Agnolo Bronzino: Medici Court Artist in Context

The Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572) has long been celebrated as the consummate court painter and his sumptuous portrayals of Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Duchess Eleonora de Toledo have become icons of Italian Renaissance art. In this volume, an international assembly of scholars advances modern perceptions of Bronzino's art by applying fresh research paradigms not only to the well-known portraits, but also to other painted subjects, frescoes, and tapestries within the context of ancient Roman precedents, Renaissance European court culture, and postmodernist theory. The seven essays supplement two recent Bronzino exhibitions in New York and Florence (2010) by addressing Bronzino's portraiture, creative process, and tapestry production as well as past and present attitudes towards nudity, sexuality, landscapes, and poetic satire in Bronzino's imagery.

About the Author :
Andrea M. Gáldy is a classical archaeologist with a special research interest in collecting history (www.collectinganddisplay.com) and Renaissance art. Since receiving a PhD from the University of Manchester, she has been awarded fellowships from the Henry Moore Foundation (2003) and the Harvard University Center of Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti (2005), and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2012. In 2010 she organised, with Townsend Zeigler, the conference Agnolo Bronzino: Medici Court Artist in Context at the British Institute of Florence.

Review :
"This stimulating collection of essays vividly illustrates the dynamic state of Bronzino studies today. The book emerges from a conference held to accompany the eye-opening exhibition of the artist's work at Palazzo Strozzi in 2010. The appeal of the seductive beauty of Bronzino's art has waxed and waned over the centuries, and the complex reasons for these fluctuations need to be put into perspective. The authors [present] a range of new interpretations of both well-known and lesser-known works, including portraits, designs for tapestries and religious paintings. The book offers a lively re-assessment of the artist's representation of women, the impact of antiquity and neo-Platonism, and the controversies surrounding his religious work in context of the Counter-Reformation. All the essays are thoughtful, lucid and intelligently argued in a direct, unpretentious style. Here the artist's multi-faceted career is revealed as an exciting field that is evolving rapidly."– Deborah Howard, Professor of Architectural History, Fellow of St John's College, Department of History of Art, University of Cambridge"The seven essays in this book were inspired by the 2010–2011 exhibition of Bronzino's paintings at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence. They [convert] the visual excitement of that exhibition into an intellectual forum that will transform Bronzino studies and open new considerations not only of this artist's work but of Tuscan painting of the sixteenth century more generally. Questions of uses of classical sources both visual and textual, of how portraits convey more than simple image, of how the details of portraits such as clothing and jewelry or the pose of the body reveal not just status but attribution and meaning, of how the heroics of nudity are embedded in portraits that present the male sitter as a classical god, of how accepted critical concepts of mannerism shackle understanding of both style and meaning, and of how reading images through modern eyes and critical frames both help and hinder discernment of how paintings conveyed meaning in their own time – these are all part of the essays contained in this book. Running through all of their scholarly detail and interpretation is a palpable excitement for new critical strategies and open-ended research – sometimes presented in the first-person by the authors – that were released by viewing Bronzino's paintings assembled for close inspection and visual delight."– John Paoletti, Kenan Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus and Professor of Art History, Emeritus, Wesleyan University