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

Reviews (1)

Only a Teaser
This book is a nice introduction to Pontormo's work, but not that satisfactory. His best paintings and drawings are brilliant, and one suspects that the publishers could have included more reproductions of his finer works. Many of the paintings in here are mediocre/ deteriorated/ or plainly less accomplished. The book is from a series on Italian masterpieces, and is limited to a standard number of pages. ... Read more

Book Description

These richly illustrated art books cover several centuries of great artists and their masterworks. From Rubens to Dali, each artist's life and times, influences, legacy, and style are explored in depth. Each book analyzes a particular painting with regard to the history surrounding it, the techniques used to create it, and the hidden details that make up the whole, providing a thorough look at each artist's career. Included is a bibliography, a chronological reading of principle works, a brief life history, and listings of public collections featuring each artist. ... Read more

Book Description

Much has been written about the identity of the sitter in this great portrait. In 1568, Vasari noted that Pontormo painted a beautiful work, a portrait of Francesco Guardi. In 1612, however, the name of Cosimo de'Medici was attached to a description of the portrait. In this volume, Cropper argues that the subject of the painting is indeed Francesco Guardi. She discusses not only the specific determination of the sitter but the tools and methods used in general for establishing the people and places portrayed in works of art. ... Read more