Book Description

Three Italian Renaissance artists—Jacopo da Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Alessandro Allori—were closely related personally and professionally anddominated Florentine art for almost a century. In this highly original study, ElizabethPilliod offers a reassessment of their lives, work, and artistic lineage, challenging theview that has prevailed since Giorgio Vasari wrote dismissively about them in hissixteenth-century Lives.

Pilliod compares information from documents she has discovered to Vasari's versions ofthe artists' lives and shows how Vasari manipulated their biographies—for examplesupressing any mention of Pontormo's status as a court artist, including his salary fromDuke Cosimo I—in order to diminish their reputations, to obliterate memory of thetraditional Florentine workshops, and to enhance the importance of the academy instead.She also discusses such subjects as the evidence for Pontormo's association with theMedici court; Pontormo's house and its place in the urban fabric of Florence; Bronzino'sand Pontormo's intimate association with poets and theatrical spectacles; and Allori'spainted challenge to Vasari's view of the artistic scene in sixteenth-century Florence. Thebook is a major revision of our understanding of Florentine art and society of thesixteenth century, a new way of looking at Vasari's Lives, and consequently a significantreconsideration of the historiography of Renaissance art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori: Mission Accomplished
I learned a new word the other day, and through coincidence it seems to refer directly to Elizabeth Pilliod's "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori." "Microstoria" is a term for historical information discovered through the analysis of documents that recount the daily activities of ordinary individuals. Though it's arguable that many of the individuals whose stories Pilliod weaves into "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori" were anything but ordinary, microstoria is still her method, and her book demonstrates her mastery of it. The book is about the difference between the evaluation of the three eponymous painters in Giorgio Vasari's canonical "Lives of the Artists"-the 16th-century compendium that still shapes today's received ideas about the Italian Renaissance-and the actual facts about their lives, their interrelations, and their contemporary reputations, as painstakingly unearthed by Pilliod in the course of ten years of research. What she discovers-that Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori held very different places in the art world and in the evaluations of their peers and patrons than the second-string status ascribed to them by Vasari and perpetuated by centuries of unquestioning acceptance of his work-should come as no surprise to anyone more familiar with the painters' works (scores of which are beautifully reproduced throughout the text) than with the traditional scholarship that has served to obscure them.

Pilliod's mission here is the rescue of these three great artists from an official history based on ancient, unreliable, and hostile opinion. In order to execute it successfully, she needed to be fluent in various versions of various languages from the 16th century to the present; adept at discovering, navigating, and mining myriad libraries, archives, collections, correspondences, museums, and middens; au courant with about 450 years of previous criticism; a skilled, sensitive psychohistorian; a fearless detective; and an x-ray-eyed connoisseur. Part of the treat of reading "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori" is witnessing the author's command of all those skills and more, displayed in lucid and entertaining prose.

"Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori" may well mark a pivot point in our understanding not only of the artists it vindicates, but of the too-infrequently examined mechanisms of art history as well. Read it if you're an art lover; read it if you're an art historian; be sure to read it if you're a scholar of the period. ... Read more

Book Description

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) was one of the leading representatives of Florentine mannerist painting. In this important new study, the eminent French art historian Maurice Brock provides a detailed analysis of this painter's remarkable oeuvre, taking into account the latest developments in scholarship and drawing on information about the artist's life that has recently come to light.

Eschewing a chronological approach, the author examines the paintings according to genre, focusing above all on Bronzino's portraits and religiouslittle-known paintings, and in particular on the ltitle-known altarpieces and private devotional pictures. For Bronzino, art was the imitation of art, not the faithful imitation of nature. This book explains how he borrowed from other art forms, notable sculpture, and it looks at the relationship between the artist's paintings
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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on June 22, 2002. The length of the article is 846 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet. (Reviews). (book review)
Author: Victoria Kirkham
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2002
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: 55Issue: 2Page: 698(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

Do the sacred decorations of a Florentine Renaissancechapelsaints, symbols, and scriptural storieshold personal andpoliticalmeanings? Cox-Rearick's ground-breaking book explores the message hiddenin thefrescoes and altar panels of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, paintedin theearly 1540s by Agnolo Bronzino for the Spanish-born wife of Duke CosimoI deMedici. Bronzino, then the chief painter to the Medici court, waslargelyresponsible for the invention in Florence of the highly self-conscious,elegantManiera style. Cox-Rearick interweaves her account of the Medicibiography withan examination of Bronzino's commission in the broader context of hisoeuvre. Cox-Rearick reveals the Chapel of Eleonora as an intimately deviseddecorativeprogram that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule.Detailedcolor photographs of the newly restored art splendidly document thisearly tourde force of a major artist whose works are still relatively unexamined. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Italian Culture, published by American Association for Italian Studies on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 1208 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Deborah Parker, Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet.(Book Review) (book review)
Author: Stefano Cracolici
Publication: Italian Culture (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: American Association for Italian Studies
Volume: 19Issue: 1Page: 143(4)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on December 22, 1997. The length of the article is 14724 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Painter and poet Agnolo Bronzino lived from 1503 to 1572. He circulated and published approximately 300 poems that received several criticisms and were influenced by various sociological factors. Bronzio's friendships with notable contemporaries helped shape his interests, literary culture and style, and linguistic views. These include Pier Francesco Ricci, Giovan Battista Tasso, Francesco Berni, Benedetto Varchi, and Giovanni Della Casa.

Citation Details
Title: Towards a reading of Bronzino's burlesque poetry. (painter and poet Agnolo Bronzino)
Author: Deborah Parker
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 1997
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: v50Issue: n4Page: p1011(34)

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Book Description

Bronzino's stature as one of the great painters of the Florentine Renaissance has long been recognized. By contrast,his literary achievements as a poet have been neglected. This is the first modern study to focus on the poetry of Bronzino.Seeking to clarify the meaning of Bronzino's poems, Deborah Parker argues that they are considerable literary achievements. Importantly, she demonstrates that our understanding of Bronzino's paintings is incomplete without careful attention to his poetry. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document, covering the life and work of Joseph D. Bronzino, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thomson Gale. The length of the entry is 503 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on March 22, 1995. The length of the article is 88749 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio.
Author: William E. Wallace
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 1995
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: v48Issue: n1Page: p194(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Renaissance Quarterly, published by Renaissance Society of America on June 22, 1996. The length of the article is 46930 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Giorgio Vasari's concept of Fraude and deceit is supplemented by Bronzino's depiction of the 'sphinx' in his painting 'The Exposure of Luxury.' The painting which depicts a virginal girl with the scales and tail of a snake menacingly hidden at the periphery of Venus and Cupid was largely symbolic of the antithetical literary devices utilized by artists. Dante's depiction of Fraud in his 'Inferno' and Vincenzo Cartari's manual 'Le Imagini degli Dei' also mandated influences in Renaissance aesthetic judgment.

Citation Details
Title: An exemplary humanist hybrid: Vasari's "Fraude" with reference to Bronzino's "Sphinx." (Giorgio Vasari and Agnolo di Cosimo a.k.a. Bronzino)
Author: John F. Moffitt
Publication: Renaissance Quarterly (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1996
Publisher: Renaissance Society of America
Volume: v49Issue: n2Page: p303(31)

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Reviews (1)

insightful
a great way to learn about the artist and his works.beautiful colorplates and explanations of the artists' works.a wonderful addition to my collection. ... Read more