Page i
Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio
Page ii
CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ART WAL...
31 downloads
1314 Views
19MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
Page i
Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio
Page ii
CALIFORNIA STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF ART WALTER HORN, Founding Editor JAMES MARROW, General Editor I The Birth of Landscape Painting in China, by Michael Sullivan II Portraits by Degas, by Jean Sutherland Boggs III Leonardo da Vinci on Painting: A Lost Book (Libro A), by Carlo Pedretti IV Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts, by Lilian M. C. Randall V The Dynastic Arts of the Kushans, by John M. Rosenfield VI A Century of Dutch Manuscript Illumination, by L. M. J. Delaissé VII George Caleb Bingham: The Evolution of an Artist, and A Catalogue Raisonné (two volumes), by E. Maurice Bloch VIII Claude Lorrain: The Drawings—Catalog and Plates (two volumes), by Marcel Roethlisberger IX Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance, by Juergen Schulz X The Drawings of Edouard Manet, by Alain de Leiris XI Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, by Herschel B. Chipp, with contributions by Peter Selz and Joshua C. Taylor XII After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters, 1870–1900, by Alfred Frankenstein XIII Early Netherlandish Triptychs: A Study in Patronage, by Shirley Neilsen Blum XIV The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought, by Ruth Mellinkoff XV Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, by Kathleen Cohen XVI Franciabigio, by Susan Regan McKillop XVII Egon Schiele's Portraits, by Alessandra Comini XVIII Manuscript Painting in Paris During the Reign of Saint Louis: A Study of Styles, by Robert Branner XIX The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy of, and Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery (three volumes), by Walter Horn and Ernest Born XX French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries, by Jean Bony XXI The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, by Suzanne Lewis
Page iii
XXII The Literature of Classical Art: The Painting of the Ancients and A Lexicon of Artists and Their Works According to the Literary Sources, by Franciscus Junius (two volumes), edited by Keith Aldrich, Philipp Fehl, and Raina Fehl XXIII The Armor of Light: Stained Glass in Western France, 1250–1325, by Meredith Parsons Lillich XXIV NineteenthCentury Theories of Art, by Joshua C. Taylor XXV Corinthian VasePainting of the Archaic Period (three volumes), by D. A. Amyx XXVI Picasso's Guernica: History, Transformations, Meanings, by Herschel B. Chipp XXVII Lovis Corinth, by Horst Uhr XXVIII The Royal Image: Illustrations of the Grandes Chroniques de France, 1274–1422, by Anne D. Hedeman XXIX Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio, by Janet CoxRearick XXX Masking the Blow: The Scene of Representation in Late Prehistoric Egyptian Art, by Whitney Davis XXXI The Forum of Trajan, by James Packer DISCOVERY SERIES I The Devil at Isenheim: Reflections of Popular Belief in Grünewald's Altarpiece, by Ruth Mellinkoff II The Forgotten Hermitage of Skellig Michael, by Walter Horn, Jenny White Marshall, and Grellan D. Rourke
Page iv
A CENTENNIAL BOOK One hundred books published between 1990 and 1995 bear this special imprint of the University of California Press. We have chosen each Centennial Book as an example of the Press's finest publishing and bookmaking traditions as we celebrate the beginning of our second century. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Founded in 1893
Page v
Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio Janet CoxRearick
Page vi
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. Oxford, England © 1993 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data CoxRearick, Janet. Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio / Janet CoxRearick. p. cm.—(California studies in the history of art ; 29) "A Centennial Book"—p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0520074807 (alk. paper) 1. Bronzino, Agnolo, 1503–1572—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Bible—Illustrations. 3. Cappella di Eleonora (Palazzo vecchio) I. Title. II. Series. ND623.B8C68 1992 759.5—dc20 9126851 Printed and bound in Korea 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.
Page vii
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the contribution provided by the Art Book Fund of the Associates of the University of California Press, which is supported by a major gift from the Ahmanson Foundation. This publication has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.
Page ix
For Wiley
Page x
CONTENTS List of Illustrations
xii
Photograph Credits
xxiv
Preface
xxvii 1
Introduction Part I The Patron and Her Chapel
One Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence
22
Two The Chronology of the Frescoes
54
Three The Altarpiece and the Completion of the Decoration
74
Part II Bronzino's Paintings in the Chapel
Four The Frescoes
94
Five The Altarpieces Part III Devotional Imagery in the Chapel
145
Six The Altar Wall
190
Seven The Stories of Moses
213
Eight The Saints of the Vault
238
Page xi
Part IV The Medicean Meaning of the Chapel Decoration
Nine History, Myth, and Propaganda in Cosimo de' Medici's Early Art
250
Ten Imagery of Dynasty and Rule
260
Eleven Cosimo de' Medici as an Old Testament Hero
282
Twelve Cosimo de' Medici, A New Moses
294
Thirteen The Programme of the Chapel
320
Appendix of Documents
327
List of Abbreviations
347
Notes
349
Selected Bibliography
417
Index of Documents Cited
429
General Index
431
Page xii
ILLUSTRATIONS Unless otherwise noted, works are by Bronzino and locations are Florence. Plate 1. Duke Cosimo de' Medici. Galleria degli Uffizi Plate 2. Eleonora di Toledo. Prague, National Gallery Plate 3. Chapel of Eleonora, view to the altar Plate 4. Chapel of Eleonora, view to the entrance Plate 5. Chapel of Eleonora, vault Plate 6. Chapel of Eleonora (south wall), The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua Plate 7. Chapel of Eleonora (west wall), The Brazen Serpent Plate 8. Chapel of Eleonora (north wall), Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna; Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe [Allori] Plate 9. Chapel of Eleonora, altar (east) wall Plate 10. St. John the Baptist (from the Chapel of Eleonora). Malibu, California, J. Paul Getty Museum Plate 11. Lamentation (from the Chapel of Eleonora). Besançon, Musée des BeauxArts Plate 12. Chapel of Eleonora, King David and The Erythraean Sibyl
Page xiii
Plate 13. Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Justice Plate 14. Chapel of Eleonora, Annunciation Plate 15. Modello for the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut Plate 16. Chapel of Eleonora, St. Michael Fighting the Devil Plate 17. Chapel of Eleonora, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata Plate 18. Chapel of Eleonora, St. Jerome in Penitence Plate 19. Chapel of Eleonora, St. John the Evangelist on Patmos Plate 20. Chapel of Eleonora, putto to the left of St. Michael Plate 21. Chapel of Eleonora, putto to the right of St. Michael Plate 22. Study for The Crossing of the Red Sea. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi Plate 23. Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, figures on the right Plate 24. Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, figures on the left Plate 25. Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Striking the Rock, detail, lower section Plate 26. Chapel of Eleonora, The Gathering of Manna, detail, lower section Plate 27. Lamentation, Besançon, detail, holy women Plate 28. Lamentation, Besançon, detail, three men Plate 29. Lamentation, Besançon, detail, angels Plate 30. Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Appointing Joshua Plate 31. Lamentation, Besançon, detail, head of a holy woman Plate 32. Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Appointing Joshua, detail, woman to the right Plate 33. Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet (tapestry). Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale
Page xiv
Figures
Figure 1. Anonymous, Agnolo Bronzino. (After Rau and Rastrelli)
2
Figure 2. Francesco Salviati, Story of Camillus. Palazzo Vecchio, east and south walls of the Sala delle Udienze
3
Figure 3. Niccolò Tribolo, Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus. Villa Castello
4
Figure 4. Baccio Bandinelli, Monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Piazza S. Lorenzo
5
Figure 5. Bronzino, Salviati, and Pontormo, Story of Joseph (tapestries). Palazzo Vecchio, Sala de' Dugento
6
Figure 6. Engraving of the choir of S. Lorenzo, 1598, showing frescoes by Jacopo da Pontormo. Vienna, Albertina
7
Figure 7. Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus. Loggia dei Lanzi
8
Figure 8. Giorgio Vasari, Duke Cosimo de' Medici with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo
9
Figure 9. Francesco Salviati, Deposition. Museo dell'Opera di S. Croce
10
Figure 10. Christ in Limbo. Museo dell'Opera di S. Croce
11
Figure 11. Allegory of Venus. London, National Gallery
12
Figure 12. Palazzo Vecchio, plan of the second floor
13
Figure 13. Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi.Chapel, Palazzo Medici
14
Figure 14. Jacopo da Pontormo, Capponi Chapel, S. Felicita, with the altarpiece of the LamentationEntombment and the Annunciation
16
Figure 15. Baccio d'Angelo, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and Fra Mariano da Pescia, Palazzo Vecchio, Chapel of the Priors
17
Figure 16. Giorgio Vasari, Palazzo Vecchio, Chapel of Duke Cosimo de' Medici
18
Figure 17. Genealogy of the Medici family
24
Figure 18. Giovanni Stradano, The Arrival of Eleonora di Toledo at Poggio a Caiano. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo
29
Page xv
Figure 19. Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus. Philadelphia Museum of Art
32
Figure 20. Giovanni Stradano, Tribute to Duke Cosimo de' Medici in the Piazza Ducale. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Gualdrada
34
Figure 21. Baccio Bandinelli, Eleonora di Toledo (bronze). Museo Nazionale del Bargello
36
Figure 22. Duke Cosimo de' Medici. London, private collection
38
Figure 23. Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni. Galleria degli Uffizi
39
Figure 24. Book of Hours of Eleonora di Toledo, Annunciation with the MediciToledo Arms. London, Victoria and Albert Museum
40
Figure 25. Giovanni Stradano, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo Receiving in the Palazzo Ducale. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo
41
Figure 26. Bronzino (workshop), Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Francesco. Pisa, Museo di S. Matteo
43
Figure 27. Francesco Salviati, Triumph of Camillus, detail, Juno. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala delle Udienze
44
Figure 28. Domenico Poggini, medal of Eleonora di Toledo with her impresa of the peahen with its young. Museo Nazionale del Bargello
44
Figure 29. Eleonora di Toledo. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie
47
Figure 30. Giovanni Antonio de' Rossi, Duke Cosimo de' Medici, Eleonora di Toledo, and their children (cameo). Museo Nazionale del Bargello
48
Figure 31. Alessandro Allori and Il Poppi, Eleonora di Toledo with Spring and Summer. Palazzo Vecchio, Studiolo of Francesco de' Medici
53
Figure 32. Camera Verde, view from the entrance to the Chapel of Eleonora with vault decoration by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Palazzo Vecchio
58
Figure 33. Francesco Salviati, ceiling of the scrittoio of Eleonora di Toledo. Palazzo Vecchio
59
Figure 34. Chapel of Eleonora, inscriptions on the doorframe
61
Figure 35. Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Prudence
63
Figure 36. Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Temperance
64
Page xvi
Figure 37. Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Fortitude
65
Figure 38. Chapel of Eleonora [Allori], Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe
66
Figure 39. Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of the vault
67
Figure 40. Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua
68
Figure 41. Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of The Brazen Serpent
69
Figure 42. Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna
69
Figure 43. Francesco Salviati, Lamentation (tapestry). Galleria degli Uffizi
83
Figure 44. Bronzino (workshop), copy of the Lamentation altarpiece of the Chapel of Eleonora. Parish church, Castrojeriz, Burgos
86
Figure 45. Bronzino, letter to Duke Cosimo de' Medici. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library
87
Figure 46. Chapel of Eleonora, vault, detail of the Trinity
89
Figure 47. Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo. S. Lorenzo
95
Figure 48. St. Benedict Tempted in the Wilderness. S. Salvi
95
Figure 49. Pietà with Angels (tabernacle). S. Casciano, Mercatalle
96
Figure 50. Giorgio Vasari, vault of the Chapel of Duke Cosimo de' Medici. Palazzo Vecchio
97
Figure 51. Raphael, Loggia di Psyche. Rome, Villa Farnesina
98
Figure 52. Jacopo da Pontormo, studies for the vault of the Villa Careggi loggia. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
99
Figure 53. Jacopo da Pontormo, studies for the vault of Villa Careggi loggia, detail, putto. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
99
Figure 54. Jacopo da Pontormo, study for God the Father in the cupola of the Capponi Chapel. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
100
Figure 55. Nativity. Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts
102
Figure 56. Study for the head of St. Jerome. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
103
Figure 57. Chapel of Eleonora, St. Jerome, detail of the head
103
Page xvii
Figure 58. Study for St. Michael. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins
104
Figure 59. Chapel of Eleonora, seated putto
108
Figure 60. Chapel of Eleonora, striding putto
109
Figure 61. Michelangelo, nude above the Libyan Sibyl. Vatican, Sistine Chapel
110
Figure 62. Study for the head of the putto to the right of St. Michael. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstichkabinett
110
Figure 63. Chapel of Eleonora, head of the putto to the right of St. Michael
110
Figure 64. Holy Family. Washington, National Gallery of Art, The Samuel H. Kress Collection
111
Figure 65. Niccolò Tribolo, Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus, detail, putti on the stem. Villa Castello
112
Figure 66. Niccolò Tribolo, Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus, detail, putti on the base. Villa Castello
113
Figure 67. St. Sebastian. Lugano, ThyssenBornemisza Collection
114
Figure 68. Hellenistic, the Belvedere Torso. Musei Vaticani
117
Figure 69. Joseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife (tapestry). Palazzo Vecchio, Sala de' Dugento
119
Figure 70. Michelangelo, Moses. Rome, S. Pietro in Vincoli
121
Figure 71. Raphael, Parnassus. Vatican, Stanza della Segnatura
122
Figure 72. Roman, the Idolino. Museo Archeologico
123
Figure 73. Michelangelo, The Brazen Serpent. Vatican, Sistine Chapel
124
Figure 74. Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, head of a dead woman
126
Figure 75. Michelangelo, study of Venus. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
127
Figure 76. Rosso Fiorentino, Moses and the Daughters of Jethro. Galleria degli Uffizi
128
Figure 77. Domenico Beccafumi, The Punishment of Korah. Pisa cathedral
129
Figure 78. Hellenistic, Niobid. Galleria degli Uffizi
130
Figure 79. Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, heads of two women
131
Page xviii
Figure 80. Study for the head of a woman in The Brazen Serpent. Paris, private collection
131
Figure 81. Hellenistic, Dying Alexander. Galleria degli Uffizi
132
Figure 82. Moses Striking the Rock, detail, head of a woman
133
Figure 83. Study for the head of a woman in Moses Striking the Rock. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins
133
Figure 84. Study for two men drinking in Moses Striking the Rock. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
134
Figure 85. Moses Striking the Rock, detail, men in the foreground
135
Figure 86. Benjamin Received by Joseph (tapestry). Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale
136
Figure 87. Jacopo da Pontormo, study for Moses Receiving the Tables of the Law. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
136
Figure 88. Michelangelo, Victory. Palazzo Vecchio, Salone dei Cinquecento
138
Figure 89. Study for the nude in The Gathering of Manna. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
138
Figure 90. Study for the nude in The Gathering of Manna. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana
139
Figure 91. Chapel of Eleonora, reconstruction of the first installation of the altar wall
146
Figure 92. Marcantonio Raimondi, The Baptism of Christ (engraving)
148
Figure 93. Dead Christ with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene. Galleria degli Uffizi
150
Figure 94. Pietro Perugino, Lamentation, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina
151
Figure 95. Andrea del Sarto, Lamentation, Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina
151
Figure 96. Jacopo da Empoli after Jacopo da Pontormo, Lamentation. Certosa di Galluzzo
152
Figure 97. Lamentation (without the lunette). Besançon, Musée des Beaux Arts
152
Figure 98. Michelangelo, Pietà. Vatican, St. Peter's
153
Figure 99. Jacopo da Pontormo, LamentationEntombment. S. Felicita, Capponi Chapel
154
Figure 100. Baccio Bandinelli, study for a Lamentation with Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. Amherst, Mass., private collection
158
Page xix
Figure 101. Baccio Bandinelli, study for The Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins
160
Figure 102. Francesco Salviati, study for Justice Liberating Innocence. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
161
Figure 103. Justice Liberating Innocence (tapestry). Palazzo Pitti
161
Figure 104. Francesco Salviati, study for The Selling of Joseph. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
162
Figure 105. The Selling of Joseph (tapestry). Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale
162
Figure 106. Francesco Salviati, study for the Arms of Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum
163
Figure 107. Allegory of the Dynasty of Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo (tapestry). Palazzo Pitti
163
Figure 108. Lamentation. Accademia
164
Figure 109. Baccio Bandinelli, Dead Christ with Nicodemus. SS. Annunziata
165
Figure 110. Perino del Vaga, study for The Preaching of St. John the Baptist. Vienna, Albertina
166
Figure 111. Jacopino del Conte, The Preaching of St. John the Baptist. Rome, S. Giovanni Decollato
167
Figure 112. Baccio Bandinelli, Dead Christ with an Angel. S. Croce
168
Figure 113. Lamentation, detail, angel, heads of Christ and St. John. Besançon, Musée des BeauxArts
169
Figure 114. Baccio Bandinelli, Dead Christ with an Angel, detail, angel
169
Figure 115. Baccio Bandinelli, Birth of the Virgin, detail, woman with child. Loreto, Santa Casa
170
Figure 116. Baccio Bandinelli, Giovanni delle Bande Nere Receiving Prisoners, detail, women. Piazza S. Lorenzo
170
Figure 117. Baccio Bandinelli, study of mourning women. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins
171
Figure 118. Baccio Bandinelli, studies of three male heads. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
172
Figure 119. Baccio Bandinelli, studies of male heads. Stockholm, National Museum
173
Page xx
Figure 120. Baccio Bandinelli, The Descent from the Cross. San Marino, Museo Nazionale
174
Figure 121. Baccio Bandinelli, study for a Descent from the Cross. London, Katz Collection
175
Figure 122. Donatello, Lamentation, detail, Joseph of Arimathea. S. Lorenzo
176
Figure 123. Baccio Bandinelli, study for a Pietà. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins
177
Figure 124. Study for the head of a holy woman. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
181
Figure 125. Lamentation, detail, angel and the Magdalene. Besançon, Musée des BeauxArts
182
Figure 126. Reflectogram of the Lamentation, detail, nose and eyes of the Magdalene (Laboratoire des Musées de France)
183
Figure 127. Reflectogram of the Lamentation, detail, nose and mouth of the Magdalene (Laboratoire des Musées de France)
183
Figure 128. Chapel of Eleonora, Annunciate Virgin, detail, head
186
Figure 129. Study for the Annunciate Virgin. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
187
Figure 130. Francesco Salviati, design for a ewer. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum
197
Figure 131. Albrecht Dürer, Lamentation (woodcut)
198
Figure 132. Marcantonio Raimondi, Lamentation (engraving)
199
Figure 133. Francesco Salviati, Lamentation. Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina
202
Figure 134. Portrait drawing of Pontormo, detail of the head. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
204
Figure 135. Alessandro Allori, Christ among the Doctors, detail, portraits of Pontormo, Bronzino, and Tomaso Manzuoli. SS. Annunziata
204
Figure 136. Alessandro Allori, study for Christ in Limbo, detail, portraits of Pontormo and Bronzino. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
205
Figure 137. Alessandro Allori, Trinity. Chapel of St. Luke, SS. Annunziata
206
Figure 138. Alessandro Allori, Christ in Limbo, detail, portrait of Bronzino with Moses and St. John the Baptist. S. Marco
207
Figure 139. Anonymous, Agnolo Bronzino. Galleria degli Uffizi
208
Page xxi
Figure 140. Christ in Limbo, detail, Bronzino as David. S. Lorenzo
208
Figure 141. Enea Vico (engraving after Bandinelli), The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, detail, selfportrait of Bandinelli. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
210
Figure 142. Baccio Bandinelli, SelfPortrait, detail. Boston, Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum
210
Figure 143. Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo, detail, portraits of Bronzino, Pontormo, and Allori. S. Lorenzo
211
Figure 144. Sicolante da Sermoneta, The Gathering of Manna. Chapel of the Bastie d'Urfé
214
Figure 145. Battista Franco, The Gathering of Manna. Pisa, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo
215
Figure 146. Early Christian sarcophagus, The Crossing of the Red Sea. Musei Vaticani
218
Figure 147. The Crossing of the Red Sea. Rome, doors of S. Sabina
218
Figure 148. Cosimo Rosselli, The Crossing of the Red Sea, and Sandro Botticelli, Moses in Egypt and Midian. Vatican, Sistine Chapel
220
Figure 149. Perino del Vaga, The Crossing of the Red Sea. Galleria degli Uffizi
220
Figure 150. Domenico Beccafumi, Moses Striking the Rock. Siena cathedral
222
Figure 151. Early Christian sarcophagus, Moses Striking the Rock, detail, Moses and other figures. Musei Vaticani
225
Figure 152. Alessandro Allori, The Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock. S. Maria Novella
226
Figure 153. Alessandro Allori, study for The Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock and The Last Supper. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
227
Figure 154. Titian, The Crossing of the Red Sea (woodcut). London, British Museum
230
Figure 155. Hieronymous Cock, engraving after a version of Bronzino's Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi
231
Figure 156. Chapel of Eleonora, The Crossing of the Red Sea, detail, the arrival of the Israelites
233
Figure 157. Luca Signorelli, The Last Acts and Death of Moses, detail, Moses appointing Joshua. Vatican, Sistine Chapel
236
Figure 158. Andrea della Robbia, Crucifixion. La Verna, Chapel of the Stigmata
244
Page xxii
Figure 159. Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata. S. Trinita, Sassetti Chapel
245
Figure 160. Giovanni della Robbia, Lamentation. La Verna, Chapel of the Pietà
247
Figure 161. Francesco Salviati, The Triumph of Camillus. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala delle Udienze
257
Figure 162. Fra Angelico, Madonna and Saints. S. Marco
262
Figure 163. (Attributed to) Francesco Maria Butteri, Madonna and Saints. Galleria degli Uffizi
262
Figure 164. Jacopo da Pontormo, Maria Salviati and Cosimo de' Medici. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery
263
Figure 165. Giulio Clovio, Eleonora di Toledo (miniature). Walbeck Abbey, Duke of Portland Collection
264
Figure 166. Francesco da Sangallo, medal of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Museo Nazionale del Bargello
265
Figure 167. Carlo Portelli, Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Minneapolis Institute of Arts
267
Figure 168. Coin of SS. John the Baptist and Cosmas. Museo Nazionale del Bargello
270
Figure 169. Loggia dei Lanzi, detail of Prudence
273
Figure 170. (After) Bronzino, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. Erlanger Collection, Connecticut
275
Figure 171. Study for the MediciToledo arms of the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins
277
Figure 172. Raphael and Giovanni da Udine, Loggia di Psyche, Villa Farnesina, detail, Mercury with fruitful garlands
281
Figure 173. Vincenzo Danti, Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Joshua. SS. Annunziata, Chapel of St. Luke
284
Figure 174. Pierino da Vinci, Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Patron of Pisa. Musei Vaticani
285
Figure 175. Vincenzo Danti, The Brazen Serpent. Museo Nazionale del Bargello
285
Figure 176. Jacob Blessing Joseph's Children (tapestry). Palazzo Pitti
293
Figure 177. Benvenuto Cellini, medal with Moses Striking the Rock. Museo Nazionale del Bargello
299
Figure 178. (After) Niccolò Tribolo, Aesculapius. Palazzo Medici
301
Page xxiii
Figure 179. Battista Franco, The Battle of Montemurlo with the Rape of Ganymede. Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina
304
Figure 180. Chapel of Eleonora, The Crossing of the Red Sea, detail, drowning soldiers
306
Figure 181. Filippino Lippi, angel with the Strozzi arms. S. Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel
307
Figure 182. Giorgio Vasari, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and the Prisoners of Montemurlo. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo
308
Figure 183. Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Appointing Joshua, detail, portrait of Pierfrancesco Riccio
311
Figure 184. (Attributed to) Francesco Salviati, Pierfrancesco Riccio. Prato, Palazzo Comunale
312
Figure 185. Chapel of Eleonora, The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, detail, ewer and basin
317
Figure 186. Bronzino (reworked?), study for a Holy Family. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut
317
Figure 187. Christ in Limbo, detail, portraits of Gelli and Giambullari as Moses and Abraham. Museo dell'Opera di S. Croce
323
Page xxiv
PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Figs. 106, 130 Author: Figs. 17, 39–41, 49, 91 Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan: Fig. 90 Biblioteca Herziana, Rome: Fig. 172 Choffet, Besançon: Plates 10, 22, 28, 29, 31 Cliché des Musées Nationaux, Paris: Figs. 58, 83, 97, 101, 117, 123, 171 Cliché du Laboratoire des Musées de France: Figs. 126, 127 Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California: Plate 11 Courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum: Fig. 24 Courtesy Robert B. Simon: Fig. 165 Fabbrica di S. Pietro in Vaticano: Fig. 98 Flammarion, Paris: Fig. 144 Fonds Albertina, Vienna: Figs. 6, 110 Fototeca Berenson, Florence: Figs. 1, 3–5, 21, 65, 66, 72, 78, 88, 92, 109, 112–16, 122, 125, 131, 132, 147, 154, 157, 158, 160, 170, 175, 186 Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, Boston: Fig. 142 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1963: Fig. 118 Ministero Beni Culturali e Ambientali, Rome: Figs. 51, 111 Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis: Fig. 167 Musei Vaticani: Figs. 64, 68, 71, 73, 146, 148, 151 Museo Nazionale, San Marino: Fig. 120 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest: Fig. 55 National Gallery, Prague: Plate 2 National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection: Fig. 61 National Swedish Art Museums, Stockholm: Fig. 119 Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome: Plate 33
Page xxv
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia: Fig. 19 Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. 1346–7: Fig. 45 Private collection, Amherst, Massachusetts: Fig. 100 Private collection, Paris: Fig. 80 Quattrone, Florence: cover; Plates 1, 3–9, 12–26, 30, 32; Figs. 34–42, 57, 59, 60, 63, 74, 79, 82, 85, 156, 180, 183, 185 Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London: Figs. 11, 22 Soprintendenza per i beni ambientali, architettonici, artistici e storici, Pisa: Figs. 26, 145 Soprintendenza per i beni ambientali ed architettonici di Firenze e Pistoia: Figs. 47, 143 Soprintendenza per i beni artistici e storici di Firenze, Florence: Figs. 2, 7–10, 12–14, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27, 28, 30–33, 43, 48, 50, 52–54, 56, 69, 70, 75–77, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 93–96, 99, 102–5, 107, 108, 124, 128, 129, 133–41, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 159, 161–63, 166, 168, 169, 173, 174, 176–79, 181, 182, 184, 187 Sotheby's, London: Fig. 121 Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden: Fig. 62 Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin: Fig. 29 Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt (Kurt Haase Fotograf): Plate 16 ThyssenBornemisza Collection, Lugano, Switzerland: Fig. 67 Virgilio Fotos, Burgos: Fig. 44 Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore: Fig. 164
Page xxvii
PREFACE The decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, is a masterpiece of the art of Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), painter to the Medici court in Florence in the sixteenth century. Indeed, as the only complex ensemble of frescoes and panels he painted, it could be deemed the central work of his career. It is also a primary monument of the religious painting of cinquecento Florence. Just as Bronzino's splendid portraits and erotic allegories established new modes of secular painting that expressed the ideals of midsixteenthcentury court life, so his innovative chapel paintings transformed traditional biblical narratives and devotional themes according to a new aesthetic. The chapel is also the locus of the emerging personal imagery of its patron, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (1519–1574), and its decorations adumbrate many of the metaphors of rule, as they have been called, that would be programmatically developed in his more overtly propagandistic later art. There has been no comprehensive, documented, and illustrated study of this central work of Florentine Renaissance art. It was the subject of a short article by Andrea Emiliani (1961) and of my own essays, one on Bronzino's preparatory studies for the decoration (1971) and two others on individual paintings in the chapel (1987, 1989). These were prolegomena to this fullscale study, in which the recently restored frescoes are also illustrated for the first time.
Page xxviii
I began this book in 1986 at the Getty Center for Art History and the Humanities, whose staff and director, Kurt W. Forster, encouraged and assisted me. The Professional Staff Congress of the City University of New York awarded me three grants in support of research. Further work on the project was carried out under the auspices of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, the National Gallery of Art, to whose staff and dean, Henry A. Millon, I am deeply grateful. I completed the book at the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti, Florence. Its director, Walter Kaiser, extended a warm welcome to me, and scholars associated with it contributed to my work: Candace Adelson, Karenedis Barzman, Paul Barolsky, Margaret B. Haines, William Hood, Leatrice Mendelsohn, Michael J. Rocke, Patricia Rubin, David Rutherford, William B. Wallace, and Hellmut Wohl. S. J. Freedberg and John PopeHennessy have sustained my work on Florentine Renaissance art over the years, and I am happy to thank them yet again here. I also thank the staffs of the libraries, archives, and museums in which I have worked, particularly those in Florence: the Kunsthistorisches Institut, the Biblioteca Nazionale, and the Archivio di Stato. Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, director of the Galleria degli Uffizi and the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, helpfully supported my work at the Uffizi. At the Biblioteca Berenson and the Fototeca Berenson, Fiorella Superbi Gioffredi was always helpful. Thanks are also due to the Comune di Firenze for expediting photography and other work in the chapel. In Paris, at the Musée du Louvre, Catherine Goguel facilitated my work in many ways. Gino Corti was of great assistance in transcribing documents in Florence, and Paola Peruzzi also assisted with archival transcriptions. Daniella Dini discussed her late father's restoration of the chapel with me and made diagrams for me of the giornate of Bronzino's frescoes. Elizabeth Giansiracusa worked on the translations. Antonio Quattrone photographed the Chapel of Eleonora expressly for this book. Several exceptionally generous colleagues read parts or all of late drafts of the manuscript and made helpful suggestions: Lynette Bosch, Rona Goffen, Craig Hugh Smyth, and, especially, Patricia Rubin and Malcolm Campbell. For other assistance of various kinds, I wish to thank the following colleagues: William Barcham, Mary Bergstein, Suzanne Branciforte, David Alan Brown, Patricia F. Brown, William Connell, Alison Cross, Susan Flanagan, Robert Gaston,
Page xxix
Marcia B. Hall, Detlef Heikamp, James Holderbaum, Marilyn A. Lavin, Giovanna Lazzi, James Marrow, Peter Meller, Ruth Mellinkoff, Nicolas Penny, Elizabeth Pilliod, Olga Raggio, David Rosand, Robert B. Simon, Yvonne Szafran, Roger Ward, Jack Wasserman, Kathleen WeilGarris Brandt, and Donald Weinstein. I also acknowledge with pleasure the contributions of Deborah Kirshman and Stephanie Fay who, as fine arts editor and copy editor, respectively, provided encouragement and helpful criticism. And I thank Pete Goldie for his computer expertise and assistance with the index. My greatest debt is to my husband, H. Wiley Hitchcock, whose linguistic and editorial acumen were the least part of his contribution to this book, which I lovingly dedicate to him. J. CR. VILLA I TATTI NOVEMBER 1990 AND JULY 1992
Page xxx E cominciandomi da i principali e piú vecchi, dirò prima d'Agnolo detto il Bronzino, pittore fiorentino veramente rarissimo e degno di tutte le lodi. (And beginning with the most important and the oldest, I shall speak first of Agnolo, called Bronzino, a Florentine painter truly most rare and worthy of all praise.) —GIORGIO VASARI, LE VITE, 1568
Page 1
INTRODUCTION When Vasari was completing the second edition of his Lives of the Artists in the mid1560s, after the death of Michelangelo, he added a new chapter on living artists. Bronzino (Fig. 1), who Vasari says was among the oldest of them, was given pride of place and the longest account. 1 As Vasari intuited, Bronzino turned out to be the last great painter of the Florentine Renaissance. During the central years of his career, from the late 1530s through the 1550s, Bronzino developed a personal style in a prodigious series of portraits (on which his reputation has always been largely based), altarpieces, and allegories that were exemplars for much of later sixteenthcentury Florentine painting. He was also the most sophisticated artist to embody in Florence the ''stylish style," the highly selfconscious and elegant manner (also known as the Maniera) that was the dominant mode of late Renaissance Florentine painting and sculpture in the 1540s and 1550s.2 His decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora is the first major example in Florence of Maniera painting. Michelangelo's work before his departure for Rome in 1534 exercised a formative influence on the development of Maniera in Florence: his sculptures for the Medici tombs in the New Sacristy at S. Lorenzo, his Victory (made for the Tomb of Julius II; see Fig. 88), the Noli me tangere and Venus and Cupid cartoons (both painted by Jacopo da Pontormo), and the finished black chalk presentation draw
Page 2
Figure 1 Anonymous, Agnolo Bronzino. (After Rau and Rastrelli).
ings (see Fig. 75). But elements of the stylish style had also appeared in the late 1520s and 1530s: in Florence, in the painting of Bronzino's contemporaries, such as his master, Pontormo; in Rome, in the art of Rosso Fiorentino, Parmigianino, Giulio Romano, and Perino del Vaga; and in Siena and Pisa, in Domenico Beccafumi's works. A new style in mural decoration was also explored in Rome in the frescoes of the Oratory of S. Giovanni Decollato (1538–41), where Francesco Salviati's Visitation and Jacopino del Conte's Preaching of St. John the Baptist (see Fig. 111) exemplify the characteristic tendency of these years toward an elegant, self conscious, and artificial manner. In Florence in the 1530s, the major painters besides Pontormo and Bronzino were Ridolfo Ghirlandaio and, from a younger generation, Battista Franco and Vasari; the most prominent sculptors were Baccio Bandinelli and Niccolò Tribolo. All (except Bronzino) had been in the service of the first Florentine duke, Alessandro de' Medici (1511/12–1537). Many of them contributed in 1536 to the festival apparati (decorations) for the entry into Florence of Charles V and for Ales
Page 3
Figure 2 Francesco Salviati, Story of Camillus. Palazzo Vecchio, east and south walls of the Sala delle Udienze.
sandro's marriage to Margaret of Austria, lost paintings and sculptures that must have been a showcase of Florentine art. 3 Bronzino's decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora belongs to the next phase of Florentine sixteenthcentury painting, which was suddenly consolidated by the extensive art patronage of Cosimo de' Medici after his election in 1537 as duke of Florence. The team assembled in 1539 for his wedding apparato (modeled after Alessandro's) was directed by Tribolo and Aristotile da Sangallo, and it included many of the artists who had been patronized by the first duke, along with Bachiacca, Salviati, and Bronzino. The major commissions that followed in the early 1540s, all more or less contemporary with the chapel decoration, make it clear that the Maniera was favored and nurtured at the court of Duke Cosimo. The most important frescoes were Salviati's Stories of Camillus in the Sala delle Udienze (audience hall) in the Palazzo Vecchio (Fig. 2) and Pontormo's lost loggia decorations at Villa Castello, which were part of a grandiose scheme initiated in 1537 for the embellishment of the villa and its gardens under the direction of Tribolo, who
Page 4
Figure 3 Niccolò Tribolo, Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus. Villa Castello.
designed the Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus (Fig. 3) and other garden sculptures there. The other major sculptural projects of the early 1540s were due to Bandinelli, then firmly ensconced in Cosimo's service, who worked on a monument to the duke's father, Giovanni delle Bande Nere (Fig. 4), as well as on Cosimo's udienza in the Sala Grande (as the Sala dei Cinquecento was known) in the Palazzo Vecchio. Of the artists active under Alessandro, only Vasari had not yet entered the circle of Cosimo's court artists. Around 1540, however, his style changed along with that of his contemporaries, and he painted his first Maniera altarpieces, the Immaculate Conception for SS. Apostoli (Galleria degli Uffizi) and The Descent from the Cross (Camaldoli, Archicenobio).
Page 5
Figure 4 Baccio Bandinelli, Monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Piazza S. Lorenzo.
Page 6
Figure 5 Bronzino, Salviati, and Pontormo, Story of Joseph (tapestries). Palazzo Vecchio, Sala de' Dugento.
A group of subsequent commissions from the mid to later 1540s includes an ambitious collaborative project, begun in 1545, that epitomizes the Maniera in Florence: the Story of Joseph tapestry cycle in the Sala de' Dugento in the Palazzo Vecchio (Fig. 5), designed mainly by Bronzino, but with contributions by Pontormo and Salviati. And in 1546 Pontormo began a great fresco cycle in the choir of the Medici church of S. Lorenzo (Fig. 6). Unfortunately, Pontormo's work has been destroyed, but his many drawings for the project suggest the highly personal and eccentric style of the cycle (see Fig. 87). During the same period, Benvenuto Cellini (just returned from France in 1545) received a commission for the Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi (Fig. 7), and Bandinelli in 1547 was asked to accomplish
Page 7
Figure 6 Engraving of the choir of S. Lorenzo, 1598, showing frescoes by Jacopo da Pontormo. Vienna, Albertina.
Page 8
Figure 7 Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus. Loggia dei Lanzi.
the sculptural transformation of the choir of the Duomo, an aborted project for which he executed, among other marbles, the monumental Dead Christ with an Angel (now S. Croce; see Fig. 112). The ambience of unusual competitiveness in which Duke Cosimo's artists vied for these court commissions is epitomized in Vasari's Duke Cosimo de' Medici with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors (Fig. 8). Though painted in 1559, after the period with which we are concerned here, this work gives a vivid idea of the artists of Cosimo's court visàvis their Medici patron and one another. 4 There is no similar homage in this room to Bronzino and the duke's other painters, rivals whom Vasari probably did not wish to portray, but Vasari (recently made capomaestro of the works at the Palazzo) included himself with the architects, pre
Page 9
Figure 8 Giorgio Vasari, Duke Cosimo de' Medici with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo.
senting the scene to the spectator in the front plane. Furthermore, the most prominent artists in the work (the three in classical garb who are closest to the duke— Battista del Tasso, Tribolo, and Giovanni Battista da San Marino) were all dead; Vasari's real rivals, such as Bandinelli, Cellini, and Bartolommeo Ammannati, all in contemporary dress, are crowded uncomfortably in the background of the tondo. The activities of the duke's private secretary, later majordomo, Pierfrancesco Riccio (1499–1564), encouraged competition among the artists in Cosimo's service. Riccio, responsible for most of the court's commissions, 5 gathered around himself a clique of artists dependent on him for favors. He was also a priest and was portrayed in his clerical robes about 1550 in a portrait attributed to Salviati (see Fig. 184).6
Page 10
Figure 9 Francesco Salviati, Deposition. Museo dell'Opera di S. Croce.
Sculptors keenly sought commissions for the monuments to the Medici family that the duke needed for political purposes. For example, Bandinelli was awarded the Giovanni delle Bande Nere monument in 1540 after competing for it with Tribolo. Much later, Bandinelli competed with Ammannati for the monumental Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria, which Ammannati carried out in 1565. Similarly, Pontormo and Salviati competed in 1546 for the major Florentine fresco project of the decade, the S. Lorenzo choir. Riccio gave it to Pontormo, to the consternation of Salviati, who soon left for Rome. Pontormo, Bronzino, and Salviati all vied in the mid1540s for a commission to design cartoons for the Story of Joseph tapestries. About the same time, Salviati designed a Lamentation tapestry for Duke Cosimo (see Fig. 43) that was clearly intended to be
Page 11
Figure 10 Christ in Limbo. Museo dell'Opera di S. Croce.
compared with Bronzino's justcompleted altarpiece for the Chapel of Eleonora (see Plate 11); and according to gossip in a letter of November 1550 from Vincenzo Borghini in Florence to Vasari in Rome, Bronzino was not above improving his work after seeing that of his rivals. Borghini reports that when Vasari's altarpiece for Gismondo Martelli was unveiled in S. Lorenzo, Bronzino ''ha fatto un gran ritoccamento, anzi pur mutamento nelle sue tavole" (did a lot of retouching, or rather making real changes, in his paintings). 7 The competitiveness of this generation of painters reached its apogee in the rivalry between Bronzino and Salviati, each of whom designed an altarpiece for a chapel in S. Croce: Salviati's Deposition of 1548 for the Dini Chapel (Fig. 9) and Bronzino's Christ in Limbo of 1552 for the Zanchini Chapel opposite it (Fig. 10).8
Page 12
Figure 11 Allegory of Venus. London, National Gallery.
Bronzino was extraordinarily successful in competing for commissions, gaining the confidence of the duke and his advisers as early as 1539. He adapted his virtuoso painting technique and powers of literary invention to the special requirements of his patron, who needed official and private portraits, sophisticated allegories, devotional works, and religious narrative cycles alike. Before the advent of Vasari at the court in 1555, Bronzino took the lead in most of the duke's decorative projects. Cosimo turned to him in 1543 for state portraits of himself (Plate 1), his wife Eleonora di Toledo (Plate 2), and later his children. When the need arose for Cosimo to present prestigious diplomatic gifts, Bronzino's works were chosen; the Allegory of Venus (Fig. 11), for example, was given to King Francis I of France. 9
Page 13
Figure 12 Palazzo Vecchio, plan of the second floor.
It was Bronzino who was selected in 1540 to execute the young duke's first major painting commission in his new residence, the former Palazzo de' Signori, now called the Palazzo Vecchio 10—the decoration of his wife's private chapel, known as the Chapel of Eleonora. This small private chapel, approximately four meters square, is located on the second floor of the palace (Fig. 12, no. 11). It was entirely decorated by Bronzino in 1540–45 (Plates 3–4). In the vault are the frescoes St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, St. Jerome in Penitence, St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, and St. Michael Fighting the Devil; in the spandrels are the Cardinal Virtues (Plate 5). Below, on the entrance and lateral walls, are frescoes of the story of Moses: The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua occupies the south wall (Plate 6); The Brazen Serpent is on the west, or entrance, wall (Plate
Page 14
Figure 13 Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi. Chapel, Palazzo Medici.
7); on the north wall is Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna, with a sopraporta (overdoor), Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe (Plate 8), added later by Bronzino's pupil Alessandro Allori. Opposite the entrance is the east, or altar, wall, which is dominated by Bronzino's Lamentation and Annunciation (Plate 9). These are replacements for the original altar paintings, the Lamentation, now in Besançon, based on the same cartoon (Plate 11), with St. John the Baptist, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Plate 10), and St. Cosmas, which is lost. The Chapel of Eleonora was the first painted chapel, private or public, commissioned by the Medici in the sixteenth century, and there are no earlier Medici
Page 15
chapels similar in type except the chapel in the Palazzo Medici (Fig. 13). Other chapels commissioned by the family in the quattrocento (mostly in public locations) had been embellished minimally and traditionally, with only a painted or sculptured altarpiece. For example, the chapel of 1453 at Villa Cafaggiolo had Alessio Baldovinetti's altarpiece The Madonna and Saints, and the Chapel of the Novitiates in S. Croce had an altarpiece of the same subject painted about 1445 by Filippo Lippi (both now in the Galleria degli Uffizi; Lippi's picture is replaced in S. Croce by Andrea della Robbia's sculptured altar). But the Palazzo Medici chapel, built by Michelozzo in 1459, was lavishly decorated for Cosimo il Vecchio and Piero de' Medici with frescoes of the Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli and an altarpiece by Filippo Lippi (copy; original in Berlin, Staatliche Museen). This ensemble might have suggested ways of achieving the elaborate display on an intimate scale that Cosimo and Eleonora seem to have desired for the chapel in their new palace. The earlier chapel, like Eleonora's, is small, with the entrance opposite the altar, a low ceiling, and space on the walls for only a single zone of frescoes. (It differs from Eleanora's chapel in plan, having an apse with a freestanding altar and altarpiece, as was traditional in the quattrocento.) Perhaps most important, however, the domestic location of the earlier chapel had made it possible for the Medici (still only de facto rulers of the Florentine republic) to commission a decoration depicting themselves as the Magi accompanied by an entourage featuring portraits of contemporaries. A work so overtly celebratory of their rule would have been inappropriate in a more public location. Another important Florentine precedent for Eleonora's chapel, from the artist's rather than the patron's point of view, was the Capponi Chapel of 1525–28 at S. Felicita (Fig. 14), decorated by Pontormo with the assistance of Bronzino, who painted two of the Evangelist tondi in the spandrels. This experience must have acquainted Bronzino with the problems of inventing a decorative scheme for a small chapel with a Lamentation altarpiece, frescoed walls (although the Capponi Chapel has only one, with the Annunciation), and a vault frescoed with monumental figures. Bronzino adapted certain features of this chapel for Eleonora's. The Palazzo de' Signori already had a usable Cappella di Palazzo, as it was called. This was the Chapel of the Priors (Fig. 12, no. 17), located on the second floor between the Sala delle Udienze (the duke's reception hall) and an anteroom to Eleonora's apartment. 11 It had been built by Baccio d'Agnolo and decorated by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio in 1511–14 at the behest of the recently reinstated Medici
Page 16
Figure 14 Jacopo da Pontormo, Capponi Chapel, S. Felicita, with the altarpiece of the LamentationEntombment and the Annunciation.
Page 17
Figure 15 Baccio d'Angelo, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and Fra Mariano da Pescia, Palazzo Vecchio, Chapel of the Priors.
(Fig. 15). Its frescoed decoration is conventional in subject, with the Trinity, apostles, and angels in the vault compartments, St. John the Baptist (patron of Florence) and an Annunciation on the wall opposite the altar, and Fra Mariano da Pescia's altarpiece The Madonna with SS. John and Elizabeth. We know that Cosimo and his family continued to use it: a letter from Riccio describes the Medici children attending Mass there in 1542; another letter indicates that it was the setting for the ceremonial entrance of Cosimo's son Giovanni into the priesthood in 1550. 12 Eleonora's chapel evidently served a function different from that of the Cappella di Palazzo (and, before it, the Palazzo Medici chapel). These chapels served
Page 18
Figure 16 Giorgio Vasari, Palazzo Vecchio, Chapel of Duke Cosimo de' Medici.
the entire Medici family, but Eleonora's chapel was personal and it was private—located in her own apartments. (See Fig. 16 for the chapel Vasari decorated for Duke Cosimo in 1558.) Questions regarding not only the function but the patronage, meaning, and reception of the Chapel of Eleonora must be raised. Why was this private space given priority in 1540 as one of the first architectural and decorative projects undertaken by the ducal family in their new home? Had Eleonora, a Spanish noblewoman who was uncomfortable in Italian, perhaps requested from Cosimo a chapel for private devotions in Spanish with her entourage? Or was it in some sense a wedding gift from the duke to his bride of one year?
Page 19
We can ask further questions about the subjects Bronzino was commissioned to paint in the chapel. Its altarpiece, the Lamentation, might be considered suitable for the private chapel of a duchess, but what are we to make of episodes from the story of Moses, of the six male saints (four on the vault, two in the altar wings), and of the Cardinal Virtues—all more suitable to the duke? Why is there so little pointed reference to Eleonora herself or to female saints who might logically be associated with her? The rooms near the chapel that Vasari decorated for the duchess in 1561–62 (see Fig. 12, nos. 12–15), in contrast, are distinctly feminine: each is dedicated to a heroine from the historical or legendary past—Penelope and the Sabine women from antiquity, Esther from the Old Testament, and Gualdrada from Florentine medieval times. 13 These questions lead to others about the Medicean meanings related to Duke Cosimo's personal imagery in Bronzino's paintings in the chapel. Who, if anyone, among the duke's circle of humanists and literati would have aided Bronzino in devising the programme for the chapel? And who besides Eleonora and her family and retinue would have been permitted to hear Mass there? Who, in short, were the ideators of the Chapel of Eleonora, and who constituted the audience for Bronzino's paintings there? In attempting to address these and other questions (only some of which can be answered because of the paucity of contemporary evidence), I have approached the decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora from several complementary points of view: Part 1 begins with a chapter about the chapel's patron, Eleonora di Toledo, on whom little has been written. It then establishes the historical background for Bronzino's chapel paintings in the context of Duke Cosimo's decoration of the Palazzo in the 1540s and the documentary basis for the chronology of the Story of Moses frescoes and the altarpiece of the Lamentation. Material supporting these conclusions is gathered in an Appendix of Documents. Part 2 deals with the style of the paintings in relation to Bronzino's oeuvre, his visual sources, and the work of other painters and sculptors working in midcinquecento Florence. It also considers how the chapel decoration might relate to contemporary writing about art. Part 3 is concerned with what could be called the devotional programme of the chapel paintings—their subjects, their typology, and the contemporary focus that Bronzino gave to their traditional religious imagery. And Part 4 places the paintings in cultural context of Duke Cosimo's court and his highly politicized art, revealing the chapel decoration to be a celebration of Cosimo's rule and of the Medici dynasty he had established with Eleonora di Toledo.
Page 20 Prima di tutte [le belle donne] a voi saggia Leonora Di questa Alma Città Donna et Regina Sposa Gentil di quel che i Toschi honora. (To you, foremost among all [beautiful women], prudent Eleonora, Lady and Queen of this Noble City, Gentle bride of him whom Tuscans honor.) —NICCOLÒ MARTELLI, 1539
Page 21
I— THE PATRON AND HER CHAPEL
Page 22
Chapter One— Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence The Marriage of Eleonora di Toledo and Duke Cosimo de' Medici The words of this chapter's epigraph by the Medici court poet Martelli praise Eleonora on her arrival in Florence as the bride of Duke Cosimo. 1 Eleonora was the sixth child and second daughter of Don Pedro di Alvarez di Toledo, brother of the powerful duke of Alba and viceroy of Naples under Emperor Charles V from 1532 until his death in 1553.2 She was born at Sebeto on 11 January 1519, but little is known of her early life.3 As a seventeenyearold she was noticed by the young Cosimo de' Medici when he visited Naples in the train of his cousin Duke Alessandro. Cosimo, Eleonora's bridegroom, was the son of the famous condottiere Giovanni delle Bande Nere and Maria Salviati, a niece of Pope Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici), who belonged to different branches of the Medici family (Fig. 17). Their only child, he united the two sides of the family. Cosimo was unexpectedly elevated to the Florentine dukedom in January 1537 after the murder of Alessandro and at the Battle of Montemurlo in August of the same year consolidated his claim to rule Florence. It was then deemed essential that he marry and produce an heir to secure the rule of the Medici, there being no eligible descendants after Alessandro's demise. It was also desirable that Cosimo take a wife who would enhance his alliance with Charles V, to whom he owed his title duke of Florence and who was effectively his feudal lord. Cosimo's first choice, Margaret of Austria, was expedient, for she was Charles's daughter (even if illegitimate) and the
Page 23
widow of Alessandro. The emperor, however, chose to give Margaret to Ottavio Farnese, a nephew of the new pope, Paul III. During the year 1538, Giovanni Bandini, Cosimo's ambassador at the imperial court, pursued other options. Writing to Cosimo in November, he reviewed the possibilities for a suitable wife in Portugal, Germany, Flanders, and Calabria—one who would be not only an advantageous match politically but also ''bella, nobile, riccha, et giovane" (beautiful, noble, rich, and young). 4 By 23 November Bandini had obtained the emperor's approval for Cosimo's marriage to Don Pedro's eldest daughter, Isabella. Cosimo, however, apparently attracted to Eleonora when he saw her in Naples in 1536, insisted on her as his bride: Intendo che il Viceré di Napoli ha spedito costà per impetrare da S. M.tà di appiccarmi addosso la sua prima figliuola. Non credo che quella permetta cosa tanto sproportionata et disconveniente: che quando altrimenti fussi, confesserei ingenuamente di tenermi molto male satisfatto di tal cosa, iudicando che al prefato Viceré debbi parere assai di darmi la seconda.5 (I understand that the viceroy of Naples has written to beseech his majesty [Charles V] to palm his elder daughter off on me. I don't believe that he will permit something so outrageous and disagreeable. Were I to think otherwise, I would honestly confess to consider myself very dissatisfied, judging that you should present matters to the above mentioned viceroy adequately enough so that he gives me the second daughter.)
Eleonora seems to have fulfilled all the conditions set forth for Cosimo's wife. The portraits Bronzino painted of her, especially the first, which portrays her at the age of twentyfour (Plate 2), show an attractive browneyed young woman with regular features and light chestnut hair. Contemporaries commented on her beauty. Cosimo's secretary, Jacopo de' Medici, remarked on her "ragionevol belleza" (remarkable beauty) at the time of her marriage, and in the letters of her intimates she is described as "bella, fresca, e colorita come una rosa" (beautiful, fresh, with the complexion of a rose).6 The conditions of the marriage were negotiated, Cosimo making a good bargain with Don Pedro,7 and the marriage (by proxy) took place on 29 March 1539 in Naples, with Jacopo de' Medici and Luigi Ridolfi, the representatives of Duke
Figure 17 Genealogy of the Medici family.
Page 26
Cosimo, signing the marriage contract and presenting a wedding ring to Eleonora. On that day Jacopo wrote to Riccio, announcing the news and praising Eleonora, 8 as well as indicating the courtly ambience in which Eleonora lived at Naples and the luxury to which she was accustomed; Jacopo remarks on his and Ridolfi's astonishment at the elegant life of Don Pedro's court.9 The taste for lavish display was later to affect Eleonora's court life, mode of dress, and patronage of art—and, by extension, those of Cosimo as well. After the marriagebyproxy, arrangements were made for Eleonora to travel from Naples to Florence. On 24 April Cosimo wrote to Don Pedro: "Attendo hora la nuova della partita della S.ra Duchessa con quel desiderio che la Ex. V. può pensare." (I'm waiting now with the eagerness Your Excellency might imagine for news of the departure of Her Ladyship the duchess).10 Cosimo also wrote to Eleonora herself; one of his secretaries reported to Jacopo in Naples that Eleonora had answered a letter from the duke written in his own hand.11 From the letter to Jacopo we learn that the Spanishspeaking Eleonora could not read Italian well but that "la Sig.ra Duchessa si era vantata di interpreterla da sé senza aiuto di persona" (Her Ladyship the duchess prided herself on understanding it without assistance from anyone). Cosimo's secretary concludes by telling Jacopo: "La S.ra Duchessa si chiamerà contenta e satisfatta insino in cima, e di questo voglio farne la sicurtà io" (Her Ladyship the duchess considers herself supremely happy and satisfied, and I want to assure [you] of this). Eleonora's letter has not survived, the only extant autograph communication from her to Cosimo of this period being an illegible postscript to a letter of solicitation from one of her entourage with the signature ''Do na le / o no r de to."12 Cosimo, who went to Villa Castello to await news of Eleonora's arrival in Pisa, wrote her anxiously on 11 May to inquire why her departure from Naples had been delayed.13 Plans went ahead, and on 18 May Chiarissimo de' Medici wrote to Riccio from Pisa, describing the arrangements for Eleonora's arrival at Livorno and her brief stay in Pisa: A Livorno si farà molto ornamento. Per non avere di che farlo, farò che vi sia buon vini et altre cose da rinfrescharsi et strami et biade per una sera.14 (In Livorno we will make a great deal of fanfare. So that we will not lack anything, I shall see that there is good wine and other things so they can refresh themselves, and straw and feed [for their horses] for one night.)
Page 27
Eleonora finally left Naples on 11 June with a convoy of seven galleys, accompanied by her brother Don Garzia and an entourage of Spanish nobles. 15 Pierfrancesco Giambullari, an academician at Cosimo's court who was partially responsible for the ducal couple's wedding apparato, prefaces his description of it with an account of the events preceding the marriage.16 He recounts that on 22 June Eleonora arrived at Livorno, where she was received in Cosimo's name by the archbishop of Pisa, and that she left for Pisa the same day. She met Cosimo and his entourage on the road, and together the ducal couple made an entrata (ceremonial entry) into the city, festive with triumphal arches and other decorations.17 Riccio, in a letter to Lorenzo Pagni, a ducal secretary in Florence who was in daily contact with Cosimo in the early 1540s,18 relates that poems were read ceremonially to Eleonora and her brother: Dell'arrivata costì del Selvastrella, . . . io subito lessi due volte il capitolo alla Sig.ra Duchessa et al Sig.r Don Gratia, che ne presono piacere; così lessi il suo sonetto che piaque, et il Sig.r Don Pedro de Toledo, persona gentilissima, ne ha chiesto la copia et gliela donò.19 (Of the material that came from Selvastrella, . . . I immediately read the capitolo [a type of poem] twice to Her Ladyship the duchess and Don Gratia [Garzia], who took pleasure in it, and similarly read [to them] his sonnet, which pleased [them], and Don Pedro di Toledo, [that] most courteous person, asked for a copy of it, and I gave it to him.)
Riccio also tells Pagni that Cosimo then presented his entourage to Eleonora: Hoggi dopo desinare, il Sig.r Duca fece conoscere alla Sig.ra Duchessa el Sig.re Alamanno Salviati, Piero e tutti, così gli altri giovani fiorentini: che fece lor grande accoglienza come fa a tutti universalmente, con la più dolce et accorta maniera che mai si sia vista.20 (Today, after dining, the duke introduced Signore Alamanno Salviati, Piero, and all the other young Florentines to Her Ladyship the duchess, who gave them a great welcome, as she always does with everyone, in the most gracious and courtly way ever seen.)
Page 28
On 24 June the ducal couple proceeded to Empoli, and on the twentyfifth they arrived at Villa Poggio a Caiano to rest until the entrata into Florence. 21 The events of these days are recounted by Cosimo himself in letters to Eleonora's parents in Naples. Reassuring them of their daughter's wellbeing, he tells them: Alli 22 del presente arrivò la Signora Duchessa con tutta sua compagnia a Livorno a salvamento, Dio laudato, senza haver sentito del viaggio e del mare incommodo o fastidio alchuno. Di che io hauto quel contentamento et allegrezza che la Ex.tia V. può pensare, senza che io m'allarghi molto in exprimerlo con parole, non havendo al mondo cosa che più fussi et aspetatta e desiderata da me.22 (On the twentysecond instant, Her Ladyship the duchess with all her retinue arrived at Livorno—and safely, God be praised, having felt no discomfort or distress from the journey or the sea. Your Excellency can imagine my pleasure and joy over this, even without my dilating on it verbally, since nothing in the world was more awaited and desired by me.)
He then says that he and Eleonora were resting up at Poggio a Caiano in preparation for her entry into Florence: La S.ra Duchessa et io siamo venuti poi qui al Poggio, luogo vicino alla città, per reposare insino alla domenicha proxima, che sarà il giorno della entrata di S. Ex.tia in Firenze, la quale piaccia a Dio sia in buon punto et honore et servitio suo et contentamento di tutti noi. (Her Ladyship the duchess and I have now come here to Poggio, a spot near the city, to rest until next Sunday, which will be the day of Her Excellency's entry into Florence, which, may it please God, will go well in both his honor and service and to the contentment of us all.)
Much later, Eleonora's arrival at Poggio a Caiano was evoked in a vignette in Vasari's Sala di Cosimo in the Palazzo. There, Giovanni Stradano depicted the long ducal cortege with Eleonora's litter making its way toward the facade of the villa (Fig. 18).23
Page 29
Figure 18 Giovanni Stradano, The Arrival of Eleonora di Toledo at Poggio a Caiano. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo.
Eleonora finally entered Florence on 29 June through the Porta al Prato; days of celebration followed in the lavishly decorated city, an apparato that was the joint work of the poet and academician Giambattista Gelli 24 and Giambullari, who described it in a fictive letter to Ambassador Bandini at the court of Charles V.25 At the Porta al Prato was a magnificent triumphal arch designed by Tribolo and decorated with statuary all'antica (in the antique style) and paintings by Ridolfo and Michele Ghirlandaio and Battista Franco.26 An enormous statue of Fecundity with "cinque bei figlioletti nudi d'intorno" (five beautiful nude children around her) was flanked by Security and Eternity.27 This group was dedicated to
Page 30
Eleonora as the producer of a Medici heir, a theme that was to dominate her personal imagery during her lifetime and beyond. On the Porta al Prato itself was an elaborate image of Charles V and his dominions, including an allegorical figure of Spain in reference to the Toledo family. Singers and instrumentalists performed a motet by Francesco Corteccia (a native Florentine then in charge of the music at S. Lorenzo) whose text (also inscribed on the arch) linked the security of the Medici to Eleonora's fecundity: INGREDERE INGREDERE FOELICISS. AUSPICIIS URBEM TUAM HELIONORA AC OPTIMAE PROLIS FOECUNDA ITA DOMI SIMILEM PATRI FORIS AVO SOBOLEM PRODUCAS UT MEDICEO NOMINI EIUSQUE DEVOTISS. CIVIBUS SECURITATAM PRAESTES AETERNAM. (Enter, enter, under the most favorable auspices, Eleonora, your city. And, fruitful in excellent offspring, may you produce descendants similar in quality to your father and forebears abroad, so that you may guarantee eternal security for the Medici name and its most devoted citizenry.)
From the Porta al Prato (where Cosimo left his bride, to take a shortcut to the Palazzo Medici) Eleonora's entourage followed a circuitous route through the city that allowed Florentines to see their new duchess. At the Duomo she was received by the archbishop and conducted to the high altar of the church—beautifully decorated for the occasion. From there the procession followed the Via de' Servi through Piazza SS. Annunziata to Piazza S. Marco, then to Via Larga, where the entrance to the Palazzo Medici was decorated with a stemma (coat of arms) announcing to all the union of the Medici and Toledo families under the auspices of the emperor. 28 The decorations of the first courtyard of the palace emphasized several themes relating specifically to Eleonora. One was the bride as goddess, exemplified in the inscription over the doorway, ACCIPIAT CONIUNX FOELICI FOEDERE DIVAM (Let the bridegroom receive the goddess bound to him in this happy alliance).29 Another was marital fidelity.30 The most important, however, was fertility. Eleonora genetrix was alluded to in lunettes such as one showing Fecundity with many children, with the motto VENTVROS TOLLEMVS IN ASTRA NEPOTES (We shall bear your descendants up to the stars).31
Page 31
The second courtyard, where the wedding banquet took place on 6 July after the nuptials, was also the site of that day's entertainment: a pageant with music by Corteccia and others, along with songs to verses by Gelli. 32 The decorations (lost, like the rest of the apparato) celebrated Cosimo's Medici heritage in two series of six paintings each, one series featuring scenes from Medici history, the other illustrating parallel events in Cosimo's life.33 Bronzino painted the climactic picture of each series: The Dispute of Duke Alessandro de' Medici with the Exiles at Naples represented the occasion in 1536 when Cosimo and Eleonora had first met, with the two adolescents perhaps portrayed among the bystanders; The Marriage by Proxy of Duke Cosimo would of course have featured Eleonora. This painting is described by Vasari: Nell'ultimo di tutti questi quadri erano le nozze del medesimo duca Cosimo fatte in Napoli: l'impresa erano due cornici, simbolo antico delle nozze, e nel fregio era l'arme di don Petro di Tolledo viceré di Napoli, e questa, che era di mano del Bronzino, era fatta con tanta grazia, che superò, come la prima tutte l'altre storie.34 (In the last of all these pictures was [depicted] the marriage of the same Duke Cosimo in Naples. The impresa [device] depicted two crows, an old symbol of marriage; and in the frieze was the coat of arms of Don Pedro di Toledo, viceroy of Naples. And this picture, which was by Bronzino, was painted with such beauty that, like the first picture [also by Bronzino], it surpassed all the others.)
Giambullari gives more detail about this painting, quoting inscriptions relating to the themes of marriage and fecundity and introducing the association of Eleonora with Juno, goddess of matrimony. The tondo Vasari mentions with a device of two crows was inscribed BONA CUM BONA NUBIT ALITE VIRGO (A perfect virgin under perfect auspices); to the side were the words DIIS AUSPICIBUS ET IUNONE SECUNDA (Under the auspices of the gods and with a favorable Juno); below, BONI CONIUGES BENE VIVITE, BREVI LIBEROS DATE (Good couple, live well; bear children quickly).35 Festivities continued at the Palazzo Medici until 9 July, and finally on the twentyfourth there was a celebration announcing the marriage to the people of Florence.
Page 32
Figure 19 Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Page 33
That the marriage of Cosimo and Eleonora was a love match is attested both by the ducal secretaries in their letters and by other contemporary observers. 36 William Thomas's History of Italy, published in 1549, reports that Cosimo "hath divers fair children by his wife and loveth her so well that in manner he never goeth abroad (unless it be to church) without her and is reputed to be a very chaste man."37 At the time of the wedding, or shortly thereafter, Cosimo commissioned Bronzino to paint a private portrait, the allegorical work Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus (Fig. 19), which shows the duke in the guise of the mythical great lover and faithful husband. As Robert Simon has persuasively argued, this work must have been a gift from Cosimo to his bride—his appeal, in the language of courtly love, for the affection of EleonoraEurydice.38 This interpretation is supported by the erotic viewfrombehind pose of the nude Orpheus, his grasp of the musical instrument's bow (and its unusual position), and the sexually suggestive shapes of the bow and pegbox.39 The theme of celebration—of both the ducal marriage and the founding of a new Medici dynasty—quite naturally dominated the wedding apparato in 1539. Such themes were also to play an important role in Bronzino's decoration of Eleonora's chapel, begun the very next year. Eleonora in the 1540s: The Establishment of a New Medici Dynasty After their wedding and the birth of their first child, Maria, the following spring, the ducal couple moved to the former Palazzo de' Signori, then being reconstructed as the seat of the splendid ducal court Cosimo hoped to establish. The palace is at the left in Stradano's vignette of 1561, Tribute to Duke Cosimo de' Medici in the Piazza Ducale, in Vasari's Sala di Gualdrada in the Palazzo (Fig. 20). For the next few years, however, the ducal couple seems hardly to have resided there, since the palace was in disrepair at least until 1542. The children Maria, Francesco (the Medici heir, born in 1541), Isabella (1542), and Giovanni (1543) lived under the guardianship of Cosimo's mother, Maria Salviati, at Villa Castello until her death on 12 December 1543.40 Cosimo and Eleonora, for their part, began to lead a peripatetic life. In addition to constantly moving the court from one Medici villa to another, they traveled frequently during the early 1540s to the cities
Page 34
Figure 20 Giovanni Stradano, Tribute to Duke Cosimo de' Medici in the Piazza Ducale. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Gualdrada.
of Cosimo's Tuscan domain so that he could gain personal control over the administrative apparatus of his state. 41 These travels were interrupted only when Cosimo was seriously ill, probably with malarial fever, from July to October 1543.42 In addition to her role as childbearer and companion to the duke, Eleonora seems to have acted as Cosimo's regent on at least two occasions—in 1541, during what seems to have been the first lengthy separation of the ducal couple, and in 1543, when Cosimo was on a mission to Genoa, negotiating with Charles V for the removal of Spanish troops from the fortresses of Florence and Livorno. There is no evidence that Eleonora carried out affairs of state at a high level during these periods; documentation in the form of signed orders and the like seems to exist only for routine matters. A series of letters of late August to early September
Page 35
1541, however, suggests that she was indeed charged with responsibilities by Cosimo, who had departed for Genoa to await there the arrival of the emperor. 43 These letters also vividly convey both her piety and her loneliness during the duke's absence from Florence (a city foreign to her).44 In the last of them (2 September) a guarded Eleonora promises to give her husband the real news when she sees him again: Se l'Ex. V. intendesse bene lo scritto di mano mia, io li potrei scrivere molte altre cose che mi restano a dirgli, ma perché le possano patir dilatione, voglio più presto riserbarmi a dirgl [i]ele di boccha che metterle in carta per mano d'altri che mia. Eleonora duquesa.45 (If Your Excellency could make out better the way I write, I might write many other things that I have to tell you—but since they might be spread around, I'd better be discreet and tell them to you in person rather than put them on paper in a hand other than mine. Duchess Eleonora.)
In 1543 Cosimo once again left Eleonora in charge of state affairs when he went to Genoa on 26 May to negotiate further with the emperor. This time he succeeded in bargaining with Charles for control of the Florentine fortresses, which were returned to him in July. Eleonora accompanied him as far as Pietrasanta and stayed through the month of May, returning in June to Poggio a Caiano, where she remained until Cosimo's return at the end of the month.46 Letters of the duke's secretaries late in 1543 emphasize Eleonora's distress at being alone.47 Indeed, a letter written by Eleonora herself to Cosimo during his illness suggests that she felt not only lonely but threatened—perhaps by the recent removal of the Spanish troops from the fortresses: Mi doggo della mia fortuna, poi che mi veggo in pericolo di restare senza voi in una città nemica del nome Spag.lo et di questo modo di reggimento, e non so in che modo in sì strano accidente potrò mantenere me, et i fig.li in stato.48 (I lament my lot: I see myself in danger staying here without you in a hostile city, with a Spanish name and under the present government; I don't see how I'll be able to maintain myself and the children here in such a strange situation.)
Page 36
Figure 21 Baccio Bandinelli, Eleonora di Toledo (bronze). Bargello.
It was, significantly, in mid1543, when Cosimo gained autonomy for Florence, that Bronzino was first commissioned to portray the ducal couple in state portraits. The bustlength portrait of Cosimo shows him as a commanderatarms (Plate 1), 49 and the portrait of Eleonora displaying her wedding ring is its companion piece (Plate 2).50 In this portrait Bronzino portrays Eleonora more informally than in any later image, her face having a youthful freshness we never see again. The likeness may be compared with that of the bronze bust of Eleonora of 1544 by Bandinelli (Fig. 21), a pendant to a bust of the duke.51 The sculptor's idealizing mode all'antica contrasts with Bronzino's sharply focused realism, though Bandinelli, unlike Bronzino, shows the cleft in Eleonora's chin. In view of the intense rivalry between the artists at Cosimo's court and their continual preoccupation with the issue of the paragone (debate on the relative merits of painting and sculp
Page 37
ture), it is notable that the duke commissioned both his chief painter and his chief sculptor to portray himself and his wife at this time. In the summer of 1545, just after he had finished the major campaign of work on the decoration of Eleonora's chapel, Bronzino portrayed the ducal couple again, this time in threequarterlength state portraits. Cosimo's portrait is a grander version of the bustlength portrait in armor, to which Bronzino has added a tree stump with the Medici device of the broncone (sprouting laurel) to the right (Fig. 22). 52 The portrait of Eleonora shows the duchess with the twoyearold Giovanni (Fig. 23).53 Although Giovanni was the second son, not the Medici heir, he was important in Cosimo's scenario for the continued power of the family. The second son of Cosimo's ancestor Lorenzo il Magnifico, also named Giovanni, had been destined for a career in the Church; he became a priest and cardinal as a youth and ascended to the papacy in 1511 as Leo X. Cosimo, emulating this tradition, had Giovanni made a priest in 1550 and a cardinal ten years later;54 only the youth's untimely death in 1562 prevented his rising further in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Cosimo must have hoped that the new Giovanni, like his predecessor, would become pope and, like the earlier Medici popes, would unite Florence and Rome under Medici rule. In this largest and most important of Bronzino's portraits of Eleonora, she is the regal bearer of sons, the embodiment of the words that had greeted her on her entry into Florence five years earlier. Even the pomegranate pattern of her magnificent brocaded dress proclaims her genetrix, for the fruit was a common symbol of marriage and fertility, one that Bronzino used on the vault of Eleonora's chapel (see Plate 20). The relation of the sitters to each other, to the spectator, and to their space proclaims security, stability, and certainty. Moreover, unusual in Bronzino's portraits, there is a landscape—a vignette at the right of marshy terrain reminiscent of the land around Poggio a Caiano, where Bronzino painted the portrait. This suggestion of the domain of the Medici makes the work an image of both dynastic and territorial power—a true counterpart to Bronzino's duke with the broncone. Aside from Bronzino's two portraits and the bust by Bandinelli, no major works of art can be connected with Eleonora in the early 1540s, when her chapel in the Palazzo was being decorated. However, a Book of Hours made for her just before the birth of Francesco is richly illuminated and embellished with her
Page 38
Figure 22 Duke Cosimo de' Medici. London, private collection.
Page 39
Figure 23 Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni. Uffizi.
Page 40
Figure 24 Book of Hours of Eleonora di Toledo, Annunciation with the MediciToledo Arms. London, Victoria and Albert Museum.
devices and those of the Medici. 55 In the Annunciation miniature (Matins), for example, the scene is appropriately set in the courtyard of S. Lorenzo; below, conjoined, are the arms of Cosimo and Eleonora, with the Medici palle to the left and the blue and silver squares of the Toledo family to the right; the ducal coronet surmounts the whole (Fig. 24). After 1545, the year in which Bronzino completed the major campaign of work in her chapel, Eleonora was increasingly occupied with family responsibilities, and she continued to bear children. Garzia was born in 1547; his baptism in 1550
Page 41
Figure 25 Giovanni Stradano, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo Receiving in the Palazzo Ducale. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo.
was an occasion for the luxurious display evident at all the public ceremonies marking events in the ducal family's life. 56 Ferdinando (the future grand duke) was born in 1549 and Pietro in 1554. To provide more space for her large family, Eleonora purchased the Palazzo Pitti in 1549, and work on its decoration was begun immediately;57 the Palazzo continued to be a ducal residence, however, as evidenced by Vasari's redecoration of Eleonora's rooms in 1561–62 (see Fig. 12, nos. 12–15).58 Stradano's vignette of about 1560 in Vasari's Sala di Cosimo provides a rare contemporary view of ducal life in the Palazzo (Fig. 25). It shows a room in
Page 42
Eleonora's apartments—probably the Camera Verde, since that is the only vaulted room—with the ducal couple seated, one of their daughters receiving a guest, and their dwarf servant, Morgante, in the foreground. 59 Bronzino—and now his workshop as well—continued to produce dynastic portraits of Eleonora with her sons (she is never shown with her daughters). In 1549 he painted the duchess with Francesco, the Medici heir, in a variation on the dynastic portrait with Giovanni (Fig. 26).60 Here, unlike the little Giovanni of the earlier portrait, the rather grownup eightyearold Francesco stands forward, gesticulating to his mother and to himself, as if explaining the dynastic significance of their relationship. By the time this portrait was painted, Eleonora's fecund and happy marriage had come to be seen as a metaphor of Cosimo's principato. Ludovico Domenichi evokes Eleonora's ''incredibil bellezza" (unbelievable beauty) in his Nobiltà delle donne of 1549 and continues: Onde la bontà di Dio veggendo tante eccellenze in lei raccolte, s'è degnato anco farla felicissima fra l'altre Donne, c'hoggi sono in terra, et con la fecondità delle belle prole, et con la rara concordia et benivolenza tra il suo santissimo Consorte, et lei. Talche beata si puo ben chiamare hoggi Thoscana essendo governata da due si giustissimi et humanissimi Principi.61 (Whence God in His goodness, foreseeing so many excellent qualities in her, deigned also to make her the happiest among all women on earth today, both in fecundity of handsome progeny and in the rare concord and benevolence between her saintly consort and herself. Thus Tuscany may indeed be called blessed today, governed by two such exceptionally just and humane rulers.)
The theme of Eleonora genetrix embodied in Bronzino's dynastic portraits was conflated with that of Eleonora deified as Juno, goddess of matrimony. Eleonora's association with Juno, first expressed in the wedding apparato of 1539, where the goddess was evoked in conventional marriage imagery, was continued long after her marriage, and she came to be seen as a kind of contemporary fertility goddess. At first, the references were subtle. For example, she was identified with Juno in Salviati's Triumph of Camillus in the Sala delle Udienze: the statue of Juno that
Page 43
Figure 26 Bronzino (workshop), Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Francesco. Pisa, Museo di S. Matteo.
Camillus (a portrait of Cosimo) brings to Rome from his victory at Veii is carried in a litter, its frieze decorated with the Medici palle, its pediment surmounted by Juno's peacocks—a witty allusion to Eleonora as Cosimo's "trophy" (Fig. 27). By the 1550s Juno had come to be the central focus of Eleonora's personal imagery. 62 This conceit was crystallized by Paolo Giovio in the invention of a personal impresa for her. Writing to Cosimo on 9 August 1551 about the design for a silver medal of the duchess, Giovio proposes "il pavone, . . . uccello dedicato a Giunone, regina del cielo, . . . uccello di somma pudicizia, bellezza e fecondità" (the peacock, . . . bird sacred to Juno, queen of the heavens, . . . the bird of greatest modesty, beauty, and fertility). The peahen would be shown spreading its wings over six pavoncini, with the motto CVM PVDORE LAETA FOECVNDITAS (Joyful fertil
Page 44
Figure 27 Francesco Salviati, Triumph of Camillus, detail, Juno. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala delle Udienze.
Figure 28 Domenico Poggini, medal of Eleonora di Toledo with her impresa of the peahen with its young. Bargello.
Page 45
ity with modesty). 63 This device is shown on the reverse of Domenico Poggini's medal of 1551, which follows Giovio's instructions to the letter (Fig. 28).64 Eleonora was also characterized as Juno (the counterpart of Cosimo's Jupiter) in Vasari's decorations in the Palazzo based on programmes by Cosimo Bartoli that essentially celebrate the ducal marriage.65 The conceit was carried to a monumental—and public—conclusion in Ammannati's Fountain of Juno, designed in 1555 for the Sala Grande. Juno, accompanied by two peacocks and seated on a rainbow, is Eleonora, and the alchemical programme of the fountain was based on the union of Air (Eleonora) and Earth (Cosimo) to produce water—an allusion to the new life that Cosimo and Eleonora brought to the Medici family.66 The ducal marriage, the fertility of Eleonora, and the Medicean dynastic continuity that she made possible are important themes in the decoration of her chapel. But other aspects of her life and character, particularly her religious predilections during her early years in Florence, are also of interest in connection with Bronzino's decoration. Cosimo's bride rapidly became known in Florence for her extreme piety, probably a result of her strict Spanish upbringing. Riccio, writing to Cosimo's secretary Ugolino Grifoni during the duke's absence from Florence in 1541, reported with some exasperation on Eleonora's preoccupation with business and prayer: La Duchessa . . . passa tempo con li negotii, con li trattenimenti di donne che la visitano, et con l'orationi che me par essere come sono in un monasterio di murate.67 (The duchess . . . spends her time with business, in entertaining the women who come to visit her, and in prayer—such that I feel as if I am in a walled monastery.)
Later, a contemporary said Eleonora was seen "ogni mattina alla messa" (every morning at Mass).68 A sharper profile of Eleonora's religious life emerges only in 1547, when she was drawn into the circle of her countrymen the Jesuits. The attraction may have been in part linguistic, for she remained uncomfortable in Italian. In 1560 her priest, Padre Diego de Guzmán, wrote of her to Giacomo Laínez: "Non ha al
Page 46
cuna affettione a nissuna delle altre nationi, né vuol parlare con alcuno de' nostri che non sia spagniuolo" (She has no affection for anyone of another nationality, nor does she want to speak with anyone who is not Spanish). 69 Largely because of her influence, Ignazio di Loyola sent a group of Jesuits directed by his closest associate, Laínez, to Florence; Eleonora received them, bringing great pressure on Cosimo in 1551 to allow the founding in Florence of a Jesuit college.70 Extremely attached to Laínez, Eleonora entrusted her spiritual guidance and that of her children to him in 1548; from 1555 to 1560 Guzmán was her confessor. Eleonora's Last Years In the early 1550s Eleonora began to show signs of tuberculosis, and from that time on contemporaries frequently commented on her illness.71 Pagni, for example, describes the health of the ducal family in a letter to Riccio of 23 March 1552: Sua Excellenza è in buona salute, ma in fin la Duchessa è molto consumata et pur hoggi se ne doleva con me in proposito ch'io sia ancor io smagrato, ma dice non si voler curare et non so dove la fondi. Li illustrissimi figlioli sono sani et belli quanto mai fussino.72 (His Excellency is in good health, but the duchess has become very thin and today complained to me that even I have grown thinner, but she says she doesn't want to take the cure, so I don't know where to start. The illustrious children are as healthy and goodlooking as ever.)
About three years later, in 1556, Bronzino portrayed Eleonora for the last time. Probably because updated state portraits were needed—Cosimo anticipated being named duke of both Florence and Siena—Bronzino painted a new set of ducal portraits. As he had before, he painted the duke and duchess in both bustand three quarterlength portraits.73 The bustlength Eleonora (Fig. 29),74 the only original work by Bronzino surviving from this late group, shows the thin face of the duchess as she looked about six years before her death.75 This portrait of the duchess makes a poignant contrast with that by Giovanni Antonio de' Rossi, who designed a cameo about 1557 that was executed in 1559–
Page 47
Figure 29 Eleonora di Toledo. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie.
62 (Fig. 30). 76 This last dynastic image of Eleonora made while she was alive shows her as the eternally youthful wife and mother. The ducal couple, holding a medallion that once contained a personification of Florence, are surmounted by Fame blowing a trumpet and surrounded by their five sons. Eleonora protectively touches the threeyearold Pietro as he plays with Cosimo's emblem of the Golden Fleece, dangling below the medallion. In 1560 Eleonora seems to have made her last major public appearances. In October she accompanied Cosimo when he made his first triumphal entry into
Page 48
Figure 30 Giovanni Antonio de' Rossi, Duke Cosimo de' Medici, Eleonora di Toledo, and their children (cameo). Bargello.
Siena as duke of Florence and Siena. The elaborate apparato for this occasion included a triumphal arch dedicated to the ducal couple. 77 Two istorie (narrative paintings) on each side of it represented such subjects as Cosimo's election and his crowning as duke by Charles V. To the left was an extraordinary depiction of the ducal couple with their sons, in which Eleonora was depicted as Fecundity:
Page 49 A man manca è il duca in habito ducale, con uno anello con Diamante in mano, e evvi la Duchessa, che viene a lui, con un ramo di vari frutti, il segno di fecondità, con questo detto, Pulchra faciat te prole parentem. 78 (On the left is the duke, in ducal garb, with a diamond ring on his hand, and also the duchess, who approaches him with a spray of fruits—symbol of fecundity—with the saying May You be Made Parent of Beautiful Offspring.
On 6 November the ducal couple (accompanied by their sons Giovanni and Garzia) continued on to Rome, making a triumphal entry into the city, where they were received by Pius IV in the Sala di Costantino at the Vatican.79 It is surprising to learn, in view of these reports, that the duchess attended such events only with great difficulty. In a letter written nine years earlier Pagni had reported: Il suo male è grande et sarà ogni giorno maggiore, se Dio per sua pietà et misericordia non ci mette della gratia sua, perché, con tutto il male, non vuol cessar punto de' disagi dell'andar fuori et seguitare il Duca ovunche vada.80 (Her illness is serious and will worsen every day—unless God in his compassion and mercy shines his grace on us—since even with all this misfortune she absolutely refuses to stop, just out of discomfort, going out and accompanying the duke everywhere he goes.)
Such notices continue in the following years. In January 1559 Guzmán visited Eleonora in Pisa, where she was ill with a fever. He reported: "La trovai assai male et li medici molto temevano della vita sua" (I found her rather sick, and the doctors feared greatly for her life).81 The Venetian ambassador to Florence, Vincenzo Fedeli, described Eleonora in 1561 as a "signora di raro spirito" (a lady of rare liveliness) but also noted: ''Questa signora è sempre indisposta, e ogni mattina ributta il pasto" (This lady is always ill, and every morning she throws up her food).82
Page 50
In October of the following year, seeking the temperate sea air, Eleonora took Garzia, Giovanni, and Ferdinando to the Maremma. They all contracted malarial fever: Giovanni died at Livorno, and three weeks later Garzia died at Pisa, where Eleonora herself died on 17 December 1562. 83 The day before her death she made her will, which in its most important stipulation left everything to the duke.84 In a long letter to Francesco, who was in Spain at the time, Cosimo expressed his extreme sense of personal loss. The letter recounts how his sons died, how Eleonora's fever returned, and how she made her will. She asked for extreme unction, and then, Nelle mie, si può dir, braccia rese l'anima a Dio, sendo stata dui giorni con intero iuditio aspettando la morte, quasi sempre con il crucifisso in mano, et stando a seder sul letto et ragionando domesticamente della morte come se fusse stato un negotiare: et fino a l'ultima hora parlò et conobbe tutti come se fusse stata in sanità.85 (In my arms, you might say, she gave up her soul to God, having been fully conscious for two days and awaiting death, with a crucifix almost always in her hands, sitting up in bed and talking familiarly of death, as if it were an ordinary business; and up to the last hour she spoke, and knew everyone, as if she had been healthy.)
Eleonora's body was taken to Florence on 20 December in a closed casket covered in black velvet marked with a red cross; it was displayed before the high altar at S. Lorenzo, where Mass was celebrated, and was then interred in the Old Sacristy. On 28 December the Vespers of the Dead were sung, and on the next day Eleonora's funeral was celebrated with great pomp in S. Lorenzo. The diarist Agostino Lapini noted of the funeral: Non vi fu simulacro ma piena la capanna grande di lumi con copia grande di cera, et la cerimonia la fè il Vescovo de' Nerli insieme con quattro Canonici del Duomo.86
Page 51 (There was no image [of Eleonora], but the main chapel was filled with lights, among them two great wax [candles], and the ceremony was conducted by the bishop of Nerli, with four canons of the Duomo.)
A Latin oration was read by Piero Vettori. 87 He praised—as had become customary by that time—Eleonora's "reale et maravigliosa bellezza" (regal and wonderful beauty) and her "facilità del partorire" (the ease with which she gave birth), continuing with a candid comment on the heavenly rewards of a woman's fecundity: Di tutti quei beni d'animo et di corpo che possono havere i Mortali, perche potendo gl'uhomini alzarsi et aggrandirsi per mill'altre vie, le Donne quasi per quest'una sola si aprono la strada di salir a Cielo.88 (Of all the benefactions that mortals can have, though men are able to rise and grow greater [in this world] . . . by a thousand different means, to women is opened, virtually through this one alone, the way to heaven.)
Subsequently, other conventional eulogies of Eleonora were written by such literary figures and members of Cosimo's court as Vasari, Aldo Mannucci, Giovanni Battista Cini, Cristoforo Bronzini, and Scipione Ammirato.89 Bronzino also celebrated Eleonora in poetry, comparing her—for the last time—with a chaste Juno: Dianzi gli Angeli in terra esser ne parve Invece di Giovanni e di Garzia, E la casta Giunon di Leonora.90 (A short while ago angels seemed to appear on earth, Instead of Giovanni and Garzia, And the chaste Juno that is Eleonora.)
Page 52
After Eleonora's death contemporaries noticed a change in the duke. The Venetian ambassador reported: "Il duca far molte grazie al tempo della duchessa: ora è rigidissimo e non ne concede mai una" (The duke gave many favors in the time of the duchess, but now he is rigid and never concedes even one). 91 Two years later—on his birthday in 1564—Cosimo abdicated in favor of Francesco and retired from active court life.92 In December 1565 Francesco married Giovanna d'Austria. The wedding apparato, far more lavish than that of Cosimo and Eleonora twentysix years earlier, virtually transformed the city into a glorification of the Medici dynasty. Vincenzo Borghini, who prepared the programme, mentions plans for a portrait of Eleonora next to a personification of temperance.93 The ducal couple were highlighted in the decorations of the Arca della Dogana, where one painting celebrated their long and fruitful marriage. Cini describes it: Sì come nell'altro da man destra si vedeva l'amorevolissimo duca preso per mano con l'eccellentissima duchessa Leonora sua consorte, donna di virile ed ammirabile virtú e prudenza, e con cui mentre ella visse fu di tale amor congiunto, che ben potette chiamarsi chiarissimo specchio di marital fede.94 (And thus, in the other, on the right, was seen the most loving duke, hand in hand with his consort, the most excellent duchess Eleonora, a woman of powerful and admirable virtues and prudence; and so long as she lived, he was conjoined to her with such love that he could be well termed a spotless image of marital fidelity.)
Shortly thereafter, having achieved the title of grand duke in 1569, Cosimo himself was on the point of death after suffering a series of massive strokes in the winter of 1572–73, and he was not expected to live much longer.95 At this point (the tenth anniversary of Eleonora's death), portraits of the ducal couple, probably by Allori, were installed facing each other at either end of Vasari's richly decorated Studiolo of Francesco in the Palazzo.96 These images commemorate the fruitful union of Cosimo and Eleonora, founders of the new Medici dynasty. They are tondi painted on slate—as if they were memorial tablets—and they present an idealized image of Francesco's parents as the everyouthful rulers of
Page 53
Figure 31 Alessandro Allori and Il Poppi, Eleonora di Toledo with Spring and Summer. Palazzo Vecchio, Studiolo of Francesco de' Medici.
