|
|
|

|
 |
The Triumph of the
City
|
The High Renaissance
&
Mannerism
(Renaissance
Art Map)
|
see collection:
Bronzino
|
|
Agnolo Bronzino
born November 17, 1503, Monticelli, duchy of Milan [Italy] died November 23, 1572, Florence
original name Agnolo , or Agniolo, Di Cosimo Florentine painter whose polished
and elegant portraits are outstanding examples of the Mannerist style. These
works are classic embodiments of the courtly ideal under the Medici dukes of the
mid-16th century; they influenced European court portraiture for the next
century.
Bronzino was greatly influenced by the work of his teacher, the Florentine
painter Jacopo da Pontormo. Bronzino adapted his master's eccentric, expressive
style (early Mannerism) to create a brilliant, precisely linear style of his own
that was also partly influenced by Michelangelo and the late works of Raphael.
Bronzino served as the court painter to Cosimo I, duke of Florence, from 1539
until his death. His portraits, such as “Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo with Her
Son Giovanni” (Uffizi, Florence), are preeminent examples of Mannerist
portraiture: emotionally inexpressive, reserved, and noncommittal, yet
arrestingly elegant and decorative. Bronzino's great technical proficiency and
his stylized rounding of sinuous anatomical forms are also notable. He also
painted sacred and allegorical works of distinction, suchas “The Allegory of
Luxury,” or “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time” (c. 1546; National Gallery, London),
which reveals his love of complex symbolism, contrived poses, and clear,
brilliant colours.
|
|
|
|
|
|
see collection:
Bronzino |
Agnolo Bronzino:
Laura Battiferri
|
|
 Laura Battiferri
1555-60
Oil on canvas, 83 x 60 cm
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence
|
|
|

Laura Battiferri (detail)
|
Agnolo Bronzino's Laura Battiferri is one
of the most fascinating Italian Renaissance portraits of
women.Reverting in deliberately archaistic manner to a
prototype found in the early quattrocento, the artist has
portrayed the sitter in profile view, a pose reminiscent of
the medal portrait. The upper part of her body with the
small head is disproportionately elongated, emphasising the
projection of her strikingly large, slightly hooked nose.
Laura Battiferri is wearing a transparent veil, which hangs
down from the shell-shaped, calotte-style bonnet covering
her tightly combed-back hair onto her goffered shawl and
puffed sleeves. While pride - or is it modesty? -makes her
avoid eye-contact with the spectator, a gesture which lends
her something of the majesty of a high-priestess, the
painting is certainly not devoid of gestures "ad spectatorem".
The mannered spread of the slender fingers of her left hand
marks a place in an open book of Petrarch's sonnets to
Laura, with whom the lady in the portrait evidently
identifies. According to Petrarch, Laura is an
"unapproachable, unattainable beauty... as chaste as the
adored mistress of a troubadour, as modest and devout as a 'Stilnovismo
Beatrice'". "Laura's personality is even more elusive than
her external appearance. She remains the incarnation of
chaste and noble beauty."
Laura Battiferri (1523-158?) was born at Urbino, the natural
daughter of Giovanni Antonio Battiferri, who later
legitimated her. Widowed at an early age, Laura married her
second husband, the Florentine sculptor Bartolommeo Ammanati,
in 155C. at the age of twenty-seven. The marriage remained
childless, Laura referring to herself as a "barren tree".
Her poetry found many contemporary admirers. The Spanish
court had her literary works translated into Spanish.
Important writers and artists, notably Torquato Tasso and
Benevenuto Cellini, sought her company.
Laura Battiferri, a supporter of the Jesuitical
Counter-Reformation, was reputed to have been a devout
Catholic. Her great popularity at the Spanish court confirms
this. The demure severity of her pose and dress may reflect
the increased rigidity of Catholic ethical norms since the
Council of Trent (1545-1563).
Norbert Schneider
|
|
|
|

Laura Battiferri
(detail)
Laura Battiferi's fingers mark a
place in an open book of Petrarch's sonnets to Laura
|
|
|
|
see collection:
Bronzino |
Agnolo Bronzino:
Portrait of Ugolino Martelli
|
|

