Birth Year : 1503
Death Year : 1572
Country : Italy
Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, called Il Bronzino, was born in Monticello,
outside Florence. He was first a student of, and then assistant to, Jacopo
Pontormo, one of the founders of Florentine Mannerism. Pontormo, after
studies with Andrea del Sarto, was influenced by Michelangelo,
Leonardo, and Durer, and passed on these
influences to Il Bronzino, one of the few artists able to get along with
the melancholy, difficult old man. In 1523, when an outbreak of plague
struck Florence, Pontormo took Bronzino with him to Certosa where they
worked together on a series of frescoes, now badly damaged. During this
period, Il Bronzino's own reputation was established and by 1530 he was
working for the Duke of Urbino. In 1532 he returned to Florence where he
painted portraits and completed a fresco of his own before again working
briefly with Pontormo at Careggi and Castello. In 1540 Duke Cosmic I, de'Medici
appointed Il Bronzino his court painter and in 1545 the artist began the
task (not completed until 1565) of decorating the private chapel of the
Duke's wife, Eleanor of Toledo.
Il Bronzino is most famous
for his portraits, delicately formal in style, coldly clear, and with an
enamel-like surface. He also painted decorative, allegorical scenes and
a great many altarpieces for various Florentine churches. All of these
were equally formalistic and elegant, as strict and austere as the atmosphere
created by Eleanor, who imported to the Medici court a Spanish love of
ritual ceremoniousness. More classical in feeling and character than his
master Pontormo, Il Bronzino brought to Mannerism an almost marble-like
purity of form that was not be to be equaled until the nineteenth century
by Ingres. Active as an artist all his life, Il Bronzino aided Vasari and
other artists in the realization of the founding of the Florence Academy
of Fine Arts in 1563. Il Bronzino died in 1572, in San Lorenzo, where,
since 1569, he had been working on a large fresco, which was completed
by his pupil Alessandro Allori.
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Agnolo
Bronzino
Eleanore
and Son
Agnolo
Bronzino
An
Allegory with Venus and Cupid
Agnolo
Bronzino
Portrait
of a Young Man
Books about Agnolo Bronzino |