Florence. They also preside over the Seasons, painted by Il Poppi. The duchess (her patron deity Juno painted by Poppi on the vault above) is flanked by Spring and Summer—represented by putti bearing flowers and wheat of those fertile seasons—and is portrayed for the last time as Eleonora genetrix (Fig. 31).
Page 54
Chapter Two— The Chronology of the Frescoes Shortly after his marriage in June 1539, Cosimo de' Medici took over the former city hall of the Florentine republic (see Fig. 20), where Bronzino was to decorate a chapel for his wife, Eleonora. In September the eight priors who had lived there were relocated in the Palazzo del Podestà, 1 and on 14 May 1540 Cosimo, Eleonora, and their newborn daughter, Maria, moved from the old Palazzo Medici in Via Larga to the palace.2 The move was a shrewd one, calculated to demonstrate Cosimo's assimilation of the city's republican government and traditions. As Cosimo's historian, Giambattista Adriani, later put it, the duke's move "fece volendo mostrare che era Principe assoluto, et arbitro del governo" (was meant to show that he was the absolute monarch and arbiter of the government).3 At the time, Cosimo wrote to Eleonora's father, Don Pedro di Toledo, that they had moved to the palace, where there were "stanze regali."4 And, in a familiar equation, he joined his wish for more children to the notion of a Pax Medicea: La S.ra Duchessa sta gagliarda et allegra, et ella et io oggi col nome di Nostro S.re Idio siamo entrati in possessione del palazzo maggiore, dove sono stanze regali. Piaccia a Sua Mayestà divina che sia in buon punto, con salute et accrescimento delle persone nostre et de figl[i]uoli et con pace et tranquillità de' sudditi di questo dominio.
Page 55 (The Duchess is vigorous and in good spirits, and today, in the name of Our Lord, she and I took possession of the great palace, where there are regal rooms. May it please our divine Lord for it to turn out well, with good health and increase for us and our offspring, and peace and serenity to the subjects of this domain.)
The palace had served chiefly as a civil administrative building and as the residence of the gonfaloniere and priors during their terms of office, and the remodeling and decorating necessary to transform the old seat of the republic into a ducal residence of appropriate splendor were to be extensive. 5 The allocation of space for the private apartments must have been made at the time of the move. In October 1540, when the ducal family was preparing to return to Florence from Poggio a Caiano, Pagni wrote to Riccio about various matters, including the lodging of a visitor, who would have to be given rooms in the "palazzo vecchio" (Palazzo Medici), since the new residence was already occupied as follows: Il S.or Duca tiene lo appartamento di sotto, la S.ra Maria [Salviati] quel di mezzo, et la S. Ex.a [Eleonora] quel di sopra, et che il resto del palazzo è ingombrato da i camerieri del S.or duca, dalle damigelle di S. E.a et dalla guardarobba.6 (The duke occupies the downstairs apartment, Signora Maria [Salviati] the one in the middle, and Her Excellency [Eleonora] the one upstairs; the rest of the palace is filled up with the duke's servants, by the maids of Her Excellency, and by the storerooms.)
It is clear, however, that the family moved into their new residence only after some delay. A great deal of construction had to be accomplished in a short time, and the palace was still uninhabitable as late as the spring of 1541. In May, Riccio wrote that the ducal family could return to Florence but that the children (Maria and Francesco) might be more comfortable in the old palace because of the construction noise in the new one:
Page 56 ri
Ragionò tra l'altre cose che S. S. facilmente se ne tornerebbe in Firenze, ma la tiene gran respetto a questi S. figlioli et alle balie d'essi ch' ànno bisogno in questa stagione et di più larghezza, et di migliori stanze non sono in palazzo, et anche i romori che sono intorno al palazzo gli sono in consideratione. Aggiunse S. S. Ill.ma ch'avendo haver male (che Dio la guardi) potria meglio per tali respecti accomodarsi nelle stanze del palazzo vecchio, dove per fare i bagni, bisognando, gli saria più accommodato loco. 7 (He explained, among other things, that His Excellency would gladly return to Florence, but he was concerned about his children and their governesses, who in this season need both more space and better rooms than the palace can offer; also to be considered is the noise in the palace. His Excellency added that, to prevent anything going wrong (God forbid!), it would thus be better for them to be put in the rooms of the old palace, where also, when baths are needed, there are better accommodations.)
Riccio ended the letter on a note of frustration because of the noise in the Palazzo: Scripto sin qui, sento non so che romore, et deve essere forse il primo s'è sentito qui intorno doppo la partita di S. Ea. (As I write, I hear some noise or other, the first to be heard after the departure of His Excellency.)
A year later, however, on 5 August 1542, Riccio wrote to Pagni that he was living in the Palazzo and that the Medici children were visiting from Villa Castello, adding: "in palazzo si sta con ogni commodità" (in the palace one can live very comfortably).8 Nonetheless, the entire family seems not to have taken up permanent residence there for several years.9 Riccio, the author of these letters, negotiated with the architects and artists who worked at the palace, acting as an intermediary between them and the duke. One of the first to be employed was Tasso.10 In 1540 he was appointed "architettore della muraglia del palazzo" (architect of the building works of the palace), and
Page 57
he directed the remodeling campaign, as well as designing rooms, stairs, and woodwork. 11 Riccio also commissioned other extensive decorations in the Palazzo between 1541 and 1545. Bandinelli, already in the service of the duke with the commission for the monument to Cosimo's father, Giovanni delle Bande Nere (Fig. 4), was enlisted in May 1541 to remodel the north end of the Sala Grande (the old council hall of the Florentine republic) as an audience hall for Cosimo, to be decorated with statues all'antica of his Medici ancestors.12 At about the same time, Bachiacca (who had entered Cosimo's service with the wedding apparato) began work at the palace as a painter. His first commission (probably dating from 1542, when payments to him began; see doc. 1) was a wall decoration of animals and plants in a small scrittoio (study) for Cosimo on the mezzanine floor.13 In October 1543, Salviati, Bronzino's major rival for ducal commissions in the 1540s, was given the important assignment of frescoing the Story of Camillus in the large Sala delle Udienze on the second floor of the palace (see Figs. 2 and 12, no. 23).14 Finally, in 1545, Cosimo began to commission tapestries to embellish various rooms in the Palazzo. Bronzino and Salviati designed cartoons for portiere (door hangings) and altar tapestries; these two plus Pontormo designed cartoons for the Story of Joseph series for the Sala de' Dugento on the first floor (see Fig. 5), and Bachiacca designed smaller tapestries to hang under Salviati's frescoes in the Sala delle Udienze.15 Eleonora's quarters on the second floor, which Riccio called the "appartamento di sopra" (upper apartment), were formerly the rooms of the Signoria, where the gonfaloniere and the priors had lived. This suite could properly be entered only through the Chapel of the Priors (Fig. 12, no. 17), which is constructed in two parts in order to serve both as a chapel and as a passageway. Beyond the chapel was an anteroom (no. 16), after which one entered the duchess's apartment. It was subdivided into six main rooms: the four later decorated by Vasari (nos. 12–15), a fifth, overlooking the second cortile of the palace, known from its later decoration as the Camera Verde (no. 10);16 and a sixth, the socalled salotta extending along the east side of the cortile (no. 18). Opening off the Camera Verde to the south was Eleonora's small scrittoio (no. 9), once the notary's office of the Signoria, which could be reached by a spiral staircase from Cosimo's apartment on the mezzanine floor below;17 to the east was her chapel (no. 11). The decision to build a new chapel for Eleonora on the second floor and the choice of this location for it were surely influenced by the public location of the Chapel of the Priors, which served as the main entrance to the apartment from
Page 58
Figure 32 Camera Verde, view from the entrance to the Chapel of Eleonora with vault decoration by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Palazzo Vecchio.
the public rooms beyond it (see Fig. 12, nos. 20–23). In contrast, the new chapel was located at the furthest reach from these rooms. Eleonora's chapel was constructed by Tasso in 1540 from the original east end of the Camera Verde, from which it is entered. He erected two partitions; he placed one, which became the west (entrance) wall of the chapel, at the juncture of the second and third bays of the Camera Verde; he set the other, which became the south wall, slightly in from the south wall of the Camera Verde, allowing for what may have been a small service area (it later became a passageway leading to the new eastern section of the palace). In the space that was to become the chapel, the high vault of the Camera Verde was masked by a lower ceiling constructed to resemble a flattened cross vault. (I will refer to this ceiling as the chapel's vault, but it is a false one.) The resulting space is approximately cubical—about four meters square and about four meters high to the center of the vault.
Page 59
Figure 33 Francesco Salviati, ceiling of the scrittoio of Eleonora di Toledo. Palazzo Vecchio.
The remodeling of Eleonora's suite must have started in 1540, and its decoration began soon afterward. Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, long in the service of the Medici and a contributor to the wedding apparato, was commissioned to fresco the walls and ceiling of the Camera Verde (Fig. 32). By May 1542 he had finished the vault frescoes, which consisted of grotesques, small inset scenes in chiaroscuro, and an elaborate MediciToledo stemma at the center. Bronzino served as one of the arbiters of the payment to him for this work. 18 Shortly thereafter, following his return from Rome in mid1543, Salviati painted the ceiling and friezes in Eleonora's scrittoio (Fig. 33).19 While Ghirlandaio and Salviati were working in the adjacent rooms, Bronzino painted the frescoes in Eleonora's chapel (see Plates 3–4). Bronzino's work has not always been dated to this time. Before 1960, no documentary evidence relevant to the frescoes was known, and it was believed that they were executed entirely after
Page 60
the first Lamentation altarpiece (1545), if not after its replica (1553). Thus the chapel was considered to be a rather late work of Bronzino's; the frescoes especially were thought to postdate his exposure, on a trip to Rome in 1548, to the earlier sixteenthcentury paintings of Michelangelo and Raphael and not to have been completed until 1564. Thanks, however, to discoveries of inscriptions in the chapel itself and records of payments to Bronzino that can be correlated with previously known letters and contemporary descriptions, the frescoes may be securely dated to 1541–43. 20 Unusual evidence for the dating of the frescoes is found in a series of inscriptions on the narrow (2.5 cm.) marble frame of the doorway around which The Brazen Serpent is painted (Fig. 34).21 The following lines are scratched into the marble: [on the right] Martedi/A di 6/di sett'bre [1541]/comincio/lastoria di/faraone/A di 30 di/Marzo/1542 fu fin[i]/ta lastori[a]/di faraone/Lunedi adi 5/di gunio 154 [2]/comincio/lastoria/delle se'pe [on the left] A di 15 . . ./fini la [sto]/ria d'aq/ua ([on the right] On Tuesday 6 September [1541] the story of the pharaoh was begun; on 30 March 1542 the story of the pharaoh was completed. On Monday 5 June 154[2] the story of the serpent was begun. [on the left] On the 15th . . . the story of the water was completed.)
These inscriptions have been mentioned in the Bronzino literature since 1960 to support a date in the early 1540s for the frescoes,22 but they present two problems: who wrote them, and when? The simple marble frame of the chapel's door seems to be contemporary with Bronzino's frescoes; it accords stylistically with their painted architecture, and it corresponds with the style of Tasso's Mercato Nuovo.23 This inner door may have been replaced, however, when the original exterior frame was replaced by a monumental marble doorframe in the style of Ammannati, probably in 1563–65, after Eleonora's death, when changes were made in the decoration of the chapel (see Chapter 3).24 Moreover, it is evident that there was some construction around the door after Bronzino's frescoes were painted, for small sections on either side of it are completely replastered and the area repainted
Page 61
Figure 34 Chapel of Eleonora, inscriptions on the doorframe.
Page 62
(see Fig. 41). Bronzino completed small sections of the chapel decoration in the early 1560s, and he may well have written the inscriptions as a memorandum at that time. An approximate chronology for the Moses frescoes can be deduced from the inscriptions. 25 The first wall to be painted was the south wall, with The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua (see Plate 6).26 ''La storia del faraone" was begun 6 September 1541 and finished 30 March 1542. It was thus painted over a period of seven months—including the winter, when fresco work would have been discontinuous and much slower than usual. The decoration of the vault—with St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, St. Jerome in Penitence, St. John the Evangelist on Patmos, St. Michael Fighting the Devil, and the Cardinal Virtues in the spandrels (see Plate 5)27—would have been undertaken before that of the walls below, as was customary in fresco practice. We may posit that it was begun in 1541 a few months before the Red Sea, a date that would allow time for the completion of Tasso's remodeling of Eleonora's apartment and the building of the chapel, undertaken sometime late in the previous year. According to the next lines in the inscriptions, The Brazen Serpent (see Plate 7) was begun 5 June 1542, a full two months after the Red Sea wall was completed. No further dates are given in the inscriptions, and the dates of execution of this and the north wall can only be guessed in relation to the time Bronzino spent on the first fresco. In any event, this method of dating cannot be precise, and the sevenmonth duration of Bronzino's work on the Red Sea fresco noted in the inscriptions may have resulted from circumstances other than the season. The Brazen Serpent, with a picture field considerably smaller than that of the Red Sea,28 could have been painted within about five months, perhaps less, since from June on, the weather would have been warm. The last inscription ("la storia d'aqua") refers to Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna (see Plate 8).29 Unfortunately, the month and year are not indicated; since the frescoes are named in sequence clockwise around the chapel, however, it is likely that it was begun after the completion of The Brazen Serpent (also following the normal lefttoright sequence of frescoing for a righthanded artist). If work proceeded more or less continuously, this wall would have been completed in at most seven months—by May 1543 at the latest. The chronology indicated by the inscriptions thus dates the vault to early 1541; The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, to late 1541– early 1542; The Brazen Serpent, to 1542; and Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna, to late 1542 or early 1543.
Page 63
Figure 35 Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Prudence.
Sections of Bronzino's fresco work are not named in the doorframe inscriptions. The figures above the altarpiece, King David and The Erythraean Sibyl (see Plate 12), can be dated to early 1543 on the basis of their illusionisticspatial style, which is similar to that of the Moses frescoes, and on the assumption that Bronzino continued clockwise around the chapel. 30 The other two sections unaccounted for are the Cardinal Virtues in the spandrels (see Plate 13 and Figs. 35–37) and Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe over the doorway of the north wall
Page 64
Figure 36 Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Temperance.
Page 65
Figure 37 Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Fortitude.
Page 66
Figure 38 Chapel of Eleonora [Allori], Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe.
(Fig. 38). The spandrels are properly part of the vault and appear to have been executed with it, but three of the Virtue medallions were filled in later, not in true fresco but a secco. I will discuss these, as well as Allori's sopraporta, which is documented to 1581–82, in the next chapter. A study of Bronzino's giornate made after the recent restoration of the frescoes provides a check on this chronology and indicates that the work may have moved faster than the inscriptions suggest. 31 This analysis reveals the number of days
Page 67
Figure 39 Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of the vault.
Bronzino worked on the frescoes: the vault has fortyseven giornate (Fig. 39), not counting the spandrels, for which we may add another ten; The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua has sixtytwo giornate (Fig. 40); The Brazen Serpent has fortysix (Fig. 41), to which may be added four for the missing portions around the door; Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna has sixtyfive (including ten over the door by Allori), to which we may add another ten for the missing central portion of the wall now replaced by the doorway (Fig.
Page 68
Figure 40 Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua.
42). Approximately ten giornate may also be added for the Sibyl and King David on the altar wall. Assuming no interruptions at all—which, of course, would not have been the case—this brings Bronzino's actual working days to a total of two hundred fiftyfour, more than eight months. Records of payments to Bronzino from Duke Cosimo survive for the period from April 1542 to July 1543 (none have survived for 1541). 32 The first series (29 April 1542 to 19 January 1543; doc. 1) consists of payments of eight and six scudi respectively to Bronzino and Bachiacca "a conto di loro pictura" (for their painting). Since neither artist is known to have been engaged in any other project in the Palazzo at this date, the paintings in question must have been Bronzino's in the chapel and Bachiacca's in Cosimo's scrittoio. The second series consists of payments in May and July 1543 of ten and thirty scudi made to Bronzino on the express orders of the duke (doc. 4).33 These payments are almost surely related to
Page 69
Figure 41 Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of The Brazen Serpent.
Figure 42 Chapel of Eleonora, giornate of Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna.
Page 70
Bronzino's work on the frescoes, since his earliest portraits of Cosimo and Eleonora date from later in 1543, and he can hardly have begun the altarpiece (not finished until the summer of 1545) at this early date. The payments thus cover the period April 1542 to July 1543, or eighteen months, during which time Bronzino was paid a total of one hundred and sixty scudi, or about the eight scudi a month stipulated as his salary in the 1542–43 record of payments. This seems reasonable as a period during which Bronzino would actually have devoted about eight months to the fresco work. The dating of Bronzino's frescoes in the early 1540s is corroborated by Vasari's references to the chapel. There is no life of Bronzino in the 1550 edition of the Vite, but in that of Raffaellino del Garbo, Bronzino's early teacher, Vasari singles out the chapel as an example of how well Bronzino had acquitted himself in his career: Andò ad imparare da costui i principii dell'arte nella sua fanciullezza Bronzino fiorentino pittore, il quale si portò poi sí bene sotto la protezzione di Jacopo da Puntormo pittore fiorentino, che nell'arte ha fatto i medesimi frutti che Jacopo suo maestro, come ne fanno fede alcuni ritratti et opere di sua mano appresso lo illustrissimo et eccellentissimo signor Duca Cosimo nella guarda roba, e per la illustrissima signora duchessa la cappella lavorata in fresco; e vivendo et operando merita quelle infinite lodi che tutto di sé gli dano. 34 (In his childhood the Florentine painter Bronzino learned the principles of art from him, and then later he continued so well under the direction of the Florentine painter Jacopo da Pontormo that he produced the same results as his master Jacopo, the best proof of this being some portraits and other works made for the guardaroba of His Excellency Duke Cosimo, and for Her Excellency the duchess the chapel decorated with frescoes; and [thus] living and working, he merits those infinite plaudits that everyone freely gives him.)
Since Vasari finished the manuscript of the Vite in early 1547, this passage provides corroborating evidence that the fresco decoration of the chapel had been completed by that date.35
Page 71
Vasari begins his description of the chapel decoration in the 1568 edition of the Vite by recounting that the commission was the result of Bronzino's successful work for Cosimo's wedding apparato: E nelle nozze dell'illustrissima donna Leonora di Tolledo, moglie già del duca Cosimo, fece . . . le migliori pitture che fussero fate in quell'apparato. Là dove il duca, conosciuta la virtú di quest'uomo, gli fece metter mano a fare nel suo ducal palazzo una cappella non molto grande per la detta signora duchessa. 36 (For the wedding of Her Excellency Eleonora di Toledo, then wife of Duke Cosimo, he made . . . the best paintings to be executed on that occasion; wherefore the duke, recognizing the man's talent, had him turn his hand to painting a chapel of modest size in the ducal palace for the abovementioned duchess.)
Vasari goes on to describe the decoration, beginning with the vault frescoes: Nella qual cappella fece il Bronzino nella volta un partimento, con putti bellissimi e quattro figure, ciascuna delle quali volta i piedi alle faccie, San Francesco, San Ieronimo, San Michelagnolo e San Giovanni. (In that chapel Bronzino painted compartments on the vault with very beautiful putti and four figures, each of whom has his feet toward the walls [below]: St. Francis, St. Jerome, St. Michael, and St. John.)
And he continues with the wall frescoes: E nell'altre tre faccie (due delle quali sono rotte dalla porta e dalla finestra) fece tre storie di Moisè, cioè una per faccia. Dove è la porta fece la storia delle bisce. . . . Nell'altra, cioè nella faccia della finestra, è la pioggia della manna, e nell'altra faccia intera quando passa il Mare Rosso e la sommersione di Faraone.
Page 72 (And on the other three walls, two of them interrupted by the door and by the window, he painted three stories of Moses, namely one for each wall. On the side with the door, he painted the story of the snakes; on the other, that is, the side with the window, he painted the story of the gathering of manna; on the other unbroken wall [he painted] the crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of the pharaoh.)
Vasari does not mention David, the Sibyl, the Virtue spandrels (or the north wall sopraporta, which postdated his account). In sum, while providing no further information on the sequence of the work, Vasari's two accounts corroborate that the frescoes were initiated sometime shortly after Cosimo's wedding in 1539 and that they were finished before 1547. Eleonora, however, may have begun to use her chapel after the frescoes had been completed in 1543. A notice in the guardaroba (storeroom) inventory of April 1544 records that Maria Salviati (who had died three months earlier) had left ''1° croce con il crocifisso d'argento e due candelieri della cappella che furono consegnati a Andrea cappellano della Duchessa per servitio di Sua Eccellenza" (a silver crucifix and two candlesticks from the chapel, which were consigned to Andrea, chaplain of the duchess, for the use of Her Excellency). 37 The north wall of the chapel is the only one requiring further comment at this point (see Plate 8). It is notable that Vasari does not cite Moses Striking the Rock as a separate fresco, his notice of The Gathering of Manna seeming to stand for the entire wall. He then goes on to refer to the Red Sea fresco as painted on "l'altra faccia intera," implying that the north wall, too, was "intera," or to be read as a continuous composition. Before Tasso's intervention, this wall was broken by one of the three large windows in the Camera Verde. (The original framing stone arch of this window on the exterior wall of the chapel can be seen from the terrace.) When the chapel was built, this window was blocked in and a smaller window of the type appropriate to a chapel was created for it. This is the window to which Vasari refers when he identifies the chapel's north wall as the "faccia della finestra." In 1581–82 this window was demolished when a large recessed doorway (1.60 m. wide, with a window in its top section) was cut through to the terrace (doc. 29).
Page 73
To reconstruct the size and shape of the window around which Bronzino painted the fresco Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna is no simple matter. Of the original window we know only that 4 1/3 braccia of glass (1 braccio equals 58 cm.) was paid for it in 1563 (doc. 23). One might imagine, however, a typical high, narrow window with a segmental top, of the type found in the Chapel of the Priors (Fig. 15). It is possible, however, that a round or perhaps oval window was set high in the center of the wall in an arrangement like that of Filippo Brunelleschi's Barbadori (later Capponi) Chapel in S. Felicita, where there was once a round window in a wall approximately the width of the north wall of the Chapel of Eleonora (see Fig. 14). 38 Pontormo painted the angel and Virgin of the Annunciation on the Capponi Chapel wall as if the central window illuminated them. Bronzino, who drew on other aspects of Pontormo's decoration for Eleonora's chapel, painted the radiance above the kneeling Moses in Moses Striking the Rock as if it emanated from just such a high window.
Page 74
Chapter Three— The Altarpiece and the Completion of the Decoration The Altarpiece (1543–45) Bronzino seems to have finished the frescoes of the Chapel of Eleonora by July 1543, the date of the final payment of a series to him (doc. 4). Although there is no record of when he turned to work on the chapel's altarpiece of the Lamentation (see Plate 11), the terminus post quem for its commission is November 1542, when correspondence between the duke, one of his secretaries, and Bandinelli indicates that the sculptor was trying to secure the commission for the altarpiece for himself (docs. 2–3). Leaving the story of Bandinelli's intervention for later discussion (Chapter 5), we will follow Bronzino's execution of the work. Two new series of payments to Bronzino (different in amount from the earlier ones) must have been for further work on the chapel. The first is for fifty florins on 16 October 1544 and ten florins on 5 January 1545; for forty florins for work done from 7 July to 12 December 1543; and for thirty florins overdue for work done before 19 October 1542 (doc. 5). 1 A second series is for ten, twenty, one hundred, and twentyfive florins on 10 January, 16 July, 14 September, and 11 November 1545 (doc. 6). It is likely that the payment of 16 July is the last in this series connected with the chapel decoration, for the final payment in this series stipulates twelve and onehalf fiorini a month—Bronzino's new salary as of 1 November, paid by Tanai de' Medici for work on tapestry cartoons. A completion date of early July 1545 for the altarpiece of the chapel is corroborated by a payment of 16 July (doc. 7) to Mariotto di Francesco Mettidoro for
Page 75
gilding the frame of the "tavola della Cappella della Duchessa" (altarpiece of the chapel of the duchess). 2 The frame was apparently still being finished up in late July.3 There follows an exchange of letters of 12–13 August and 19 September between Pagni, Duke Cosimo (both at Poggio a Caiano), Riccio (in Florence), and Don Francesco di Toledo (at the court of Charles V in Brussels). These letters are all that remain of a correspondence between the ducal secretaries, the duke, and Eleonora's brother about Bronzino's altarpiece, in which we learn that it was to be sent by the duke to Besançon as a gift to Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle. As keeper of the seals and first minister to Charles V, Granvelle had been in a position of considerable power in Italian affairs and greatly assisted Cosimo in his dealings with the emperor.4 Cosimo had in fact courted him as early as 1541, and Granvelle was instrumental in securing for Cosimo the return in 1543 of fortresses in Florence and Livorno that had been occupied by Spanish troops.5 The gift of Eleonora's altarpiece to the minister must have been made primarily in recognition of this aid to Cosimo in his consolidation of Medici power in Florence. However, there may have been other considerations as well. In 1541 Cosimo's great rival for the emperor's favor, the Farnese family, had presented Granvelle with a colossal torso of Jupiter for his lavishly appointed new palace.6 Cosimo may have been attempting to match this gift; he may also have been bribing Granvelle in connection with the emperor's forthcoming awards of the Order of the Golden Fleece—an honor duly bestowed on Cosimo in the summer of 1545.7 Each of the five surviving letters (quoted in extenso in docs. 9–12, excerpted in doc. 14) mentions Bronzino's altarpiece together with other favors and gifts from the duke to Granvelle—specifically his sending of Giovanni Camerini, his engineer specializing in water control, to drain some swamps in Granvelle's land, and his gift of fiaschi of wine. There is no suggestion in these letters that Bronzino's picture was more important than the other gifts; indeed, in all but one letter the export of the painting is mentioned last. The passages dealing with the altarpiece are as follows. In a letter to Riccio of 12 August, Pagni refers to Bronzino's picture as hanging in the chapel, but reveals that it was to be sent to Granvelle (doc. 9): Di più la S. V. ha da fare usare ogni diligentia per far fornire lo adornamento del quadro che fece il Bronzino, qual è nel'oratorio della Duchessa nostra Signora,
Page 76 qual s'ha da mandare a detto Monsignor di Gran Vela a detto luogo di Besanzon, per una sua Cappella che nuovamente ha fatto fare. (Moreover, Sir, you must use the utmost care in having the frame made for the picture Bronzino has painted, which is in the chapel of the duchess, and which is to be sent to the abovementioned Monsignor di Granvelle at the stated Besançon, for a chapel of his which he has recently had built.)
The altarpiece was not, however, sent immediately to Granvelle. In his letter of 12 August Pagni ordered a new frame—presumably one appropriate for a gift of a work to be displayed independent of its setting in the Chapel of Eleonora. 8 On the same day Riccio replied, writing to the duke at Poggio a Caiano that work on the frame was proceeding (doc. 10): L'adornamento per la tavola della cappella della duchessa nostra Signora si lavora et si fa con sollecitudine, et hora di novo si rinfrescherà l'opera diligente, adciò con prestezza habbia la perfectione. (The frame for the altarpiece in the duchess's chapel proceeds and is being done promptly; and now the work will be carefully retouched, so that it will soon be perfect.)
On 13 August, Pagni replied that the duke was in a hurry to have the picture sent immediately (doc. 12): Ha hauto piacere l'Ecc.a S. che si solliciti lo abbigl[i]amento di quella tavola, perchè desidera di mandarla presto. (His Excellency is pleased to request the "clothing" [the frame] of that altarpiece, since he wishes it to be sent soon.)
Duke Cosimo himself was already in communication with the court of Charles V about the gift, for on 12 August he wrote to Don Francesco di Toledo that he would send the picture as soon as the frame was finished (doc. 11):
Page 77 Non mancherò di mandare anco la tavola dell'altare della Cappella della Duchessa, di mano del Bronzino, che è pictore excellente, e si attende a farli il suo fornimento, quale spedito, si invierà subito a cotesta volta. (I shall not fail to send also the altarpiece of the chapel of the duchess, painted by Bronzino, an excellent painter; we are waiting to receive its frame, at which time it will be sent to you as soon as possible.)
The frame must have been ready within the month, as Cosimo wrote again to Don Francesco on 19 September, telling him that he would have the picture sent immediately via Genoa (doc. 14): Et la tavola della Cappella della Duchessa si invierà presto alla volta di Genova, et si consegnerà lì al commendator Figueroa, che la mandi più oltre al suo cammino. (And the altarpiece from the duchess's chapel will shortly be sent to Genoa, and there will be given to Commendator Figueroa, so he can send it on its way.)
We do not know when Bronzino's Lamentation was sent to Besançon, but presumably it was shipped off shortly after Cosimo's letter, just quoted. 9 Granvelle was present when the gift arrived, for he had gone to Besançon in August and because of illness did not rejoin the court in Brussels until after 15 October.10 The Lamentation was installed in a burial chapel that Granvelle had built in the Church of the Carmelites. This is the "Cappella che nuovamente ha fatto fare" mentioned in Pagni's letter of 12 August; the chapel is also cited in Granvelle's will as his future burial place.11 In 1549, however, Granvelle commissioned a grander family monument—a vaulted funerary chapel to adjoin the sanctuary of the church and to be connected to his palace by a covered passage.12 Granvelle died in Augsburg on 27 August 1550; the new chapel, with Bronzino's painting installed and statues of the twelve apostles around the walls, was consecrated on 6 December 1551.13
Page 78
There is scant later notice of Bronzino's picture. In 1572 Granvelle's son, Antoine, commissioned from Pierre d'Argent the Elder a copy, which was installed in the Granvelle chapel in the parish church at Ornans in 1574. 14 But after a brief seventeenthcentury notice of "le riche tableau peint de la main de Bronzino" (the rich picture painted by the hand of Bronzino), there is silence on the subject of the Lamentation until the nineteenth century.15 During the Revolution the Granvelle Chapel in Besançon was partially destroyed; although the building still exists, it has been partitioned.16 The altar of which the Lamentation was a part disappeared in the Revolution, and Bronzino's picture itself was preserved in the Besançon city hall from 1793 until it entered the Musée des BeauxArts on its opening in 1834.17 This is the extent of the documentation on Bronzino's first altarpiece for the chapel. The Lamentation is precisely dated, and we have detailed information about its export to France; however, there is no documentation on the altar wings. For information on these panels, we must turn to Vasari's description of Bronzino's work in the chapel. His notice of the frescoes is followed by an account of the two versions of the altar and of the flanking panels: Nella tavola di questa cappella, fatta a olio, che fu posta sopra l'altare, era Cristo deposto di croce in grembo alla madre. Ma ne fu levata dal duca Cosimo per mandarla, come cosa rarissima, a donare a Gran Vela, maggiore uomo che già fusse appresso Carlo quinto imperatore. In luogo della qual tavola ne ha fatto una simile il medesimo e postala sopra l'altare in mezzo a due quadri non manco belli che la tavola, dentro i quali sono l'angelo Gabriello e la Vergine da lui annunziata. Ma in cambio di questi, quando ne fu levata la prima tavola, erano un San Giovanni Batista ed un San Cosimo, che furono messi in guardaroba quando la signora duchessa, mutato pensiero, fece fare questi altri due.18 (In the altarpiece of this chapel, done in oil, which was over the altar, was Christ taken down from the cross [and] in the Virgin's lap; but the duke had it removed in order to send it, as a very rare work, to Granvelle, at that time an important man at the court of Emperor Charles V. In place of that altarpiece he had another like it painted and put it above the altar, between two paintings of no lesser quality than the altarpiece itself, representing the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin
Page 79 Annunciate. But instead of these, at the time when the first altarpiece was removed, there were paintings of St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas, which were stored in the guardaroba when the duchess, having changed her mind, had these other two painted.)
The panels of St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas flanking the Lamentation before it was sent to Besançon apparently remained in the chapel. Although there is no documentary evidence for the date Eleonora had them removed from the chapel, it was probably 1553, the year Bronzino's replica of the Lamentation was installed there. Presumably Eleonora believed that the new lateral panels by Bronzino would shortly follow. 19 In any event, the original wings were in storage by November 1553, when panels by Bronzino described as "Uno San Cosimo" and "Uno San Giovanni Batista" are recorded in the palace inventory as being in the guardaroba (doc. 20). In an inventory of 1560 the same pair is designated as "quadri compagni" (companion pictures) and as without frames (doc. 21), and in a 1574 inventory they are described as "aovati"—arched (doc. 28). Much later, in 1609 (doc. 30), they are listed as having gold frames, and their measurements are given as three by one braccia (approximately 1.74 × 0.58 m.).20 Until 1951, when the panel now in the Getty Museum resurfaced (see Plate 11),21 both panels were thought to be lost; now, St. Cosmas remains the only missing part of Bronzino's original ensemble.22 There was another reason besides the making of a new frame for the delay in sending the Lamentation to Besançon in August 1545. Bronzino, who had just met with Duke Cosimo at Poggio a Caiano about a portrait he was painting there,23 wrote a letter to Riccio in Florence on 22 August 1545 that tells a great deal about the situation (doc. 13): Ieri, che fumo alli XXI del presente, fui con S. E. per cagione del Ritratto, dove dissi quanto per vostra S. mi fu imposto circa la speditione della tavola per in Fiandra, et come, volendo sua E. che se ne rifacessi un'altra, bisognava stare costì almanco otto o dieci giorni per farne un poco di disegno. Dissemi che così voleva et era contento, ma mi pare che S. E. si contenti che prima si fornisca il ritratto; et di più dice Sua E. che si faccia in questo mezzo fare il legname per dipingervi su detta tavola, et aggiunse sua prefata E.: "Io la vogl[i]o in quel modo proprio
Page 80 come sta quella, et non la vogl[i]o più bella;" quasi dicesse: "Non m'entrare in altra inventione, perchè quella mi piace." Per tanto V. S. R.da, quando li piacesse, potrebbe dire al Tasso che dessi ordine, o per dir megl[i]o facessi, perchè così è l'intenzione di S. E., che mi disse: "Fa' far la tavola, et falla ingessare." So che il Tasso non mancherà della solita diligentia, che certo fece cotesta molto diligentemente, et così doverrà fare quest'altra. (Yesterday, the twentyfirst of the current [month], I met with His Excellency about the portrait, and I told him what I was instructed to say concerning the shipment of the painting to Flanders; and also, since His Excellency requested that another one be done, that it was necessary for the painting to stay there [in the chapel] at least eight or ten days [for me] to do some drawings. He told me that was fine [with him] and that he was pleased, but I think that he would prefer to have the portrait completed first; moreover, His Excellency requests the panel be prepared so we can start painting, and he added, "I would like it to be exactly like the other one, not an improved version," as if to say, "Do not change your conception; I like it as it is." Therefore, Your Lordship, please tell Tasso, when it is convenient for him, that this is the request of His Excellency, who told me, "Have the panel made and gesso applied." I am sure that Tasso, who certainly did the first one most carefully, will not fail to do this one likewise.)
There is scant mention of Eleonora's chapel in Medici letters and accounts between this letter and 1553, when Bronzino finally painted the replica. The only letters referring to the chapel from these years that I have found are two written by Riccio in September 1549 to Pagni, who was at Poggio a Caiano with the ducal family. In the first the majordomo writes that in the course of Tasso's work on the new apartment for the duchess above the Camera Verde (then on the top floor of the Palazzo), there had been a severe rainstorm, the Camera Verde had been damaged, and he needed the keys to the chapel, which were with Eleonora, to check for possible damage there (doc. 15). In the second letter Riccio reported (doc. 16): Hebbi le due chiavi della cappella et dello scriptoio che non hanno punto patito dell'acqua. . . . Intanto sopra la volta si fa un tecto posticcio per riparare a ogn'acqua che venisse.
Page 81 (I received the two keys to the chapel and to the study, which were not damaged at all by the water. . . . Meanwhile, a temporary roof has been erected above the vault to protect the chapel from any possible water damage.)
Unfortunately, these letters are uninformative about the contents or decoration of the chapel. Nor do we discover any details from the general palace inventory of November 1553, which does not mention the chapel. This was presumably because it was kept locked, as were, according to the inventory, the Chapel of the Priors and Eleonora's private study, both of which presumably contained valuables. 24 The presence in the guardaroba of furnishings belonging to the chapel indicates, however, that it was in use. On 30 June 1550 an altar frontal lined with gold satin was made for Eleonora's chapel (doc. 18); in March 1553 vestments for use in the chapel were made (doc. 19); and in the 1553 palace inventory there is a listing for six silver Apostles and a pax for the chapel (doc. 20): 6 Apostoli d'argento per l'altare della S.ra duchessa. . . . Un pace d'argento dorato con la Natività di christallo . . . con ornamento atorno di lapislazeri. . . . Uno lampanaio per la cappella, d'argento. (Six Apostles of silver for the altar of Her Ladyship the duchess . . . a pax of silver and gold with a Nativity in crystal . . . and a border of lapis lazuli . . . a silver candlestick for the chapel.)
There is no other mention in these inventories of objects specifically for Eleonora's chapel, but a large number of furnishings and vestments were kept in a scrittoino in the guardaroba segreta (private storeroom), where they were inventoried "In mano al Rev.do p.re fra Alessandro et altri Capp.ni" (in the hand of the reverend priest Brother Alessandro and other chaplains).25 The palace inventory raises the question of where the vestments for the priests and the furnishings for the celebration of Mass in Eleonora's chapel were stored. There is no nearby room in her suite that could have been a sacristy.26 The furnishings for her chapel could have been kept in the scrittoino, but the Chapel of the Priors at the other end of her apartment apparently had a sacristy,27 which might have served Eleonora's chapel as well.
Page 82
When Bronzino's Lamentation was dispatched to France in 1545, what, if anything, replaced it over the chapel's altar before 1553, when the replica was installed? Altar tapestries were often used in chapels, either instead of or hanging over a painted altar panel. 28 The possibility that such a tapestry hung in Eleonora's chapel is suggested by a letter from Sforza Almeni to Riccio of 8 April 1550 (doc. 17): La duc[h]essa mia S.ra m'à detto che io scriva a V. S. che quella facci fare dal Bronzino un cartone d'un panno d'altare in quel modo che stava quella del suo oratorio con quelle medesime figure, con un festone atorno che sia bello, el qual disegna mandarlo in Ispagna. (My lady the duchess has told me to write to Your Lordship, to have you order from Bronzino a cartoon for an altar tapestry like the one in her oratory [i.e., chapel], with the same subjects [and] surrounded by a beautiful garland, which she plans to send to Spain.)
This letter, it would seem, was an order to Bronzino to make a cartoon for an altar tapestry like one then hanging in the chapel.29 No details are given about this tapestry (presumably, they would not have been necessary); however, it may have been Salviati's Lamentation tapestry, which has the MediciToledo arms repeated twice in the border (Fig. 43). This work, which must have been designed in late 1545 or early 1546, was Salviati's first tapestry cartoon for the duke; it was woven by Nicholas Karcher and cited as ''uno Panno da altar" (an altar tapestry) in the delivery record of 31 July 1546.30 It was inventoried in 1549, and it is listed in the guardaroba as Salviati's in the palace inventory of 1553, where it is called a tapestry altar hanging.31 Salviati's tapestry is approximately two meters square (2.04 × 1.98 m.), the size of the chapel altarpiece (with its narrow frame, but without the arched upper section). It could thus have hung in the space left empty by the removal of Bronzino's Lamentation; and, since it represented the same subject, it would have been an appropriate substitute.32 Given the coincidence of the tapestry's date of commission in late 1545 and the painting's date of export as well as the tapestry's appearance in the Medici guardaroba in early November 1553 (about a month after Bronzino had requested blue pigment to finish his Lamentation replica), one is tempted to conjecture that the tapestry was commissioned for the chapel and hung there until it was no longer needed.33
Page 83
Figure 43 Francesco Salviati, Lamentation (tapestry). Uffizi.
Page 84
But why was the completion of Eleonora's chapel so delayed? A glance at the general picture of Bronzino's work in the late 1540s and early 1550s suggests that the painter—at the height of his career as Cosimo's court painter and portraitist and also in demand among the Florentine aristocracy—was occupied with many other works. He did altarpieces and portraits, and orders for tapestry cartoons from Cosimo, particularly for the ambitious Story of Joseph series for the Sala de' Dugento (see Fig. 5) and for portiere, began to come in during the late summer of 1545, before Bronzino would even have had the opportunity to begin the Lamentation replica. 34 At this time Duke Cosimo also gave many other commissions for work in the Palazzo. From 1549 on there was a new campaign of construction under Tasso's direction, lasting until his death in 1555.35 More rooms were necessitated by the size of both the ducal family—seven children with the birth of Ferdinando in 1549— and the court, which had outgrown the quarters remodeled for the duke and duchess when they moved to the palace in 1540. For Eleonora, Tasso built two new rooms (1549–55) and a large terrace (1549–51) above the original "appartamento di sopra."36 During these same years, Bronzino completed the cartoons for the Story of Joseph tapestries and Bachiacca did cartoons for the Months (1549–53)37 as well as painting the ceiling of the terrace above Eleonora's apartment (1552– 53).38 Finally, in 1554–55 Tasso constructed the entirely new Quartiere degli Elementi (Apartment of the Elements) and the Terrace of Saturn opening off it (see Fig. 12, no. 1–7),39 the decoration of which under the direction of Vasari would constitute a second phase of Cosimo's embellishment of the Palazzo. This history strongly suggests that during the years after 1545 the duke had become more interested in the products of his new tapestry manufactury and the construction of additional space in the Palazzo than in paintings, and that consequently Eleonora's chapel did not have high priority. Bronzino finally painted the replica of the Lamentation in 1553 (see Plate 9).40 A ricordo of 26 September in the Medici accounts refers to the delivery of two ounces of ultramarine blue to Bronzino for the "tavola della Cappella della Duchessa" (doc. 19). We can presume that his altarpiece was installed in the chapel shortly thereafter; since there are many blue areas in the painting (the sky, the Virgin's and Magdalene's robes, etc.), however, it is impossible to know what stage Bronzino had reached in the work at the time the pigment was delivered.
Page 85
Vasari corroborates a date of 1553 for the replica of the Lamentation, noting that it was painted at the same time as Bronzino's Christ in Limbo (see Fig. 10) and Resurrection (SS. Annunziata) altarpieces, both dated 1552: Et in questo medesimo tempo [Bronzino] fece la tavola che in palazzo fu messa nella cappella, onde era stata levata quella che fu mandata a Gran Vela. 41 (And around the same time [Bronzino] did the altarpiece that was placed in the chapel, from which the other one had been taken and sent to Granvelle.)
The decade after the installation of the second Lamentation in late 1553 until Eleonora's death in December 1562 was another period of inactivity in the chapel— even though Bronzino had not yet painted the second pair of wings for the altarpiece. Certainly, he was occupied with other work. More important, however, after the appointment of Vasari as "architetto del palazzo" in 1555 and the initiation of ambitious decorative projects in the palace's private and public rooms,42 Cosimo may not have pressed Bronzino to complete his work in the chapel, whose decoration was by then ten years out of date. During this period, however, Cosimo may have had yet another replica of the altarpiece made as a diplomatic gift. There is a fullscale copy on canvas of Bronzino's painting in the parish church at Castrojeriz (Fig. 44).43 In the sixteenth century this town near Burgos belonged to the Mendoza family, several members of which were closely linked with Duke Cosimo in the 1540s and 1550s: Don Diego Hurtado Diaz de Mendoza was Charles V's ambassador to Florence, and Don Francisco Mendoza di Burgos was Cosimo's governor and captain general of Siena after the death of Pedro di Toledo in 1553.44 It is possible one of these or another of the Mendozas was the recipient of this copy of the Lamentation, which might have been made from Bronzino's cartoon in his shop in the early 1550s at the same time that Bronzino made his own replica for Eleonora.
Page 86
Figure 44 Bronzino (workshop), copy of the Lamentation altarpiece of the Chapel of Eleonora. Parish church, Castrojeriz, Burgos.
The Completion of the Decoration (1563–65) The chapel was refurbished during the year after Eleanora's death in late 1562. On 3 July 1563 payment was made for glass for the window on the north wall (doc. 23). In addition, Duke Cosimo asked Bronzino to complete the second set of flanking panels for the altarpiece. This pressure on Bronzino was part of the duke's larger scheme, his plan to abdicate in favor of Francesco. One of his tasks at this time was to settle accounts with court artists, who, in turn, requested overdue payments from him. In February 1563 Bronzino asked to be paid for two works he had painted for Eleonora in 1561: a portrait of her copied from one in the guardaroba and a Madonna copied after a picture by Leonardo da Vinci. 45
Page 87
Figure 45 Bronzino, letter to Duke Cosimo de' Medici. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library.
Probably in response to a request from Cosimo at about this time, Bronzino returned to work on the chapel altarpiece. On 19 June (doc. 22), wood was ordered for "addornamenti e una tavola per uno altare nella Cappella in Camera Verde" (frames and a panel for an altar in the chapel of the Camera Verde). 46 The new altar wings were not painted immediately, however, and in the spring of 1564 Cosimo must have pressed Bronzino again. In response to this request Bronzino wrote to the duke on 15 April (doc. 24; Fig. 45). After thanking him for a requested payment and acknowledging that his salary would no longer be paid by the duke, Bronzino assures his patron that he will finish the Nativity altarpiece
Page 88
for the Church of the Cavalieri in Pisa. 47 He then tells Cosimo that he will finish the parts of the chapel decoration that are lacking, promising to complete the work before the duke's return to Florence: E in tanto non manco di seguitare la Tavola de' Cavalieri, e dar fine à quel tanto che manca nella Cappella di Palazzo, le quali cose credo che V. E. I. trouerrá al suo ritorno fornite. (Meanwhile I am continuing to work on the altarpiece for the Cavalieri and completing what remains to be done in the palace chapel, so Your Excellency will find the work completed on your return.)
On the new flanking panels of the second Lamentation Bronzino painted the Angel of the Annunciation and the Virgin Annunciate (see Plate 14), which we already know about from Vasari's description of the chapel (in the 1568 edition of the Vite) as it appeared in the mid1560s. They were duly completed three months later. On 15 July 1564 payment was made to Dionigi di Matteo for frames for "una Nuntiata" and "uno Angelo" for the "Cappella della Camera Verde" (doc. 25),48 and on 16 September payment was made for gilding these frames, at which time the paintings were presumably installed in the chapel (doc. 26).49 There was still work to be done in the chapel, however, and the duke urgently wanted this and other Palazzo decorations completed in 1565 because the palace was being prepared as the future residence of Francesco and his intended bride, Giovanna d'Austria, whose wedding was to take place on 18 December 1565.50 A payment to Bronzino of 17 February 1565 "per spese fatte . . . nel rassettare la cappella ch'è nella Camera Verde" (for expenses incurred in tidying up the chapel in the Camera Verde) establishes that the painter was active in the chapel at this time (doc. 27). It seems reasonable to suppose that the MediciToledo stemma that Bronzino had originally painted at the center of the vault, inappropriate for the new owners of the chapel, was at this time painted over, by Bronzino or Allori, with the Trinity, bordered by fruits and flowers (Fig. 46).51 It is probable that work still remained to be done on the spandrels, three of whose Virtue medallions were filled in a secco after the rest of the fresco work was completed. The discrepancy between the delicate execution of the Justice
Page 89
Figure 46 Chapel of Eleonora, vault, detail of the Trinity painted over the MediciToledo coat of arms.
Page 90
medallion (see Plate 13), which was consonant in style with the rest of Bronzino's fresco work in the chapel, and the coarser execution of the other three Virtues suggests that, under pressure to complete the chapel in 1565, Bronzino assigned the figures of Fortitude, Temperance, and Prudence to his chief assistant, Allori (see Figs. 35–37). 52 One further change in the chapel decoration was made long after Bronzino's death in 1572. In 1581–82 a workroom was constructed on the terrace outside the chapel, and the terrace walls were painted by Tommaso del Verrocchio.53 To make this newly decorated terrace accessible to the apartment of Grand Duchess Giovanna, the small chapel window was blocked in and a large recessed doorway was cut through to it. A payment for the brass doorknobs of the door on 15 October 1582 (doc. 29) indicates when this work was completed. This reconstruction resulted in the removal of a large section of the center of Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna (see Plate 8). The walls flanking the recessed doorway were painted in chiaroscuro to harmonize with the basamento (wainscoting), with the dove of the Holy Spirit depicted under the lintel of the door. The change also left an area to be filled in on the wall above the new door. The Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe was therefore added at this time, presumably by Allori (see Fig. 38).54 It was the final decoration in the chapel. Aside from Vasari's description, there is virtual silence on the Chapel of Eleonora in later sixteenthcentury accounts of art works in Florence. Even such observers as Paolo Giovio and Anton Francesco Doni, who write about other works of art in the Palazzo, do not make note of the chapel.55 Later, in 1584, Raffaello Borghini simply repeats Vasari's notice with a few minor changes of wording, giving no evidence of having firsthand knowledge of the chapel decoration.56 Francesco Bocchi, in 1591, describes the Sala delle Udienze, the Chapel of the Priors, and the guardaroba—all on the second floor of the palace—but omits Eleonora's former apartment entirely.57 With the definitive transfer of the court to the Palazzo Pitti in the seventeenth century, the former ducal residence was used as an administrative building and for festive occasions. Eighteenthcentury guidebooks to Florence—even entire works on the Palazzo alone—take no note of the chapel. Giovanni Richa, for example, writing on the churches of Florence, notes in the Palazzo only the Chapel of the Priors;58 and a long description and inventory of the palace men
Page 91
tions neither the chapel nor the Camera Verde. 59 The rare guidebooks that mention the second floor state that Eleonora's apartment consists of the four rooms decorated by Vasari.60 Indeed, the rest of the apartment was not open to the public; and, after 1771, there would have been little reason to keep the chapel open, since Bronzino's altarpiece was transferred in that year to the Galleria degli Uffizi (doc. 31).61 In the early nineteenth century, the chapel became accessible again, and notices of it begin to appear in guides to the Palazzo Vecchio. The poor state of the frescoes and the absence of the altarpiece are the main themes. One guidebook, for example, comments in 1843: "Sono a lamentarsi in questa cappella notevole guasti, e sarebbe desiderabile vi si remediasse" (The serious damage in this chapel is lamentable, and it should be taken care of).62 In 1865, when the capital of Italy was transferred to Florence, a program of restoration in the Palazzo was begun under the direction of Carlo Falconieri. He took personal credit for salvaging various works of art in the palace, including the chapel. He described the chapel decoration—the first appreciative words about it since Vasari—as follows: Io non so dire, ripeto, con quanto amore ho salvato dall'ultima perdizione una cappella del Bronzino, che è certamente quanto egli fatto si avesse di migliore e più stupendo, nella cui parete sono ritratti in affresco con incredibile finezza taluni fatti della sacra scrittura. . . . Ebbene era convertita questa cappella in magazzino di specchi, il cui fruttare e rifruttare l'avea distrutta per un terzo, senza malizia o rimordimento di chi al governo di cotesto palazzo era preposto.63 (I cannot tell you, I repeat, with what feeling I saved from being completely destroyed a chapel by Bronzino, certainly his best and most stupendous work. On its walls are some scenes from the Holy Scriptures, painted in fresco with unbelievable delicacy. This chapel had been converted into a storeroom for mirrors, and the continual use and reuse of it had destroyed onethird of it, though without malice or remorse on the part of those appointed to manage the palace.)
Indeed, the chapel was in a lamentable state. Mirrors leaning against the frescoes had caused much abrading and paint loss, especially in the lower part of the entrance wall. The south wall had also suffered major damage from humidity, par
Page 92
ticularly the left side, where the frescoes on the lower part had been completely destroyed. Furthermore, the basamento, with its frieze of painted architecture and putto heads, had been repainted on the altar wall as well as on the south wall. In 1885–86, after the Palazzo Vecchio had become the seat of the Florentine government, yet another campaign of restoration was undertaken. 64 This included the chapel, whose condition continued to be commented on.65 Anna Baia, writing the first (and still the only) biography of Eleonora, gives the chapel only passing mention, although she does refer to it as ''quella maraviglioso cappelletta dipinta dal Bronzino" (that marvellous little chapel painted by Bronzino).66 Finally, in 1909 there was a comprehensive restoration of the second floor, including the apartments of Eleonora. Windows that had been walled up were reopened, floors were restored, and the Lamentation altarpiece with its wings of the Annunciation was returned from the Uffizi.67 Thus, in the early twentieth century, the Chapel of Eleonora was opened to the public for the first time in its history.
Page 93
II— BRONZINO'S PAINTINGS IN THE CHAPEL
Page 94
Chapter Four— The Frescoes The frescoes in the Chapel of Eleonora (see Plates 3–8) are Bronzino's sole work in mural painting from his mature years, the only later fresco by him being the enormous Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo of 1565–69 in the nave of S. Lorenzo (Fig. 47). The chapel frescoes, however, are stylistically related to the marmoreal, crystalline mode of Bronzino's mature paintings on panel, including works of the mid1540s such as the chapel's own altarpiece (see Plate 11) and the Allegory of Venus (see Fig. 11), as well as to his monumental public altarpieces of 1552, Christ in Limbo (see Fig. 10) and the Resurrection in the Guadagni Chapel at SS. Annunziata. 1 Moreover, the stylistic evolution of the frescoes leads directly to the mode of the Story of Joseph tapestry series as well as to that of other Bronzino tapestries of the mid1540s (see Plate 33; Figs. 5, 69, 103, 176). Indeed, the chapel frescoes mark a final transition in Bronzino's work from his early to his mature style, a shift that coincided with—and was reinforced by—his move from private to predominantly ducal patronage. The chapel frescoes were begun soon after Bronzino worked as an assistant to Pontormo in the frescoes at Villa Castello;2 he had earlier worked independently as a fresco painter, however, as in St. Benedict Tempted in the Wilderness, painted for the Florentine Badia (Fig. 48).3 This lunette of the late 1520s has dimensions almost identical to those of the arched frescoes in the chapel, but it is vastly different in style, with its Pontormesque saint and its landscape setting. Moreover, dur
Page 95
Figure 47 Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo. S. Lorenzo.
Figure 48 St. Benedict Tempted in the Wilderness. S. Salvi.
Page 96
Figure 49 Pietà with Angels (tabernacle). S. Casciano, Mercatalle.
ing his stay in Pesaro in 1530–32 Bronzino had participated in the mural decorations commissioned by Guidobaldo della Rovere, duke of Urbino, at the Villa Imperiale. 4 There, the young Florentine painter had come in contact with the style and fresco technique of the Raphael school, and he may also have visited other northern Italian cities such as nearby Urbino and Loreto. After his return from Pesaro—and before he entered the service of Duke Cosimo—Bronzino painted the Pietà with Angels in a tabernacle near Florence (Fig. 49).5 This fresco, now ruined and overpainted, must once have been an impressive work (of interest also as an early essay on the subject of the Chapel of Eleonora altarpiece). Works now lost, however, may have been the most decisive in Cosimo's selecting Bronzino for the important commission of Eleonora's chapel. These include the two large narrative paintings for the duke's wedding apparato in 1539. According to Vasari, it was these istorie—"the best paintings to be executed for that occasion"— that brought Bronzino's talents to Cosimo's attention.6 Before beginning his work in the chapel Bronzino seems to have visited Rome. Although there is no documentation for a Roman trip before 1548, when letters place him there,7 the visual evidence that he knew both antique and contemporary Roman art, especially that of Michelangelo and Raphael, strongly indicates a visit to the city shortly before he entered Duke Cosimo's service in 1539.
Page 97
Figure 50 Giorgio Vasari, vault of the Chapel of Duke Cosimo de' Medici. Palazzo Vecchio.
The Vault The chapel's vault is designed as an oval articulated by ribs that form a saltire cross (see Plate 5), an attenuated geometric form that displaces the emphasis of the vault's composition to the corners of the room, which are strongly accented by the densely decorated spandrels. 8 This oval design is unprecedented in Florentine chapel decoration, but it was shortly to be imitated by Salviati in Eleonora's scrittoio (see Fig. 33) and later by Vasari in Cosimo's private chapel (Fig. 50).9 The conceit of the open loggia is also innovative for a chapel vault. Various nonFlorentine (and secular) ceiling decorations have been suggested as sources for
Page 98
Figure 51 Raphael, Loggia di Psyche. Rome, Villa Farnesina.
Bronzino's combination of the trellis motif and the sottoinsù figures (painted as if seen from below) against the sky. Raphael's Loggia di Psyche in the Villa Farnesina—like the chapel, an epithalamium—is a clear prototype (Fig. 51). 10 Models were also available in Florence in recent paintings by Pontormo. Most immediate for Bronzino must have been the loggias at Villa Careggi and Villa Castello, where he had recently assisted his former master. As descriptions by Vasari and drawings by Pontormo indicate, the Careggi loggia included pendentives edged by garlands and an oval vault design with putti seen from below (Figs. 52–53).11 We do not know precisely what role these lost decorations may have
Page 99
Figure 52 Jacopo da Pontormo, studies for the vault of the Villa Careggi loggia. Uffizi.
Figure 53 Jacopo da Pontormo, studies for the vault of Villa Careggi loggia, detail, putto. Uffizi.
Page 100
Figure 54 Jacopo da Pontormo, study for God the Father in the cupola of the Capponi Chapel. Uffizi.
played in the development of ideas for the chapel, but Bronzino seems to have carried over at least some of the elements of Pontormo's design. Bronzino also looked to Pontormo's cupola (no longer extant) in the Capponi Chapel (see Fig. 14). 12 There, in an illusionistic design unusual for Florence, four patriarchs seen from below were portrayed sitting on a parapet at the corners of Brunelleschi's hemispheric cupola, with God the Father seated on a higher level opposite the altar.13 Pontormo's large gesturing figures may be visualized from his studies—in particular, one for the God the Father, seated with widespread arms (Fig. 54).14 This figure seems to have been a source for Bronzino's St. Jerome, who is likewise placed opposite the altar (see Plate 18).
Page 101
Framed and articulated by fictive architectural elements, Bronzino's vault is a tour de force of illusionism. Light radiates from behind the medallion, transforming the vault into a vision of open blue sky behind the garlanded stone trellis, and billowing white clouds support the four saints attended by Herculean putti who cavort athletically in front of the garlands. The saints were executed, Vasari tells us, "con diligenzia et amore grandissimo" (with diligence and the greatest devotion). 15 Three of them—Francis (with his companion, Brother Leo), Jerome, and John—are transfixed by transcendental contemplation, modeled by the heavenly radiance into powerful presences, vividly immediate both physically and psychologically. St. Michael, in contrast, is a more idealized figure, flattened emblematically against the sky in his compartment over the altar. In late 1540 or early 1541, after he had been commissioned to paint the chapel, Bronzino made a handsome presentation drawing of the vault composition for his ducal patrons. This modello, highly finished in black chalk and gray ink and wash highlighted in white on bluegray paper, is the earliest surviving work related to the chapel decoration (Plate 15).16 There are no analogous drawings by Bronzino from before 1540, but the style of this drawing is comparable to that of his small Nativity, datable to 1539 (Fig. 55).17 The modello suggests how Bronzino developed his ideas at an experimental point of transition between his early works (which themselves vacillate between an arbitrary Pontormesque concept of form and a more naturalistic style) and his evolving Maniera.18 It is characterized by luminosity, a fluidity of composition, and a delicate articulation of figures, while in the fresco Bronzino made changes that indicate a shift toward artificial conventions of figure composition, space, light, and emotional expression that were to become the artistic vocabulary of the Maniera. For example, the rhythmic and Pontormesque figure of St. John in the drawing (similar to St. Joseph of the Nativity) is a more compact, sculptural form in the fresco (Plate 19). There is also a hardening of the fluid forms and a squaringoff of the cursive rhythms of the drawing in the frescoed St. Francis and Brother Leo, as the forms are shifted parallel to the picture surface (Plate 17). This direction is still more marked in St. Jerome, where the drawing's pentimenti, or changes of design, show Bronzino experimenting with the head in nearprofile and the right leg crossed behind the left. The saint moves actively in space, the upper body leaning forward urgently toward the crucifix, the front leg extended and the left arm flung further back. In the fresco, the saint, now heavy and solid—
Page 102
Figure 55 Nativity. Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts.
his magnificent nude torso contrasting with his crimson robes—is forced into a more frontal and upright position, his torso and arms parallel to the picture surface (Plate 18). Subsequent to the modello Bronzino restudied the saint's head in a black chalk drawing (Fig. 56), revising it yet again in the painted head with its flowing beard (Fig. 57). 19 If the painting of the vault proceeded clockwise from the altar wall (as it did in the Moses frescoes), then Bronzino painted St. Michael last (Plate 16), drastically and abruptly revising his style in this figure. The illusionistic and rhythmic sketch of the saint fighting the devil in the modello was followed by a precise and exquisitely modeled black chalk study from the nude, which fixed his final, less mobile
Page 103
Figure 56 Study for the head of St. Jerome. Uffizi.
Figure 57 Chapel of Eleonora, St. Jerome, detail of the head.
Page 104
Figure 58 Study for St. Michael. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Page 105
position (Fig. 58). 20 And then, in the fresco, the frontal saint stops the clockwise flow around the ceiling by looking to the right and down, his left leg and sword forced parallel to one another, and his pinwheeling limbs splayed across his compartment. The cloud bank that is a seat for his companions is tilted up, almost spilling him out of his shallow space. The archangel has been wrenched out of the illusionistic context of the ceiling, not even sharing in the light that illuminates the saints from above. Flatly lit from the front, frozen in place like an emblem over the altar, St. Michael is the antithesis of the illusionism and emotional communication of the other saints. Moreover, in contrast to their relative simplicity of dress, he is a figure of decorative splendor, with his great multicolored wings, his blue and gold costume, and his gold sandals. A golden veil of color suggesting a diaphanous armor covers his idealized torso, which contrasts strikingly with the naturalistic treatment of the torso of the aged St. Jerome opposite him. The painted St. Michael exemplifies many of the conventions of Bronzino's developing mature style—tippedup space and frontal light; flatness of pose contradicted by marblelike sculptural modeling; accented, parallel, and angular limbs; and polished finish of the extremities. He is the first such figure to be painted by Bronzino, and his head is the earliest example of a glacially idealized male type that Bronzino would favor in many later works. St. Michael's elegant head and his contrived posture seem to refer to Michelangelo's Victory of 1530–32, one of the first sculptures to exhibit the fully developed characteristics of the Maniera (see Fig. 88). In evoking this work (which, like St. Michael, represents the victory of good over evil), Bronzino declared an admiration of Michelangelo's art that informs the chapel's Moses frescoes, the chapel's altarpiece, and his mature art in general. Bronzino, who was a poet as well as a painter (he also imitated Michelangelo's poetry), expressed his admiration not only in his paintings but in two sonnets dedicated to Michelangelo. The imagery of these suggests that the chapel's St. Michael was not just influenced by Michelangelo's sculpture but was intended as homage to the master. Both poems begin with the wordplay Michelangelo/Michel Angelo (a conceit found in other midcinquecento poetry), and both express Bronzino's profound debt to him.21 The first sonnet begins with an untranslatable pun on Buonarroti and continues with a declaration of Bronzino's devotion:
Page 106 O stupor di natura, Angelo eletto, Ch'avete al virtuoso il Buono arroto (O marvel of nature, angel elect, who has sharpened goodness to perfection) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Con puro core, e con sincero affetto Fin da' primi anni miei vi feci voto, Terrestre Dio, di me tutto, e devoto Vi consacrai la mano, e l'intelletto. (With pure heart and sincere affection I have prayed to you from my earliest years, O terrestrial God, and I have devoutly consecrated to you my entire self, my hand, my intellect.)
The other sonnet reiterates Bronzino's sense of indebtedness to Michelangelo: Come l'alto Michele Angel con forte Mano, e felice asserenando il cielo (As the angel Michael on high with strong and felicitous hand making the heavens serene) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O nobile alma, o mente alta, ed o mano Sovr'ogni altra felice, a voi si debbe Quanto han di buono, e bel gli studii nostri. (O noble soul, O lofty mind, and O hand more felicitous than any other, we owe to you what [ever] of good and beauty our pursuits possess.)
Page 107
The two sets of putti who stand between the saints, called ''putti bellissimi" by Vasari, echo the contrast between the flattened, angular, frontlit St. Michael and the other saints, more threedimensional and foreshortened. The seated putto (Fig. 59) and the striding putto (Fig. 60) over the entrance wall move and turn in space in sharply contrasting postures, whereas the putti flanking St. Michael repeat the saint's frontal pose and are almost mirror images (Plates 20–21). Putti such as these do not appear earlier in Bronzino's art. 22 In type, however, they resemble the children in his Washington Holy Family of the late 1520s (Fig. 64) 23 and are thus another stylistic link between this initial part of the chapel decoration and Bronzino's earlier painting. Indeed, a large modello in black chalk that Bronzino originally used (reversed) for the Christ child seems to have served for the head of the putto to the right of St. Michael (Fig. 62).24 Bronzino added the wings in the drawing and adapted the angle of the head to the sottoinsù scheme of the vault (Fig. 63). But more than any source in Bronzino's own art, these muscular, athletic putti reflect his study of the Sistine ceiling. The seated putto strikingly recalls Michelangelo's Jonah, and all the putti evoke the sculpturesque ignudi, who, like them, are set against painted architecture, accompanied by garlands and ribbons. Their poses are reminiscent of specific ignudi, such as the one to the right above the Libyan Sibyl (Fig. 61), which is reflected in the putto to the right of St. Michael (see Plate 21). Like Pontormo before him in the putti around the oculus in the lunette Vertumnus and Pomona at Villa Poggio a Caiano (1521), Bronzino turned Michelangelo's heroic nudes into playful children. But in contrast to the eccentric naturalism of Pontormo's rustic urchins, which the putti of the modello still recall, Bronzino's putti have a mockheroic, sculptural quality, and their exaggerated scale and pose enhance their decorative role. Another, more contemporary, intermediary between Bronzino and Michelangelo was Tribolo's decorative interpretation of the ignudi in the putti on the base of the Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus at Villa Castello (see Fig. 3). Although work on it continued long after 1540, the fountain was designed in the late 1530s, and Bronzino could have known Tribolo's model for it, which the sculptor is shown holding in Vasari's Duke Cosimo de' Medici with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors (see Fig. 8), or other modelli.25 His striding putto (see Fig. 60) derives
Page 108
Figure 59 Chapel of Eleonora, seated putto.
Page 109
Figure 60 Chapel of Eleonora, striding putto.
Page 110
Figure 61 Michelangelo, nude above the Libyan Sibyl. Vatican, Sistine Chapel.
Figure 62 Study for the head of the putto to the right of St. Michael. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen.
Figure 63 Chapel of Eleonora, head of the putto to the right of St. Michael.
Page 111
Figure 64 Holy Family. Washington, National Gallery of Art, The Samuel H. Kress Collection.
Page 112
Figure 65 Niccolò Tribolo, Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus, detail, putti on the stem. Villa Castello.
from a putto (once playing with a garland) on the stem (Fig. 65), and his seated putto (see Fig. 59) was taken in reverse from Tribolo's identically posed putto on the basin (Fig. 66). 26 The putti of the vault raise a major stylistic issue in the chapel decoration and in other of Bronzino's paintings of the decade 1535–45: his use of antique and contemporary sculptural models and his apparent efforts to make his painting closely imitative of sculpture—sometimes, but not invariably, the same thing. Bronzino's preoccupation with sculpture had been gaining momentum since the early 1530s
Page 113
Figure 66 Niccolò Tribolo, Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus, detail, putti on the base. Villa Castello.
as he moved away from Pontormo's more flexible and painterly style. The first major examples are two paintings of about 1533: St. Sebastian (Fig. 67), where Bronzino reconstructed a classical torso for the martyr, and Andrea Doria as Neptune (Milan, Pinacoteca di Brera), where he portrayed the sitter in subdued colors as a living sculpture, possibly related to Bandinelli's contemporaneous project for a monument to the Genoese admiral. 27 Later, at about the time he began the chapel decoration, Bronzino used fragments of classical sculpture as the basis for figures in paintings such as the Panciatichi Holy Family (Galleria degli Uffizi), where the Virgin's head is closely modeled on that of an Aphrodite.28 And he
Page 114
Figure 67 St. Sebastian. Lugano, ThyssenBornemisza Collection.
continued throughout his career to quote or allude to the sculpture of his contemporaries. 29 The relation of Bronzino's painting to sculpture was not just an episode in the development of his personal style. It reflected an issue with wide ramifications in Florentine art and culture during the 1540s, when the paragone was debated with renewed interest by Florentine literati and artists. Their concerns were given literary expression in the second lecture of Benedetto Varchi's Due lezzioni (delivered in March 1547; published in 1550) and in letters by Vasari, Bronzino, Pontormo, Tasso, Francesco da Sangallo, Tribolo, Cellini, and Michelangelo in answer to Varchi's query on the primacy of the arts.30 Of course the sculptors
Page 115
defended their art and the painters theirs, but what is significant for Bronzino's sculptural manner of painting is Varchi's own advocacy of sculpture. The whole debate, indeed, seems to reflect a temporary shift in the hierarchy of the visual arts in the 1540s, with sculpture briefly eclipsing the established superiority of painting. 31 Bandinelli's sculptural style all'antica and Bronzino's sculpturesque painting, having won the favor of Duke Cosimo in the early 1540s, became, to a large degree, the "official" mode of the art of his court. A case in point is the contrasting fortunes of Bronzino and Salviati at the Medici court in the 1540s. Salviati's career in Florence suggests that his painterly and ornamental style was ultimately not to the taste of Cosimo and his advisers, especially the powerful Riccio.32 Through his contacts with Tasso, who intervened on his behalf with Riccio, Salviati had been awarded the important commission for the Camillus frescoes in 1543, but he fell from favor and failed to secure the commission for the choir of S. Lorenzo, which Riccio gave to Pontormo.33 Nor did he fare well in his work on the Joseph tapestries, to which he contributed only a single cartoon before departing permanently for Rome in 1548. In contrast, Bronzino, who painted frescoes, altarpieces, and portraits alike in an increasingly sculptural style, was much in demand. Bronzino was not alone among his contemporaries in using sculptural models or in painting in a sculptural manner, but he was the most prominent—and enthusiastic— cinquecento proponent of this approach to painting. Indeed, it was his emulation of sculpture, together with the exquisite finish and artifice of his painting, that led Cellini to praise him as a painter second only to Michelangelo. In his letter to Varchi, Cellini writes: Oggi si vede Michelagnolo essere il maggior pittore che mai ci sia stato notizia, né infra gli antichi né infra i moderni, solo perché tutto quello che fa di pittura lo cava dagli studiatissimi modegli fatti di scultura; né so cognoscere chi più s'apressi oggi a tale verità d'arte, che il virtuoso Bronzino.34 (Michelangelo is taken today to be the greatest painter ever known, among either the ancients or the moderns, precisely because everything he does in painting is based on closely studied sculptural models; I do not know anyone today who comes closer to such artistic truth than the virtuoso Bronzino.)
Page 116
It may not be coincidental that Bronzino's letter to Varchi discusses the art of painting only in the context of refuting arguments in favor of sculpture, never (in this unfinished statement) to defend painting proper. 35 His review of the case for sculpture gives a valuable clue to the qualities he found attractive in it. The issue that seems to have concerned him the most—and the only one in which he touches on the painter's side of the argument—is that of multiple views: Dicono appresso che, dovendo farsi dagli scultori quasi sempre le statue tonde, . . . bisogna aver sommo riguardo che stiano bene per tutte le vedute, e se ad una veduta la loro figura arà grazia, che non manchi nell'altre vedute. . . . Dove così non avviene al pittore, il quale non fa mai in una figura altro che una sola veduta, la quale sceglie a suo modo e, bastandogli che per quel verso che la mostra abbia grazia, non si cura di quello che arebbe nell'altre vedute, che non appariscono.36 (Then they go on to say that since sculptors must almost always make their statues in the round, . . . they must take great care that the work looks well from all views, and if their figure has grace from one view, they must make sure that it is not deficient from the other views. . . . But this problem does not present itself to the painter, who in each figure never gives more than one view, which he chooses the way he wants; since he is satisfied if it is beautiful on the side he shows, he does not care what it would look like from the viewpoints that cannot be seen.)
What is left unsaid (and what Bronzino might have gone on to explain in his unwritten praise of painting) is how the painter could achieve the effect of sculpture's multiple views solely through disegno (drawing or design). Nor do others who wrote to Varchi in defense of painting refer to this matter; however, it is touched on by Pietro Aretino in a letter of 1540 to Vasari. In it he praises, in a drawing (now lost) by Vasari for a Gathering of Manna, lo ignudo che, chinato in terra, scopre il dinanzi e il di dietro, per esser in virtù de la forza facile e con grazia de la sforzata facilitade, calamita degli occhi.37 (the nude who, bending down to the ground, simultaneously reveals both front and back, so that by virtue of the effortless power and the grace of its powerful effortlessness it acts like a magnet to the eye.)
Page 117
Figure 68 Hellenistic, the Belvedere Torso. Musei Vaticani.
This type of figure also appears in Bronzino's painting about 1540. For Bronzino's embracing of a sculptural ideal led him not only to paint in a way that evokes sculpture but also to introduce specific poses that might remedy some of the alleged shortcomings of the art of painting. The first instances of flattened, twisted poses showing more than would normally be seen of a figure are the kneeling shepherd in the Nativity (see Fig. 55) and the figure of Cosimo in the portrait of him as Orpheus (see Fig. 19). Parts of these figures are rotated so that we see simultaneously the head in profile or full face and the back almost parallel to it. This demonstration of the painter's art in competition with that of the sculptor is all the more pointed since the source of both figures is the great antique exemplar, the Belvedere Torso (Fig. 68). 38 The striding putto on the vault of the
Page 118
Chapel of Eleonora also embodies perfectly the same principle (see Fig. 60). Moreover, the putto's similarity to one of Tribolo's fountain putti (see Fig. 65) suggests that it, too, was a painter's competitive response to contemporary sculpture—Bronzino's demonstration of his own mastery of the sculptor's multiple views. 39 The painted ''sculpture" of the chapel's spandrels, whose Cardinal Virtues are under the feet of Bronzino's heroic putti, reflects the issues of the paragone on a playful level (see Plate 13; Figs. 35–37). Indeed, the frequent appearance of such motifs in Bronzino's painting suggests a constant preoccupation with this issue. His Pygmalion and Galatea (Palazzo Vecchio, ca. 1530), whose very theme is the paragone, shows a monumental statue brought to life not only through the sculptor's art but also the painter's, as is the relief of Venus and Mars on the altar behind it.40 The lively little statues that vouch for the cultivated taste of the sitters in such Bronzino portraits as Youth with a Lute (Galleria degli Uffizi) and Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman (Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada) can also be read in the context of the paragone, as can two Bronzino portraits of young men with statuettes, Sculptor (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and Young Man (London, National Gallery).41 In the latter, recently identified by James Holderbaum as a posthumous portrait of Pierino da Vinci,42 the painted sculpture—a small lavendercolored Bacchus with a putto—has a painterly vivacity that contrasts with the passive face of its creator. The chapel's spandrels are a tour de force of illusionistic painting—intricate caprices typical of Bronzino's taste for the bizarre and fantastic, which is a hallmark of Maniera.43 The medallions are conceived as fictive reliefs inserted into the convex painted spandrels, which, in turn, are set over draperies that separate them from the fictive architecture of the vault (and which, on the north wall, actually overlap the fictive stone arch). Suspended in front of the spandrels are female heads whose drapery (in Prudence and Temperance; see Figs. 35–36) extends to the sides of the medallions to support their devices. Bronzino characteristically plays with forms that exist at the borderline between animate and inanimate, and these heads are witty examples of his fascination with ambiguous reality. Though disembodied, they are endowed with lively expressions, as if commenting on the painted scenes around them. Below each medallion hang three or four grimacing masks; all, especially a bestial head and a screaming face below Temperance, seem to have come to life.
Page 119
Figure 69 Joseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife (tapestry). Palazzo Vecchio, Sala de' Dugento.
There are no real precedents in Bronzino's art for these sophisticated decorative images, but, along with the garlands of the vault, they anticipate the decorative vocabulary of the tapestry borders Bronzino designed in 1545 with the same fanciful motifs of garlands, masks, draped heads, and delicate hermlike figures who playfully overlap the picture space (see Plate 33; Figs. 86, 103, 105, 176). And in the background of one of them, Joseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife (Fig. 69), reliefs and statues seem to occupy "real" space, and oval medallions with figures echo the conceit of the chapel spandrels. 44
Page 120
In the chapel's stories of Moses Bronzino continued the dialogue between an illusionistic classicism and an emerging style of greater artificiality and abstraction that we have seen in the vault frescoes. 45 In The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua of 1541 (see Plate 6), the episodes are set against the deeply receding Red Sea, and the figures are discrete sculptural entities, but in The Brazen Serpent of 1542 space is compressed, with forms overlapping and figures arbitrarily stylized (see Plate 7). By the end of the cycle, in Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna of 1542–43 (see Plate 8), Bronzino had established a narrative mode of vertically rising compositions that he would elaborate in the Story of Joseph tapestries of the mid1540s. A striking feature of the Red Sea–Joshua fresco is the sea itself. It is a monumental version of the lucid watery landscape in Bronzino's little Nativity (see Fig. 55). But one might also speculate on the possible influence of the deep seascape in Domenico Ghirlandaio's Christ Calling SS. Peter and Andrew, which is opposite Cosimo Rosselli's Crossing of the Red Sea (see Fig. 148) in the Sistine Chapel Moses cycle, which Bronzino studied. Bronzino's fresco appears to follow the spatial illusionistic mode of Ghirlandaio's work, yet the vast glacial expanse of the sea, with its distant horizon line and its figures diminishing in size in an exaggerated demonstration of Albertian perspective, does not fulfill its promise of a unified, readable space in the Florentine tradition. Instead, space is fragmented, and its parts do not read easily as a whole. In this fresco Bronzino departed from the clarity of space and narrative characteristic of Renaissance painting, tending toward an obfuscation of both spatial construction and narrative sequence typical of the Maniera. As a result of this approach, the subject of the work is obscured; it was not even described correctly by knowledgeable contemporaries (see Chapter 7). The painting is also singularly undramatic as a narrative—especially considering that it purports to tell the great story of the Exodus. The lack of dynamism or focus in the composition, the groups of coolly detached Israelites, the unnatural clarity of the airless atmosphere, and the attention to realistic detail all serve to deemphasize the drama. Over sixty years ago, in one of the first modern appreciations of Bronzino's frescoes in the chapel, Arthur McComb wrote:
Page 121
Figure 70 Michelangelo, Moses. Rome, S. Pietro in Vincoli. It is hard to believe that we are here in a company of harassed Jews fleeing from slavery. This is rather a society of the elect, of youthful antique gods and fair Renaissance ladies. The sea to which these creatures of a marble formality have come is icy and still, and the arctic impression is borne out by color of a boreal coolness. 46
Of the three wall frescoes in the chapel, this one displays most clearly Bronzino's obsession with a sculptural ideal in painting. Some of the figures are based on actual sculptures. The seated Moses (whose gesture is a languid, mannered translation of that of God the Father in Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling Creation of Adam) would be unthinkable without the great Michelangelo prototype in Rome (Fig. 70). The population of the foreground includes three nudes whose firm
Page 122
Figure 71 Raphael, Parnassus. Vatican, Stanza della Segnatura.
modeling and precise contours adhere to the same plastic ideal. These figures are so complete as to suggest marble statues, and two of them have the aura of the classical quotation so dear to Bronzino and his contemporaries. The seated nude with a jar (partly obscured by the column) is a river god type, perhaps inspired by the same antique source that Raphael used for Sappho (also a repoussoir figure) in the Parnassus (Fig. 71). The nude with his back turned is the second of these, but its sculptural impact has been compromised by damage to the fresco. A black chalk modelstudy for him—a drawing in the same classicizing, sculptural mode as the study for St. Michael (see Fig. 58)—records the pose of the legs and also gives an idea of the subtle modeling and play of light over the smooth polished forms that must originally have characterized the painted figure (Plate 22). 47 This nude was adapted from the Idolino (Fig. 72), a Roman bronze copy of a Greek original that was unearthed in Pesaro in 1530, when Bronzino was working there.48 The changes Bronzino made from the model indicate his new figural ideal, the fluid movement and gentle contrapposto of the antique youth being exchanged for a calculated pose of more decorative artificiality. This nude balances
Page 123
Figure 72 Roman, the Idolino. Museo Archeologico.
the reclining nude, whose contrapposto is similarly contrived; both have also been given an angular emphasis—the seated nude by the arm bent across the body, a motif to recur often in Bronzino's figures, and the standing man by the exaggerated thrust of the hip, the raised arm (another favorite Maniera motif), and the left leg crossed behind the right. This last pose, also derived from antique sculpture, is a "signature motif" of Bronzino's, appearing in a variation in the nude looking into the sea at the center of the fresco. In The Brazen Serpent (see Plate 7) Bronzino painted a dramatic scene with overscale figures and extremely foreshortened nudes, a dynamic composition of bold crossing diagonals and angular patterns that contrasts with the serenity of the first fresco painted in the chapel. These qualities of The Brazen Serpent are all
Page 124
the more striking because its drama surprises the visitor as he turns from contemplating the altarpiece to view the fresco over the door to the chapel. In contrast to the unbroken wall on which Bronzino painted the Red Sea–Joshua fresco, the entrance wall is broken by a doorway, around which Bronzino had to arrange his composition. Like Raphael in the Parnassus (see Fig. 71), he used the doorframe to create the illusion of a hill—in this case, the mound on which Moses raised the healing serpent. The novelty of this spatial construction is astonishing: Bronzino created the illusion of half the hill and its population, some of whom spill down into our space on either side (like Raphael's poets); above, the Israelites diminish in size as the crest of the hill is reached, and two even smaller men (a priest and a nude) emerge in bust length from behind the cross on the other side. Michelangelo's influence is strongly evident in The Brazen Serpent, which depends on the spandrel in the Sistine Chapel (Fig. 73). Michelangelo's pattern of
Figure 73 Michelangelo, The Brazen Serpent. Vatican, Sistine Chapel.
Page 125
intertwined figures on a rising spatial plane is echoed here, as are motifs such as the woman being held up to be healed (Plate 23), but Bronzino has stratified the action so that the dead figures and those carrying out a balletic struggle with the snakes are in the foreground, while the saved are moved up toward the isolated cross on the summit of the hill. Unlike Michelangelo, moreover, Bronzino suppresses the narrative of the Israelites' mortal struggle: the subject is drained of passion, the drama is staged, and the geometry of his cool, sculptural forms is a metaphor for their emotional immobility. Among the frescoes of the chapel, Vasari singled out The Brazen Serpent for comment; in fact it is the only one he describes, and he mentions it first. Typically, he was impressed by Bronzino's vivid depiction of la storia delle biscie, . . . con molte belle considerazioni di figure morse, che parte muoiono, parte sono morte, et alcune guardando nel serpente di bronzo guariscono. 49 (the story of the snakes, . . . with a very beautiful treatment of the bitten figures—some dying, some dead—and others, gazing at the brazen serpent, who are healed.)
Indeed, in the variety and complexity of their postures and the elegance of their linear definition, these figures demonstrate a newly fluid, facile, and ornamental manner not seen before in Bronzino's art. The opposing pair over the doorway—the dark man and the pale woman (who is the most artificially contrived figure in all Bronzino's art; see Plate 23)—are the apogee of his ability to transform drama into artifice through disegno. In the last two paragraphs of his letter to Varchi, Bronzino emphasizes the importance of contour lines, as opposed to chiaroscuro, in creating rilievo (the effect of threedimensionality) in painting. Refuting the old argument that sculpture is difficult because of the hardness of the medium, Bronzino asserts that the three dimensionality of sculpture belongs not to art but to nature and that art exists only in surfaces and lines: Solo dicono che, per questo, non imitano più la natura per far di rilievo che altrimenti, anzi tolgono la cosa che già era di rilievo fatta dalla natura, . . . ma solo è dell'arte le linee che cercondano detto corpo, le quali sono in superficie; onde, come'è detto, non è dell'arte l'essere di rilievo, ma della natura.50
Page 126
Figure 74 Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, head of a dead woman. (They say only that . . . they [sculpture and painting] do not imitate nature more by creating three dimensions differently; rather they take over the thing that was already made threedimensional by nature; . . . but only the lines that outline said body, which are on the surfaces, belong to the art of painting; therefore, as we said, threedimensionality does not belong to art but to nature.)
The painter, then, has a more difficult task than the sculptor—that of defining form through contour. Here, in the artfully twisted figures of The Brazen Serpent, Bronzino gives his first fullscale demonstration of mastery over that task.
Page 127
Figure 75 Michelangelo, study of Venus. Uffizi.
Bronzino also attained a new level of grazia in The Brazen Serpent in the figures of the halfdozen women crowded into the upper left of the fresco (Plate 24), those to the center right (see Plate 23), and the dead woman at the lower right, whose hair has a sensuous linear patterning (Fig. 74). These exemplify the notion of bodily extremities as the locus of grazia that was so important to Vasari, who writes in the preface to part three of the Vite of the desirability of "una fine, ed una estrema perfezione ne' piedi, mani, capegli, barbe" (finish and utter perfection in feet, hands, hair, and beards.) 51 Bronzino was aware of Bandinelli's elegant female types (see Figs. 115–17); he also must have known the teste divine drawings of Michelangelo, such as the Venus (Fig. 75), that were so influential for Maniera. Bronzino's refined handling of the fresco medium in the elaborate braided head
Page 128
Figure 76 Rosso Fiorentino, Moses and the Daughters of Jethro. Uffizi.
dresses of several of these Israelite women is analagous to Michelangelo's precise description in black chalk of fantastic idealized heads. The frescoed heads anticipate the elegantly appointed aristocratic ladies in Bronzino's chapel altarpiece (see Plate 11) and that of the pharaoh's wife in the tapestry Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet (Plate 33). Of the frescoes in the chapel, The Brazen Serpent is the most clearly linked in style with paintings by Bronzino's contemporaries. For example, there are a number of sources for the nudes in the foreground, especially the contrasting pair on either side of the doorway, who lie diagonally in opposing directions—foreshortened yet flattened. They are cousins to the Michelangelesque nudes in the foregrounds of (mainly Florentine) paintings of the 1520s and 1530s such as Rosso's
Page 129
Figure 77 Domenico Beccafumi, The Punishment of Korah. Pisa cathedral.
Moses and the Daughters of Jethro of 1523 (Fig. 76) 52 or Beccafumi's Punishment of Korah of 1536–38 (Fig. 77) and Scenes of Moses on Mt. Sinai and Moses Striking the Rock in the pavement of the Siena cathedral (see Fig. 150).53 Interestingly, all these works depict Old Testament subjects that might have been especially interesting to Bronzino when he received the commission for the Moses frescoes. The fallen nudes in these works and in Bronzino's Brazen Serpent owe a great deal to these painters' study of late antique battle sarcophagi.54 Other antique influences as well were at work in Bronzino's fresco: the Laocoön was influential (as it had been for Michelangelo's spandrel) but is not precisely quoted. Likewise, the fleeing woman with her raised, crooked arm (see Plate 23) reveals Bronzino's study of the Niobid group, especially the running Niobid (Fig. 78),55 and his ideal
Page 130
Figure 78 Hellenistic, Niobid. Uffizi.
izing black chalk study for the head of the woman being held up to be healed (Fig. 79) may have been suggested by an Amazon or a Niobid (Fig. 80). 56 The head of the woman with a snake around her neck at the left margin of the fresco (see Plate 24), however, is directly quoted from the Dying Alexander (Fig. 81).57 The pathos of all these Hellenistic sculptures and their common theme of the gods' punishing human presumption is singularly appropriate for the biblical story of the Brazen Serpent and for the didactic and political implications of Bronzino's fresco as well (see Chapter 12). The style of the fresco on the last wall Bronzino painted is difficult to assess (see Plate 8), for Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna was drastically modified when the chapel's window was walled up, the doorway cut
Page 131
Figure 79 Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, heads of two women.