Ugolino Martelli
c. 1535
Oil on wood, 102 x 85 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
|
 Ugolino Martelli
(detail)
The statue of David was a symbol of patriotic loyalty to
Florence. Its presence in the portrait documents the period's waxing
sense of Italian nationhood.
|
Agnolo Bronzino is considered the master of Florentine Mannerism. Held in high
esteem by his aristocratic patrons, his portraits bestowed on the sitter an air
of confident reserve and dignified elegance. Although his portrait of Ugolino
Martelli (1519-1592), now in Berlin, is cool and polished in style, Bronzino
transcends mere outward appearances to reveal an introverted, intellectual
quality in the features of this young humanist scholar. The sitter must have
been about twenty years old at the time; evidently, he wished to present himself
as somewhat older and deserving of respect: a "puer senex", as it were. Martelli
is sitting and gazing contemplatively to one side, his black, silken gown
buttoned to the neck, and a black beret on his small oval head. He is apparently
thinking about a passage in the book lying open on the table. It is the ninth
book of the "Iliad", Homer's epic on the Trojan War. The sequel, as it were, in
Latin literature was Virgil's "Aeneid". This is apparently one of Martelli's
favourite books, as the inscription MARO (= Virgil) on the book on the left
shows. His left hand is supported by a book by Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), whom
Martelli's contemporaries would have considered the most erudite of humanist
scholars. Baldassare Castiglione gave a prominent place to this Petrarch
scholar, poet and philosopher in his treatise "II libro del Cortegiano" (Book
IV), describing Bembo as the very paragon of courtly scholarship. Bembo was made
a cardinal in 1539. Perhaps his appointment provided Martelli, who later became
Bishop of Grandeves in the south of France, with an opportunity to seek Bembo's
patronage as a follower of his Neoplatonic doctrine; the attribute of the book
undoubtedly represents an act of homage. Thus the year of Bembo's elevation to
the rank of cardinal may help us date the portrait, since the artist himself has
left only his signature.
In some of Bronzino's portraits, and those of other Mannerist painters, it is
quite common to find the sitter posed before an abruptly receding architectural
background. Martelli, too, is posed before the inner court of a palace built by
Do-menico d'Agnolo, with walls reminiscent of the Biblioteca Laurenziana.
Standing against the back wall is a statue of David. Once attributed to
Donatello, but probably the work of Bernadino Rosselino, it is now in the
National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Just as the "Iliad" and the "Aeneid" were both still considered by Renaissance
humanists as literary links to ancient Rome (and thereby to Italy's early
history), so the prominent position given to the statue of David in Martelli's
"intellectual setting" underscores its function as a symbol of the young
humanist's patriotic loyalty towards his native town of Florence. The portrait
thus documents the waxing sense of Italian nationhood of the period, described,
too, by Francesco Guicciardini and Niccolo Machiavelli in their books on the
history of Florence. Pietro Bembo's work "Prose della volgar lingua" (1525) gave
support to this movement, encouraging Italian authors to use their own language
rather than Latin.
Norbert Schneider
|
|
|
|
|
see collection:
Bronzino |
Agnolo Bronzino:
Andrea Doria as Neptune
|

Portrait of Andrea Doria
as Neptune (detail)
|
 Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune
1550-55
Oil on canvas, 115 x 53 cm
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan
|
This portrait heroises and idealises the Genuese admiral and
statesman Andrea Doria (1466/68-1560), showing him as Neptune.
Standing before a ship's mast on which his name is carved in gold
letters, Doria carries a trident in his sinewy right hand, while in
his left he holds part of a sail that hangs down from the top right
of the picture - gathering it into a kind of loincloth which barely
covers his genitals.
John Pope-Hennessy has suggested the portrait may have been painted
to commemorate Andrea Doria's occupation of Tunis in 1535. A medal
by Leone Leoni, also showing Doria as Neptune, places him in a more
narrative context, whereas Agnolo Bronzino's allegorical figure is
reminiscent of the statuesque plasticity of a Michelangelo. The
portrait has an official character. It represents the appropriate
form of idealisation for a condottiere who, a member of Pope
Innocence VII's personal body-guard, worked his way to the top of
the social ladder in the service of various Italian princes: in
other words, a state portrait. During the internecine disputes
between Charles V and Francis I, Andrea Doria initially served the
French king; swapping his allegiance to the German Emperor, he
finally, following the liberation of Genoa, became a dictator of
this republican city-state.
Doria's wish to give himself mythological stature is not perhaps the
most surprising aspect of this portrait; even more conspicuous is
his self-conscious exhibition of nudity, his apparent obsession with
virility. Vitality and aggressive, warlike behaviour, springing from
instinctual, libidinous drives, are shown here as the only route to
power. Nudity was not unusual for a mythological subject, but the
fact that Doria wished to portray his body in this way shows that he
was not interested in displaying the external trappings of a power
based on dynastic tradition, but in demonstrating a power which
derived its natural legitimacy from a new ethics of achievement, and
its supremacy from reserves of determination and physical strength
which were the exclusive domain of the powerful individual.
Norbert Schneider
|
|
|
|
|

Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune (detail)
|

Leone Leoni
The Triumph of Andrea Doria
1541
|
|
see collection: Bronzino
|
|
|

|
|