oil on wood, 135 × 231 cm Palazzo Colonna, Rome
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust)1540-45Oil on wood, 147 x 117 cmNational Gallery, London
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust) (detail)1540-45Oil on wood, 147 x 117 cmNational Gallery, London
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust) (detail)1540-45Oil on wood, 147 x 117 cmNational Gallery, London
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust) (detail)1540-45Oil on wood, 147 x 117 cmNational Gallery, London
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust) (detail)1540-45Oil on wood, 147 x 117 cmNational Gallery, London
BRONZINO, Agnolo, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)
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BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupid and Time (Allegory of Lust)
This work was probably created at the Tuscan court of Duke Cosimo de' Medici for presentation to the King of France. It was designed as a puzzle, and incorporates symbols and devices from the worlds of mythology and emblematic imagery. It would have made the perfect present for the French king, known for his lusty appetites, yearning after Italian culture
and magnificence, and with a liking for heraldry and obscure emblems.
The goddess of love and beauty, identified by the golden apple given to her by Paris and by her doves, has drawn Cupid's arrow. At her feet, masks, perhaps the symbols of sensual nymph and satyr, seem to gaze up at the lovers. Foolish Pleasure, the laughing child, throws rose petals at them, heedless of the thorn piercing his right foot. Behind him Deceit, fair of face, but foul of body, proffers a sweet honeycomb in one hand, concealing the sting in her tail with the other. On the other side of the lovers is a dark figure, formerly called Jealousy
but recently plausibly identified as the personification of Syphilis, a disease probably introduced to Europe from the New World and reaching epidemic proportions by 1500.
The symbolic meaning of the central scene is thus revealed to be unchaste love, presided over by Pleasure and abetted by Deceit, and its painful consequences. Oblivion, the figure on the upper left who is shown without physical capacity for remembering, attempts to draw a veil over all, but is prevented by Father Time - possibly alluding to the delayed effects of syphilis. Cold as marble or enamel, the nudes are deployed against the costliest ultramarine blue, and the whole composition, flattened against the picture plane, recalls Bronzino's
contemporaneous designs for the duke's new tapestry factories.
BRONZINO, AgnoloAdoration of the Shepherds
According to Vasari, this small devotional painting was commissioned by Filippo di Averardo Salviati (1513-1572). It was most likely destined for a private chapel in the Salviati villa.
This jewel-like painting displays the extreme refinement of execution and luxury of materials characteristic of Florentine Mannerism, with 'disegno' (drawing), sculptural modelling of forms, and enamel-like finish apparent in every detail. The entire upper half of the composition is a deep landscape of lakes and hills, above which stretches a vast blue sky that
Bronzino painted in expensive lapis lazuli. To the right, an angel announcing the birth of Christ to a single shepherd hovers in the sky, and in the foreground five putti fly in celebration directly over the Nativity scene.
BRONZINO, AgnoloHoly Family
According to Giorgio Vasari (1568) and Raffaello Borghini (1584), the painting was commissioned to Bronzino by Bartolomeo Panciatichi, whose coat of arms dominates the fort in the background. It portrays, using the sculptural forms of Michelangelo's painting, the meeting of the Holy Family with John the Baptist on their return from Egypt, as
indicated by the presence of the travel bundle on top of which Jesus is sleeping. It has been in the Uffizi Gallery since 1919.
BRONZINO, AgnoloVenus, Cupido and Satyr
Venus and Cupid and a Satyr was completed sometime around 1553-54 and is now on display in one of the galleries of the Palazzo Colonna in Rome. In this painting, the nude bodies of Venus and Cupid are again portrayed as potential sources of pleasure for the viewer, but this time there are no allegorical elements included in the composition, so the
erotic nature of the image is more evident.
Crucially, this version of the painting includes a satyr who stands in for the voyeuristic viewer and who gazes lustfully at the central pair. The satyr's lechery is clearly signaled by his wagging tongue, his leering eyes, and his grasping hand, but significantly, it is impossible to tell who the satyr is lookinb at: his gaze cuts diagonally across both figures from
Cupid's bottom to Venus' lap, and then, appropriately enough, to the tip of the arrow that Venus holds.
BRONZINO, Agnolo
Agnolo di Cosimo usually known as Bronzino was a Florentine Mannerist painter. His sobriquet, Bronzino, in all probability refers to his relatively dark skin.
He lived all his life in Florence, and from his late 30s was kept busy as the court painter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was mainly a portraitist but also painted many religious subjects, and a few allegorical subjects, which include what is probably his best known work,
Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time, c. 1544–45, now in London. Many portraits of the Medicis exist in several versions with varying degrees of participation by Bronzino himself, as Cosimo was a
pioneer of the copied portrait sent as a diplomatic gift.
He trained with Pontormo, the leading Florentine painter of the first generation of Mannerism, and his style was greatly influenced by him, but his elegant and somewhat elongated figures always appear calm and somewhat reserved, lacking the agitation and emotion of those by his teacher.
They have often been found cold and artificial, and his reputation suffered from the general critical disfavour attached to Mannerism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.