Figure 80 Study for the head of a woman in The Brazen Serpent. Paris, private collection.
Page 132
Figure 81 Hellenistic, Dying Alexander. Uffizi.
through, and the sopraporta painted. The center section now missing included more of the blue sky, which united the two episodes of the Israelites in the desert at the top; more of the Rock of Horeb, which separated them below; and the end of Moses' rod, which effects the miracle. The style of this fresco, moreover, must be understood in relation to the missing window: since it was the only source of natural light in the chapel, the wall received (and receives today) little and irregular illumination. This may be why in some areas, such as the draperies of the drinking figures, Bronzino used a looser and more pictorial fresco technique than on the other two walls (Plate 25). He also had the opportunity here to paint figures such as the blond woman next to the column (Fig. 82) as if they were illuminated by the light from above. Bronzino's softly modeled cartoon fragment (in charcoal heightened with white) for this head shows a careful observation of the passage from light on the right to deep shadow on the left of the face (Fig. 83). 58
Page 133
Figure 82 Moses Striking the Rock, detail, head of a woman.
Figure 83 Study for the head of a woman in Moses Striking the Rock. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Page 134
Figure 84 Study for two men drinking in Moses Striking the Rock. Uffizi.
The only other drawing for Moses Striking the Rock, a squared black chalk study for the two men drinking water at the lower left, is of a different type (Fig. 84). 59 A life study after two nudes, it shows more of them than appears in the fresco (the right arms of both men, the entire drinking bowl). When he came to paint this pair, Bronzino changed the lower youth into an old man wearing drapery over his head and shoulder (Fig. 85). This head is a reprise of a striking passage of realistic painting—the head of St. Elizabeth (in turn based on the Hellenistic sculpture, the Drunken Market Woman) in Bronzino's Washington Holy Family (see Fig. 64).60 Most of the characteristics of Bronzino's fully developed mature style are present in Moses Striking the Rock. Space is all but suppressed, and the dramatic con
Page 135
Figure 85 Moses Striking the Rock, detail, men in the foreground.
tortions of the figures in The Brazen Serpent are replaced by an overlapping pattern of rising forms, so that the composition anticipates the vertical designs of the narrow panels of Bronzino's Joseph tapestries, such as Benjamin Received by Joseph (Fig. 86). It is notable, however, that neither Bronzino's figures in the chapel nor those in the tapestries ever lose their heavy, rooted quality to float like the forms in Pontormo's Joseph tapestries or in his contemporaneous drawings for the frescoes of the S. Lorenzo choir such as a compositional study for Moses Receiving the Tables of the Law (Fig. 87). 61 The complexity and elaboration of the crowd of highly ornamental types piled up toward Moses in this fresco are developments of the mode of composition of The Brazen Serpent. Both frescoes may well have been influenced by Jacopino del
Page 136
Figure 86 Benjamin Received by Joseph (tapestry). Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale.
Figure 87 Jacopo da Pontormo, study for Moses Receiving the Tables of the Law. Uffizi.
Page 137
Conte's Preaching of St. John the Baptist in the Oratory of S. Giovanni Decollato, the most advanced example of fresco painting in the new style in Rome (see Fig. 111). If this apparent influence in fact resulted from an acquaintance with Jacopino's fresco, then a trip to Rome about 1539 seems more probable than ever. In the oratory Bronzino would also have seen Salviati's Visitation (1538), whose ornamental foreground figures may have influenced those in The Crossing of the Red Sea. Moreover, such a trip would have given him an opportunity to see, or see again, the antique works that are echoed in his paintings of about 1539, such as the Nativity (see Fig. 55) and Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus (see Fig. 19), as well as in the chapel frescoes themselves. The composition of The Gathering of Manna differs from that of Moses Striking the Rock. Instead of a tightly interwoven pattern of upwardmoving forms, the fresco is dominated by fewer, more monumental, figures (only ten in all). The largest of these is a nude holding an urn (Plate 26). As a result of the alteration of the wall, this figure has lost his original spatial situation; his colossal size now seems anomalous, and he is uncomfortably cramped against the doorframe. He is, however, the most conspicuous ''setpiece" on the chapel walls. This nude demonstrates yet another way in which Bronzino rivaled the sculptor's multiple views: the figura serpentinata. For not only could a painted figure be flattened and twisted like the striding putto on the vault (see Fig. 60), but its torsion could be made continuous (and to a degree abstract), and it could be isolated as a repoussoir figure in the foreground of the painting, as if a statue. The figura serpentinata, characteristic of the Maniera, 62 had been anticipated in seated figures in the chapel decoration, like the Moses and the nude below him in the Red Sea–Joshua fresco (see Plate 6) or the small kneeling Moses in the Rock (see Plate 8). But the nude with the urn in the Manna is the first true example of the figura serpentinata in Bronzino's art. Placed directly opposite the nude with his back turned in the foreground of the Red Sea–Joshua fresco, the twisted figure reads as a corrective Maniera counterpart to that nude, which still has a classical quality despite his contrived contrapposto. These similar nudes, both raising an arm to hold an object, one turned away from and the other facing the spectator, also suggest a play on the paragone and on the issue of multiple views; moreover, their reference to sculpture is made clear by Bronzino's evocation of the antique Idolino in the pose of the earlier nude and by his paraphrase of Michelangelo's Victory—the paradigm of the figura serpentinata (Fig. 88)—in the later one.
Page 138
Figure 88 Michelangelo, Victory. Palazzo Vecchio, Salone dei Cinquecento.
Figure 89 Study for the nude in The Gathering of Manna. Uffizi.
There are two preparatory drawings in black chalk for this important figure. The first, on the verso of the study for the two drinking men in Moses Striking the Rock (see Fig. 84), is a delicate detail study for the drapery that twists intricately over his hips (Fig. 89). 63 The other is a large modello for the whole figure, differing from it only in details and showing something of the original rocky setting to the left (Fig. 90).64 The Celebratory Mode of the Chapel Bronzino's fresco decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora (see Plates 3–4) is at once monumental and elaborate. The frescoes are painted in a grand manner rooted in the style of the Roman High Renaissance, but they are characterized by a Maniera
Page 139
Figure 90 Study for the nude in The Gathering of Manna. Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
Page 140
taste for artificiality, abundance, and ornamentation, as well as by a richness of materials appropriate to a court chapel and to the personal taste of the new duchess of Florence. Here, albeit in a very different style, Bronzino revived the celebratory mode of Gozzoli's earlier painted chapel for the Medici. His frescoes of Moses and the Israelites have a precision of execution and a luxury of color and detail analogous to those of the Magi and their cortege. Where Michelozzo created a carved, gilded ceiling and pilasters, however, Bronzino painted a fanciful fictive architecture. It creates the illusion of a loggia built of pietra serena, the characteristic gray Florentine stone: its columns frame each of the Moses scenes; above, a stone trellis hung with garlands frames a blue sky; below, the loggia is supported by balustrades that frame cartouches with putto heads. The concetto (conceit) of the loggia permits all the available surfaces—walls and ceiling—to be covered with scenes and decorative motifs. Even the chapel's altarpiece—itself a work of decorative elegance—is embedded in the wall surface behind the painted architecture. Contributing to this impression of luxury are the elaborate costumes and jewels of many of the figures in the frescoes and the detailed treatment of their coiffures and headdresses—for example, those of the women to the left in The Brazen Serpent (see Plate 24). Precious objects and substances also abound: the ribs of the vault are fictive red porphyry, as was the central medallion as Bronzino first painted it; and the garlands were originally secured by gilded holders, now overpainted (see Plate 5). There is a plethora of objects made of precious metals and decorated with jewels: a sword of gold and lapis lazuli lies in front of the seated nude in The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, where a silver ewer with a snake for a handle and a gold basin decorated with a Birth of Venus are displayed in the foreground (see Fig. 185). In The Gathering of Manna there are two gold basins and a large golden urn (see Plate 26), and, in the original altarpiece, there is a gold chalice in the hands of an angel and a large lapis lazuli ewer in those of Nicodemus (see Plate 11). Bronzino's color and fresco technique also contribute to the richness of the chapel paintings. Both were highly regarded by his contemporaries. The Venetian Paolo Pino's extraordinary praise of Bronzino as a painter and colorist is voiced in his Dialogo di pittura by Fabio, representing the Florentine point of view: Se Bronzino seguita all'ascendere, egli verrà un eccellentissimo maestro, et ardisco ch'el mi par el più bel coloritore che dipinga a' giorni nostri. 65
Page 141 (If Bronzino continues to rise, he will become a most excellent master, and I venture [to say] that he seems to me the finest colorist [who is] painting in our time.)
Lauro, Pino's Venetian interlocutor, responds sympathetically, even though he, of course, prefers Titian: Bronzino é un perito maestro, e mi piace molto il suo fare, e li son anco parzial per le virtù sue, ma a me più sodisfa Tiziano. (Bronzino is a skilled master, and his manner pleases me very much, and I am also partial to him on account of his virtues, but I derive greater satisfaction from Titian.)
Pino, who seems to have been well acquainted with Bronzino and his art (or at least his reputation), 66 does not mention specific paintings on which he bases this favorable judgment. Before 1548, when the Dialogo was published, however, Bronzino's only major work was the Chapel of Eleonora, and only its frescoes could have been known by Pino (or his informant), since the chapel's altarpiece had been exported to Besancon shortly after its completion in 1545. Vasari also praised Bronzino as a colorist (though not in the specific context of the chapel),67 and his concluding comment on the chapel frescoes makes clear his high opinion of Bronzino's accomplishment as a fresco painter: Et in somma questa opera, per cosa lavorata in fresco, non ha pari et è condotta con tutta quella diligenza e studio che si poté maggiore.68 (In a word, this work, executed as it is in fresco, has no equal, and it is painted with the greatest possible diligence and study.)
Bronzino's highly individual handling of color in the chapel frescoes—his audacity in both choice and combination of colors—is solidly based in an early
Page 142
sixteenthcentury Florentine tradition of color experimentation that is seen first in Andrea del Sarto, then in Rosso. These painters used a palette based on intermediate hues (violet, neutral red and blue, and pale yellow) rather than the usual saturated red and blue seen, for example, in Raphael's paintings. 69 Bronzino was similarly inventive in the choice of hues such as violet and an unusual range of greens and yellowtoorange tones, including a pale yellow of great rarity in fresco painting. Another striking characteristic of the color in the chapel frescoes, this time related less to Sarto and Rosso than to the revival of certain characteristics of late quattrocento painting, is Bronzino's extensive use of blue. He employed not only the usual azurite but also lapis lazuli, the most expensive color in the artist's palette, which he used lavishly here in a display of Medicean conspicuous consumption.70 For example, it appears in areas of the frescoes opposite the window that receive the most light: the curtain behind Fortitude (see Plate 3) and draperies in The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua (see Plate 6). Bronzino also used it (with gold) to great luxurious effect in the costume of the archangel Michael (see Plate 16), in his place of honor over the altar, and throughout the first Lamentation, where it would have glowed in the light from the altar's candles (see Plate 11). And Bronzino used a rare and expensive indigo blue more extensively than was usual in Florentine frescoes—for example, in the curtain behind Temperance (see Plate 4), in the drapery of the kneeling soldier in Moses Appointing Joshua, and in the background of the David and Sibyl panels (see Plate 12). Bronzino's handling of color in the frescoes also has a decorative artificiality and an unreal quality that is characteristic of Maniera painting. It was achieved by an anti naturalistic technique of modeling by saturation change (also known as upmodeling) and by the introduction of discrete cangianti (or color changes, in which two colors are juxtaposed) to give volume.71 The upmodeling or "blond manner" technique, which was a revival of the late quattrocento practice of painters such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, gives Bronzino's frescoes an atmosphere of unnatural purity and clarity, as opposed to the density of atmosphere characteristic of, say, Raphael's frescoes. That older manner of painting had been updated in the first decade of the century by Michelangelo in the Doni tondo (Galleria degli Uffizi) and in the Ancestors of Christ lunettes of the Sistine ceiling (both now revealing his technique more clearly, thanks to their recent cleaning).72 Michelangelo's frescoed lunettes are decidedly more painterly, however, than the smoothly
Page 143
modeled surfaces of Bronzino's chapel frescoes, intended to be seen from very close. Bronzino's blond manner, with its overall pastel tonality, had also been used in Florence by Pontormo in frescoes of the 1520s such as the Passion of Christ cycle at the Certosa di Galluzzo and the Annunciation at S. Felicita. Following the lead of Michelangelo and Pontormo, Bronzino modeled in pure tones without the addition of black or (except in the blues) of white. Comparison of his technique and Allori's in Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe (see Plate 8) in the chapel itself is instructive in this respect. In contrast to Bronzino's pure colors, the addition of black in Allori's modeling gives this section of the window wall a distinctly muddy quality. Although never relying on cangianti to the extent Michelangelo did in his frescoes, Bronzino does use some color changes such as yellowblue (in Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna; see Plates 25–26), 73 greenviolet (in the curtain behind Justice; see Plate 13), bluepink (in The Brazen Serpent; see Plate 7), and other combinations. These are most striking in the fresco on the north wall that receives little light, and they may have been intended to bring coloristic life to that area.74 Bronzino's frescoes are also, as Vasari says, very finely wrought ("condotta con tutta quella diligenza e studio"). For example, he makes a play of different flesh tones—from the grayish cast of the dead nudes in The Brazen Serpent to the pearly flesh of the women to the ruddy tint of the athletic male nudes (see Plate 7)—and he subtly depicts reflected light, as in Moses Striking the Rock (see Plate 25). Moreover, he worked very slowly, producing extremely small giornate (see Figs. 39– 42) in comparison with his contemporaries such as Raphael and Michelangelo.75 For example, the seated nude and Moses in The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, which are typical of his finely worked foreground figures, were done over a period of four and six days, respectively. Bronzino's slow fresco procedure was partly due to his refined, highly worked technique, but it was also a function of the colors he used—particularly lapis lazuli and indigo, which are difficult to apply and require much time. All his colors are laid densely one over the other, giving the surface a lapidary refinement, with almost invisible junctures between the giornate. (Allori's giornate in the sopraporta are less finely joined.) Another characteristic of the Chapel of Eleonora decoration that contributes
Page 144
to its sense of luxury is Bronzino's ambitious adaptation, in the intimate space of a private chapel, of a decorative mode developed by the Raphael school in Rome for largescale public frescoes. The way in which Bronzino contrasted the deep spatial expanse of the Red Sea with the sharply restricted space of the Moses scenes on the opposite wall and the way he built up the hill in The Brazen Serpent over the chapel doorway recall Raphael's spatial schemes of the Stanza della Segnatura, especially that of the Parnassus (see Fig. 71). 76 But in the chapel all the elements of the decoration, with the exception of the spandrels, are overscale for the space. Where Raphael's frescoes are recessed under their framing arches and set above a high basamento, creating a sense of distance from the observer, Bronzino's densely populated scenes are brought right down to the spectator's level, supported only by the very low basamento. The figures of the vault, walls, and altarpiece alike are largescale and sculptural. Some of them (notably the putti of the vault) even project out illusionistically, adding to a sense of horror vacui as they seem to crowd the nonetooample space left for the spectator in this small chapel. The altarpiece touches the top of the basamento, which would have coincided with the height of the altar itself, and it is so large that its frame almost reaches the painted arch at the edge of the vault above. We must imagine, in addition, that the chapel was crowded with furniture, the altar, and the altar furnishings—including the six large silver statuettes of apostles that are mentioned in the 1553 palace inventory as belonging in Eleonora's chapel.
Page 145
Chapter Five— The Altarpieces The altar wall of the Chapel of Eleonora as we see it today is its revised version, with Bronzino's altarpiece replaced by his replica of 1553 and the original altar wings by his Annunciation of 1564 (see Plate 9). The initial installation, in which the Lamentation was set between St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas, can be partially reconstructed (Fig. 91). The altar wall ensemble recalls the Renaissance polyptych, but Bronzino's transformation of this traditional genre is almost complete. The altarpiece, instead of being freestanding (which it could not have been in any case in the restricted space of Eleonora's chapel), hangs on the wall. Outside its simple gilt frames are narrow painted frames that have been set behind both the fictive stone architecture (arches identical to those of the other walls) and also behind the plane of David and the Sibyl, whose cartouches are painted so as to appear to overlap them. Thus, the "wings" of the altar cannot close, but are locked open behind the painted architecture. The upper, arched, portion of the Lamentation is the counterpart of the lunette of a more conventional altarpiece, and it reads as part of the wall's upper zone. King David, The Erythraean Sibyl, St. John the Baptist, and St. Cosmas The prophets (see Plate 12) are a contrasting pair: David is a bearded old man of the type that first appears in Bronzino's art as the shepherd with bagpipes in his
Page 146
Figure 91 Chapel of Eleonora, reconstruction of the first installation of the altar wall.
Nativity (see Fig. 55) and then throughout the Joseph tapestries; the Sibyl is an idealized heroine type who reappears as Justice in his tapestry of 1545 (see Fig. 103). These figures also relate to the cast of characters in the wall frescoes: David is like the patriarch in Moses Appointing Joshua (see Plate 6), and the cool blonde prophetess closely resembles her counterparts among the Israelites—the dead woman at the lower right of The Brazen Serpent (see Fig. 74) or the woman with the crying child in Moses Striking the Rock (see Plate 25). These figures are in fresco and thus seem to belong to the space created by the chapel's fictive architecture; they also project out into the viewer's space from their cramped niches, the Sibyl leaning her book of prophecies against the frame of the Lamentation. This strongly illusionistic mode is related to that of saints of the vault. David, for example, sits at an angle, his leg and foot pushing forward out of his space much as do the limbs of St. John (see Plate 19) and Brother Leo (see
Page 147
Plate 17). In a reversal of our expectations, these figures, drawn from the distant past of the Old Testament, are vividly illusionistic presences. Like characters escaped from the stories of Moses, they behave in a ''realistic" mode, turning and peering down from above the altarpiece to contemplate its scene of the Lamentation. This motif of figures viewing an altarpiece from above may reflect that of the tondi flanking Pontormo's altarpiece in the Capponi Chapel, where St. John (at the left, like Bronzino's David) gazes down at the Lamentation (but the panel is now wrongly installed, rotated so that the saint looks up); yet Bronzino has achieved an illusionism to which Pontormo did not aspire. St. John the Baptist (see Plate 10) is on the same scale as David, but in contrast to the vivid reality of the Old Testament king above him, the saint is a remote and artificial presence. He is a newly elegant male type in Bronzino's art, with a face that suggests the highstrung but veiled sensibility of the male characters in his altarpieces of the early 1550s such as the Christ in Limbo, where Bronzino repeated this physical type as St. John the Baptist, as Adam, and as Christ (see Fig. 10). Bronzino has placed the saint's strongly sculptural form in an extremely restricted space and further immobilized him by the forced flatness that we have seen in some of the figures of the vault. His angular pose, with its strong diagonal accents, is also emphasized by its repetition in St. John the Evangelist in the Lamentation. 1 But most notably, St. John the Baptist is a figura serpentinata, signaling Bronzino's rapid move in the mid1540s away from a naturalistic figure style to a figural type of abstraction and artificiality. Even more than the nude with the urn in The Gathering of Manna (see Plate 26), painted shortly before this panel, St. John exhibits a tension between sculptural mass and flatness—the simultaneous emphasis on and denial of threedimensionality that is one of the key conventions of Maniera. This paradoxical quality relates to the issue of the paragone, mentioned in connection with some of the figures in the chapel frescoes. St. John, whose torso is twisted unnaturally to bring it parallel with his bent leg and arm (and thus to show an expanse of his muscular back), seems almost a demonstration of the painter's challenge to the sculptor's ability to depict multiple views. This manipulation can be seen in a comparison with a possible source for this figure, Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving The Baptism of Christ (Fig. 92).2 There, the Baptist kneels with his cross angled over his left shoulder and looks to the right much as does Bronzino's saint; he holds the cup that he has just filled with water from the stream; Bronzino's saint has placed the cup at his feet. But Bronzino has "im
Page 148
Figure 92 Marcantonio Raimondi, The Baptism of Christ (engraving).
proved" on his model in accord with Maniera taste by revealing more of the back and turning it parallel to the picture plane, fashioning it—now nude—as a quotation from the Belvedere Torso (see Fig. 68). The technique and pigments Bronzino used in this panel are conventional. 3 There is an underdrawing and there are various pentimenti, the most significant one being a change in the position of the saint's right hand, which was originally turned more inward; minor changes can be seen in the position of the back and the leg.4 Bronzino used ochers, umbers, and siennas in the flesh tones and hair, with lead white and vermilion in the lighter areas, and, for the saint's drapery, a transparent red lake directly on top of the white ground; in its pink areas this red is mixed with lead white, at times with a very thin glaze of the pure lake on top. The brown area below St. John's left hand was originally green, which would have picked up the greens in the Lamentation.5 For the background, Bronzino used azurite on top of an underlayer of reddish brown earth pigment, a technique
Page 149
that he often employed to achieve a more intense color, as in the backgrounds of such portraits as Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni (see Fig. 23). While there can be no discussion of the style of the lost St. Cosmas, the composition and color scheme of the work may be deduced by comparison with St. John and the angel of the Annunciation, almost identical in their composition, and by analogy with the Virgin Annunciate, which replaced it (see Plate 14). In the angel Bronzino closely followed the pose of St. John: both face inward toward the Lamentation, and their flattened forms and the zigzag pattern of their limbs echo the diagonal accents of King David above. As is true of many of Bronzino's later variants on his earlier ideas, however, the angel's composition is greatly simplified, with St. John's complex torsion eliminated and the figure presented more in profile. It seems reasonable to suppose that St. Cosmas was a mirrorimage pendant to St. John and that the Virgin Annunciate similarly reflects that saint's pose. St. Cosmas, then, would have been a flattened figure, the body turned and compressed frontally to balance the inwardturned St. John; his pose probably echoed the diagonal position of the Sibyl above, with the left arm, like the Virgin's in the replacement panel, held across his body. The colors of St. Cosmas are also not difficult to imagine. Bronzino would have followed the tradition of dressing the saint in red to signal his martyrdom; and since St. John's drapery is a deep red, he probably used a lighter shade for Cosmas's robes (as he did for the dress of the Virgin Annunciate). Indeed, such a play of deep crimson to the left of an altarpiece against orangy red on the right would have echoed a favorite color scheme of Pontormo's, first seen in the draperies of his St. John the Evangelist and St. Michael of 1519 (Pontorme, S. Michele). 6 The Lamentation Bronzino had developed a personal style for devotional works in modestscale paintings of the late 1520s such as the Washington Holy Family (see Fig. 64) and The Dead Christ with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene (Fig. 93),7 and later works such as the Panciatichi Holy Family. He successfully transformed this style into a monumental mode in the chapel Lamentation, which finds him at the height of his powers (see Plate 11). With its gleaming sculptural forms, its intense yet glacial colors, and its finely controlled line, it is an opulent, precious object, even more jewellike than the frescoes among which it is set. As Bronzino's most brilliant
Page 150
Figure 93 Dead Christ with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene. Uffizi.
Page 151
Figure 94 Pietro Perugino, Lamentation, Pitti.
Figure 95 Andrea del Sarto, Lamentation, Pitti.
essay in religious painting for his Medici patrons, it has justly been seen as the most elaborate demonstration of a personal style that made him the favored court painter of Duke Cosimo in the 1540s. Although this altarpiece is a work of the utmost modernity for its time, it is profoundly rooted in the representational traditions of the Pietà altarpiece in Florence. Its composition derives from a familiar type of Pietà, or more properly—because of the expansion of the group beyond the Virgin and the dead Christ—Lamentation. 8 This type is monumentally exemplified by Pietro Perugino's altarpiece of 1495 from the Vallombrosan convent of S. Chiara (Fig. 94), Andrea del Sarto's high altarpiece for S. Piero a Luco of 1525 (Fig. 95),9 and Pontormo's fresco of 1523 at the Certosa di Galluzzo (Fig. 96).10 The dependency of Bronzino's Lamentation on these works becomes especially clear if we note that
Page 152
Figure 96 Jacopo da Empoli after Jacopo da Pontormo, Lamentation. Certosa di Galluzzo.
Figure 97 Lamentation (without the lunette). Besançon, Musée des BeauxArts.
without the lunette, his composition has a square format and a lucid symmetrical disposition of its figures (Fig. 97). Moreover, Bronzino has quoted from Perugino's painting the holy woman standing at the center of the picture who raises her arms and looks down at the dead Christ. In these Lamentations, as well as in Bronzino's own previous essays in the subject—the Uffizi Dead Christ (see Fig. 93) and the Mercatalle tabernacle (see Fig. 49)—Christ is placed, reclining or seated, in front of the Virgin. However, in the chapel altarpiece Bronzino departed from this iconography, using the alternative motif of Christ held in the Virgin's lap—a representation that had been given authoritative sculptural definition by Michelangelo in the St. Peter's Pietà (Fig. 98). 11 And he also consulted the major earlier interpretation of Michelangelo's work in Florence, Pontormo's LamentationEntombment in the Capponi Chapel
Page 153
Figure 98 Michelangelo, Pietà. Vatican, St. Peter's.
(Fig. 99). Indeed, Pontormo's altarpiece has often been cited as the fundamental model for Bronzino's painting—which has consequently been read as a tribute to his master's work. It is true that Bronzino's St. John paraphrases Pontormo's youth supporting the body of Christ. More than has been recognized, however, Bronzino in his painting critiqued Pontormo's masterpiece. He translated its idiom into the elegant and selfconscious language of midcentury Florentine painting: Pontormo's spiraling, weightless, and unstable vertical composition has been replaced by a fixed, symmetrical, sculptural, and essentially horizontal tableau, the more exact prototypes of which are the Lamentations of the PeruginoSarto type mentioned above. Bronzino's Lamentation may also be understood in the context of the competitive ambiance of Duke Cosimo's court in the 1540s, of other works commissioned
Page 154
Figure 99 Jacopo da Pontormo, LamentationEntombment. S. Felicita, Capponi Chapel.
Page 155
by the duke for the decoration of the Palazzo, and of other artists who vied for these commissions. Salviati, particularly, comes to mind: both his Dini Chapel Deposition of 1548 (see Fig. 9) and his suavely elegant tapestry of the Lamentation (see Fig. 43), which (as I have suggested) might have hung temporarily in Eleonora's chapel after the exportation of Bronzino's altarpiece, were competitive responses to the Chapel of Eleonora Lamentation. The tapestry, an alternative solution for the subject, with only four figures, was clearly designed with knowledge of Bronzino's painting, whose holy woman in profile Salviati paraphrased in the Virgin of the tapestry. After the installation in 1553 of Bronzino's second Lamentation, Salviati's work, no longer needed in Eleonora's chapel, may then have been installed in the nearby Chapel of the Priors (see Fig. 15), where it would have invited comparison between the styles of the duke's rival artists. 12 There was even an element of competition in the original commission of the chapel altarpiece.13 In November 1542, while Bronzino was working on the chapel's frescoes, its altarpiece had apparently not yet been assigned to him. This is surprising: lacking evidence to the contrary, we would assume that Bronzino had been commissioned in 1540 to carry out the entire decoration of the chapel. But there are many instances in which frescoes and altarpieces of a chapel were by different artists, and it is worth recalling that in both the Chapel of the Priors (Fig. 15) and the chapel of the Palazzo Medici (Fig. 13; an important precedent for that of Eleonora, as I have noted) the frescoes and the altarpiece were by different artists. In any event, there is documentary evidence that in 1542 Bandinelli was aggressively trying to secure the commission of the altarpiece for himself. On 9 November one of Cosimo's secretaries, Agnolo Marzi de' Medici, replied to a letter from Bandinelli, referring apparently to a drawing Bandinelli had submitted for the altarpiece of Eleonora's chapel (doc. 2): Risponderò alla Signoria Vostra quanto Sua Ecc.tia ha resoluto sopra la lettera che ella mi ha scritto. Et prima per conto della pittura della cappella di Sua Illustrissima Signora Consorte, gl'è sodisfatto lo avvertire ne ha Vostra Signoria fatto. (I shall report to you, Sir, what the duke has decided in response to the letter you wrote me. First of all, regarding the painting for the chapel of His Excellency's wife, I inform you that he is satisfied with your work.)
Page 156
On 20 November Duke Cosimo himself answered a letter from Bandinelli—apparently having seen his modello for the altarpiece—saying that he intended to have Bronzino use Bandinelli's design for the Pietà because Eleonora liked it so much (doc. 3): Haviamo visto le vostre de' 12, in risposta delle quali vi si dice che'l disegno della Pietà piace alla Sra nostra Consorte, et per farlo mettere in opera, come merita in vero l'opera et fatica vostra, s'ordinerà al Bronzino che le dipinga lui et obbedisca voi in questo per quanto sia di bisogno. (We have seen your letters of the twelfth, and in response we indicate that our consort likes the drawing of the Pietà and, to have it executed as the work and your effort deserve, we shall order Bronzino to paint it and to comply with you in this matter.)
There is no further mention of Bandinelli's name in connection with the Lamentation, which Bronzino completed and signed by July 1545. However, in Bronzino's letter to Riccio of 22 August (quoted in Chapter 3) there is a revealing remark. Bronzino tells Riccio that he wants time to do some preparatory drawings but that the duke has said to him: "Io la [la pala d'altare] vog[l]io in quel modo proprio come sta quella, et non la vog[l]io più bella. . . . Non m'entrare in altra inventione, perchè quella mi piace." ("I want the [altarpiece] exactly like the other, and I don't want it more beautiful. Don't introduce any new ideas, because I like that one.")
Bronzino had evidently been instructed by Cosimo to follow Bandinelli's "inventione" a second time—and he did so in the replica of 1553 (see Plate 9). Bandinelli was involved in the genesis of the chapel Lamentation in a way that was characteristic of him and of his modus operandi in relation to his ducal patrons and his fellow artists. The sculptor had won a special place of favor with the ducal couple, particularly Eleonora. 14 He was also very aggressive in soliciting
Page 157
commissions from them, competing for their favor with Tribolo and Cellini. 15 For example, in 1540, Cosimo gave Bandinelli the commission for the monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere, planned for the Neroni Chapel in S. Lorenzo, even though it had already been assigned to Tribolo.16 Bandinelli then proposed himself for the important project of Cosimo's udienza in the Sala Grande, and in 1547 he persuaded the duke to accept his plans for the choir of the Duomo.17 Cellini later reported that the duchess was protective of Bandinelli, securing commissions for him such as the Neptune fountain in the Piazza della Signoria and acquiring the Pazzi Chapel in SS. Annunziata for him so that he could erect his tomb monument there.18 It would have been entirely in character for Bandinelli to solicit the commission for the chapel altarpiece from Cosimo by way of a modello. A prolific draftsman— already famous in his time—who especially prized the art of disegno,19 he was in the habit of showing drawings to Cosimo and Eleonora. Vasari mentions Bandinelli's practice in connection with a number of commissions, such as the choir of the Duomo, where he writes of the ''molti disegni portato dal Bandinello al duca Cosimo" (many drawings brought by Bandinelli to Duke Cosimo).20 There is also correspondence between Bandinelli and the duke (or his secretaries) from the early 1540s indicating that the artist was seeking other commissions in the same fashion.21 For example, a letter from Ugolino Grifoni to Riccio amusingly evokes a moment at court when Duke Cosimo evaded the persistent Bandinelli: [Il Duca Cosimo] nell'uscire di camera li venne visto il Bandinello, et subito si ritirò, facendoli intendere per il Forlì che non era tempo di vedere disegni, benchè esso per captare audientia grata li havessi fatto intendere per il medesimo Forlì havere cose bellissime da mostrare.22 (As [Duke Cosimo] was leaving his room, he saw Bandinelli approaching. He immediately withdrew and had Forlì tell him that there wasn't time to look at drawings, even though [Bandinelli], to assure himself a receptive hearing, had let the duke know, through Forlì, that he had some beauties to show.)
The most tangible evidence of Bandinelli's interest in painting a Lamentation for his ducal patrons is his large black chalk modello of the subject (Fig. 100).23
Page 158
Figure 100 Baccio Bandinelli, study for a Lamentation with Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. Amherst, Mass., private collection.
Page 159
This drawing is an elaborate twelvefigured composition containing a number of Bandinelli's stock figures (the holy women tearing their hair, Nicodemus holding the crown of thorns and the nails of the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea as a selfportrait of the artist, etc.); a group of angels, one of whom holds the chalice and host, floats above. But its exceptional feature is the retardataire motif of donors kneeling to either side of the scene. To the left we recognize the profile of a youthful, beardless Cosimo, as he appeared no later than 1540. 24 To the right is a stylishly dressed kneeling woman with long blonde hair who, though idealized, can only be Eleonora. Her presence, the duke's cleanshaven face, and the fact that Bandinelli returned from Rome in 1540 point to a date for this presentation drawing in that year.25 It thus cannot have been the drawing for the chapel altarpiece that Bandinelli showed to the ducal couple in 1542, a possibility that is also ruled out by its rectangular format, which suggests that it was preparatory to a relief. But it gives strong evidence of the sculptor's desire to depict such a subject for his ducal patrons, an interest apparently rekindled in 1542 with the possibility of the commission for the chapel altarpiece. Although Bandinelli was primarily a sculptor, he was also a painter; thus an attempt by him to obtain a commission for a painting, rather than a sculpture, would not have been unusual. Indeed, in 1525 Bandinelli had been given a major painting commission by the Medici for two frescoes, The Martyrdom of SS. Cosmas and Damian and The Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo on the lateral walls of the choir of S. Lorenzo. The project was aborted (Pontormo ultimately painted these walls), but Marcantonio's engraving and Bandinelli's compositional study for the S. Lorenzo (Fig. 101)26 attest to his invention of a complex and monumental istoria. Because Bandinelli's drawings were used regularly by contemporaries, the duke's suggestion that Bronzino follow one for the altarpiece is less astonishing than it might seem. There is evidence that Bandinelli, like his great model Michelangelo, programmatically had his cartoons executed by other painters. Vasari relates that in late 1526 or early 1527 Bandinelli, having decided that he no longer wanted to paint because his technique had been criticized, turned over the execution of the cartoon of a Lamentation to a young assistant; again, toward the end of his life Bandinelli made cartoons of four Old Testament subjects, to be painted by Andrea del Migna and given to Duchess Eleonora to decorate rooms in the Palazzo Pitti.27 One of his main activities as early as 1515 was the preparation of drawings to be engraved by others, such as those for The Massacre of the Innocents
Page 160
Figure 101 Baccio Bandinelli, study for The Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
of ca. 1520–21, The Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo, and The Birth of the Virgin of 1540; 28 and his drawings were used outside his own workshop, by painters such as Bachiacca and Allori, to whom he had given them.29 What of Bronzino's use of invenzioni by contemporaries? Among several instances in the mid1540s, the most precisely demonstrable examples are his tapestry designs for Duke Cosimo. Bronzino used a Salviati drawing (Fig. 102)30 for his Justice Liberating Innocence (Fig. 103); he adapted a drawing for The Selling of Joseph by Salviati, obviously planned for one of the narrow tapestries of the Joseph series (Fig. 104),31 for his tapestry of the same subject (Fig. 105); and he used a Salviati drawing (Fig. 106) as the basis for his Allegory of the Dynasty of Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo of 1549 (Fig. 107).32 Bronzino also exploited Bandinelli drawings (and prints after them), having presumably been given access to them by the artist.33 The most conspicuous instance is his late Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo (see Fig. 47), painted in the very church for which Bandinelli's own composition had been destined many years earlier (see
Page 161
Figure 102 Francesco Salviati, study for Justice Liberating Innocence. Uffizi.
Figure 103 Justice Liberating Innocence (tapestry). Pitti.
Page 162
Figure 104 Francesco Salviati, study for The Selling of Joseph. Uffizi.
Figure 105 The Selling of Joseph (tapestry). Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale.
Fig. 101). 34 Besides the fresco's similarity to the drawing in its architectural setting and figural groupings, the nude with the bellows to the lower left of the saint and the standing figure directly above him are similar to Bandinelli's compositional study but do not appear in the published engraving. Bronzino turned again to Bandinelli for inspiration for a Lamentation he painted for Cosimo in 1561 (Fig. 108).35 The figure of St. John the Evangelist, who kneels holding the dead Christ, alludes to Nicodemus in the Pietà group that the sculptor had recently made for his own tomb in SS. Annunziata (Fig. 109).36 Bronzino's painting was finished in 1561, the year after Bandinelli's death, and its allusion may well have been a tribute to his friend.
Page 163
Figure 106 Francesco Salviati, study for the Arms of Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.
Figure 107 Allegory of the Dynasty of Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo (tapestry). Pitti.
Page 164
Figure 108 Lamentation. Accademia.
Page 165
Figure 109 Baccio Bandinelli, Dead Christ with Nicodemus. SS. Annunziata.
Page 166
Figure 110 Perino del Vaga, study for The Preaching of St. John the Baptist. Vienna, Albertina.
Unless the drawing Bandinelli showed to Cosimo and Eleonora comes to light, we will never know to what extent Bronzino followed it in painting the altarpiece of the Chapel of Eleonora. Contemporary practice (aside from the examples I have already given) may, however, be helpful. Before concluding that Bronzino followed a finished modello by Bandinelli in which all details were precisely worked out, we can look at how Jacopino del Conte used a compositional drawing by Perino del Vaga (Fig. 110) for his Preaching of St. John the Baptist (Fig. 111). 37 The composition is recognizably that of the drawing, yet the interpretation is free: Jacopino brought the figure of St. John down into the crowd so that the composition is less airy and open; certain figures (like the woman in the left foreground) are omitted, others are added (the standing man to the right), and still others (like the seated man to the right) are changed in detail. This contemporaneous example shows how a drawing could be the basis for a painting—and even determine its style—yet not be identical to it.
Page 167
Figure 111 Jacopino del Conte, The Preaching of St. John the Baptist. Rome, S. Giovanni Decollato.
Page 168
Figure 112 Baccio Bandinelli, Dead Christ with an Angel. S. Croce.
Against this background, let us now consider Bronzino's altarpiece (see Plate 11). It yields evidence supporting the attribution of its invenzione to Bandinelli, for the strikingly Bandinellian aspects of the composition go beyond the general affinity between the two artists' styles. First among these are the insistently sculptural figures, particularly the dead Christ. Although the pose of the figure is ultimately derived from Michelangelo's Pietà (see Fig. 98), the refined physical type seems almost a painter's translation of Bandinelli's aesthetic, as in his Dead Christ with an Angel (Fig. 112). Moreover, the classicizing angels on either side of Bronzino's painting, especially the one with the chalice (Fig. 113), resemble the angel supporting Bandinelli's Christ (Fig. 114). But even more than this work, Bandinelli's Dead Christ with Nicodemus comes to mind (see Fig. 109). The raising and display of the overscale body of Christ as a eucharistic offering in both this sculpture and Bronzino's painting are profoundly similar. 38 The postures, heads, and elaborate headdresses of the four holy women to the left in Bronzino's painting are also Bandinellian (Plate 27). They recall figures such as a woman in the right panel of his Birth of the Virgin of 1519 (Fig. 115).39 They also resemble figures in works by Bandinelli contemporary with the chapel altarpiece. The idealized female heads (now badly damaged), flattened in profile all'antica, in the relief Giovanni delle Bande Nere Receiving Prisoners on the base of the monument to Duke Cosimo's father (Fig. 116) are prototypes. Numerous
Page 169
Figure 113 Lamentation, detail, angel, heads of Christ and St. John. Besancon, Musée des BeauxArts.
Figure 114 Baccio Bandinelli, Dead Christ with an Angel, detail, angel.
Page 170
Figure 115 Baccio Bandinelli, Birth of the Virgin, detail, woman with child. Loreto, Santa Casa.
Figure 116 Baccio Bandinelli, Giovanni delle Bande Nere Receiving Prisoners, detail, women. Piazza S. Lorenzo.
Page 171
Figure 117 Baccio Bandinelli, study of mourning women. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
drawings of such figures by Bandinelli are also suggestive, particularly one of mourning women preparatory to an unexecuted relief for the same monument (Fig. 117). 40
Another Bandinellian aspect of Bronzino's altarpiece is the trio of men that balances the holy women to the right (Plate 28). It recalls images of the three ages of man that Bandinelli drew a number of times, often (as in the Lamentation trio) representing the heads respectively in full, threequarter, and profile views. The most finished example of this conceit among his drawings is one of three male
Page 172
Figure 118 Baccio Bandinelli, studies of three male heads. New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
heads (Fig. 118). 41 Less sculptural in concept and more suggestively like Bronzino's painted group is a sheet entirely covered with male heads arranged in three trios, each of which has two foreground heads partially overlapping one in the background (Fig. 119).42 In these drawings of juxtaposed heads Bandinelli's selfportrait (or an image referring to his own appearance) is featured at the center, implying a comparison of his image with the others. The reference to portraiture in Bandinelli's threeages drawings is also germane to the conceit of the trio in the chapel Lamentation (see Chapter 6).
Page 173
Figure 119 Baccio Bandinelli, studies of male heads. Stockholm, National Museum.
A compositional motif in Bronzino's Lamentation also suggests Bandinelli's taste. As has often been remarked, the sculptor drew many ideas from Donatello's pulpit reliefs in S. Lorenzo, particularly the Lamentation, a crowded scene peopled by wailing women with their arms flung high and other mourning women seated. Bandinelli incorporated these motifs into such compositions as his Lamentation with Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo (see Fig. 100) and his sketchmodel of 1530 for a relief of the Descent from the Cross for
Page 174
Figure 120 Baccio Bandinelli, The Descent from the Cross. San Marino, Museo Nazionale.
Charles V (Fig. 120). 43 One of these Donatellian motifs, especially significant in relation to the chapel altarpiece, appears in a pen study probably done in connection with that relief (Fig. 121).44 Standing to the right in the drawing is the bearded Joseph of Arimathea, with lowered head, looking at the nails of the Crucifixion, as Joseph does in Donatello's Lamentation (Fig. 122). This same Donatellian figure, in an elegant Maniera guise, appears in Bronzino's Lamentation in
Page 175
Figure 121 Baccio Bandinelli, study for a Descent from the Cross. London, Katz Collection.
the whitebearded Joseph of Arimathea, whose similarity to the Donatello model extends even beyond the motif of the nails to the angle of Joseph's head and the position of his left hand. Finally, the very subject of the chapel altarpiece that apparently was still to be commissioned in late 1542 would have appealed to Bandinelli, who more than any other cinquecento Florentine artist had taken the Pietà as his special theme.
Page 176
Figure 122 Donatello, Lamentation, detail, Joseph of Arimathea. S. Lorenzo.
Indeed, he had essayed the subject a number of times before 1542 but had never carried a work to completion. Besides the Lamentation with Cosimo and Eleonora, the most important of these works was a large picture projected in the late 1520s. Vasari described it as una tavola assai grande per la chiesa di Cestello [S. Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi] e n'aveva fatto un cartone molto bello, dentrovi Cristo morto e le Marie intorno e Niccodemo con altre figure. 45 (a panel of considerable size for the church of Cestello; and for it he did a beautiful cartoon of the dead Christ surrounded by the Marys, Nicodemus, and other figures.)
Page 177
Figure 123 Baccio Bandinelli, study for a Pietà. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
Vasari goes on to note that Bandinelli gave this cartoon to Agnolo, brother of Franciabigio, to execute; however, it was never completed. 46 The composition of the unfinished Cestello altarpiece is probably reflected in a pen modello by Bandinelli, which may have been the type of drawing that he later showed to Duke Cosimo in soliciting the commission for the chapel altarpiece (Fig. 123).47 Although it does not depict exactly the same subject, certain figural motifs in it are strikingly similar to those in Bronzino's Lamentation: the putto holding the curtain to the right in the drawing resembles the putto to the right in the upper section of Bronzino's picture, and the unusual motif of the symmetrically placed angels, looking out of the scene to the right and left, occurs in the angels with the chalice and veil.
Page 178
If elements in the Chapel of Eleonora altarpiece seem to depend on Bandinelli's design, the work as a whole is strikingly characteristic of Bronzino's own mature style of the mid1540s. The Lamentation is a paradigm of Vasari's ''bella maniera" (beautiful style). 48 It is a prime example of Bronzino's dedication to refinement and artifice, and in this respect similar to the contemporaneous Allegory of Venus (see Fig. 11), although it is far less coolly abstract and lapidary than its secular counterpart. The bella maniera is manifest in Bronzino's interpretation of the subject, his composition and figures, and his color—or, as these aspects of painting were termed by his contemporaries, invenzione, disegno, and colore.49 For the midsixteenthcentury Florentine painter, the invenzione of a work like the chapel altarpiece involved realizing the potential of the given devotional subject (in this case, the Lamentation): its interpretation, the choice of episodes and characters, the emotional tenor of the figures, and their deportment.50 Although Vasari's comments on invenzione do not specify religious works, they were first formulated in the mid1540s (for the 1550 edition of the Vite) and presumably reflect the attitudes of contemporaries such as Bronzino who were painting at the time. In discussing invenzione Vasari emphasizes, almost to the exclusion of all else, qualities related to narrative incident and to the disposition of figures: E da ciò [buona maniera] nasce l'invenzione, la quale fa mettere insieme in istoria le figure a quattro, a sei, a dieci, a venti, talmente che si viene a formare le battaglie e l'altre cose grandi dell'arte. Questa invenzione vuol in sé una convenevolezza formata di concordanza e d'obbedienza; che s'una figura si muove per salutare un'altra, non si faccia la salutata voltarsi indietro, avendo a rispondere, e con questa similitudine tutto il resto.51 (And from [good style] is born invention, according to which the figures in a scene—whether four, or six, or ten, or twenty—are arranged so as to shape the oppositions and other major aspects of art. Such invention should have a propriety based on concord and agreement; thus, if one figure is about to greet another, the one being greeted, and thus having to respond, should not be posed with his back turned—and so on throughout the entire work.)
Vasari requires, moreover, that the painting "sia piena di cose variate e differenti l'una da l'altra" (be full of things that are varied and different one from the other),
Page 179
and that the artist "debbe distinguere i gesti e l'attitudini" (ought to distinguish the gestures and attitudes) of his figures—this point is elaborated at length—so that, above all, the painting will have "una concordanza unita" (a unified harmoniousness) and will be "sempre accompagnata con una grazia di facilità" (always accompanied by a grace of execution). Bronzino's Lamentation involves no narrative, but it exemplifies precisely the qualities Vasari singles out—decorum, a highly selfconscious variety, and the transmutation of religious feeling into grazia. Withdrawing from the dramatic and tragic potential of the subject, Bronzino presented it with artificiality and refinement. For example, the grief of St. John is expressed less by his facial expression than by the exquisite commingling of Christ's chestnut curls with his own light brown hair (see Fig. 113). Realism is scrupulously avoided: there is no evidence of suffering in the marmoreal perfection of Christ's body, no overt display of grief among the mourners. Bronzino's Lamentation speaks a language that is (to borrow John Shearman's characterization of Maniera) "articulate, intricate, and sophisticated, . . . a silvertongued language of beauty and caprice, not one of violence, incoherence, and despair." 52 Its syntax is a frozen pathos. Emotions are controlled by the stylized attitudes and cool demeanor of the actors. Male and female mourners, young and older angels are contrasted; within each group, there is a careful distinction of type and affect. The solid triangle of motionless witnesses on the right contrasts with the rhythmic calligraphy of the bending, gesturing women to the left. The twelve mourners also manifest a refined artificiality of behavior; they display exquisite courtesy toward one another (the more remarkable for their close physical proximity), and their facial expressions convey the utmost civility—behavior that recalls Vasari's recommendations on convenevolezza (propriety). Although the triangle of figures closest to Christ—John, Mary, and the Magdalene—are gently sad in mien, only the frown of the angel carrying the cross (Plate 29) breaks through the suppressed emotional tenor of these mourners. Bronzino's Lamentation is also characteristic of Maniera in its emphasis on the symbolic ramifications of its subject. We already sense this in the deliberation with which Bronzino has arranged the figures in a pattern of diagonals that cross at the body of Christ. This design echoes both the saltire cross of the vault and the actual cross held by the angel above. Moreover, as in Pontormo's Capponi Chapel altarpiece (see Fig. 99)—and in contrast Perugino's and Sarto's represen
Page 180
tations of the subject (see Figs. 94–95)—there is no real setting here: two rocks and a single branch and leaf to the left define the foreground, and only the cloud bank separates the Lamentation from the angels, who float against a blue sky like that of the chapel vault. Further, Bronzino has introduced symbolic figures into the scene who do not belong to the narrative but comment on it: the five angels carrying the arma Christi (instruments of the Passion) and the two angelacolytes who flank the Pietà group, displaying a chalice and a veil. These last angels, who literally intrude into the Lamentation scene, with its characters drawn from the Gospels, tend to displace the event to a symbolic realm (see Chapter 6). Bronzino's Lamentation is also a masterpiece of midsixteenthcentury devotional painting in its perfection of disegno and colore—without both of which, we learn from Vasari's letter to Varchi, all a painter's efforts are in vain: E se un pittore disegna bene et i colori benissimo non adoperi, ha perso il tempo in tale arte; e se ben colorisca e disegno non abbia, il fin suo e vanissimo. 53 (Just as a painter who designs well but fails to use the finest colors wastes his time in art, one who uses colors well but has no [sense of] design will never get anywhere.)
The Lamentation exhibits a masterly disegno worthy of the praise of Vasari, who called it a "cosa rarissima."54 For in midsixteenthcentury Florence disegno in a painting meant not only the drawing of contours—the draftsman's mode of painting with great emphasis on the subtlety and tension of line that Bronzino had learned from Pontormo—but also the composition and proportions of the figures. It was a function of bella maniera, as Vasari succinctly put it: "Il disegno fu lo imitare il piú bello della natura in tutte le figure" (Disegno was the imitation of the most beautiful [aspects] of nature in all the figures).55 Bronzino's composition of overlapping forms—at once sculptural and flattened parallel to the picture plane—is crafted like a giant relief. His virtuosity in handling these strata is such that five levels can be read from "foreground" to "background" at each side of the painting, yet the intricate design is also locked to the picture surface. Individual figures are elegantly proportioned and exhibit the perfect language of hand gestures that Vasari mentions as a requisite of bella maniera.56
Page 181
Figure 124 Study for the head of a holy woman. Uffizi.
Although such a finely wrought painting was the result of carefully detailed preparation, only a single (and rather minor) study for it survives. This is a black chalk drawing for the head of the holy woman at the center of the composition (Fig. 124). 57 It is identical to the head as it appears in the X ray of the painting, where the hair is similarly close to the head and there is no sign of the full coiffure of the final version.58 Technical examination of the altarpiece reveals the presence of many other pentimenti, indicating that Bronzino continued to modify details of the composition even after the first layer of paint was in place.59 For
Page 182
Figure 125 Lamentation, detail, angel and the Magdalene. Besançon, Musée des BeauxArts.
example, the profile of the Magdalene (Fig. 125) was reworked, as can be seen in details from the infrared reflectogram showing Bronzino's underdrawing (Figs. 126– 27). Finally, Bronzino's style in the altarpiece is characterized by a refinement, artifice, and abstraction of colore. 60 Even color and light are possessed of grazia and bella maniera; the artifice of Bronzino's modeling and color is comparable to that of his ornamental disegno and contributes equally to his "stylish style." Following the lead of Pontormo in the Capponi Chapel altarpiece (see Fig. 99)—and ultimately that of Michelangelo in the Doni tondo—Bronzino painted his altarpiece in the exquisite and artificial blond manner, with no deep shadows or softening chiaroscuro. There are no contemporary comments on the color of Bronzino's
Page 183
Figure 126 Reflectogram of the Lamentation, detail, nose and eyes of the Magdalene (Laboratoire des Musées de France).
Figure 127 Reflectogram of the Lamentation, detail, nose and mouth of the Magdalene (Laboratoire des Musées de France).
picture, but Vasari's precise remarks on Pontormo's individualistic use of a similar technique in his altarpiece might be applied to Bronzino's as well. He says that in this work Pontormo abandoned his former way of painting, and, pensando a nuove cose, la [the altarpiece] condusse senz'ombre e con un colorito chiaro e tanto unito, che appena si conosce il lume dal mezzo ed il mezzo dagli scuri. 61 (thinking of new possibilities, he executed [the altarpiece] without shadows and with a pale and unified color, so that it is hard to distinguish the light from the halftones and the halftones from the shadows.)
Page 184
As in the wall frescoes, the colors Bronzino used in the Lamentation are luxuriously rich and of a jewellike intensity. Indeed, as Marcia B. Hall has observed, the color scheme of the Lamentation, which at first seems inappropriate to its tragic theme, "signifies by its ornamental irreality a transcendent dimension," suggesting a celebration of the Redemption rather than the tragedy of death. 62 The picture is given its essential coloristic character by its intense and luminous blues. Lapis lazuli predominates—in the background; in the robes of the Virgin, the Magdalene, and the holy woman holding the head of Christ; and in details such as Nicodemus's vase. Contemporaneously, Bronzino used such a blue for the background curtain in his Allegory of Venus, where it establishes a mood of hotcold eroticism (see Fig. 11). But here, icy blues and pearly flesh tones are complemented by warm pinkreds (the Magdalene's cloak and the dress of a holy woman to the left), echoing the red of the saints' draperies in the original altar wings. In the altarpiece, Bronzino does not indulge as often in the piquant and highly artificial color shifts that he uses in the frescoes. The most obvious cangianti here are in the angelacolytes' draperies (shaded from green to lavender to yellow), the headdress of the holy woman in red (blue to green), the hat of the companion of Joseph and Nicodemus (blue to pink), and the angel's wings (blue to pink, red to yellow). Bronzino's typical refinement in the handling is also evident in the painting's exceptionally well preserved surface glazes (as contrasted with the overcleaned Allegory of Venus). The angels in the lunette are more fluidly painted than the figures below, with exquisite passages of reflected light, as on the face of the lower of the two angels carrying the column. The main scene is painted more solidly, but with a subtle alteration of textures that goes far beyond the finesse of even the most sensitively handled of Bronzino's earlier religious paintings, such as the Dead Christ with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene (see Fig. 93). The frozen and polished surfaces of the body of Christ and the limbs and faces of the female mourners and the angelacolytes are like marble. These effects are created by Bronzino's upmodeling technique, which emphasizes rilievo, for here—more exactly than in the frescoes—he imitates the effect of actual sculpture. This precision of detail is enhanced by the cool light that falls on the forms, giving everything in the painting, including the colors themselves, an unnatural clarity and purity. Moreover, passages of the painting, such as the metallic strands of the Magdalene's golden hair, have a sharp, miniaturist reality (see Fig. 125), as compared, for example, with the softer textures of her earlier counterpart.63 The three
Page 185
men to the right, however, are painted in a more realistic mode; their flesh is more rosy, their hair and garments softly textured (see Plate 28). The Second Lamentation and the Annunciation Bronzino's second Lamentation, installed in the chapel in 1553, was presumably based on the same cartoon as the first, but the draftsmanship is less finely controlled, and the finesse of execution and subtlety of expression of the first version are lacking (see Plate 9). The mood of cool detachment and the ineffable grazia of the figures have also been lost: several of the mourners—notably the Virgin Mary and the holy woman in full face to the left—are depicted as older, and their expressions are more tinged with grief than those of their earlier counterparts. (There are also differences from the first panel in minor elements of the design, such as the vase carried by Nicodemus, which has a grotesque head for a handle instead of a golden athletic nude.) But the most significant change in the second Lamentation—one that contributes to its sorrowful mood—is its radically different palette. In contrast to the intense colors and the predominant blue tonality of the first version, the colors of the second are deep and somber, without cangianti; the Virgin's blue robe is dulled from a brown underpainting, which is also evident in the heavy, dark clouds above. 64 The painting no longer complements the blondmanner Pontormesque colors of the surrounding frescoes, nor is it in tune with the celebratory mode of the chapel decoration in general. Although the central panel of the second altarpiece duplicates that of the first—at least in composition—the new wings that Bronzino painted in 1564 replace the patron saints of Florence and the Medici with the conventional altarpiece theme of the Annunciation (see Plate 14). As I have noted, the composition of the angel repeats that of St. John (see Plate 10), and the Virgin's serpentine composition presumably echoes that of the lost St. Cosmas. In every other respect, however, these panels depart drastically from the style of the original altar wings. Instead of the abstract setting in the St. John, here the Virgin's priedieu, book, and lectern jut out at angles, without, however, defining an actual space. The color scheme of the panels is still based on red—Gabriel's dark red wings contrast with Mary's lighter red dress—but these rich, warm tones are now juxtaposed with a sharp greenish yellow (the angel's wings) and a glacial bluish white (Mary's man
Page 186
Figure 128 Chapel of Eleonora, Annunciate Virgin, detail, head.
tle). Moreover, both the angel and the Virgin lack the grazia and complexity of the figures in the first altarpiece; the simplified forms, drained of their expressiveness, retain only the control of their earlier counterparts. The facial types—the stylized downcast head of the Virgin (Fig. 128) and the Roman profile of the angel—are the standardized female types of Bronzino's later painting, such as Noli me tangere, dated 1561 (Paris, Musée du Louvre) or even The Raising of the Daughter of Jairus of 1571–72 (S. Maria Novella). 65 The only surviving drawing for Bronzino's later work in the chapel is a black chalk study for the Virgin (Fig. 129).66 In its uninflected line and lack of vitality, this careful modello (squared for enlargement) is akin to the painting for which it was made, and it contrasts sharply with the subtlety and vitality of Bronzino's earlier studies for the chapel frescoes.
Page 187
Figure 129 Study for the Annunciate Virgin. Uffizi.
Page 188
There must have been a variety of reasons for the changes in style and mood in Bronzino's later paintings for the Chapel of Eleonora. The muted palette of the Lamentation is not generic to Bronzino's art of the early 1550s; there is nothing dark in the colors of either Christ in Limbo or the Resurrection, for example. The contrast between this work and the original altarpiece might have been a response to the climate in the ducal household, created by Eleonora's advanced tuberculosis, which Pagni suggests in a letter of 1551 (just when Bronzino would have been painting this picture): ''Il suo male è grande et sarà ogni giorno maggiore" (her illness is serious and seems more so every day). 67 These stylistic changes and those noted in the second altar wings, painted after the duchess's death, are also signposts of a shift in style in Florentine painting that came about in the wake of the CounterReformation—a move away from the Maniera that became fully evident in Bronzino's altarpieces of the early 1560s such as the Accademia Lamentation (see Fig. 108) and the Nativity of 1564 (Pisa, S. Stefano).68 The less sensuous color and the somber, almost harsh, forms and grieving faces of the second Lamentation reveal a search for a new expressiveness, inimical to Maniera, that may have been an early response in Florentine art to the spirit of reform made explicit by the Council of Trent. The figures in the Annunciation also seem to reflect a shift in taste toward the conventionally devotional; they are painted in a newly chaste, pure style that would characterize much later sixteenthcentury painting in Florence. All these developments announce the demise in Bronzino's art of the bella maniera.
Page 189
III— DEVOTIONAL IMAGERY IN THE CHAPEL
Page 190
Chapter Six— The Altar Wall Prophets and Prophecies The theme of prophecy resonates throughout the decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora. It is signaled in the basamento frieze, where Bronzino painted winged putto heads—ancient emblems of prophecy. It is announced on the altar wall in the figures of King David and the Erythraean Sibyl and their prophetic inscriptions as well as in St. John the Baptist. It is established in the Old Testament frescoes of the stories of Moses, which are to be read typologically (see Chapter 7). Finally, all prophecies are fulfilled in the image of the sacrificed Christ of the Lamentation. The only inscriptions in the chapel decoration are the prophecies of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection written on the scrolls below King David and The Erythraean Sibyl (see Plate 12). Under David are two lines from Psalm 21 [22]: FODERVNT MANVS MEAS ET PEDES / MEOS DINVMERAVERVNT OMNIA / OSSA MEA—DAVID (They have pierced my hands and my feet; they have numbered all my bones—David). David's words were understood as a prophecy of the Crucifixion. Indeed, the psalm from which these lines were drawn was identified in the liturgy with the Crucifixion; it was sung on Good Friday among the Improperia, which form part of the veneration of the cross. 1 This quotation thus connects the prophet with the Lamentation, where the Crucifixion is evoked in the dead Christ and in the instruments of the Passion (adjacent to David in the upper zone of the painting).
Page 191
Bronzino portrayed David as the crowned and aged king, his left hand tugging at his beard in a familiar gesture signifying the presence of the divine (exemplified in Michelangelo's Moses; see Fig. 70). 2 David is also characterized as the divinely inspired psalmist, who holds a harp (with which, perhaps, he accompanies the Twentyfirst Psalm). Below Erythraea is a quotation from the book of sibylline prophecies, the Orcula sibyllina, which she holds open: MORTE MORIETVR TRIB[V]S DIEBVS / SOMNO SVBSCEPTO ET TV[N]C AB / INFERIS REGRESSVS AD LVCEM VENIET—ERITHEA (And he shall fall asleep and lie in death for three days: then he shall be the first to return from the lower world and come again to the light—Erithea).3 While David and Erythraea were by no means a common pair, here she was chosen to accompany the prophet in her role as a prophet of the Resurrection, which she had become by virtue of the very lines inscribed beneath her.4 These words had been featured before in Renaissance art with Erythraea's image, as in Fra Angelico's Crucifixion at S. Marco, where she is the only sibyl in a series of nine prophets (including David) portrayed in the frame. She also appears (with part of the same inscription, quoted in Greek from Lactantius), as one of four sibyls in Raphael's decoration of the Chigi Chapel (Rome, S. Maria delle Pace), where her prophecy of the Resurrection appropriately refers to the subject of the chapel's altarpiece.5 St. John the Baptist (see Plate 10) complements King David, for he too is a prophet of the Crucifixion. Like David, who was understood to prophesy Christ's sacrifice in Psalm 21, John's words "Ecce Agnus Dei" signaled Christ as the sacrificial lamb.6 Since John prophesied the Passion—but was not a participant in it—Bronzino separated him from the central panel of the altarpiece by making him larger than the figures in the Lamentation.7 He has made certain, however, that the saint's role as the herald of Christ's advent is clear: John's pose, halfkneeling in profile, as if genuflecting, is strikingly like that of an angel of the Annunciation. As the initiator of the sacrament of baptism, St. John is also a fulcrum of a theme of baptism in the chapel, and Bronzino reminds the observer of the act of baptizing by depicting a cup with water at the saint's feet. The Eucharistic Lamentation The chapel's prophecies of salvation have their focus in the Lamentation, with which the conception of the chapel decoration must have begun, even though the
Page 192
vault and the Moses frescoes were executed earlier. The altarpiece framed by prophets (and the anomalous St. Cosmas, who belongs to the Medicean programme of the work; see Chapter 12) is an iconographically complex work in which the Lamentation—the dead Christ held by the Virgin, St. John the Evangelist, and the Magdalene in the front plane; the holy women and the group of Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and their companion behind them—is embellished with symbolic elements (see Plate 11). The angels who float above with the arma Christi, for example, link the Lamentation explicitly to the whole of Christ's Passion. 8 Angels like these were often depicted in Renaissance art in a lunette surmounting a Passion scene; or, as in Bronzino's own earlier Pietà with Angels (see Fig. 49), the Pietà group may be flanked by angels who hold the individual instruments of the Passion. In the chapel Lamentation, five angels carry three of the arma Christi: two at the left hold the column, one at the center holds the rod with the sponge and the lance, and two at the right hold the cross. Below, in the Lamentation scene itself, are the two remaining Passion symbols: the three nails (and the pincers) held by Joseph, and the crown of thorns, resting on the ground below, approximately on a line with Christ's head. The cross and the nails, which evoke David's prophecy of the Crucifixion, have been given special prominence. Joseph, who is brightly lit and stands directly under the cross, holds the nails against his white garment (see Plate 28). The cross itself is accented by Bronzino's emphatic characterization of the redwinged angel carrying it (see Plate 29). The angel's head is aligned above that of the central holy woman, his wings alone are brightly colored, and he is the only figure in the painting who looks directly out at the observer. Another symbolic feature of the altarpiece, the angelacolytes with the chalice and veil, transforms it into a eucharistic Lamentation.9 One of Bronzino's compositional sources—Andrea del Sarto's S. Luco altarpiece (see Fig. 95)—is also a eucharistic Lamentation, but its symbolism is overtly presented: the dead Christ is displayed on the Stone of Unction, alluding to the altar, and the chalice and host symbolizing the wine and bread of the Mass are depicted directly below in clear reference to the Corpus Domini.10 Bronzino integrated the symbolic chalice into the Lamentation scene by placing it in the hand of the angel to the left (see Fig. 113), a motif that recalls the angels who catch the blood of Christ in chalices in early Renaissance Crucifixions. Making the reference to the eucharistic Christ explicit, this angel simultaneously points at the body of Christ.
Page 193
Though attending the dead Christ, this angel, somewhat surprisingly, looks out of the scene, gazing serenely toward the wall on which Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna are represented (see Plate 8), with St. John the Evangelist on Patmos in the vault above (see Plate 19). The two Moses episodes were understood as typifying the wine and bread of the Eucharist, and John's Gospel, in which the doctrine of the Eucharist is most explicitly spelled out (John 6), is replete with the very eucharistic allusions from which these typologies were drawn. The angel thus shifts the observer's attention to the sacramental meaning of Christ's death. The pendant angelacolyte, identically dressed, also points at the dead Christ but holds a transparent veil with both hands (see Fig. 125). The veil is more diverse in its allusions than the chalice. The motif of the veil in Renaissance painting was drawn from the Meditations on the Life of Christ, where it is told that the Virgin wrapped Christ in a veil from her head at the Nativity and "gird[ed] Him with the veil from her head" after the Crucifixion. 11 The prophetic veil held by the Virgin over the Christ child is a common motif in Renaissance painting, seen in pictures like Raphael's Madonna di Loreto and its derivatives,12 as well as in Bronzino's own Holy Families of the 1540s.13 Veils in paintings of the Pietà or Lamentation—especially transparent ones such as the veil held up by the Virgin in Sebastiano del Piombo's Ubeda Pietà (Seville, Casa de Pilatos; 1537–39)—also allude to the veils described in the Meditations. So also do veils in scenes of the Resurrection or the three Marys at the tomb, where they may be read as Christ's burial cloths. Angels often hold them; indeed, late medieval sculptures of these subjects show angels displaying veils explicitly alluding to the Resurrection.14 These veils being all the same, any of them carries all these meanings, as must the veil in Bronzino's Lamentation. But such veils—whether in scenes of Christ's infancy, his Passion, or his Resurrection—also have a eucharistic significance. In Bronzino's Lamentation, where the chalice signals the Eucharist, the veil also reads as a eucharistic emblem. Liturgically, it alludes to the humeral veil used in the Mass to cover the Sacrament, as is suggested in the deliberate way the angel lifts it with both hands, as does the priest in the Mass.15 There are other indications of a eucharistic theme in Bronzino's altarpiece. Although his dead Christ recalls Michelangelo's Pietà (see Fig. 98), an important element of the figure differs from Michelangelo's: the body of Christ is overscale in relation to the Virgin. In this, Bronzino's Christ is similar to Bandinelli's Dead
Page 194
Christ with Nicodemus, a later eucharistic Pietà in which the instruments of the Passion are also prominently displayed (see Fig. 109). 16 As in Bandinelli's work, Bronzino's dead Christ is placed in a decidedly unnatural position, with the body turned, its left arm pronated and held by the Virgin—as if for the spectator's contemplation. Bronzino's deliberate display of the Corpus Domini also reveals all five wounds of the Crucifixion (although, paradoxically, his idealizing style does not permit detailed description of them).17 Christ's body lies on a diagonal almost exactly parallel to that of the large cross carried by the angels above. The wounds of the hands and feet allude to the fulfillment of David's prophecy "They have pierced my hands and feet," and the lance's wound in Christ's right side is aligned directly with the lance carried by the angel above. This wound is also the focus of a play of hands. The angelacolyte with the chalice points at St. John and at Christ, while John, in turn, indicates the wound with his splayed fingers. John's position—between the symbolic chalice and the wound—is particularly apt, for it is his Gospel (John 19:33–35) that tells about the piercing of Christ's body with the lance and his epistle that designates the blood flowing from Christ's side as a type of the Eucharist (1 John 5:6–8). Below John's hand, the Virgin's right hand supports the body with the end of Christ's loincloth in an allusively liturgical manner.18 The subtle interplay between these three figures around Christ thus calls our attention to the sacramental meaning of the Corpus Domini. Even though they were not envisioned in the early 1540s, the subjects of the paintings added later to the altar wall ensemble confirm the importance of the eucharistic theme signaled in the chapel's Lamentation. The Annunciation, in particular, alludes directly to the Incarnation, emphasizing the theme of the Corpus Domini on the altar wall (see Plate 9).19 Joseph, Nicodemus, and the Artist's Portraits in the Lamentation The three men to the right in Bronzino's altarpiece have a special iconographic significance (see Plate 28).20 The inclusion of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus in Deposition and Entombment scenes is supported by both scriptural and apocryphal sources, which describe the two men assisting in taking the body from the cross and preparing it for burial.21 Apocryphal writings and medieval texts expanded the role of Nicodemus considerably, sometimes confounding his attri
Page 195
butes and actions with those of Joseph, a confusion that was carried over into the iconography of Joseph and Nicodemus in medieval and Renaissance art. 22 In the Byzantine tradition, where the theme of the Threnos, or Lamentation, first appears, both Joseph and Nicodemus are represented frequently as active participants in the Deposition, with Joseph generally shown supporting the upper part of the body of Christ and Nicodemus, often with pincers and nails, at the feet. Likewise, in the Entombment, Joseph (usually whitebearded) was given the role of sustaining the head of Christ, and Nicodemus (usually blackbearded) was at the feet—an arrangement logically deduced from the relative importance accorded the two characters in the Gospels. When the subject of the Lamentation—in which Joseph and Nicodemus have no active role—evolved as a central devotional image in Renaissance art, Joseph and Nicodemus were usually retained, kneeling and holding the shroud at the head and feet of Christ, in symbolic recall of their traditional roles in the Entombment.23 This traditional depiction of Joseph and Nicodemus is seen in Florentine altarpieces of the late quattrocento such as Perugino's Lamentation (see Fig. 94). The older, bearded, bareheaded, and richly dressed Joseph is at the head of Christ, supporting the upper part of the body, while the younger Nicodemus, who is more simply garbed but wears an exotic turban, holds the shroud at the feet.24 Pontormo's Certosa Lamentation, where Joseph holds Christ's head and Nicodemus (who wears a conical hat) is at the far left holding the shroud, is also of this type (see Fig. 96). Variations in the positions and attributes of Joseph and Nicodemus were frequently introduced, however, in Italian art; for example, one or both of them were isolated behind or to the sides of the main Lamentation group, where they hold either the nails, pincers, and jar of spices that signal their actions in the Deposition and Entombment or other symbols of the Passion, such as the crown of thorns.25 Bronzino's Joseph and Nicodemus, whose position in the painting follows this last tradition, are readily identifiable by their traditional physical types and attributes. The whitebearded Joseph, who holds the three nails and the pincers, is dressed in a white garment decorated with bands of gold embroidery with motifs all'antica. This robe also has pink fringe, a detail of costume that traditionally indicated a foreigner—which, of course, he was.26 The younger Nicodemus wears a less rich but more contemporary furcollared red robe and, in keeping with the tradition, a hat—here the leather helmet hat with flaps fashionable in Florence in the 1530s and 1540s. Pontormo wears a similar hat (without the exotic chinstrap)
Page 196
in Bronzino's contemporaneous portrait drawing of him (see Fig. 134). 27 The salient feature of Nicodemus's representation, however, is the magnificent ewer he carries, which refers to the spices of "one hundred pounds weight" that he brought to Christ's entombment (John 19:38). This ewer positively identifies Nicodemus: either Joseph or Nicodemus may hold the nails and pincers in the Lamentation scene (since both men participated in the Deposition), but only Nicodemus carries a vessel, usually one of contemporary design.28 In keeping with the courtly dress and accessories of the actors in the chapel's Lamentation, Bronzino's Nicodemus carries a large lapis lazuli ewer with a gold handle fashioned as an acrobatic nude. Since no such monumental pieces—especially in lapis lazuli—were in the ducal collections as early as the 1540s,29 this ewer may have been inspired by designs of similar ewers by Salviati, such as one in which the handle is a nude woman (Fig. 130), or by prints of antique vases, such as the series dated 1543 by Enea Vico.30 Employing a degree of artistic license, Bronzino painted Nicodemus's ewer in the same costly lapis lazuli he employed for the background and for the robes of the Virgin in the altarpiece. Bronzino added a third man to the traditional twofigure group standing behind the Lamentation scene. His identification is problematic: biblical and apochryphal texts mention no such man, and medieval texts such as the Meditations on the Life of Christ, from which the theme of the Pietà was drawn, refer only vaguely to "others" who came with Joseph and Nicodemus to the scene of the Crucifixion.31 However, in cinquecento paintings of the Deposition and Entombment, one or two men are frequently represented as helping Joseph and Nicodemus. These "extras" in the scene appear to have been inspired by a study of such Dürer prints as a woodcut of the Entombment from the Large Passion (Bar. 13), where three turbaned men carry Christ's body. An example close to Bronzino is a Düreresque Entombment by Vasari, then in the collection of Duke Cosimo, in which three men carry the body of Christ (Arezzo, Casa del Vasari).32 They are described by the painter as "Niccodemo, Gioseffo et altri"; Vasari also wrote at length in 1537 about the Deposition (Arezzo, Chiesa dell'Annunziata) he was painting, calling the four men taking the body of Christ from the cross "i Nicodemi."33 In paintings of the Lamentation, these helpers, not needed, were less commonly included. However, a "third man" was sometimes carried over from the cast of characters of the narrative scenes. Such a figure occurs regularly in the Northern paintings and prints that all the artists of Bronzino's Florentine circle
Page 197
Figure 130 Francesco Salviati, design for a ewer. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum.
Page 198
Figure 131 Albrecht Dürer, Lamentation (woodcut).
studied. In Dürer's Lamentation woodcut from the Small Passion, for example, a turbaned companion, seen frontally, is depicted between Joseph and Nicodemus (Fig. 131). 34 Pontormo included the companion—the man who leans over to lift the lid of the box of spices—in his Düreresque Lamentation at the Certosa (see Fig. 96). Bronzino and Bandinelli also borrowed motifs from Dürer prints: their influence appears in Bronzino's early works, in his 1552 Resurrection, and in his Pietà of 1569 in S. Croce; Bandinelli quotes Dürer in numerous drawings.35 There is, however, no precise source in Dürer for the trio of men in Bronzino's chapel Lamentation. A compositional ''set piece" of a trio (not necessarily including both Joseph and Nicodemus) to the right of the Lamentation seems to occur first in Italian painting in Perugino's S. Chiara altarpiece (see Fig. 94), a work on which
Page 199
Figure 132 Marcantonio Raimondi, Lamentation (engraving).
(as we have seen) the composition of Bronzino's Lamentation depends in other respects. There, the trio is made up of a young saint, a Vallombrosan monk, and a turbaned man. The latter is of interest in relation to the third man in Bronzino's altarpiece, for he takes over Joseph and Nicodemus's accustomed role as displayer of the nails, and he seems to be associated with these figures, who kneel in the left and right foreground. (The three men are connected by their blue robes and exotic details of dress—brocades, turbans, scarves—worn by no one else in the scene.) Such a trio also appears in an engraving by Marcantonio of the Lamentation (Fig. 132) that was made about 1515 after a drawing by Raphael for the Borghese Entombment. 36 It depends on Perugino's model (and not incidentally on Dürer's Entombment engraving as well),37 but the characters are arranged somewhat dif
Page 200
ferently: the turbaned Nicodemus and St. John the Evangelist are the foreground figures of the trio, and the "third man"—who wears a hat—stands between them. This set piece of the three men—with its antecedents in Dürer, Perugino, and Raphael—was reconstituted in Bronzino's altarpiece to include Joseph, Nicodemus, and their companion. Unlike Marcantonio or Perugino, Bronzino subjected his trio of witnesses to Maniera conventions of gesture, decorum, and grazia. Joseph is artfully introspective; his lips are slightly parted, and he brings his hand with the nails across his chest in eloquent personal testimony. Nicodemus mutely attends to and gestures toward Joseph, and their companion stares wideeyed at him. In this Lamentation Joseph and Nicodemus play the role of detached observers—isolated in suspended conversation, witnesses to the sacramental meaning of the scene and bearers of the arma Christi. The trio of witnesses embodies an unusual personal conceit that illuminates the meaning of the Lamentation in Bronzino's art and its relation to that of his contemporaries. This conceit draws on a Renaissance tradition in which the painter or sculptor included himself or other artists as bystanders, or even actors, in religious works. When Joseph and Nicodemus were depicted in early Renaissance scenes of the Passion, the tradition of showing Joseph as older and bareheaded, Nicodemus as younger and turbaned was maintained; in other cases, Joseph and Nicodemus are similar in type (but we are probably correct in consistently identifying Joseph as the man who holds Christ or who is placed to his right). In a related devotional image of the dead Christ supported by one mourner only, however, it has been difficult to identify the supporting figure with certainty—is he Joseph or Nicodemus? In the early quattrocento, a whitebearded man who must be Joseph was often represented, but toward the end of the century, a turbaned man (sometimes younger) was probably intended to be Nicodemus. 38 I would suggest that this new image—that of the single mourner as Nicodemus—developed because the artist began to paint the man holding the Dead Christ as a selfportrait. This new iconography conflated two traditions, both from Northern art. The first was the portrayal of Nicodemus—the more humble personage who is usually placed at the feet of Christ (or on his left)—as a worker, as in the Lamentation by Petrus Christus in which Nicodemus is a worker who has the nails, hammer, and pincers laid out below him (New York, Metropolitan
Page 201
Museum of Art). 39 The second was the depiction of Nicodemus as a portrait in contemporary dress.40 Also relevant to this development was a traditional association of Nicodemus with the art of sculpture and sculptors' representations of him as a selfportrait.41 This tradition may have been particularly strong in Florence because of the legend that Nicodemus was a sculptor and the author of a famous Crucifix—the venerated Volto Santo, then in Lucca.42 Indeed, Vasari maintains (erroneously, as it happens) that Nicodemus in Fra Angelico's Deposition (S. Marco) is a portrait of the architect and sculptor Michelozzo.43 When the artist wished to identify intimately with Christ's sacrifice and to portray himself alone holding the dead Christ, the two traditions—Nicodemus as a portrait of a humble worker and Joseph at Christ's head—came into conflict. Significantly, the individualistic tradition of the Renaissance artist as Nicodemus the artisan appears to have taken precedence over the older iconography in which Joseph was assigned the honored place. Thus, in most cinquecento Pietàs with a selfportrait of the artist, it seems to be Nicodemus who was intended, not Joseph—even when the identifying headgear is absent.44 As early as the 1520s, the subject of the dead Christ with Nicodemus had become popular in Florence, as in a number of paintings and drawings from the circle of RossoSalviatiBandinelli.45 Around 1550 this conceit was monumentalized in two sculptured Pietà groups, both containing selfportraits of the artist and both intended for the sculptor's own tomb: Michelangelo's Pietà with Nicodemus and the Magdalene (Duomo, begun before 1550);46 and Bandinelli's Dead Christ with Nicodemus, begun about 1554 (see Fig. 109).47 Vasari and other contemporary sources identify the selfportraits in these works as Nicodemus, and there seems no reason to question this testimony to a Florentine tradition.48 The conceit of the artist as Nicodemus witnessing the Passion was also current in Bronzino's immediate artistic circle and in works contemporaneous with the chapel altarpiece. Pontormo realized the conceit imaginatively in his LamentationEntombment in the Capponi Chapel (see Fig. 99). There, dressed as an artisan wearing a hat—and painted in earthy ocher and green tones, which contrast with the phosphorescent pale tonality of the rest of the picture—PontormoasNicodemus looks out at the observer from the right margin of the painting.49 Since only one of the two men who buried Christ is portrayed in Pontormo's altarpiece, and since he is characterized as a worker, his identity as Nicodemus seems secure. In 1545–46, Salviati, too, depicted himself as Nicodemus.
Page 202
Figure 133 Francesco Salviati, Lamentation. Pitti.
Page 203
In a Lamentation painted for Duke Cosimo, he is recognizable as the young blackbearded man in profile (placed in an unusually prominent central position in the painting), standing next to a bearded Joseph (Fig. 133). 50 In a number of works where both Joseph and Nicodemus are present (and neither carries Nicodemus's jar of spices), however, the identity of the man with the features of the artist is not always certain. Bandinelli's various depictions of Passion subjects are a case in point; indeed, in some of them, the artist seems to be both Joseph and Nicodemus. In the modello for his Descent from the Cross relief, he is recognizable as the bareheaded man in the left middle ground, who is probably Joseph; he touches his beard with one hand and raises his other hand, as the turbaned Nicodemus next to him displays the nails of the Crucifixion (see Fig. 120).51 The same selfportraitasJoseph type, this time holding the nails and based on Donatello's Joseph (see Fig. 122), appears in the related drawing (see Fig. 121). And, again, in the modello of a Lamentation with Cosimo and Eleonora about 1540, a Bandinellian type appears as both Joseph (at the head of Christ) and Nicodemus, who wears a hat and holds the crown of thorns and the nails (see Fig. 100).52 None of the works by Bronzino's contemporaries provides an exact precedent for the trio of Nicodemus, Joseph, and a companion in the Lamentation of the Chapel of Eleonora, however. Not one but all three figures are portraits of artists, and Bronzino has used them in a novel and personal way to signal the artistic genesis of his masterpiece. The companion of Joseph and Nicodemus is the only one of the three men shown frontally—and thus the one most obviously a portrait. He is an unmistakable likeness of Pontormo,53 a portrait in which Bronzino paid tribute to his master, whose Capponi Chapel altarpiece was a major Florentine exemplar of the Lamentation by an artist of the previous generation. Besides his selfportrait as Nicodemus in the Capponi Chapel (see Fig. 99), there are a number of contemporary likenesses of Pontormo, the closest in date to the chapel altarpiece being Bronzino's drawing of the late 1530s, which shows Pontormo's pinched face, large eyes, and sparse beard (Fig. 134). Bronzino also portrayed Pontormo in Christ in Limbo (see Fig. 10), where he appears, wideeyed, in the shadow to the left of Christ's right shoulder.54 There are also other portraits of Pontormo as witness to a sacred event, such as a posthumous one in Allori's Christ among the Doctors of 1560–64, where his name is written on his collar (Fig. 135).
Page 204
Figure 134 Portrait drawing of Pontormo, detail of the head. Uffizi.
Figure 135 Alessandro Allori, Christ among the Doctors, detail, portraits of Pontormo, Bronzino, and Tomaso Manzuoli. SS. Annunziata.
In Bronzino's chapel painting, Pontormo is portrayed as the anonymous companion of Joseph and Nicodemus and takes his place behind them. He is in the background—in the past—while the other two figures belong to the present. Bronzino, the painter of the Lamentation, is cast in the traditional artist's role as Nicodemus. We know Bronzino's features from several portraits by Allori, who depicts him in the company of other artists—in emulation, I believe, of the chapel altarpiece. The earliest of these is a cartoon for a Christ in Limbo of about 1555–60, where Pontormo and Bronzino are shown side by side at the lower right (Fig. 136). 55 Allori also depicted the two artists in Christ among the Doctors,56 a portrait that was the model for the frontispiece of the life of Bronzino in Rau and Rastrelli's late eighteenthcentury Degli uomini illustri nella pittura (see Fig. 1). And
Page 205
Figure 136 Alessandro Allori, study for Christ in Limbo, detail, portraits of Pontormo and Bronzino. Uffizi.
Allori portrayed both artists again below his fresco of the Trinity in the Chapel of St. Luke at SS. Annunziata (Fig. 137). These damaged portraits, identified by the inscriptions AN•BR and IA•PV, were added a secco after Bronzino's death in 1572. 57 Here a spirit of homage to Allori's artistic antenati (ancestors) is clear, the composition even suggesting another, secular, "trinity" in which Allori—painter of the work—traces his artistic lineage to Bronzino and Pontormo. Finally, Bronzino appears in Allori's Christ in Limbo of 1588 at S. Marco as the central head (between Moses and St. John the Baptist) of a trio of witnesses strikingly like that of the Chapel of Eleonora altarpiece (Fig. 138). Also useful in identifying the portrait of Bronzino in the Lamentation are two portraits of him closer in date to the chapel decoration. One is an anonymous
Page 206
Figure 137 Alessandro Allori, Trinity. Chapel of St. Luke, SS. Annunziata.
Page 207
Figure 138 Alessandro Allori, Christ in Limbo, detail, portrait of Bronzino with Moses and St. John the Baptist. S. Marco.
painting dating from about 1550 (Fig. 139); 58 comparing this portrait with Allori's likenesses of Bronzino, we can easily recognize the face of a younger Bronzino. The second portrait is Bronzino's own portrayal of himself in 1552 as witness to another sacred event—Christ's descent into Limbo (see Fig. 10). Bronzino—who was the author of sacred poetry—has cast himself here as David the Psalmist, the man at the upper left who extends a muscular arm toward Christ (Fig. 140).59 He idealized his own image, adding a long, flowing beard to his stillyouthful face, just as he had given his strongfeatured profile a heroic mien in the Nicodemus in the chapel altarpiece. Moreover, both figures have been singled out for special attention by the use of the costly lapis lazuli for David's blue robe and Nicodemus's blue ewer, and by the luxurious goldsmith work of the handle of the ewer and of David's belt (whose putti are like those in Bronzino's contemporaneous tapestry borders). Of the trio in the chapel altarpiece, it is Joseph of Arimathea who dominates the right side of the painting: he is depicted not just as a head but in halflength, he wears a gleaming white robe, he is fully illuminated by a strong light from the
Page 208
Figure 139 Anonymous, Agnolo Bronzino. Uffizi.
Figure 140 Christ in Limbo, detail, Bronzino as David. S. Lorenzo.
Page 209
left, he is the only one of the three men who contemplates the dead Christ—and he is, in fact, a portrait of Bandinelli. 60 The sculptor's appearance is extensively documented in his many selfportraits—for example in The Dead Christ with Nicodemus, where the same bearded personage is depicted as he appeared in the early 1550s (see Fig. 109). Earlier, he had been portrayed in Enea Vico's engraving after his design, The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli (Fig. 141).61 His head—directly under a book bearing his name as inventor of the composition—is at almost the same angle as in Bronzino's portrait of him as Joseph. Finally, comparing Bronzino's likeness with a contemporaneous selfportrait painted by Bandinelli (Fig. 142), we can see how carefully Bronzino observed Bandinelli's hair: the steel gray base of its color, the wisps at the temples, and the short, tousled bits on the crown of his head.62 While Bronzino was working on the chapel frescoes, Bandinelli was trying to secure the commission for the altarpiece (see Chapter 5): we know from an exchange of letters in November 1542 that he submitted a modello for it to Cosimo and that the duke directed Bronzino to paint it after Bandinelli's design. The presence in the painting of Bandinelli as Joseph appears, then, to be Bronzino's acknowledgment of the artist who supplied the invenzione for his picture. Knowing that these three men are portraits makes more understandable the fluid and transparent manner in which Bronzino painted them. Like Pontormo, who used color differentiation rather than technique to make this distinction (the earth colors in which he painted his selfportrait in the Capponi Chapel altarpiece), Bronzino subtly distinguished between the level of reality of the trio and that of the other biblical figures. The concetto of the trio of artists in the chapel altarpiece was the prototype for a similar trio in Bronzino's Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo (see Fig. 47). Here the readily identifiable portraits of the artists (who do not play roles) make up an obvious set piece, one that would seem to lend credence to my reading of the chapel trio. In the left background, under Mercury, patron god of artists, are three bustlength figures that look out at the spectator, their dark contemporary dress contrasting with the light tones of the rest of the fresco (Fig. 143). To the left we recognize Bronzino, author of the painting, who holds what appears to be a paintbrush in his right hand.63 His head—demonstrably that of the person who appears in the contemporary Christ among the Doctors (see Fig. 135), is placed like a signature at the left margin of the painting.64
Page 210
Figure 141 Enea Vico (engraving after Bandinelli), The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, detail, selfportrait of Bandinelli. Uffizi.
Figure 142 Baccio Bandinelli, Selfportrait, detail. Boston, Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum.
Page 211
Figure 143 Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo, detail, portraits of Bronzino, Pontormo, and Allori. S. Lorenzo.
In the center of the trio in the Martyrdom—in the same relationship to Bronzino as in the Eleonora chapel's altarpiece trio—is a posthumous portrait of Pontormo, also recognizable from Allori's portrait of him in Christ among the Doctors. 65 As in the chapel Lamentation, Pontormo is included in the role of Bronzino's master; and, as in the earlier painting, the reference to Pontormo's own art is very pointed, for Pontormo had also worked at S. Lorenzo on a Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo. That fresco, over the high altar, was left incomplete on Pontormo's death and was finished by Bronzino, who (according to Vasari) included a portrait of Pontormo to the right of the saint in tribute to his master.66 Now, following a precedent established by earlier Renaissance painters like Luca Signorelli and Raphael,67 Bronzino included a commemorative portrait of Pontormo next to his own in the Martyrdom, in reference to Pontormo's earlier role as painter in the same church.
Page 212
The third head of the Martyrdom trio is Allori, whose likeness may be compared with that in Bronzino's Christ in Limbo, where he is the youth looking up under Christ's right arm (see Fig. 10). 68 Allori's presence here rounds out ''three ages"—three generations—of Florentine painters: Bronzino's master, Bronzino himself, and Bronzino's follower. In this fresco, then, as in the chapel Lamentation, Bronzino, Pontormo, and Allori are witnesses not only to the sacred event depicted but to Bronzino's painting of it and to his place in the continuum of Florentine art.69 The concetto of the trio of artists in the Chapel of Eleonora Lamentation is strikingly similar to that of the Martyrdom. Bronzino, the youthful man to the left, underlines his artistic relationship with the two older artists. (Bandinelli was the oldest of the group, and Bronzino has conspicuously aged him so that he looks more venerable, even though he was scarcely two years older than Pontormo.) Next to him in the center is his master, and to the right is Bandinelli, who had provided the invenzione for the design of the painting. Bronzino's trio of witnesses to the Lamentation thus symbolizes the artistic genesis of the altarpiece of the Chapel of Eleonora.
Page 213
Chapter Seven— The Stories of Moses The stories of Moses that Bronzino painted on the walls of the Chapel of Eleonora continue the theme of prophecy and fulfillment in the paintings on the altar wall. Prophecies of salvation are the subtext of the Moses frescoes. For these read not only as biblical narrative but as typology, the conventional metaphorical reading of the Old Testament. This interpretation of the Old Testament, established by the words of Christ himself (Luke 24:44), was set forth by St. Paul, who postulated, in 1 Corinthians and in Hebrews, a mystical correspondence between Old and New Testaments. The typology was elaborated by St. Augustine and other church fathers and codified in the Middle Ages in popular illustrated books (widely known in Italy) such as the Biblia pauperum and the Speculum humanae salvationis, in which Old Testament stories and characters were viewed as types or figures of the New, and the New Covenant was seen as the fulfillment of the Old. Corresponding scenes from the Old and New Testaments were routinely juxtaposed in medieval art. In the Renaissance, however, typology fell out of fashion and no longer played a major role in monumental art, 1 even though the idea of analogy persisted and the notion of Old Testament prophecy being fulfilled in the New remained a powerful underlying premise of religious narrative (whether or not the New Testament, or Christological, element was depicted). But typology as such did survive in a specific form characteristic of religious imagery of the 1530s and 1540s. Rather than the traditional pairings of Old and New Testament events,
Page 214
Figure 144 Sicolante da Sermoneta, The Gathering of Manna. Chapel of the Bastie d'Urfé.
a series of Old Testament scenes form the setting—the Old Testament background—for a single monumental work that stands for the New Testament as a whole and is the climax of the ensemble. Examples of the use of typology at the time of the Chapel of Eleonora include two other chapels. One was decorated by the Roman painter Sicolante da Sermoneta about 1549 at the Château de la Bastie d'Urfé in southeastern France. 2 It is dedicated to the Sacrament: the altarpiece is The Institution of the Eucharist, and the rest of the decoration is entirely devoted to Old Testament prototypes of the Eucharist. The two most prominent scenes are Moses Striking the Rock and The Gathering of Manna (Fig. 144), which Sicolante painted in large lunettes, the Manna on the altar wall, the Rock opposite. Correspondences between Sicolante's figures (the men and women gathering manna, the repoussoir nude to the right of the miracle of the rock) and figures in Bronzino's Manna and Red Sea–Joshua frescoes (the manna gatherers, the reclining nude) suggest that Sicolante was acquainted with Bronzino's chapel frescoes. Another chapel of this type was an important precedent for the Chapel of Eleonora: a major Old Testament cycle (no longer in place in its entirety), including Moses scenes, painted in 1531–38 for the apse of the Pisa cathedral.3 The iconography of these panels centered on the theme of sacrifice, divine reward, and divine punishment. To the left of the altar were examples of sacrifice rewarded: Giovanni Antonio Sogliani's Sacrifice of Abel and Sacrifice of Noah, Sodoma's Sacrifice of Isaac, and (nearest the altar) Battista Franco's Gathering of Manna (much damaged; Fig. 145)—the last construed as alluding typologically to the Eucharist, thus also representing a sacrifice.4 To the right were examples of sacri
Page 215
Figure 145 Battista Franco, The Gathering of Manna. Pisa, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
fice punished: two Moses scenes by Beccafumi (The Punishment of Korah [see Fig. 77] and The Adoration of the Golden Calf), Niccolò del Ambrigia's Punishment of the Sons of Aron, and Sogliani's Sacrifice of Cain. The New Testament counterparts of these episodes are not represented, but the Passion of Christ and the theme of the Redemption are present in Sodoma's altarpiece of the Lamentation (1540) and in Beccafumi's Four Evangelists.
Page 216
Still another example of typology in this period is the apparato in the Florentine Baptistery for the baptism of Francesco de' Medici in 1541, which was used again in 1550 for the baptism of Garzia and again in 1577 for the baptism of the firstborn son of the next generation (Francesco's son Filippo). 5 Its climactic decoration was The Baptism of Christ by Vasari; we learn from the diarist Francesco Settimanni's description of the 1577 event that the decoration was typological—that Vasari's painting was flanked by a Deluge and a Crossing of the Red Sea, which were considered types of Baptism: Nella tribuna fu posta la tela a olio, alta braccia 15 e larga 13, ove era il Battesimo di Nostro Signore, e dalle bande in una il Diluvio, nell'altra gli Ebrei che passano il Mar Rosso, figure amendue del Battesimo. La pittura fu di Giorgio Vasari.6 (In the tribune was placed an oil painting, fifteen braccia high and thirteen braccia wide, depicting the baptism of our Lord; on one side was The Deluge and on the other The Crossing of the Red Sea, both of them types of baptism. The paintings were by Giorgio Vasari.)
Vincenzo Borghini's description of the 1577 baptism details these works at greater length, noting that they were accompanied by inscriptions from SS. Peter and Paul designating them as prototypes of baptism: Nelle guance, e piegatura di questa Cappella, e Tribuna maggiore, sono state fatte d'ordine del medesimo maestro [Vasari] due grandi historie similmente colorite, nelle quali si rappresentano quelle due, che per testimonio de' due principali Apostoli, furono figure, et ombra del S. Battesimo. . . . Nell'altra historia, che è dirimpetto a questa, e della medesima grandezza, si vede il passaggio del Popolo Israelitico, per lo mare rosso. . . . E che ciò fusse segno, e figura del Battesimo, lo dichiarò San Paulo nelle parole, che a pie di detta historia si legono: Baptizati svnt in nvbe, et in mari.7 (To the sides of the Tribune were two large istorie, also in chiaroscuro, painted by the same master [Vasari], depicting the two subjects that, according to the two main apostles, were types of baptism. . . . In the other istoria, which is opposite
Page 217 this one [The Deluge] and of the same size, one can see the crossing of the Hebrew people through the Red Sea. . . . That this event was a sign and type of baptism was also declared by S. Paul in the words that can be read below the painting: "They are baptized in the cloud and in the sea.")
This example of typology is particularly relevant to the Chapel of Eleonora because it was a Medici commission exactly contemporaneous with Bronzino's painting of the Moses frescoes. The decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora was similar in some respects to each of these contemporary examples of typological decoration, but different from all of them in that it was devoted exclusively to stories of Moses. Beginning with St. Paul's characterization of him (Hebrews 9:18–27, 11:23) and continuing through early Christian and medieval exegetical writings, Moses had been the preeminent typus Christi, or type of Christ. In fact, the prevailing view of the Old Testament as prophecy was largely based on analogies made in the New Testament between events from Exodus (the Crossing of the Red Sea, the Brazen Serpent, the Fall of Manna, and Moses Striking the Rock) and the Passion of Christ, as well as the sacraments of the Eucharist and baptism. 8 In the patristic tradition, Exodus 12, which tells of the Crossing of the Red Sea, was the paschal text par excellence, and the epic of the deliverance from Egypt itself prefigured the Redemption and the sacraments of the Church.9 Because of this Christological and sacramental typology, Moses had been represented more prominently and frequently than other Old Testament patriarchs from early Christian times, when he was depicted in the art of the catacombs, in mosaics, and on sarcophagi.10 The earliest illustrations of Old Testament narratives that were accessible to the Renaissance artist were those on sarcophagi, where Moses, as a typus Christi, was the most commonly depicted patriarch after Jonah, popular as a type of the resurrected Christ. A number of sarcophagi were decorated entirely with scenes of Moses, such as one with the Crossing of the Red Sea (Fig. 146).11 Moses was also presented as a type of Christ in monumental cycles in basilicas such as Old St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and S. Maria Maggiore and in other works such as the doors of S. Sabina, where eight miracles of Moses and Christ are paired, including Moses Striking the Rock and the Crossing of the Red Sea (Fig. 147).12
Page 218
Figure 146 Early Christian sarcophagus, The Crossing of the Red Sea. Musei Vaticani.
Figure 147 The Crossing of the Red Sea. Rome, doors of S. Sabina.
Page 219
In spite of this venerable tradition, Moses was seldom represented in the Renaissance, although he was, of course, included in Old Testament cycles such as Gozzoli's ruined frescoes of 1467–84 in the Camposanto at Pisa, where there are four Moses stories, or Raphael's Logge in the Vatican, where there are two bays devoted to Moses. 13 The selection of Moses as a theme for a midsixteenthcentury chapel decoration (indeed, the choice of any Old Testament subject at all) was most unusual, and no chapel before Eleonora's had been exclusively devoted to him. One chapel decoration featuring Moses, however, was an important precedent for Bronzino, both for its Old Testament–New Testament typology and for its use of Moses as an exemplar for the chapel's patron. The frescoes painted for Sixtus IV in the Sistine Chapel are the most sustained appearance of the patriarch in Renaissance painting. Two of the scenes, Sandro Botticelli's Moses in Egypt and Midian and Rosselli's Crossing of the Red Sea, show the righttoleft sequence of the cycle on the left nave wall (Fig. 148). The commission called for eight stories of Moses, paired with scenes, opposite them, from the life of Christ, a scheme that harks back to early Christian cycles like those of Old St. Peter's and S. Maria Maggiore. This typological scheme is explicated by tituli over each painting.14 As in the Sistine Chapel cycle, Bronzino's frescoes present Moses as a typus Christi, alluding to the New Testament and to the theme of salvation. The Chapel of Eleonora, as a typical midcinquecento chapel with typological content, however, has no corresponding New Testament subjects and no inscriptions over its Old Testament scenes; thus the typological correspondences between Moses and Christ are not spelled out; the viewer is left, much as in the cycles in the Chapel of the Bastie d'Urfé (see Fig. 144) and Pisa cathedral, to make the connection between these scenes and the Lamentation altarpiece. In Florence, Siena, and Pisa in the 1520s and 1530s Moses subjects were sometimes represented, for reasons that remain unclear. Some of these works, such as Perino del Vaga's Crossing of the Red Sea, a large chiaroscuro painted in 1523 for Raffaello di Sandro, chaplain of S. Lorenzo (Fig. 149), and Rosso's Moses and the Daughters of Jethro, painted for Giovanni Bandini in the same year (see Fig. 76), have no demonstrably typological context.15 Others are Old Testament narrative cycles in which a typological meaning is implicit. In 1525 Jacone and Bachiacca decorated an arch in Piazza S. Felice with nine Old Testament paintings— according to Vasari, "la maggior parte de' fatti di Mosè" (the majority on the deeds
Page 220
Figure 148 Cosimo Rosselli, The Crossing of the Red Sea and Sandro Botticelli, Moses in Egypt and Midian. Vatican, Sistine Chapel
Figure 149 Perino del Vaga, The Crossing of the Red Sea. Uffizi.
Page 221
of Moses). 16 Bachiacca later painted two panels, Moses Striking the Rock (Edinburgh, National Gallery) and The Gathering of Manna (Washington, National Gallery), apparently based on these lost ephemera.17 And Beccafumi was also occupied with the theme in the Old Testament cycle in the black and white marble pavimento of Siena cathedral: in 1524–25 he designed the frieze Moses Striking the Rock (Fig. 150), which is placed toward the altar because of its typological
Page 222
Figure 150 Domenico Beccafumi, Moses Striking the Rock. Siena cathedral.
reference to the Sacrament; and in 1529 he completed the large Scenes of Moses on Mt. Sinai next to it, an arrangement that suggests a giant altarpiece with its predella. 18 Finally, in the 1530s the elaborate Old Testament cycle in the apse of Pisa cathedral that I have mentioned was undertaken. The Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock, and the Brazen Serpent The decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora exemplifies the traditional linking of the Old and New Testaments in the context of the Passion and the sacraments. Among the individual frescoes in the chapel, the linked scenes of Moses' miracles in the desert—the Gathering of Manna and the Striking of the Rock (see Plate 8)—are the most clearly typological. Indeed, whenever these particular episodes appear together (beginning as early as the fourthcentury doors of S. Sabina), their symbolic meaning is understood, for one prefigures the bread, the other the wine, of the Eucharist.19 The eucharistic prefiguration of the manna is drawn from one of the key texts in the literature of the Sacrament, the passage in the Gospel of St. John where Christ promises salvation through the Eucharist and compares himself with the manna: I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it
Page 223 and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh. 20
This fresco, then, alludes to the Eucharist, and to the chapel's eucharistic Lamentation. There are three episodes in the story in Exodus 16:13–36—the fall, the gathering, and the reservation of the manna. Bronzino shows all of these, emphasizing, however, the gathering and reservation of the manna, which allude to the reception and reservation of the Sacrament. All but one of the scene's ten figures are depicted in the act of gathering the manna and placing it in receptacles; the eucharistic significance of the scene is underscored by the punctilious description of the manna itself and by the reverence of the women and children who catch it in their aprons before it falls to the ground.21 Bronzino shows no fewer than six urns and basins for the reservation of the manna, including the great golden urn held up by the prominent nude in the foreground; he wears elegant buskins like those of Moses himself in The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua (see Plate 6) and has his mantle pulled over his head as a sign of respect for his task. This man must be Aaron, commanded by Moses to collect manna in the urn, which was then placed in the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 16:33–34; ''in tabernaculo reservandum"). Aaron, carrying a large urn, must have been a similarly imposing figure (now much damaged) in Battista Franco's Gathering of Manna at Pisa (see Fig. 145), which may have been a source for Bronzino's depiction. In the New Testament, the "golden urn holding the manna" (Hebrews 9:4) was considered a physical symbol of the Old Covenant, as contrasted with the spiritual symbols of the New. The priest Aaron, then, prefigured the priest who reserves the Eucharist after the Mass, placing it in a tabernacle of the Sacrament.22 As a result of this typology, the Gathering of Manna and other subjects relating to the Sacrament were often placed next to the altar in chapel cycles. This is the case with Franco's painting in Pisa, with Sicolante's in the Chapel of the Bastie d'Urfé (see Fig. 144), and also with Salviati's Moses and Aaron before the Tabernacle of 1548–49 in the Chapel of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (Rome, Palazzo della Cancelleria), where The Gathering of Manna is painted on the vault over the altar, with St. Paul Displaying the Eucharist on the opposite wall.23 Bronzino's Manna fresco is thus appropriately located next to the altar of the Chapel of Eleonora, where Mass was celebrated and where the Sacrament may have been reserved.
Page 224
Moses Striking the Rock, the second miracle of Moses in the wilderness, is told in Exodus 17:4–7 following the Gathering of Manna. 24 This subject had important typological associations with both the Eucharist and baptism. The eucharistic prefiguration is taken from St. Paul (1 Corinthians 10:4), for whom the rock was Christ: "All [our fathers] ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink. For they drank from the supernatural Rock which followed them, and the Rock was Christ."25 This typology was elaborated in the Middle Ages in such a way that the water prefigured the blood flowing from Christ's side, the subject being paired in the Biblia pauperum with the crucified Christ pierced by the soldier's lance.26 A typological association of Bronzino's Moses Striking the Rock with Christ's wounding by the lance resonates in the chapel, where the lance itself is displayed in the upper part of the altarpiece, held by an angel on a line directly above the wound in Christ's chest (see Plate 11), and where the impaling of Christ is reenacted in St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata (see Plate 17). In the water flowing from the rock, the church fathers also saw a type of the water of the baptismal rite, and Moses Striking the Rock was interpreted as a prefiguration of baptism. Indeed, with the Deluge and the Crossing of the Red Sea, it is one of the great water subjects of the Old Testament, all of which were taken as types of baptism and hence of salvation. In art this typology goes back to early Christian catacombs and to sarcophagi, where Moses Striking the Rock was the most frequently depicted Old Testament episode (the Gathering of Manna, however, does not appear at all).27 Sarcophagus representations of Moses Striking the Rock were an important source for Bronzino.28 Typically, the subject is shown on sarcophagi as a vertically composed scene, with the figures piled one atop the other in a compressed space, with an oftenrepeated motif of drinkers at Moses' feet. All these features are seen in Bronzino's fresco (see Plate 8). Another stock figure in these sarcophagi that appears in an example at the Vatican (Fig. 151)29 is a man behind Moses who raises his hands in wonder at the miracle; this too Bronzino repeated. The subject of Moses Striking the Rock was uncommon in earlier Renaissance art (it is not included in Gozzoli's cycle in the Pisa Camposanto or in that of the Sistine Chapel, for example); in the first Moses bay of Raphael's Logge, however, Moses Striking the Rock is juxtaposed with The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel at the Well, and both are presented as prefigurations of baptism, alluded to by a Baptism of Christ.30 Among works contemporary with Bronzino's chapel decoration,
Page 225
Figure 151 Early Christian sarcophagus, Moses Striking the Rock, detail, Moses and other figures. Musei Vaticani.
Moses Striking the Rock is represented in Bachiacca's painting of the subject in Edinburgh; he, too, includes the supine drinker and the awestruck man. 31 The drinker also appears in Beccafumi's pavimento (see Fig. 150), where Vasari singled it out for praise.32 In these depictions of the episode from the 1530s, as in Bronzino's fresco, the emphasis has shifted from Moses himself to the eager crowd of people who look with wonder at the water and enjoy its benefits. The eucharistic prefiguration of Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna was heightened by the addition to this wall of Allori's Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe (see Fig. 38), an explicit emblem of the Eucharist that suggests how central the chapel's eucharistic theme was considered to be by its Medici patrons. Allori depicted a globe (with Italy at its center) partly covered by a curtain held up by two angels. The angels also hold an ornate gold chalice marked
Page 226
Figure 152 Alessandro Allori, The Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock. S. Maria Novella.
with a cross; 33 suspended above it is a large host stamped with a representation of the Crucifixion and inscribed AGNUS DEI.34 In 1581–84, just after painting this sopraporta, Allori depicted these same Old Testament types of the Eucharist in a large lunette in the refectory at S. Maria Novella (Fig. 152).35 He made drawings after Bronzino's frescoes on the chapel's north wall, and he incorporated a number of his master's ideas into his own, more obviously eucharistic, fresco.36 Moses Striking the Rock is represented to the sides of the lunette and the Gathering of Manna above, with inscriptions (from Psalm
Page 227
Figure 153 Alessandro Allori, study for The Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock and The Last Supper. Uffizi.
77:15–16, 24) identifying the subjects: above the Gathering of Manna, PANEM COELI (bread of heaven); below Moses Striking the Rock, EDVXIT TAMQVAM FLVMINA AQVAS . . . (He made streams of water flow like rivers [from the rock]) and PLVIT ILLIS MANNA AD MANDVCANDVM (He rained down upon them manna to eat). At the center of the lunette was a panel painting by Allori of the Last Supper. It has been removed, but his preparatory drawing shows the typological ensemble as he originally planned it, with the two Old Testament types of the Sacrament above the New Testament scene (Fig. 153). 37
Page 228
The emphasis on the theme of the Sacrament in the Chapel of Eleonora decoration—especially in the altarpiece, which I have characterized as a eucharistic Lamentation; the north wall frescoes, which show types of the Eucharist; and even Allori's later addition—raises the question of the chapel's dedication. Was it a chapel of the Sacrament? On the basis of the subjects depicted in the decoration, Maurice Cope did not hesitate to include it in his study of sixteenthcentury chapels dedicated to the Sacrament, emphasizing that chapels of the Sacrament like Palma Giovane's Sacristy of S. Giacomo dall'Orio of 1575 (a eucharistic cycle with an Entombment altarpiece and depictions of the Red Sea, the Brazen Serpent, and the Gathering of Manna) are decorated with such subjects. 38 This is certainly possible, but the suggestion raises more questions than it answers. Although contemporary sources designate no chapel in the Palazzo as dedicated to the Sacrament (the Chapel of the Priors was dedicated to S. Bernardino; Cosimo's chapel was dedicated in 1558 to SS. Cosmas and Damian), the Sacrament must have been reserved in the Priors' chapel, at least before Eleonora's was built, and that function may have been transferred to the Chapel of Eleonora—appropriately decorated with eucharistic themes—in the 1540s. In general, however, chapels began to be formally designated as chapels of the Sacrament only after the proliferation of the CounterReformation theme of the veneration of the Eucharist (exemplified in Allori's sopraporta). Moreover, we lack documentation: if Eleonora's chapel was actually dedicated to the Sacrament (or to the Corpus Domini), the Sacrament would have been reserved there. Papal dispensation would have been required for such a chapel, and there is no record of any. Furthermore, there is no payment or inventory record of a tabernacle specifically for Eleonora's chapel, which would have been essential for a chapel of the Sacrament.39 The question of the dedication thus remains open.40 The story of the Brazen Serpent, the third of the miracles in the desert that Bronzino depicted in the chapel (see Plate 7), is told in Numbers 21:6–9. It was traditionally interpreted as a type of the Crucifixion, a typology drawn from John 3:14: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." The Israelites saved by the healing serpent were thus read as prefiguring the spiritual healing and salvation of man by Christ.41 Bronzino's model for this fresco, Michelangelo's spandrel in the Sistine Chapel (see Fig. 73), is one of four scenes of the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites
Page 229
by God—all to be read as types of salvation. In the typological context of the Chapel of Eleonora, Bronzino's allusions to the New Testament are much more pointed, and he departed from the biblical text so as to evoke the Crucifixion with unusual vividness. The text gives no specific setting for the event; Bronzino, however, placed the scene atop a hill that suggests Golgotha. According to Numbers 21:9, "the Lord said to Moses, 'Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.'" 42 However, Bronzino's serpent is wound about an unusually prominent, boldly silhouetted cross. The Crucifixion is also evoked by the swooning woman who is held up by another (see Plate 23), a vignette that recalls the Virgin at the foot of the cross. The position of this fresco opposite the altar also relates to its prefiguration of the Crucifixion. The observer entering the chapel literally passes under the Old Testament type of the Crucifixion while looking toward the sacrificed Christ in the Lamentation altarpiece.43 The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua The typology of the Crossing of the Red Sea, the major episode represented on the chapel's south wall, is more complex than that of the three Moses episodes I have just discussed. The story of the Exodus was understood primarily as a type of salvation. Here, as elsewhere, Moses is a typus Christi, and his leading the Israelites from bondage was thought to prophesy Christ's redemption of mankind. Because of its water symbolism, the subject was also held to prefigure baptism, the initiation rite that took place in early Christian times on Easter and was thus intimately bound with both Moses' deliverance of the Jews from Egypt and Christ's deliverance of mankind by his Crucifixion. This dual interpretation was drawn from St. Paul (1 Corinthians 10:12): "I want you to know, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea."44 As a scene of salvation with these profound typological associations, the Crossing of the Red Sea had a long representational history. It was the most ambitious narrative attempted on early Christian sarcophagi, often occupying the entire front panel. In a sarcophagus in the Vatican, for example, we see the classic presentation of the story, with the Egyptians drowning to the left and Moses and the Israelites arriving safely to the right (see Fig. 146).45 The subject was also included in Old Testament cycles in Rome such as the mosaics in S. Maria Maggiore and the S. Sabina doors (see Fig.
Page 230
Figure 154 Titian, The Crossing of the Red Sea (woodcut). London, British Museum.
147). Its typological associations with baptism and salvation persisted in Renaissance art. For example, the Crossing of the Red Sea is a figure of salvation in Andrea Previtali's Chapel of the Pregadi, painted in 1515 in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, where (as in the Speculum humanae salvationis) the subject is paired with a New Testament scene of salvation, Christ in Limbo; 46 in the same year it was depicted as a type of baptism in Raphael's Vatican Logge.47 In the Sistine Chapel, however, where the theme of papal primacy dictated a differently focused programme, Rosselli's Red Sea (see Fig. 148) and Domenico Ghirlandaio's Christ Calling SS. Peter and Andrew are paired typologically as examples of the Old and New Laws.48 The Crossing of the Red Sea was also represented in the Renaissance in Old Testament cycles such as Gozzoli's frescoes in the Pisa Camposanto. Less commonly, the subject was combined with other Moses episodes;49 and there were
Page 231
Figure 155 Hieronymous Cock, engraving after a version of Bronzino's Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua. Uffizi.
occasional independent representations such as Titian's great woodcut of about 1515 (Fig. 154) 50 and Perino's chiaroscuro (see Fig. 149). The Crossing of the Red Sea, as recounted in Exodus, includes three distinct episodes, all of which Bronzino depicted (see Plate 6). The first, the preparation of the Israelites for their flight from Egypt (Exodus 12:33–39), was not commonly represented in Moses cycles.51 Bronzino shows the preparation in the center foreground, where three youths face to the left, and in the left foreground, where there is a man with two women, each of whom is accompanied by a child. This scene is clearly one of departure: the three youths, their backs turned on the group to the right, look and gesture toward the water; the man has already begun to walk to the left, as can be seen in Bronzino's drawing for him and in the engraving after the fresco published by Hieronymous Cock about 1550 (Fig. 155),52 both of which show his left leg crossed behind the right as if to take a step.
Page 232
The man has taken the arm of the woman next to him as if to help her rise; she looks up expectantly at him, the nursing of her child interrupted. To the right of this woman are a silver ewer and a gold basin, which must be intended to represent the spoils of the Egyptians—"the jewelry of silver and gold" that is described in the biblical text (Exodus 12:35). 53 The most telling detail in this scene is the soft tied bundle on the man's head. This may be Bronzino's rendering of the unleavened bread dough and kneading bowls mentioned in Exodus as carried by the Israelites in their haste to depart: "So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their mantles on their shoulders" (Exodus 12:34; see also 12:39). This detail seems to have been adapted by Bronzino from a Red Sea sarcophagus—perhaps the one in the Vatican—where a man to the far right, who holds a child by the wrist (much as Bronzino's man holds the woman), has a tied bundle around his neck (see Fig. 146).54 Bronzino has merely shifted the object to the man's head. The unleavened bread carried by this man may have a symbolic significance. He is the compositional counterpart of the man holding the golden urn directly across the chapel in The Gathering of Manna (see Plate 26). The man with the urn is Aaron and his urn contains the manna prefiguring the Eucharist. The contrasting pair of figures thus evokes the transformation of the humble bread of the fleeing Israelites into the symbolic "bread of heaven." The second episode in the Exodus is the drowning of the pharaoh's army, and the third is the safe arrival of the Israelites on the opposite shore (Exodus 14:21–29), which Bronzino depicted to the right behind the large foreground figures (Fig. 156). One of the Israelites carries the tied bread bundle, thus linking this scene with that of the departure, and a camel emerging from the water with the group identifies the locale (and may allude to the forthcoming wanderings of the Israelites in the desert). Moses is recognizable as the whitebearded man in blue at the water's edge. He does not hold his rod over the water, as in some sixteenthcentury representations (see Figs. 149 and 154), but follows an older tradition, exemplified in the S. Sabina doors (see Fig. 147); his hands are outstretched in an ancient attitude of prayer.55 To the far right, cut off by the fresco's frame, Bronzino shows the celebratory dance of Miriam and her companions (Exodus 15:1–21). The closing of the waters over the pharaoh's army and the arrival of the Israelites in the background of Bronzino's fresco follow the usual lefttoright sequence of the action and conform with the traditional iconography of the subject derived
Page 233
Figure 156 Chapel of Eleonora, The Crossing of the Red Sea, detail, the arrival of the Israelites.
Page 234
from sarcophagi (see Fig. 146). In most representations of the Crossing of the Red Sea that I have cited (an exception is the Sistine Chapel fresco, which reads from right to left because of the narrative sequence of the scenes; see Fig. 148), the picture space is divided between the drowning of the pharaoh's army to the left and the arrival of the Israelites on the right. The group gathered around Moses in the right foreground of Bronzino's fresco, however, has no precedent in representations of the Crossing of the Red Sea. The seated Moses is the largest of the three depictions of the patriarch in the cycle; he holds his rod, points at the blond youth in front of him, and is surrounded by a circle of Israelites intent on his action. As I have suggested in an earlier study, this scene does not even belong to the story of the Crossing but depicts Moses appointing Joshua as his successor. 56 The scene I identify as Moses appointing Joshua has been read as part of the Crossing of the Red Sea since Vasari described the fresco as representing ''quando [Moisè] passa il Mare Rosso, e la sommersione di Faraone,"57 naming only one of the two scenes represented here—just as his description of the wall opposite mentions only The Gathering of Manna (see Plate 8).58 That two scenes are represented here as in the fresco on the north wall is indicated by the discontinuous composition, the separation of background and foreground, and the appearance of Moses in two places. Furthermore, the group to the lower right is unconnected with either the arrival or the celebration of the passage in the right background and is separated from the departure scene by a clearly marked caesura: the scene is cut off from the Red Sea by a wall, and not one of the people grouped around Moses looks toward the sea. Indeed, Moses' pointing gesture carries the action forward toward the blond youth, whom I identify as Joshua, who in turn gestures out of the painting away from the sea. In fact, even the time frame of this scene seems not to be that of the rest of the fresco. Moses is dressed differently here—in rich purple and gold robes and elaborate goldlaced blue buskins. And, unlike the Moses of the background arrival scene, he is depicted with the rays of God's light emanating from his head. These properly belong to Moses only after his second descent from Mt. Sinai with the Tablets of the Law.59 Admittedly, the rays were used indiscriminately by Renaissance artists in depicting the patriarch; the contrast between the two Moses figures in this fresco is striking, however, and Bronzino may have intended it to indicate that the foreground scene should be read as taking place after the Exodus. The story of Joshua's appointment, one of the last acts of Moses and one of crucial importance for Israel, is related twice in the Old Testament. In Deuteron
Page 235
omy (31:7–8, 14–15, 23) it is simply said that when Moses was dying he summoned Joshua to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, but in Numbers (27:18–23) the story is recounted in greater detail: And the Lord said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand on him; cause him to stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight. You shall invest him with some of your authority, that all the congregation of the people of Israel may obey. And he shall stand before Eleazar the priest, who shall inquire for him by the judgement of the Urim before the Lord; at his word they shall go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he and all the people of Israel with him, the whole congregation." And Moses did as the Lord commanded him; he took Joshua and caused him to stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole congregation, and he laid his hands upon him, and commissioned him as the Lord directed through Moses.
The investiture scene has various iconographical traditions, including the laying on of hands, Moses giving his rod to Joshua, and Moses pointing to Joshua. 60 The subject is rare in Renaissance art, but it received monumental treatment in the Sistine Chapel in Signorelli's fresco, The Last Acts and Death of Moses (Fig. 157).61 There, Moses (with prominent golden rays emanating from his head) hands his golden rod to Joshua, and the priest Eleazar stands behind the kneeling youth. Bronzino seems to have based his scene on Signorelli's representation. Allowing for the different stylistic conventions of the cinquecento (the stock Maniera gesture of Moses and the repoussoir figures who close the circle in front of him), the two scenes are remarkably similar—even to the triangular arrangement of the three principals, the group of four spectators to the right behind Moses, and the two between him and Eleazar. Like Signorelli's priest, Bronzino's Eleazar is bearded, holds a book, and points to Moses as if to signal the import of his action. But, most significant, Joshua as painted by both Signorelli and Bronzino is young and blond, reflecting a traditional type of the youthful prophet depicted without his usual military attributes, but with the diadem that is his attribute as the leader of the Israelites to the Promised Land.62 If Bronzino's fresco on the south wall of the chapel actually represents the episode of Moses appointing Joshua as well as the Crossing of the Red Sea, then
Page 236
Figure 157 Luca Signorelli, The Last Acts and Death of Moses, detail, Moses appointing Joshua. Vatican, Sistine Chapel.
it reads quite differently in the context of the chapel's religious imagery. It was Joshua to whom Moses gave the law; thus the subject of Moses appointing Joshua is a lawgiving episode, which introduces into the cycle a crucial aspect of Moses' epic. Moses Appointing Joshua also becomes the climactic scene in the cycle. In the chapel the Moses narrative would then begin on the south wall with the Exodus, moving counterclockwise and chronologically through the three scenes of Moses' miracles in the wilderness and concluding at the near end of the same wall with the appointment of Joshua. 63 This last scene suggests the future and the ar
Page 237
rival of the Israelites in the Promised Land. It also underscores the typological theme of the whole chapel decoration, for as the New Testament fulfilled the Old, so Joshua followed Moses, and both were types of Christ. As Moses' successor, Joshua looks back at Moses and to the past of the Old Covenant, pointing out of the painting toward the future—the New Covenant and the Redemption, represented in the chapel's altarpiece of the Lamentation.
Page 238
Chapter Eight— The Saints of the Vault Bronzino painted the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora as a vision of heaven (see Plate 5). Its blue sky, garlands, saints in their compartments, and putti marking the corners reflect the imagery of the traditional "dome of heaven" inherited by the Renaissance from early Christian art. 1 But the way Bronzino has realized this ancient imagery is anything but traditional. The presence of God is symbolized by the radiance emanating from the central medallion, which inspires and illumines the saints—particularly Francis and Jerome, who direct their ecstatic gazes toward the light. The mortal nature of these saints (and of St. John) is stressed by their subordination to the supernatural light, in contrast to the Archangel Michael, who simply exists within it. By replacing the landscape against which the episodes of the three saints were traditionally depicted in Renaissance art with blue sky and billowing clouds, Bronzino raised the saints to the heavenly realm of the archangel. Traditionally, quadripartite vault decorations in family chapels such as Eleonora's were decorated with prophetic figures such as Old Testament prophets or sibyls, who foretold the coming of Christ. If saints were selected instead, the usual choice was the four evangelists—witnesses to the Incarnation—as in the Chapel of the Priors in the Palazzo (see Fig. 15). But the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora depicts four diverse saints, whose relationships to one another are not immediately apparent. Why were they chosen?
Page 239
The personal preference of the chapel's Medici patrons might explain the choice, but neither the names of the vault saints nor their feast days figure in the lives of Cosimo and Eleonora, and, with the exception of St. Francis (see Chapter 12), none of them seems to have had personal significance for the ducal couple. Three of the saints, however, had Medicean associations and had been depicted often in earlier Medici art. St. Francis had long been associated with the family, beginning with Cosimo il Vecchio's patronage of Michelozzo's monastery Church of the Zoccoli di S. Francesco (near the Medici Villa Cafaggiolo) and of the Chapel of the Novitiates (1434–45) in S. Croce. St. Francis had appeared regularly in Medici altarpieces of the quattrocento, along with the other family saints Cosmas, Damian, and Lorenzo (and, sometimes, Jerome). St. John the Evangelist was the patron saint of Giovanni di Bicci, founder of the two branches of the family, from each of which Duke Cosimo was descended (see Fig. 17). The Old Sacristy in S. Lorenzo was dedicated to the evangelist, and Donatello decorated it with reliefs of his stories. St. Jerome, in vogue as a patron of humanism in late quattrocento Florence, was the subject of a number of paintings owned by the Medici at that time, perhaps indicating a special devotion to him. 2 Such an interest was explicitly demonstrated by Cosimo il Vecchio, who had the church and convent of the Order of the Eremite di S. Girolamo (the Hieronymites, reformers of the Third Order of St. Francis) in Fiesole rebuilt in 1450.3 A sacra conversazione by a follower of Fra Angelico (Avignon, Petit Palais), which bears the Medici arms and shows Jerome with the other Medici saints Francis, Lorenzo, Cosmas, and Damian, was probably commissioned by Cosimo for the church in the 1450s.4 The Medici continued to be the recognized protectors of the Hieronymite order, and Duke Cosimo revived Medicean patronage of the Hieronymite church built by his ancestor at exactly the time when Bronzino was painting the chapel vault. In its cloister he erected a large well, which bore his arms and was inscribed COSMVS MEDICES FLORENT DVX II MDXLI.5 In spite of the connection between three of the vault saints and the Medici, the pattern breaks down with St. Michael, who had not previously played a role in their art. Thus we must seek other reasons for this particular combination of saints and for their inclusion in the decoration. Michael Levey has observed that the saints are exemplars of "four types of sanctity: Archangel, Evangelist, Father of the Church, and a modern saint."6 Some such scheme seems to have been intended, but the chapel's saints are not just diverse types; they represent four classes of saints as determined by the Church: angel (Michael), evangelist (John), doctor
Page 240
(Jerome), and confessor (Francis). This suggests that they were chosen to represent a microcosmic history of the Church in the small space of the chapel, an idea that might be confirmed by the presence in the original wings of the altarpiece of representatives of two further classes of sainthood: prophet (John the Baptist) and martyr (Cosmas). If a presentation of the broad theme of sainthood was in fact intended here, it might be significant that the saints are also arranged historically: like the Moses narratives they proceed counterclockwise, from St. Michael over the altar to St. Francis over the south wall, representing successive eras in the history of salvation. In this sense, the vault might also be seen to echo the "history" presented on the altar wall, with its prophets of the Passion, its image of the sacrificed Christ, and its saintly witnesses. But these general considerations do not tell us why a particular angel, evangelist, doctor, and confessor were selected for the vault. Why Michael, John, Jerome, and Francis? How do these saints relate to the chapel's themes of prophecy and fulfillment, of the Passion of Christ, and of the sacraments? Some indicators are found in the relationship between each saint and the painting on the wall below him. Presiding over the altar, the archangel Michael occupies the most prominent position on the vault (see Plate 3). St. Michael is the weigher of souls and guardian of the elect at the Last Judgment (Daniel 5:27; 12:1), a theme that connects him with the representation, directly below him in the Lamentation, of angels carrying the instruments of the Passion, a motif often depicted in the Last Judgment. Bronzino shows St. Michael here with the scales in his left hand, a soul praying for protection at his right, and another soul under his left arm, enveloped in his cloak (see Plate 16). The spandrels on either side of the saint expand on his actions. Justice, whose attributes of the unsheathed sword and the scales suggest an emblem of divine justice (see Plate 13), comments on the saint as judge in the weighing of souls. Fortitude (see Fig. 37) comments on the strength of the angelic victor over the Devil. After producing his modello for the vault (see Plate 15), Bronzino changed the design of St. Michael to emphasize the saint's iconographic links with the altar wall and heighten the contrast between him and the other vault saints. Whereas the foreshortening and illusionism of the vault saints is more accentuated in the fresco than in the modello and their gazes are shifted up toward the heavenly radiance, Bronzino made none of these changes in St. Michael. Moreover, the
Page 241
repeated diagonals of the figure echo those of David and the Sibyl below, a link reinforced by the saint's downward gaze to the right, which leads the observer's eye down to the altar wall. A last connection between Michael and the altar wall is his relation to the prophecy of the Resurrection inscribed below him. As the angel who will sound the last trumpet at the resurrection of the dead (1 Corinthians 15:52), Michael also signals Christ's Resurrection. Perhaps Michael's association with this event accounts for a curious detail in Bronzino's representation of him—the caterpillar that is prominently displayed on his left shoulder. The chrysalis of the caterpillar that will become a butterfly is a traditional symbol of the Resurrection. 7 The theme of the Resurrection is echoed in the upwardspiraling poses and ecstatic upward gazes of the two putti flanking Michael (see Plates 20–21), especially the one on the right, who stands directly above the Sibyl's Resurrection prophecy. And even the fruits on the garlands behind them carry out the theme: the putto to the left stands over a large open pomegranate and three pears, the latter a fruit of Christ and the former a common symbol of the Resurrection, as is the gourd between the legs of the putto to the right.8 Besides emphasizing important themes of the altarwall paintings over which he presides, St. Michael embodies the continuity between the Old and New Testaments that is fundamental to the chapel's imagery. As the only saint who appears in the Old Testament, Michael was considered the protector of the Hebrew nation and was associated with the salvation of the Israelites as their military defender.9 He appears, for example, as the angel who led the Exodus (Exodus 14:19), and he is featured in the story of Joshua, whom he supported with drawn sword at Jericho (Joshua 5:13–15). St. Michael is also connected directly with Moses through the story of his dispute with the Devil over the body of the patriarch.10 Finally, the saint sums up the theme of Redemption in the chapel. In his fight with the devil and his casting out of the rebel angels Michael is a type of Christ, foreshadowing Christ's salvation of mankind. The text for this subject is taken from the Apocalypse of St. John the Evangelist, who writes of the conflict at the end of time that reflects the battle in heaven at the beginning of time (Revelation 12:7–9): Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down,
Page 242 that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
St. John is represented on the vault next to St. Michael, and his vision of the archangel—indeed, the apocalyptic theme—may have been seen as a link between the two saints. The stories of the remaining saints—John, Jerome, and Francis—placed over the chapel's frescoes echo the themes of exile, spiritual isolation, and divine intervention that are found in the epic of Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. Like their Old Testament predecessors—and like St. John the Baptist of the altar wall, all three saints are shown in the symbolic wilderness, where they join in communion with God and are rewarded for their faith. But they also relate to the New Testament, for each of these saints has a special connection with the Passion of Christ, hence to the theme of the chapel's altarpiece: St. John witnesses the Passion in his Gospel, St. Jerome meditates on it, and St. Francis relives it. Moreover, each was considered a eucharistic saint—John for his writings about the Sacrament, Jerome for the story of his last Communion, and Francis for his devotion to the Sacrament. 11 St. John is portrayed as the aged evangelist in exile on Patmos writing the book of Revelation as he turns to the eagle, symbol of his divine inspiration (see Plate 19). As author of the Apocalypse—a reinterpretation of the Old Testament in light of the New—John exemplifies the chapel's theme of prophecy and fulfillment.12 The saint's writings are also closely related to the typological meanings of the Moses stories on the chapel walls. John repeatedly mentions Moses as a prototype of Christ, beginning with the general statement "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth come through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17; see also 5:45–47; 7:19–22). And John's Gospel was the major source for typological connections between the stories of Moses and the Israelites, the Passion of Christ (John 17–19), and the sacraments. Finally, since his Gospel is the most direct testimony to the Passion and the most extensive exposition of the doctrine of the Eucharist (John 6), John is also related to the New Testament images in the chapel's altarpiece. Like John, St. Jerome echoes the Mosaic theme of isolation in the wilderness. Bronzino heightened this theme as he evolved the figure: in the modello, the saint gazes in adoration at a crucifix placed slightly in front of him (see Plate 15); in the
Page 243
fresco the crucifix is omitted and Jerome looks directly up into the supernatural radiance above (see Plate 18). This change serves to emphasize more forcefully the message of divine aid to the faithful, echoing the theme of God's intervention in the Moses scenes below. The omission of the cross (most unusual in representations of this subject) also makes it clear that St. Jerome is to be read together with The Brazen Serpent beneath and the Lamentation opposite. As we have seen, the prominent cross in The Brazen Serpent emphasizes the subject as a type of the Crucifixion. This cross is directly under the saint (see Plate 4), and the depiction of another cross with him would be redundant. Moreover, his pose, with its planar arrangement of the torso and outstretched arms, imitates that of the crucified Christ. St. Jerome himself thus becomes a living crucifix, relating to the imagery recalling the Crucifixion in the altarpiece across the chapel from him. Jerome is also closely connected with St. Francis, represented in the adjacent compartment of the vault (see Plate 5). For Jerome is not portrayed here in his role as a Doctor of the Church but as a penitent hermit, as he appears in the art of the churches and convents of the Hieronymites, who were devoted—as were the Franciscans—to the eremitic life. 13 These two kneeling penitents in the wilderness read as a pair on the vault. Indeed, because of their devotion to the Crucifixion, Jerome and Francis had long been depicted together in Franciscan sacre conversazioni, Entombments, and, especially, Crucifixions. For example, in one by Andrea della Robbia in the Chapel of the Stigmata at La Verna, both saints kneel and look up in ecstasy, as they do in the chapel vault (Fig. 158).14 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata (see Plate 17) is immediately distinguished from the other scenes by being the only one that represents a miracle—the stigmatization, which took place at La Verna in the Casentino (Tuscany) on 12 September 1224. Bronzino first laid out the scene in his modello with St. Francis facing right (toward St. Jerome) and Brother Leo (an apocryphal addition to the event) facing left, shielding his eyes from the divine radiance (see Plate 15). The image of the crucified Christ before which Francis kneels is lightly sketched to the upper right. In the fresco, the two figures are reversed, so that the composition closely resembles traditional Florentine representations of the subject, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio's fresco in the Sassetti Chapel at S. Trinita (Fig. 159). Bronzino transformed his quattrocento model by the sheer monumentality of the figures in relation to their restricted space and by the omission of the usual landscape setting. Moreover, as Millard Meiss has observed, there is an important
Page 244
Figure 158 Andrea della Robbia, Crucifixion. La Verna, Chapel of the Stigmata.
Page 245
Figure 159 Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata. S. Trinita, Sassetti Chapel.
deviation from Bronzino's models in the iconography of this fresco: the crucifix is omitted and the divine radiance alone symbolizes the source of the stigmata and the saint's exaltation. 15 Bronzino has treated St. Francis like St. Jerome; both saints commune directly with the divine radiance, and their spiritual relationship and common devotion to the Crucifixion are emphasized. The multiple connections between St. Francis and the chapel's typological and sacramental themes make St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata the most complex representation on the vault. Among the vault saints only Francis is related typologically to both Christ and Moses, and he thus links the Old and New Testament elements of the chapel's imagery. Francis was held by his followers to be Franciscus alter Christus (another Christ), an identification most dramatically revealed in the miracle of the stigmatization.16 Bronzino's saint, turned almost frontally, his
Page 246
arms outstretched and three of the stigmata revealed, reenacts the Crucifixion, echoing both David's prophecy of the Crucifixion and the dead Christ of the altarpiece. 17
The theme of St. Francis as a new Moses appeared in Franciscan writings immediately following the saint's death in 1226; it was later elaborated, particularly by St. Bonaventure.18 Francis, like Moses, was seen as a religious founder and lawgiver and as a leader of a pilgrimage; indeed, the Franciscan order was conceived as a living extension of the Exodus. St. Bonaventure writes in the Legenda minor: Those who abandon the Egypt of this world can follow Francis with complete confidence; the Cross of Christ will part the waters of the sea for them like Moses' rod, and they will traverse the desert to the promised land of the living, where they will enter by the miraculous power of the Cross, having crossed the Jordan of our human mortality.19
Moreover, through the stigmatization—the very event represented by Bronzino on the vault over The Crossing of the Red Sea—Francis was most closely associated with Moses of the Exodus. His wilderness at La Verna was equated with Moses' desert and the divinely sanctioned Franciscan rule with the Covenant. When Elias of Cortona, vicar general of the order, announced the stigmatization after Francis's death, he proclaimed Francis a new Moses, giving the ''law and the covenant to his people."20 And for St. Bonaventure the stigmatization revealed God's approbation of the Franciscan rule: "He [Francis] had dictated everything as it was revealed to him by God. . . . This was proved by God's own testimony only a short time afterwards when Francis received the stigmata of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the seal of Christ . . . with which he gave the rule and its author his divine approval."21 St. Francis's receipt of the stigmata, then, is the very event that seemed to his followers to prove that he was both a new Moses and Franciscus alter Christus. Finally, St. Francis was traditionally connected in Franciscan thought with all the other saints of the vault. He was linked in his own lifetime with St. Michael, represented in the adjacent panel: before receiving the stigmata, he had retreated to La Verna to observe the vigil of the feast of St. Michael; consequently the Fran
Page 247
Figure 160 Giovanni della Robbia, Lamentation. La Verna, Chapel of the Pietà.
ciscans observed a cult of the archangel that was closely associated with the stigmatization. 22 And he was connected with Jerome and John in Franciscan art works such as Giovanni della Robbia's altarpiece of the Lamentation in the Chapel of the Pietà at La Verna, where SS. Francis, Michael, and Jerome stand behind the Pietà group (which includes St. John the Evangelist) with St. Anthony of Padua (Fig. 160).23 With the exception of the last (who had no cult in Florence), these are the saints of the chapel vault. The fact that Bronzino's saints were among those favored by the Franciscans may have been a factor in the choice of the subjects of the vault, since St. Francis was probably the personal choice of the chapel's patrons (see Chapter 12).
Page 248
In sum, whatever other meanings Bronzino's four saints may have, the scenes in the vault read as graphic tituli above the chapel's walls, each relating to a major theme of the painting below: John, the preeminent eucharistic saint, comments on Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna, types of the Eucharist; Jerome, who adores the crucified Christ, comments on the Brazen Serpent, type of the Crucifixion; Michael alludes to the Resurrection, potential in the dead Christ of the altarpiece and heralded by the Sibyl's prophecy; and Francis, the new Moses, relates to the Exodus. Later changes in the vault decoration—Bronzino's replacement of the MediciToledo stemma with a threeheaded Trinity against a gold background and his addition of fruits and flowers appropriate to the saints in the vault compartments 24—altered the vault's meaning (see Fig. 46).25 The obliteration of the secular coat of arms and the substitution of a traditional emblem of the Trinity accords with the conservative and dogmatic iconography of the other additions made to the chapel decoration after Bronzino completed the first campaign of work in 1545: the altar wings with the Annunciation and the emblematic overdoor, Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe, which makes explicit the central theme of the Sacrament in the chapel's original devotional programme.
Page 249
IV— THE MEDICEAN MEANING OF THE CHAPEL DECORATION
Page 250
Chapter Nine— History, Myth, and Propaganda in Cosimo de' Medici's Early Art Each of the Old and New Testament subjects Bronzino represented in the Chapel of Eleonora is integral to what might be called the "devotional programme" of the decoration, as I have discussed it in Part 3. It can be shown, however, that the religious significance of each painting is complemented by a secondary, Medicean, level of meaning. There was a tradition in Medici art for such subtexts. Moreover, the profound attachment of the literati and artists of midsixteenthcentury Florence— especially Bronzino himself—to double meanings, and anomalies in the choice and handling of the sacred subjects all suggest this other level of intention on the part of Duke Cosimo, his advisers, and his artist, a level anticipated, moreover, in the reception of the work by its viewers. With rare exceptions, works of art commissioned by Cosimo throughout his long rule had a Medicean meaning, or significato, 1 as Vasari expressed it in his Ragionamenti, begun in the late 1550s. That is, beyond their primary or overt meaning, these works celebrated the Medici family and sometimes even functioned as political propaganda.2 In a manner unprecedented in the Renaissance, public and private purposes overlapped in Cosimo's art, his ideology determining the content of many images that might at first seem innocent of political significance. Although the Chapel of Eleonora is hardly a propagandistic work that publicly celebrates Cosimo's rule, like the wedding apparato of 1539 or Vasari's
Page 251
decoration of the Sala Grande in the Palazzo almost thirty years later, it nonetheless has substantial Medicean significato. Works of art commissioned by Duke Cosimo during the first decade of the principato and those dating from after the middle of the century were very different in ideology and, consequently, in style. As might be expected, political messages were most fully elaborated in the art of the later years of Cosimo's rule—after his power had been consolidated, the continuity of his dynasty assured, and his territories expanded. 3 By about 1550, the mythology of the principato had become well established, its themes and formulas crystallized, its symbols codified. Earlier writings such as those by Filippo de' Nerli (the most important of Cosimo's historians), Benedetto Varchi, Paolo Giovio, and Bernardo Segni—all commissioned by (or dedicated to) Cosimo within the first two decades of his rule—essayed a new ducal version of Medicean and Florentine history justifying Cosimo's absolutist government.4 Programmes for artistic projects that would give visual form to this mythology were devised by a smoothly functioning team of literati who had come into the duke's service in the 1540s, especially Cosimo Bartoli and Vincenzo Borghini, who collaborated with Cosimo's artists to turn out propagandatoorder, often writing in copious detail about the Medicean meanings that works of art were intended to convey.5 The key figure of this later period was Vasari. His redecoration of the Palazzo, initiated in 1555, was (to borrow Gombrich's phrase) a pictorial panegyric lavished on Cosimo.6 Vasari also contributed to the myth of the Medici in the 1568 edition of his Vite, where he comments on the Medicean significance of some of the works of art commissioned by Cosimo. More explicitly, in the Ragionamenti (cast as a dialogue with Francesco de' Medici), he glossed the Medicean significato of his own decorations then in progress in the Palazzo, explaining time after time how the paintings related to a secondary level of Medicean meaning, or what he had Francesco call "il senso nostro."7 Cosimo's early art was no less intended to glorify himself, his family, and his rule.8 It was created in an ideological ambience distinct from that of the later years, however, and it reflects the special circumstances of the first decade of the principato. In 1537—in spite of Cosimo's youth and his sudden assumption of power, the political instability of his regime, and the ambivalence of many of those around him—the duke and his advisers began to devise a mythology justifying his rule.
Page 252
(In this and the following chapters, I will often refer to "Cosimo's art," "Cosimo's commission," etc., with the understanding that the ideas behind the works commissioned in the duke's name were not necessarily his personally but those of his artists and artistic advisers, whom I will mention by name when possible.) They also sought to exploit the possibilities offered by art as personal propaganda. In this formative stage, myths and images were invented as the occasion demanded, and Cosimo's art, like his political ideology, was characterized by inconsistency and opportunism, by an inventive and experimental use of the traditional imagery of rulership (largely inherited from antiquity) and of older Medicean formulas reinterpreted for current needs. Because of its experimental inventiveness, the art of the duke's early years is more difficult to interpret than his more predictable and more overtly propagandistic later art. Moreover, the literati who would later explain how the ducal art was to be read were only beginning to be assembled in his service. Cosimo did not inherit a coterie of court intellectuals from Duke Alessandro, and some of the old guard who might have been expected to serve as his advisers had not yet accommodated themselves to the new regime. Among historians, only Nerli and Piero Vettori were in the duke's service before 1543, when Varchi was called back from exile. 9 But a considerable number of literati were on the scene as cultural advisers: Bartoli, Pierfrancesco Giambullari, Giambattista Gelli, Niccolò Martelli, and Luca Martini (also an engineer in the duke's service); Gelli, Martelli, and Martini all wrote poetry in praise of the duke, as, later, did Varchi.10 These men were all members of the Accademia degli Umidi, founded in November 1540 and dedicated to the advancement of learning through the vernacular.11 It was transformed into the Accademia Fiorentina on the auspicious date 25 March 1541 (the Florentine New Year's day) under the sponsorship of Duke Cosimo, who thereby made a key move in his attempt to control intellectual activity in Florence and to restore her cultural primacy.12 In the years around 1540 that concern us here, these humanists and poets were in close contact with Pierfrancesco Riccio (whom I have mentioned often as Cosimo's secretary and majordomo in charge of cultural affairs) and with the duke's painters and sculptors, particularly Bronzino and Tribolo, the only artist members of the academy.13 But the close working relationship between artists and academicians that characterized Cosimo's later years did not yet exist. Nor did the copious literary and epistolary documentation that they left, which guides our interpretation of Cosimo's art of the late 1550s and 1560s. Although there are some
Page 253
letters of the 1540s by artists (notably Bandinelli; see Chapter 5), they typically comment on practical matters such as money, scheduling, and supplies, rather than on significato. Furthermore, if there was much discussion of artistic matters in the correspondence of Riccio, Pagni, and the other ducal secretaries, only the most fragmentary evidence of it survives. For example, all that remains regarding Salviati's commission to decorate the Sala delle Udienze (see Fig. 2)—iconographically the most complex cycle commissioned by Cosimo in the early 1540s—is a laconic statement in a note from Pagni ordering Riccio to have Salviati paint "tutte le opere notabili di Camillo" (all the notable deeds of Camillus). 14 The authorship of the programmes for most works commissioned by Cosimo in the first decade of his rule is in fact unknown. When a name surfaces, it is because it is mentioned by Vasari, who states, for example, that Tribolo sought Varchi's advice on the garden sculptures at Villa Castello,15 or because the programme was published, as in the case of Gelli's and Giambullari's for Cosimo's wedding apparato (see Chapter 1). This description is the only example from Cosimo's early patronage of a type of text intended for a wider audience—such as Vasari's Ragionamenti or Giovanni Battista Cini's Descrizione dell'apparato for Francesco's wedding in 1565—that was more common later.16 Unlike the 1565 apparato, however, the 1539 account is not backed up by informative correspondence among those responsible for the programme. Nonetheless, it is a key document for interpreting other projects dating from Cosimo's first decade of rule, including the Chapel of Eleonora. To supplement the sparse documentary evidence directly bearing on the meaning of the Chapel of Eleonora decoration, we must turn to other sources. There is much to be gleaned from the informed opinion of Vasari—although, to be sure, he is inconsistent and there are lacunae, especially where a Medicean significato was probably taken for granted in the Vite, whose primary message was art and artists, not meaning.17 For example, there is not a word in Vasari about topical meanings in either the Sala delle Udienze Story of Camillus frescoes (see Fig. 2) or the Sala de' Dugento Story of Joseph tapestries (see Fig. 5) in the Palazzo, both of which have unmistakably Medicean programmes. In fact, the only works whose Medicean significato Vasari really explains are his own—in the Ragionamenti, whose primary purpose was to gloss their meaning. There are also clues to the interpretation of the chapel decoration in Cosimo's welldocumented later art, whose themes—clearly recognizable in their fully developed form—are adumbrated in his first decade. And earlier Medici art, the
Page 254
celebratory and propagandistic function of which is often clearly set forth, is also useful as a guide to interpretation. Indeed, Medicean conceits originating in the art of Lorenzo il Magnifico and Leo X are often reflected in Cosimo's art, as are the kinds of art works that the Medici pope, in particular, commissioned—festival apparati, medals, dynastic portraits, ceremonial rooms such as the Salone at Poggio a Caiano, chapel decorations with Medicean imagery such as Michelangelo's New Sacristy at S. Lorenzo, and religious narratives with papal subtexts such as Raphael's tapestries The Acts of the Apostles. The chapel paintings can also be approached by analogy to others commissioned by Cosimo whose function was primarily didactic, and to those with explanatory inscriptions, such as the paintings for the wedding apparato, as well as to medals and imprese. From 1540 to 1545, when Bronzino was painting Eleonora's chapel, the duke commissioned works of art of diverse types, many of which have Medicean significato. Bronzino painted a number of state portraits of Cosimo and Eleonora (see Plates 1–2; Figs. 22–23). Bandinelli and Cellini made competing portrait busts of him in 1544 and 1545, respectively, 18 and Bandinelli also portrayed Giovanni delle Bande Nere (see Fig. 4). The content of these portraits was related primarily to imagery of Medici rule,19 as were the numerous medals by Domenico di Polo that carry didactic messages about Cosimo and his rule.20 In the realm of monumental art, the efforts of Cosimo's advisers and artists were focused on several major commissions that had political significance: the decoration of the Villa Castello loggia and gardens, initiated in 1537 under the direction of Pontormo and Tribolo, respectively (see Fig. 3);21 the wedding apparato of 1539, organized by Tribolo and Aristotile da Sangallo; the decoration of public rooms of the Palazzo, begun in 1540 under the direction of Tasso: the Sala Grande with its new udienza by Bandinelli, the Sala delle Udienze with frescoes of Camillus by Salviati (see Fig. 2), and the Sala de' Dugento, with its Story of Joseph tapestries by Bronzino, Pontormo, and Salviati (see Fig. 5); and in 1541 the apparato for the baptism of Francesco de' Medici, mounted by Tribolo, Tasso, and Vasari. By the mid1540s, with the first campaign completed in the transformation of the Palazzo into a residence decorated with appropriately Medicean and ducal imagery, Cosimo shifted his focus to the Piazza della Signoria, with the commission of Cellini's Perseus (see Fig. 7), and to the churches, with the commission to Pontormo to paint the choir of S. Lorenzo with Old Testament frescoes—which are not innocent of political content (see Fig. 6). These works marked the end of the early phase of Cosimo's patronage and his use of art to enhance his image.
Page 255
The artists employed on these projects were charged with creating visual images to reinforce the political propaganda of the nascent principato. They emphasized certain themes of Cosimo's rule, some of which were later dropped as irrelevant or as having served their purpose; conversely, some ideas prominent in Cosimo's later art had not yet been developed—or were not publicly advanced—in the 1540s. Thus, for example, Cosimo's early art is characterized by an aggressive stance regarding his right to rule and the inevitability of his principato, but there was a shrewd holding back or veiling of certain forms of personal glorification—apotheosis, identification with gods such as Apollo and Jupiter, even the full development of the CosimoAugustus parallel—that appear later but around 1540 might have been considered overly suggestive of royal pretensions. The themes that emerge repeatedly in the propaganda and art of Cosimo's first decade, all of which have their nexus in the person of the duke and his rule, are those of legitimacy, destiny, power, and promise. After the murder of Duke Alessandro in January 1537, it was imperative for the supporters of the regime to find an immediate replacement—not just to ensure the continuation of the principato but to ward off the real threat that Charles V would return Florence to his direct protection. 22 The claim for Cosimo's legitimacy rested only on the absence of Medici heirs in the main line of the family (save Alessandro's murderer Lorenzino), but Cosimo had several points in his favor: he united the two branches of the family (see Fig. 17); his father Giovanni delle Bande Nere was remembered as a popular military hero, especially renowned for exploits against the French (the emperor's traditional enemy); and—at age seventeen—he had not previously been involved in Florentine politics.23 Thus, on 9 January, the Florentine Senate elected Cosimo "capo, e Primario del governo e della città di Firenze" (leader and head of the government and of the city of Florence)—but not duke.24 That negative decision, a compromise designed to preserve some degree of autonomy for Florence, was made in the belief that the young capo could be manipulated or even replaced. However, Cosimo proved himself adroit and politically precocious, and, in a series of shrewd maneuvers, primary among them the victory of 1 August 1537 over the Florentine fuorusciti (exiles) at Montemurlo, he succeeded in being recognized by the Florentines as the legitimate successor to Alessandro. On 30 September 1537 he obtained from the emperor the official privilegio to use the title Duca di Firenze.25 Even with his title ratified, Cosimo had to reinforce his legitimacy continuously against challenges from both imperial and republican quarters: the supporters of
Page 256
Charles V, who had military backing; the Ottimati, Florentine aristocrats who favored a principato, but one under their control; the exiles, whose governo libero (or republican government) would include an alliance with the French, and the piagnoni, the followers of Savonarola who preached that the new regime would fall by the will of God. 26 Cosimo's legitimacy was proclaimed at every turn in his early art. It was particularly expressed in the theme of the duke and his antenati that appears in the wedding apparato, in Bandinelli's statues of the udienza in the Sala Grande, in the sculpture planned by Tribolo for the gardens of Villa Castello, and in other works I will cite in the following chapters.27 Bolstering Cosimo's claim to be the legitimate ruler of Florence was a carefully developed and nurtured myth of his destiny—of the inevitability of his rule, its predestination by fate, divine providence, and the stars.28 In Cosimo's art, as in Medicean art before him, one way of expressing these ideas was the topos of Medici return. With the restoration of the family in 1512, images, mottoes, and conceits had been invented by the advisers of Leo X to propagandize the return to power of the Medici. Such imagery centered on several old and interrelated Renaissance images of renewal that were associated mainly with the perceived Golden Age of Leo's father, Lorenzo il Magnifico: time's return and the new Golden Age of the Medici, vegetative regrowth (in this case, of the Medici laurel), and rebirth.29 In Cosimo's art Leonine imagery was revived in full force, its message adjusted to the political circumstances of the late 1530s.30 The upheavals of the previous decade and the alliance of Florence with Charles V had put the Golden Age of Lorenzo forever out of reach, and there was little nostalgia for the past in Cosimo's celebration of the Medici house. Nor was his imagery of return accompanied by any of the undercurrents of transience and precariousness that gave the earlier images such poignancy: for this return was understood to be permanent. In works such as the Story of Joseph tapestries (see Chapter 11) and Salviati's Camillus frescoes, the theme of return was presented as a function of the duke himself, linked closely with his claim to be the legitimate successor to Alessandro and with his promises for a new Golden Age of Medici rule. In The Triumph of Camillus the Medici topos of return was updated to suit the new ideology of Cosimo's regime, as the triumphal adventus of the duke himself is paralleled with that of Camillus, crowned with laurel by Fame, making a lavishly appointed entry into Rome after his victory at Veii (Fig. 161).31
Page 257
Figure 161 Francesco Salviati, The Triumph of Camillus. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala delle Udienze.
The duke's historians also subscribed to this cyclical view of history and to the predestined Medici return. Thus Varchi in his Storia fiorentina, commissioned by Cosimo at the close of the first decade of his rule, began with a succinct statement of the ducal view of Medici history: Tre volte fu cacciata da Firenze la casa de' Medici, . . . e tutte e tre le volte, come avevano i cieli destinato, vi ritornò sempre maggiore e più potente che partita non se n'era. 32 (Three times the house of the Medici was evicted from Florence, . . . and all three times, as the heavens had predestined, it returned—always greater and more powerful than if it had never left.)
Page 258
By the time these lines were written, the mythology of Cosimo's regime had been effectively formulated: Cosimo was not only the legitimate successor to former Medici rulers but also the inevitable one. Claims of legitimacy and inevitability, to have real meaning, had to be buttressed by personal power; in proclaiming his predestined right to rule Florence, Cosimo also asserted that he could defend that claim against internal and external enemies, that resistance to his absolute authority was futile. Claims for legitimacy involved the manipulation of historical facts, and the notion of inevitability was pure myth, but Cosimo's power was real, and his achievement of absolute control was in fact the main accomplishment of his early years. In internal affairs the duke demonstrated his strength immediately and with unexpected forcefulness by expelling the dissenting cardinals in late January 1537, defeating the fuorusciti at Montemurlo in August, and executing or detaining the political prisoners taken there. He then set about establishing the machinery of an absolutist state. In external affairs Cosimo allied himself with Charles V while simultaneously seeking Florentine autonomy. By accepting the imperial privilegio he in effect pledged fealty to Charles, and he played the role of loyal feudal vassal for the first five years of his rule. 33 Yet at the same time he successfully bargained with Charles to accept 150,000 scudi (provided by Eleonora) for the return of the fortresses of Florence and Livorno (which had been occupied by Spanish troops), thereby achieving in 1543 his goal of Florentine autonomy.34 Cosimo's equivocal situation in his early years as duke required a delicate balance in the presentation of images of ducal power, or, as Kurt Forster termed them, ''metaphors of rule."35 In works of art commissioned before 1543 there is a tension between the openly stated idea of subservient alliance with Charles (as in the wedding apparato) and the notion of the duke's own power, expressed only obliquely (as in allegories of his victory of Montemurlo; see Chapter 12). Indeed, only after the return of the fortresses were Cosimo's absolutist programme and royal ambitions given visual form. It was then that a mode all'antica began to dominate his art; authoritative sculptural models of antiquity were used, by such artists as Salviati in The Triumph of Camillus (see Fig. 161) and Bandinelli in his marble bust of Cosimo, to suggest the duke's power.36 In this connection, too, Cosimo identified with Augustus and with such powerful legendary heroes as Hercules.37 Finally, Cellini's Perseus, with its thinly veiled warning against dissenters (see Fig. 7), brought Cosimo's imagery of power into public view in the Piazza della Signoria.
Page 259
If the themes of Cosimo's legitimacy and destiny drew on tradition and that of his power asserted the reality of the present, the theme of his promise was concerned with the future—the benefits that he offered Florentines in return for their support of his rule. This theme relates to those already discussed, and, since it projects them all into the future, it is their summation. The general notion of the pubblico bene (public welfare) subsumes two major benefits Cosimo promised to the people of Florence: the founding of a new Medici dynasty that would bring stability to the historically unsettled city and the achievement of prosperity and peace—even a new Medici Golden Age—in Florence. The dynastic theme was expressed in the wedding apparato and in Bronzino's portrait of Eleonora with Giovanni (see Fig. 23). Tribolo's ambitious garden design for Villa Castello, had it been completed, would have projected the Golden Age idea most explicitly; moreover, in his Augustan mode (particularly in the wedding apparato) Cosimo was closely identified with the revival of the Augustan Golden Age and the Pax Augustae. The duke as peacemaker and healer of discord was a ubiquitous theme that drew on the conceit Cosimo medico (alluding to the wordplay on the name Medici [= doctors]). The theme appears in works of art such as Salviati's Peace Burning Arms over the doorway in the Sala delle Udienze (see Fig. 2) and perhaps even in Bronzino's image of the duke as Orpheus with his lyre (see Fig. 19). The primary level of meaning of Bronzino's paintings in the Chapel of Eleonora is rooted in their function as devotional and narrative pictures in a sacred context, but all the themes of Cosimo's early art that I have sketched here are present in the decoration. The ideas that are expressed in the chapel are at once monumental and elaborate—large scale and conceit laden—in the taste of the same courtly Maniera aesthetic that determined their style. The conceits that express the themes of Cosimo's legitimacy, destiny, power, and promise in his secular art were modified or adapted to the devotional subjects of the decoration to glorify him, his marriage to Eleonora, and the new Medici dynasty.
Page 260
Chapter Ten— Imagery of Dynasty and Rule The Chapel of Eleonora differs in two major respects from the other decorations that Duke Cosimo commissioned in the early 1540s. It is a religious work, in which topical and secular themes must necessarily function only as a subtext; thus Eleonora's chapel is not, and could not be, a propagandistic work like Cosimo's commissions for the decoration of the great reception rooms of the palace. Moreover, the chapel is not a public space but a private one. Its decoration might even be seen as akin to that of an exquisitely illuminated manuscript intended for a limited audience. The chapel would be used and enjoyed by its owners and their entourage and, perhaps, shown only to those cognoscenti who could appreciate the beauty of Bronzino's paintings and the way in which their religious imagery also celebrated Cosimo's rule, the ducal marriage, and the new Medici dynasty. A contemporary level of meaning in Bronzino's chapel paintings is clearly established in the Medici portraits that can be identified in the altarpiece. It is also delivered in the MediciToledo stemma, in the Cardinal Virtues of Duke Cosimo, and in the fruitful garlands and putti, which allude to the new Medici dynasty he established with Eleonora. The Altarpiece Bronzino's original altarpiece (see Plate 11 and Fig. 91), the climax of devotional imagery of the Chapel of Eleonora, conveys a secondary, Medicean, level of meaning in its identification of earthly and heavenly hierarchies. The Lamenta
Page 261
tion and its wings contain portraits of Medici family members as saints—part of a tradition in Medici art that took shape in the midfifteenth century and continued beyond Bronzino's time into the late cinquecento. In the quattrocento, a number of Medici posed in the guise of their patron saints Cosmas and Damian. For example, in Fra Angelico's Madonna and Saints, the high altar painted in 1438–40 for S. Marco, the work's patron, Cosimo il Vecchio, is portrayed as his name saint, Cosmas, the intercessor at the left (Fig. 162). 1 The Medici also had themselves portrayed as the Magi, an association that became part of the family's iconography.2 The most prominent example is Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi in the Palazzo Medici chapel (see Fig. 13), whose decoration was an important prototype for that of the Chapel of Eleonora. There, Lorenzo, the Medici heir, is probably idealized as the young Magus, and portraits of his father, Piero, and his grandfather Cosimo il Vecchio, among others, are included. In a Madonna and Saints of 1575 from the workshop of Bronzino (attributed to Francesco Maria Butteri; Fig. 163), this conceit is carried to an extreme.3 The work includes Florence's protectors, St. John the Baptist and St. Anne; in addition, there are five saints, all portraits. Cosimo is posthumously portrayed as St. Cosmas (at left, holding his attribute, the medicine jar); his son Cardinal Ferdinando is St. Damian; below them, Cosimo's daughter Isabella is St. Catherine. To the right of the Virgin is Grand Duke Francesco as St. George and Isabella's husband, Paolo Orsini, as St. Flaviano. Bronzino's incorporation of family portraits in the altarpiece of Eleonora's chapel goes beyond the quattrocento prototypes but does not match the audacity of the later cinquecento picture. Here Bronzino portrays Medici family members as the Virgin Mary, a holy woman, St. John the Baptist, and St. Cosmas. The most obvious portrait is the unmistakable likeness of Maria Salviati as the Virgin Mary—whose name she bore. Bronzino's likeness of the duke's mother may be compared with Pontormo's portrait of her with the young Cosimo, painted about 1527 (Fig. 164).4 Particularly striking in both portraits are Maria's prominent eyes, an inherited facial feature (passed on to Cosimo) that is even mentioned in the description of her in Settimanni's diary: [Maria] fu alta di statura, bianca di volto, occhi grossetti, come quella che ritraeva a Papa Leone Xo, essendo nata di Madonna Lucrezia de' Medici sua sorella.5 (Maria was tall, fair, [with] large eyes like those of Pope Leo X because she was the daughter of the Lady Lucrezia de' Medici, his sister.)
Page 262
Figure 162 Fra Angelico, Madonna and Saints. S. Marco.
Figure 163 (Attributed to) Francesco Maria Butteri, Madonna and Saints. Uffizi.
Page 263
Figure 164 Jacopo da Pontormo, Maria Salviati and Cosimo de' Medici. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery.
An anomaly in Bronzino's depiction of the Virgin points to this identification: she is dressed in a nun's habit. The Virgin as nun was a commonplace in altarpieces painted for convents, such as Bronzino's own Dead Christ with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene from S. Trinita, where Mary wears the brown habit of the Vallombrosians (see Fig. 93), or Perugino's Lamentation for S. Chiara, where she is portrayed as a nun of the Clarissae (see Fig. 94). Although there is no apparent reason for the Virgin in the chapel painting to be so garbed, we find one in Maria Salviati's personal history: after 1526, during her widowhood, Maria became a tertiary of the Dominican order, and she wore a blackandwhite nun's habit, in which she was buried. 6 She is depicted in this dress in Pontormo's portrait (and in all later ones of her). In the altarpiece Bronzino departed from the reality of Maria's black clothes and gave Mary an idealized blue habit (the traditional color of her robes) with a white coif—a fictive nun's garb that alludes to, without literally representing, Maria's customary dress. This portrait may also have had a
Page 264
Figure 165 Giulio Clovio, Eleonora di Toledo (miniature). Walbeck Abbey, Duke of Portland Collection.
commemorative function, for Maria died on 12 December 1543, only a few months after the Lamentation was begun. The holy woman in green in the Lamentation, probably Maria Cleophas, 7 is an idealized likeness of the chapel's patron, Eleonora herself.8 This woman is prominently isolated at the exact center of the picture, her dress and coiffure come closer to contemporary costume than those of any of the other women in the painting, and she is the only one (besides the Magdalene, who is always bareheaded) whose head is not covered. Her face may be compared with Bronzino's contemporaneous portrait of the duchess (see Plate 2). Even though her head is tipped forward and down at an angle that defies the comparison, Maria Cleophas has the same full face, long nose, and prominent chin as the young Eleonora in this portrait. Also useful for comparison is Giulio Clovio's miniature of Eleonora, datable to 1551–53 (Fig. 165).9 Clovio's work is much less idealized than Bronzino's portraits of the duchess, showing, for example, her square jaw and the cleft in her chin, and it also gives a point of reference for the color of Eleonora's hair,
Page 265
Figure 166 Francesco da Sangallo, medal of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Bargello.
which was described as blond when her coffin was opened in 1857. 10 Bronzino in his portraits depicts Eleonora's hair as somewhat darker (although never brunet); in Bandinelli's representation of her as a donor figure in his Lamentation drawing of about 1540 (see Fig. 100), however, she is decidedly fair. In his preparatory study for the head of Maria Cleophas (see Fig. 124) Bronzino depicted her hair close to her head, as Eleonora's actually was. Only after he had already begun painting the altarpiece did he add the holy woman's full blond coiffure (see Chapter 5). St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas, the original altar wings, were designated as portraits in an inventory of the Palazzo guardaroba of 1574 (doc. 28). Other evidence suggests that they were indeed portraits—of the duke himself and his father. St. John seems to be an idealized likeness of Giovanni delle Bande Nere (see Plate 10). The saint's profile may be compared to that of the medal of Giovanni by Francesco da Sangallo, which has the same narrowed, squinting eye and the ridge above the eyes (Fig. 166).11 It may also be compared to the various portraits
Page 266
based on Giulio Romano's death mask of Giovanni, in all of which we see an aquiline nose, strong chin, and mustache similar to St. John's. The first of these portraits is exactly contemporary with Bronzino's altarpiece, suggesting a revival of interest in the duke's father at this time. It had been commissioned from Titian in 1545 by Pietro Aretino (who had been Giovanni's secretary), but the commission passed to Gian Paolo Pace, and the portrait (with the death mask, both in the Galleria degli Uffizi) was eventually presented to Cosimo in 1546. 12 Carlo Portelli later painted a portrait of Giovanni derived from this one (Fig. 167),13 in which he changed Pace's halflength profile to the left into a threequarterlength Giovanni in armor seated in profile right, obviously modeled on Vasari's state portrait of Alessandro de' Medici of 1534 (Galleria degli Uffizi).14 The red drapery of Bronzino's saint is unusual and may allude to Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Although John the Baptist was a martyr saint, he is rarely dressed in the traditional red of martyrdom, and it is tempting to read his red robes here as indicative rather of the "martyrdom" in battle of Cosimo's father in 1526. Portelli used red with this meaning for Giovanni's drapery, and Vasari had used it in his portrait of Alessandro, in a gloss of which he associated it with the blood shed by the Medici.15 The symbolism would have been even more appropriate for Giovanni delle Bande Nere, a hero who actually died in battle. Cosimo's father had played an important part in the duke's claims to legitimacy. Lacking any heroic exploits of his own, the duke found it expedient in these works to emphasize his descent from the famous condottiere—perhaps hoping to project, by association, a heroic image for himself. Giovanni is featured prominently in the wedding apparato, with a series of paintings on the Porta al Prato celebrating his military valor,16 and Tribolo's colossal equestrian monument of him, with paintings on its base by Bronzino, dominated the Piazza S. Marco.17 Tribolo's statue may have suggested the idea for the permanent memorial to Cosimo's father by Bandinelli (see Fig. 4),18 which reads as a "standin" for the duke, who was politic enough not to dedicate a public monument to himself at this time. Given Cosimo's careful attention to enhancing his father's image in the early 1540s, it is hardly surprising to find Giovanni memorialized in Eleonora's chapel in the guise of his name saint (St. John). Until the lost St. Cosmas resurfaces, it seems reasonable to suggest that the Medici patron saint who had often been portrayed with the features of a Medici was a likeness of Cosimo, who, after all, bore his name. In 1558, the duke had himself portrayed as St. Cosmas by Vasari in the altarpiece of his private chapel
Page 267
Figure 167 Carlo Portelli, Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
in the Palazzo (see Fig. 16). 19 The wings are Vasari's portraits Duke Cosimo de' Medici as St. Cosmas and Cosimo il Vecchio as St. Damian.20 As was Vasari's custom, the likenesses were based on existing portraits. That of Cosimo il Vecchio is a lengthened version of Pontormo's portrait of the pater patriae of 1519 (Galleria degli Uffizi), and the likeness of Duke Cosimo was taken from Bronzino's recent state portrait, painted in 1556.21 That Vasari derived his Duke Cosimo literally from Bronzino's portrait is all the more obvious because his duke looks (inappropriately) away from the altar, but in the same direction as in Bronzino's picture. Bronzino's likeness of the duke in Eleonora's altarpiece may have been based on his own recent state portrait of Cosimo (see Plate 1), already the official ducal image and one that he repeated elsewhere in 1545, as in the threequarterlength
Page 268
version that Cosimo sent to Giovio (see Fig. 22). The likely pose of the figure in the lost altar panel, with St. Cosmas–Cosimo looking to the left toward the Lamentation, his right arm placed across his body (probably holding his attribute of a medicine jar), could readily have been adapted from this portrait. The portrait of Cosimo in his own chapel also suggests a parallel between the duke—a new Cosimo—and his ancestor, the pater patriae. These portraits are a prime example of a conceit I have called the two Cosimos. 22 It was part of the duke's somewhat specious claim of legitimate descent from Cosimo il Vecchio, a lineage that would make him a new pater patriae and a second founder of the state. The notion of the new Cosimo appeared early in his rule in poems dedicated to him, such as one by Martelli on the occasion of his marriage. It opens: Le Suntuose Nozze il Sacro Honore La Reggia Pompa l'ornamento altero Del Nuovo Cosmo italico splendor Col più Gradito Sangue del Hybero Vengo a cantar con vive voce furore.23 (Of the magnificent nuptials, the devout honor, The royal pomp and dignified ornament Of the new Cosimo, Italic splendor Joined with most welcome Iberian blood, Come I to sing aloud, with passion.)
The duke had connected himself with Cosimo il Vecchio by adopting in 1537 an old Medici impresa with a regenerating laurel (the broncone) that was associated with the first Cosimo.24 The conceit of the two Cosimos also appeared in the imagery of his wedding apparato25 and in a new personal impresa (two anchors with the motto DVABVS) that succinctly expressed the idea of the new duke's refounding of the state in the image of the first Cosimo.26 A portrait of the duke as the patron saint he shared with his ancestor in Eleonora's chapel would also have exemplified the conceit of the two Cosimos. The pairing of Cosimo as St. Cosmas and Giovanni delle Bande Nere as St. John in the chapel altarpiece has another topical meaning related to Medicean dynastic continuity. For these ''portraitsassaints" would have been seen to allude
Page 269
not only to a particular Cosimo and Giovanni but to Cosimo and Giovanni as favorite given names in the family (see Fig. 17). Moreover, it may be important that the name Giovanni alluded to Cosimo's immediate dynastic concerns. In October 1543 he named his second son Giovanni, after his father, 27 following a Florentine tradition of symbolically "remaking" a dead ancestor.28 Furthermore, in selecting this particular name, he imitated both Cosimo il Vecchio, who had named his second son Giovanni, and Lorenzo il Magnifico, whose second son—also named Giovanni—became Pope Leo X (and was Cosimo's own godfather).29 The allusion in the chapel altarpiece to a seemingly predestined cycle of Medici fathers and sons bearing the names Cosimo and Giovanni thus indicates that the theme of prophecy and fulfillment is not limited to the chapel's devotional imagery but is fundamental to its political message as well.30 The linking of the Medici saint with the patron saint of Florence in the altar was also a succinct statement of Cosimo's rulership. The same combination was to be a feature of his own chapel (see Fig. 16), which was dedicated to SS. Cosmas and Damian and consecrated on the feast of S. Giovanni. Its altarpiece (in which St. John occupies a prominent position), with wings of Cosmas and Damian, was taken as the starting point for the decoration of the chapel, which includes scenes from the lives of the Medici saints on the vault (see Fig. 50) and scenes from the life of the Baptist on the walls. More important for the genesis of the conceit, as used in Eleonora's chapel, however, was the presence of this precise imagery elsewhere in Cosimo's early art. Shortly after he became duke, Cosimo replaced the traditional Florentine lily on the florin with his own image (keeping St. John on the reverse).31 About 1540 he made a more complex statement, conflating communal and Medicean imagery in a coin that paired St. John with St. Cosmas (Fig. 168).32 The inscription IOA[NNE] B[ATISTA] P[ROTECTORE] E[T] COS[MA] CONS[ERVATORE] / DIVIS proclaims that CosmasCosimo is St. John's counterpart as the preserver of the city of Florence. In 1543 the duke issued a silver coin pairing his image with that of St. John to commemorate the return of the Florentine fortresses, the most important of which was the fortress of S. Giovanni (now the Fortezza da Basso).33 Another example of the linking of St. Cosmas–Cosimo and St. John the Baptist in Cosimo's early art presents an exact parallel with the chapel altarpiece. In the mid 1540s (we cannot date the work more precisely), as one of a series of similar frescoes inside several of the Florence city gates, Michele di Ridolfo Ghirlandaio painted a lunette in the Porta S. Gallo.34 It depicts the Madonna flanked by St.
Page 270
Figure 168 Coin of SS. John the Baptist and Cosmas. Bargello.
John the Baptist and St. Cosmas; Cosmas, the intercessor to the right who gestures toward the Virgin while looking out at the spectator, is a portrait of Cosimo. The novelties in Michele's image lie in the pairing of the patron of Florence and her duke, and in the fusion of St. Cosmas and Cosimo into a single image so that the duke actually becomes the saint. This public painting delivers a political message: on becoming duke, Cosimo assumed not only the leadership of the Medici family and of Florence but also a position equal to that of the city's patron saint. In the chapel's altar wings this same highly symbolic pairing has a greater depth of spiritual meaning: as St. John bears witness to the sacrifice of Christ on behalf of Florence, St. Cosmas does so on behalf of the family for whose devotions the chapel served. If we imagine now the original installation of the altar wall (see Fig. 91), completed by Bronzino's portrait of Duke Cosimo as St. Cosmas on the right, we can better appreciate both how Cosimo dominated the decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora and how immediately apparent the focus on him would have been.
Page 271
The frescoes above the altar wings, King David and The Erythraean Sibyl (see Plate 12), are not portraits but may also play a role in the political subtext of the altar wall. David, the hero of the Florentine republic, was himself a Florentine "patron saint." The youthful giantkiller was not permitted to appear in Cosimo's art until all threat to his rule had passed; David the king, however, placed next to the spandrel of Justice with its accompanying emblems of rulership (see Plate 13), may have been intended as a subtle reference to Cosimo's royal ambitions. And David, "whose house and dominion were to stand forever" (2 Kings 7:16), would also have carried a strong dynastic message, underscoring this important theme in the chapel. 35 Among the sibyls, Erythraea in particular was associated with Florence. A Florentine tradition held that her prophecy of white lilies foretold the rise of Florence, city of the lily, a legend that may account for her presence among the trecento sculptures including the Tiburtine Sibyl, King David, and King Solomon on the Campanile of the Duomo.36 With the original altar wing in place, Erythraea would have pointed down at St. Cosmas–Cosimo. The juxtaposition and the gesture might have encouraged the observer to read not only Christ but Cosimo as the fulfillment of her prophecy, as the embodiment of a Medicean "resurrection," or renewal. The relationships between biblical and contemporary characters and prophecies on the altar wall thus suggest a twofold typological scheme in the chapel's imagery: the fulfillment in the New Testament of the prophecies of the Old and, similarly, the predestination of Medici history by God. Family members such as Duke Cosimo act out their fated roles—in relation to the state, rather than to the Church—and become secular counterparts of their sacred predecessors. Cosimo's Virtues The theme of Duke Cosimo's virtù was a commonplace in his art (as in that of any other Renaissance ruler). In the familiar Renaissance conceit, virtù and fortuna— polar (and often conflicting) forces of personal talent and will versus fate—were seen to influence the course of human affairs. In Cosimo's art, virtù and fortuna are presented as Godgiven and as existing in perfect harmony.37 The theme was crystallized in the motto that Giovio invented in 1540 to accompany the duke's device of Capricorn, symbol of his astrological destiny. The words FIDEM FATI VIRTVTE SEQVEMVR (We shall follow with virtue faith in our destiny)
Page 272
expressed Cosimo's faith that his own abilities would complement the exalted destiny to be read in his horoscope. 38 The message of the impresa—that Cosimo's virtù was conjoined with his fortuna—was given artistic form early in his rule in the decoration of Villa Castello, where the loggia (with the duke's horoscope painted by Pontormo) and the gardens (with Tribolo's sculpture alluding to Cosimo's rule) asserted their harmonious coexistence.39 The Cardinal Virtues in a chapel decoration often signal a funerary context. They had long been a traditional feature of burial chapels, often appearing in the spandrels or in the four fields of the vault, where they attest to the virtuous life of the deceased.40 But there is no question of a funerary meaning in the Chapel of Eleonora; nor, given the conventions of Renaissance art, is it possible to imagine that they refer to Eleonora—a woman—at all. Here they must allude to Cosimo, declaring his virtù and glorifying him, not in death, but in life—in his wife's private chapel. The Virtues in the Chapel of Eleonora relate to a number of Florentine traditions. The Cardinal Virtues had played a role in the civic art of the city, where they decorated public monuments such as the Baptistery (Andrea Pisano's ceremonial doors), the Campanile, the Loggia dei Lanzi, and the Church of Or S. Michele. In the chapel, Cosimo incorporated this traditional republican imagery to serve his own image as legitimate ruler of the city, just as he had assimilated such civic heroes as St. John the Baptist and Hercules.41 The moralreligious significance that links the chapel's virtues with those on the city's monuments is heightened by Bronzino's imaginatively symbolizing the vices by masks tied or chained below them. This imagery descends from the medieval conceit of the triumph of virtue, in which the vices were portrayed in medallions at the feet of the virtues; an exact precedent for Bronzino's imagery is found in the virtues of the Loggia dei Lanzi, where, for example, at the feet of Prudence an upsidedown masklike head signifies vice (Fig. 169). Although Bronzino seems not to represent specific vices in the spandrels, at least one mask—the screaming face below the virtue Temperance—vividly evokes the opposing vice, anger (see Fig. 36). The virtues and vices may also relate to Florentine art contemporaneous with the chapel decoration, in which the mask had become detached from its original context to stand alone as a symbol of vice. For example, masks are emblems of fraud in Bronzino's Allegory of Venus, where they express the deceitful aspects of love (see Fig.11).42 And masks were used in Medicean paintings about rulership, such as Vasari's portrait of Lorenzo il Magnifico of 1534 (in the collection of Ot
Page 273
Figure 169 Loggia dei Lanzi, detail of Prudence.
taviano de' Medici; now Galleria degli Uffizi), where a "maschera bruttisima" (very ugly mask), as Vasari calls it, symbolizes the vice over which the ruler's virtue has triumphed. 43 Finally, and precisely relevant to the Chapel of Eleonora decoration, the Cardinal Virtues belonged to Renaissance literary tradition. Lucio Paolo Rosello's treatise on princes Il Ritratto del vero governo del principe dall'esempio vivo del gran Cosimo de' Medici (1552) states that by observing the Cardinal Virtues, a prince could govern well; the treatise presents Duke Cosimo as the exemplar of these virtues.44 In the chapel we see this conventional idea expressed visually, as the virtue spandrels reinforce the notion that Duke Cosimo, the new exemplum virtutis, embodies the sum of the virtues. Personifications of Cosimo's specific virtues appear in diverse works of his first decade of rule, but the Chapel of Eleonora is the only work commissioned by the duke in which the Cardinal Virtues are represented alone. It is also the only religious work he commissioned in which they appear at all, thus underscoring the chapel's secular subtext. (For example, when Vasari came to decorate the vault of Cosimo's chapel in the late 1550s, he chose the Theological Virtues [more tradi
Page 274
tional for a chapel], adding Justice, the virtue especially associated with Cosimo, in the fourth spandrel; see Fig. 50.) The most important of the chapel's virtues are Justice (see Plate 13) and Fortitude (see Fig. 37). Above the altarpiece, with its portrait of Cosimo as St. Cosmas, they convey a clear political message about the duke's just and powerful rule. The fundamental ruler's theme of Justice was expressed early in Cosimo's art in Tribolo's Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus at Villa Castello (see Fig. 3), which symbolized Cosimo's justice (and fortitude) in his victory at Montemurlo. 45 Around the fountain, sculptures of virtues were projected; Vasari states that they were intended to show "la grandezza e la bontà della casa de' Medici, e che tutte le virtú si truovono nel duca Cosimo" (the greatness and goodness of the house of Medici, and that all the virtues are found in Duke Cosimo).46 He continues, noting that Justice was to be in the first niche near the fountain, with "il ritratto di sua eccellenza, per essere quella sua peculiare" (the portrait of Duke Cosimo, that [justice] being his particular [virtue]). Cosimo's justice was also a major theme in the decoration of the Palazzo, the seat of his government, in the early 1540s. The Sala delle Udienze had been a hall of justice under the republic, and when he took it over to serve in this same capacity, Cosimo shrewdly allowed Benedetto da Maiano's statue of Justice to remain in place over the east doorway (see Fig. 2).47 In the Camillus cycle, Salviati reiterated the theme of divine justice as an allusion to Cosimo in The Sacrifice of Isaac at the center of the south wall, flanked by Faith, Hope, Charity, and Fortitude, the virtues necessary to Cosimo's administration of justice.48 Another work in the Palazzo that featured the theme is Bronzino's door hanging Justice Liberating Innocence (see Fig. 103).49 Justice, a heroic armored woman with a sword and scales, frees Innocence (Florence) from Envy, Greed, Fury, and Perfidy (the animals who menace her), while Father Time reveals Truth. This work tells the observer that the eternal truth of Medici rule is revealed in the actions of Cosimo, her just principe.50 Justice, the most significant of Cosimo's virtues, was the only medallion Bronzino painted in the original campaign of work in the Chapel of Eleonora (see Plate 13). It is colored a brilliant red (echoing the red robes of St. John and, presumably, of CosmasCosimo in the altar wings below). The design of this spandrel is more complex than that of the others, with a larger emblem above the medallion, six attributes of the virtue, and five multicolored masks of vice. Justice's attributes are the only ones in the spandrels that explicitly signal Cosimo's
Page 275
Figure 170 (After) Bronzino, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo. Erlanger Collection, Connecticut.
rulership. The sword and scales suggest the power and balance of divine justice, personified by the adjacent St. Michael, who carries them (see Plate 16). The orb and scepter symbolize a temporal ruler's power—and possibly Cosimo's ambitions for a royal title. 51 The compass and square signify architecture and allude to the Medicean topos of the ruler as architect of the state.52 These same devices appear in a portrait dated 1546 (Fig. 170), an anonymous pastiche combining Bronzino's first portraits of Eleonora and Cosimo (see Plates 1–2).53 Eleonora wears the same red gown, but Cosimo's armor has been changed to civilian dress, and he is characterized as the architect of Tuscany: a map of Pisa lies in front of him, he holds a compass in his hand, and a square rests beside the map. (This
Page 276
theme was durable: Cosimo carries the same emblems in important paintings by Vasari, such as Duke Cosimo de' Medici with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors; see Fig. 8.) 54 The other three virtue medallions are less elaborate. Fortitude (see Fig. 37), with her attribute of a broken column, is framed by the paws of Hercules' lion. Hercules was the supreme exemplar of the virtue; it is probable that lions were planned for the frame, but Bronzino left it empty when he stopped work on the frescoes in the mid1540s, and it was never filled in. This imagery is related to Cosimo's penchant for Herculean attributes to signal his fortitude, as in portraits of 1544–45 such as Cellini's bronze bust and Bandinelli's engraving of the duke as Hercules.55 Prudence and Temperance are relegated to the less prominent positions on the chapel's entrance wall, reflecting their minor importance in Cosimo's early imagery of rule.56 Prudence is depicted in the usual fashion with a Janushead, a mirror, and a snake, the latter two devices repeated in the spandrel's frame (see Fig. 35). Temperance is shown pouring water from a jug into a basin; ewers are also painted on either side of her frame (see Fig. 36). The MediciToledo Stemma, the Garlands, and the Putti The organization of a vault into four compartments with garlands articulating the ribs and the family arms in a central medallion was traditional in Renaissance family chapels. Bronzino's handling of these elements is novel, however: the decorative imagery of the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora—the MediciToledo stemma, the red porphyry "architecture," the fruitful garlands, and the putti—was designed to celebrate Cosimo's union with Eleonora and his promise of a new Medici dynasty that would bring peace and prosperity to Florence (see Plate 5). Under the Trinity the outlines of the stemma that Bronzino painted at the center of the vault can be made out (see Fig. 46): to the left, the (red) Medici palle and, to the right, the (blue and silver) squares of the Toledo arms; above is Cosimo's ducal coronet embraced by the imperial eagle of Charles V. The modello for the vault (see Plate 15) shows a simpler design without the eagle and the coronet; and, rather than the partizione semplice (vertical division) of the arms as painted, it is inquartato (divided in four), with two sets of palle and squares.57 Bronzino then restudied the arms in black chalk on the verso of his drawing for St. Michael (Fig. 171).58
Page 277
Figure 171 Study for the MediciToledo arms of the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora. Louvre.
The ducal coronet and the imperial eagle added to the MediciToledo stemma emphasize the politics of uniting the two families under the beneficent patronage of Charles V. As had been true of the art of Duke Alessandro (who was married to Charles's daughter), the theme of alliance with the emperor was omnipresent in the art of Cosimo's early years, signaled at every turn by elaborate MediciToledo stemme with the imperial eagle, such as one displayed over the portal of the Palazzo Medici for the wedding of the ducal couple. 59 And the coat of arms received poetic elaboration in Gelli's song for Apollo in the entertainment, where the emperor was "l'Aquila altera" (the proud eagle) who made his nest in the Medici laurel, and the costume of Flora (Florence) featured an ingenious headdress made up of the palle and the eagle.60 The same stemma is found in other works of 1540–42, such as the Annunciation miniature in Eleonora's Book of Hours (see Fig. 24) and the vault of the Camera Verde (see Fig. 32), which is the only room in the Palazzo besides the chapel where the coat of arms includes the
Page 278
imperial eagle. After the emperor had granted Cosimo limited autonomy by returning the Florentine fortresses to him in 1543, his emblem was apparently no longer considered a necessary adjunct to the ducal stemma. 61 The theme of Cosimo's power as ruler is also evoked by the frame around the central medallion and the ribs that extend from it to the corners of the vault. (The frame, seen in Bronzino's modello, was later obscured by a garland of fruits and flowers.) These pseudoarchitectural elements are painted to imitate porphyry, the valuable and durable red stone that in antiquity was the prerogative of emperors, who used it as a symbol of imperial authority.62 Later rulers, including the Medici in their tombs in the Old Sacristy at S. Lorenzo, used the stone to convey a political message of power;63 and it also appears in Florentine art as an attribute of fame, as in the painted porphyry wall revetments behind Castagno's uomini illustri from Villa Carducci (now S. Apollonia, Museo Castagno).64 In Cosimo's later art, porphyry was employed for family portraits, where it suggests an equation between the hard and noble substance and the eternal worth of the subject, and in Francesco del Tadda's statue of Justice (alluding to the duke's military might) in Piazza S. Trinita.65 In view of these traditions, it is reasonable to suppose that the ''porphyry" in the chapel is more than a luxurious detail. These architectural elements, and possibly also the Justice medallion—a "porphyry" relief—allude to Cosimo's rule and his royal or grand ducal pretensions. The garlands suspended from the medallion by gold rings and tied to the ribs with blue ribbons are made up of many different fruits and vegetables intertwined with laurel and vine leaves. Such garlands of plants that bloom and fruits that ripen in diverse seasons had symbolized the Golden Age since Augustan times. And the inclusion in them of citrus (an allusion to the Medici palle) and laurel, symbolizing the family's renewal, makes it clear that the Golden Age evoked on the chapel vault is that of the Medici.66 The use of vegetative imagery to allude to Medicean regeneration was an old conceit in the family's art; the combination of Medici emblems, fruitful garlands, and putti had carried this message twenty years earlier in Pontormo's lunette Vertumnus and Pomona at Poggio a Caiano.67 This celebratory imagery was revived in Cosimo's early art to signify the foundation of a new Medici dynasty. It was featured in the wedding entertainment, where Gelli's song for Apollo details the fortunes of the Medici lauro: Cosimo and Eleonora are transformed into green plants that will bear flowers—their future offspring, who will conquer death.68 This conceit was also given visual form in several of Cosimo's decorations of the
Page 279
early 1540s: garlands, putti, and the family arms were prominent in the apparato for Francesco's baptism in 1541; Salviati's Camillus frescoes are embellished by putti who sit on garlands holding the MediciToledo arms (see Fig. 2). His ceiling decoration in Eleonora's scrittoio features Abundance with putti (see Fig. 33); and the base of Cellini's Perseus (see Fig. 7) is adorned with garlands and fertility figures of Artemis. Bronzino crystallized all this iconography more didactically in his Allegory of the Dynasty of Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo (see Fig. 107). 69 This tapestry depicts Apollo (Cosimo) and Minerva (Eleonora) tending a laurel, accompanied by a monumental MediciToledo stemma crowned with the ducal coronet;70 the inscription FVNDATA ENIM ERAT SVPER PETRAM (For it has been founded on a rock) alludes to the strength of the new dynasty. The decorative elements of the chapel vault represent an earlier, more imaginative, conflation of the conceits of this tapestry. The porphyry ribs convey the notion of strength and durability, and the garlands suggest that all the new branches and fruits of the Medici tree spring from the marriage of Cosimo and Eleonora, symbolized in the central stemma. This conceit of the ducal offspring as fruits was current in poetry dedicated to the Medici at just the time the chapel vault was being painted. In his "Sonetto sopra la nascita del duchino," celebrating Francesco's birth in 1541, Gelli calls Francesco the "novella prole" (new branch) of the Medici tree and asserts that from such a noble house ''non mai mal frutto nasce" (bad fruit will never be born).71 Thus, the chapel's four putti, placed so intimately in relation to the MediciToledo stemma and the fruitful garlands, read as the fruits of the union of Cosimo and Eleonora—the children of the marriage. Bronzino has slyly made this clear by including among these celestial creatures one wingless putto—a mortal child (see Fig. 60). The choice of the fruits that lie between the legs of the putti on either side of St. Michael (see Plates 20–21) encourages an even more explicit reading of this imagery in relation to the ducal couple. The putto to the left stands over a ripe, open pomegranate and two pears. The pomegranate was a wellknown symbol of the Resurrection—usually found, in Renaissance painting, in the hands of the Christ child as a prophetic sign—but it was also a secular symbol of marriage and fertility.72 Bronzino's delineation of the fruits is emphatically sexual: the putto on the right stands over a group of phallic vegetables, one of which is aligned with his genitalia.73 These fruits complement the pomegranate and two pears (as well as the two gourds under the wingless putto; see Fig. 60) in a way that leaves little
Page 280
doubt that both putti and fruits were intended to tell of richness, abundance, and fertility—the fecundity of Eleonora and Cosimo. Imagery with a sexual subtext is characteristic of Bronzino. He was the author of a large body of poetry that includes rime in burla—seemingly banal poems in the tradition of cinquecento burlesque poetry like that written by his friend Anton Francesco Grazzini (Il Lasca)—that have an obscene or homoerotic meaning. 74 These often take as a starting point vegetal imagery, which is elaborated in an erotic or pornographic metaphor, such as the onion in "La cipolla di Bronzino pittore," a long paean dedicated to the poet's sexual prowess.75 And we should also recall that while Bronzino was at work in the Chapel of Eleonora, he was also painting the highly erotic Allegory of Venus, where a putto carrying the roses of Venus is similar in type to the putti of the chapel vault (see Fig. 11). The imagery of the fruits also brings to mind one of Bronzino's probable sources of the vault's design of a garlanded trellis framing sottoinsù figures against the sky: Raphael's Loggia di Psyche (see Fig. 51). There, in the spandrel with Mercury (Fig. 172), Giovanni da Udine painted suggestively sexual fruits (a gourd, ripe figs and eggplants, etc.) that Vasari described with relish.76 Philippe Morel has traced this representation to the very tradition of burlesque poetry that Bronzino and his circle wrote.77 Further, Morel read it as alluding to Mercury's announcement of the recent paternity of Agostino Chigi, patron of the loggia.78 Bronzino's putti and their fruits alluding to the fecund union of Cosimo and Eleonora are less blatantly sexual than those in the Loggia di Psyche, but the mere introduction of such details into a chapel decoration brings up the issue of decorum. Giovanni's priapic fruit was much admired as a concetto: according to Vasari, "il quale capriccio è espresso con tanta grazia, che piú non si può alcuno imaginare" (that caprice is expressed with such grace that one could not imagine more). Unfortunately, we have no such contemporary comment on the reception of Bronzino's similar caprice; the erotically tinged Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus (see Fig. 19), however, painted only shortly before the chapel, suggests that the duke would not have objected to Bronzino's sexually charged fruits. The radiance emanating from the central MediciToledo stemma that bathes all the figures, garlands, and fruits in the heavenly zone of the chapel reads as both a supernatural light illuminating the ecstatic saints and a blatant assertion of Medicean dominance, as if from Heaven itself, that transforms the vault into an apotheosis of the MediciToledo marriage.79 The overpainting of the coat of arms
Page 281
Figure 172 Raphael and Giovanni da Udine, Loggia di Psyche, Villa Farnesina, detail, Mercury with fruitful garlands.
completely altered this focus; together with the replacement of the patron saints of Florence and the Medici by the Annunciation, it blunted the Medicean message in the chapel's decoration, shifting its emphasis from the glorification of Cosimo and Eleonora to a more conventional devotional iconography.
Page 282
Chapter Eleven— Cosimo de' Medici as an Old Testament Hero Allusions to Duke Cosimo's rule and the new Medici dynasty he founded with Eleonora di Toledo are evident not only in the paintings of the altar wall and the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora but also in the Story of Moses frescoes. Before examining these in detail, however, it is necessary to consider the extensive use of biblical imagery in Cosimo's early art and to discuss some other examples of the Old Testament cycles that he commissioned in the first decade of the principato. Old Testament imagery appears in panegyric and in art commissioned by Cosimo throughout his rule, from his wedding apparato to the orations delivered at his funeral. More than merely associating the duke with the heroes of the Old Testament, these works presented Cosimo as their reincarnation. The conceit of the hero reborn (implicit in the cinquecento's cyclical view of history) was a Renaissance cliché that sharpened the characterization of contemporary personalities. Old Testament figures were often evoked as exemplars: for example, Lorenzino de' Medici's murder of Duke Alessandro was seen by contemporaries as the act of a new David or a new Judith—both old Florentine models of the defense of republican virtue. 1 Cosimo's advisers and artists saw to it that this conceit was constantly given new literary and artistic form, discreetly emphasizing his public image and his political ambitions by suggesting parallels with Old Testament figures.2
Page 283
As with all the imagery Cosimo employed to glorify himself, he identified with Old Testament heroes who suited his propagandistic focus at a given moment. In the 1560s he upgraded his status as he tried to become king of Tuscany by emphasizing that his rule was divinely ordained; subsequently, the conceit of Cosimo as an Old Testament king came into great vogue. He was characterized as a divinely appointed king in a series of tapestries designed in 1560–65 by Stradano for Cosimo's suite in the Palazzo. These symbolized the duke's virtù as exemplified by David, Solomon, Ciro, and others, and the three tapestries of the Story of David include David Anointed King by Samuel, alluding to Cosimo's elevation to the dukedom. 3 In 1561 Fedeli, Cosimo's ambassador to Venice, compared the duke's election (which brought him to Florence from a rural life at Villa Trebbio) to God's call to David: Siccome David dal pascere le pecore per voler di Dio fu chiamato al Regno, così Cosimo uccellando e pescando fu chiamato al Principato.4 (Just as David, by God's wishes, was called to kingship from shepherding, so Cosimo was called to dukedom from birdhunting and fishing.)
The duke also appeared several times as King Solomon, model of royal wisdom, in Vasari's decorations of his bedroom in the Palazzo.5 And at the very end of his life Cosimo was identified with the prophet Joshua. This association was related to Cosimo's goal of territorial expansion in Tuscany, for it was Joshua who led the Israelites to the Promised Land and who was assured by God: "Every place that the sole of your foot shall touch, that have I given unto you" (Joshua 1:3). Just after Cosimo had received the title grand duke of Tuscany (27 August 1569), Vincenzo Danti portrayed him as a new Joshua in an exceptionally direct portrait likeness (Fig. 173). The sculpture is part of the important decoration of the Chapel of St. Luke (SS. Annunziata) executed for the Accademia del Disegno, of which Duke Cosimo was patron.6 The decoration symbolized the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting. Placed next to Santi di Tito's painting Solomon Building the Temple (signifying architecture), CosimoJoshua was characterized as the architect of Tuscany.
Page 284
Figure 173 Vincenzo Danti, Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Joshua. SS. Annunziata, Chapel of St. Luke.
Cosimo was also identified with Moses in his later sculpture. In Pierino da Vinci's Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Patron of Pisa, a marble relief executed for Luca Martini in 1549 (Fig. 174), 7 Cosimo is shown as liberator of Pisa, driving the vices from the city. As Holderbaum has shown, the relief is filled with portraits: among the supporters grouped behind the duke are the patron of the relief, the engineer Martini (the bearded man holding an astrolabe); Pierino himself (in full face at the left margin); and his master Tribolo (bearded, below Pierino).8 Standing directly behind Cosimo, as alter ego, is a horned Moses with the Tablets of the Law. Another of these sculptures is Vincenzo Danti's bronze relief The Brazen Serpent, the Moses story represented earlier in the Chapel of Eleonora (Fig. 175). The
Page 285
Figure 174 Pierino da Vinci, Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Patron of Pisa. Musei Vaticani.
Figure 175 Vincenzo Danti, The Brazen Serpent. Bargello.
Page 286
relief's date (1559) and oblong proportions suggest that it might have been designed for Cosimo's private chapel (completed the previous year), perhaps as the central panel of an antependium for the altar. 9 The conceit of the duke as an Old Testament hero was adumbrated in the first decade of his rule, when Old Testament imagery played an even more fundamental role than in the art of his later years. In this early phase of the principato when Cosimo's regime was still unstable and his critics vociferous, however, he was not yet identified with the biblical kings. Nor was he associated with the young David, who was still an antiMedicean symbol, as can be seen in Giuliano Bugiardini's quotation of the head of Michelangelo's David to convey an antiMedicean message in his portrait of Francesco Guicciardini of 1545 (New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery).10 In the years during which the duke consolidated his power, he was compared instead with the great founders—Noah, Joseph, and Moses. The dramatic stories of powerful yet benevolent patriarchs who founded or refounded their line or the state must have seemed tailormade to convey the duke's power as founder of a new Medici dynasty and as refounder of the principato—particularly in light of the paternalistic concept of the state that Cosimo early established.11 Identification with these divinely ordained and assisted patriarchs, who fulfilled their destiny as liberators of their people despite trials and obstacles, could only enhance Cosimo's image of legitimacy and power. And his image as a healer of discord promising peace and prosperity echoed familiar Old Testament topoi. But perhaps most important, especially before 1543 (when the birth of his second son virtually assured the continuation of his line), Cosimo's promise of dynastic continuity and consequent political stability for Florence could be suggested by one of the most vivid leitmotifs of the Old Testament: the orderly transfer of power from father to son. In the Old Testament cycles of Cosimo's early art he is a new Noah, a new Joseph, and a new Moses—much as in secular contexts he was styled a new Hercules and a new Augustus. Moreover, the biblical Promised Land was understood as analogous to the traditional Golden Age; indeed, as the emphasis of Medicean propaganda in Cosimo's time shifted from nostalgia to promise, the Promised Land replaced the Golden Age of earlier Medici art as the favored metaphor of the pubblico bene. In these biblical cycles allusions to the Medici are more circumspect than in Cosimo's secular decorations. In the frescoes in the Chapel of Eleonora and in the
Page 287
tapestries in the Sala de' Dugento no Medici imprese or mottoes guide the viewer to the identification of Cosimo with Moses and Joseph. Nonetheless, there is plentiful evidence that their stories were intended to allude to him. The extensive use of biblical imagery in Cosimo's early art arose from an obsession with the Old Testament among members of his coterie, who developed the notion of the duke as an Old Testament hero. The conceit given visual form in the art of the 1540s was developed at the beginning of the decade by Gelli, Giambullari, and Bartoli, the academicians who were Cosimo's main cultural advisers. The Old Testament became a focus of intense study among these literati as they advocated the Tuscan language over Latin and revived the mito etrusco—the myth of the Etruscan origins of Florence, as opposed to the traditional legend of its Roman foundation. They declared that Tuscany had been founded by Noah, whom they identified with another mythical founder of Florence, Janus, and that the Tuscan tongue derived from Aramaic, or Hebrew—the language of Redemption. 12 This movement became entrenched in 1541 when this group, aided by Riccio (who maintained close ties with them on the duke's behalf), transformed the Accademia degli Umidi into the Accademia Fiorentina, which became to some extent an instrument of Cosimo's cultural policies. The ideas espoused by the group engendered intense polemics in the academy, ending in the victory of Cosimo's clique and its reformation in 1547 with Giambullari as consul.13 About the same time, these ideas were crystallized in a spate of publications on the subject. Indeed, in a recent study Paolo Simoncelli writes that the AramaicEtruscan movement swept like a comet over the Florentine cultural world.14 Gelli and Giambullari, both already in Cosimo's service as authors of the wedding apparato, were the most important proponents of the movement. Both men were scholars of the Old Testament. They were known as the Aramei, and Giambullari was ironically nicknamed "L'Arameo" by his enemy Grazzini.15 Giambullari's defense of the Tuscan language and its Hebrew origins, in the form of a dialogue with Gelli, was published in Florence in 1546;16 in it the argument for the founding of Florence by NoahJanus is put forth. Gelli played an even more important role in promulgating the idea that Noah had founded Florence. For example, his Eclogue (published in 1542 on the anniversary of Cosimo's election but probably written about 1539) is a dialogue between two shepherds who come to Florence to attend the investiture of the duke.17 One of them tells the story of Noah's foundation of Tuscany, concluding:
Page 288 Siam già vicini al tempio: entriamo omai, entriamo a render grazie ai santi Iddei che diedero oggi il suo buon Cosmo a Flora, che non men che Noè l'antico padre ancor le renderà l'età de l'oro. (We are already near the temple: let us enter, let us enter to give thanks to the holy gods who today gave Flora [Florence] her good Cosimo, who no less than the ancient father Noah shall bring back to her again the Golden Age.)
Already in this poem, in his academy lecture of 5 August 1541 on "la lingua d'Adamo" (the language of Adam) 18 and in his treatise Dell'origine di Firenze (dedicated to Cosimo in 1544),19 Gelli argues that Tuscany was the first place to be inhabited after the Deluge, that NoahJanus brought the Aramaic language with him to Italy, and that his reign was a Golden Age. Noah is presented as a model ruler—legislator, leader, bringer of peace, and provider for the Pubblico bene—and the shepherds in Gelli's Eclogue speak of a new Noah, who will revive the Golden Age in Florence, thus linking the Noah image to Cosimo. Gelli's poetry for Cosimo's wedding apparato, the duke's first official ideological and political statement, is replete with allusions to the mito etrusco and to the myth of Noah's founding of Florence.20 Gelli developed the notion that NoahJanus founded twelve cities in Tuscany, thus justifying Cosimo's planned territorial expansion. This idea was elaborated in speeches sung by Apollo in the wedding entertainment (which also included personifications of the cities that had come to pay homage to the new duke): L'antica Fiesole è, che edificata Fu da Iapeto del gran Noè figlio . . . D'Armenia Aretia con Noè suo sposo, Che dagli antichi Iano è nominato, Venne in Toscana . . .21
Page 289 (This is ancient Fiesole, who was built by Japheth, son of the great Noah . . . From Armenia Aretia with her husband Noah, called Janus by the ancients, came to Tuscany.)
Noah also appeared prominently in the lavish decorations for the baptism of Francesco de' Medici in 1541, the next major public celebration of Cosimo's rule. Vasari's Deluge and Crossing of the Red Sea, portraying types of the sacrament of baptism, flanked his Baptism of Christ in the Tribune of the Baptistery (see Chapter 7). That Noah was included so prominently in the decorations suggests that one of the Aramei, probably Bartoli, who became preposto (provost) of S. Giovanni on 20 April 1540, was responsible for the programme. 22 Finally, Noah dominated Pontormo's frescoes in the S. Lorenzo choir, a decoration that was almost entirely devoted to Old Testament scenes. Pontormo painted subjects from Genesis that were mystically linked in an unsystematic typological arrangement with subjects from the New Testament (see Fig. 6, an engraving that shows, in reverse, only the three scenes in the upper wall above the altar, The Temptation, Christ in Glory and the Creation of Eve, and The Expulsion). From Vasari's and other contemporary descriptions, as well as Pontormo's preparatory drawings, the remaining frescoes can be identified.23 On the upper left wall were Cain and Abel, Noah Designing the Ark, Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law (for Pontormo's study, see Fig. 87); on the upper right wall were The Four Evangelists (holding their Gospels and pendant to the Moses), The Sacrifice of Isaac, and The Labor of Adam and Eve; on the lower left wall was The Deluge with the Benediction of the Seed of Noah. Vasari did not describe the Noah scenes correctly: the episode of the Benediction of the Seed of Noah belongs to the aftermath of the Deluge and was painted with it on the lower wall, whereas the earlier episode of the Building of the Ark was depicted in the upper zone.24 Opposite The Deluge, the first great epic of salvation, was The Resurrection of the Dead. On the altar wall, above The Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo and The Ascension of Souls, the central panel—Christ in Glory and the Creation of Eve—united the beginning and the end. The absence of an immediately comprehensible rationale for the unusual choice and combination of subjects in this cycle explains Vasari's sharp criticism of the frescoes. He did not understand ''the doctrine of the work," and he blamed
Page 290
the strangeness of the biblical interpretations on the "persone dotte e letterate" (learned and literary people) with whom Pontormo associated. 25 Raffaello Borghini also criticized the frescoes, citing particularly the alleged errors in the Noah subjects.26 Various suggestions have been made as to which "persone dotte e letterate" Vasari meant,27 but it seems likely that he was referring to the Aramei. An important member of this group was Riccio (he had obtained the S. Lorenzo commission for Pontormo), whom Vasari described elsewhere as belonging to "una setta'' (a clique), probably the Aramei.28 The people Vasari had in mind might also have included Riccio's friends Giambullari and Gelli. Giambullari had his own associations with S. Lorenzo, being a canon of the church and serving as secretary to the canons when they made their deliberations; he also set his dialogue Il Gello in the cortile of the church.29 It thus seems likely that these men of the Aramean group influenced, if they did not invent, the programme of the frescoes, with its unusual emphasis on Noah—their special hero.30 Pontormo's frescoes seem to illustrate Gelli's elaboration on the myth of Noah and the Etruscans in relation to the familiar themes of Cosimo's early art.31 The Deluge with the Benediction of the Seed of Noah was a metaphor of renewal: as the flood recedes, God blesses Noah's seed and commands Noah and his heirs to "be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth" (Genesis 9:7). The rarely represented theme of the benedictio multiplicationis could have been seen to allude to the Medici, styled as descending from the Tuscan founder Noah and destined now to revive his Golden Age through the dynasty founded by a new Noah. When Pontormo's frescoes were painted, Medicean dynastic succession had been more than assured by the birth in 1549 of Eleonora's fourth son, Ferdinando. At this time, her fertility came to be linked with the pubblico bene, a theme that had come increasingly to preoccupy the historians at Cosimo's court. Looking back over the first years of the principato, Nerli remarks: Dalla quale [Eleonora] dipoi Sua Eccellenza ne ha acquistata una bellissima e molto felice successione di figlioli come maschi, come femmine da poterne una perpetua felicità allo stato e alla casa sua.32 (From her [Eleonora] Cosimo has acquired a beautiful and fortuitous succession of sons and daughters, to make perpetual happiness possible for the state and for his house.)
Page 291
Nerli extends the theme of fertility to Cosimo himself, comparing him with "quel gran Patriarca Abraham" (that grand patriarch Abraham), another founder of a new dynasty who had been promised fertility and progeny by God "per grazia speciale" and was told that his seed would multiply like the stars in heaven. As we know, the attachment of Cosimo's advisers to the Old Testament in the early 1540s led to commissions for biblical cycles based not just on the story of Noah and the mito etrusco but on other Old Testament subjects as well. 33 Besides the Story of Moses frescoes in the Chapel of Eleonora, the major cycle was the Story of Joseph, a subject that had been used with political reference before by the Medici (see Plate 33; Figs. 5, 69, 86, 105, 176).34 The most extensive surviving example of Old Testament imagery in Cosimo's art, this tapestry cycle depicted an Old Testament hero as an exemplar of Cosimo more pointedly than Pontormo's allusive Noah fresco. Destined for the politically important Sala de' Dugento in the Palazzo, the tapestries tell of Joseph, the second founder of his line, whose epic must have been seen to parallel the history of the duke—a second Medici founder (after Cosimo il Vecchio) under whom Florence would enter a new Golden Age.35 The series of Joseph tapestries is the most elaborate treatment of the cherished Medici topos of return in all of Cosimo's art. The story of the unjustly exiled youth, honored first outside his own country and then reconciled with those who had cast him out and brought back to rule them, was an allegory of Cosimo's triumphal elevation to power. But the story is more than a historical narrative: it tells of a "call to rule," of the inevitable working out of divine providence. In equating his own history with it, Cosimo expanded the meaning of the topos of return: his advent was not only predestined but also divinely ordained. The Joseph cycle consists of two sets of ten tapestries. The first set highlights the theme of Joseph's predestined ascendancy, telling the narrative up to the coming of the brothers to Egypt. Four tapestries depict Joseph's dreams of his divinely ordained future: Bronzino's Joseph's Dream of the Sheaves of Wheat, Joseph's Dream of the Sun, Moon, and Stars, and Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet (see Plate 33) and Salviati's Joseph Explaining the Pharaoh's Dream. The next four tapestries, which include The Selling of Joseph (see Fig. 105) and Joseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife (see Fig. 69), tell of Joseph's trials in Egypt. The lastnamed is a key work in providing a visual basis for identifying Joseph with Cosimo. The scene was inspired by Raphael's fresco in the Vatican Logge,36 but Bronzino
Page 292
turned Joseph's head in profile so that he closely resembles the beardless, curlyhaired Cosimo as depicted on his early medals. 37 The portrait likeness here in the narrative (it occurs nowhere else) points up that Cosimo when he assumed power was the same age (seventeen) as Joseph when he was taken to Egypt—that is, when the way was opened for his rise to power (Genesis 37:2). The second set of tapestries develops the story of Joseph's ascendancy—and that of Cosimo, a new Joseph.38 Four scenes allude to Cosimo's promise of future benefits to Florence, suggesting that Cosimo, like the generous Old Testament hero, would lead his people to fulfillment and prosperity. For example, in Bronzino's Joseph's Feast and in Salviati's Joseph Selling Grain to His Brothers, JosephCosimo sits in imperial profile, dispensing plenty, his pose and the twolevel composition recalling the relief of Liberalitas on the Arch of Constantine. The next four tapestries are devoted to the themes of return and reconciliation favored by Cosimo as metaphors of rule, and the last four suggest by analogy with the story of Joseph that there will be an orderly transfer of Medici power. These tapestries expand on a monumental scale a topos of familial continuity in Florentine art. Paul Barolsky has pointed out that the Story of Joseph panels painted by Pontormo and others for the Borgherini bridal chamber in 1515–18 depict episodes from Joseph's story that were appropriate to the marital bedroom; they are about fathers and sons, about the continuity of the family line.39 These same episodes from the later part of the Joseph story are featured in the Sala de' Dugento tapestries in the context of the continuation of Cosimo's new Medici dynasty. The Meeting of Jacob and Joseph in Egypt shows the reunion of father and son. Other reconciliation scenes, including Benjamin Received by Joseph (see Fig. 86), resemble each other so closely as to seem redundant, but this repetition drives home the message of the benevolent ruler, alluding to Cosimo and his forgiveness of those who opposed his rule. Joseph Reveals Himself to his Brothers, the emotional climax of the story, had been represented in Medici art: in Cellini's medal of 1534 for Clement VII to convey the message of reconciliation and magnanimity.40 A source for Bronzino's composition, this medal shows Joseph seated on a throne decorated with Medici palle. The penultimate scene, Jacob Blessing Joseph's Children (Fig. 176), is analogous in theme to Pontormo's lost Benediction of the Seed of Noah in S. Lorenzo. Both works allude to Cosimo's founding of a new Medici dynasty and the future transfer of Medici rule to his son, a theme also embodied in the Moses frescoes in the Chapel of Eleonora.
Page 293
Figure 176 Jacob Blessing Joseph's Children (tapestry). Pitti.
Page 294
Chapter Twelve— Cosimo de' Medici, a New Moses The Choice of Moses for the Chapel of Eleonora Like the Story of Joseph tapestries, the chapel frescoes embody the conceit of Cosimo as an Old Testament hero. 1 They must have suggested to their audience that the story of Cosimo and the Florentines might be analogous to the epic of Moses and the Israelites, and, at the same time, they provided their patron with an exemplar of rulership and appropriate princely action. Predating the Joseph tapestries by four or five years, the cycle might be regarded as a private experimentation with ideas later developed in a more public mode and in greater narrative detail. Among the important differences between these two decorations, however, is their context: in the tapestries an Old Testament hero was brought into the political arena of the Sala de' Dugento; in the Moses frescoes, allusions to Medicean themes were made in a devotional space. The selection of Moses as protagonist of the chapel frescoes must have been based on much the same rationale as that of Joseph for the tapestries. But Moses possessed additional qualities that made him ideally suited to Cosimo's purposes. First, he founded not just his line but a state. Second, he was a divinely assisted lawgiver; his epic contained repeated episodes in which the people, troubled by external threats and internal dissent, doubted him, only to be proved wrong by God's intervention. Cosimo's claims to legitimacy and power, as well as his promise of benefits to those who submitted to his rule, were well served by the story of the Crossing of the Red Sea, a dramatic episode of return and reconciliation: as
Page 295
Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, Cosimo would lead the Florentines into a new Golden Age of Medici rule. Moreover, the miracles of the Gathering of Manna, the Striking of the Rock, and the Brazen Serpent could associate Cosimo with the divinely aided ruler who quelled protest (sometimes harshly) and healed his people; and the appointment of Joshua presented Moses as an exemplar for Cosimo in providing for the future of the state. Thus, according to the typology of the chapel decoration, as Old Testament events prefigured the spiritual benefits and promise of salvation in the New Testament—with Moses and Christ understood as founders of the Old and New Covenants—so the temporal benefits brought to the new state by its founder, Cosimo, could lead to Florentine salvation. The pervasive influence of the Aramei and their obsession with the Old Testament in Florence around 1540 must have been a major reason an Old Testament subject was selected for the chapel, but other factors may have indicated the choice of Moses (rather than, say, Noah or Joseph) as the patriarch whose stories would be painted there. Given Cosimo's regard for traditional imagery of rule, one of these must have been the topos of Moses as a ruler's exemplar. It had been revived in cinquecento papal art, as, for example, in Michelangelo's Moses for the Tomb of Julius II (see Fig. 70). Moreover, Moses had appeared on Raphael's ceiling of the Stanza d'Eliodoro (along with Noah, Abraham, and Jacob) in Moses before the Burning Bush as an exemplar of divine intervention on behalf of the papacy, and Leo X had often been compared with the patriarch. 2 But the most prominent example, and the work that provides the only real precedent for Bronzino's series, is the fresco cycle in the Sistine Chapel—also a palace chapel in which the ruler used Mosaic imagery for his personal glorification. As princeps of the Jews, Moses was a suitable papal model, and in the Sistine cycle medieval typology was manipulated to serve Pope Sixtus's claims to papal primacy.3 Moses and Christ—and, by implication, Sixtus—are presented in their multiple roles as lawgivers, rulers, and priests, and Moses thus becomes not only a type of Christ but a typus papae. Temporal rulers of the period, specifically Charles V, were also associated with Moses.4 For example, Beccafumi's Scenes of Moses on Mt. Sinai in the pavimento of Siena cathedral (see Fig. 150) was completed for a planned visit of Charles to Siena in 1530. A border around these scenes of Moses combatting idolatry contains an inscription with the emperor's name and imperial emblems (the eagle, Jupiter's thunderbolts), thus associating him with the powerful and divinely aided patriarch.5
Page 296
Another reason the new duke of Florence might have considered Moses a suitable subject for a decoration of the early 1540s was the association of Moses with princely virtù in contemporary political thought. 6 In treatises de regimine principum, biblical and historical figures are often cited as models of strong and virtuous rulership.7 In Machiavelli's Il Principe (1532), the most important such treatise, Moses is prominently and repeatedly mentioned as a model for the coming redentore of Italy. Although the idea of such a savior figure goes against the cyclical theory of history characteristic of Medici thought, it is consistent with Medicean opportunism, which constantly suggests just this possibility. Moreover, Machiavelli's work was closely linked historically with the Medici, having been written during the first years of the family's restoration and dedicated in 1516 to Lorenzo the younger. Duke Cosimo is known to have been an adherent of Machiavelli's ideas.8 His historians, such as Nerli, Nardi, and Ammirato, were followers of Machiavelli's thought, and Bartoli, in his Discorsi istorici, reworked Machiavelli's theories, styling Cosimo the embodiment of the ideal prince who would rescue Florence from her political disorder.9 In ways that would have made the patriarch seem a particularly apt typus Cosmi, Machiavelli evokes Moses as a "strumento di Dio," an executor of God's will, destined to help his people in adversity.10 Machiavelli also evokes Moses in a precise political context, mentioning him repeatedly as a princely exemplar—a model of strong and virtuous leadership. But perhaps most significant in considering Machiavelli's Moses as a prototype for the chapel's Moses is Machiavelli's characterization of his exemplars as "uomini felici"—ancient and incorruptible leaders who were able to found their states and maintain their power not merely because they were instruments of God or were blessed with fortuna, but because of their personal virtù. Moses is the first of four exemplars whom the new prince should follow: Ma, per venire a quelli che per propria virtú e non per fortuna sono diventati principi, dico che li piú eccellenti sono Moisè, Ciro, Romolo, Teseo e simili.11 (But coming to those who through their own ability and not through Fortune became princes, I say that the most admirable are Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and the like.)
Page 297
Thanks to their virtù, these men became "potenti, securi, onorati, felici" (powerful, firm, honored, prosperous). 12 As Machiavelli put it in the Discorsi, "gli uomini possono secondare la fortuna" (men can aid fortune).13 This harmonious relationship between fortuna and virtù was fundamental to Cosimo's own presentation of himself as ruler—and he was often referred to in panegyric as a "uomo felice." Machiavelli not only characterizes Moses as a typus principis and the epitome of princely virtù but also cites him more frequently than his other three exemplars. Moses is cited (in both the Discorsi and the Principe) as a leader who used force to establish his state.14 Machiavelli makes it clear that a leader's virtù could be demonstrated only in times of crisis, that disaster represented an occasione for the prince, and that the use of force was justified. Machiavelli's Moses would thus have been a perfect model for Cosimo, a new prince attempting to justify his own unpopular methods of maintaining power (after the Battle of Montemurlo). The choice of Moses was analogous in this sense to that of the dictator Camillus for the frescoes of the Sala delle Udienze (see Fig. 2). Machiavelli's first illustration of misfortune as an opportunity for the prince is Moses' leading his people out of their enslavement in Egypt: Era dunque necessario a Moisè trovare el populo d'Israel, in Egitto, stiavo et oppresso dalli Egizii, acciò che quelli, per uscire di servitù, si disponessino a seguirlo.15 (It was, then, necessary for Moses that the people of Israel be in Egypt, enslaved and downtrodden by the Egyptians, so that to escape from bondage they would prepare their minds for following him.)
Machiavelli cites this episode again when he exhorts the divinely chosen Medici, with their special conflation of fortuna and virtù, to redeem Italy and make it a new Promised Land. In the prophetic language of the Old Testament he recommends that the Medici imitate Moses; and indeed, divine aid would come to them as it had to Moses:
Page 298 Qui è disposizione grandissima; né può essere, dove è grande disposizione, grande difficoltà, pur che quella pigli delli ordini di coloro che io ho proposti per mira. Oltre a questo, qui si veggano estraordinarii senza esemplo, condotti a Dio: el mare s'è aperto; una nube vi ha scòrto el cammino; la pietra ha versato acqua; qui è piovuto la manna; ogni cosa è concorsa nella vostra grandezza. 16 (Now your opportunity is very great, and when there is great opportunity, there cannot be great difficulty, if only your family will use the methods of those whom I have proposed as models. Moreover, now we see marvelous, unexampled signs that God is directing you: the sea is divided; a cloud shows you the road; the rock pours out water; manna rains down; everything unites for your greatness.)
Machiavelli thus suggests that a Medici principe, directed by God, could be a new Moses and that the signs of God's presence are revealed in the very miracles Bronzino was to paint in Eleonora's chapel—the Crossing of the Red Sea, Moses Striking the Rock, and the Gathering of Manna. Another Florentine thinker for whom Moses had been an important model was Savonarola—from whom, ironically, Machiavelli had derived many of his ideas about Moses as an exemplar of leadership. But Savonarola had evoked the patriarch as an antiMedicean hero.17 For him, "Moyses, massimo de' profeti" (Moses, the greatest of the prophets) was an exemplar for the liberating hero who would lead the Florentines—the New Israelites—out of their difficulties. In his sermons during the time of Lorenzo il Magnifico, Savonarola had conflated this notion with antiMedicean ideas.18 After the elevation of Cosimo to the dukedom, Savonarola's followers (the piagnoni) came forward, predicting that the unstable new regime would fall by the will of God and identifying Savonarola as a New Moses.19 Particularly subversive politically were the Capi rossi, a Savonarolan group that had infiltrated two lay confraternities at S. Maria Novella.20 The Savonarolans were so vociferous in denouncing Cosimo's rule as they preached political reform in Florence that Cosimo suppressed the Capi rossi in 1538 and silenced the piagnoni in 1545 by closing their convents at S. Marco and elsewhere.21 Given these circumstances, one might speculate that whatever other reasons there may have been for the choice, Cosimo adopted Savonarola's alter ego Moses as his own early in his rule in an effort to defuse the considerable power of these political opponents.
Page 299
Moses' Miracles in the Desert and Cosimo as Savior of Florence Through analogy with Moses in the Chapel of Eleonora frescoes, Cosimo—the divinely appointed ruler—is celebrated as the deliverer of his people from their enemies (The Crossing of the Red Sea), as provider of the benefits symbolically represented by the water and the manna (Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna), as healer (The Brazen Serpent), and—with Eleonora—as prudent provider for future rule in the Promised Land of Medici Florence (Moses Appointing Joshua). The frescoes of the miracles in the desert allude generically to Cosimo without suggesting specific events of his rule; The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua is a complex political allegory of Cosimo's power and his promise for the future. The linked scenes of Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna (see Plate 8) symbolize the hope and promise of a new life: Moses feeds his people; the bread from heaven is a type of the Eucharist, and the water alludes to baptism, the blood of Christ, and the wine of the Eucharist. These scenes seem to carry a similar meaning in relation to the Medici, alluding to Cosimo's promises of prosperity. 22 The subject had been used before in a Medici ruler's propaganda in Cellini's medal for Pope Clement VII, which carries an explicit political message of the pope's beneficence (Fig. 177). Inscribed VT / BIBAT / POPVLVS (So that the people
Figure 177 Benvenuto Cellini, medal with Moses Striking the Rock. Bargello.
Page 300
may drink), it commemorated Clement's opening of a well at S. Patrizio, Orvieto, that allowed water to be brought to Rome. 23 Likewise, Bronzino's Moses Striking the Rock (with Temperance pouring the symbolic water to the left of the scene) suggests the renewal of Florence under Cosimo, the water flowing from the rock signifying the hope his rule afforded Florentines for a new life of peace and prosperity. Water carried connotations of the pubblico bene in other works of art from Cosimo's early years. The idea was mooted in Gelli's verses for the wedding apparato, where Pistoia (the last of the Tuscan cities to pay tribute to Cosimo in the banquet entertainment) equates the duke with Neptune, who calms the waves as Cosimo calms civil discord.24 And at Villa Castello, the water from the fountains and grottoes (which were actually part of the reconstruction of Florence's ancient water system) flowed around Tribolo's Fountain of VenusFiorenza, symbolizing Cosimo's Florentine domain.25 The Brazen Serpent (see Plate 7) continues the theme of the benefits Cosimo brought to the Florentines. The Israelites saved by their faith in the healing serpent are types of those redeemed, or spiritually healed, by Christ's sacrifice on the cross. But they are also types of the Florentines ''saved" by Cosimo, the divinely assisted ruler. As a scene of healing, The Brazen Serpent echoes a traditional Medicean conceit of the family as healers of political discord. Popular in Medici art because of the wordplay on the name Medici,26 this conceit took on a broader significance in the early sixteenth century after Machiavelli proposed the Medici as a panacea for the sick body politic. Machiavelli's followers among Cosimo's historians—Nerli, for example—invariably saw Cosimo as the healer of civil discord, bringing tranquillity and repose to Florence.27 The theme of Cosimo medico may have been signaled in the chapel's portrait of Duke Cosimo as St. Cosmas by the saint's familiar attribute of the medicine jar28 and in The Brazen Serpent by the serpent wound about the cross so that it resembles Mercury's caduceus, symbol of medicine.29 The caduceus is a specific image of healing in other works commissioned by Cosimo. A statue of Aesculapius, designed by Tribolo in the late 1530s for a fountain at Villa Castello and placed in the middle of a garden of medicinal herbs,30 shows the healer (his head freely quoted from Michelangelo's Moses; see Fig. 70), leaning against a giant caduceus (Fig. 178).
Page 301
Figure 178 (After) Niccolò Tribolo, Aesculapius. Palazzo Medici.
There is yet another topical dimension to The Brazen Serpent. All the miracles of Moses depicted in the chapel occurred after the people had rebelled against their leader, a biblical formula of the leader tested by his people's loss of faith in him. 31 Moses—and Cosimo, too, it is suggested—obeys God's will and thus delivers his people, gaining their support and faith in his promises for their future. Unlike the episodes of the miraculous spring and the fall of manna, however, the story of the Brazen Serpent tells of the consequences of lack of faith. It begins with the murmuring of the people against Moses and God, continues with God's punishment of the rebels by sending down fiery serpents, and ends with the healing of the faithful through the intercession of Moses and the restoration of the
Page 302
Israelites' allegiance to their leader. This scene, then, might be read as a justification of Cosimo's rule, and even of his autocratic methods of controlling dissent. The theme of punishment is heavily stressed in the fresco, with its vivid images of the dead and of those who still struggle with the killing serpents. The work could be seen as warning the Florentines against a rebellion like that of the fuorusciti, which led to the Battle of Montemurlo, and as a lesson about the consequences of rebellion. As such, it anticipates Cellini's Perseus, whose apotropaic Medusahead trophy was held up to the Florentines in the Piazza della Signoria (see Fig. 7). 32 The Crossing of the Red Sea and the Battle of Montemurlo The fresco on the south wall of the Chapel of Eleonora, which has an unbroken picture field and receives the best light, was reserved for the most important episodes from the story of Moses and the chapel's key political message. For here the story of Moses begins (with the Exodus) and ends (with the appointing of his successor); and here the story of Cosimo as a new Moses begins and ends—with his delivery of his own people and his promise for the future of Florence under Medici rule. Bronzino's telling of the epic from Exodus is a monumental example of the quintessential Medicean theme of unjust exile and triumphant return, taking its place beside the Joseph tapestries and the Camillus cycle, the two major works commissioned by Cosimo in the 1540s whose themes are the call to rule, the hero's triumphs in exile, his return to his country, his liberation of his people, and his reconciliation with them. The Crossing of the Red Sea thus carries a message about those destined by God to rule who were (like the Medici) cast out by their own people, then returned to liberate them. But its allegory may be even more pointed, for it seems to allude to the event that made possible the consolidation of Cosimo's principato—his victory at Montemurlo on 1 August 1537.33 It is difficult to appreciate the degree to which the duke and his supporters in the late 1530s understood this event as predestined by fate and absolutely decisive for Florentine history. The coincidence of the date of the Battle of Montemurlo with that of Augustus's victory at Actium confirmed for them the exalted destiny that Cosimo's "Augustan" natal horoscope had promised. Cosimo was instantly
Page 303
styled a new Augustus, and the Capricorn impresa, which signaled the Augustan parallel, was featured on a medal of 1537–38 and became ubiquitous as a decorative device in Cosimo's early art. 34 Works of art commissioned by Cosimo between 1537 and 1543 are filled with allusions to this victory. In the wedding entertainment, Gelli's song for Apollo that accompanied the tributes of the Tuscan cities to Cosimo included a description of an apologetic Montemurlo: Quel'; che vien' poi lor dietro in veste oscura, Montemurlo è, che in voce assai tremante Quant'ogn'altro, per fama al ciel ti estolle; et perdon' chiede del suo Ardir' si folle.35 (The one who comes behind them in dark dress is Montemurlo, who, in a rather trembling voice, extols your fame to heaven as much as any other. And he asks pardon for his foolish arrogance.)
The event was portrayed in one of the istorie in the decoration of the Palazzo Medici for Cosimo's wedding. Antonio di Donnino painted The Taking of Montemurlo, which was accompanied by devices alluding to the forces of fate that had brought about the victory. The only particular Vasari gives about this lost picture is that its background vignette represents "una scaramuccia di cavalli tanto bella" (a very beautiful skirmish of horses),36 but the painting seems to have rewritten history in the interest of Cosimo's image. Its pairing with Pierfrancesco Foschi's Giovanni delle Bande Nere Taking Biagrassa flattered Cosimo by implying that he had been present at Montemurlo and was thus a military hero like his father.37 In actuality, Cosimo had been far from the scene while his general Alessandro Vitelli led the battle.38 Another, different, celebration of Montemurlo is Battista Franco's Battle of Montemurlo with the Rape of Ganymede, a small picture painted for Cosimo before June 1539 that conflates the themes of the duke's personal power and his alliance with Charles V (Fig. 179).39 The battle is shown in the middle ground; at the right is the castle of Montemurlo, where the exiles had assembled; at the left, a view of Florence symbolizes the prize of the victory, news of which a horseman carries to Cosimo in the city. This private work, unlike the picture in the wedding apparato,
Page 304
Figure 179 Battista Franco, The Battle of Montemurlo with the Rape of Ganymede. Pitti.
shows the taking of the prisoners, among them Baccio Valori, archtraitor to the Medici and one of three important prisoners shortly to be executed. Vasari described this battle scene as "mescolato di poesia a suo capriccio" (mixed with his [Franco's] capricious poetry). 40 Indeed, in an unusual juxtaposition, a rape of Ganymede is enacted in the foreground, and an eagle (=Jupiter) bears Ganymede aloft. It is generally agreed that the scene is an allegory of the fealty of Cosimo (Ganymede) to Charles (Jupiter); it celebrates, in particular, the imperial privilegio that had confirmed Cosimo's ducal status the very month after Montemurlo.41 Vasari's comment—that in this picture the young duke "era per virtù di Dio salito in cielo" (had risen by the grace of God into heaven)—also makes it clear that Battista's work concerns Cosimo's destiny, his coming to power through divine providence.42
Page 305
The event was also alluded to in various indirect ways: Salviati's Battle of the Latins and the Volscians (see Fig. 2) and Triumph of Camillus (see Fig. 161) allude to Cosimo's victory; Tribolo's Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus at Villa Castello (see Fig. 3) and Domenico di Polo's medal of the same subject are allegories of Cosimo's Herculean fortitude in defeating the exiles. Cellini's Perseus (see Fig. 7) and the relief on its base, Perseus Liberating Andromeda, combining allusions to Cosimo's special destiny, his legitimacy, and his power, may also be read as referring to his victory at Montemurlo and his liberation of Florence. 43 Bronzino's Crossing of the Red Sea belongs with this group of works. It draws on an ancient tradition of the biblical episode as an allegory of a contemporary battle. This topos originated with Eusebius, who compared Constantine's victory over Maxentius with Moses' victory over the pharaoh and styled the emperor a new Moses.44 The subject had also been treated as a political allegory in literature and oratory in Renaissance Venice, where there was a traditional association between the doge and Moses, the Venetian state and the Promised Land, and the Venetians and the Chosen People.45 In the early sixteenth century, in particular, the Crossing of the Red Sea was the subject of several Venetian works, and their topical reference is clear. An important one that Bronzino may have known is Titian's woodcut (see Fig. 154). The drowning soldiers in the uniforms of the German armies and the spires of a Germanic city in the distance allude to the war of the Serenissima against the League of Cambrai and, more specifically, to the rout of the imperial troops after the defeat at Agnadello in 1509, the miraculous recovery of Venetian territories, and the achievement of peace, which is symbolized by a Caritas—the woman nursing her child in the right foreground.46 Whereas Venetian examples emphasize the Chosen People more than the virtù of the individual leader, in Bronzino's fresco the conceit of Cosimo as a new Moses has unmistakable contemporary reference. The soldiers in the Red Sea are not merely drowning but are vividly characterized as pairs of struggling figures, suggesting a battle scene (Fig. 180). As in many Renaissance works depicting historical battles, the enemy is characterized as the Turk, the enemy of Christendom. Details of the soldiers' costumes are Turkish and a shield floating on the water bears the crescent and two stars of the Turkish flag.47 Moreover, to the left above the shield is a red banner showing one white crescent. The coat of arms of the Strozzi, Cosimo's chief opponents among the fuorusciti, has three white crescents on a red ground, as can be seen in a detail from Filippino Lippi's frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel (Fig. 181).48 Filippo Strozzi, head of the family, had been a vocal
Page 306
Figure 180 Chapel of Eleonora, The Crossing of the Red Sea, detail, drowning soldiers.
critic of Cosimo at the time of his election, expressing the cynical expectations of the republicans that the leaders of the new regime "vogliono continuare nel passato governo senz'alterare altro che 'l nome da Alessandro a Cosimo" (want to continue the former government without changing anything except the name, from Alessandro to Cosimo). 49 Strozzi was taken prisoner at Montemurlo; proclaiming himself a martyr for the republic, he committed suicide in Cosimo's prison in the Fortezza di S. Giovanni. The banner in The Crossing of the Red Sea, then, would seem to signal that Moses' victory over the Egyptians is to be read also as the victory of Cosimo over his enemies at Montemurlo.
Page 307
Figure 181 Filippino Lippi, angel with the Strozzi arms. S. Maria Novella, Strozzi Chapel.
Years later, in Duke Cosimo de' Medici and the Prisoners of Montemurlo (Fig. 182), Vasari portrayed Strozzi and the other prisoners bound in submission before an Augustan Cosimo, being crowned with laurel by Victory. 50 Vasari's picture belongs to the period of triumph after Cosimo's second victory over the Florentine exiles in 1555. Such a scene would have been out of keeping with the tactful imagery of his early art, exemplified in Bandinelli's Giovanni delle Bande Nere Receiving Prisoners on the base of the monument to Cosimo's father (see Fig. 4), which would have been read as a thinly veiled reference to Cosimo's notorious seizure of political prisoners at Montemurlo.51
Page 308
Figure 182 Giorgio Vasari, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and the Prisoners of Montemurlo. Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Cosimo.
I have suggested that the choice of Moses as a subject, as well as the particular stories illustrated in the Chapel of Eleonora, may have been influenced by Il Principe, where Moses is presented as an exemplar of rulership and the Crossing of the Red Sea is twice cited as an example of an occasione for the ruler. Whether or not Machiavelli's treatise was in fact a point of departure for Bronzino's Moses cycle, a parallel between Cosimo and Moses was explicitly made in the panegyrics of the grandduke's apologists. In his 1578 biography, Baccio Baldini styled Cosimo a new Moses and, writing of the duke's divinely aided rule of Florence, even compared the Battle of Montemurlo to the Crossing of the Red Sea:
Page 309 [Cosimo] potette ragionevolmente cantare quell'Hinno il quale cantò già Moise, quando egli vidde Faraone con tutta quella sua grande, bella et ponderosa hoste esser andato sotto l'onde del mar rosso. 52 ([Cosimo] could, with good reason, sing that hymn that Moses sang when he saw the Pharaoh drowning in the waves of the Red Sea along with his large and powerful host.)
The passage recalls the literary topos of the victor as a new Moses—in this case, Constantine, who sang a hymn to god for his victory.53 The images adjacent to The Crossing of the Red Sea may also allude to the victory at Montemurlo, at least in a general way. Prudence (see Fig. 35) might suggest the duke's prudent decision to engage the exiles in battle, and Fortitude (see Fig. 37) his strength in achieving the victory over the rebels.54 Rosello lauded Cosimo's fortitude in the victory at Montemurlo in his treatise on princes: "Quanta reputatione doni al Prencipe la fortezza . . . Il Prencipe d'animo valoroso può raffrena da i vitii un popolo ribello." (What fame may fortitude grant the prince! . . . The prince of valorous spirit can restrain a rebellious populace from vices.)55 The choice of St. Michael (not a Medici saint) for the position to the left of the Red Sea may also relate to the theme of victory (see Plate 3). The saint symbolizes the victory of good over evil, the putting down of rebel angels, and the restoration of order in heaven. As such, he brings to a climax a theme of the punishment of evil in the chapel frescoes (seen in The Brazen Serpent and in The Crossing of the Red Sea). But the victory over evil may also be Cosimo's and the saint an emblem of the defeat of the insurgent fuorusciti (known as rebels, as in Rosello's "popolo ribello," quoted above). St. Michael, the princeps militiae angelorum (prince of the angelic army)—the protector of the Church Militant—thus stands also for the Medici prince in triumph, and the wordplay princeps/principe would not have been lost on the contemporary observer. Bronzino characterized the saint as a powerful victor, with his flattened, swastikalike position making unmistakable reference to the Nike (or Victory) sculptures of ancient art. His prominent sword, as compared with the partly hid
Page 310
den scales of justice, also emphasizes his role as a symbol of fortitude. In this sense, St. Michael is analogous to another personification of victory designed by Bronzino for the duke—the tapestry Justice Liberating Innocence, where the figure is also surrounded by the fruits of Medicean renewal and fertility (see Fig. 103). Moses Appointing Joshua and the Birth of Francesco de' Medici The Strozzi arms in the Red Sea and the reading of the scene as an allegory of Cosimo's victory at Montemurlo suggest a political message in Moses Appointing Joshua as well (see Plate 30). 56 Several elements in the scene point to such a contemporary level of reference. The first is Bronzino's handling of the figure of Moses, whose importance is suggested by his large scale, his central position in the scene, his imperial gesture, and his placement in relation to the chapel's altar—he looks and gestures toward it. In this, he is like Danti's JoshuaCosimo (see Fig. 173), originally placed in the Chapel of St. Luke so that he looked directly across to the altar. The second indicator of a topical meaning in this scene is the presence of portraits. Moses (unlike Joshua) can be depicted only as a bearded patriarchal type, and thus he does not bear the young Cosimo's features. Figures in the group around Moses—Eleazar, the redturbaned man between him and Moses, and the man wearing the blue costume and closefitting hat to the right of Moses—however, all seem to be portraits. I can positively identify only one of them: Cosimo's secretary Riccio, also a priest and canon of the Duomo, is portrayed as the priest Eleazar (Fig. 183), a likeness that may be compared with the sharper characterization of him in his clerical robes dating from 1550 (Fig. 184).57 As Eleazer turns and gestures deferentially to Moses, as if to signal to the audience his act of appointing Joshua, so—as Cosimo's secretary Riccio—this man calls attention to his patron's commanding gesture. Portraiture of this kind in Florentine chapel frescoes had been a commonplace since the late quattrocento, with portraits of donors, political and literary figures, and artists frequently included in religious narratives.58 Particularly relevant in the present context is Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi (see Fig. 13), a possible model for various aspects of Bronzino's chapel; it is populated with Medici family members and their contemporaries, with the most prominent family portraits concentrated on the wall to the right of the entrance, where Bronzino also placed his
Page 311
Figure 183 Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Appointing Joshua, detail, portrait of Pierfrancesco Riccio.
Page 312
Figure 184 (Attributed to) Francesco Salviati, Pierfrancesco Riccio. Prato, Palazzo Comunale.
Page 313
portraits. We might also recall the many portraits in Florentine works contemporary with the chapel decoration, such as Bronzino's Christ in Limbo (see Fig. 10) and Pierino's Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Patron of Pisa (see Fig. 174). A contemporary reading of Moses appointing Joshua his successor is also suggested by the frequent depiction of appointment and investment subjects in Renaissance art in allusion to contemporary events. 59 The scene of Moses appointing Joshua in Signorelli's Last Acts and Death of Moses in the Sistine Chapel, on which elements of Bronzino's composition seem to depend (see Fig. 157), is such a work. The appointing scene is not the main one in the fresco, and it is not paired with a corresponding New Testament episode,60 but the transfer of sacerdotal authority that it represents was suited to the cycle's secondary theme of papal primacy; indeed, the event is even displaced from its proper historical context and shown as the last act of Moses before his death.61 Likewise, in the Chapel of Eleonora the prominence of the episode asks for an explanation related to the fresco's political content. Bronzino's depiction of Moses appointing Joshua is replete with allusions to traditional Florentine civic imagery of rule. Joshua had been an exemplar of virtù in republican Florence of the quattrocento, when Donatello's colossal statue of a young Joshua stood on the north tribune of the Duomo;62 it signified the courage and strength of the Florentines, who, like the hero, would guard their Promised Land against its enemies. Bronzino's youthful Joshua may also have had such connotations; certainly Danti's later JoshuaCosimo (see Fig. 173) was intended to be read as having won the Promised Land of Tuscany.63 Another significant detail is Moses' rod, which had been understood from earliest times as the insignia of the divinely appointed ruler.64 It is also held by Signorelli's Moses, who actually gives it to Joshua, and the duke raises it in Pierino's relief to direct the establishment of the law and the rule of the virtues and the arts in Pisa (see Fig. 174). Bronzino's fresco conflates the characters of Cosimo and Moses (who stands behind Cosimo in Pierino's relief), with Moses' rod signifying Cosimo's divinely assisted rule. In both these works, Moses' rod may also have been intended to bring to mind the bastone del dominio (baton of rule), which had been the insignia of the captain general of the Florentine forces in the time of the republic.65 The association of the bastone with Cosimo—it appears as his attribute in the Justice spandrel (see Plate 13), in Salviati's Triumph of Camillus (see Fig. 161), and in Danti's Joshua—reads as an assertion of his legitimate claim to rule Florence.
Page 314
All these factors suggest that Moses Appointing Joshua, as an image of the passing of rule from Moses to his successor, carries a message akin to that of Signorelli's allusion to papal succession in the Joshua episode in the Sistine Chapel. It alludes to Duke Cosimo's establishment of a new Medici dynasty: as Moses provides for the future of the Israelites by designating Joshua, who will lead them to the Promised Land, so Cosimo provides for an orderly transfer of government and the continuation of the state by producing with Eleonora an heir who will rule Florence in a new Medici Golden Age. 66 In light of this reading, we might look again at the population of the foreground of the fresco, particularly the seated women with their children to the left, who belong to the scene of the departure for the Red Sea, and the soldier and the reclining nude at the right, who belong to the appointment of Joshua episode. All these figures appear to signal the Pax Medicea after Montemurlo, a theme that is also seen in Salviati's Peace Burning Arms (see Fig. 2) and the pendant Arno with a View of Florence in the Sala delle Udienze.67 The women are Caritas figures of the type that appear as emblems of peace at the lower right of Titian's Crossing of the Red Sea, which likewise alludes to peace after battle (see Fig. 154). And the soldier kneeling in front of the patriarch, together with the discarded sword on the rock in the foreground, would seem to allude to the same idea. Finally, I would propose that the appointment of Joshua may refer not just to the general idea of Cosimo's establishment of a new Medici dynasty in the peaceful aftermath of conflict but also, specifically, to the birth and baptism of his heir, Francesco de' Medici, which was so crucial to his quest for Florentine autonomy.68 This important dynastic theme first appeared in the duke's art in the wedding apparato. The statue of Fecundity that Eleonora would have seen on her entry through the Porta al Prato into Florence made clear the role she was to play in Cosimo's future. Dynastic imagery was a leitmotif of the Palazzo Medici decorations, where a lunette compared Cosimo to Aeneas,69 and inscriptions accompanying the istorie insistently referred to AeneasCosimo. This line of propaganda reached a climax in Bronzino's Marriage by Proxy of Duke Cosimo with its imperative motto, ''Bear children quickly!"70 Francesco was born on 25 March 1541. This propitious date coincided with the feast of the Annunciation, the first day of the Florentine year, and the date of the legendary founding of the city; ducal supporters greeted the birth as a sign that fate had indeed destined the Medici to rule Florence.71
Page 315
The date selected for the baptism in the Florentine Baptistery was 1 August, the anniversary of the Battle of Montemurlo, a day that had already been designated one of Cosimo's giorni felici (lucky days) and celebrated as a public holiday. Thus Francesco's baptism would fall on the same day of the year as the event that had marked the duke's assurance of Medici power in Florence. Furthermore, the Baptistery was believed to have once been a temple of Mars and was held up as evidence of the city's glory as a Roman colony. A Medici baptism celebrated there could only dramatize the association of the Medici with the ancient traditions and renewal of the city itself. Charles V bestowed the imperial stamp of approval by agreeing to be godfather to the child, and the baptism took place, according to Settimanni's diary, "congrandissima solennita e pompa" (with the greatest pomp and circumstance). 72 The apparato, executed in haste to be ready for the significant date, conflated the Old Testament, the New Testament, and two generations of Medici. Vasari's Baptism of Christ implied a parallel with that of the Medici infant, and his paintings featuring Moses and Noah—The Crossing of the Red Sea and The Deluge—would have suggested Duke Cosimo. Moreover, in view of the traditional association of the Crossing of the Red Sea with victory in battle, Vasari's painting may have been understood as alluding to the victory at Montemurlo. This conflation of themes of prophecy, fulfillment, and renewal thus dramatized the symbolic ritual of the baptism of the Medici heir, turning the occasion into a compelling pronouncement of the rebirth of Florence under Medici rule. In Gelli's poem "Sopra il battesimo dell'unico figiuolo di Sua Eccellenza" (On the baptism of the only son of His Excellency) the speaker is the Arno, who expresses the hope that Francesco will bring about the return of the Golden Age of the Medici and that divine providence will give him the strength to fight the enemies of Florence, the fuorusciti.73 In very different language (without the Old Testament metaphors), Gelli associates the baptism of the Medici heir and the Battle of Montemurlo. Bronzino's fresco The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua was begun in late 1541, some months after the baptism. It transforms ideas from the poetry of Gelli and the ephemeral decorations of the apparato into permanent visual form, joining The Crossing of the Red Sea, with its topical reference to Cosimo's victory at Montemurlo, with Moses Appointing Joshua, which may be read as alluding to the birth and baptism of Francesco de' Medici.
Page 316
Two further features of the work may allude to these Medicean events of 1541. The first is a detail that seems to bring together different layers of meaning in the fresco: the spoils of the Egyptians at the center foreground, which separate yet join the two Moses episodes (Fig. 185). These vessels allude to baptism, signifying the water of the sacrament that the Crossing of the Red Sea prefigures, but the decoration on them is Medicean. The theme of Venus with the shell that symbolizes her birth from the sea had often been used in Medici art—as in Botticelli's Birth of Venus (Galleria degli Uffizi)—to symbolize Medici renewal. The snake handle on the silver ewer alludes to the Medici impresa of the snake turning back on its tail, signifying the family's eternal life. (The snakes in The Brazen Serpent and the Prudence spandrel also seem to carry this meaning; see Plate 7 and Fig. 35.) The decoration of both these "baptismal" vessels thus alludes to familiar themes of Medici renewal and immortality. The second is the group of women with a child behind Moses (Plate 32). These four women—the main one of whom is pregnant—bear an astonishing resemblance to those in Pontormo's Visitation at Carmignano, a hint of a New Testament reference within the Moses scene that is underscored by the baby carried by the pregnant woman's attendant. He is reminiscent of the Christ child; moreover, his gesture of lifting the hatveil of the woman carrying him, as if to put it over his own head, is a motif that appears in Renaissance Madonnas, where the Virgin, or Christ himself, draws her veil over his head in prophetic allusion to the veils of the Passion. 74 Bronzino knew this motif and experimented with it in a drawing of the 1540s for a Holy Family (Fig. 186).75 This imagery of pregnancy and birth, with its suggestion of the birth of the Savior, has little to do with Moses, the Crossing of the Red Sea, or the appointing of Joshua. These figures must have been painted here in reference to Eleonora genetrix—to the theme of fertility and procreation that is signaled in the chapel decoration by the putti and fruits of the vault and, perhaps, by the unusual number of women and children in the wall frescoes. The pregnant woman's status is signaled by her conspicuous placement behind Moses; Joshua looks back at Moses and at her, their three heads being precisely aligned on a diagonal that is emphasized by the men's gestures toward the altar. She is pointedly linked with Moses by the child, who is intersected by the rays of light from the patriarch's head and who reaches out and touches his mother's arm as if to guide her forward. Moreover, her aristocratic bearing and rich clothing are unlike those of the other Israelite women. Her red dress has a wide gilded border
Page 317
Figure 185 Chapel of Eleonora, The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, detail, ewer and basin.
Figure 186 Bronzino (reworked?), study for a Holy Family. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut.
Page 318
around the neckline with a grotesque head all'antica (like those on MosesCosimo's leggings), and she wears a golden crownlike headdress. This woman can only be intended to allude to Eleonora herself and the birth of Francesco. The issue of decorum arises here, but the pregnant woman is not, after all, an actual portrait likeness of the duchess, any more than Moses is a portrait of Cosimo. And we might bear in mind that a pregnant Eleonora would not have been an unrealistic image, for Eleonora had hardly ever been seen by Bronzino or any others involved in the planning of the chapel decoration in any other condition. 76 The allusion to the duchess adds to the concentration of key political imagery in the chapel decoration on the wall to the right of the altar, completing the Medicean message of the fresco: as Cosimo, a new Moses, delivers the Florentines from their enemies and establishes the principato, Eleonora produces an heir so that the Medici may eternally rule the Promised Land of Florence. The devotional and Medicean levels of meaning in the chapel decoration also intersect in the vault above this wall in St. Francis, who has a greater topical significance than the other vault saints (see Plate 17). At the time of the chapel's commission, Cosimo and Eleonora were personally devoted to St. Francis and to the cult of the stigmatization,77 and their observance may ultimately have determined the choice of the subject of the vault compartment above The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua. The Medici heir born in 1541 was named after St. Francis. This choice of name was clearly made for reasons of personal piety, for Francesco was not a traditional Medicean name, nor was it the name of a relative, as were the other ducal children's names.78 The naming of the child was connected with the Franciscan shrine at La Verna, site of the stigmatization. According to Cosimo's biographer, Ammirato, Fù posto al fanciullo nome Francesco, imperoche la Duchessa visitando la state passata i luoghi santissimi della Vernia; si botò a Dio, se per intercession del suo fedelissimo servo Francesco, il quale in que' luoghi vivendo havea aspra et innocente vita menato, era per nascerle figliuol maschio, non per altro nome, che per quel di Francesco hauerlo à chiamare.79 (The child was called Francesco, since the Duchess, on a visit to the sacred place La Verna the preceding summer [1540], vowed to God that if, through the in
Page 319 tercession of his loyal servant Francesco, who had lived a frugal and chaste life there, she were granted a son, she would have him called by no other name than that of Francesco.)
Eleonora's vow at La Verna was also evoked in Gelli's poem celebrating Francesco's baptism, where a personification of the Arno tells of the new Francesco, named according to his mother's vow at La Verna, where the Arno River has its source. 80 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, its subject rarely depicted outside Franciscan churches and chapels, must have been charged with personal meaning for the ducal couple. St. Francis is placed on the vault directly above The Crossing of the Red Sea, the Old Testament figure of baptism, with its ritual of naming. And he is also above Moses Appointing Joshua, an allegory of the new dynasty Cosimo established with the birth of Francesco. Symbolically, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata thus relates not only to the renovatio of the Church, which St. Francis embodies, but also to the rebirth of Medici power. As a celebration of the renewal made possible by Cosimo's victory at Montemurlo and the birth of Francesco de' Medici, The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, with St. Francis above it, thus complements the chapel's underlying devotional theme of prophecy and fulfillment by projecting the message of Medici renewal and rule into the future.81
Page 320
Chapter Thirteen— The Programme of the Chapel The intermeshed religious and political meanings in the decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora bring up yet again the question of the authorship of the chapel's programme. Did its patrons, Eleonora and Cosimo, have any role in determining the chapel's imagery? To what extent did Bronzino, poet and learned member of the Accademia Fiorentina, determine the details of the paintings? And, if there were advisers on hand, who were they? We have little indication that Eleonora influenced the choice of the subjects for the paintings in her chapel, but she does seem to have been consulted on at least one aesthetic decision. Cosimo's letter to Bandinelli of late 1542, in which he tells the artist, "Our consort likes the drawing of the Pietà," indicates that she was asked for an opinion about Bandinelli's modello for the altarpiece. In 1545, however, when Bronzino was preparing to paint a replica of the Lamentation altarpiece after Cosimo had sent the original to Granvelle, it was the duke, not Eleonora, who instructed the artist: "Don't introduce any new ideas because I like that one [altarpiece]." But about this same time, if we are to believe Vasari, Eleonora—undoubtedly piqued at Cosimo for giving away her altarpiece—asserted herself in choosing the subject for new wings to flank the replica commissioned from Bronzino. She had the original side panels of St. John and St. Cosmas (a portrait of the duke!) put in storage and commissioned the more traditional (and feminine) devotional subject of the Annunciation in their place.
Page 321
Although the only paintings in the chapel whose subjects are demonstrably connected with Eleonora are St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata and Moses Appointing Joshua, Eleonora's personal history may have some bearing on the use of mainly Old Testament subjects in the chapel decorations. Eleonora's childhood tutor was Donna Benvenida Abravanel, the wife of Don Samuele, who was financial adviser to Eleonora's father. Donna Benvenida was a notable intellectual and patroness of learning and a member of a noble Jewish family. 1 Although she cannot have been responsible for Eleonora's religious upbringing, Donna Benvenida was on intimate terms with her pupil, who called her madre, and she remained close to Eleonora even after Eleonora's marriage and departure from Naples.2 Thus, the possibility, at least, of Eleonora's sympathy for Old Testament subjects cannot be discounted. In spite of reports that Eleonora saw Bandinelli's drawing and later chose the subject of the new wings for the altarpiece, much of the imagery of her own chapel (especially as originally conceived) hardly alludes to her at all. Rather than celebrate the duchess, or female saints with whom she might have identified, the chapel decorations depict patriarchal and saintly exemplars for Cosimo as ruler. Where the chapel paintings (such as Moses Appointing Joshua) relate to Eleonora at all, they celebrate Eleonora genetrix, for she is evoked in the chapel's imagery only in connection with her marriage and progeny. The chapel's Medicean imagery is thus consistent with Eleonora's personal imagery in other works of the 1540s—especially the dynastic portraits with her sons (see Figs. 23 and 26)—and other imagery of her as Juno, goddess of matrimony, that was to crystallize later. As the primary audience for the chapel's imagery, the duchess must have been reminded of her circumscribed role in Cosimo's scenario each time she attended Mass in her chapel. As to who might have aided Bronzino in determining the images to be represented in the chapel, Riccio, Gelli, and Giambullari are likely candidates among the literati in ducal service in 1540. Riccio was a close associate of Cosimo's as majordomo, secretary, and liaison with the duke's artists. That Bronzino portrayed Riccio in Moses Appointing Joshua (see Fig. 183) attests to the majordomo's involvement in the chapel project—probably as the intermediary between the duke and Bronzino. But although Riccio was an Academy member, he was not a scholar.3 Lacking evidence for his involvement in Cosimo's other artistic programmes, I am inclined to read the portrait as a tribute not to Riccio's intellect or knowledge but to his power at court—at Cosimo's side, as Bronzino shows him.
Page 322
Gelli and/or Giambullari had collaborated successfully, just before the commission of the chapel, on the wedding apparato—the only securely documented instance of "learned advisers" in Cosimo's early art. We know that Riccio, who had to approve of everyone who worked at the court, was close to his fellow academicians. He wrote often and in glowing terms about their lezioni (lectures) at the Accademia Fiorentina. For example, on 11 November 1542 he writes to Pagni, "Domani legge il Giambullari e così si andrà seguendo allegramente" (tomorrow Giambullari is reading and I will go happily [to hear him]); and, two days later: M'ero scordato di dire a V.S. che domenica all' Accademia il Giambullari fece una bella e gran lectione con sodisfactione universale. Et il mio Gello si va preparando per fare honore a S. Ex.a, et li prometto che la sarà cosa da non si vergognare da nessuna altra. 4 (I had forgotten to tell Your Lordship that on Sunday at the academy Giambullari gave a fine long lecture, to everyone's satisfaction, and that my [friend] Gelli is readying [one] in honor of His Excellency—and I promise that it will be something no one will be ashamed of.)
Gelli and Giambullari were both scholars of the Old Testament; their expertise was already evident in the wedding apparato, and their special interest in the legend of Noah as founder of Tuscany may have determined the unusual emphasis on Noah in Pontormo's S. Lorenzo choir frescoes. Moreover, both men were Moses scholars. In Il Gello, Giambullari writes of "l'infallibile scritto di Mosè" (the infallible writings of Moses), who he thought was the author of Genesis.5 And Gelli, in Dell'origine di Firenze, also mentions the patriarch frequently, even giving Moses a title that suggests he was thinking of Cosimo: writing of Old Testament chroniclers who could be relied on, he declares: "In fra i quali Moises duca del populo hebreo sarà il primo" (Among those [writers] Moses, duke of the Hebrew people, would be the first).6 He notes that Moses as a writer was ''illuminato del divino lume" (illuminated by divine light) and that he seconded his writings "con grandissimi miracoli" (with the greatest miracles). In short, Moses was regarded by both Gelli and Giambullari as the most important source for their theories of Old Testament history.
Page 323
Figure 187 Christ in Limbo, detail, portraits of Gelli and Giambullari as Moses and Abraham. Museo dell'Opera di S. Croce.
Bronzino was on intimate terms with the members of the Academy Varchi, 7 Martini, Giambullari, and Gelli; and he had belonged to the very select group of the Umidi, joining the Accademia Fiorentina on 11 February 1540 as the first artist member.8 There is also evidence in his paintings of his friendship with Giambullari and, especially, Gelli. Vasari recounts that Bronzino portrayed his artist and academician friends in the guise of biblical figures in Christ in Limbo (see Fig. 10), "fra quali è Jacopo Pontormo, Giovanbattista Gelli, assai famoso accademico fiorentino, et il Bacchiacca dipintore" (among them is Jacopo Pontormo, Giambattista Gelli, [the] rather famous Florentine academician, and the painter Bachiacca).9 The inseparable academicians are prominently placed just to the left of Pontormo—and of Christ (Fig. 187).10 In a clever commentary on
Page 324
Giambullari's involvement in Mosaic studies, Bronzino depicted him as a whitebearded Moses complete with horns and the Tablets of Law (the latter not visible in the illustration). Gelli has no identifying attributes, but a contemporary poem about this picture describes it as showing "Abram, Moisè e ciascun altro Padre" (Abraham, Moses, and some other father); thus he may be identified as Abraham. 11 Bronzino had portrayed Gelli earlier in one of the tapestries of the Story of Joseph cycle. We hear about this portrait in ironic poetry addressed to Gelli by his enemies. An epigram by Alfonso de' Pazzi begins, "Gello, io t'ho visto in un panno d'arazzo" (Gello, I have seen you in a tapestry).12 A poem by Grazzini, "A Giambattista Gelli," mentions Bronzino by name and implies, in the secret language of burlesque poetry, that there was an intimate friendship between the two men. It ends with a reference to Bronzino's portrait of Gelli: . . .filosofo volgar, poeta pazzo, dipinto vivo in un panno d'arazzo.13 ( . . . crude philosopher, crazy poet, depicted true to life in a tapestry.)
Gelli is easily recognizable in Bronzino's Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet (see Plate 33) as the man standing in imposing full length, who has his broad features, large expressive eyes, high forehead, and bald pate. This man is the pharaoh's chief butler, a characterization that may be Bronzino's witty comment on Gelli's artisan status, for, although an academician, he was a shoemaker by profession.14 In sum, given the Old Testament subject matter of the Chapel of Eleonora frescoes; given the many connections between Bronzino, Giambullari, and Gelli; and given their employment by Cosimo in 1539 for the comprehensive wedding apparato programme, Gelli, Giambullari, or both could well have continued immediately thereafter in the duke's service (as Bronzino did), collaborating with Bronzino in devising the programme for Eleonora's chapel. I believe that the evidence tips slightly toward Bronzino's friend and fellow poet Gelli, however. He
Page 325
was an Old Testament scholar, the author of verses in the wedding apparato that adumbrate themes in the chapel, and the author of the poem I have cited on the baptism of Francesco. 15 This poem, like the Chapel of Eleonora, celebrates Cosimo's elevation to the dukedom, the victory at Montemurlo, Eleonora's vow at La Verna, and the founding of a new Medici dynasty by the birth of Cosimo and Eleonora's son Francesco.
Page 327
APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS This appendix contains documents directly related to the Chapel of Eleonora in chronological order. Many others are quoted or cited in the notes; all are indexed in the Index of Documents Cited. For each document in this appendix I have indicated in a note the initial publication, quotation, or reference to the document, if any. All letters (except those of unusual length dealing with extraneous matters) are quoted in extenso, but only the relevant passages of ricordi, payments, and inventories are given. I have checked and made complete transcriptions of all documents with the aid of Dott. Gino Corti, to whom I am most grateful. He should not, however, be held accountable for any errors of transcription or interpretation. All dates in the headings and interpolated in the documents are New Style. Original idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies of spelling have been retained. Transcriptions, both complete and partial, of unpublished documents 1, 4–6, and 15–16 were given to me by Edward Sanchez, to whose generosity I am greatly indebted.
Page 328
Doc. 1— Payments to Bronzino and Bachiacca, 29 April 1542 to 19 January 1543. 1 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 600 (Ricordi, copie di lettere ed altro pertinenti all' Ill.mo S.or Duca di Firenze Cosimo de Medici per mano di P.o Franc.o Riccio) f. 10r E addì detto [29 April 1542] si fece una poliza al Pretino che pagasse al Bronzino scudi viii et scudi iiii al Baiacca a buon conto scudi 12 f. 11r E addì detto [3 June 1542] si fece una poliza al Pretino sottomaestro di casa che pagasse scudi viii al Bronzino e un'altra che pagasse scudi 6 al Baiacca scudi 14 . . . Addì xvii di giugno . . . Feci una poliza a . . . Messer Franc.o Pretino sottomaestro di casa di S. Ex.a che pagasse al Bronzino pittore scudi viii et al Baiacca scudi 6 scudi 14 f. 13r Addì xv di luglio [1542]. Feci una poliza al Pretino sottomaestro di casa che pagasse al Baiacca pittore fiorini 6 et al Bronzino fiorini viii scudi 14 f. 14v Addì v detto [August 1542]. Si fece una poliza a Messer Franc.o Pretino sottomaestro di casa di S. Ex.a che pagasse al Baiacca scudi 6 et al Bronzino scudi otto a conto di loro pictura scudi 14 f. 16r Addì detto [26 August 1542] feci una poliza al Pretino che pagasse al Baiacca fiorini 6 et al Bronzino fiorini viii. f. 17r Addì 16 di Septembre [1542]. Feci una poliza al Pretino che pagasse al Bronzino fiorini viii e al Baiacca fiorini 6. f. 19r Addì xxii di dicembre [1542]. Feci una poliza al Pretino che pagasse al Bronzino pittore scudi viii [di] moneta e al Baiacca scudi vi a loro conto. f. 20v Addì xix Gennaio [1543]. Feci una poliza al Pretino che pagasse scudi sei al Bronzino et scudi 4 al Baiacca. Doc. 2— Letter from Agnolo Marzi De' Medici in Pisa to Baccio Bandinelli in Florence, 9 November 1542. BNF, Bandinelli 6 (Libro di Lettere e Suppliche), f. 84r Mag.co S.r Cavalieri Risponderò alla Signoria Vostra quanto Sua Ecc.tia ha resoluto sopra la lettera che ella mi ha scritto. Et prima per conto della pittura della cappella di Sua Illustrissima Signora Consorte, gl'è
Page 329
sodisfatto lo avvertire ne ha Vostra Signoria fatto. Del venir a portare qua quel suo disegno della facciata, non vuole che la perda altrimenti questo tempo per essere massime dolorose strade, ma che la attenda a' lavori come lei sa. Al far la guardarobba dove lei ne dice, ci andrà pensando S. Ecc.tia et ne risolverà secondo conoscerà essere bene. Desidera pur assai che lei lavori, seguiti et attenda come li commisse a lavorare sul sepulcro et non sopra le statue, che a quelle non mancherà poi tempo. Quanto a' conti, che è poca fatica a saldarli vedendosi quel che Vostra Signoria ha sino adesso condotto al fine. Altro non ho che offerirmeli quanto posso. Di Pisa li 9 di novembre 1542. [by a different hand] Di Vostra Signoria Molto Magnifica Martio vescovo di Marsico [on verso] Al Mag.co S.or Cavallieri Bandinello mio Honorando Firenze Doc. 3— Letter from Cosimo De' Medici in Pisa to Baccio Bandinelli in Florence, 20 November 1542. BNF, Bandinelli 6 (Libro di Lettere e Suppliche), f. 99r S.r Cavalieri charissimo Haviamo visto le vostre de' 12, in risposta delle quali vi si dice che'l disegno della Pietà piace alla Sra nostra Consorte, e per farlo mettere in opera, come merita in vero l'opera et fatica vostra, s'ordinerà al Bronzino che la dipinga lui et obbedisca voi in questo per quanto sia di bisogno. Circa al quietarvi l'animo per meglio attendere al sepolchro, questo non lo può fare se non nostro S.re Dio, quale con una parola anzi con una inspiratione et fiato divino può consolare altrui. Però a questo non sappiamo dirvi altro se non exhortarvi al seguitare a lavorare sul sepolchro, et di quello s'espetterà a noi et saremo tenuti non ne semo per mancarne. Possete, come scrivete, smurare dove s'ha da collocare decto sepulcro; et delle pietre miste da voi domandate, quando sarà tempo non vi se ne mancherà per li bisogni di tal opera. Et acciò vediate per esperientia che vi vogliamo bene e tenere per quanto si può l'animo quieto, s'ordina per l'alligata a Pierfrancesco de' Ricci non vi dia molestia per la gabella della casa da voi compra. Quanto al corridor de' balaustri, non stando voi in un fermo proposito, non haviamo a dirvi altro se non che le cose che, oltre a molto tempo et denari ci si getton via di superchio, recono alla fine poco honore a voi et a noi [added by another hand] né lo comporta la virtù vostra così chiara. La resolutione del corridore secreto può espettare la ritornata nostra costà, però ci risolveremo per allhora a quello ci parrà da farci dentro. Di Pisa li 20 di novembre 1542 El Duca di Fiorenza [on verso] . . .mo S.r Cavallie . . .
Page 330
Doc. 4— Payments to Bronzino, 26 May and 7 July 1543. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 600 f. 25r E addì 26 [May 1543] che pagasse scudi x al Bronzino pittore per mandato di S.Ex.a scudi 10 f. 25v E addì vii di Luglio [1543] che pagasse al Bronzino pittore scudi 30 d'oro moneta per ordine di S. Ex.a scudi 30 Doc. 5— Payments to Bronzino, 16 October 1544 to 5 January 1545. ASF, Depositeria generale 573 (debitori e creditori, 1543–50) f. 131, sinistra [debit side] Agnolo di Cosimo detto Bronzino dipintore de' dare addì XVI d'Ottobre 1544 Fiorini cinquanta di moneta hauti in più partite al quaderno di cassa di Francesco Ruberti a car. 141, d'ordine di Sua Ex.tia; a Uscita a car. 95, pagò detto Francesco; havere car. 130 Fior. 50 E addì V di gennaio [1545] Fiorini dieci di moneta fatti buoni a Messer Pierfrancesco Ricci Secretario per tanti fattili contare a Girolamo Migl[i]orotti a buon conto dalla sua entrata pagonazza segnata * a car. 69; havere in questo car. 182 Fior. 10 E de' dare Fiorini quaranta di moneta assegnatoci di tanti per debitore dal libro giallo dello Scrittoio di Sua Ex.tia segnato F car. 70, per tanti hautine da ddì VII di lugl [i]o a ddì XII di dicembre 1543 in IIII partite; havere detto libro in questo car. 96 Fior. 40 E de' dare Fior. trenta di moneta assegnatoci di tanti per debitore dal libro rosso segnato D dello Scrittoio per tanti hautine sino XVIIII d'ottobre 1542; havere detto libro, car. 104 Fior. 30 f. 131, destra [credit side] Agnolo di Cosimo detto Bronzino pittore di contro de' havere Fiorini centotrenta di moneta assegnato di tanti per debitore al libro verde segnato H dello Scrittoio di Sua Ecc.tia a car. 103 per resto et saldo di questo conto; dare detto libro in questo car. 193 Fior. 130
Page 331
Doc. 6— Payments to Bronzino from 10 January to 11 November 1545. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 10 (1544–1553), f. 37 sinistra Bronzino pittore de' dare addì X di giennaio [1545] fiorini X d'oro moneta, portò contanti per mano di Girolamo Migliorotti; a uscita c. 69; posto el mayordomo di S. E.tia avere in questo, c. 35 F. 10 E addì 16 di luglio [1545] fiorini XX d'oro moneta, contanti a suo conto per ordine di S. Ex.tia, come per lettera; a uscita, c. 82; posto avere el mayordomo in questo, c. 47 F. 20 E addì XIIII di settembre fiorini 100 d'oro di moneta contanti a suo conto per le mani di Lattanzio Ghorini; a uscita c. 91; posto avere el mayordomo in questo, c. 60 F. 100 E addì XI di novembre fiorini XXV d'oro di moneta per mano di Tanay de' Medici nostro giovane, a conto di fiorini XII 1/2 il mese cominc[i]ato addì primo di detto, a buon conto; a uscita, c. 99; posto el mayordomo avere in questo, c. 65 F. 25 The following chart summarizes the payments to Bronzino for the chapel frescoes and altarpiece in the three different account books in which they occur: Mediceo del Principato 600 (docs. 1, 4)
Depositeria generale 573 (doc. 5)
Apr. 29, 1542
scudi 8
[May]
June 3
scudi 8
June 17
scudi 8
July 15
scudi 8
Aug. 5
scudi 8
Aug. 26
scudi 8
Sept. 16
scudi 8
[Oct.]
Oct. 19, 1542
[Nov.]
Dec. 22
scudi 8
Jan. 19, 1543
scudi 6
[Feb.]
? Mar. 23 (muraglia et altro)
? Apr. 4 (muraglia e pittori)
May 26
scudi 10
[June]
July 7
scudi 30
July 7, 1543
[Aug.]
Sept.
[Oct.]
[Nov.]
(table continued on next page)
scudi 30
fiorini 40 (in 4 installments)
Page 332
(table continued from previous page)
[Dec. 12]
[Jan. 1544]
[Feb.]
[Mar.]
[Apr.]
May
[June]
[July]
[Aug.]
[Sept.]
[Oct. 16]
[Nov.]
Guardaroba 10 (docs. 7, 8)
fiorini 50 (in many installments)
[Dec.]
Jan. 10, 1545
fiorini 10
Jan. 5, 1545
[Feb.]
[Mar.]
[Apr.]
[May]
[June]
July 16
fiorini 20
[Aug.]
Sept. 14
fiorini 100 (8 mos. at fiorini 12)
[Oct.]
Nov. 11
fiorini 25 (in 2 installments for tapestry designs)
fiorini 10
Doc. 7— Payment to Mariotto Di Francesco Mettidoro for the Gilding of the Frame of Bronzino'S Lamentation, 16 July 1545. 2 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 10, f. 4 Spese per conto di S. Ex.tia Ill.ma deono dare . . . Et addì 16 detto [July 1545] fiorini 6 d'oro moneta per Sua Ex.tia a Mariotto dipintore per doratura del'ornamento della tavola della Cappella della Duchessa, contanti; a uscita, c. 82, posto avere il Mayordomo in questo, c. 47 Fior. 6 lire—
Page 333
Doc. 8— Letter from Bronzino in Poggio a Caiano to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 9 August 1545. 3 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1170A, fasc. I, ins. IIIbis, f. 36 Molto R.do S.r mio osser.mo Ho riceuto l'azurro mandatomi dalla S. V., il quale invero non è tanto a un pezzo, et è tanto poco che non credo sia dua danari. Pertanto V. S. sia contenta, non vi essendo più di quella sorte medesima, me ne mandi di quello che può, tanto che sia almeno mez'oncia, perchè non credo poter fare con manco, perché il campo è grande et ha ad essere scuro, tal ch'io son certo che non ne bisogna manco. V. S. adunque si degni vedere tra quello che venne costì ultimamente di qui del migl[i]ore, cioè del più bello, et me ne mandi quel tanto ch'io chieggo, perchè non s'ha adoperare per altri che per S. Ex.tia I nostri Angeli stanno tutti benissimo, et gli adoriamo, parendoci che Iddio ci dia più che humana gratia a poterlo fare, et chosì Iddio sempre a V. S. et a noi gli conservi felici, come speriamo, sì Iddio ha cura de' buoni e giusti Signori, come si vede che ha. Circa le campane, vi confesso che m'hanno non manco infastidito scrivendone, che costì mi facessino udendole, tanto che non so quel ch'io mi farò di loro, pure me le sono levate dinanzi. Duolmi del nostro Barlacchi, Iddio l'aiuti, ché in verità ne sarebbe danno grandissimo, perché oltre all'essere huomo facetissimo et amorevole, era buona persona et fedelissimo servitore della celeste Casa de' Medici, et certo non s'arà un simile a fretta; pure Iddio disponga il megl[i]o. Altro per hora non mi occorre, salvo ricordare a V. S. che io desidero che quella mi comandi, perchè mi parebbe, quando quella lo facessi, essere da qualcosa. Et senza più dire, bacio le mani alla V. S. R.da, pregando nostro S.re Iddio che quella contenti et conservi. Dal Poggio alli VIIII d'Agosto del XLV, per il di V. S. R.da Servitore Il Bronzino pittore [address] Al molto R.do S.re il Signor Maiordomo di sua Ex.tia in Firenze Doc. 9— Letter from Lorenzo Pagni in Poggio a Caiano to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 12 August 1545.4 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1169, ins. IX, f. 1 Molto R.do S.or mio osser.mo Le dua di V. S.ria de' XI son comparse, l'una hiersera col spaccio del Selvastrella, l'altra stamani con le aggiunte, et al contenuto di esse non mi occorre replicare altro. Le dirò ben per ordine di
Page 334 a
Sua Ecc. che la vuole che V. S. faccia intendere all'Ingegneri Camerino [Giovanni Camerini] che si metta in ordine per andare a Besanzon in Borgogna, dove per servitio di Mons.r di Gran Vela ha d'haver carico di far desiccare certi pantani in alcuni suoi luoghi, per la qual andata la S. V. lo ha a provedere per tre o quattro mesi o più che potesse star là, di quanto haverà bisogno. Faccendoli expressamente intendere che da Monsr di Gran Vela predetto né da alcun altro non ha havere salario o mercede alcuna, et se non quella li darà Sua Ecc.a, perchè così è la mente sua. Di più la S. V. ha da fare usare ogni diligentia per far fornire lo adornamento del quadro che fece il Bronzino, qual è nel'oratorio della Duchessa nostra Signora, qual s'ha da mandare a detto Monsignor di Gran Vela a detto luogo di Besanzon, per una sua Cappella che nuovamente ha fatto fare. Inoltre vuole Sua Ecc.a che la S. V. con ogni prestezza possibile faccia fare fin a quaranta fiasconi di vetro grosso, di tenuta di fiaschi cinque l'uno, per mettervi drento dieci some di greco, se tanto ne è in cantina di Sua Ecc.a, per mandarlo a Bruxelles a detto Mons.r di Gran Vela che lo domanda, et in questo massime non vuol Sua Ecc.a si perda punto di tempo. La S. V. darà ancora al Guiduccio (ché così Sua Ecc.a comanda) del greco et vin rosso, che li domanderà per il R.mo Cardinale Cybo, con li quali vini la gli farà dare ancora quattro vasselletti di zucchero rosato, che li darà per ordine di mia S.ra la Duchessa, Donna Isabella Figueroa, et offerirà a detto abate ogni altra cosa che li S.ri nostri possino, per satisfattione et piacimento del prefato R.mo, ché così comandano. La S. V. comandi al Grasso che ci mandi della carta, perchè siamo senza; et io non ho altro che dire se non che me li raccomando. Dal Poggio, alli XII di ogosto 1545. Di V. S. R.da Servitor Lorenzo Pagni [on verso] Al molto R.do S.or mio osser.mo Messer Pier Francesco Riccio Maiordomo di Sua Ecc.a a Fiorenza Doc. 10— Letter from Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence to Cosimo De' Medici in Poggio a Caiano, 12 August 1545, in Answer to Lorenzo Pagni's Letter (Doc. 9). 5
ASF, Mediceo del Principato 373, f. 505r–v Molto Mag.co S.r mio L'ingegneri Camerino, a cui ho parlato sopra la gita sua in Borgogna a Besanzon, è parato a far quanto S. Ex.a gli comanda. Et però siamo restati d'essere di novo insieme per vedere quel che gli faccia di bisogno per tal gita et stanza, et subito sarà a cavallo. L'adornamento per la tavola della cappella della duchessa nostra Signora si lavora et si fa con sollecitudine, et hora di novo si rinfrescherà l'opera diligente, adciò con prestezza habbia la perfectione. Li quaranta fiasconi di vetro grosso, di tenuta cinque fiaschi l'uno, saranno in ordine tra doi
Page 335
dì, ché non si hanno se non da vestire, havendo hauto sorte di trovargli facti. Ma adverta la S. V. che tanti fiaschi sono some cinque et non dieci come dice la S. V. per la sua lettera, imperò gl[i]e n'ho voluto dire una parola. Ordinerò anche le casse dove dentro debbono andare detti fiasconi, et cercherò de' vetturali che gli portino. Intanto S. Ex.a comanderà quel che si ha da fare. Tengo li 4 vasetti di zuchero rosato per consegnarlo al Guiduccio, così come a ogni suo comando gli darò il greco et il rosso per il R.mo Cibo. Al Grasso ho detto della carta. Con la presente io mando a V. S. una di mess. Donato de' Bardi, un pieghetto di Siena et molt'altre lettere, come V. S. vedrà per deto loro ricapito. Tutti 3 questi Ill.mi stanno bene. Dio guardi tutta la casa Ill.ma, et a V. S. me raccomando, che Nostro S.re Dio la contenti. Di Firenze, el dì XII di Agosto 1545. Lessi la carta del Vescovo di Cortona a tutti questi Sig.ri et non ci hanno detto su cosa alcuna et baciano le mani di S. Ex.a Di V. S. Servitor Pierfrancesco Riccio [f. 527v; address] Al molto Mag.co S.r mio Messer Lorenzo Pagni Secretario di S. Ex.a Doc. 11— Letter from Cosimo De' Medici in Poggio a Caiano to Don Francesco Di Toledo in Brussels, 12 August 1545. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 6, ff. 160r–163r [In a long letter devoted to diplomatic affairs there is the following passage on ff. 162v–163r:] A Don Francesco di Toledo alla corte Cesarea adì 12 d'agosto 1545 dal Poggio. . . . Oggi medesimo ho dato ordine di inviar alla volta di Burselles un mio architetto d'acque, sì come la S. V. mi ricercava, per servitio di Mons.r di Granvella, et farà capo a lei. Ce ne sono dua altri che, per essere molto vecchi et per la età impotenti al cammino che è pur longo, non si mandano. Manderò anco a S. S.ria otto o dieci some di greco in fiaschi grandi et di vetro grosso, di tenuta di cinque fiaschi ordinarii l'uno, adciò si conduca ben conditionato, et non mancherò di mandare anco la tavola dell'altare della Cappella della Duchessa, di mano del Bronzino, che è pictore excellente, et si attende a farli il suo fornimento, quale spedito, si invierà subito a cotesta volta. Et se a S. S.ria aggrada altra cosa da queste bande, piacciali farmelo intendere, che mi reputerò a gratia et favore grandissimo di fare qualsivogli cosa che sia grata a S. S.ria
Page 336
Doc. 12— Letter from Lorenzo Pagni in Poggio a Caiano to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 13 August 1545. 6 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1169, ins. IX, f. 2 Molto R.do S.or mio oss.mo Ho riferito a S. Ecc.a l'ordine che la S. V. haveva dato per la partita di Camerino architetto, et m'ha decto che s'ha a mandare a Bruselles in Fiandra et non a Besenzon in Borgogna, perchè quivi il S.or Don Francesco di Toledo, al quale egli ha a far capo, l'ha a presentare a Mons.r di Gran Vela da parte di S. Ecc.a, et vuole che si parta quanto prima sarà possibile. Io intesi bene da S. Ecc.a della quantità delle some che voleva mandar di vino greco, et così anco de' fiaschi, ma le seppi mal referire alla S. V., et non se ne maravigli ché li do mia fè che questa volta posso dire come diceva spesso Mons.r d'Altopasso, che sono annegato nelle faccende, dallo arrivo del Selvastrella in qua. Per hora s'hanno a mandar li 40 fiasconi, et un'altra volta il resto sino in X some, se tanto greco è in la cantina di S. Ecc.a Ha hauto piacere l'Ecc.a S. che si solliciti lo abbigl[i]amento di quella tavola, perchè desidera di mandarla presto, come anco il greco. Il zucchero rosato et il greco et il latino per il Cardinal Cibo, V. S. lo ha a consegnare all'Abate Guiduccio, con le qui aggiunte. Per virtù di messer Agnolo Divitii qui ci troviamo senza un foglio di carta da scrivere, et quel che peggio è, senza registro, et certo lui, che ha la cura di queste cose, non doverebbe ridursi a tanto estremo. Supplico a V. S. facci mandar qua un registro foraneo et carta, spago et cera senza dilatione di tempo, che me ne vergogno et ho paura di non haver rossore di questa sua stracurataggine. La lettera di Venetia si rimanda per farla vedere a cotesti Sri del Consiglio. S. Ecc.a havendo lecto la carta di V. S. directiva in la sua propria mano, m'ha comandato li scriva che non sa quando li tornerà bene di venire a Firenze a fare l'exequie della Principessa di Spagna, ma che sarà quando si troverrà vestita a bruno un giorno a suo commodo, per non star costì se non il giorno che si faranno decte exequie. Però vuole che la S. V. facci tener a ordine tutto quello bisogna per decte exequie, adciò venendo possa far lo effecto senza dilatione et partirsi a commodo suo. Va con questa un dispaccio per l'Ambasciator di Roma, quale V. S. ha a inviar subito a quella volta con corriero espresso, et pagarlo per andar et per tornare. Ci sarà un altro dispaccio per Augusta a Mons.r di Cortona, dentro il quale vanno lettere per Don Francesco di Toledo per la Corte Cesarea. Però la S. V. ha a far spedire decto dispaccio per staffetta expressa, non solo sino in Augusta, faccendolo dirizare al maestro delle poste di quella città, ma ancora sino alla Corte. Però potrà ordinarne la exegutione in buona forma a messer Hieronimo di ser Iacopo nel modo detto. Io sarò costì stasera o domattina per andarmene a Siena, et allo arrivo mio darò conto alla S. V. di tutto quello che accade. Intanto li bacio le mani et la prego facci dar ricapito a tutte le alligate. Dal Poggio li XIII d'ogosto 1545. Il s.or Campana si raccomanda alla S. V. Di V. R.da S.
Page 337
Il pieghetto che va con questa per Alexandro del Caccia, V. S. ha a inviarcelo per cavallaro a posta Servitor Lorenzo Pagni [on verso; address] Al molto R.do S.or mio oss.mo il S.or Maiordomo magior di S. Ecc.a a Firenze Doc. 13— Letter from Bronzino in Poggio a Caiano to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 22 August 1545. 7 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1170A, fasc. I, ins. IIIbis, f. 34 Molto R.do S.or mio osser.mo Ieri, che fumo alli XXI del presente, fui con S. E. per cagione del Ritratto, dove dissi quanto per vostra S. mi fu imposto circa la speditione della tavola per in Fiandra, et come, volendo sua E. che se ne rifacessi un'altra, bisognava stare costì almanco otto o dieci giorni per farne un poco di disegno. Dissemi che così voleva et era contento, ma mi pare che S. E. si contenti che prima si fornisca il ritratto; et di più dice Sua E. che si faccia in questo mezzo fare il legname per dipignervi su detta tavola, et aggiunse sua prefata E.: ''Io la vogl[i]o in quel modo proprio come sta quella, et non la vogl[i]o più bella" quasi dicesse: "Non m'entrare in altra inventione, perchè quella mi piace." Per tanto V. S. R.da, quando li piacesse, potrebbe dire al Tasso che dessi ordine, o per dir megl[i]o facessi, perché così è l'intenzione di S. E., che mi disse: "Fa' far la tavola, et falla ingessare." So che il Tasso non mancherà della solita diligentia, che certo fece cotesta molto diligentemente, et così doverrà fare quest'altra. Nè per ora m'occorre altro, salvo raccomandarmi a V. S. quanto posso, pregando quella che si degni alle volte comandarmi qualche cosa, et nostro Signore Iddio, che quella sempre in sua gratia et del nostro buon Patrone conservi: al quale sia per sempre contento et felicità. Dal Poggio alli XXII d'Agosto del XLV per il di V. S. R.da Servitore Il Bronzino Pittore [address] Al molto R.do S.re Messer Pierfrancesco Riccio Maiordomo di Sua Ex.tia et suo sempre osser.mo a Firenze
Page 338
Doc. 14— Letter from Cosimo De' Medici in Poggio a Caiano to Don Francesco Di Toledo in Brussels, 19 September 1545. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 6, ff. 242r–248v [In a long letter concerned with diplomatic and political matters, there is the following passage on f. 244r:] Lo Architetto delle acque mandato a cotesta volta per servitio di Mons.r di Granvella, allo arrivo di questa doverrà esser comparso, così anco il vin greco con li marzolini; però non occorre dirne altro. Et la tavola della Cappella della Duchessa si invierà presto alla volta di Genova, et si consegnerà lì al commendator Figueroa, che la mandi più oltre al suo cammino. Doc. 15— Letter from Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence to Christiano Pagni in Poggio a Caiano, 14 September 1549. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 394, ff. 549r–550r Molto R.do S.r mio Tornandosene im poste costì il S.r Pardo, ho voluto far questo letterino a V. S., la quale intenda ch'el Signorino sta bene; et il S.r Iovio credo harà paura di questo tempo a venir da voi oggi, come n'haveva voglia. Intanto noi ci godereno il suo abbondantissimo ragionamento, et io lo vo tractenendo con mostrarli delle cose di S. Ex. In questa notte el tempo è stato qui così umido et con tanti tuoni et acque grossissime, che me hanno spaventato. Non s'è inteso, quando scrivo, ancora dove sieno cascate saette; m'è parso un bel guadagno che questa volta il cielo s'è degnato lasciare stare il nostro campanile. Prego Dio che tenga sana et felicissima S. Ex.a et tutta sua Casa. Secondo l'ordine che lasciò la Duchessa nostra Signora a Maestro Tasso che si fabricassero le sue stanze sopra la camera verde, questa septimana s'è atteso a levare il vecchio tecto et palco, et questo temporale tanto terribile d'acqua ci ha hauto a far danno a detta camera verde, pur non si vede cosa che importi, et s'andrà pigliando qualche modo, che seguitando l'acque non possino nuocere. Sarebbe forse bene per ogni caso ch'io havesse le chiave della cappella del Bronzino et dello scriptoio di detta camera verde; imperò V. S. si degni dirne una parola alla Duchessa nostra S.ra, et piacendoli pigliar cura che io habbia quanto prima decte chiavi. Et alle loro Ecc.ie humilmente me raccomando et a V. S., che Dio le guardi. Di Firenze, il dì 14 di Settembre 1549. Di V. S. Servitor Pierfrancesco Riccio [on f. 550v] Al molto R.do Sig.r mio messer Christiano Pagni, Secretario di S. Ecc.a
Page 339
Doc. 16— Letter from Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence to Christiano Pagni in Poggio a Caiano, 15 September 1549. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 394, ff. 580r–581r Molto R.do S.or mio Io ho due lettere di V. S., tutte due d'hieri. La prima ricerca risposta in quella parte che tocca la provisione di Medoro, com'anche me ne scrive messer Lorenzo, che gl'ho mandati questa mattina per il procaccio scudi XIIII d'oro in oro, et d'agosto passato gl[i]e ne mandai altri X, che messer Lorenzo non lo sapeva, ma me ne scripse o disse V. S. che così si facesse. Di maniera che al conto ne fa messer Lorenzo, con li scudi X detti Medoro vien pagato per tutto octobre, et di tanto più quanto saranno li aggi, se già non s'abbia a pagar la provisione sua a scudi d'oro. Ho voluto toccare tutto questo per informatione di S. Ex.a. Per l'altra sua lettera intesi quanto S. Ecc.a comanda per conto delle poste, che ci starò vigilante, et nel vero la cosa istessa lo richiede per questo conto, et però scripsi di Pardo. Hebbi le due chiavi della cappella et dello scriptoio che non hanno punto patito dell'acqua. Se la Duchessa ne resta servita, io le terrò ancor 2 dì o 3, se per sorta bisognasse rivedere et advertire se piovesse. Intanto sopra la volta si fa un tecto posticcio per riparare a ogn'acqua che venisse, et s'attenderà a sollecitare l'opera adciò si tiri avanti che l'invernata ne assalga. La S. V. harà veduto il S.or Iovio, che volse venire a cavallo, ma gli si dette una bona bestia. Hor tocca a voi a farli carezze, ch'io gli ho facte fare certe pappine in tazza che gli sono sodisfacte, dicolo per informatione, et a S. S.ria me raccomando. Maestro Andrea sta meglio. Il Signorino sta bene. Le Sig.e a Castello, che le visitai questa mattina di grand'hora, stanno bene; et voi costà state bene, che Dio ne sia ringratiato. Io hebbi i doi conti della fabrica della saetta, da Luca Martini che gli teneva. Hor Hieronimo Ciacchi mi sprona che gli sieno facti buoni o per scriptura alla magona del ferro o in contanti li resti di decti conti, et mi dice che n'ha parlato con S. Ex.a, et parmi dica che la se ne contenti. Il resto è circa scudi 1100 d'oro. A V. S. mi raccomando, che Dio la contenti. Di Firenze, il dì XV di Settembre 1549. Di V. S. Servitor Pierfrancesco Riccio Al molto R.do S.r mio messer Christiano Pagni secretario di S. Ex.a
Page 340
Doc. 17— Letter from Sforza Almeni in Livorno to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 8 April 1550. 8 ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1176, ins. I, f. 6r Molto Rdo S.or mio oss.mo La duc[h]essa mia S.ra m'à detto che io scr[i]va a V. S. che quella facci fare dal Bronzino un cartone d'un panno d'altare in quel modo che stava quella del suo oratorio con quelle medesime figure, con un festone atorno che sia bello, el qual disegna mandarlo in Ispagna. E perchè dubita non torni picolo, vorrebbe la mesura d'ogni cosa, c[i]oè quanto tornerà grande ag[i]ungendoci el festone. V. S. lo potrà mandare. E questo è quanto al panno mi resta in risposta d'una di V. S. a dirle, che mai non penso nè penserò che V. S. m'abi se no[n] da fav[o]ri[r]e e aiutare, e quello che me lo fa più cognos[c]iere è e fatti che vego ogni g[i]orno el verso di me. Ma mi du[o]le bene che le mia forze son tante debole, che non potrò mai mostrare a V. S. el disiderio che io tengo nel quor di servirla. Non posendo, V. S. acetti la bu[o]na voluntà e comandimi qualc[h]e volta. E patroni stanno tuti bene. Di Li[v]orno, alli 8 d'aprile 1550. D. V. S. afetionato servitor Sforza Almenni [on verso] Al molto R.do S.or mio il S.or Maiordomo di Sua ecc. tia in Fiorenza Doc. 18— Ricordo on the Delivery of Gold Satin for an Altar Frontal for the Chapel of Eleonora, 30 June 1550.9 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 23, f. 37r Addì 30 decto [June 1550] X 1/2 braccia di raso d'oro, da Piero Arrigucci, messo in una fodera d'un paliotto d'altare di rethe di refe, lavorate per la cappella della Duchessa, consegnato a Ulivo banderaio br. 10 1/2
Page 341
Doc. 19— Ricordo on the Delivery of Altar Furnishings and Vestments for the Chapel of Eleonora, 26 March 1553; Ricordo on the Delivery of Ultramarine Blue to Bronzino for the Second Altarpiece of the Chapel of Eleonora, 26 September 1553. 10 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 27 f. 49v Addì XXVI di decto [March 1553] XIIII 1/2 braccia di velluto tané da Niccolò Puccini, per lire XII braccio, messo in uno dossello d'altare, una pianeta, stola, manipulo et brusci a uno camisce [càmice], con ordine della Sig.ra Duchessa nostra per la sua cappella; tagliò Ulivo bandieraio braccia 14 1/2 XVIIII braccia di tela nera di Venetia, da Bastiano di Dino, consegnata al decto, per fodera di decte braccia 19 III 1/2 braccia di teletta nera con opera, cioè uno de'teli del stanzino della Duchessa, consegnato al decto, per el fregio di decta pianeta et dossello braccia 3 1/2 f. 65r Addì XXVI di decto [September 1553] II oncie d'azzurro oltramarino consegnato a Maestro Bronzino pittore, disse per la tavola della Cappella della Duchessa con ordine di Sua Ex.a Oncie 2 Doc. 20— St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas by Bronzino; PietÀ Altar Tapestry by Salviati; and Furnishings from the Chapel of Eleonora in an Inventory of the Medici Guardaroba, 27 October to 7 November 1553.11 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 28 f. 30r [Nella prima stanza della Guardaroba secreta . . . 3 November 1553] Uno San Cosimo pitto in sul legname, di mano del Bronzino. Uno San Giovan Batista pitto in sul legname, di mano del Bronzino. f. 37r [5 November] Uno panno d'altare, drentovi una Pietà, d'oro, argento et seta, di braccia 3 1/2 et 3 1/2, di mano di M.o Niccolass, foderato di tela azzurra. f. 44 [7 November 1553 . . . Nel tredicesimo armadio della Guardaroba segreta]. 6 Apostoli d'argento per l'altare della S.ra Duchessa, di libre 121, oncie 2. Un pace d'argento dorato con la Natività di christallo, di libre 3, oncie —, denari 12, con ornamento atorno di lapislazeri. Uno lampanaio per la cappella, d'argento, di libbre 3, oncie 11.
Page 342
Doc. 21— PietÀ Altar Tapestry by Salviati; St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas by Bronzino in an Inventory of the Medici Guardaroba, 1 July 1560. 12 ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 45 f. 28r Un pannetto per la Cappella, d'oro et d'argento et seta, chor una Pietà di braccia 3 1/2, quadro foderato di tela azurra. f. 59r Dua quadri compagni, dentrovi in uno S.to Cosimo et nel'altro S.to Giovanbatista, di man del Bronzino, sanza ornamento. Doc. 22— Payment to Tomaso Di Francesco for Wood for Bronzino's Annunciation for the Chapel of Eleonora, 19 June 1563.13 ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 10, f. 24v MDLXIII. Sabato addì 19 di giugno. A spese per la muraglia del palazo duchale: . . . e lire 2.3 — a Tomaso di Francesco segatore per segatura di braccia 14 1/2 d'asse di noce a soldi 3 braccio, per farne addornamenti e una tavola per uno altare nella Cappella in Camera Verde . . . Doc. 23— Payment for the Window of the Chapel of Eleonora, 3 July 1563.14 ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 10, f. 27r M.D.LXIII, Sabato addì 3 di luglio . . . A spese di più sorte fiorini sei di moneta, lire una, soldi vi, danari viii piccioli, e per dette a' frati degl'Ingiesuati, portò fra' Buonaventura vicario contanti, per valuta di braccia 4 1/3 d'una finestra invetriata di vetri bianchi, fatta per la Cappella acchanto alla Camera Verde, per lire 10 el braccio, come in detta poliza Fior. 6 L. l s. 6 d. 8. Doc. 24— Letter from Bronzino in Florence to Cosimo De' Medici, 15 April 1564 (FIG. 45).15 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 1346–47 Illmo et Eccmo Sor Duca Sore e Padron mio ossmo ecc Con ogni mio maggiore affetto, e debita gratitudine, e quanto io pos[so] il più, ringrazio vostra infinita cortesia, e larghissima liberalita, dell'havermi fatto pagare li danari di quel salario, che la
Page 343
bontà, e amorevolezza vostra più tempo fà mi bordino, del quale sono stato al tutto pagato cagione, che per la di voi grazia, e magnificenzia, io doverrò per al presente, por fine a tutti li miei affanni, e tanto piu mi è grato, e di profitto, uno cosí generoso atto di V. E. Ill.ma, quanto io l'ho veduto distendere in più, e cosí universale è, che io veggo, e sento il suo glorioso nome alzarsi con infinite lodi al cielo, e porgere infinitissimi preghi à Dio per ogni sua esaltazione, e felicità, fra li quali io quasi per dolcezza, e stupore lagrimando, non sono già stato l'ultimo à mescolare i miei certissimo, che se Dio ama il bene, e la carità, come si sà per prova, saranno esauditi; e se bene il Cavaliere Sor Tommaso de Medici mi ha detto, che tal salario non mi corre più, non è però, che io none speri, che quando à V. E. I. verra occasione di servirsi di quel poco, che io vaglio, ella non mi riponga nel numero de suoi Fedeli, e mi riapra la porta della sua santissima Casa la quale io m'era promesso, che mentre ch'io vivo non me s'havesse à chiudere già mai, et la qual cosa io desidero piu che la vita, e in tanto non manco di seguitare la Tavola de Cavalieri, e dar fine à quel tanto che manca nella Cappella di Palazzo, le quali cose credo che V. E. I. troverra al suo ritorno fornite, e me non meno desideroso, e pronto à servirla, e adorarla, che mai: et alla quale io prego il n[ost]ro Signore Iddio, che dia ogni bene e felicità, e con ogni mia debita reverenza à piedi di quella inginocchiato bacio la veste di Fiorenza alli XV d'Aprile del lxiiii per il di V. E. Ill.ma humilmo e devmo s[ervito]re Il Bronzino Pittore Doc. 25— Payment to Dionigi Di Matteo for the Frames of Bronzino's Annunciation in the Chapel of Eleonora, 15 July 1564. 16 ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 10, f. 66v MDLXIIII Sabato addì 15 detto [July] . . . A spese per la muraglia del palazo duchale . . . e lire 3.10 — a Dionigi di Matteo legnaiuolo, per 2 addornamenti fatti per la Cappella della Camera Verde, a una Nuntiata e a uno Angelo, come in detta poliza. Doc. 26— Payment to Taddeo Di Francesco for the Gilding of the Frames of Bronzino's Annunciation in the Chapel of Eleonora, 16 September 1564. ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 10, f. 73r MDLXIIII. Sabato addì 16 di settembre. A spese per la muraglia del palazo duchale . . . e lire 4.16 — piccioli pagati a Taddeo di Francesco battiloro per valuta di 120 pezi d'oro per mettere d'oro 2 ornamenti nella Cappella in Camera Verde d'una Nostra Donna e d'uno Angelo, come nella poliza di no 195.
Page 344
Doc. 27— Payment to Bronzino for Work in the Chapel of Eleonora, 17 February 1565. 17 ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 10, f. 91r [17 February 1565] A spese di pittori e loro pertinenze, per in Palazo Duchale . . . e per spese fatte el Bronzino pittore nel rassettare la cappella ch'è nella Camera Verde, in diverse spese come in detta poliza, lire 11.14: in tutto f. 6 L. 5 s. 4 Doc. 28— St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas by Bronzino in an Inventory of the Medici Guardaroba, 19 June 1574. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 87, f. 68v Nella stanza Prima principale della Guardaroba dove è la Mostra, per quale si passa alla stanza dell'horologio. Adì 19 di Giugno 1574 . . . Ritratti dua, di S.to Giovanni et S.to Cosimo aovati no 2 Doc. 29— Payment to Santi Di Domenico for a Pair of Brass Doorknobs for the Door to the Terrace from the Chapel of Eleonora, 15 October 1582.18 ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 11, entrata e uscita G, 1573–85, f. 136r [15 October 1582] A spese dette [per la fabrica del palazzo duchale] lire tre piccioli, pagati a Santi di Domenico ottonaio, portò contanti, per valuta di uno paio di palle d'ottone, grande, servite all'uscio della Capella che va sul terrazzino della Gran Duchessa, come per detta listra f. — L.3 — Doc. 30— St. John the Baptist and St. Cosmas by Bronzino in an Inventory of the Medici Guardaroba, 6 July 1609. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 289, f. IIIV Nella prima stanza della guardaroba detta la mostra . . . 2 quadri in tavola alti braccia 3 in circa e larghi braccia 1, drentovi uno San Giovanni e uno San Cosimo, tondi di sopra, con ornamenti dorati no 2
Page 345
Doc. 31— Bronzino's Lamentation and Annunciation Inventoried on Their Transfer to the Uffizi, 28 June 1771. Galleria degli Uffizi, Archivio, 1771A, III, ins. 27, f. 16v (Inventario de' quadri . . . sono passati alla Real Galleria in vigore di Rescritto de' 22 Xbre 1770), 5045. Un quadro d'Altare in tavola del Bronzino centinato di sopra alto nel più braccia 4 1/3 largo braccia 3, dipintovi la Deposizione di Nostro Signore dalla Croce, in braccio alla Madonna santissima, e diversi altri santi, che lo sostengono, e al di sopra angeli avante ciascuno di sopra, alcuni segni della passione, con ornamento tutto intagliato, e dorato. Inventario vegliante a carta 390. [Note to left:] Nota bene come alla tavola di contro vanno uniti due altri laterali, che rappresentano L'Angiolo Gabriello e la Sant.ma Annunziata. L'ornamento rimandato in Guardaroba.
Page 347
ABBREVIATIONS E. Allegri and A. Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici: Guida storica, Florence, 1980
ArtB
The Art Bulletin
ASF
Florence, Archivio di Stato
Bac.
E. Baccheschi, L'Opera completa del Bronzino, Milan, 1973
Bar.
A. Bartsch, Le peintre graveur, 21 vols. Leipzig, 1854–76
BNF
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale
Burl.
The Burlington Magazine
CoxRear.
J. CoxRearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos, Princeton, 1984
Giam.
P. F. Giambullari, Apparato et feste nelle noze dello Illustrissimo Signor Duca di Firenze, et della Duchessa sua consorte, con le sue stanze, madriali, comedia, et intermedii, in quelle recitati, Florence, 1539 (for trans., see Min.&Mit.)
JWCI
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
Lang.
K. Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici: Fifteenth– Eighteenth Centuries, 3 vols., Florence, 1981–87
MDP
Mediceo del Principato
Min.&Mit.
A. C. Minor and B. Mitchell, A Renaissance Entertainment: Fes
All.&Cec.
Page 348
tivities for the Marriage of Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, in 1539, Columbia, Mo., 1968 (trans. of Giam.)
MKIF
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz
Pal.Vec.
Palazzo Vecchio: Committenza e collezionismo medicei, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del cinquecento, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, 1980, ed. P. Barocchi, Florence, 1980
Vas.CdL
Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari pittore aretino (Florence, 1568), ed. P. della Pergola, L. Grassi, and G. Previtali, 9 vols., Milan, Club del Libro, 1962–66
Vas.Frey
Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, ed. K. Frey, 3 vols., Munich, 1923–40
Vas.Mil.
Le vite de' più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori scritte da Giorgio Vasari pittore aretino (Florence, 1568), in Opere, ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols., Florence, 1878–85
Vas.Rag.
I Ragionamenti, in Vas.Mil., VIII, pp. 9–225
Page 349
NOTES Introduction 1. Vasari's chapter on artists who were members of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno is titled ''Degl'Accademici del disegno: Pittori, scultori, ed architetti e dell'opere loro e prima del Bronzino." Vasari could have given Bronzino a separate chapter (other living artists, such as Titian, had their own vite) but may have refrained from doing so out of personal jealousy of his most significant rival in painting at the ducal court. For Vasari's praise of Bronzino, quoted in the epigraph of this introduction, see Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 13 (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 593). When citing Vasari, I refer to the standard edition, edited by Gaetano Milanesi; because its text is corrupt, however, all quotations follow the Club del Libro edition, with the Milanesi reference given as well. 2. For Maniera and its literature, see Smyth, 1962; J. Shearman, "Maniera as an Aesthetic Ideal," in The Renaissance and Mannerism: Studies in Western Art. Acts of the Twentieth International Congress of the History of Art, Princeton, 1963, II, pp. 220–21; Freedberg, 1965, pp. 187–91; and Shearman, 1967; (for the "stylish style," see p. 19). For the reaction against Maniera, see Hall, 1979, pp. 33–83 ("CounterManiera"), and, on Bronzino in particular, pp. 45–49. The word maniera simply connoted "style" in the sixteenth century, as in the phrases "bella maniera" or "maniera moderna," which occur throughout Vasari's vite. I italicize the word used in this sense and capitalize Maniera as a period designation (more precise than Mannerism) to signal late Renaissance art in Florence and Rome ca. 1530– 60. For a useful survey of the history of these concepts in art and literature, see J. Mirollo, "Mannerism as a Term, Concept, and Controversy," in Mannerism and Renaissance Poetry: Concept, Mode, Inner Design, New Haven and London, 1984, pp. 1–71. 3. See Vas.Mil., VIII, pp. 252–65; Mitchell, 1979, pp. 46–50; and, on the imperial entry in particular, A. Chastel, "Les entrées de Charles Quint en Italie," in Jacquot, 1960, pp. 202–3; V. Cazzato, "Vasari e Carlo V: L'ingresso trionfale a Firenze del 1536," in Garfagnini, 1985, pp. 179–204; and B. Mitchell, The Majesty of the State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in
Page 350
Renaissance Italy (1494–1600), Florence, 1986, pp. 69–71. The apparati were under the direction of Vasari, with Tribolo, Ghirlandaio, Franco, Raffaello da Montelupo, Andrea di Cosimo Feltrini, Cristofano Gherardi, and Montorsoli also participating. 4. For this picture, see W. C. Kirwin, "Vasari's Tondo of Cosimo I with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors in the Palazzo Vecchio," MKIF, 15, 1971, pp. 104–22. 5. Riccio came from Prato, had been Cosimo's tutor (from 1524), and after 1537 was treasurer (tesoriere di camera) and secretary to Cosimo until spring 1545, when he became majordomo in charge of all expenses. See ASF, MDP 321, Cariche d'onore, ff. 15, 17, 22, 28 (quoted in Ferruzzi, 1986, p. 307); and ASF, MDP 4591, f. 41 (letter of Lorenzo Pagni of 6 April 1545, referring to Riccio, "il quale nella reforma della Casa di S. Ex. nuovamente fatta è stato dichiarato maiordomo maggiore di essa Casa"). Vasari mentions Riccio frequently, attributing to his influence Tasso's appointment as architect of the palace in 1540 and such important commissions as Tribolo's for the apparato for the baptism of Francesco de' Medici in 1541 (Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 90–91), Salviati's for the frescoes in the Sala delle Udienze in 1543 (VII, p. 22), Pontormo's for the frescoes in the choir of S. Lorenzo in 1546 (VI, p. 284), and Tasso's for the Mercato Nuovo (VI, p. 95). Riccio's many letters bear out Vasari's statements (see, for example, those published in Gaye, 1839–40, II, pp. 329, 330, and 371). On the necessity of artists' staying in Riccio's good graces and for the opinion that no artist, however skillful, could work at the court unless he was part of Riccio's clique, see Vas.Mil., VI, p. 91; and Cellini, La vita, 1971, bk. II, chap. 61. For Riccio's career at court and further bibliography, see Plaisance, 1972, pp. 398–99; Corti, 1977, pp. 11–14 (especially useful); Bigazzi, 1980, pp. 112–14, 125–27; Simon, 1984, pp. 13–15; and Wright, 1986, p. 91. 6. For this portrait, see Bigazzi, 1980, cat. 5. Riccio is posed in front of Prato cathedral, of which he became proposto in 1550. The attribution to Salviati is problematic: although the painting (which is very dirty and also hangs at some distance from the observer) appears close to Salviati's portrait style, the painter left Florence definitively for Rome in 1548, two years before Riccio was appointed to his post at the cathedral. For Michele Tosini's posthumous portrait of Riccio dated 1574, see Bigazzi, 1980, cat. 6. 7. See Vas.Frey, I, p. 315. At this time Bronzino would have been working on the Resurrection for SS. Annunziata (commissioned in 1549) and, possibly, on the Christ in Limbo and the replica of the Lamentation for the Chapel of Eleonora, both completed in 1552. The picture Vasari was painting in 1550–51 was the lost altarpiece of S. Gismondo (see Vas.Mil. VII, pp. 691–92). 8. Vasari (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 30) favored Salviati's altarpiece: "e chi n'fatto dopo lui a concorrenza [Bronzino] non l'ha superato." For Bronzino's painting, see Bac. no. 96. There is no satisfactory monograph on Bronzino; the volume by Baccheschi in the Rizzoli series L'opera completa, however, has the advantage of a numbered catalogue; I will refer to this work for his paintings, adding references to specialized literature when necessary. 9. See Vas.Mil., VII, p. 598; Bac. no. 50. 10. Before Cosimo took possession of the building, it was known variously as the Palazzo de' Signori, the Palazzo Maggiore, the Palagio Pubblico, and the Palagio dei Priori. After his move there, it was called the Palazzo Ducale; it became known by its modern name, the Palazzo Vecchio, after 1549, when the ducal couple purchased the Palazzo Pitti. I will henceforth refer to it simply as the Palazzo. 11. For this chapel, see All.&Cec., pp. 396–97.
Page 351 ria
ma
12. For Riccio's letter of 14 November 1542, see ASF, MDP 358, f. 613: "Il Signor Don Francesco, mentre stamattina il prete diceva il chyrie, Sua S. Ill. replicava: lison, lison, et presa l'asperge dava l'acqua benedetta a' circunstanti, che io credetti haver a morir di ridere di quell' acti." For Giovanni's investiture, see Chapter 1, n. 45. 13. See All.&Cec., pp. 195–212. Chapter 1 1. "Stanze di Niccolò Martelli sopra le nozze del Duca Cosimo de' Medici," Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2862, f. 165r. See also Martelli's sonnet "A Leonora di Tolledo: Madama alta e gentil, consorte cara / Di quel Signor che ai Toschi impera et regna" (BNF, ms. II.X.191, f. 4v). 2. For Don Pedro, see P. Giannone, Istoria civile del regno di Napoli, Naples, 1821, VII, pp. 136–47. Piero Vettori's funeral oration for Eleonora (1563, pp. 2r– 3r) gives some detail on the Toledo family origins. The best account of Eleonora's life is Baia, 1907; see also Pieraccini, 1924–25, I, pp. 55–70; the briefer, undocumented, accounts by Winspeare, 1961; and A. D'Addario, "Eleonora di Toledo, duchessa di Firenze e Siena," in Donne di casa Medici, Florence, 1968, pp. 33–62. The present chapter presents a brief account of Eleonora, focusing on the period of Bronzino's decoration of her chapel in the early 1540s and on the areas of her life and personal imagery to which the chapel paintings relate. 3. Naples, Archivio di Stato, Manoscritti nobiliari del march. Livio serra di Gerace, VI, f. 1506: "Eleonora Alvarez di Toledo, n. 11 gennaio 1519." The epitaph inscribed in 1858 on Eleonora's tomb (she died 17 December 1562) gives her age at death as fortyone (see Picenardi, 1888, p. 342); a later inscription, however, gives her age as fortytwo. If the document quoted above gives Eleonora's correct date of birth, she was fortythree at the time of her death. 4. ASF, MDP 335, II, ff. 468r–472v (letter of Giovanni Bandini in Toledo to Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, 7 November 1538). See also ASF, MDP 4296, ff. 299r–301r, 307r–v (letters of Giovanni Bandini in Toledo to Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, 21 and 23 November 1538). For contemporary notices of Cosimo's marriage, see Adriani, 1587, p. 60; Ammirato, 1641, III, pp. 457–58; Cini, 1611, pp. 102–3; and Segni, 1723, p. 247. For the political machinations connected with Cosimo's choice of a bride, see Baia, 1907, pp. 15–16; and Spini, 1945, pp. 133–37. 5. ASF, MDP 2, ff. 121v–123r (draft of a letter from Cosimo de' Medici in Florence to Giovanni Bandini in Naples, 11 January 1539). 6. According to Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, p. 56. For Jacopo's remark, see n. 8 below. Cristoforo Bronzini, who knew Eleonora, gives a glowing, if conventionalized, description of her in his treatise Della dignità e nobilità della donne, 1624–32 (week 1, day 4), p. 124: "Ebbe questa serenissima signora l'andar grave, lo star riverendo, il parlar dolce, pieno di sapore, la faccia chiara, e la vista angelica, et tutte le altre bellezze, che si leggono essere state nelle più celebrate donne." 7. For the marriage contract, see ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, VIII, 3; see also ASF, Pergamene Medicee, 90, p. 12; and MDP 30 A–C; and MDP 1, 13, ff. 64r– 66r ("Capitoli del matrimonio"). On 10 March 1539 Cosimo wrote to Bandini, referring to Pope Paul III's earlier request that he marry the pope's relative Vittoria and to his successful alliance with the emperor through marriage to Eleonora (ASF, MDP 4299, ff. 88r–v (letter of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence to Giovanni Bandini in Naples, 10 March 1539): "Et benché io so che il Papa si farà beffe de' casi mia quando gli verrà notitia [del]le conditioni che io ho proposte a quelle mi offriva, tuttavia
Page 352
desidero ogni giorno havere qualche occasione di poter dimostrare a S. Maestà [Charles V] che io non ho, né voglio haver mai altro signore et patrone al mondo di quella, né altra adherentia o dipendentia." 8. ASF, MDP 1169, ins. IV, f. 1 (letter of Jacopo de' Medici in Naples to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 29 March 1539). "Come per le lettere di sua Ex.tia la S. V. Rev.da intenderà, questa sera a ore 3 si è sposata la S.ra Donna Leonora di Tolledo in nome dello Ill.mo S.or Duca comun padrone. . . . Dirolli solo che, oltre alla più che ragionevol belleza, si intende esser tanto ben creata et virtu[o]sa Signora quanto uscissi mai di Spagna, di sorte che sua Ex.tia ha da ringratiar Iddio di essersi saputo eleggere una consorte tale, la qual Iddio lungamente li preservi." See also ASF, MDP 337, f. 134r (letter of the notaio Bernardo Gamberelli to Cosimo de' Medici, 29 March 1539), in which he tells the duke that the "convenzione di matrimonio" with Don Pedro was concluded and that the marriage had been celebrated, the ring given to the bride, and the dowry arranged. 9. See Adelson, 1985, p. 148, citing Jacopo's letter of 29 March (see n. 8 above), as well as another of 2 April 1539. 10. ASF, MDP 3, I, ff. 50r–51v (letter of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence to Don Pedro di Toledo in Naples, 24 April 1539). 11. ASF, MDP 3, I, ff. 63v–64r (unsigned letter from Florence to Jacopo de' Medici in Naples, 11 May 1539). 12. ASF, MDP 338, f. 55r (letter of Eleonora di Toledo in Naples to Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, 18 May 1539). This letter is reproduced in A. Bellinazzi and C. Lamioni, Carteggio universale di Cosimo I de' Medici, Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Inventario, I, Mediceo del Principato, filze 329–353, Florence, 1982, pl. 13. In a letter of 29 August 1541 written on Eleonora's behalf by Lorenzo Pagni to Duke Cosimo (ASF, MDP 353, f. 317r) we learn that the duke could not read Eleonora's handwriting at all: "E lei [Eleonora] m'ha comandato che in nome suo li baci le mani, come fo, con ogni debita reverentia et li dica che la magior pena che tiene è che V. Exc.a non intenda li scritti di mano sua, supplicandola che non resti però scrivere a lei (come ha fatto sin qui) di suo pugno, perchè non ha magior destanso in questa absentia sua, che il vedere et leggere sue lettere." See Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 62–63, on Eleonora's handwriting. 13. ASF, MDP 3, I, f. 61r (letter of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence to Eleonora di Toledo in Naples, 11 May 1539): "Hora poiché et la partita del' Ex. V. è ritardata più di quello che io pensavo et che io non ho lettere sua, mi è parso spedirle il presente in diligentia per salutarla et dirle come io sto benissimo Dio gratia et con il medesimo desiderio della venuta sua qua." 14. ASF, MDP 1169, ins. IV, no. 13, f. 121r (letter of Chiarissimo de' Medici in Pisa to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 18 May 1539). 15. Vasari (Vas.Rag., p. 196) writes that he painted this scene in the Sala di Cosimo, but it is not among the vignettes painted there. 16. Giam., pp. 3–5 (Min.&Mit., pp. 97–99). See also ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, pp. 161–64 (Settimanni). Giambullari was born in 1495; his father, the poet Bernardo Giambullari, had been in the service of Leo X and had served as secretary to Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici, mother of Lorenzo the younger. For his early life, see "Notizie," in Lezioni di Messer Pierfrancesco Giambullari, Milan, 1827, pp. v–vii. 17. See Giam., p. 4 (Min.&Mit., p. 98); and Ammirato, 1641, III, p. 457.
Page 353
18. For Pagni, see Wright, 1986, p. 93. Pagni had a cousin Christiano, a lawyer who was also in Cosimo's circle, and another cousin Benedetto, a painter. All references to Pagni without a given name refer to Lorenzo. 19. ASF, MDP 339, ff. 79r–81r. 20. Alamanno Salviati was Cosimo's uncle (Maria Salviati's brother); Piero may be Piero di Gino Capponi, on whom see Booth, 1921, p. 169. 21. See Giam., p. 4 (Min.&Mit., p. 98). 22. ASF, MDP 2, ff. 138–139. 23. See Vas.Rag., p. 196. 24. Gelli, noted poet and Dante scholar, was born in 1498; poetry for the wedding apparato was his first major literary work. For his life and works, see De Gaetano, 1976. 25. See Giam. and Min.&Mit.; see also ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, pp. 166–67 (Settimanni). For modern commentary on the apparato, see A.M. Nagler, Theatre Festivals of the Medici, 1539–1637, New Haven, 1964, pp. 5–12; G. G. Bertelà and A.P. Tofani, Feste e apparati medicei da Cosimo I a Cosimo II, mostra di disegni e incisioni, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 1969, p. 195; H. W. Kaufmann, "Art for the Wedding of Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora of Toledo (1539)," Paragone, 21, 1970, pp. 52–67; Forster, 1971, pp. 91–93; Mitchell, 1979, pp. 50–54; CoxRear., pp. 241–48, 251–56; and A. Testaverde Matteini, "La decorazione festiva e l'itinerario di 'rifondazione' della città negli ingressi trionfali a Firenze tra XV e XVI secolo," MKIF, 32, 1988, pp. 341–48. 26. See Giam., pp. 6–15 (Min.&Mit., pp. 99–103); and Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 86–89 (in the vita of Tribolo). 27. Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 86–87, describes the statue of Fecundity as "una femina di cinque braccia, fatta per la Fecondità, con cinque putti, tre avvolti alle gambe, uno in grembo, e l'altro al collo." 28. Giam., p. 18; Min.&Mit., pp. 99, 121–24: "Una grande arme delle Illustris. Casa Medici et Tolledo insieme congiunte et abbracciate dal'Aquila Imperiale." 29. See Giam., p. 19; and Min.&Mit., p. 124, which identifies the source of the quotation as Catullus, Ode LXIV, line 374. 30. Fidelity was alluded to in a lunette with a device showing a black dove on the branches of a dead bush with a green shoot growing from it (a play on the Medici impresa of the regenerating laurel). Its inscription ILLE MEOS is from Dido's words to Anna on the subject in Aeneid, IV, 28 (see J. Gelli, Divise, motti e imprese di famiglie e personaggi italiani, Milan, 1928, pp. 256–57, no. 946). 31. See Giam., p. 21; and Min.&Mit., p. 126, which identifies the source of the quotation as Aeneid III, 158, in which the gods of Troy address Aeneas. 32. See Giam., pp. 31–64 (Min.&Mit., pp. 196–223). For this entertainment, see H. W. Kaufmann, "Music for a Noble Florentine Wedding (1539)," in Words and Music: The Scholar's View, ed. L. Berman, Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 161–91; for the music itself, see Musiche fatte nelle nozze, 5 vols., Venice: A. Gardane, 1539 (rept.), and for a recording of it, Firenze 1539, Centro Musica Antica di Ginevra, Studio di Musica Rinascimantale di Palermo, Schola "Jacopo da Bologna," dir. Gabriel Garrido (Tactus TC 53012001; recorded August 1987, November 1988; released 1990).
Page 354
33. See Giam., pp. 25–29 (Min.&Mit., pp. 130–35); and Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 87, 441–45. 34. Vas. CdL, VI, p. 304 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 445); see also Giam., p. 29. This lost painting must be reflected in Vasari's later paintings of the marriage of Duke Alessandro as well as that of Catherine de' Medici in the Sala di Clement VII in the Palazzo. 35. See Giam., p. 29. Min.&Mit., p. 135 n. 76, gives the sources of these quotations: The first is from Catullus's Poem 61, lines 19–20 ("Junia marries Manlius, as beautiful as the inhabitant of Idalis, Venus, when she came to the Phrygian judge [Paris]; she gives herself to her husband, a perfect virgin, under perfect auspices"); the second paraphrases Aeneid, IV, 45; the last is from Catullus's Poem 61, lines 211–12, 233–34. 36. For example, Caterina Cibò (sister of the cardinal) wrote to Eleonora Gonzaga, duchess of Urbino, from Florence on 8 July 1541. See ASF, Carte d'Urbino, cl. 1, div. G., 266, f. 659r–v: "El Sr. Duca e Duchessa innamoratissimi insieme, mai stà l'uno senza altro." And Cosimo's biographer Adriani, 1871, pp. 19–20, praises the match and Eleonora herself: "E visse [Cosimo] con essa molto contento, amandosi scambievolmente quanto si possa credere: ed era anche da essa amata, che, oltre alla forma vaghissima era d'ingegno raro e di bellissime maniere, ed atta a governi grandi, e di bello animo." 37. W. Thomas, The History of Italy, ed. G. B. Parks, Ithaca, N.Y., 1963, p. 105. For other comments on the affection of the ducal couple, see Settimanni (ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, p. 296), who tells of an incident of rudeness to Eleonora, "il che dispiaceva al Duca che amava molto la Duchessa"; and Bronzini, 1624–32, p. 124, who notes: "da Cosimo fu [Eleonora] molto amata." 38. Simon, 1985, pp. 20–23. 39. See Simon (as in n. 38); and C. Plazzotta, who, in a review of Bronzino's Rima in burla, 1988, in Burl., 131, 1989, p. 715, comments on the provocative portrayal of Cosimo, seen from the rear, "a sedere," which echoes the homoerotic imagery of Bronzino's own poetry (on which see Chapter 10, nn. 74–75). 40. For details on the life of the ducal family during the early 1540s, see Baia, 1907, pp. 24–62; Booth, 1921, pp. 105–26; Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 57–63; and Winspeare, 1961, pp. 11–22. The letters of the ducal secretaries Grifoni, Pagni, and Riccio contained in ASF, MDP 1169–72, make it clear that the children lived at Castello. 41. See Baia, 1907, p. 39, for the cities visited in 1542; Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, p. 57, for those visited in 1545. 42. The diarists all comment on this illness, which threatened the very existence of the Medici principato. Settimanni reports in October that Cosimo was gravely ill and that it was widely believed that he had been poisoned; according to the same source, the duke was still convalescing at the time of Maria Salviati's funeral on 14 December (ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, pp. 294, 301). Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 33–37, gives a detailed account of this illness as well as of a less serious one of early August to November 1544. 43. Opinion is divided as to what powers Eleonora may actually have exercised. See Baia, 1907, pp. 37–38; C. O. Tosi, "Eleonora di Toledo reggente lo Stato," L'illustratore fiorentino, 1910, pp. 162–66; and Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, p. 61. A sample of Eleonora's direction of Cosimo's daytoday affairs is found in letters from her to Cosimo or his captains concerning the lodging of soldiers in Barberino di Mugello. See ASF, MDP 353, f. 369r (copy; to Cosimo, 31 August 1541); MDP 354, ff. 15r, 16r–18r; MDP 354, ff. 34r–v (to Cosimo, 3 September 1541, signed "La Duchessa"); MDP 354, f. 36 (to Camillo Colonna, Cosimo's captain, 3 September 1541); MDP 354, f. 132r–v (to Colonna, signed "La Duchessa").
Page 355
44. On the twentysixth Pagni reported on Eleonora's ecstatic reception of a letter from the duke and of her attending to business; see ASF, MDP 353, ff. 259r–260r (letter of Lorenzo Pagni in Florence to Ugolino Grifoni in Genoa, 26 August 1541). On 27 August Eleonora wrote to the prioress of S. Pietro in Pistoia, making a contribution to the convent and requesting the prioress's prayers for the successful governance of Florence (quoted in Cantini, 1805, p. 516). And on the twenty eighth Pagni wrote to Cosimo on Eleonora's behalf, conveying her distress that the duke could not read her handwriting (see n. 12 above). 45. ASF, MDP 354, f. 18. 46. See Ferrai, 1882, pp. 198–99; Baia, 1907, pp. 29–32; and Booth, 1921, pp. 119–21. 47. See Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 57–58. 48. BNF, ms. Magl. VIII.80, I, f. 203v (copy of an undated letter of Eleonora di Toledo). The letter is annotated by the copyist "Della Duchessa Leonora al Duca Cosimo ammalato" and—incorrectly, I believe—"Queste parole furno causa, che li Spag.li già levati dal Duca furno rimessi nelle fortezze." 49. Cosimo is shown without the badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece, received in 1545 and worn in the later versions of this portrait. For the date of this work, see Simon, 1983; idem, 1984, pp. 66–80, 231–34. See also Lang. cat. 27,44, which attributes it to Luigi Fiammingo after Bronzino. 50. This portrait measures 59 × 46 cm.; thus, unless it has been cut down, it cannot be a literal pendant to Cosimo's portrait, which measures 74 × 58 cm. See my forthcoming study of Bronzino's portraits of Eleonora for further details on his portraits of the ducal couple. For this portrait, see Vas.Mil., VII, p. 598 (mention of a portrait of Eleonora dating before the Uffizi Eleonora and Giovanni of 1545); also Bac. no. 55d; Lang. cat. 35,10f; CoxRearick, 1982, pp. 72–73; Simon, 1983, p. 536; idem, 1984, p. 77; and Campbell, 1985, p. 387. As Simon and I have both noted, a portrait of Eleonora that must be this one was delivered to Poggio a Caiano on 23 October 1543 (ASF, MDP 1170, ins. VI, f. 336). 51. See Lang. cat. 35,23. 52. See Lang. cat. 27,19a. For the identification of the work and date, see Simon, 1983; idem, 1984, pp. 89–134; idem, "Il ritratto di Cosimo I nel Museo Gioviano," Atti del Convegno Paolo Giovio: Il rinascimento e la memoria (Como, 1983), Como, 1985, pp. 183–92; and idem, "'Blessed Be the Hand of Bronzino': The Portrait of Cosimo I in Armour," Burl., 129, 1987, pp. 387–88. In the last two articles, Simon demonstrates that this is the portrait mentioned in Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 597–98—the one that was given by Cosimo to Paolo Giovio. Giovio thanks him for it on 30 July 1546 (ASF, MDP 1170A, ins. II, no. 6, f. 14r). 53. For this picture, see Vas.Mil., VII, p. 598; also, from its vast bibliography, Beck, 1972; idem, 1974, pp. 62, 66; Bac. no. 55; Lang., I, pp. 98–99, and cat. 35,10; McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 92–93; CoxRearick, 1982, pp. 71–77; Simon, 1983, p. 536; idem, 1984, p. 75; and Campbell, 1985, p. 387. Beck and Langedijk call the child Francesco, an identification based on listings in the 1553 and 1560 inventories of the guardaroba of a large portrait of the duchess with Francesco. This is a different picture, however (see n. 60 below). The child's apparent age (two to three years) concurs with Giovanni's birthdate (1543), and his appearance agrees with Bronzino's portrait of Giovanni from the spring of 1545 (Uffizi; see Lang. cat. 54,4). A mid1545 date for the portrait also seems to be confirmed by two Bronzino letters written in August from Poggio a Caiano (docs. 8 and 13).
Page 356
54. Giovanni was given "la tonsura nella Cappella del Palazzo Ducale" (the Chapel of the Priors) on 21 June 1550 (see ASF, Pergamene Medicee, 90, p. 32v). 55. London, Victoria and Albert Museum ms. L.1792–1953. The manuscript is dated 10 February 1540 (New Style 1541). See S. Meloni Trkulja, in Pal.Vec., cat. 362, who does not suggest an author for the illuminations. The borders of these pages are stylistically similar to the work of Francesco di Giovanni Boccardi, who also illuminated a Book of Hours for Duke Alessandro (Florence, Biblioteca Corsiniana ms. 1232), as well as the frontispiece of Duke Cosimo's imperial diploma of 1537 (ASF, Trattati internazionali, 1, ins. C; see Lang. cat. 27,62). The miniatures are by a different hand, not that of an illuminator but of a painter such as Michele Ghirlandaio. 56. For a contemporary account of the baptism, see Jacopo Cortesi da Prato, Il Battesimo di Don Garzia de' Medici, ed. G. Saltini, Florence, 1893. 57. On the purchase of the Pitti Palace, see F. Morandini, Mostra documentaria e iconografica di Palazzo Pitti e Giardino di Boboli, Florence, Archivio di Stato, 1960, p. 13, doc. 11. According to All.&Cec., p. 8, there was a partial transfer of the court to the Pitti Palace in May 1550. 58. See Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 699–700; and All.&Cec., pp. 195–212. 59. See Vas.Rag., p. 196. All.&Cec., p. 150, wrongly identifies the subject of this painting as the birth of Francesco. 60. See Lang. cat. 35,12; and Simon, 1984, p. 76. The darkhaired, darkeyed boy is identifiable as Francesco on the basis of a comparison with Bronzino's portrait of him of 1551, when he was ten years old (Uffizi; Lang. cat. 42,24). 61. Domenichi, 1549, p. 252v. Plazzotta, 1988, p. 25, quoted this passage in relation to Bronzino's dynastic portraits of Eleonora. 62. See Campbell, 1983, pp. 823–24; CoxRear., p. 290; and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 375–80. 63. See Ferrero, 1956–58, II, p. 200. 64. See Pollard, 1985, cat. 392; and Lang. cat. 35,30. 65. For Bartoli, Vasari, and the programmes for the Quartiere degli Elementi and the Quartiere di Leone X, see Bryce, 1983, pp. 51–71; also CoxRear., p. 290; and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 375–80. For EleonoraJuno in the Sala di Giove, see Vas.Rag., pp. 91–96; All.&Cec., pp. 91–96; for the Sala di Opi, see Vas.Rag., p. 46; All.&Cec., pp. 83–90; and for the Sala degli Elementi, see Vas.Rag., pp. 11–35; All.&Cec., pp. 63–73; and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 320–56. In Vas.Rag., pp. 73, 76, the description of a statue of Juno in the Terrace of Juno (1556–57), dedicated to Eleonora, concludes: "certo Sua Eccellenza è Giunone istessa." See All.&Cec., pp. 102–4, and, for the opinion that this decoration was not intended to allude to Eleonora, see McGrath, 1985, pp. 125–26. 66. The fountain was partially installed in the Sala Grande for Francesco's wedding celebrations in 1565 but was later removed; for a reconstruction, see D. Heikamp, "Bartolommeo Ammannati's Marble Fountain for the Sala Grande of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence," in Fons Sapientiae: Renaissance Garden Fountains, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture, ed. E. B. MacDougall, 5, 1980, pp. 120–30; and All.&Cec., pp. 223–26; for the fountain's reference to Eleonora, see M. Campbell, "Observations on the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Time of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, 1540–1574," in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del '500, Florence, 1983, III, pp. 821–24; CoxRear., p. 290; and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 373–80. 67. ASF, MDP 353, f. 324 (letter of 29 August 1541).
Page 357
68. See Saltini, 1898, p. 86, citing a letter of 1558. 69. Quoted in Scaduto, 1964, p. 578. 70. See Baldinucci, 1845–47, II, pp. 374–77. For Eleonora and the Jesuits, see Scaduto, 1964, pp. 577–85; also Baia, 1907, pp. 53–62. 71. On the details of Eleonora's illness, see Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 65–68. 72. ASF, MDP 1176, ins. IX, f. 40 (letter of Lorenzo Pagni to Pierfrancesco Riccio, 23 March 1552). 73. The original of the threequarterlength Cosimo is lost, but see the workshop version in Turin, Galleria Sabauda (Lang. cat. 27,36; and Simon, 1984, p. 152 and cat. b25). Simon, 1984, p. 158, believes that the portrait of Cosimo de' Medici in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Lang. cat. 27,38) is the original bustlength version. The original threequarterlength Eleonora is lost but may be recorded in the workshop painting in Washington, National Gallery (see Bac. no. 112a; Shapley, 1979, I, pp. 93–94; Lang. cat. 35,14; and Campbell, 1985, p. 387). P. Costamagna, "Osservazioni sull'attività giovanile di Alessandro Allori: Seconda parte—les portraits," Antichità viva, 27, 1988, p. 29, believes the Washington picture is Bronzino's original. There is a problem about the date of these pictures: Vasari (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 601) says Bronzino painted the duke and duchess when Cosimo was forty (1559 or 1560), and there is an entry for a portrait of the duke in the guardaroba inventory of 1560 (ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 45, f. 60r); as Langedijk points out, however, one of the replicas bears the inscription "ANNI XXXVI," suggesting that Cosimo was thirtysix when the original was painted. 74. See Bac. no. 112; and Lang. cat. 35,8. This work is usually dated about 1560 and considered as the model for the Washington picture; however, Costamagna (as in n. 73), p. 29, attributes it to Allori. 75. Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, p. 68, whose primary interest in the Medici was medical, notes of the Berlin picture: "La Eleonora apparisce realmente malata: le mani affilate, il naso assottigliato, le gote scavate, gli zigomi sporgenti, il bell'ovale della faccia allungato e nei tratti segnate le sofferenze di una deperita." 76. See M. McCrory, in Pal.Vec. cat. 227; Lang. cat. 27,195 and 278 (Vasari's drawing for the cameo); and M. Sframeli, in A. Giusti et al., Splendori di pietre dure: L'arte di corte nella Firenze dei Granduchi, Palazzo Pitti, Florence, 1988, cat. 2. 77. See A. Martellini, La solenne entrata dello illustriss. & eccellentiss. sig. il Duca di Fiorenza et Siena, fatta a XXVIII d'ottobre MDIX, Siena, 1560, p. 12: "vi è un inscrittione principale: Cosmum Med. Princ. opt. & Eleonoram coniugem lectissimam. S. P. Ilaris veneratur et excipit." 78. See La solenne entrata (as in n. 77), p. 12; see also Cirni, 1560, p. 4r. The description concludes: "Sotto questo sono due figli del Duca; intorno al primogenito, in atto di consulta, con questo verso, Qui iuvenes quantas ostentant aspice viros." 79. This important event was widely reported at the time: see ASF, Manoscritti 127, II, II, p. 453 (Settimanni); and La solenne entrata dell' Illustriss. & Eccllentisss. Signore Il Sig. Duca di Firenze, fatta in Rome alli VI del presente mese di novembre 1560, Bologna, 1560, n.p.; also Galluzzi, 1781, II, pp. 20– 22. 80. ASF, MDP 1176, ins. X, f. 3 (letter of Lorenzo Pagni, 25 July 1551). 81. Quoted in Scaduto, 1964, p. 581. 82. See Albèri, 1839–53, I, pp. 352–53.
Page 358
83. For these events and Eleonora's death, see Ferrai, 1882, pp. 81–89; Saltini, 1898, pp. 132–34; Baia, 1907, pp. 81–89; Booth, 1921, pp. 187–88; Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, p. 66; and Scaduto, 1964, pp. 583–85. 84. ASF, MDP 5922a, ins. XXVIII, ff. 128r–131r. "In prima lascia suo herede universale di tutti li suoi beni mobili, immobili, ragioni, azzioni presenti e futuri [etc.] L'Eccell.mo Sig.r Duca suo consorte." 85. ASF, MDP 327, ff. 107ff. For the letter, see Spini, 1940, pp. 183–86. Much of it is translated in Booth, 1921, pp. 187–88. 86. Lapini, 1900, pp. 135–38. See also ASF Manoscritti 128, III, pp. 239–40 (Settimanni); a letter by Guido Serguidi, quoted in Saltini, 1898, p. 134; and Moreni, 1827, pp. 75–78. Cosimo was later buried with her (see Borsook, 1965–66, p. 47). 87. See Vettori, 1563. According to Moreni, 1827, pp. 75–77, orations were also read by Adriani, Giovanni Guadagni, and Pietro Perondini. 88. Vettori, trans. Mini, 1563, p. 3v. 89. See Moreni, 1827, pp. 77–78; and Baia, 1907, pp. 90–93. For Bronzini's characterization of Eleonora, see n. 6 above. 90. See Bronzino, 1823, p. 41. These lines are quoted from no. 12 of a group of thirteen sonnets on the death of Eleonora (pp. 36–42). 91. See Albèri, 1839–53, I, p. 77. 92. The abdication took place on 1 May 1564 (see C. O. Tosi, "Abdicazione di Cosimo de' Medici in favore del figliuolo Francesco," Arte e storia, 1907, pp. 23– 25); but Lapini, 1900, p. 141, records the official transfer of power to Francesco as having been made on Cosimo's fortyfifth birthday (11 June). 93. For this decoration, see the description of the apparato by Cini, in Vas.Mil., VIII, pp. 561–64; and the correspondence with Borghini in Vas.Frey, II, pp. 195– 203; and Borghini, 1912, p. 28. 94. See Cini, in Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 123 (Vas.Mil., VIII, p. 564). 95. For the rapid decline in Cosimo's health and its turn for the worse, which left him paralyzed in early 1573, see Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 40–46. 96. For Eleonora's portrait, see Bac. no. 55e; Lang. cat. 35,38 (as school of Bronzino); and CoxRear., pp. 288–90. Given the high quality of their execution, these portraits are attributable to Allori. Eleonora's coiffure and her highcollared dress accord with the fashion of the early 1570s. For the Studiolo, see All.&Cec., pp. 323–50. Chapter 2 1. L. Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 di Luca Landucci continuato da un anonimo fino al 1542, ed. I. del Badia, Florence, 1883, p. 376. See also the account by Cosimo's biographer Baldini, 1578, p. 31: "[Cosimo] deliberò d'andare ad habitare nel Palagio de i Priori, et si come egli era stato eletto Prencipe della Città da i suoi Cittadini, così stare ancora et habitare in quel medesimo palagio nel quale era sempre mai stato ne i tempi passati il sommo Magistrato della Città il quale era già Prencipe di quella, perche egli fece acconciarvi molte stanze e assai begli habituri da potergli commodamente habitare, et partitosi dal palagio de i Medici andò a stare nel
Page 359
palagio de i Priori di sopra detto.'' On the history of the palace before 1540, see Lensi, 1929, pp. 3–116; and All.&Cec., pp. 40, 392–97. 2. ASF, MDP 600, f. 4v: "Addì xv detto [May 1540] in sabbato a hore 20 in circa vigilia dello Spirito Santo il S.r Duca Cosimo con la S.ra Duchessa Lionora sua consorte entrò nel palazzo maggiore in Fiorenza electo per habitatione di lor Ex.,e quod faustum felixque sit." Landucci (as in n. 1 above), p. 376, and Lapini, 1900, p. 106, also record this date, although in the letter (cited in n. 4 below) Cosimo gives the day as the fourteenth. 3. Adriani, 1587, p. 129. See also other contemporary accounts of the move such as Vas.Rag., pp. 14–17. 4. ASF, MDP 10, f. 114v (letter of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence to Don Pedro di Toledo in Naples, 14 May 1540). 5. Lapini, 1900, p. 103, reports that Cosimo "fe' restaurare e ridurre a miglior forma il detto palazzo . . . e si spese nel ridurre detto palazzo molte miglia di scudi." Segni, 1723, p. 248, notes: "si ritrasse ad abitare nel Palazzo già stato della Signoria, perciò con molte muraglie furono ressettate quelle stanze fabbricate per gli Signori Civili, e piccole, e si rimutatono tutte le stanze antiche della Gabella del Sale, delle stanze de' Leoni, della Mercanzia, ed ogni cosa si voltò sottosopra, acciocché 'l Duca in quel Palazzo potesse abitare più comodamente." 6. ASF, MDP 1169, ins. V, f. 15 (letter of Lorenzo Pagni in Poggio a Caiano to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 8 October 1540). For the apartments and rooms of the palace as they existed in 1553, see Conti, 1893. 7. ASF, MDP 351, ff. 326–327 (letter of Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence to Lorenzo Pagni in Pisa, 22 May 1541). 8. ASF, MDP 358, f. 37 (letter of Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence to Lorenzo Pagni in Trebbio, 5 August 1542). The letter continues: "Li ill.mi Sig.ri figliuoli di S. E.xa sono hoggi in palazzo et stanno bnss.,o Dio sia sempre lodato. Et sta sera se ne torneranno alla S.ra Maria [Salviati] che sta bene." 9. It may be indicative that the first inventory of the guardaroba after the move was taken on 25 March 1544 (ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 8). All.&Cec., p. 292, note that this date was three months after the death of Maria Salviati and may reflect Eleonora's taking over the household. 10. Tasso is mentioned often in Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 89, 91, 95, 96, 238; VII, p. 22; VIII, pp. 696–97; Vasari notes his important position in the service of the duke, his influence with him on behalf of other artists, and his place of favor with Riccio. 11. See Lensi, 1929, p. 124. Payments to Tasso for work in the initial remodeling campaign between 18 March 1542 and 30 January 1543 are found in ASF, MDP 600, f. 8v: "E addì detto [March 1542] feci una poliza al detto [Michel Ruberti] che pagasse al Tasso scudi xv di moneta a buon conto per lavori fatti." F. 18r (payment to Tasso for woodwork, November 1542): "Fecesi pagare al Tasso legnaiuolo scudi x d'oro moneta dal depositario delle bande . . . con ordine di Michel Ruberti." F. 21r (settling of Tasso's account for work in the Palazzo, 30 January 1543): "Addì detto [January 1543]. Sotto scripsi un conto di Battista Tasso a Michel Ruberti che importa lire 335 piccioli, saldo per maestro Tribolo, di lavori fatti in palazzo." 12. Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 170–75. On the udienza, see All.&Cec., pp. 32–39, quoting (p. 36) payment of Bandinelli's salary of 260 scudi from 20 September 1542 to 7 April 1543 (ASF, Depositeria generale 573, f. 195v). To keep my references to the works of art in the Palazzo as brief as
Page 360
possible, I generally refer only to All.&Cec., which gives the dating, documentation, and bibliography of all decorations there. 13. See Vas.Mil., VI, p. 455; and All.&Cec., p. 49. 14. Cheney, 1963, pp. 359–74, cites (pp. 646–47) the letter recording the commission, payments to Salviati in 1544 and 1545 (ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 10, ff. 21v, 22r, 32v, 43v, and 47r), and Giovio's letter of 11 September 1545 referring to the frescoes (for which, see Chapter 3, n. 55). The decoration, however, was said to be unfinished by A. F. Doni, Lettere del Doni, libro secondo, Florence, 1547 (letter of 3 June 1547 to Salviati); and L. Domenichi, La pittura di Leonbattista Alberti tradotta per M. Lodovico Domenichi, Venice, 1548, p. 3. For the Sala, see also Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 22–27; and All.&Cec., pp. 40–47. 15. See Adelson, 1983, pp. 899–924; and idem, 1985, pp. 147–50, for a brief summary of the tapestries in the context of Cosimo's renovation of the Palazzo. For the cycle, see also Bac. nos. 59–74; Adelson, in Pal.Vec. cat. 80–99; and idem, in Dolcini, 1985, pp. 19–46, with a reconstruction of the hanging of the tapestries. 16. Conti, 1893, pp. 62–63, identifies this room as Eleonora's udienza because of a baldachino mentioned in the 1553 inventory that was similar to one in the Sala delle Udienze. It is unlikely that this was Eleonora's bedroom, as Lensi, 1929, pp. 26–27, contends, for the Sala di Gualdrada is convincingly designated as such by Conti, 1893, pp. 61–62. See also All.&Cec., pp. 30–31. 17. See D. Marzi, La Cancelleria della Repubblica Fiorentina, Rocca S. Casciano, 1910, p. 478. 18. ASF, MDP 600, f. 10v: "E addì 20 detto [May 1542] feci una poliza a Messer Franc.o Pretino, sottomaestro di casa di S. Ex.,a che pagasse a Ridolfo del Grillandaio pictore scudi 34 di moneta per resto della pictura grottesca fatta nella camera verde di sopra del palazzo. Saldo il conto per maestro Tribolo e maestro Bronzino" (see All.&Cec., p. 31, where the document is transcribed differently). 19. After discussing the Sala delle Udienze, Vasari (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 27) lists the scrittoio along with other works painted by Salviati in the Palazzo (such as the lost ceiling of the winter dining hall) before his departure for Rome in 1548. This list has suggested a dating of 1545 (see Lensi, 1929, p. 136; Cheney, 1963, p. 375; All.&Cec., p. 48); however, as Cheney, pp. 161–62, notes, the decoration may have been contemporaneous with the rest of the work in Eleonora's suite. 20. The earlier literature on the frescoes is as follows (with the dates assigned by the authors): Furno, 1902, p. 45; Schulze, 1911, p. xi (1545–64); Goldschmidt, 1911, pp. 34, 54 (1545–64); Schaeffer, 1911, p. 61; Tinti, 1920, pp.'8–9 (1545–64); Voss, 1920, I, pp. 217–18; McComb, 1928, pp. 33–35, 56 (1550–64); Lensi, 1929, pp. 132–34; Venturi, 1933, pp. 3, 42–48 (commission in 1539, execution after 1548); Berenson, 1936, p. 99; Becherucci, 1944, p. 48 (after 1548); and Becherucci, 1949, p. 5. Smyth, 1956, pp. 215–21, challenged the traditional dating of the frescoes on the basis of their stylistic connections with Bronzino's paintings of the 1530s and on Vasari's statement that the chapel was begun after Cosimo's marriage; he dated the inception of the project to 1539 and the frescoes to the early 1540s, with The Gathering of Manna dated 1546. 21. These inscriptions were found by Giovanni Poggi during the restoration of the chapel in 1949. I determined the dates interpolated in them from the perpetual calendar tables in A. Cappelli, 1930, Cronologia cronografia e calendario perpetuo, Milan, 1930, pp. 73, 89. 22. See Emiliani, 1960, pp. 35–36, 66–67, and text opposite pls. 33–36; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11, where the inscriptions are transcribed and discussed; and Smyth, 1971, pp. 53–54 n. 23. Other post1960 literature on the frescoes is as follows: Emiliani, 1961; Berenson, 1963, I, p. 42;
Page 361
Shearman, 1963, p. 416; Bac. nos. 36–46; Freedberg, 1971, p. 703 (expressing doubts that The Brazen Serpent was finished in 1542 and suggesting that the RockManna fresco may be "significantly later in date"); Cheney, 1973, pp. 165–66; Richelson, 1975, pp. 109–10; All.&Cec., pp. 21–29; McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 72–83; and CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 45–46. 23. As noted by Collareta, 1980, p. 116. 24. This is the conclusion of All.&Cec., p. 28, which proposes (but does not document) that a new inner door to the chapel was installed in 1563. 25. See CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 9–11. 26. The fresco measures 2.91 (height at center) × 4.83 m. (width at lower edge). 27. The vault measures 4.88 × 3.82 m.; the medallions measure 45 × 32 cm.; and each spandrel measures 85 × 60 cm. 28. The fresco measures 1.66 (height at center) × 3.75 m. (width at lower edge; each side 1.05 m.). 29. The fresco measures 0.91 (height over the door), 1.28 m. (width at lower edge of the left side), 1.49 (width at the lower edge of the right side), 4.90 m. (total width); and the overdoor measures 68 × 85 cm. 30. For these frescoes, see Zeri, 1952, pp. 57–58; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11; Bac. nos. 45–46; All.&Cec., p. 26; McCorquodale, 1981, p. 83; and Cox Rearick, 1987, p. 46. 31. I am grateful to Daniella Dini for her diagrams of the giornate and for discussing the issues of giornate with me. 32. Emiliani, 1960, pp. 35–36, alludes (although in incomplete and somewhat garbled form) to Edward Sanchez's discovery of this evidence, communicated to Emiliani by Craig Hugh Smyth. 33. See also ASF, MDP 600, f. 24v ("E addì detto [4 April 1543] che dessi a Lionardo Brogiotti scudi 60 per la muraglia, e pittori del palazzo"), which may include payment to Bronzino. Two other indications of payments to Bronzino in letters of 1543 and 1544 are probably not connected with the chapel. On 21 May 1543 Agnolo Marzi de' Medici wrote from Pietrasanta to Riccio in Florence suggesting that the duke was in favor of employing Bronzino for an unnamed project: "Del Bronzino anchora [Duke Cosimo] si contenta che sia servito et aiutato di qualche cosa" (ASF, MDP 1170, ins. IV, f. 207). On 31 January 1544 the same secretary wrote to Riccio from Pisa that Cosimo had seen a bill for Bronzino's work and declared that it was Eleonora's responsibility: "Siane con la Duchessa che son cose sua" (ASF, MDP 1171, ins. I, f. 15). 34. Vasari, 1986, pp. 592–93. 35. As noted by Shearman, 1963, p. 416. Vasari alludes to this date in his own vita (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 683); on 8 July 1547 he received congratulations on having "condotto el libro al fine" (Vas.Frey, I, p. 199); and on 10 and 15 December, Giovio and Annibale Caro wrote to him that they had read the manuscript (Vas.Frey, I, pp. 199, 209). 36. For the complete text on the chapel, see Vas.CdL, VIII, pp. 17–18 (Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 596–97). For Vasari's praise of the frescoes in this passage, see Chapter 4. 37. See ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 8, f. 4. The chaplain is Andrea Macinelli da Montepulciano, listed by Conti, 1893, p. 271, in the "Ruolo degli Stipendiati della Corte Medicea nell'anno 1553 (ASF, Depositeria generale 393). 38. The present arched window of the Capponi Chapel results from a later reconstruction, probably dating from the 1564 building of Vasari's corridor connecting the Palazzo Vecchio with
Page 362
the Palazzo Pitti, which passes over the church. For the original architecture of the chapel, see H. Saalman, "Form and Meaning at the BarbadoriCapponi Chapel in S. Felicita," Burl., 131, 1989, pp. 532–39, fig. 17. Chapter 3 1. These payments are recorded in the first volume of an account book kept by Cosimo's new treasurer, Michele Ruberti. On Ruberti and on this first volume, Depositeria generale 573 (1543–45), see Ferruzzi, 1986, pp. 307–8. See the Appendix for a summary of the payments to Bronzino for work in the chapel. 2. According to Vas.Mil., V, p. 208, Mariotto (d. 1548) worked with Vasari himself in 1536, and with Andrea di Cosimo Feltrini on Cosimo's wedding apparato. 3. On 22 July Riccio noted in his ricordi (ASF, MDP 616, ins. I, ff. 9–10): "Addi 22 di Luglio 1545 . . . Dell'ornamento della tavola della Cappella [della Duchessa]." See Wright, 1986, p. 97 n. 31, who cites f. 12 (dated 1545), which contains the notation "Tavola della Cappella"; and f. 13, which is dated "addì ulto di luglio 1545," and contains the notation "La Tavola dalla Cappella della duchessa." I thank David Wright for these references. 4. Granvelle (1484–1550) became councillor of state to Charles V in 1524 and first minister in 1530, a post he occupied until his death. He accompanied the emperor on his many travels and in his wars as well as representing him at diets in Germany and at the Council of Trent. His portrait, painted by Titian in 1548 at Augsburg, is in the Musée des BeauxArts at Besançon. For Granvelle, see A. Castan, "Monographie du Palais Granvelle à Besancon," Mémoires lus à la Sorbonne: Archéologie, Paris, 1866, pp. 291–306; idem, 1881, p. 463; idem, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 12–20; M. l'Abbé Perrin, "Nicholas Perrenot de Granvelle, ministre de CharlesQuint," Académie des Sciences, BellesLettres et Arts de Besançon, ProcesVerbaux et Mémoires, 1899, pp. 20ff; and M. Van Durme, "A propos du quatrième centenaire de la mort de Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle," Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance, 28, 1951, pp. 270–94. 5. Contemporary accounts emphasize Granvelle's role in this event, which was so important in Cosimo's quest for Florentine autonomy. See Mannucci, 1586, p. 87; and Baldini, 1578, p. 34, who mention Granvelle as having persuaded Charles to restore the fortresses. Cosimo and Granvelle met in Tuscany several times, in September 1541 and again in January 1542; a long letter from the duke in Florence to Bandini, 13 January 1542, begins "Mi occore dirvi come hier l'altro parti di qua monsignor di Granvela, dove è stato dua giorni" and continues to discuss the negotiations at length (ASF, MDP 4299, f. 199; for the letter, see Spini, 1945, pp. 64– 68). 6. The torso, moved to Versailles under Louis XIV, is now in the Louvre (see Castan, 1881, p. 463; and idem, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 16–17). According to Van Durme (as in n. 4), p. 289, Granvelle was known for his greed, inordinate love of gifts, and taking of bribes. 7. Lapini, 1900, p. 106, gives the date of Cosimo's formal investiture as 11 August 1545. For this award, often wrongly cited as given in 1546, see Simon, 1984, pp. 67–68. 8. The Lamentation already had a frame—the one Mariotto was gilding in July (see doc. 7). It would have been very narrow (no more than 11.5 cm.) and simple, however, to be set within the illusionistic painted frames in the chapel. 9. Indirect evidence of a date before 22 October for the shipping of the altarpiece is found in ASF, Registro di spedizioni e di espressi e staffette per portar lettere ed ogetti, 1544–61 (Guardaroba Medicea 9). The altarpiece is not listed after 22 October; unfortunately, the pages of this
Page 363
document corresponding to the dates 18 June to 22 October (ff. 5v–13v), during which the altarpiece must have been sent, have been left blank. 10. Van Durme (as in n. 4), pp. 274–75, gives the dates of Granvelle's absence. Granvelle's son, Antoine, the Bishop of Arras, tells of his father's serious illness in a letter of 21 October 1545 to Cardinal Farnese: "la longa et pericolosa infirmita di Mons.r de Granvella mio padre, me ha tenuto fora de corte più tempo di quello facevamo disegno nel partir nostro [di] Worms" (Madrid, Royal Palace Library ms. 2259). I owe knowledge of this letter to Edward Sanchez. 11. See Castan (as in n. 4), pp. 297–99; idem, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 18–19. 12. See Castan, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 37–40, for the contract of 18 November 1549, in which every part of the proposed structure is detailed. See also Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale, Recueil Boisot, ff. 325–328v, "Traité concernant la chapelle sépulcrale contiguë à l'église des Carmes de Besancon, que Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle et sa femme projetaient de construire . . . 10 Janvier 1550." 13. See Castan (as in n. 4), pp. 297–99; idem, 1881, p. 464; idem, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 21–23. 14. Panel; 2.68 × 1.73 m. For this work, see Castan, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 26–32; and Le seizième siècle européen: Peintures et dessins dans les collections publiques françaises, Paris, Petit Palais, 1965, p. 40. A portrait of the patron as the companion of Joseph and Nicodemus has been substituted for Bronzino's portrait of Pontormo (for which, see Chapter 6). 15. See Castan, 1881, Mémoires, p. 23. 16. See R. Tournier, Les eglises comtoises, Paris, 1954, pp. 271–73, on the architecture of the chapel, with a diagram of it. 17. Besancon, Musée des BeauxArts 799.1.29. The panel measures 2.68 × 1.73 m. and is signed on the rock to the lower right: OPERA DEL BRONZINO FIORENTINO. It was cleaned by Lanceron in 1836–38, when a strip measuring 6.5 cm. was added at the bottom of the panel (see L. Clément de Ris, Les Musées de Province, Paris, 1861, II, pp. 38–40); by Gouliant in 1935; by Aubert in 1956. It was restored by Michel in 1965 and cleaned again by Huvelin in 1971. Since Castan (1881, pp. 460–64; idem, 1881, Mémoires; idem, Musée de Besancon: Catalogue des peintures, dessins, sculptures et antiquités, Besancon, 1886, pp. 37–38) assembled the documentation for Bronzino's execution of the altarpiece, its date of 1545 has never been questioned. See also Besançon, Palais de Justice, Exposition de tableaux, 1831, no. 25; Furno, 1902, p. 39; L. Gonse, Les chefsd'oeuvre des musées de France: La peinture, Paris, 1900, p. 66; Poggi, 1909; Goldschmidt, 1911, p. 51; Schulze, 1911, p. v; Schaeffer, 1911, p. 60; J. Magnin, La peinture et le dessin au Musée de Besançon, Dijon, 1919, p. 270; Tinti, 1920, pp. 9–10; Voss, 1920, I, p. 217; McComb, 1928, p. 46; Venturi, 1933, pp. 4–5, 48–49; G. Gazier, Besancon: Son musée et ses collections d'art, MulhouseDornach, 1935, p. 8; L'art italien de Cimabue à Tiepolo, Paris, Petit Palais, 1935, no. 49; Becherucci, 1944, pp. 45–46; idem, 1949, p. 4; Zeri, 1952, p. 57; Besancon, le plus ancien musée de France, Paris, Musée des arts décoratifs, 1957, no. 25; Emiliani, 1960, pp. 66, 73, text to pls. 53–54; idem, 1961, pp. 127, 134–35; Berenson, 1963, I, p. 41; Freedberg, 1965, p. 193; Le siezième siècle, 1965 (as in n. 14), no. 49; Emiliani, 1966, text to pls. X–XI; Levey, 1967, pp. 5–6; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 8–9; Freedberg, 1971, p. 299; Bac. no. 47; Hall, 1979, pp. 41–43; All.&Cec., p. 24; McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 84–87; Simon, 1984, pp. 70–72; and CoxRearick, 1989. 18. Vas.CdL, VIII, pp. 18–19 (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597). 19. Adelson, 1985, p. 162, in contrast, believes that the original wings were removed when the Lamentation was exported in 1545 and that they were not rehung until 1553, when Bronzino's replica was ready.
Page 364
20. I have traced Bronzino's panels as far as 1660 (ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 189, f. 4) but found no reference to them after that date. 21. Inv. 73.PA.70. The panel was restored in 1987 by Yvonne Szafran, who kindly provided these comments on its condition: Cleaning and restoration have revealed the picture to be in fair condition. The largest losses of paint occur in the blue background, St. John's left hand, and along the bottom edge. There is also some abrasion of the paint film, especially in the flesh tones; however, the drapery and St. John's right hand are in a remarkable state of preservation. The support consists of three vertical 1 1/2" thick pieces of poplar planks. The back of the panel has suffered extensive worm damage and there are large losses of wood, causing damage in the background, where the paint has sunken and fallen in to the left of St. John's head, creating an irregular and bumpy surface with substantial paint loss. At some point the panel was cut down, removing the arch at the top. The cleaning revealed that Bronzino painted a black border at the top around the blue background, indicating the arched shape of the panel. The remnants of this border are quite damaged; however, they do provide a good indication as to the exact curve of the original arch, and allowed for the reconstruction of the panel to its present dimensions. While the left side of the panel was also cut, none of the painted surface was lost, and one can see very clearly that the original paint goes up only to an inscribed line. In fact, all that has been lost on this side is a gessoed border, which still remains on the panel's right side. Whether this border was originally wider or not is hard to tell. A size layer between the gesso and the paint is clearly evident if one looks at this original gessoed strip on the right edge of the panel, where the darkened blue layer can be seen clearly. [This practice is mentioned by Vasari in Vasari on Technique, trans. L. S. Maclehose, New York, 1907, p. 230.] This layer may have caused some of the paint loss, as many of the losses, especially in the red drapery, involve loss of the paint layer only, leaving the original ground.
I would add that the replacement for St. John in the chapel, the angel of the Annunciation, measures 1.52 × 0.55 cm. The Getty panel (1.47 × 0.52 m.) would thus seem to have been cut down 5 cm. in height and 3 cm. in width. For St. John, see Zeri, 1952, who discovered the work in 1948 in the Dudley Wallis Collection, London. The picture was sold at Sotheby's in 1951, entering the Neuhaus Collection in Lima, from which it was sold in 1973 to the present owner by G. Algranti, Milan. Zeri recognized the St. John from Vasari's description as the lost left wing of Bronzino's altarpiece, dating it 1545 as painted just before the Lamentation. See also Fontainebleau e la maniera italiana, Naples, 1952, no. 12; Emiliani, 1960, pp. 73, 81, text opp. pl. 55; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 9, 11; G. Algranti, Selezione 1973, Milan, Palazzo VigoniMainopi, 1973, no. 77 (the picture connected with the entries in Guardaroba Medicea 28 and 45, my docs. 20–21); B. Nicolson, "Current and Forthcoming Exhibitions," Burl., 115, 1973, p. 404; Bac. no. 48; Cheney, 1973, pp. 166–67; and All.&Cec., p. 25. Beck, 1972, p. 11, supposed incorrectly that the St. John mentioned in the 1560 guardaroba inventory was Bronzino's St. John (Rome, Galleria Borghese), but subsequently (1974, p. 66 n. 4) took up my suggestion that the entry referred to the St. John now in the Getty Museum. 22. St. Cosmas would have measured approximately 1.55 × 0.55 m., like the Virgin Annunciate that replaced it; for this work, see Zeri, 1952, p. 59; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11; Bac. no. 49; Cheney, 1973, p. 167; and All.&Cec., p. 25.
Page 365
23. This portrait could have been one of the versions of Bronzino's Duke Cosimo de' Medici (see Fig. 22), but more likely it was Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni (see Fig. 23), which Bronzino was painting at Poggio a Caiano on 9 August 1545 (see doc. 8). 24. Conti, 1893, pp. 53, 58, and 63, notes that there is no mention in the inventory of the contents of either the two chapels or Eleonora's study. 25. Conti, 1893, pp. 196–99. One item, "Una bolla di Papa Julio Secondo dove concede l'indulgentia alla cappella di Santo Bernardo in palazzo," specifically alludes to the Chapel of the Priors, dedicated to S. Bernardino. 26. See Conti, 1893, pp. 56–65, for the suite in 1553. 27. Conti, 1893, pp. 54, 196–97. 28. See Adelson, 1985, p. 161, for this type of tapestry. 29. Simon, 1984, p. 72 n. 2, quotes this letter but believes it refers to an order for another cartoon of Bronzino's first altarpiece. The antecedent of "quella" (despite its feminine ending), however, must be "panno d'altare," not the altarpiece itself, which is not mentioned in the letter and, in any event, had hung only briefly in the chapel five years earlier. 30. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 12, f. 5v: "Vo Panno da altar di seta + oro dentrovi v.a Pietà da m.ro Niccola tappezzieri." For this tapestry, see Smyth, 1971, p. 92; Cheney, 1963, p. 376; and Adelson, 1983, p. 905. G. G. Bertelà, in Berti, 1980, no. 471, gives the wrong date (1549) for the tapestry but does suggest that it was made for one of the chapels in the Palazzo. 31. See ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 21, f. 42r (15 July 1549), quoted in Cheney, 1963, p. 376. For the 1553 entry, see doc. 20. 32. Some years ago I mentioned my hypothesis about the use of Salviati's tapestry in Eleonora's chapel to Candace Adelson, who has come to conclusions somewhat different from mine (1985, p. 162; apparently, however, without knowledge of the Almeni letter—my doc. 17). She proposes that Salviati's tapestry was designed for the Chapel of the Priors (with whose altarpiece its measurements agree) and may also have hung in Eleonora's chapel, noting that in the guardaroba inventory of 1560 (my doc. 21), it is identified as "per la Cappella." I agree that after 1553, when it was no longer needed in Eleonora's chapel, the tapestry may well have been used in the priors' chapel. 33. Wright, 1986, p. 97, proposes another substitute for the Lamentation before 1553: The Medici Madonna (Sarasota, Ringling Museum) by Lorenzo Pagni's cousin Benedetto. The painting, which measures 1.73 × 1.41 (or somewhat smaller than the space available in Eleonora's chapel) was presented to Duke Cosimo in May 1547 with the suggestion that it would be appropriate for one of the chapels in the Palazzo. 34. See doc. 6 for Bronzino's new salary of 12 1/2 fiorini a month (as of 1 November) for work on the tapestry cartoons, first paid on 11 November 1545. The earliest mention of Bronzino's working on a tapestry cartoon (the socalled Primavera, actually representing Dovizia; Pitti) is a memo from Riccio to Cosimo dated 16 September 1545 (ASF, MDP 613, ins. XIV, f. 25v; see Adelson, 1980, p. 147 n. 32). This tapestry was delivered 8 December 1545 (Adelson, 1983, p. 905). For the dates of the Joseph cartoons, see C. Adelson, in Pal. Vec. cat. 80–89. 35. Tasso was paid five scudi a month from 1 March 1549 to 5 May 1555 as "architetto alla muraglia del Palazzo" on the orders of Riccio (ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 2, debitori e creditori C, 1552–72, f. 48). For his work, see All.&Cec., pp. 9–51.
Page 366
36. This is the construction referred to in Riccio's letters of 1549 (see docs. 15–16). The "camere nuove" above the Camera Verde and the chapel are included in the palace inventory of 1553 (see Conti, 1893, pp. 71–78; also All.&Cec., pp. 10–11). 37. See Viale Ferrero, 1963, pp. 30, 72–75; and Adelson, 1985, p. 150 n. 17. 38. See ASF, Fabbriche Medicee 2, f. 91; and All.&Cec., pp. 11, 50–51. 39. See All.&Cec., pp. 15–16. 40. Panel; 2.43 × 1.73 m.; signed on the rock to the lower right: OPERA DEL BRONZINO FIOR. Since Castan (1881, pp. 460–63; idem, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 7–11) first brought the evidence together, there has been agreement on the date of Bronzino's replica. For this picture, see Conti, 1893, p. 63; Furno, 1902, p. 45; Poggi, 1909; Schulze, 1911, p. xi; Goldschmidt, 1911, p. 54; Schaeffer, 1911, p. 61; McComb, 1928, p. 55; Venturi, 1933, pp. 10, 73; Berenson, 1936, p. 99; Zeri, 1952, pp. 57–58; Emiliani, 1960, pp. 66, 81, text to pls. 86–88; idem, 1961, p. 127; Berenson, 1963, I, p. 42; CoxRearick, 1971, p. 11; Smyth, 1971, p. 54 n. 23; Bac. no. 84; Hall, 1979, p. 47; and All.&Cec., pp. 24–25. 41. Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 22 (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 600). 42. For Vasari's vast enterprises, see Vas.Rag., pp. 11–225; and All.&Cec., pp. 55–285. 43. According to Virgilio Soto Cornejo, who kindly supplied the photograph, the painting is in oil on canvas, 2.60 × 1.75 m. I am grateful to Santiago Alcolea Blanch, Fernando Benito Domenech, Lynette Bosch, Samuel K. Heath, Angel Ruiz Garrastacho, V. Gerrard Powell, Craig Hugh Smyth, and William Wallace for their assistance in researching this painting. 44. For the Mendoza, see Col. D. Gutierrez, Historia genealogica de la casa de Mendoza, Cuenaca, 1946, pp. 498 (Don Diego Hurtado) and 484 (Don Francisco). 45. See ASF, MDP 497A, f. 1140 (letter from Giovanni Dini, Alamanno de' Pazzi, and Carlo de' Medici in Florence to Cosimo de' Medici, 9 February 1563). 46. In this and other documents dating after Eleonora's death, the chapel is no longer identified with its original patron but is designated by its location off the Camera Verde, or simply as the Cappella di Palazzo. For the former designation, see docs. 22–23, 25–27 of 1563–65; for the latter, see doc. 24 of 1564. 47. See Bac. no. 117. Bronzino, in fact, did not finish this work until February 1565: it is signed (Old Style) 1564. See two letters from Cosimo to Bronzino of 27 January and 11 February 1565 (Gaye, 1839–40, III, pp. 165–66, whose archival reference should be corrected to read ASF, MDP 220, ff. 76r, 78v). 48. According to Lensi, 1929, p. 270 n. 17, Maestro Dionigi di Matteo della Neghittosa, "falegname da Badia," was employed by Vasari in the construction of models for the Palazzo and was his assistant in the building of the Uffizi. 49. Panels; each 1.52 × 0.55 m. See Castan, 1881, p. 460; Conti, 1893, p. 64; Poggi, 1909; Goldschmidt, 1911, p. 54; Schulze, 1911, p. xi; Voss, 1920, I, p. 217; McComb, 1928, p. 55; Lensi, 1929, p. 134; Venturi, 1933, p. 73; Berenson, 1936, p. 99; Becherucci, 1944, p. 48; Zeri, 1952, p. 57; Smyth, 1956, pp. 217–18; Emiliani, 1960, pp. 67, 73, 86, text to pls. 35, 86; idem, 1961, p. 136; Berenson, 1963, I, p. 42; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11; Bac. nos. 114–15; and All.&Cec., pp. 25–26. In the earlier literature it was assumed (following Vasari's implication) that the Annunciation was executed contemporaneously with the second Lamentation in 1553. The documents relevant to the completion of the panels in 1564 were noted by Lensi, however, and there has been agreement on 1564 as the date of their execution (except for Baccheschi, who dates them ca. 1560–65).
Page 367
50. Vasari, who was in charge of most of the palace decoration, frequently notes the pressure to complete the work, especially the Sala Grande, in the year before the marriage (see Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 193–94, VII, pp. 703–4; Vas.Frey, II, pp. 877–78, etc.). For the apparato, see All.&Cec., pp. 275–85. 51. Smyth, 1971, p. 54, however, suggested (without giving his reasons) that the Trinity may have been painted in the mid1540s or early 1550s. 52. No particular notice was taken of the spandrels until Smyth, 1956, p. 217; idem, 1971, p. 54 n. 23; Emiliani, 1960, text to pls. 43–44; and CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 9–11, agreed that the Fortitude, Temperance, and Prudence figures seemed later in style than the Justice and might date from the early 1560s. But Richelson, 1975, p. 120; and All.&Cec., p. 23, do not make this distinction, Richelson believing that all the Virtue spandrels were added in 1564–65 and that they reflect the mature duke's accomplishments, particularly Justice with its symbols of the rulerarchitect. As I will show in Chapter 10, this imagery was also current in the 1540s. All.&Cec., p. 23, believe that the Virtues may have been added to commemorate Eleonora; but it is difficult to imagine what subject might have been planned for these medallions other than the Virtues, especially given the presence of their attributes in the frames of the medallions, which are indistinguishable in style from the rest of the fresco work of the early 1540s. Collareta, 1980, p. 116, believes all the spandrels were completed in the first campaign of work in the chapel. 53. See All.&Cec., pp. 28, 351–52. 54. Before the discovery of the 1582 payment (see All.&Cec., p. 24; my doc. 29) and the attribution of the sopraporta to Allori, it was assumed to be Bronzino's. Venturi, 1933, p. 46, however, characterized it as coarse (sgangherati), and Smyth, 1956, p. 217 (also 1971, p. 54), called attention to the stylistic discrepancy between the sopraporta and the other frescoes, dating it 1564. Emiliani, 1960, p. 67; idem, 1961, p. 136; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11; idem, 1987, p. 47; Bac., no. 44; and Cheney, 1973, p. 167, concurred. 55. Giovio, in Ferrero, 1956–58, II, no. 213a, wrote to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese on 11 September 1545 that he had heard from Florence how "Ceco de' Salviati pittore ha fatto l'istoria di Scipione [sic] nella secunda sala [del Palazzo], e Baccio [Bandinelli] fa statue brave per la prima." A. F. Doni, Il disegno, Florence, 1549, pp. 47v, 48r, notes works of art to be seen on the second floor of the Palazzo but has only this to say: "Così solendo valente huomo, accioche ci sia mostro la guardaroba, la sala che ha dipinta Francesco Salviati, e altre scolture e pitture, che sono molte." 56. Borghini, 1584, pp. 535–36. 57. Bocchi, 1591, pp. 94–95. 58. Richa, 1754–62, X, pp. 219–28 (called the "cappella di palazzo"). 59. See M. Rastrelli, Illustrazione istorica del Palazzo della Signoria, Florence, 1792, pp. 183–97. 60. See, for example, Firenze antica e moderna illustrata, Florence, 1794, V, pp. 363–64. 61. The pictures are listed in L. Lanzi, La Real Galleria di Firenze, Florence, 1782, pp. 28, 202. They were displayed separately, with the Annunciation in a corridor and the Lamentation in "gabinetto XVIII." 62. See F. Moisè, Illustrazione storicoartistica del Palazzo de' Priori, Florence, 1843, pp. 135–36. Another typical guide of this period is G. François, Nuova guida di Firence, Florence, 1853,
Page 368
pp. 700–701: "In seguito si trova una cappella dipinta dal Bronzino e nella quale sono molti guasti e mancanze." There follows a brief description of the subjects. 63. C. Falconieri, La novella camera dei deputati, Florence, 1865, p. 20. 64. See A. Gotti, Storia del Palazzo Vecchio in Firenze, Florence, 1889, p. 352; and Lensi, 1929, p. 339. 65. E. Bardi, Sui lavori di restauro nel Palazzo della Signoria di Firenze, Florence, 1889, p. 6, proposes to restore the "gravi danni resentiti dalle pareti e volta per filtrazioni d'umidità e per scollegazioni e sciolture" and to clean and restore the paintings. See also C. Conti, Il Palagio del Comune di Firenze, Florence, 1905, p. 71, on the bad condition of the chapel. 66. Baia, 1907, pp. 96–97. 67. For details of the restoration of the "ambiente storico" of the palace, see Lensi, 1929, p. 342. The frescoes have undergone two further restorations since 1909— Poggi's of 1949 and that of Dino Dini and Vittorio Bonciani, completed in 1987. Chapter 4 1. Bac. no. 95. 2. The lost loggia decoration, on which Bronzino worked with Pontormo from 1537 to 1539, was the last of a number of collaborative efforts in which he perfected his fresco technique, having assisted Pontormo in 1536 at the Medici Villa Careggi in another lost loggia decoration (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 282; and VII, p. 596). In the vita of Pontormo (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 482) Vasari attributes "la maggior parte" of the execution of the "ornamenti" at Villa Castello to Bronzino, after which Pontormo completed the work himself in 1543. Bronzino's defection from the project may have been related to his new employment by the duke, for Vasari mentions the work at Castello in the vita of Bronzino, VII, p. 596, just before his account of Bronzino's contribution to Cosimo's wedding apparato in 1539. 3. See Vas.Mil., VII, p. 594; and Bac. no. 3. Bronzino had painted other frescoes on a smaller scale: The Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo and The Man of Sorrows with Two Angels at the Certosa di Galluzzo in 1523–24 (Bac. nos. 1–2); a lost tabernacle with the Noli me tangere for the nuns of the Poverine about 1528 (see J. Cox Rearick, "Two Studies for Bronzino's Lost Noli Me Tangere," Master Drawings, 19, 1981, pp. 289–93); and lost lunettes of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in the house of Bartolomeo Bettini in 1533–34 (see Vas.Mil., VII, p. 595). 4. Bac. nos. 13–16. According to Vas.Mil., VII, p. 595, Bronzino did "alcune figure a olio ne' peducci d'una volta." In the vita of Pontormo, Vas.CdL, VI, p. 173 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 276), Vasari specifies further that Bronzino did "nel peduccio d'una volta all'imperiale un Cupido ignudo molto bello, et i cartoni per gl'altri." The decoration of the villa was under the direction of Girolamo Genga and Menzocchi; Raffaellino dal Colle, Camillo Mantovano, and the Dossi also worked there (Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 318–19). Critics have found it difficult to differentiate the hands of these artists. For a summary of the problems and literature, see F. Gibbons, Dosso and Battista Dossi: Court Painters at Ferrara, Princeton, 1968, pp. 76–79. Smyth, 1956, pp. 129–86, believes the following parts of the scheme to be by Bronzino: a putto on the east wall to the right of the door of the Camera del Giuramento; a Mercury by Dosso Dossi, repainted by Bronzino in the Camera dei Semibusti; Venus and Cupid in an oval (cf. Vas.Mil., vita of Genga, VI, p. 318); and three river gods in the Sala Grande. 5. Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 595–96.
Page 369
6. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 445. For this festival Bronzino also did large Victories of Giovanni delle Bande Nere in chiaroscuro imitating bronze on the base of Tribolo's equestrian statue in the Piazza S. Marco (Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 87–88). 7. On 30 April 1548 Bronzino wrote to Duke Cosimo regarding his return from Rome (Gaye, 1839–40, II, pp. 368–69). See also Christiano Pagni's letter of 5 May 1548, which mentions Bronzino's return (ASF, MDP 1170A, ins. IIIbis, f. 537). This letter was published by Wright, 1986, pp. 98–99, who posits that Bronzino had left Florence in 1546 on an extended leave of absence; as Smyth, 1971, p. 47, has established, however, Bronzino's 1548 trip was a brief one. 8. For critical comment on the vault frescoes, see Voss, 1920, I, p. 218; McComb, 1928, pp. 33, 56; Venturi, 1933, p. 48; Becherucci, 1944, p. 48; Smyth, 1956, pp. 218–21; Levey, 1967, text to pl. IV; Emiliani, 1960, pp. 66–67; Smyth, 1962, p. 18; Shearman, 1963, p. 416; Emiliani, 1966, text to pl. IV; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11; Freedberg, 1971, p. 298; Smyth, 1971, p. 54; Bac., nos. 36–39; All.&Cec., pp. 22–23; McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 77–78; and CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 65–67. 9. Noted by I. Preussner, Ellipsen und Ovale in der Malerei des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, Weinheim, 1987, pp. 65, 68. 10. Venturi, 1933, p. 48, noted Raphael's loggia as a source for the vault. Cheney, 1973, p. 166, suggested that Bronzino might have seen Parmigianino's vault decoration at the Rocca di Fontanellato near Parma, where putti (seen from below) stand against an elaborate trellis. 11. Uffizi 6644Fr and 458Fr (CoxRearick, 1964 [1981], cat. 312 and 319). Vas.CdL, VI, p. 179 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 281) describes ''alcuni putti, che andavano nell'ovato della volta, con diversi animali in mano che scortano al di sotto in su." 12. Noted by Shearman, 1971, p. 18; see also Cheney, 1973, p. 166; and McCorquodale, 1981, p. 78. It is possible that Bronzino may also have known Melozzo da Forlì's vault of ca. 1477–80 in the Sacristy of St. Mark at the Santa Casa, Loreto (a city he could have visited during his stay in Pesaro). Bronzino's St. John (see Plate 19), in particular, recalls Melozzo's seated, foreshortened prophets. 13. See Shearman, 1971, p. 18, who noted that some idea of the illusionism of Pontormo's invention may be gained from Vasari's derivative drawing for a circular vault with four prophets (Uffizi 2 orn.; see C. MonbeigGoguel and W. Vitzthum, "Dessins inédits de Giorgio Vasari," Revue de l'art, 1, 1968, p. 91). In contrast, L. Steinberg, "Pontormo's Capponi Chapel," ArtB, 54, 1974, pp. 395–96, placed the seated patriarchs over the pendentives, with God the Father on an upper level (Vasari's "in cielo") facing the altar wall. 14. Uffizi 8966S (CoxRearick, 1964 [1981], cat. 260). For the other studies, see cat. 261–62. 15. Vas.Mil., VII, p. 596. 16. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut 4344; 34.4 × 26.1 cm. Touches of brown ink have been added by a later hand in the figure of St. Jerome (right side of head, inner side of right forearm, and lion's head) and in the St. Michael (the faces, the saint's feet, and a bit of his skirt flying to the right). The drawing is cut to the curved shape of the picture space and laid down. It is inscribed (possibly by Jabach, to whom it belonged) on the verso of the mount: (in ink) "Julio Romano Plafond pour un Cabinet de Medicis a Florence" (in a different hand) "N.o 11 Giulio Romano"; (in pencil) "Ecole Romaine L: no. 1." See Voss, 1920, I, p. 217 n. 2 (who identified this modello for the vault); F. Würtemberger, "Die manieristisches Deckenmalerei in Mittelitalien," Römisches Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte, 4, 1940, p. 75; Smyth, 1949, p. 195; idem, 1956, pp. 39–40, 88, 218–21 (who dated it 1539–40); Emiliani, 1960, text to pl. 36; Smyth, 1962, p. 64 n. 115;
Page 370
Shearman, 1963, p. 416 (who notes its absence from Berenson's 1961 catalogue); Pouncey, 1964, p. 284; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 11–13; Smyth, 1971, pp. 10–19; Bac., p. 91; Cheney, 1973, p. 165; All.&Cec., p. 27; and McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 77–78. The combined media of the modello appear here for the first time in Bronzino's drawings, anticipating studies of ca. 1545 such as the modelli for the borders of the Joseph tapestries (London, British Museum 19096 12177), Justice Liberating Innocence of 1545 (Milan, Ambrosiana, Codice Resta 61), and Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet (Uffizi 15721F), which may also have been a presentation drawing. 17. Smyth, 1962, p. 18; idem, 1971, pp. 10–18 passim, suggests that Maniera was a matter of choice for Bronzino in 1540; I would emphasize, however, that Bronzino himself was largely responsible for the invention of this new style. 18. Bac. no. 26. 19. Uffizi 576F; 14.1 × 10.6 cm.; laid down. Smyth, 1956, pp. 39–41, rejected this drawing as Bronzino's, but it was included by Berenson, 1961, II, no. 599. It was associated with the saint by CoxRearick, 1971, p. 19; Bac., pp. 91–92; Cheney, 1973, p. 166; and McCorquodale, 1981, p. 78, but All.&Cec., p. 27, reserved judgment. This drawing is rubbed but is of high quality (as Berenson recognized), and the technique is the careful black chalk manner that Bronzino used in the 1530s in the study for a head of Dante (Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung 2147) and the study for the Christ child in the Panciatichi Holy Family (Uffizi 6639F). Although there is a slight difference in the angle of the saint's head and his beard is shorter in the drawing, his features and the expression are similar to those of the head in the painting, as is the solid plasticity of the form, the light from the left and above, and the Bronzinesque flat shape of the eye. 20. Paris, Louvre 6356r; on bluegray prepared paper; 38.7 × 22.5 cm. From the Baldinucci Collection (II, 102; as Lomazzo), the drawing was acquired by the Louvre in 1806. See Smyth, 1971, pp. 7–8 (who identified it as Bronzino's); CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 18–19; C. MonbeigGoguel, Il manierismo fiorentino (I disegni dei maestri), Milan, 1971, p. 83; idem, 1972, no. 10; Bac., p. 91; Cheney, 1973, p. 165; All.&Cec., p. 27; and McCorquodale, 1981, p. 78. The firmly sculptural quality of the forms, the searching contours (such as those at the right side of the torso), and the luminous translucency of the flesh recall Bronzino's drawings of about 1540, such as Uffizi 6639F (see n. 19 above), as well as bringing to mind the refined sensitivity of Pontormo's drawings, still an important influence on Bronzino's draftsmanship. 21. The sonnets (see Bronzino, 1823, p. 26) are dedicated "A Mess. Michelagnolo Buonarroti." For the same wordplay see Cellini, 1971, p. 849, Rime, no. VIII. Listing great artists, he writes: "Donato, Maso, il Lippi e Lionardo, / quel gran Michel più dotto Angel divino, / ciascun di questi fu pittor profondo." See also p. 901, no. LXV: "(A Michelangiolo Buonarroti) / Solo una fronda della tua corona, / Angel Michel, divin, solo immortale." See also Arisoto, Orlando furioso, Canto XXXIII: "Michel più che mortal, Angelo divino"; and Giambattista Strozzi's poem on Michelangelo's Notte in the New Sacristy (in Vas.Mil., VII, p. 197): ''La Notte, che tu vedi in sì dolci atti / Dormire, fu da uno angelo scolpita." Michelangelo himself may have made an ironic selfreference to the archangel in a modello for The Last Judgment in which St. Michael appears at the center of the composition—as a signature, one might say. For a copy of this lost work (London, Courtauld Institute), see B. Barnes, "A Lost Modello for Michelangelo's Last Judgment," Master Drawings, 26, 1988, pp. 239–48. I am grateful to Paul Barolsky for these last three references. 22. According to Vas.Mil., VI, p. 281, Bronzino painted a putto on Pontormo's design at Careggi, as well as others on that vault and at Castello, but these are lost. Smyth, 1956, p. 141,
Page 371
suggests that two putti on the east wall of the Sala del Giuramento at Villa Imperiale, Pesaro, anticipate those flanking St. Jerome; however, this attribution to Bronzino is uncertain. 23. Bac. no. 8 24. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen C85r; 32.1 × 24.6 cm.; inscribed on the recto in ink: A. Bronzino. See CoxRearick, 1964, "Bronzino," pp. 376–77. This drawing was formerly attributed to Allori, to whom the study of legs and small studies after Michelangelo on the verso may well be ascribed. 25. For the Hercules fountain, see Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 80–81; Adelson, 1974, pp. 66–81; and Wright, 1976, pp. 286–302. 26. This derivation is confirmed in Bronzino's modello, in which the figure is not reversed. Two of Tribolo's putti cavorting on the basin of the fountain may also have been the inspiration for the two outermost angels of the group of five holding the arma Christi in the chapel's altarpiece, as suggested by C. Del Bravo, "Dal Pontormo al Bronzino," Artibus et historiae, 12, 1985, p. 86. 27. See CoxRearick, 1987, "St. Sebastian," pp. 155–62; for the Doria portrait, see Bac. no. 76. 28. Bac. no. 31. For the antique references, see B. Schweitzer, "Zum Antikenstudium des Angelo Bronzino," Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, 33, 1919, pp. 45–63 (the picture erroneously dated after Bronzino's Roman trip in 1548); and, for another Praxitelean head that might have been the model, E. Paribeni, "Riflessi di sculture antiche," Archeologica classica, 13, 1961, p. 103, pl. XLVI. 29. Del Bravo (as in n. 26), p. 98 n. 48, gives a number of examples. 30. For the text and the artist's letters, see B. Varchi, Due lezzioni . . . della maggioranza delle arti (Florence, 1550), in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, pp. 3–82; and for extensive analysis of both the lectures and the letters, see Mendelsohn, 1982. For Michelangelo's letter in defense of sculpture, see Summers, 1981, pp. 269–78. 31. See Mendelsohn, 1982, pp. xxiii, 143–44, who notes that not only was Varchi's support of sculpture a shift from the traditional Florentine advocacy of painting but that "the Lezzioni were written in direct response to the esthetic climate of courtly Venetian academies, and as a rebuttal to the praises of painting." 32. Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 25–26 and 30, reports criticism of Salviati's style, particularly as regards his repetitive reassembling of alreadyused motifs. 33. Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 22 and 30. 34. Quoted in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, p. 80. For Cellini's praise of Bronzino, see also sonnet LXXVI (Opere, 1971, p. 911), "Scendi, Giove, dal ciel tra nube e pioggia." This poem is an answer to Bronzino's sonnet in praise of Cellini's Perseus, and it ingeniously reproduces the rimes in Bronzino's poem in the same spirit in which artists of his circle quoted and echoed each other's paintings and sculptures. Its second verse begins: "Al Bronzin, più divin ch'ogn'altro, appoggia/ogni sua gloria." 35. Bronzino's letter is reprinted and annotated in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, pp. 163–67; and Barocchi, 1971–77, I, pp. 499–503. For an English translation see R. Klein and H. Zerner, Italian Art, 1500–1600 (Sources and Documents in the History of Art Series), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966, pp. 10–13; and for useful notes on it, Mendelsohn, 1982, pp. 150–52. Bronzino was under pressure to finish the letter in 1564 on the occasion of Michelangelo's funeral. At this time there was a renewed debate on the paragone, with Vasari and Bronzino representing painting, which
Page 372
was declared the superior art (Mendelsohn, 1982, pp. 147–48). On 5 August 1564 Vincenzo Borghini wrote to Vasari: "Ho scritto al Bronzino che doverebbe finir la sua lettera, e vorrei lo facessi in ogni modo, che voi non credo dobbiate fare altro, avendone scritto nel principio delle Vite e dell'opera a bastanza, poi che scrivesti prima quella lettera" (Vas.Frey, II, p. 93). 36. Bronzino, in Barocchi, 1971–77, I, p. 503. 37. See P. Aretino, Lettere sull'arte, ed. E. Camesasca, Milan, 1957–60, I, p. 175 (quoted in Mendelsohn, 1982, p. 287). 38. For Duke Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus and the torso, see Simon, 1985, pp. 21–22. 39. Bronzino's continuing interest in the issue is demonstrated in his ironic doublesided portrait of Morgante, the court dwarf servant, whose deformed nude body is examined from both sides (ca. 1553; Uffizi). See Vas.Mil., VII, p. 601; Bac. no. 163; and M. Collareta, in Pal.Vec. cat. 513. 40. Bac. no. 11. Peter Meller (oral communication) connects the work with Pliny's comments on Pausias (Naturalis historia, bk. XXXV, chap. 126) regarding the virtuoso painting of a foreshortened ox on an altar. 41. Bac. nos. 18, 91, 75, 97. 42. I am grateful to James Holderbaum for this communication; his discovery is to be published in the acts of a conference on Pierino held at Vinci in 1990. 43. See also the bizarre types among the drowning Egyptians in The Crossing of the Red Sea (Fig. 180). Vasari does not comment on this aspect of Bronzino's art, but see Vas.CdL, VI, p. 309 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 458), praising Bachiacca's art as "molto bizzarro e fantastico nella positura delle sue figure, stravolgendole, e cercando di farle variate, diferenziate dagl'altri in tutti i suoi componimenti." On the taste for the bizarre in Maniera, see Smyth, 1962, p. 13; and Shearman, 1967, pp. 146–55. 44. For this tapestry, see Bac. no. 57; and G. G. Bertelà, in Berti, 1980, no. 121. 45. For comments on the style of the Moses frescoes, see Voss, 1920, I, p. 218; McComb, 1928, pp. 33–34, 56; Venturi, 1933, pp. 42–48; Becherucci, 1944, p. 48; Smyth, 1956, pp. 41–42, 74, 217–18; Emiliani, 1960, pp. 66–67, text to pls. 35–38; idem, 1961, pp. 136–38; idem, 1966, text to pl. V; Levey, 1967, text to pl. V; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 10–11; Freedberg, 1971, pp. 298–99; Smyth, 1971, pp. 5, 7–8, 10, 54; Bac. nos. 40–44; All.&Cec., p. 24; McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 74–76, 78, 82; and CoxRearick, 1987. 46. McComb, 1928, p. 35. 47. Uffizi 6704F; black chalk on yellow prepared paper; 42.3 × 15.1 cm.; laid down; WM: crossed arrows with a star (Briquet 6292). Originally attributed to Pontormo, this drawing was recognized as Bronzino's study for the man by F. M. Clapp, Les dessins de Pontormo: Catalogue raisonné precédé d'une étude critique, Paris, 1914, pp. 248–49. See also McComb, 1928, p. 150; Berenson, 1938 and 1961, no. 601D; Smyth, 1949, p. 195 n. 80; L. Marcucci, Mostra di disegni dei primi manieristi italiani, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 1954, no. 97; Smyth, 1956, pp. 41–42; A. Forlani, I disegni italiani del cinquecento, Venice, 1962, no. 38; Forlani Tempesti, 1963, no. 15; CoxRearick, "Bronzino," 1964, no. A134; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 17–18; Smyth, 1971, pp. 5–7, 19 n. 24; Cheney, 1973, p. 165; Bac. p. 92; All.&Cec., p. 27; and McCorquodale, 1981, p. 78. 48. As pointed out by Smyth, 1971, pp. 5–7.
Page 373
49. Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 18 (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597). In Vas.Mil., V, p. 630, Vasari also praised similar dead nudes in Beccafumi's Punishment of Korah (see Fig. 77). For Vasari's frequent praise of the painter's depiction of beautiful dead bodies and his emphasis on the narration of human emotions in art, see S. L. Alpers, "Ekphrasis and Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari's Lives," JWCI, 22, 1960, pp. 192–203. 50. Bronzino, in Barocchi, 1971–77, I, p. 503. 51. Vas.CdL, III, p. 379 (Vas.Mil., IV, p. 10). I translate grazia (see the quotations in the text above from Bronzino and Aretino) as "grace," but in the sixteenth century the word had rich connotations, meaning also beauty, loveliness, or even a quality partaking of divine grace (see S. J. Freedberg, Parmigianino: His Works in Painting, Cambridge, Mass., 1950, p. 6). 52. Although Rosso's picture of 1523 was sent to France by Battista della Palla in 1529 (as Caroline Elam shows in a forthcoming article), Bronzino could have seen it in Florence before then. 53. K. W. Forster, review of D. Sanminiatelli, Il Beccafumi, in ArtB, 51, 1971, p. 404, remarks that Beccafumi's pavimento and his two Moses panels in Pisa had "an immediate impact on Bronzino's chapel, the first masterpiece of Florentine maniera." One might think also of Salviati's drawing of Rebecca and Eleazar at the well (Uffizi 14610F) and of the foreground figures in Vasari's Immaculate Conception of 1540 (Uffizi), as well as Rosso's design of 1529 for a fresco of the same subject, which Bronzino himself copied (Uffizi 15559F; see Emiliani, 1960, figure on p. 29). 54. See Smyth, 1962, pp. 14–17, for the antique sources of these and other Bronzino figures, such as the even more archaeologizing soldiers in his Resurrection at SS. Annunziata. The soldiers in Michelangelo's drawing Resurrection (Windsor 12767r) are also of this type, and such drawings may have been examples for Bronzino. 55. For this group, see G. A. Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi: Le sculture, Rome, 1958–61, I, pp. 101–21. 56. This drawing (12.1 × 13.7 cm.), in the Clifford Collection (Manchester) from 1966, was sold at Sotheby's 3 July 1989, lot 6, to a private collector in Paris. The connection with the chapel fresco (noted by CoxRearick, 1971, p. 19) was overlooked in the exhibition catalogue Italian SixteenthCentury Drawings from British Private Collections, Edinburgh, Scottish Arts Council, 1969, no. 16, where it is identified as preparatory to a head in Bronzino's Selling of Joseph (see Fig. 105). The head in the foreground of the tapestry is similar to the one in the drawing, which is a head type Bronzino often used (cf. Justice Liberating Innocence; Fig. 103), although any study for the Joseph tapestry would necessarily have been in reverse direction. The connection with The Brazen Serpent was accepted by MonbeigGoguel, 1972, p. 39; Bac., p. 92; and Cheney, 1973, p. 166; but not by All.&Cec., p. 27. 57. For the sculpture, which belonged to Cardinal Pio da Carpi (and after 1564 to Duke Cosimo), see Mansuelli (as in n. 55), I, cat. 62. 58. Paris, Louvre 17; 28.8 × 21.6 cm. (cut so that the head is almost silhouetted, and laid down). From the Baldinucci Collection (II, 5), the drawing was acquired by the Louvre in 1806. Attributed to Bronzino by M. Reiset, Notice des dessins, cartons, etc. . . . au Musée Impériale du Louvre: Ecole d'Italie etc., Paris, 1866, no. 105; and H. Voss, Zeichnungen der italienischer Spätrenaissance, Munich, 1928, p. 13, this drawing does not appear in McComb's or Berenson's lists (Pouncey, 1964, p. 284, noted the omission from Berenson's 1961 edition). It was connected with
Page 374
the woman in the fresco by R. Bacou, Choix des dessins de maîtres florentins et siennois, Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1955, no. 78. See also Smyth, 1956, pp. 42–43; R. Bacou and J. Bean, Dessins florentins de la collection Baldinucci, 1625–1696, Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1958, no. 13 (Roman ed., 1959, no. 16); Emiliani, 1960, text to pl. 36; Le XVIe siècle européen: Dessins du Louvre, Paris, Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, 1965, no. 125; R. Bacou and F. Viatte, Dessins du Louvre, III, Ecole italienne, Paris, 1968, no. 45; CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 20–21; Smyth, 1971, pp. 8–9; MonbeigGoguel, 1972, no. 11; Bac., p. 93; Cheney, 1973, p. 165; and All.&Cec., p. 27. The accentuation of some of the salient contours (the nose, eyelids, chin) suggests that these lines at least were redrawn in the process of transfer. 59. Uffizi 10320Fr; 32.0 × 24.7 cm. See Geisenheimer, 1905, p. 107; Smyth, 1956, p. 73; Lecchini Giovannoni, 1970, no. 3; Smyth, 1971, p. 10; CoxRearick, 1971, p. 13 n. 43; and Lecchini Giovannoni, 1988, p. 12. Geisenheimer suggested that the figures were preparatory to Allori's Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock, but they do not appear in the fresco or in Allori's drawing for it (see Figs. 152–53). Smyth, Lecchini Giovannoni, and I all thought these figures were Allori's derivations from Bronzino's fresco; I now believe, however, that this drawing is Bronzino's own study. (It might be added that the chapel frescoes do not include the draped arm with pointing hand, which would argue against this drawing's being a copy after them.) 60. I thank David Alan Brown for the observation about Bronzino's source in the sculpture now in Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlung. 61. Uffizi 6749F; see CoxRearick, 1964 (1981), cat. 354. 62. For the origins of the figura serpentinata in High Renaissance painting, its special expressiveness as a basis for ideal movement in Michelangelo's art of the 1520s and early 1530s, and its adoption by the artists of the Maniera, see D. Summers, "Maniera and Movement: The Figura Serpentinata," Art Quarterly, 35, 1972, pp. 269–301; and Shearman, 1967, pp. 81–83. 63. Uffizi 10320v; 32.0 × 24.7 cm. See Smyth, 1956, p. 74; Lecchini Giovannoni, 1970, no. 3; and CoxRearick, 1971, p. 13 n. 43. These studies have been considered Allori's copies after motifs from the frescoes; renewed study convinces me, however, that the drawing of the drapery (not identical to the drapery in the fresco) is of a complexity and high quality consonant with Bronzino's own hand. The legs, lightly sketched (they are partly under the drapery study) correspond with those of the boy at the center of the Red Sea (in reverse). 64. Milan, Ambrosiana, Codice Resta 48; 40.7 × 20.5 cm.; inscribed in ink on the recto: Ang.o Bronzino. The figure is not quite identical to the frescoed figure, differing in some folds of the drapery in relation to the bent leg and in the decorative details of the boots (simplified in the fresco). There is also a pentimento in the contour of the left arm, and the right arm and jar are only sketched in. 65. Pino, in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, p. 120. Noted by Smyth, 1971, p. 45. 66. Elsewhere in the Dialogo, Pino (in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, p. 135) writes on the subject of illustrious modern painters, and has Lauro say on the subject of the general culture of artists: "Intendo del vostro Bronzino che si diletta molto di littere, di poesia e musica." M. Pardo, Paolo Pino's "Dialogo di Pittura": A Translation with Commentary, Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1984; Ann Arbor, 1984, p. 87, suggests that Pino's list of notable Florentine painters (Bronzino, Vasari, and Pontormo—but not Salviati) was based on the recent responses of these three to Varchi's request of 1547 for letters on the paragone; hence Pino's roster of painters included those "sanctioned by the best recent Tuscan criticism." 67. See Vas.Mil., VII, p. 630, for Vasari's mention of the "vaghezza di colorito" in Bronzino's altarpieces of the early 1560s.
Page 375
68. Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 18 (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597). 69. For Sarto, see J. Shearman, Andrea del Sarto, Oxford, 1965, I, pp. 131–48, especially on the "brilliant and exotic range of color," giving the "impression of extravagant festivity" of his Tribute to Caesar at Poggio a Caiano (p. 143), a Medicean istoria Bronzino may well have studied. For Rosso, see Caron, 1988, pp. 356–57. 70. Lapis lazuli was so expensive that it was often delivered separately to the painter. For Bronzino's comments on the blue sent to him for the background of a portrait, see doc. 8. 71. This kind of modeling descends from the classic technique described by C. Cennini, The Craftsman's Handbook: Il Libro dell'arte, trans. D. V. Thompson, New York, 1960, chap. 77–80. For discussion of color modes in Italian painting, see L. Caron, "Choices concerning Modes of Modeling during the High Renaissance and After," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 48, 1985, pp. 476–89, especially pp. 477–79; and M. B. Hall, "From Modeling Techniques to Color Modes," in Color and Technique in Renaissance Painting: Italy and the North, ed. M. B. Hall, Locust Valley, N.Y., 1987, pp. 1–29 (both with extensive bibliography). 72. For Michelangelo's cangianti, see F. Mancinelli, "The Technique of Michelangelo as a Painter: A Note on the Cleaning of the First Lunettes in the Sistine Chapel," Apollo, 117, 1983, pp. 362–67; and idem with G. Colalucci, "Vero colore di Michelangelo: Le lunette della Cappella Sistina," Critica d'arte, 50, 1985, pp. 72–78. See also Hall (as in n. 71), pp. 15–19. 73. As pointed out by Hall (as in n. 71), p. 3, yellow is common in color changes because it is intrinsically high in value and needs to be modeled with another color. 74. John Shearman (in a paper at a symposium on the Sistine Chapel in March 1990, reported by C. Elam, "Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel," Burl., 132, 1990, p. 456) notes that Michelangelo used cangianti in the Sistine Chapel lunettes to compensate for controluce and distance, as did Pontormo (to compensate for darkness) in the Capponi Chapel Annunciation. 75. Much information on giornate is found in E. Borsook and F. Superbi Gioffredi, eds., Tecnica e stile: Esempi di pittura murale del rinascimento italiano, Florence, 1986, where useful comparative examples of the giornate of other Florentine painters are given. For example, Fra Angelico worked very fast, painting the Annunciation and Noli me tangere frescoes at San Marco in, respectively, ten and four days (pp. 20–21; diagrams, figs. 1–2). The Moses cycle of the 1480s in the Sistine Chapel (each fresco three times the size of one of Bronzino's) has an average of fifty giornate per fresco (p. 69). Raphael's frescoes in the Stanze (each more than twice the size of Bronzino's) have an average of fifty giornate apiece (pp. 69, 90; diagram, pl. 133); his Coronation of Charlemagne has eighty giornate because of the many portraits (diagram, pl. 159); the Galatea in the Villa Farnesina has only twenty giornate (diagram, fig. 33); and a typical Sistine Chapel lunette (p. 76, diagram, pl. 112) took Michelangelo only three days. 76. Marcantonio's engraving after the Parnassus (Bar. 247) could have served as an aid to Bronzino in recalling the fresco; however, he probably knew the original, for the engraving does not include the figure of Sappho that he seems to have adapted for the seated nude to the right in Moses Appointing Joshua. Chapter 5 1. Bronzino used this same bentknee pose—also for a figure to the left of a composition—in the contemporaneous Allegory of Venus; see Fig. 11. 2. Bar. 28 (after Francia?). See also an anonymous marble St. John the Baptist (c. 1520; Bargello), attributed to Francesco da Sangallo by W. R. Valentiner, "An Early Work by Francesco da
Page 376
Sangallo," in Scritti in onore di Lionello Venturi, Rome, 1956, I, pp. 259–67. The sculptured saint has a halfkneeling serpentine pose similar to Bronzino's, but without the radical contrapposto of Bronzino's saint. 3. I am greatly indebted to Yvonne Szafran, who restored the painting, for this information. 4. These changes are visible when the panel is examined with the infrared vidicon, yet little underdrawing is revealed. A cross section of a paint sample taken from the left edge of the painting, however, reveals charcoal particles of an underdrawing between the paint layer and the ground layer. 5. Under magnification one can see very clearly that this section was originally green, and Xray fluorescence confirms that it is a discolored copper resinate. 6. See E. Micheletti et al., Il Pontormo: Restauro e recollocazione dei due "Santi" nella chiesa di S. Michele a Pontorme, Empoli, 1986, for these brilliant red tones, which have only recently been revealed by the restoration of Pontormo's work, now reinstalled in its original location. 7. Bac. no. 10. My illustration shows the painting in its newly cleaned state. 8. The terms Pietà and Lamentation are somewhat elastic. The work's patron, Duke Cosimo, called it a Pietà (see doc. 3); Vasari (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597) describes it as "Cristo deposto di croce in grembo alla madre," a characterization that has led to the painting's inaccurately being called a Deposition. 9. There are other altarpieces of this type, such as Fra Bartolommeo's Lamentation with SS. Peter and Paul of ca. 1511–12 (Pitti), recently cleaned to reveal the saints standing behind the Pietà group. For this work and others of Fra Bartolommeo's Lamentation compositions, see C. Fischer, "La Pietà di Fra Bartolomeo," in Fra Bartolomeo: La Pietà di Pitti restaurata, ed. M. Chiarini, Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 1988, pp. 13–33. 10. I illustrate not the original fresco, which is badly damaged, but the copy by Jacopo da Empoli showing the composition without its arched top (also at the Certosa). 11. This motif also occurs in Florentine Lamentations such as Perugino's of 1494–95 (Uffizi) and Fra Bartolommeo's lost altarpiece for the Certosa di Pavia of 1511, as has been noted by C. Fischer, Perugino, Lippi e la bottega di San Marco alla Certosa di Pavia, 1495–1511, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, 1986; Florence, 1986. 12. See Chapter 3, n. 32. Adelson, 1985, p. 162, posits an initial dependency of Bronzino's Lamentation on Salviati's Lamentation of 1539–40 for the Church of Corpus Domini in Venice (now in Viggiù, Church of the Beata Vergine del Rosario; see D. McTavish, in Da Tiziano a El Greco: Per la storia del Manierismo a Venezia, 1540–1590, Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 1981, cat. 6), who suggests that Bronzino adapted the Magdalene's ornate ointment jar and the angel with the instruments of the Passion from it. I do not find these derivations convincing, nor does it seem reasonable to suppose that Bronzino knew Salviati's Venetian altarpiece; it is possible, however, that Salviati showed him drawings after he returned to Florence in 1543. 13. The following consideration of Bandinelli's role in the genesis of Bronzino's altarpiece is based on CoxRearick, 1989, pp. 40–49. In the present discussion, two inessential illustrations from that article have been omitted as well as some details of Bandinelli's career; the Bandinelli drawing illustrated in Fig. 100 has been added. 14. In his Memoriale (in Barocchi, 1971–77, II, p. 1408), Bandinelli extravagantly praises Eleonora as his patroness, and among his letters are many addressed to her in this role (see BNF, ms. Bandinelli 2.10, ff. 7–10, 17, 19, 34, 53, etc.). Vas.Mil., VI, p. 184, notes that after Cellini returned from France in 1545, his rival Bandinelli had the continued support of Eleonora, if not
Page 377
of the duke, particularly in connection with the Duomo choir project. Further, when he had finished the statue God the Father and wanted Cosimo to view it, "il duca non volle mai andare, et essendone pregato dalla duchessa, la quale in ciò favoriva Baccio." See also VI, pp. 186–88, for Eleonora's continued patronage of Bandinelli in various commissions of the 1550s. 15. For further details, see CoxRearick, 1989, nn. 20–24. 16. See Vas.Mil., V, p. 86; VI, pp. 168–69. 17. See Vas.Mil., V, pp. 355–56; and VI, pp. 176–77. 18. Cellini, La vita, bk. II, chap. ci. For the Neptune fountain, see the Vita, bk. II, chap. xcix. For Bandinelli's involvement in this commission, ultimately executed by Ammannati, see H. Keutner, "Un modello del Bandinelli per il Nettuno della fontana di Piazza della Signoria a Firenze," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Roberto Salvini, Florence, 1984, pp. 417–26. 19. Bandinelli, who claims in his Memoriale (in Barocchi, 1971–77, II, pp. 1386–87) to have authored "un altro libro pure del Disegno," writes (p. 1395): "Tutto il mio intento era nel disegniare." For Bandinelli's obsessive concern with drawing, see WeilGarris, 1981, pp. 227–33. Vasari often points to Bandinelli's virtuosity in disegno (see Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 138, 144, 148) and in his summary of the artist's achievements (VI, 190) notes that he has drawings by the master in his collection, "che non si può certamente far meglio." For more on Vasari's praise of Bandinelli as a draftsman, see R. Ward, "Observations on the Red Chalk Figure Studies of Baccio Bandinelli: Two Examples at Melbourne,'' Art Bulletin of Victoria, Melbourne, 23, 1982, pp. 19–20. 20. Vas.Mil., V, p. 357. Bandinelli himself confirms this practice in a letter of 7 December 1547 concerning the same project (see Bottari, 1822–25, I, p. 63; see also pp. 94–95 for Bandinelli's letter of 21 February 1551 to Luca Martini concerning his showing drawings to Cosimo). For further details, see CoxRearick, 1989, n. 29. 21. For example, a disegno of an unspecified subject is discussed in a letter from Cosimo at Poggio a Caiano to Bandinelli, 7 March 1543 (BNF, ms. Bandinelli, 6, f. 91). An interesting case is Agnolo Marzi de' Medici's letter of 11 November 1543 to Bandinelli, referring to a portrait drawing of Cosimo by Bandinelli that apparently did not please the duke (see BNF, ms. Bandinelli 6, f. 118). Agnolo reports to the artist: "Rimando il disegno della testa sopra il quale S. Ecc.tia m'ha detto vi scriva che non lo somiglia in cosa alchuna." Another letter from Agnolo (f. 95; 20 November) also refers to the "disegno di quella testa." 22. ASF, MDP 1170, f. 363 (letter of Ugolino Grifoni at Castello to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 25 November 1543). Bernardo Antonio de' Medici was the bishop of Forlì and Cosimo's ambassador to France. 23. Amherst, Mass., private collection; 48.0 × 53.4 cm.; sold at Christie's 6 July 1987, lot 86. I am grateful to Roger Ward for bringing this drawing to my attention and to its owner for permission to publish it. 24. See various early (1537–39) profiles of the beardless duke, such as Pontormo's drawing (Uffizi 6528F; Lang. cat. 27,66), Domenico di Polo's medals (Lang. cat. 27,157–63), Francesco di Giovanni Boccardi's miniature (Lang. cat. 27,62), and Bandinelli's (or his school's) marble relief busts in the Bargello (Lang. cat. 27,91– 92). Cosimo may have experimented with a beard before definitively opting for one after 1540: a wispy beard appears in some of Domenico di Polo's medals and in Bronzino's portrait of him as Orpheus (see Fig. 19). 25. The kneeling Cosimo repeats with minor variations the type and pose of the kneeling soldier in Bandinelli's Coronation of Charles V by Clement VII (Rome, S. Maria sopra Minerva)
Page 378
of 1539–40. For this relief, and the suggestion that the soldier might be a portrait, see WeilGarris Brandt, 1989, p. 498 and n. 15. 26. Paris, Louvre 99; see M. G. Ciardi Dupré, "Per la cronologia di Baccio Bandinelli (fino al 1540)," Commentari, 17, 1966, p. 155; and Ward, 1982, cat. 327. For the engraving (Bar. 104), see C. Wilkinson, ed., Drawings and Prints of the First Maniera, Providence, Rhode Island School of Design, 1973, cat. 98. There is also a modello in Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung 2215 (see Ward, 1982, cat. 249). For the commission, see Vas.Mil., V, p. 418; VI, p. 147. 27. See Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 151, 188. 28. See Vas.Mil., VI, p. 144; for the Massacre (Bar. 21) see Wilkinson (as in n. 26), cat. 90. 29. This activity started early: see Vas.Mil., VI, p. 138, on Bandinelli's giving a cartoon of Cleopatra to Piloto the goldsmith about 1515, and Bachiacca's copy of his drawing Leda and the Swan of the same date (Milan, Ambrosiana, Cod. F.265 inf., no. 70); on the latter, see P. Pouncey, "Di alcuni disegni del Bandinelli e di un suo dipinto smaritto," Bollettino d'arte, 46, 1966, p. 324; and Ward, 1982, cat. 236. Roger Ward informs me that a number of Bandinelli's later drawings (notably those for the Duomo choir) exist in two autograph versions, and Bandinelli himself specifies that he made drawings seriatim in order to compare them with one another (see his letter to Luca Martini cited in n. 20 above). A later example reflects the continued fame of Bandinelli's drawings. According to Borghini, 1584, p. 625, Allori did a painting of "un Deposto di croce ritratto di un disegno del Cavaliere Bandinello," which was in Palazzo Salviati. The drawing that Allori copied must have been the pen drawing seen by Bocchi, 1591, p. 185, in Palazzo Salviati and listed in 1609 in the inventory of Lorenzo Salviati's collection (see Keutner [as in n. 18], p. 424 n. 21). For Allori's painting (Madrid, Prado) see U. Middeldorf, "Alessandro Allori e il Bandinelli," Rivista d'arte, 14, 1932, pp. 485–88; and M. Collareta, in Pal.Vec. cat. 567. Elizabeth Pilliod kindly informs me that the picture dates from the 1560s. 30. Uffizi 1766F. See C. MonbeigGoguel, "Salviati, Bronzino, et La Vengence de l'innocence," Revue de l'Art, 8, 1976, pp. 33–37. 31. Uffizi 656F. I attribute this drawing (traditionally given to Vasari) to Salviati; G. Smith, in SixteenthCentury Tuscan Drawings from the Uffizi, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1988, cat. 32, suggested it was used by Bronzino. 32. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; see Parker, 1972, II, no. 685. Adelson, 1985, p. 163 n. 65, noted the connection with Bronzino's tapestry. 33. In an early instance of this practice, Bronzino used drawings by Bandinelli for the monument Andrea Doria as Neptune in preparing his own portrait of the Genoese admiral as Neptune. See CoxRearick, "St. Sebastian," 1987, p. 158; and Ward, 1988, cat. 29. 34. I am grateful to Robert W. Gaston for pointing out the importance of these derivations and for observing that Bronzino must have owned Bandinelli drawings from which he borrowed motifs. 35. Bac. no. 120. 36. WeilGarris, 1981, p. 249 n. 52, remarked that this Lamentation "reflects a fusion of Bandinelli's Duomo and Annunziata Pietàs." 37. See J. S. Weisz, Pittura e Misericordia: The Oratory of S. Giovanni Decollato in Rome, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1982; Ann Arbor, 1984, pp. 17– 18. As suggested by M. Hirst, "Perino del Vaga and His Circle," Burl., 108, 1966, p. 402, Perino had made the drawing for an unexe
Page 379
cuted project for the Chapel of SS. George and John the Baptist in Pisa cathedral and later gave it to Jacopino to aid him in competing with Salviati for the oratorio decoration. 38. For Bandinelli's eucharistic Christ, see WeilGarris, 1981, p. 235. Bandinelli's pair read as a sculptural reprise of the Christ and St. John in the chapel altarpiece. For Bronzino's Christ as eucharistic, see Chapter 7. 39. For the Santa Casa relief and its studies, see K. WeilGarris, The Santa Casa di Loreto: Problems in Cinquecento Sculpture, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1965; New York, 1977, I, pp. 110–56. I thank the author for indicating to me these points of similarity. 40. Paris, Louvre 101B. See M. G. Ciardi Duprè, "Il modello originale della Deposizione del Bandinelli per Carlo V," in Festschrift Ulrich Middeldorf, ed. A. Kosegarten and P. Tigler, Berlin, 1968, p. 271; and Ward, 1982, cat. 330, who records the inscription on the verso: " . . . della tomba[?] . . . Sig.re Giov . . . 1540." See also Louvre 106 (Ward, cat. 335); Horne Museum 5608 (Ward, cat. 245); and Turin, Royal Library 15595r, an earlier study related in style to the Loreto relief (Ward, cat. 391). 41. New York, Metropolitan Museum 63.125; see J. Bean and F. Stampfle, Drawings from New York Collections, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1965, cat. 75; and Ward, 1982, cat. 258. Among other examples, see Madrid, Academia de San Fernando 87 and Windsor Castle 0396 (Ward, cats. 231 and 421). 42. Stockholm, National Museum 128; see Ward, 1982, cat. 386. 43. For Bandinelli's sources in Donatello, see the discussion of Antonio Susini's copy of the lost relief for Charles V by K. WeilGarris Brandt, in Italian Renaissance Sculpture in the Time of Donatello, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1985, pp. 244–46. For other derivations from Donatello, see Bandinelli's Lamentation (London, Victoria and Albert Museum), executed about 1554 for the base of the high altar of the Duomo (M. G. Ciardi Duprè, "Alcuni aspetti della tarda attività grafica del Bandinelli," Antichità viva, 5, 1966, p. 28), as well as numerous drawings of Lamentation and Entombment scenes (see Ward, 1982, cat. 10, 15, 207, and 282). 44. See Ward, 1982, cat. 224; and idem, 1988, cat. 27. 45. Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 151–52. 46. Other Pietà compositions predating the chapel are a relief in silver of 1528 (lost; see Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 156–57; Heikamp, 1964, p. 37 n. 1; and Ward, 1982, cat. 216); and a Pietà painting with Nicodemus of late 1526 or early 1527 (see Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 151–52). 47. Paris, Louvre 117; see Ward, 1982, cat. 341. See also another version of this drawing, Uffizi 539F (Ward, cat. 68). 48. Vas.CdL, III, p. 377 (Vas.Mil., IV, p. 8), proemio to Part III: "La maniera venne poi la piú bella, dall'avere messo in uso il frequente ritrarre le cose piú belle; e da quel piú bello, o mani o teste o corpi o gambe aggiugnerle insieme e fare una figura di tutte quelle bellezze che piú si poteva; e metterla in uso in ogni opera per tutte le figure, che per questo si dice esser bella maniera." 49. For these traditional divisions of painting, which go back to Alberti, Leonardo, and ultimately antique rhetoric (inventio, dispositio, elocutio), see Vas.Mil., II, p. 95, proemio to Part II; and Vas.CdL, III, p. 381 (Vas.Mil., IV, p. 13), proemio to Part III: "Ma quello che importa il tutto di questa arte è che l'hanno ridotta oggi talmente perfetta e facile per chi possiede il disegno, l'invenzione et il colorito." See also Pino, in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, p. 113, where it is Fabio (the Tuscan advocate) who says: "L'arte della pittura . . . dividerò in tre parti a modo mio: la prima
Page 380
parte sarà disegno, la seconda invenzione, la terza e ultima il colorire." This statement is followed by a lengthy discussion of each component. Likewise, L. Dolce, Dialogo della pittura (Venice, 1557); M. W. Roskill, ed., Dolce's "Aretino" and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, New York, 1968, p. 116: "Tutta la somma della pittura a mio giudicio è divisa in tre parti: Inventione, disegno, e colorito." 50. For the somewhat different early Renaissance concept of invenzione, which involved primarily the subject matter provided by the patron or humanist, see Kemp, 1977, pp. 347–98. 51. See Vas.CdL, I, p. 120 (Vas.Mil., I, pp. 173–74). See also Pino, in Barocchi, I, 1960–62, pp. 115–16; and Dolce (as in n. 49), p. 119. 52. Shearman, 1967, p. 213. For comments on this aspect of Bronzino's picture, see, among others, Freedberg, 1965, p. 195; idem, "Disegno versus Colore in Florentine and Venetian Painting of the Cinquecento," in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations. Acts of Two Conferences at Villa I Tatti in 1976–77, Florence, 1980, II, p. 318; and Hall, 1979, pp. 42–43. 53. See Vasari, in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, p. 62. 54. Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 19 (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597). 55. Vas.CdL, III, p. 377 (Vas.Mil., IV, p. 8), proemio to Part III. See also Pino, in Barocchi, 1960–62, I, p. 114; and Dolce (as in n. 49), p. 116. For a summary of the concept of disegno, see M. Poirier, "The Role of the Concept of Disegno in MidSixteenthCentury Florence," in The Age of Vasari, Notre Dame and Binghamton, 1970, pp. 53–58; and idem, "The DisegnoColore Controversy Reconsidered," Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 13, 1987, pp. 52–86. For Michelangelo and disegno, see Summers, 1981, pp. 250–61. 56. Vas.CdL, VI, p. 169 (Vas.Mil., IV, p. 10). 57. Uffizi 10894F; 15.3 × 16.3 cm.; laid down. Formerly ascribed to Raphael, this study was attributed to Bronzino by B. Berenson, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, New York, 1903, I, p. 327 (1938 and 1961, no. 602); and McComb, 1928, p. 151; but rejected as Bronzino's by Smyth, 1956, p. 37. I consider it a study for the Lamentation (CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 19–20), an association accepted by Cheney, 1973, p. 166; All.&Cec., p. 27, reserved judgment. 58. The infrared examination also shows that the woman's headdress was later modified. My information on the examination of the painting is from a technical report of the Laboratoire de Recherche des Musées de France dated 27 July 1984, kindly provided by Madame Courtet of the Musée des BeauxArts, Besançon. 59. According to the technical report cited in n. 58, the infrared examination reveals that a figure of a young woman was originally drawn in the place of Joseph of Arimathea, that the holy woman to the far left was higher, and that the legs of all the angels above were slightly modified in position. The X ray showed additional modifications made after the first paint layer, such as the figure of Nicodemus, added at a late stage, without underdrawing. 60. Literature on color in Maniera is scarce, but see Poirier, 1970 (as in n. 55), pp. 53–68; C. Davis, "New Frescoes by Vasari: Colore and Invenzione in Mid sixteenthcentury Florentine Painting," Pantheon, 38, 1980, pp. 153–57; Poirier, 1987 (as in n. 55), pp. 70–80 (all on the coloredisegno issue); and, more specifically on color modes, Caron, 1988; and M. B. Hall, Color and Meaning: Practice and Theory in Renaissance Painting, Cambridge, 1992, p. 156ff. 61. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 271. 62. See Hall (as in n. 60), p. 182, and pp. 180–83, for a general discussion of the painting's color.
Page 381
63. The technical report on the altarpiece (see n. 58) notes the extraordinary range of Bronzino's technique, from the softly modeled drapery of St. John to the enamellike hardness—without any trace of brushstrokes—in the heads of the angelacolytes, and his characteristic way of painting strands of hair, each one highlighted with white. 64. As noted by Hall, 1991 (as in n. 60), p. 185. 65. See Bac. nos. 116 and 124. 66. Uffizi 13846F; 33.5 × 14.2 cm. This drawing has long been attributed to Bronzino, but it was published as Bronzino's study for the Virgin (rather than as a copy, a status tacitly implied by its omission from Berenson's and McComb's lists) only by Forlani Tempesti, 1963, no. 21. I concur (CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 21–22), but Smyth, 1971, p. 64 n. 97 and p. 79 n. 212; Cheney, 1973, p. 166; and All.&Cec., p. 27, all reject the attribution to Bronzino. 67. The letter is quoted in Scaduto, 1964, p. 581. 68. For the Adoration, see Bac. no. 117. For the changes of style in Bronzino's later art, see Hall, 1979, pp. 45–49; and McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 145–55. Chapter 6 1. Liber usualis, Paris, 1964, pp. 749–50. 2. This is the "Moses gesture" identified by H. W. Janson, "The Right Arm of Michelangelo's Moses," in Sixteen Studies, New York, 1973, pp. 291–97. 3. These lines (Oracula sibyllina, bk. VIII, lines 413–17) were quoted in Lactantius, Divinae institutiones, bk. IV, chap. xix. Lactantius was widely used after the publication of the first printed edition in 1465; however, these particular lines had already gained currency in the Latin translation by St. Augustine, De civitate Dei, bk. XVIII, chap. xxiii. In quoting the passage in the chapel's inscription, Bronzino omitted the first word and the last line of the verse: "Et . . . primus resurrectionis principio revocatis ostenso" (And . . . manifesting to those recalled from the dead the beginning of resurrection). 4. Erythraea was also famous among the socalled pagan witnesses to the Christian revelation for her oracle of the Last Judgment; and, in the late quattrocento, following the publication of Filippo Barbieri's treatise on the sibyls, she began to be shown as a prophet of the birth of Christ. This is her role in Ghirlandaio's Sassetti Chapel in S. Trinita and on the Sistine Chapel ceiling; indeed, as portrayed there, she and others of Michelangelo's sibyls were the models for Bronzino's youthful, heroically idealized figure. See Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. I, pp. 420–30; and C. de Tolnay, Michelangelo, Princeton, 1943–60, II, pp. 58–59, 152–54 (with literature on the sibyls in art). In Barbieri's treatise, the major text for the sibyls in the Renaissance, Erythraea is paired with Ezechiel (as she is on the Sistine ceiling). For this treatise (and a description of Erythraea unconnected with Bronzino's image), see E. Mâle, L'art religieux de la fin du moyenâge, Paris, 1922, pp. 255–64; and E. Borsook and J. Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence: History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel, Doornspijk, Holland, 1981, pp. 29–30. 5. See M. Hirst, "The Chigi Chapel in S. Maria della Pace," JWCI, 24, 1961, p. 169; and L. D. Ettlinger, "A Note on Raphael's Sibyls in S. Maria della Pace," JWCI, 24, 1961, pp. 322–23. This ensemble also includes David. 6. See Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. I, p. 492, for examples of the pairing of David and St. John in Crucifixions.
Page 382
7. But the anachronism of the Baptist, patron saint of Florence, in a Lamentation was not unusual in Florentine painting. See the Lamentations by Raffaellino del Garbo (Munich, where St. John the Baptist stands above St. John the Evangelist); Ridolfo Ghirlandaio (Colle Val d'Elsa, where the Baptist takes the Evangelist's usual place); and works by Andrea del Sarto of the 1520s, such as the Pisa polyptych of 1527–28 (where the Baptist is in a wing) or Louvre inv. 1677, a study for the Pitti Lamentation. 8. For the arma Christi, see Schiller, 1972, II, pp. 184–97. 9. It is so characterized by Hall, 1979, pp. 42–43. 10. See Cope, 1979, pp. 32–39, for this type of Lamentation and, for discussion of eucharistic Lamentations in general, pp. 26–65. 11. See Ragusa and Green, 1961, pp. 33 and 333. This motif in Renaissance art is discussed by L. Steinberg, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and Modern Oblivion, New York, 1984, pp. 28, 32; see also K. WeilGarris Brandt, "Michelangelo's Pietà for the Cappella del Re di Francia," in "Il se rendit en Italie": Etudes offertes à André Chastel, Paris, 1987, p. 91. 12. For discussion of the motif in pictures derived from Raphael's lost work (see the copy in Paris, Louvre) that include a series of Nativities by Vasari beginning with the Camaldoli altarpiece of 1538, see H. Wohl, "Vasari's Adoration of the Shepherds for Santo Stefano in Pane," Elvehjem Museum of Art Bulletin, 1986–87, pp. 9–14. 13. Bronzino shows the Virgin wearing a transparent veil over her head in the pictures in London, National Gallery, and Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (Bac. nos. 32 and 79). There is also a curious echo of this theme in the woman carrying a child behind Moses in Moses Appointing Joshua in our very chapel, where the child pulls her hatveil over his head (see Chapter 12). 14. See W. Forsyth, The Entombment of Christ: French Sculptures of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Cambridge, Mass., 1970, p. 13, who suggests that such angels were borrowed from Easter morning scenes in liturgical dramas. 15. For the humeral veil, see The Catholic Encyclopedia, London, 1910, p. 542. For the liturgical significance of this veil motif in Botticelli's Uffizi Adoration, Michelangelo's St. Peter's Pietà, and Vasari's Nativities, see Hatfield, 1976, pp. 35–41; WeilGarris Brandt (as in n. 11), p. 91; and Wohl (as in n. 12), p. 14. 16. So characterized by WeilGarris, 1981, p. 241. 17. For the wounds of Christ, see V. Gurewich, "Observations on the Iconography of the Wound in Christ's Side, with Special Reference to Its Position," JWCI, 20, 1957, pp. 358–62; and 26, 1963, p. 358; and A. A. Barb, "The Wound in Christ's Side," JWCI, 34, 1971, pp. 320–21. 18. See WeilGarris Brandt (as in n. 11), p. 104 n. 186, for this motif in Michelangelo's Pietà. For the veiled hand as a gesture of liturgical offering in Botticelli's Adoration, see Hatfield, 1976, pp. 36–37. 19. The choice of this subject may have been an early reflection of the CounterReformation's reassertion of Marian imagery, later to be specifically recommended by the Council of Trent (see Molanus, 1594, bk. II; and Hautecoeur, 1965, p. 350), or it may reflect the taste of Eleonora's new spiritual advisers, the Jesuits, with whom she was in increasing contact after 1550. 20. This section repeats (with some additions, and omitting three illustrations) material published in CoxRearick, 1989, pp. 57–76.
Page 383
21. The synoptic Gospels mention only Joseph, a rich disciple of Jesus who begged his body from Pilate and then bore the responsibility for taking it down from the cross, wrapping it in a shroud, and placing it in the tomb (Matthew 21:57). Mark 15:42 adds that Joseph was a "respected member of the council" and Luke 23:50 that he was "a good and righteous man." John 19:39, however, adds Nicodemus, who "came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloe, about one hundred pounds weight,'' and assisted in the burial preparations. 22. Weitzman, 1961, p. 476, emphasizes that the Lamentation theme is based on recension B of the Acta Pilati (the Gospel of Nicodemus), which contains the Lament of the Virgin. In the Meditations on the Life of Christ (Ragusa and Green, 1961, pp. 340–42) both Nicodemus and Joseph take part in the Deposition and the burial preparations. In the "Painter's Guide to Athos" (Didron, 1891, II, pp. 318–19) Nicodemus is given specific tasks in the Deposition, such as extracting the nails from the feet with pincers, and it is prescribed that he should be present at the Lamentation with nails, pincers, hammer, and spices. For a summary of the traditions of Joseph and Nicodemus in Passion scenes, see Schiller, 1972, II, pp. 164–79. 23. For these developments, see Weitzman, 1961, pp. 477–87, who notes that the men were "turned from carriers into worshipers." 24. Nicodemus has usually been identified as the man in the right background who shows the nails to an old monk and a youth. The man opposite Joseph who holds the end of the shroud, however, is in the "canonical" position for Nicodemus; the man with the nails is an unidentified helper. 25. An early example is Nardo Di Cione's Lamentation from S. Remigio (Uffizi), where the two men are in the right background, facing each other, with Nicodemus holding the ointment jar and nails (see K. M. Birkmeyer, "The Lamentation of San Remigio," Gazette des BeauxArts, 60, 1961, pp. 459–80); a later example is Signorelli's Lamentation of 1502 (Cortona, Museo Diocesano), where the pair is again on the right, with Joseph holding the nails and the crown of thorns. It is notable in both cases that although Nicodemus does not wear his usual headgear, a distinction is maintained between Joseph (older, whitebearded, and seen in three quarter view) and Nicodemus (younger and seen in profile). This arrangement is frequent from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth. See Birkmeyer, text and figs. 1, 6, 11, and 13, for trecento examples; and Stechow, 1964, pp. 290–93, for other Renaissance variations on Joseph and Nicodemus in Lamentation paintings. 26. My thanks to Edward Maeder for this observation. 27. Uffizi 6698F. See CoxRearick, 1964 (1981), cat. 331. Such hats are seen in numerous portraits of this period. 28. See the large beribboned cylindrical box that Pontormo copied in his Certosa Lamentation (see Fig. 96) from Dürer's woodcut of the same subject (see Fig. 131) and the cylindrical chrismatory with a conical lid held by Nicodemus in the S. Remigio Lamentation. 29. The collection later had vases and ewers of lapis lazuli decorated with gold, such as one dated 1563 by the Milanese intagliatore Gasparo Misuroni; it is mentioned in Vas.Mil., V, p. 389, as a "vaso grande di lapis lazuli, che ne merita lode infinita" (see C. W. Fock, in Pal.Vec. cat. 416). But gold and lapis lazuli ewers on the scale of the one in Bronzino's painting were not made until the 1580s (see one by Giovanni Bilivert and Bernardo Buontalenti dated 1583; Fock, cat. 430). About 1540, however, other Florentine artists depicted such vases (see a blueandgold one like Nicodemus's urn in Vasari's Deposition at Camaldoli, Archicenobio); hence designs for them must have been available.
Page 384
30. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; see Parker, 1972, II, cat. 683; and Cheney, 1963, p. 535, who dates it to the 1550s. For a print from Vico's series showing a similar design, see Bar. 432. 31. See Ragusa and Green, 1961, p. 340. 32. See M. Collareta, in Pal.Vec. cat. 497. 33. See Vas.Frey, I, pp. 15–16 and p. 79. 34. Bar. 43 (1510–11). In the Entombment (Bar. 44), the next woodcut of the Small Passion, the same three figures appear. See also the Large Passion Entombment (Bar. 13), already noted in the text. 35. For Bronzino's use of Dürer in his early works, see G. Smith, "Bronzino and Dürer," Burl., 119, 1977, pp. 709–10; for Dürer sources for the Resurrection, see G. Smith, "An Imperial Portrait by Bronzino," Burl., 128, 1986, pp. 350–54; and for Bronzino's use of the Trinity woodcut for a late Pietà, see E. Pilliod, "Bronzino's S. Croce Pietà," Burl., 128, 1986, pp. 577–79. One example (among many) of Bandinelli's use of Dürer is the drawing Christ as the Man of Sorrows (Moscow, Pushkin Museum; see Ward, 1982, cat. 246), which is based on the woodcut Mass of St. Gregory (Bar. 123). 36. The engraving (Bar. 37) is based on the drawing in Oxford, Ashmolean (Parker, 1972, II, cat. 529). Joseph of Arimathea stands in the background to the left of the Lamentation group. It should be noted that in Raphael's painting Entombment, the three men (Joseph, Nicodemus, and their helper) carry the body of Christ. 37. Bar. 13. For the influence of this engraving on Raphael's Borghese Entombment and other borrowings by Raphael from Dürer, see J. Polzer, "Dürer et Raphael," Nouvelles de l'Estampe, 17, 1974, pp. 15–22. 38. Stechow, 1964, has discussed this problem. For the whitebearded Joseph, see pp. 293–98 and his figs. 4–5. The first example of the type with the single mourner is apparently Fra Angelico's Entombment predella panel from S. Marco (Munich), in which the bearded Joseph holds Christ. For a late quattrocento example, see Stechow, fig. 6. 39. See Weitzman, 1961, p. 479. 40. See PopeHennessy, 1966, pp. 289–300. 41. A Northern example is Adam Kraft's selfportrait as Nicodemus, dressed as an artisan with hammer and pincers, in his Entombment (Nuremberg, ca. 1491). The striking selfportrait in Niccolò dell'Arca's Compianto (Bologna, S. Maria della Vita, 1463; C. Gnudi, Nuove richerche su Niccolò dell'Arca, Rome, 1972, pp. 39–40) belongs to the tradition of portraits in quattrocento sculptured groups of the Lamentation, on which see T. Verdon, The Art of Guido Mazzoni, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1975; New York, 1978, pp. 19–27, 59–61, and 79–81. 42. See Stechow, 1964, p. 300. 43. Vas.Mil., II, p. 450, identifies Nicodemus as the man in the black cappuccio. This man, a helper of Joseph and Nicodemus, may well be a portrait, but he is not Nicodemus, who is to the right on the ladder (identified by an inscription on the border of his garment). 44. A monumental example is Savoldo's painting with his selfportrait (Cleveland, Museum of Art, ca. 1525). See Stechow, 1964, pp. 297–98, who identifies the man as either Joseph or Nicodemus; and PopeHennessy, 1966, pp. 296–97, who calls him Nicodemus. 45. One muchreplicated composition shows a turbaned Nicodemus, clearly a portrait (see CoxRearick, 1989, p. 66, fig. 27). The surviving fragment of Bandinelli's Dead Christ with Ni
Page 385
codemus, a related invenzione, depicts Nicodemus with the artist's features (see CoxRearick, p. 67, fig. 20). Vasari also did a painting (lost) in 1553 that represented "Cristo morto tenuto da Niccodemo e da due angeli" (Vas.Mil., VIII, p. 252). 46. Discussed in this context by Stechow, 1964, pp. 289–90, 298–301, who identifies the man as probably Nicodemus, with particular emphasis on the message of Christ's words to Nicodemus about spiritual rebirth (John 2:1–21). PopeHennessy, 1966, pp. 298–300, also identifies him as Nicodemus; but I. Lavin, "The Sculptor's Last Will and Testament," Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, 35, 1–2, 1977–78, pp. 16–19; and WeilGarris, 1981, pp. 238, 241–42, call him Nicodemus or Joseph, Lavin believing that he is the first such selfportrait. 47. Mentioned in this context by Stechow, 1964, p. 298; PopeHennessy, 1966, pp. 297–98; and, at greater length, by WeilGarris, 1981, pp. 238, 241–42 (all of whom believe the man is probably Nicodemus). Lavin (as in n. 46), pp. 33–37, calls him Nicodemus or Joseph. 48. Michelangelo's figure is identified as Nicodemus in Vas.Mil., VII, p. 217; see Stechow, 1964, pp. 289–90, for other sixteenthcentury citations. Bandinelli's group is described in Vas.Mil. VI, p. 186, as "un Cristo morto, che è retto da Niccodemo, il quale Niccodemo è Baccio ritratto di naturale." As WeilGarris, 1981, p. 249 n. 46, has pointed out, in favor of the Nicodemusassculptor identification of Bandinelli's portrait is the emphatic presence of the nails, hammer, and pliers lying in front of the dead Christ—the instruments of the Passion that were actually called sculptor's tools in an ironic epitaph by Alfonso de' Pazzi. 49. See CoxRearick, 1964 (1981), I, p. 112; and L. Berti, L'opera completa del Pontormo, Milan, 1973, p. 84, for this and other portraits of Pontormo discussed in this chapter. Berti, 1956, p. 12, noted the selfportrait in the LamentationEntombment but did not identify the figure as Nicodemus, whereas Shearman, 1971, p. 27, thought the figure was probably Joseph of Arimathea. 50. For this picture (but not the selfportrait), see Cheney, 1963, p. 376. This painting is a smaller variant on Salviati's Corpus Domini altarpiece of 1539–40 (on which see Chapter 5, n. 12). See also Salviati's tapestry of 1546, Dead Christ with Nicodemus, in which he portrays himself as Nicodemus (Pitti; see CoxRearick, 1989, fig. 28). 51. U. Middeldorf, "A Bandinelli Relief," Burl., 57, 1930, p. 66, recognized the head of the man I identify as Joseph as "identical to that of Nicodemus in the Pietà in SS. Annunziata." 52. In works postdating the Chapel of Eleonora, Bandinelli continued to portray himself as Nicodemus, as in a modello for the Lamentation relief for the high altar of the Duomo: he stands to the far left holding the crown of thorns; Joseph holds the nails on the right, where he is accompanied by a hooded companion (see J. Pope Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1964, II, pp. 445–46, no. 475; also no. 476). 53. When Pierre d'Argent copied the Lamentation in his altarpiece at Ornans, he recognized the head of Pontormo as a portrait and substituted for it a portrait of his own patron, Cardinal Granvelle. 54. Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 599–600, states that Pontormo was portrayed here. For discussion of other portraits in the picture, see Gaston, 1983. 55. Uffizi 1787E. For the painting (Rome, Galleria Colonna), in which the portrait heads do not appear, see Gaston, 1983, fig. 11. 56. Bronzino's position on Christ's right, in the place of honor, is not evident in the detail reproduced. Unlike the portrait of Pontormo, the one of Bronzino is not identified by an inscrip
Page 386
tion on his collar. Baldinucci, 1845–47, III (in the vita of Allori), p. 66, erroneously identified these two heads as Michelangelo (actually Bronzino) and Bronzino (actually Pontormo). 57. See Meiss, 1970, p. 214 and colorplate. 58. Identified by Gaston, 1983, p. 48. This work is catalogued in the Uffizi as a selfportrait of Bandinelli (see Berti, 1979, cat. A54; and E. Micheletti, in Pal.Vec. cat. 70). Bronzino's beard, reddish here, is grayish in the portrait in the Lamentation. 59. As recognized by Gaston, 1983, p. 48. 60. D. Heikamp, "Introduzione e note" [life of Bandinelli], in Vas.CdL, VI, p. 12, made this identification. The best source for portraits of Bandinelli is WeilGarris, 1981, pp. 229, 235, 237–38, figs. 13–16; idem, 1990. I am grateful to her for sharing with me her knowledge of the subject. 61. Uffizi 15955 Stampe sciolte. For the identification of this figure, see WeilGarris, 1981, p. 247 n. 41. 62. For this portrait, see R. Hadley, "A Portrait of Bandinelli," Fenway Court, I, 1966, pp. 17–24, who dates it in the 1540s; and WeilGarris, 1981, p. 246 n. 37. I thank Elizabeth Pilliod for observations about Bronzino's likeness of Bandinelli. 63. Gaston, 1983, p. 48, noted this portrait. Although the composition of this part of the fresco is somewhat confusing, it appears that Bronzino is about to receive an honorific gold chain from the young woman (Fame) who approaches from the right. 64. This is the same place occupied by BronzinoDavid in the Christ in Limbo (see Fig. 10). Bronzino also portrayed himself in this position in his Lamentation of 1561 (see Fig. 108), where he is an observer at the left margin of the painting. His head is directly above his signature and date on the handle of the jar held by the angel below. Gaston, 1983, p. 48, who noted this portrait, also pointed out that the features of Bronzino's close friend Varchi are depicted in the man who presses his face against Christ's in the background scene. This figure—holding Christ's upper body—must surely be Joseph, in contrast to his helper, the turbaned Nicodemus. 65. First noted by Berti, 1956, p. 7. 66. See Vas.Mil., VIII, pp. 24–25: "Finì [Bronzino] un S. Lorenzo ignudo sopra una grata. . . . Il ritratto del qual Pontormo fece di sua mano il Bronzino in un canto della detta cappella a man ritta del San Lorenzo." 67. See Signorelli's selfportrait at the left margin of The Deeds of the Antichrist in the Chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto (Vas.Mil., II, p. 167) with a portrait of Fra Angelico, who had initiated the work in the chapel many years earlier. See also Raphael's selfportrait at the right margin of The School of Athens, with a portrait, apparently of Sodoma, who had planned the original decoration of the Stanza della Segnatura and painted the ceiling (Vas.Mil., IV, p. 332). 68. Identified by Matteoli, 1969, pp. 306–7, on the basis of Allori's selfportrait (Uffizi; Berti, 1979, cat. A13). The date that Elizabeth Pilliod has kindly confirmed for this portrait is early 1556. 69. See the relevant comments on the perpetuity of the family of art in Vasari's Vite by Barolsky, 1991, pp. 69–70, who writes of Vasari's view of artistic community, in which "the ideal relationship of artists to one another is a loving one, of paternal largesse, filial devotion, and fraternal love." His illustration is Vasari's tale of Pontormo's portrayal of the child Bronzino in Joseph in Egypt (London, National Gallery), which suggests that Vasari saw Bronzino as like a
Page 387
son to Pontormo, "a modern Jacob or patriarch among painters, who begat Bronzino, who begat Allori." Chapter 7 1. One major exception is Tintoretto's cycle of 1575–78 in Venice, Scuola di S. Rocco, where miracles of the Old Testament prefiguring the Redemption are painted on the ceiling (see C. de Tolnay, "L'interpretazione dei cicli pittorici del Tintoretto nella Scuola di San Rocco," Critica d'arte, 7, 1960, pp. 341–76; and J. Schulz, Venetian Painted Ceilings of the Renaissance, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968, pp. 87–91). This unusually precise typological scheme, in which the corresponding New Testament scenes are represented on the walls below, includes four of the Moses scenes represented by Bronzino: The Brazen Serpent, depicting a type of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, is at the center of the ceiling; it is flanked by Moses Striking the Rock (with The Crossing of the Red Sea as a subordinate scene) as a type of baptism, and The Gathering of Manna (placed at the altar end of the room) as a type of the Last Supper and the Eucharist. 2. See M. de Morant, Episodes bibliques (sculptures et peintures) de la chapelle du Château de la Bastie d'Urfé, Montbrison, 1968; and O. Raggio, "Vignole, Fra Damiano et Girolamo Siciolante à la Chapelle de la Bastie d'Urfé," Revue de l'art, 15, 1972, pp. 29–52; and J. B. Hunter, "The Life and Works of Girolamo Sicolante da Sermoneta, Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1983, pp. 44–46, 162–71. 3. See M. Rati and M. Cataldi, "La pittura in Duomo dal cinque e seicento," in Livorno e Pisa: Due città e un territorio nella politica dei Medici, Pisa, 1980, pp. 407–8. 4. For Franco's panel, see R. P. Ciardi, "I dipinti dei secoli XVI–XVIII: Da Battista Franco ai fratelli Melani," in Il Museo Duomo a Pisa, Milan, 1986, pp. 129–30. 5. For the reuse of the apparato in 1550, see ASF Manoscritti 127, II, II, p. 488 (Settimanni). For the 1577 event, see [V. Borghini], La descrizione della pompa e dell'apparato fatto in Firenze nel Battesimo del Serenissimo Principe di Toscana, Florence, 1577, pp. 8, 13–14; and E. Borsook, "Art and Politics at the Medici Court II: The Baptism of Filippo de' Medici in 1577," MKIF, 13, 1967, pp. 95–174. 6. ASF, Manoscritti 129, IV, p. 134 (Settimanni). For Vasari's Baptism, see ricordo no. 115 of 10 July 1541 (Vas.Frey II, p. 858). Vasari also notes the picture in his own vita (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 670), stating, moreover (VI, pp. 89–90), that Tribolo, Pontormo, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and Bronzino had all refused to execute it because of the short time allowed. All the works are lost, but Borghini's account permits the identification of two studies by Vasari for the Baptism (Stockholm, National Museum 60/1863, and London, British Museum 1895915754), both identified by P. Barocchi, Vasari pittore, Milan, 1964, pp. 125–26. Neither drawing reflects Borghini's description in every detail, and only the London one shows the arched top of the composition with God the Father and the angels. 7. Borghini, 1577 (as in n. 5), pp. 13–14, describes the flanking pictures in a long passage, from which I quote only the lines on The Crossing of the Red Sea. The quotation is from 1 Corinthians 10:2, the source for this typology. 8. See, among others, John 3:14 (the Brazen Serpent), 6:49–51 (Manna); and 1 Corinthians 10:2–5 (Moses Striking the Rock and the Crossing of the Red Sea). In his ninthcentury exegesis of the Old Testament, Rabanus Maurus declared, "The Book of Exodus is deservedly preemi
Page 388
nent [in the Old Testament]; for in it nearly all the sacraments by which our present Church is instituted, nourished, and governed find figurative expression" (quoted in Fleming, 1982, p. 62). 9. See Daniélou, 1950, pp. 131–200. Hence, readings of the history of Moses from Exodus are emphasized in the liturgy of the days before Holy Week and on Holy Saturday, when stories of the patriarch (including the Crossing of the Red Sea) prepare for the Resurrection. 10. There is no comprehensive study of the iconography of Moses, but see Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. I, pp. 172–227; and Ettlinger, 1965. For Moses in medieval art, see Mellinkoff, 1970. 11. Musei Vaticani; see Wilpert, 1929–36, I, no. 201, 3. The most important Moses sarcophagus, at Aix, shows the Crossing of the Red Sea, Moses Striking the Rock, and The Miracle of the Quails; see Garrucci, 1872–80, V, pl. 308, 2,4; and Wilpert, 1929–36, I, no. 97, 2–3. 12. For the S. Sabina doors, see G. Jeremias and F. X. Bartl, Die Holztur der Basilika S. Sabina in Rom, Tübingen, 1980. There were, of course, innumerable individual representations of Moses stories in mosaics, miniatures, and Bible illustrations (for examples, see Ettlinger, 1965, pp. 46–56). 13. See Davidson, 1985, pp. 77–79. 14. See Ettlinger, 1965, pp. 43–75, 94–119; and J. Shearman, "The Chapel of Sixtus IV," in The Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo Rediscovered, London, 1986, pp. 22–69. For the tituli, see Redig de Campos, 1971; and for a summary of the relation between the tituli and the scenes represented, see Goffen, 1986, pp. 235–37. 15. For Perino's work, see Vas.Mil., V, pp. 607–8; B. F. Davidson, "Early Drawings by Perino del Vaga," Master Drawings, 1, 1963, pp. 21–22; and E. Borea, in Berti, 1980, cat. 348. For Rosso's painting, see Chapter 4, n. 52. There is also a Rosso drawing apparently representing Moses and the Israelites in the desert, which may show Moses striking the rock to the right (London, British Museum Ff. 1–18; see Turner, 1986, no. 112). In the early 1520s Pontormo did a series of drawings for an unexecuted project representing the Israelites Drinking Water in the Desert (see CoxRearick, 1964 [1981], cat. 224–32). 16. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 452. 17. For the Manna, see Shapley, 1979, I, no. 791; for the Rock, see H. Brigstocke, Italian and Spanish Paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1978, no. 2291. These works are different in style, the Rock probably dating close to 1530 and the Manna (with motifs from the Rock incongruously adapted to it) at least a decade later. 18. See M. Collareta, in Torriti, 1990, pp. 652–76. 19. The Fall of Manna is paired with the Last Supper in the Speculum humanae salvationis and in the Biblia pauperum (see Didron, 1891, II, pp. 415–16). For this typology, see Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. 1, pp. 196–202; and Daniélou, 1965, pp. 142–52. 20. John 6:48–51; also John 6:31–35 ("I am the bread of life"); 1 Corinthians 10:3–5 (quoted in the text at the discussion of the Rock); and Psalm 77: 24–25 (the manna as "angel's food"), which was used in the Corpus Christi liturgy. 21. Noted by Cope, 1979, p. 192. 22. For later Venetian paintings of the reservation of the manna, including works in which the manna is actually shown as consumed, see Cope, 1979, pp. 193–213. Tabernacles of the Sacrament were decorated with Old Testament types of the Sacrament such as the Gathering of Manna (see one described in Vas.Mil., VI, p. 10, as painted by Salviati ca. 1530).
Page 389
23. For Salviati's painting, see Rubin, 1987. The Manna is also next to the altar in other typological cycles such as Tintoretto's (see n. 1) and Sicolante's (see Fig. 144). 24. See also Numbers 20:8–11, where Aaron, a figure Bronzino does not include, has a prominent role. 25. As Fleming, 1982, p. 62, noted in relation to the water flowing from a rock in Bellini's St. Francis (New York, Frick Collection), this passage was "crucial for the foundation of the medieval typological understanding of the Exodus." 26. See Didron, 1891, II, p. 420. 27. See E. Becker, Das Quellwunder des Moses in der altchristlichen Kunst, Strassburg, 1909, pp. 91–99. For specific sarcophagi, see Garrucci, 1872–80, V, pl. 308, 4 (Aix); pl. 359, 2 (Lateran), and many others. 28. Also relevant were similarly composed scenes representing St. Peter baptizing the centurion from a miraculous fountain, a related subject that occurs frequently as a type of baptism. 29. See Wilpert, 1929–36, I, no. 103, 4. 30. See Davidson, 1985, p. 76. 31. Bachiacca's source for the supine drinker may have been Filippino Lippi's representation of the scene (London, National Gallery; see Davies, 1971, pp. 288–89), from which he may also have adapted his kneeling Moses. 32. Vas.Mil., V, p. 647. 33. The eucharistic symbolism of the chalice in relation to Moses Striking the Rock was remarked on when the sopraporta was still thought to be part of the original chapel decoration (see McComb, 1928, p. 23; and Meiss, 1970, p. 213). 34. This emblematic sopraporta descends from countless representations of pairs of angels holding the chalice and host in Renaissance sculpture; they appear most often in reliefs decorating tabernacles or ciboria where the host was reserved. In Florence, for example, see Giovanni della Robbia's tabernacle in SS. Apostoli, where the angels of the predella hold a wreath containing the chalice and wafer (see Vloberg, 1946, II, p. 43; and, for other examples, I, pp. 225, 227). In these reliefs, the host was usually enclosed within a tondo; in the early sixteenth century, however, the tondo was detached to become a symbol of the world that Christ had saved, with the chalice and host shown above it, as here. The most conspicuous example in Florence is Fra Bartolommeo's Salvator Mundi of 1516 (Pitti), where the host (also stamped with the Crucifixion), is suspended over the chalice, and two angels flank a tondo, called in Vas.Mil., III, p. 491, a "palla del mondo." 35. See Geisenheimer, 1905. 36. See Uffizi 10322F, connected by Geisenheimer, 1905, p. 107, with a figure in Allori's fresco. Smyth, 1956, p. 74; idem, 1971, p. 59 n. 57, noted the derivation from Bronzino's man drinking; see also CoxRearick, 1971, p. 13 n. 43. A study by (or after?) Allori for a Gathering of Manna (Düsseldorf FP4749, attributed to Lambert Lombard; see I. Budde, Beschreibender Katalog der Handzeichnungen in der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, 1930, no. 789), includes figures copied from Bronzino's fresco (the man with the urn and the women holding up their aprons). Detlef Heikamp informs me that Allori designed a tapestry of the subject. 37. Uffizi 714F; see Lecchini Giovannoni, 1970, no. 42. 38. See Cope, 1979, pp. 242–43, 282. Other chapels of the Holy Sacrament that have Old Testament representations include one in S. Giovanni Laterano, Rome (altar of 1548, with stat
Page 390
ues of prophets, including Moses) and the chapel of 1521–24 in S. Giovanni Evangelista, Brescia (with Moretto da Brescia's Gathering of Manna). Although not strictly speaking a chapel, Tintoretto's Scuola di S. Rocco, which features three of the Moses scenes that are painted in the Chapel of Eleonora and emphasizes eucharistic themes and symbols, is also of this type. 39. There was no space in the chapel for the traditional wall niche for the Sacrament, nor does Bronzino's altarpiece have a predella, the center of which often housed the Sacrament (as is the case in Sarto's Lamentation; see Fig. 95), but the Sacrament could have been placed in a small tabernacle on the altar in front of the painted image of the eucharistic Christ. See Cope, 1979, p. 24, for a description of this common type of sixteenthcentury tabernacle. 40. I thank Patricia Rubin and William Hood for their advice on this matter. 41. The Brazen Serpent was paired in the Biblia pauperum with the Crucifixion, and the line from Psalm 22 ("they pierced my hands and my feet") that is inscribed on the altar wall of the chapel is also cited as a text related to the Brazen Serpent (see Didron, 1891, II, p. 419). For this typology, see Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. 1, pp. 209–10. 42. In the Biblia pauperum (see Didron, 1891, II, p. 419) the serpent is described as hanging from a tree: "[The Lord] commanded Moses to make a brazen serpent to hang it from a tree." 43. As pointed out by Cope, 1979, pp. 242–44. In the Scuola di S. Rocco, Tintoretto also placed The Brazen Serpent across from the altar. It might be added that the positioning of this scene of salvation, with its depiction of the saved and the damned, on the inside entrance wall of the chapel reflects the traditional placement of the Last Judgment in that location. 44. For the typology of the Crossing of the Red Sea, see Daniélou, 1950, pp. 152–76; idem, 1965, pp. 114–30; and Cope, 1979, pp. 241–42. 45. Other examples of Red Sea sarcophagi are at Aix, Arles, Belgrade, Rome (Doria), and Spalato (see H. Rosenau, "Problems of Jewish Iconography," Gazette des BeauxArts, 56, 1960, pp. 8–9). 46. Now Accademia; see S. MoschiniMarconi, Galleria dell'Accademia di Venezia, 1962, I, cat. 298. 47. See Davidson, 1985, p. 76. In the Biblia pauperum the scene is connected with St. John baptizing Christ (see Didron, 1891, II, p. 408). For a summary of the Red Sea–baptism typology, see F. I. Dögler, "Der Durchzug durch das Rote Meer als Sinnbild der christlichen Taufe," Antike und Christentum, 2, 1930, pp. 63– 69; and Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. 1, pp. 192–95. 48. See Redig de Campos, 1971, p. 118, who notes that the tituli ("Congregatio populi a Moise legem scriptam accepturi" and "Congregatio populi legem evangelicam recepturi") allude to the people gathered around Moses and Christ in expectation of the giving of the Law (which is the subject of the next fresco in each series). 49. As in Gentile Bellini's (destroyed) painting of 1466 in the Scuola di S. Marco, which was paired with the Flight of Moses and His People into the Desert (see H. F. Collins, Gentile Bellini: A Monograph and Catalogue of Works, Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1970, pp. 6, 105, 159–60). 50. For this work, see Chapter 12, n. 46. 51. The episode may be shown in the Sistine Chapel at the far left (as the chronological conclusion of the fresco's action in this righttoleft cycle) of Botticelli's Moses in Egypt and Midian (see Ettlinger, 1965, pp. 39, 63). There, in a scene that shows Moses leading the Israelites
Page 391
to the Red Sea, Moses is a type of Christ leading man to salvation and the scene is a link to the next fresco of the series, The Crossing of the Red Sea (see Fig. 148). 52. Uffizi 8676 stampe in volume; 33 × 43 cm.; inscribed in the lower left corner "ANG. BRONSINO. INVE[N]./H. Cock. excude. Cum privileg. Re." Vas.Mil., V, p. 438, mentions this engraving in an account of the Flemish publisher's works: "In un altra [carta] fece Moisè che passa il mare Rosso, secondo che l'aveva dipinta Agnolo Bronzino, pittore fiorentino, nel palagio del duca di Fiorenza, nella cappella di sopra." In the life of Bronzino, Vasari, after describing the fresco, notes: "la quale storia è stata stampata in Anversa," alluding to the same print (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597). T. A. Riggs, Hieronymous Cock: Printmaker and Publisher, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1971; New York, 1977, cat. 23, has pointed out, however, that this engraving is actually by an unidentified engraver, Cock being only the publisher. The following painted copies (all apparently later sixteenthcentury Flemish) derive from this engraving; all are in the same direction as the fresco, and in all the bearded man to the left behind Moses has a portraitlike quality: (1) Avignon, Musée des BeauxArts 435 (panel; 0.69 × 1.08 m.); (2) Burghley House, the Marquess of Exeter (panel; 17 1/2 × 23 1/4 in., the most technically accomplished and Italianate of the copies; ByamShaw, 1976, I, p. 76 n.2, considers it possibly by Allori); (3) Los Angeles, Louis and Annette Kaufman Collection (panel; 25 1/2 × 35 1/2 in.); (4) Paris, Palais Galliera (sold 23 June 1964, lot 44, as School of Fontainebleau; panel; 0.71 × 1.07 m.); identical to the Avignon picture and considered by ByamShaw, I, 1976, p. 70, to be Flemish. 53. The spoils are also represented in the foreground next to a woman and child in Perino del Vaga's chiaroscuro (see Fig. 149); they are noted there in Vas.Mil., V, 608 ("un numero di vasi, ch'egli finge che abbino spogliato l'Egitto"). 54. This motif appears in the Lateran, Aix, and Arles examples, among others. It also occurs in the fresco of the Red Sea at DuraEuropos (see C. H. Kraeling, ed., The Excavations at DuraEuropos: The Synagogue, New Haven, 1956, pp. 21, 79, pl. LII) and in miniatures (see H. Buchthal, The Miniatures of the Paris Psalter: A Study in Middle Byzantine Painting, London, 1938, n. 22, pl. IX, fig. 9). 55. For the praying gesture and Moses, see M. Schapiro, Words and Pictures: On the Literal and Symbolic in the Illustrations of a Text, Paris, 1973, pp. 17– 36, who reads this gesture (in earliest art represented frontally) as symbolizing the cross. In Perino's chiaroscuro this gesture is transferred to the woman behind Moses (see Fig. 149). 56. See CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 52–54. 57. Vas.Mil., VII, p. 597; see also the inscription on the doorframe: "la storia del faraone." 58. The doorframe inscription refers to this wall as representing "la [sto]ria d'aqua," omitting mention of The Gathering of Manna. Both this and Vasari's incomplete title reflect the reading of these frescoes as continuous compositions. 59. Exodus 34:29: "And he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation with the Lord." This tradition was observed in Renaissance painting, as in the Sistine Chapel, where Moses has no rays of light (or horns) in scenes of the departure of the Israelites and the crossing of the Red Sea (see Fig. 148) but is shown with the horns in the giving of the law and other scenes late in the cycle. On this subject, see Mellinkoff, 1970. 60. For Moses handing the rod to Joshua, see manuscripts cited by Ettlinger, 1965, p. 49 n. 1, pl. 37a. Among manuscripts showing Moses pointing at Joshua, see British Museum, Cotton Claudius B. IV, f. 136v (cited by Mellinkoff, 1970, fig. 21), and New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, G. 60, Bible, f. 95v.
Page 392
61. See Ettlinger, 1965, pp. 70–74. 62. For Joshua as a type of Christ, see Réau, 1955–59, II, pt. 1, pp. 219–20; and Ettlinger, 1965, p. 73, citing St. Augustine. Joshua wears the diadem, for example, in The Crossing of the Jordan, S. Maria Maggiore. 63. I am grateful to Marilyn A. Lavin for discussing this point with me and for noting that counterclockwise arrangements usually depend on special requirements (e.g. the counterclockwise sequence of the roundels in the Old Sacristy, which may depend on an astrological programme determined by the cupola's fresco). She also notes the precedent of Signorelli's frescoes in the Chapel of S. Brizio at Orvieto, where the narrative moves counterclockwise. See now M. A. Lavin, The Place of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431–1600, Chicago, 1991, pp. 229–32. Chapter 8 1. For the ancient origins of this type of church or chapel ceiling, see K. Lehmann, "The Dome of Heaven," ArtB, 27, 1945, pp. 1–27. 2. In the 1492 inventory of the Palazzo Medici there are four paintings of St. Jerome (one with St. Francis), and there was one in each of the Medici villas at Careggi and Fiesole. See E. Müntz, Les collections des Médicis au XVe siècle, Paris, 1888, pp. 60, 64, 67, 87, 90, 91. 3. Vas.Mil., II, p. 342, attributes their design to Michelozzo. On these buildings under the Medici, see A. Bandini, Lettere fiesolane, Florence, 1800, pp. 116, 130– 44; and D. Brunori, L'Eremo di S. Girolamo di Fiesole, Fiesole, 1920, pp. 19–25. The family arms adorn them, and Ghirlandaio's altarpiece Madonna and Saints (lost) included St. Jerome with the Medici saints Cosmas, Damian, Lorenzo, and Francis and the Florentine patron St. John the Baptist. On the Hieronymites, see E. F. Rice, St. Jerome in the Renaissance, Baltimore and London, 1985, pp. 68–75. 4. See M. Meiss, "Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: The Image of St. Jerome," Pantheon, 32, 1974, pp. 134–40; and B. Ridderbos, Saint and Symbol: Images of Saint Jerome in Early Italian Art, Groningen, 1984, p. 75. 5. See Brunori (as in n. 3), p. 19; also pp. 17, 23–25. Jerome may have had another, more personal, association for the duke. Although there is no evidence that Cosimo celebrated the feast of St. Jerome, it was on that day (30 September) in 1537 that he received the ducal privilegio from the emperor. Personal preferences of Eleonora may also have indicated the inclusion of St. Jerome (although I cannot adduce any evidence for this). The Hieronymite order was of Spanish origin and was widely diffused in Spain (even in Toledo, the ancestral home of Eleonora's family), and there seems to have been a devotion to the saint in the Spanish community in Florence: after Eleonora's death, a Chapel of St. Jerome was built in the Cappella degli Spagnoli in 1565 by the Aldana family, with an altarpiece, The Madonna with SS. Francis and Jerome by Santi di Tito (Richa, 1754–62, IV, p. 266). 6. Levey, 1967, n. to pl. IV; see also Cheney, 1973, p. 167. 7. See G. Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, New York, 1966, p. 13. 8. For the symbolism of these fruits, see Chapter 10, n. 72. 9. Daniel 10:13, 21. As noted by Ettlinger, 1965, p. 74, Bede interpreted St. Michael's fighting the Devil not only as a type of Christ's salvation of mankind, but as a symbol of Moses' leading Israel from captivity despite the Devil's resistance.
Page 393
10. Epistle of Jude, 9. The episode is depicted in an overpainted fresco on the entrance wall of the Sistine Chapel (see Ettlinger, 1965, pp. 74–75). The early church fathers also believed that Michael was used by God to speak to Moses in the burning bush. 11. See Vloberg, 1946, II, pp. 255–61. 12. Although I do not believe that the Apocalypse determined the iconography of the vault, three of its images might be seen to relate to it. In Revelation 12:7–12 (a passage that deals with the theme of the Church and the Antichrist) John sees a vision of St. Michael casting the Devil out of Heaven. The putti at the corners of the vault evoke Revelation 7, which begins with a vision of ''four angels standing at the four corners of the earth." St. Francis of the Stigmatization was mystically identified by his followers as the Angel of the Sixth Seal, a vision of which immediately follows John's of the four angels. Across from St. John on the chapel vault, Francis faces east and looks up into the light ("the rising of the sun"), possibly alluding to this Franciscan iconography. For Francis as the Angel of the Sixth Seal, see S. Da Campagnola, L'angelo del sesto sigillo e l'alter Christus, Rome, 1971; and Fleming, 1982, pp. 130–63, for this reading of Bellini's St. Francis in the Frick Collection. 13. There were, indeed, close links between the Hieronymites and the Franciscans, especially in Florence, for the Hieronymite church in Fiesole was founded in the late fourteenth century by a member of the Third Order of St. Francis. On the theme of St. Jerome in penitence, see Ridderbos (as in n. 4), pp. 63–88. 14. See A. Marquand, Andrea della Robbia, Princeton, 1922, I, pp. 95–97; see also pp. 39–41 for the altarpiece, Coronation of the Virgin, accompanied by these same two subjects (Assisi, S. Maria degli Angeli). 15. See M. Meiss, Giovanni Bellini's St. Francis in the Frick Collection, Princeton, 1964, p. 31, who discusses this and other works by Bellini as the first instances in Italian painting in which the crucifix is replaced by a supernatural radiance. See also, in relation to Bronzino's image, Smyth, 1956, pp. 219–20, and 1971, p. 13. 16. For this theme see Da Campagnola (as in n. 12); for the theme in Italian art, see H. W. van Os, "St. Francis of Assisi as a Second Christ in Early Italian Painting," Simiolus, 7, 1974, pp. 115–32; Fleming, 1982, pp. 139–40; R. Goffen, "A Bonaventuran Analysis of Correggio's Madonna of St. Francis," Gazette des Beaux Arts, 103, 1984, pp. 11–12; and idem, 1986, pp. 252–53, in which Goffen points out that the death of Moses in Signorelli's fresco The Last Acts and Death of Moses in the Sistine Chapel is composed like a Lamentation. 17. See Goffen, 1986, p. 258; and idem, Piety and Patronage in Renaissance Venice: Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans, New Haven and London, 1986, pp. 53–54, for the Franciscan attachment to the cult of the Wounds of Christ. Schiller, 1972, II, pp. 184–97, notes that the Franciscan Meditations on the Life of Christ encouraged the contemplation of the Passion at each station of the cross and influenced the popularity of the theme in Franciscan art. 18. For this theme, see S. Clasen, "Franziskus, der neue Moses," Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 24, 1961, pp. 200–208; for the theme in Italian art, see Fleming, 1982, pp. 47–64; Goffen, 1984 (as in n. 16), pp. 11–13; and idem, 1986, pp. 237–61. I am indebted to Rona Goffen and Marilyn A. Lavin for discussing Franciscan subjects with me. 19. St. Bonaventure, Legenda minor Sanctii Francisci, in Opera omnia, Quaracchi, 1882–1902, bk. X, 9, p. 564 (Exodus 14); trans. in M. A. Habig, St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, Chicago, 1973, pp. 830–31.
Page 394
20. See A. van Corstanje, The Covenant with God's Poor, trans. G. Reidy, Chicago, 1966, pp. 125–28, for a translation of Elias's letter. These and other texts are discussed in Fleming, 1982, pp. 46–48; Goffen, 1984 (as in n. 16), pp. 12–13; and idem, 1986, p. 253. 21. Legenda minor (as in n. 19), bk. IV, 11, p. 516; trans. in Habig (see n. 19), 1973, pp. 661–62. 22. See E. Mâle, L'art religieux de la fin du XVIe siècle du XVIIe siècle et du XVIIIe siècle: Etude sur l'iconographie après le Concile de Trente, Paris, 1951, p. 491; Goffen, 1986, p. 259, who cites St. Bonaventure's description of Francis's own devotion to the saint; and idem, 1986 (as in n. 17), pp. 20–21, for a description of St. Michael Fighting the Devil in the Chapel of St. Michael in the Franciscan Church of the Frari, Venice, and images of the saint in the Upper Church at Assisi and in S. Croce. 23. See A. Marquand, Giovanni della Robbia, Princeton, 1920, no. 78, pp. 78–80. 24. The apples over St. Michael are the familiar symbol of evil when connected with scenes of the Garden of Eden; Cheney, 1973, pp. 167–68, read them as such, and they may refer to the Devil conquered by the saint. The roses over St. John were interpreted as symbols of the Virgin by Cheney, 1973, pp. 167–68; however, they are explicitly related to martyr saints—the class to which John belongs—and would more logically be linked to him. It may also be relevant that the red rose was considered the flower of the Passion, particularly of the blood of Christ (see D'Ancona, 1977, p. 340). Since St. John is the primary witness to the Passion in the chapel decoration and is also placed over the "eucharistic" wall with the Rock and Manna scenes, the roses might also allude to these themes. Lilies are the flower of confessors, the class of saint to which Francis belongs. On the lily and the rose, see D'Ancona, 1977, pp. 210–20 and pp. 330–55. Cheney, 1973, pp. 167–68, noted that the pinecones over St. Jerome symbolize the Resurrection. 25. This emblem of the Trinity was still in use in the early 1560s, although it was proscribed in the aftermath of the Council of Trent. In its twentyfifth and last session (1–2 December 1563) the council prohibited all religious images that were contrary to dogma or might provoke error in the ignorant, but these pronouncements were very general. See Sacros Concilium Tridentinum . . ., 1649, p. 639, quoted in Barocchi, 1960–62, II, p. 521; C. DeJob, De l'influence du Concile de Trente sur la littérature et les beauxarts chez les peuples catholiques, Paris, 1884, pp. 242–43; and Hautecoeur, 1965, I, pp. 345–54. Later these pronouncements were elaborated and expanded. On the threeheaded Trinity, see G. A. Gilio, Degli errori e degli abusi de' pittori circa l'istorie, 1564 (in Barocchi, p. 36); G. Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane, Bologna, 1581 (in Barocchi, p. 422); and Molanus, 1594, bk. II, chap. IV. Chapter 9 1. On the humanist concept of significare, a word used in the Renaissance to describe the meaning of a work of art, see Kemp, 1977, p. 376. 2. Such interpretations must be made with caution (and common sense), especially where works do not refer specifically to the Medici by inscription or documentation. Warnings about overinterpretation (particularly of mythological cycles) and doubts about the existence of detailed programmes for many Renaissance works have been expressed by E. H. Gombrich, Topos and Topicality in Renaissance Art, Annual Lecture of the Society for Renaissance Studies, London, 1975; and idem, review of E. Verheyen, The Palazzo del Tè in Mantua: Images of Love and Politics, Burl., 122, 1980, pp. 70–71. Gombrich's doubts have hardened to neopositivist doctrine in recent
Page 395
work by C. Hope, review of R. Harprath, Papst Paul III, als Alexander der Grosse: Das Freskenprogramm der Sala Paolina in der Engelsburg, Burl., 123, 1981, pp. 104–5; idem, "Artists, Patrons, and Advisers in the Italian Renaissance," in Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. G. F. Lytle and S. Orgel, Princeton, 1981, pp. 293–343; and idem, review of CoxRearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art, in the London Review of Books, 7, 1985, p. 16, where Hope goes so far as to state: "While imprese of their nature inevitably make personal allusions to the patron, paintings and sculpture do not." See also McGrath, 1985, for the opinion that no Medicean references were intended in Vasari's mythological cycles in the Palazzo. Gombrich, Hope, and McGrath raise provocative questions, but their approach is narrowly circumscribed by their definition of "evidence"; other work, including my own, provides a substantial and strongly supported refutation of such an extreme stance. 3. See the studies on topical significance in Cosimo's later art: Borsook, 1965–66 (on the apparato for Cosimo's funeral); N. Rubinstein, "Vasari's Painting of The Foundation of Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio," in Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. D. Fraser, H. Hibbard, and M. Lewine, London, 1967, pp. 64–73; Spini, 1971 (on the "architettura del regime"); Richelson, 1975 (on Cosimo's personal imagery); and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 320– 96. Rousseau's dissertation on astrological symbolism in the art of Duke Cosimo covers much of the same ground as my book on dynastic and astrological imagery in Medici art (1984); although completed in 1983, this dissertation was kept unavailable for study until 1985. 4. See Varchi, 1843–44 (commissioned by Cosimo in 1547 and dedicated to him; Nerli, 1728 (completed under Cosimo, 1549–52); P. Giovio, Historium sui temporis, Florence, 1551 (dedicated to Cosimo); and Segni, 1723 (begun in 1553). For historiography at Cosimo's court, see M. Lupo Gentile, "Studi sulla storiografia fiorentina alla corte di Cosimo I de' Medici," Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 19, 1905, pp. 1–164. 5. See Borghini, 1912; for Borghini and Vasari, see P. Ginori Conti, ed., L'apparato per le nozze di Francesco de' Medici e di Giovanna d'Austria nelle narrazione del tempo e da lettere inedite di Vincenzo Borghini e di Giorgio Vasari, Florence, 1936. For Bartoli and Vasari, see Vas.Frey, I–II (their correspondence of 1563–65); and Bryce, 1983, pp. 51–71. 6. See Gombrich, 1980 (as in n. 2), p. 71. For Vasari's vast enterprises in the Palazzo, see All.&Cec., pp. 55–273, 317–52. 7. For "il senso nostro," see McGrath, 1985. For a reading of the Ragionamenti as a literary celebration of the Medici, not tied at all points to the decorations, see P. T. Baxter, "Rileggendo I Ragionamenti," in Garfagnini, 1985, pp. 83–93. 8. Cosimo's early art has not been studied as such. See, however, Forster, 1971 (for "metaphors of rule" in portraiture); M. Plaisance, "La politique culturelle de Côme Ier et les fêtes annuelles à Florence de 1541 à 1550," in Les fêtes de la Renaissance, III, Paris, 1975, pp. 133–55; Richelson, 1975 (brief comments in an overview of Cosimo's imagery); Wright, 1976 (for the decoration of the loggia and gardens of Villa Castello, with much valuable background material); CoxRear., pt. IV (for astrological and dynastic symbolism); and Rousseau, 1985 (for astrological symbolism). 9. Nerli was in the duke's service from 1537, Vettori from 1538, and Varchi, a republican exile, from 1543 as his official historian (for his return, see Pirotti, 1971, p. 23), a role that was filled by Nerli from 1549. Other exiles—Jacopo Pitti, Segni, Adriani (who came into Cosimo's service in 1549 and became his official historian in 1566)—returned later. Giovio, earlier in Medici service, returned to Florence only in 1549.
Page 396
10. For the cultural ambiance and the literary personalities of Cosimo's early years, see Lupo Gentile (as in n. 4), pp. 60–70; Albertini, 1970, pp. 280–354; Plaisance, 1972; and Cochrane, 1973, pp. 67–87. 11. See De Gaetano, 1968, pp. 29–33; idem, 1976, pp. 100–136; Plaisance, 1972, pp. 381–437; and idem, 1974, pp. 170–77. 12. In his patronage of the Academy, as in his other culturalartistic activities, Cosimo emulated Cosimo il Vecchio and Lorenzo il Magnifico. For the beginnings of the Accademia Fiorentina, see Plaisance, 1972, pp. 403–33; idem, 1974; C. di Filippo Bareggi, "In nota alla politica culturale di Cosimo I: L'Accademia Fiorentina," Quaderni storici, 8, 1973, pp. 527–74 (with documents); De Gaetano, 1976, pp. 100–136; and Vasoli, 1980. 13. For Riccio, see the Introduction, n. 5. Bronzino, Tribolo, and Michelangelo (not resident in Florence) were admitted to the Academy in 1541; Cellini, Bandinelli, and Francesco da Sangallo in 1545. For Bronzino and Academy members, see Chapter 13, n. 8. 14. ASF, MDP 1170, ins. VI, f. 361 (letter of Lorenzo Pagni in Poggio a Caiano to Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence, 9 October 1543: "Il Duca mio Sig.re m'ha comandato ch'io scriva alla S. V. che dia a Maestro Francesco dipintore, datore di questa, tutte le opere notabili di Camillo, adciò possa farne uno schizzo per S. Ex.a, et così li piacerà exequire." Wright, 1976, pp. 353–54; and idem, 1986, p. 94, takes this note to mean that Riccio was responsible for the programme of the room, although this is not stated and is by no means to be assumed. Melinda Schlitt, who is preparing a study of the Camillus cycle, kindly informs me that there is no evidence that Riccio was responsible for the actual programme of the work. 15. Vas.Mil., V, p. 83. Even Vasari, however, is not always correct. Varchi did not return to Florence until 1543 and thus cannot have advised Tribolo in the late 1530s; moreover, Martelli, in Dal primo e dal secondo libro delle lettere di Niccolò Martelli, ed. C. Marconcini, Lanciano, 1916, p. 23, states in a letter of 1 March 1543 to Tribolo and Tasso that the tabernacle sculptures were based on Tribolo's own ideas. Cellini's Perseus depended on a programme by Varchi, who wrote explanatory verses about each of its figures. These, however, are not inscribed on the work itself; see Heikamp, 1957, pp. 144–45. 16. Cini's description of the work that was carried out under the direction of Vasari and Borghini (in Vas.Mil., VIII, pp. 519–622) allows us to visualize the ultimate expression of Cosimo's artaspropaganda. 17. I am grateful to Patricia Rubin for discussing Vasari and Medicean significato with me. 18. For these busts, both in the Bargello, see Lang. cat. 27,105 and Lang. cat. 27,127. 19. See Forster, 1971, pp. 76–79. 20. See Lang. cat. 27,156–64; for their political content, see CoxRear., pp. 254–83, passim. 21. For a recent overview of Tribolo's work at Castello, see A. Conti, "Niccolò Tribolo nel giardino di Castello," Antichità viva, 28, 1989, pp. 51–61. 22. For the political events of the period during which Bronzino painted the Chapel of Eleonora I have relied mainly on the following primary sources: Baldini, 1578, pp. 13–36; Mannucci, 1586, pp. 32–100; Adriani, 1587, bks. 1–6; Cini, 1611, bks. I–II; Ammirato, 1641, VI, bks. 31–32; Nerli, 1728, bk. 10; Segni, 1723, bks. 8–11; Mellini, 1820; Nardi, 1838–41, II, pp. 323–68; and Varchi, 1843–44, III, bks. 15–16 (covering 1536–37 only). See also Cantini, 1805, pp. 501–680, and Ferrai, 1882, pp. 223–332, for documents. Among modern studies, see Galluzzi, 1781, I, bk. I, pp. 1–171; Booth, 1921, pp. 53–126; Pieraccini, 1924–25, II, pp. 5–30; Spini, 1945, pp. 436–74;
Page 397
idem, "Cosimo I de' Medici," in Unione Fiorentina: Secoli vari, Florence, 1958, pp. 163–87; Albertini, 1970, pp. 201–54; Cochrane, 1973, pp. 13–52, 510– 20; and F. Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana, I Medici, Turin, 1976 (vol. XIII, 1, of Storia d'Italia, ed. G. Galasso), pp. 66–83. 23. In 1538 the new duke sought to reinforce the legitimacy of his title by obtaining permission from Charles to marry Alessandro's widow, who was Charles's daughter. Had this move been successful, Cosimo's right to rule would have been a less crucial issue; however, he was denied this convenient "natural succession" and was compelled to use other means to shore up an appearance of legitimacy. 24. Cantini, 1805, pp. 502–7, doc. II. A contemporary diarist notes that on 11 January the Otto (Council of Eight) made known that "il sopra nominato signore Cosimo de' Medici si chiamassi signore e non Duca" (quoted in R. Ridolfi, "Diario fiorentino di anonimo delle cose occorse l'anno 1537," Archivio storico fiorentino, 1958, p. 549). In 1537 this title was in general use, as in a letter from Giovio to Duke Cosimo of 4 May 1537, addressed "Illmo Signore il S' Cosmo de Medici, capo della Republica fiorentina." There seem to have been no illusions about the true nature of the development, however. See, for example, Vasari's letter of 9–10 January 1537 to Don Antonio de' Medici: ''Oltre che la servitù facessi di nuovo col signor Cosimo de Medici, creato principe in luogo suo [di Alessandro], io potessi havere il luogo et la provisione medesima" (for both letters, see Vas.Frey, I, pp. 77–78). On Cosimo's election, see A. Rossi, "L'elezione di Cosimo I de' Medici," Atti dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 7, 1889–90, pp. 369–435; Spini, 1945, pp. 27–41; Albertini, 1970, pp. 207–11; Cochrane, 1973, pp. 13–18; and Diaz (as in n. 22), pp. 66–73. 25. See Galluzzi, 1781, I, pp. 7–8. On the privilegio, see G. Canestrini, Legazioni di Averardo Serristori, ambasciatore di Cosimo I a Carlo V e in corte a Roma, 1537–1568, Florence, 1853, pp. 13–19, 30, 33–36; and Cantini, 1805, pp. 507–13, doc. IV. For the documents of Cosimo's investiture as duke and his receipt of the imperial diploma, see ASF, Trattati internazionali, 1, ins. C. Boccardi's miniature on the first page depicts Cosimo in a medallion, showing him as reddish haired and clean shaven, wearing military dress all'antica; it is inscribed C[OSIMO] MED[ICI] D[UCA] II F[IRENZE], a title that was now his (see Lang. cat. 27,62). 26. On Cosimo's enemies and the political situation after his election, see Varchi, 1843–44, III, bk. 15; also Spini, 1945, pp. 55–123; Albertini, 1970, pp. 179–210; and Diaz (as in n. 22), pp. 73–83. For the antiMedicean activities of the piagnoni, see Albertini, 1970, pp. 10–12, 179–210; and Weinstein, 1970, pp. 317–73. 27. For these and other examples of the theme of legitimacy in Cosimo's early art, see CoxRear., pp. 237–48. 28. For examples of the theme of Cosimo's astrological destiny in his early art, see CoxRear., pp. 237–40 and 255–74; and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 1–57 and 301– 19. 29. For these themes, see CoxRear., chaps. 1–5, passim; also Rousseau, 1985, pp. 127–77. 30. See CoxRear., pp. 251–58. 31. For the Camillus cycle, see Cheney, 1963, pp. 162–97; 359–74; All.&Cec., 1980, pp. 40–48; and CoxRear., pp. 239, 252–53. 32. Varchi, 1843–44, I, p. 9. 33. Almost immediately after his election Cosimo declared his loyalty to the emperor. See his letter of 28 February 1537 to Bandini, at the imperial court (quoted in Spini, 1940, p. 21). In another letter to Bandini (13 June 1540; Spini, pp. 47–54), he reminds the emperor in the most
Page 398
forceful terms (through his ambassador) of his loyalty, his demonstration of it, and his dependence on imperial favor, referring to Charles as "Sua Maestà, la quale sola come di privato mi ha fatto signore così di signore mi può con una sola parola fare ritornare privato." 34. The fortresses of Florence were taken over on 7 July on his behalf by Giovanni de' Luna, those of Livorno by Chiarissimo de' Medici. See Ammirato, 1641, III, pp. 466–67; Adriani, 1587, pp. 192–94; and Mannucci, 1586, pp. 87–88, who states that by recovering the fortresses Cosimo became a "prencipe assoluto." According to Segni, 1723, pp. 274–75, Cosimo celebrated the event by the symbolic act of taking up a brief residence in the most important of them, the Fortezza di S. Giovanni. For a modern account of these events, see Spini, 1945, pp. 272–82. 35. Forster, 1971. 36. For the mode all'antica in Cosimo's art, see Forster, 1971, pp. 76–89; and Richelson, 1975, pp. 79–92. 37. For Cosimo and Hercules, see Ettlinger, 1972; and Richelson, 1975, pp. 79–92; for Cosimo, Hercules, and Augustus, see Forster, 1971, pp. 72–89. Chapter 10 1. See CoxRear., p. 248, for this picture and Botticelli's Madonna delle Convertite (ca. 1470; Uffizi), where Lorenzo il Magnifico plays the same role, with Giuliano as Damian. Cosimo il Vecchio is St. Cosmas in Filippo Lippi's Seven Saints (ca. 1448; London, National Gallery), in which all the saints are portraits of family members (see Davies, 1971, pp. 392–96), and he plays the role of the saint again in Roger van der Weyden's sacra conversazione of 1450 (Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut). For Cosmas and Damian and the Medici in the fifteenth century, see CoxRear., pp. 32–34, 38, 39, 44, 48, 53, and 133. 2. For this theme, see R. Hatfield, "The Compagnia de' Magi," JWCI, 33, 1970, pp. 107–61; idem, 1976; and CoxRear., pp. 19, 35, 48, 54, 140, 168, and 226. 3. See Lang., I, pp. 118–19 and cat. 27,39; idem, in Pal.Vec. cat. 573. 4. See CoxRear., pp. 236–37; and Lang. cat. 87,5 (dated, however, 1537 or after); for other portraits of Maria, most of which are based on Pontormo's, see Lang. cat. 87,1–15. 5. ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, p. 301 (Settimanni). 6. For Maria and the Dominicans, see Cronaca fiorentina di Antonio d'Orazio Marucelli da San Gallo (BNF, ms. Magl. II.IV.19, ff. 30–33, which relates that Maria's body was brought to S. Caterina in Piazza S. Marco, the convent of Dominican nuns to whom she was greatly attached as a tertiary of the order. See also ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, p. 300 (Settimanni). When Maria's casket was exhumed and opened in 1857, the corpse was found dressed in a black nun's habit. See the description, quoted in Picenardi, 1888, p. 340: "il vestiario che lo copriva apparve qual si addice a monaca, cioè di panno nero, ma intignato: si scorgevano tuttora gli avanzi del soggòlo, abbenchè il velo che un dì copriva la testa, fosse consunto." 7. The Gospels name six women present at the Crucifixion and Entombment, with Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas (mother of James and Joseph) most prominent (Matthew 28:1, 55–56; Mark 16:1, 40, 47; Luke 24:10; and John 19:25, 20:1). The others are the mother of the sons of Zebedee (Matthew 28:55–56), Salome (Mark 16:1, 40), Joanna (Luke 24:10), and the sister of the Virgin Mary (Martha?; John 19:25). These women were thought of by Renaissance artists as having specific names (see Vas.Frey, I, pp. 15–16, in a letter to Ippolito de' Medici, for whom
Page 399
Vasari was painting an Entombment: "le Marie, cioè Maddalena, Jacobi et Salome"). Bronzino's women should thus be identifiable, but only two are. Mary Magdalene kneels to the right, holding Christ's feet in reference to her having anointed them (John 12:17). Her ointment jar is beside her, and she is unmistakably identified by her long blond hair, the absence of the veil worn by the four other women to the left, and her usual blue and red garments (the red an older tradition). Maria Cleophas looks most directly at Christ's body, for it was she who (with the Magdalene) "beheld where he was laid [in the sepulchre]." To the left, a coiffed figure (Martha?) holds Christ's head. The remaining three must be Salome, Joanna, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee, but there is little basis for distinguishing among them. 8. See CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 19–20. 9. The miniature is described (Galleria degli Uffizi, Archivio, Inventario delle robe della Tribuna, 1589, ms. 70, f. 9) as "Un quadretto debano con tondo nel mezzo di minio ritrattovi drento la Duc[he]ssa lionora toledo di mano di Don Giulio coperta di Cristallo e suo filetto darg[en]to dorato, e Catena darg[en]to." It has long been known from the copy by Daniel Fröschl (Uffizi), for which see Lang. cat. 35,20; and S. Meloni Trkulja, "Giulio Clovio e i Medici," Peristil, 26, 1983, pp. 91–100. The original has recently been discovered by Simon (see Lang., III, supp. to cat. 35,20; and R. B. Simon, "Giulio Clovio's Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo," Burl., 131, 1989, pp. 481–85). 10. See Picenardi, 1888, p. 342, quoting the description of the clothes: "Le ricche vesti, foggiate secondo la moda della metà del secolo XVI, e più alcune treccie di capelli di color biondo tendente al rosso, attorte da una cordicella d'oro." 11. See Lang. cat. 56,28; and Pollard, 1985, cat. 310. See also Sangallo's marble bust of Giovanni (Bargello; Lang. cat. 56,23). 12. See E. P. Pillsbury, "A Medici Portrait by Carlo Portelli," in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus, Florence, 1978, II, pp. 289–90; and Lang. cat. 56,6. 13. See Pillsbury (as in n. 12), pp. 289–300; and Lang. cat. 56,7. 14. Lang. cat. 1,14. 15. See Vas.Frey, I, pp. 27–29: "Quel panno rosso . . . mostra il sangue che s'è sparso sopra di quelli che hanno repugnato contra la grandezza della illustrissima casa de' Medici; et un' lembo di quello, coprendo una coscia dell'armato, mostra, che anche questi di casa Medici sono stati percossi nel sangue nella morte di Giuliano et ferite di Lorenzo vecchio." 16. See Giam., pp. 6–13; and Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 576–77. The programme of these paintings by Battista Franco and Ridolfo Ghirlandaio prefigures that of Vasari's Sala di Giovanni delle Bande Nere in the Palazzo, in which all but one of the main subjects is repeated (Vas.Rag., pp. 183–88). 17. This important work can be visualized in Tribolo's sketch of a Leonardesque group (Paris, Louvre 50v; see MonbeigGoguel, 1972, cat. 186). The horse is described in Vas.CdL, V, p. 474 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 88), as twelve braccia in size, "con le gambe dinanzi in alto e sopra quello una figura armata e grande a proporzione, la quale figura aveva sotto genti feriti e morte"; and by Giam., p. 17, in even more detail. 18. See D. Heikamp, in Pal.Vec. cat. 648; and Lang. cat. 56,19. For the motif of Giovanni en Mars with a broken lance, see H. T. Van Veen, "A Note on Bandinelli's Giovanni delle Bande Nere in Piazza San Lorenzo, Florence," Burl., 128, 1986, pp. 346–47.
Page 400
19. The chapel was completed 24 June 1558 for the marriage of Lucrezia de' Medici and Alfonso d'Este. See Vas.Frey, I, pp. 501–3; also All.&Cec., pp. 162–65; and CoxRear., pp. 248–49. For other examples of Cosimo as St. Cosmas, see CoxRear., chap. 10. 20. For the traditional placement of Cosmas to the left of the altar and Damian to the right, Cosmas thus assuming the place of honor to the Virgin's right, see T. Verellen, "Cosmas and Damian in the New Sacristy," JWCI, 42, 1979, p. 275. The altarpiece was Raphael's Madonna dell'Impannata, now in the Pitti and replaced in the chapel by a copy. 21. For this portrait, see Chapter 1, n. 73. 22. CoxRear., pp. 233–50. 23. Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, ms. 2862, f. 163r. See also a sonnet by Gelli, 1969, p. 62 (on the anniversary of Cosimo's elevation to the dukedom in 1542), which calls him "quest'altro Cosimo." 24. Domenico di Polo's medal of the duke (see Pollard, 1985, cat. 334; Lang. cat. 27,161; and CoxRear., p. 238) reproduces the impresa of the laurel with the motto VNO AVVLSO NON DEFICIT ALTER from Pontormo's portrait Cosimo de' Medici Pater Patriae. As Giovio, 1556, p. 33, noted, the impresa signified that the duke was the new branch of the Medici tree after the murder of Alessandro. 25. The idea was set forth in the initial pair of istorie in the Palazzo Medici, Bachiacca's Return from Exile of Cosimo il Vecchio and the Birth of Duke Cosimo, the latter described by Giambullari "come nuovo principio di più felice secolo" (Giam., pp. 25, 27). 26. Each of the istorie in the wedding apparato was accompanied by "le due Ancore, nuova impresa di Sua Eccellentia" (Giam., pp. 24, 30). This device is also represented on one of Cosimo's first medals by Domenico di Polo (Pollard, 1985, cat. 335), and it could be seen over the wedding banquet table decorating the frame of Pontormo's portrait of the pater patriae (CoxRear., pp. 343–48). It has been argued by Rousseau, 1985, p. 262 n. 145, and pp. 461–75, that the word duabus was extracted from the alchemical maxim Ex duabus aquis unam facite (From two waters make one) and that "the two waters implied are like the two streams of Medici descendants who are brought to a fixed and unified point in Cosimo I, the bearer of the impresa." 27. See BNF, ms. II.I.313, f. 171: "Adi [blank] di Ottobre la Duchessa moglie dell Duca Cosimo partori un bambino maschio di che si fece festa e allegrezza grande et al battesimo il Duca in memoria di suo Padre gli fece por' nome Giovanni." 28. See KlapischZuber, 1985. 29. See Chapter 1 for Cosimo's plans for a career in the church for Giovanni, portrayed with Eleonora in a dynastic portrait painted at about the same time as the chapel altarpiece (see Fig. 23). 30. Two paintings of Giovanni di Cosimo continued the association between a Medici Giovanni and St. John the Baptist. One is Bronzino's portrait of him as St. John the Baptist of 1560 (Rome, Galleria Borghese; see Bac. no. 85; and CoxRearick, 1987, "St. Sebastian," p. 159). The other was a posthumous (and lost) work of 1569 by Vasari, who mentions it in ricordo no. 347 of 1569 (Vas.Frey, II, p. 881): "Ricordo come questo anno si fecie per il granduca uno quadro dun San Giovannino igniudo, ch'è sul ritratto di Don Giovanni, suo ultimo figliol maschio [sic]; et si dono a Sua Altezza." 31. Cosimo's first scudo d'oro showed the Medici arms without a coronet and the inscription COSMVS SECVNDVS MEDICES (that is, Cosimo is the second Medici to govern the city); this was
Page 401
replaced with the legend COSMVS MEDICES DVX II on coinage issued after the imperial privilegio of September 1537 (see A. Gaelotti, Le monete del Granducato di Toscana, Livorno, 1930, p. 42). Segni, 1723, p. 237, dates Cosimo's issuing of "moneta colla sua impronta" from the same date. The first of these (late 1537) is a testone showing the beardless duke with a seated St. John on the reverse (Bargello inv. 397; see Gaelotti, cat. xi). There is also a ducato with a standing St. John on the reverse (Gaelotti, cat. iv). See also Gaelotti, pp. 44–45, 50, on lire of 1538 and ducati of 1542 with St. John, and pp. 41–112 passim for the motif throughout Cosimo's coinage. 32. Gaelotti (as in n. 31), cat. xxi. Instead of Bargello inv. 404, which is too effaced to reproduce, I illustrate inv. 406 of 1570, in which the St. Cosmas is posed differently. 33. See A. Armand, Les médailleurs italiens, Paris, 1883–87, III, p. 247a. The obverse shows a bust of Cosimo in armor, bareheaded and bearded, and inscribed COSMVS. M. R. P. FLOR. DVX. II; the reverse shows St. John seated frontally, inscribed S. IOANNES. BATISTA. 34. According to Vas.Mil., VI, p. 547, after Ridolfo Ghirlandaio quit painting, Cosimo commissioned his pupil Michele to paint "tre grandi archi a fresco sopra alcune porte della città di Firenze, a San Gallo la Nostra Donna, S. Giovanni Battista e San Cosimo." The subject of the Porta al Prato fresco (lost) was the same, while on the Porta alla Croce near S. Ambrogio (in ruined condition), that saint was substituted for St. Cosmas. 35. See Rubin, 1987, p. 101, who interpreted the presence of David in the Farnese chapel in a similar way. 36. See M. L. Trachtenberg, The Campanile of Florence Cathedral: Giotto's Tower, New York, 1971, p. 105 and n. 91. 37. See Wright, 1976, pp. 224–30, 303–14. 38. See Giovio, 1556, p. 33; and CoxRear., p. 275. Virtù with Fortuna was an old Medicean conceit; see the medal of Giuliano de' Medici of 1513, showing the personifications of the two forces with the motto DVCE VIRTVTE COMITE FORTVNA (CoxRear., p. 148). 39. See Wright, 1976; CoxRear., pp. 258–69; and Rousseau, 1985, pp. 301–19. 40. A prominent Florentine example is the tomb chapel of the cardinal of Portugal (S. Miniato al Monte), where Luca della Robbia's Virtue medallions are placed at the four corners of the vault with Justice and Fortitude to the left and right of the main wall (as in Eleonora's chapel). For the Cardinal Virtues in innumerable Renaissance tombs, see Réau, 1955–59, I, pp. 187–91; and E. Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture, New York, 1964, pp. 74–76. 41. For Hercules florentinus, see Ettlinger, 1972, p. 120; Richelson, 1975, pp. 79–88; and CoxRear., pp. 146–47, 253–54. 42. For the symbolism of masks, see Tervarent, 1958–64, cols. 261–62; and M. Barasch, "The Mask in European Art: Meanings and Functions," in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson, ed. M. Barasch and L. F. Sandler, New York, 1981, pp. 253–64. 43. See Vas.Frey, I, pp. 17–18. For the symbolism of this picture, see U. Davitt Asmus, Corpus Quasi Vas: Beiträge zur Ikonographie der italienischen Renaissance, Berlin, 1977, pp. 41–62. 44. Rosello, p. 27r: "Ben sanno le S. V. che pongono i morali filosofi quattro virtù cardinali, et queste sono ministre de' Prencipi, i quali da queste governati non possono errare ne gli atti lori; e sono Prudentia, Temperantia, Giustizia, e Fortezza." 45. The fountain's subject was connected in Florentine thought with victory over evil and tyranny, and Hercules was paralleled with David, another defender of the governo giusto. On the fountain's iconography, see Ettlinger, 1972, p. 127; Wright, 1976, chap. VI; and CoxRear., p. 286.
Page 402
The notion of Cosimo as a just Hercules was also current in his literary circle, as in Giambullari, 1546, p. 82, who makes a lengthy comparison of the achievements of Cosimo and Hercules, primary among which was just rule. 46. Vas.CdL, VI, p. 470 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 84). For the sculptures, see Adelson, 1974, pp. 82–86. 47. Cosimo also kept a tablet alluding to Christ's justice that had been placed over the entrance to the Chapel of the Priors when Christ had been elected King of Florence during the last Medici exile (1527–30). For these works and their inscriptions alluding to justice, see All.&Cec., p. 40. 48. See Cheney, 1963, pp. 163, 373, who also notes that the frescoes Schoolmaster of Falieri and Camillus before Brennus may be read as referring to antique justice. 49. See G. G. Bertelà, in Pal.Vec. cat. 121. In view of its subject, it would be interesting to know if this tapestry was made for one of the entrances to the Sala delle Udienze. 50. See Bosch, 1983. 51. In the Sala degli Elementi in the Palazzo, Vasari showed Justice with a scepter in allusion to Cosimo, described (Vas.Rag., p. 25) as "La Justizia tiene e governa con questa scettro il mondo." 52. See Lang., I, pp. 139–53, for the theme of the Medici as architects of the state. 53. See CoxRearick, 1982, pp. 72–73; Simon, 1984, pp. 333–35; and Lang. cat. 27,32. 54. See also Vasari's Duke Cosimo de' Medici Planning His Campaign against Siena in the Sala dei Cinquecento (see Vas.Rag., p. 216; All.&Cec., p. 240; and Lang. cat. 27,212c). About 1560 Cosimo was styled the architect of a new Tuscany in the Chapel of St. Luke, SS. Annunziata (see Chapter 11); and in 1555 Enea Vico dedicated his Discorsi sopra le medaglie degli antichi to Cosimo, styling him a "saggio Architetto" of the state. 55. For the engraving, see Lang. cat. 27,76. 56. For the medal, which shows a standing woman holding a staff and feeding a snake from a bowl, see Pollard, 1985, no. 328. Lang. cat. 27,156 calls her Hygieia, and the figure has also been wrongly identified as Temperance. Prudence was a favored virtue of an older Duke Cosimo, as in Bronzino's Allegory of Happiness, where she holds a terrestrial globe (instead of her usual mirror) in allusion to Cosimo's dominion; and the left side of her Janus face is a portrait of the duke himself (Uffizi; see Bac. no. 123; Smith, 1984). And she literally accompanies him in Vasari's Duke Cosimo Planning His Campaign against Siena (see n. 54), where she joins Fortitude, who holds her column. 57. The partizione semplice was apparently decided on as the official form of the stemma, for the quartered form as it appears in the drawing never occurs again in Cosimo's art. For the ways in which the arms of two families joined in marriage were combined in Renaissance heraldry, see G. C. Bascapè and M. del Piazzo, Insegne e simboli: Araldica pubblica e privata, medievale e moderna, Rome, 1983, pp. 485–714; 559–69 on partizioni. 58. Paris, Louvre 6356v; 38.7 × 22.5 cm.; the stemma itself measures about 8 × 6 cm. The sheet has recently been lifted from its mount to reveal this study at the lower left of the verso; its design is close to that of the arms painted on the vault except that Bronzino has sketched in only the Medici palle on the shield (see J. Cox Rearick, "Deux dessins de Bronzino [1503–1572] découverts au Louvre," La revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, 1991, nos. 5–6, pp. 35–47). 59. See Giam., p. 18 (Min.&Mit., p. 124).
Page 403
60. See Giam., pp. 39, 42 (Min.&Mit., pp. 142, 166): "Et haveva per cimiero sopra un'dorato vaseto, l'Aquila Imperiale, con l'Ali alquanto inclinate, come s'ella notessi conare le rosse Palle, che sotto le sue penne, raccolte si dimostranano." 61. The eagle is not part of the stemma in the Sala delle Udienze (although it was featured in stainedglass windows, executed before 1543). Later it was replaced with Cosimo's emblem of the Golden Fleece, as in Bronzino's tapestry of the ducal arms (see Fig. 107), in Della Robbia's Medici stemma at La Verna (both of 1549), and in numerous other works. 62. See R. Delbrück, Antike Porphyrwerke, Berlin, 1932; and J. Deér, "The Dynastic Porphyry Tombs of the Norman Period in Sicily," trans. G. A. Gillhoff, in Dumbarton Oaks Studies, 5, Cambridge, Mass., 1959, especially chaps. 2 and 7, for the use by emperors of the stone in imperial funeral monuments, temples, and palaces and in decorative details of statuary of themselves or of the gods. The practice of imitating porphyry in paint also had antique precedent; see Pliny, Naturalis historia, bk. XXXV, chap. 1, for the technique of simulated marble. 63. See E. J. Mundy, "Porphyry and the 'Posthumous' FifteenthCentury Portrait," Pantheon, 46, 1988, p. 38. In the Old Sacristy, porphyry was used in the slab over the tomb of Giovanni di Bicci and in Verrocchio's tomb for Piero and Giovanni, and in the church it was used in Verrocchio's marker for the tomb of Cosimo il Vecchio. Vas.Mil., I, pp. 108–13, discusses porphyry at length as the first of the pietre dure, citing antique and Florentine examples. 64. Mundy (as in n. 63), pp. 39–41, demonstrates that there was a Renaissance tradition of portraits with painted porphyry reverses decorated with imprese, a form to which Bronzino's imitation porphyry frame of the MediciToledo arms is related. 65. On porphyry work under Cosimo, see Lang., I, pp. 113–15; and D. Di Castro Moscati, "The Revival of the Working of Porphyry in SixteenthCentury Florence," Apollo, 126, 1987, pp. 242–48. 66. For the citrus as mala medica, see CoxRear., pp. 150–51; and for the laurel, see CoxRear., pp. 17–27, 44–49, 54–56, 128–53. 67. See CoxRear., pp. 137–41, where the combination of these elements is interpreted as alluding not only to general Medicean regeneration but to the birth of Cosimo, the future duke. 68. See Giam., p. 39; Min.&Mit., p. 142. 69. See C. Adelson, in Pal.Vec. cat. 101; and CoxRear., p. 240. 70. The motif of flowers growing out of the Medici stemma can also be seen in Benedetto Pagni's Medici Madonna, presented to Cosimo in 1547. See Wright, 1986, p. 96. 71. See Gelli, 1969, p. 63. 72. See D'Ancona, 1977, pp. 296–99, 312–15; and Tervarent, 1958–64, cols. 204–5, who cites a portrait of Emperor Maximilian I and his wife, Isabella of Portugal, who holds the fruit in her hand as a symbol of marital union. 73. Bosch, 1983, p. 81 n. 24, remarks on the sexual significance of these fruits. 74. See the 1988 edition of Bronzino's Rime in burla, with notes to the poems (pp. 402–38) and an excellent bibliography of the editions of Bronzino's poetry (pp. 475–82). 75. See Bronzino, 1988, pp. 103–28, and the notes by Petrucci Nardelli, pp. 409–11, explaining the poem in the code language of burlesque poetry. 76. Vas.CdL, VI, p. 404 (Vas.Mil., VI, p. 558): "Sopra la figura d'un Mercurio che vola, ha finto per Priapo una zucca, attraversata da vilucchi, che ha per testicoli due petronciani, e vicino
Page 404
al fiore di quella ha finto una ciocca di fichi brugiotti grossi, dentro a uno de'quali, aperto e troppo fatto, entra la punta della zucca col fiore." 77. See P. Morel, "Priape à la Renaissance: Les guirlandes de Giovanni da Udine à la Farnésine," Revue de l'art, 69, 1985, p. 15. 78. Morel (as in n. 77), p. 24. 79. Later Cosimo himself was depicted in apotheosis in painting (Vasari's tondo in the Sala Grande) and in panegyric. See B. B. Davanzati, "Orazione in morte del Granduca Cosimo I recitata nell'Accademia degli Alterati," in Operette del Signor Bernardo Davanzati Bostichi tratte dall'edizione di Padova di Giuseppe Cosimo, Livorno, 1779, I, p. 162: "La famiglia de' Medici è . . . come stelle folgorante nel Cielo"; or Baldini, 1578, p. 16, where Cosimo is described at his elevation to the dukedom as "una nuova luce la quale apprisca et risplenda nel mezzo di molti oscuri et soliti." Chapter 11 1. See Nardi, 1838–41, II, p. 26; and Nerli, 1728, pp. 289–90. The Republican exiles interpreted this event similarly but cast it as a reenactment of a Roman drama, with Lorenzino as a new Brutus, Alessandro as Caesar, and Cosimo as Augustus (see Varchi, 1843–44, III, pp. 259, 288; and Segni, 1723, p. 209). 2. For a brief account of Old Testament imagery in Cosimo's art, see Richelson, 1975, pp. 109–13. 3. See Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 617–18; and C. Conti, Ricerche storiche sull'arte degli arazzi in Firenze, Florence, 1875, pp. 51–53. 4. See Albèri, 1839–63, I, p. 336. See also B. Betti, Orazione funerale di Benedetto Betti, Florence, 1574, p. 13, who gave populist overtones to this subject, declaring Cosimo to have been "quasi un altro David per providenza d'Iddio eletto capo di tanti popoli." In Francesco de' Medici's wedding apparato of 1565, the painting David Made King was placed over a statue of Cosimo; it was said to allude to Cosimo's having become duke by the will of God (see Cini, "Descrizione," p. 546). Cosimo even made a posthumous appearance as David in Poccetti's cycle the Triumphs of David (1580–90, Palazzo del Borgo), which depicted "l'istoria del trionfo di David, per alludere a' fatti della G. M. di Cosimo I" (see C. Theim and G. Theim, Toskanische FassadenDekoration in Sgraffito und Fresco: 14. bis 17. Jahrhundert, Munich, 1964, cat. 54). 5. This decoration of 1560 was based on a programme devised by Bartoli and Borghini; it featured paintings of Solomon that represented "le actioni d'un principe grande, giusto et honorato, come è il nostro" (Borghini, in Vas.Frey, I, pp. 526–31). For this decoration, see All.&Cec., pp. 187–88. Cosimo was also compared with Solomon in panegyric: see, for example, Cirni, 1560, p. 2, referring to Cosimo as a lawgiver, represented by a statue of Solomon inscribed "Placida Populus in pace regebat" in the apparato for his entry into Siena. 6. For this cycle, which also included statues of Moses, Abraham, Melchizedek, David, and Solomon, see Summers, 1969, pp. 67–90; and G. Spini, "Introduzione generale," in Architettura e politica da Cosimo I a Ferdinando I, ed. G. Spini, Florence, 1976, pp. 75–77. 7. For this relief, see H. Utz, "Pierino da Vinci e Stoldo Lorenzi," Paragone, 18, 1967, pp. 54–55, 61.
Page 405
8. These observations will be published in the acts of the conference on Pierino da Vinci, held in Vinci in 1990. 9. Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 631–32, mentions the relief but gives no details of its destination. See D. Summers, The Sculpture of Vincenzo Danti: A Study in the Influence of Michelangelo and the Ideals of the Maniera, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1969; Ann Arbor, 1970, pp. 68–88 and cat. VI, who suggests that the relief was set between smaller panels of the Flagellation and Resurrection. There it would have alluded to the Crucifixion, just as Bronzino's fresco does in Eleonora's chapel. See also Richelson, 1975, p. 111; and C. Davis, "Benvenuto Cellini and the Scuola Fiorentina," North Carolina Museum of Art Bulletin, 13, 1976, pp. 8, 61–62, who notes that Morgante, the court dwarf, is depicted in the lower right corner of the scene. 10. See C. de Tolnay, "Proposte per un ritratto di Francesco Guicciardini di Giuliano Bugiardini alla Yale University Art Gallery," MKIF, 21, 1965–66, pp. 359–65. In a revisionist gesture, Vasari interpreted Michelangelo's David (originally set up at the portal of the Palazzo dei Signori as an antiMedicean statement) as a reference to Cosimo's princely ideal of justice (Vas.Mil., VII, p. 154). 11. On Cosimo's paternalistic attitude toward the state, see S. Berner, "Florentine Political Thought in the Late Cinquecento," Il pensiero politico, 3, 1970, p. 190. 12. For this movement in the 1540s (an example of the continuous preoccupation of Renaissance Florentines with the ancient and noble origins of their city), see G. Cipriani, Il mito etrusco nel rinascimento fiorentino, Florence, 1980, pp. 78–87; D'Alessandro, 1980; and Simoncelli, 1984, pp. 1–72. For the myth of Noah's foundation of Tuscany, see D'Alessandro, 1980, pp. 74–75; idem, 1980, "Il mito," pp. 370–76. 13. See De Gaetano, 1968, pp. 31–33, 37–38; Plaisance, 1972, pp. 403–5; and Vasoli, 1980, pp. 33–46, 60. 14. Simoncelli, 1984, p. 16. See also Stoichita, 1988, pp. 131–35. 15. See Grazzini, 1882, pp. 79, 81, 342, 529, and 569. Grazzini, p. 349, also called him a twofaced "Giano," in ironic reference to NoahJanus. Bartoli was called "l'Etrusco." On the Aramei, see Plaisance, 1972, pp. 403–4; De Gaetano, 1968, pp. 46–47; and idem, 1976, pp. 43–45, 125–27. 16. See Giambullari, Il Gello, Florence, 1546. On this work, see Plaisance, 1974, pp. 183–84; and D'Alessandro, 1980. 17. See Gelli, 1969, pp. 64–70. D'Alessandro, in Gelli, 1979, pp. 67–69, dates the "arameietruschi" theories to 1539 and the Eclogue to the same year. For an analysis of the poem, see D'Alessandro, 1980, "Il mito," pp. 358–62. 18. For the lecture, see BNF, ms. Magl. VI.163, ff. 222–249. It is discussed by Plaisance, 1972, pp. 413–14; idem, 1974, pp. 177–78, 181n.; and D'Alessandro, 1980, "Il mito," pp. 356–58. 19. See Gelli, 1979. For this work, see D'Alessandro, 1980, "Il mito"; also Plaisance, 1974, pp. 179–82; De Gaetano, 1976, pp. 40–47; and Simoncelli, 1984, pp. 19–20, who believes that the work was written closer to the date of Cosimo's assumption of power. 20. See Cipriani (as in n. 12), pp. 75–79; and D'Alessandro, 1980, "Il mito," pp. 354–56, who suggests that this "scelta di politica culturale" was an assertion of Cosimo's escape from feudal dependency on Charles V, who was characterized as the new Augustus. For the extent of Gelli's
Page 406
role in the wedding apparato and the crediting to him of parts not previously known to be his, see De Gaetano, 1976, pp. 37–39. 21. See Giam., pp. 45, 54 (Min.&Mit., pp. 168, 195). Volterra also boasted her Etruscan origins by wearing a hat representing Janus bifrons (Giam., p. 53). For the political significance of the wedding pageant, see Plaisance, 1974, p. 181 n. 94. 22. On Bartoli and his close association with the ideas of Gelli and Giambullari, see Plaisance, 1972, pp. 405–7; and D'Alessandro, 1980, "Il mito," pp. 362–63. For Bartoli as preposto of San Giovanni, see Bryce, 1983, p. 35. 23. See Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 285–86; also CoxRearick, 1964 [1981], pp. 318–42, with a diagram of the probable placement of the scenes. 24. I suggest that Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 285–86 (Vasari admitted he did not understand the cycle at all) carelessly located The Benediction of the Seed of Noah in the upper zone. The event occurred after the Deluge, not before, and is part of the episode of God's covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:1–17); thus, it would have been part of the scene of God speaking with Noah. I propose that a large black chalk drawing of old men, women, and children (London, British Museum 19744636) is Pontormo's study for part of this monumental fresco on the left lower wall. See J. CoxRearick, "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori, and the lost "Deluge" at S. Lorenzo," Burl., 134, 1992, pp. 239–48. 25. Vas.Mil., VI, pp. 284–86; VII, p. 130. 26. Borghini, 1584, p. 78. 27. Possible connections between Pontormo and the spiritualism movement of the reformers, especially the Valdesians, have been suggested by K. W. Forster, "Pontormo, Michelangelo, and the Valdesian Movement," Aktes des 21. Internationalen Kongress für Kunstgeschichte in Bonn 1964, II, Michelangelo, Berlin, 1967, pp. 181–85 (with the reformers Varchi and Vincenzo Borghini proposed as authors of the programme); and Corti, 1977, pp. 14–23 (with Riccio suggested as instrumental in the programme). See also the review of these articles by P. Simoncelli, "Jacopo da Pontormo e Pierfrancesco Riccio: Due appunti," Critica storica, 1980, no. 3, pp. 331–48. V. I. Stoichita, in contrast, connected the programme with hermetic and alchemical texts in "La sigla del Pontormo: Il programma iconografico della decorazione del Coro di San Lorenzo," Storia dell'arte, 38–40, 1980, pp. 241–56. 28. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 91. 29. Giambullari was made a canon of S. Lorenzo in 1536 (see Mellini, 1820, p. 65; and D. Moreni, Continuazione delle memorie istoriche dell'Ambrosiana R. Basilica di S. Lorenzo di Firenze, Florence, 1816–17, pp. 305–11). For his secretaryship, see Florence, Biblioteca MediceaLaurenziana, ASL, Libro dei Partiti C (1544–62), ff. 2, 7, 14, etc. 30. Stoichita, 1988, who argued for this Aramean influence, also discusses the development of the Noah myth with emphasis on hermetic ideas in the writings of Guillaume Postel (De Eturiae regionis, Florence, 1555), which he believes influenced Pontormo. 31. See Gelli, 1979, pp. 89–96, describing the flood and its aftermath. 32. Nerli, 1728, p. 298. See also Domenichi, 1549, p. 252v (quoted in Chapter 1). For the theme of the pubblico bene in Cosimo's early years, see Albertini, 1970, pp. 295–99. 33. It might be added that an Old Testament image even surfaced in Salviati's Camillus cycle, where The Sacrifice of Isaac (alluding to AbrahamCosimo and deliberately contrasting with the style all'antica of the rest of the work) is set into the center of the south wall like an arazzo
Page 407
riportato (see Fig. 2). Bandinelli's incompletely realized sculptures in the Duomo choir also included twentyone reliefs of Old Testament scenes, separated by reliefs of prophets and apostles, which were to decorate the octagonal choir itself (only the prophets and apostles were executed); Adam and Eve were to guard its entrance (but were removed when their nudity caused a scandal); and the climax of the decoration was to be a cycle of Passion scenes (not executed) on the base of the high altar, with a Pietà (see Fig. 112) and God the Father Blessing on the altar itself. There seems to have been no explicit political programme for the ensemble (the subjects were not presented in a monumental narrative form conducive to political propaganda), although in 1550 Bandinelli did plan to include a statue of Duke Cosimo with the Pietà. For this project, see Heikamp, 1964. 34. Joseph had been used as an exemplar by Leo X (Cosimo's preferred model for propagandistic art) in the central bay of Raphael's Vatican Logge, where five episodes are to be read as biblical prototypes for the familiar Medicean themes of exile, dynastic continuity, and divine appointment, in this case in pointed reference to the Medici pope. See Davidson, 1985, pp. 74–75; and K. V. AndrusWalck, The ''Bible of Raphael" and Early Christian Antiquity, Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1986; Ann Arbor, 1986, pp. 134–48. 35. The parallel was first noted by VialeFerrero, 1961, p. 26; then it was studied in detail by Smith, 1982, pp. 183–96, who emphasizes the dependence of the programme on Philo Judaeus's Life of Moses (see Philo IV, London, 1934, On Joseph: The Life of the Statesman); see also CoxRear., p. 274. 36. Smyth, 1971, p. 39, noted the connection. 37. See CoxRear., p. 274. 38. Smith, 1982, p. 187, remarks on this emphasis, comparing it with the more standard division of scenes in the Joseph series mosaics in the Florentine Baptistery. 39. Barolsky, 1991, pp. 67–69, "The Meaning of Pontormo's Joseph," also notes that there were New Testament elements in the Borgherini room, since Joseph is a type of Christ and Granacci's Crucifixion completed the ensemble; moreover, the theme of salvation was emphasized by the wordplay on the patron's first name— Salvi. 40. See Pollard, 1985, cat. 514. The connection with the tapestry was noted by Smith, 1982, p. 192. Chapter 12 1. Meiss, 1970, p. 132, noted both that the Rock and Manna frescoes referred to the benefits Cosimo would bring Florence and that Cosimo, like other rulers before him, thought of himself as a new Moses. See also comments by Cheney, 1973, p. 167; Richelson, 1975, pp. 109–10; Smith, 1982, p. 196 n. 28; and McCorquodale, 1981, pp. 73–75. 2. See J. Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, London, 1972, p. 15 and n. 88. A few years after Bronzino completed the Chapel of Eleonora, Salviati painted Moses and Aaron before the Tabernacle in the Chapel of Cardinal Farnese. There, Moses and Aaron, emblematic of Paul III and of Cardinal Farnese, are legitimate administrators of divinely sanctioned authority (see Rubin, 1987, pp. 96–97). For other examples of Moses as a ruler's exemplar, see A. Calcaro, review of R. Mellinkoff, The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought, in College Art Journal, 32, no. 3, 1973, pp. 365–68.
Page 408
3. See Shearman (as in n. 2), p. 6, who cites Petrus Comestor's interpretation of Moses in Egypt as representing the appointment of Moses as princeps of the Jews. For topical references in the Sistine Chapel cycle, see Ettlinger, 1965, pp. 37–45, 104–19. 4. See particularly his entrées (Jacquot, 1960, II, pp. 415–19). 5. See M. Collareta, in Torriti, 1990, p. 657, who reads here a reference to contemporary Sienese events involving the imperial appointment of Francesco Bandini Piccolomini as archbishop. 6. I have discussed Machiavelli in relation to Bronzino's fresco (see CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 37–38). 7. On the principe literature of the Renaissance, see A. H. Gilbert, Machiavelli's "Prince" and Its Forerunners: "The Prince" as a Typical Book de Regimine Principum, Durham, N.C., 1938; and C. H. Clough, Machiavelli Researches, Naples, 1968, pp. 53–54. 8. See Mannucci, 1586, p. 178, who states that Cosimo ignored the Index of Paul IV on which the book had been placed; and Guardaroba Medicea 235, f. 3, for the book (listed as prohibited) in Cosimo's library. See also A. Panella, "L'introduzione a Firenze dell'indici di Paolo IV," Rivista storica degli archivi toscani, 1, 1929, pp. 11–25. For Cosimo's assiduous reading of "quei libri, che trattavano del governo di un buon principe," see Mellini, 1820, p. 48. 9. Bartoli, Discorsi istorici, Venice, 1569. See chaps. 36–37 on the duties of the principe, which are notably Machiavellian. 10. Il Principe, 1968, chap. VI, p. 31: "E, benchè di Moisè non si debba ragionare, sendo suto uno vero esecutore delle cose che li erano ordinate da Dio, tamen essere ammirato solum per quella grazia che lo faceva degno di parlare con Dio." And, referring to the actions of his other exemplars: " . . . parranno non discrepanti da quelli di Moisè, che ebbe sí gran precettore" (cf. also chap. XXVI, p. 103). 11. Il Principe, 1968, chap. VI, p. 30 (tr. Gilbert, 1965, p. 25). Machiavelli's four exemplars are first mentioned in chap. VI, pp. 30, 31, 32; they are probably referred to in chap. XIII, p. 61 ("ordini de' quattro soprannominati da me"); and they come triumphantly forward again by name in chap. XXVI, pp. 102, 103. 12. Il Principe, chap. VI, p. 31 (tr., p. 27). 13. Discorsi, bk. II, xxix. See also Il Principe, chap. VII. 14. See Il Principe, chap. VI, p. 32; chap. XIII, p. 61; and chap. XXVI, p. 103, on his four exemplars and the justice of war. See also Discorsi, bk. I, chap. 9, p. 154, where Moses exemplifies the ruler's need for complete authority; and bk. III, chap. 30, where he exemplifies the leader's necessary use of violence. 15. Il Principe, chap. VI, p. 31. After giving examples for Moses and the other three prototypes, Machiavelli sums up the matter: "Queste occasioni per tanto feciono questi uomini felici, e la eccellente virtú loro fece quella occasione essere conosciuta; donde la loro patria ne fu nobilitata e diventò felicissima." 16. Il Principe, chap. XXVI, p. 102 (tr., p. 94). 17. See V. Gaston, "The Prophet Armed: Machiavelli, Savonarola, and Rosso Fiorentino's Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro," JWCI, 51, 1988, pp. 220– 25; and A. Brown, "Savonarola, Machiavelli, and Moses: A Changing Model," in Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. P. Denley and C. Elam, London, 1988, pp. 57–72.
Page 409
18. See G. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Ezechiele, Rome, 1955, I, p. 254, Sermon XX; and Weinstein, 1970, especially pp. 27–66, 88–91. 19. See Lorenzo Violi, Le giornate, ed. G. C. Garfagnini, Florence, 1986, particularly pp. 336–56, an apologia in the form of a dialogue written ca. 1438–40 in which Savonarola's sermons on the Exodus are debated and he is repeatedly characterized as "nostro Moysé." I owe this reference to Donald Weinstein, to whom I am grateful for his counsel on Savonarolan issues. 20. See L. Polizzotto, "Confraternities and Political Dissent: The Case of the Savonarolan 'Capi Rossi,'" in Memorie domenicane, 16, 1985, Politica e vita religiosa a Firenze tra '300 e '500, pp. 258–83. 21. See Galluzzi, 1781, I, pp. 66–69; and A. Amati, "Cosimo I e i frati di S. Marco," Archivio storico italiano, 81, 1923, pp. 227–77. 22. The Gathering of Manna might allude to Cosimo's liberality; at least it stood for Medicean liberality in Allegory of the Liberality of Duke Alessandro de' Medici by Paolo Zacchi da Vezzano, in which coins fall like manna from heaven (Venice, Cini Collection; see Lang., I, p. 227). 23. See Cellini, La vita, bk. I, chap. 71; and Pollard, 1985, cat. 517. 24. Giam., p. 60 (Min.&Mit., p. 209). In the apparato, there was also a device that showed alcioni (kingfishers) nesting in the waters (Giam., p. 19); its motto was taken from Ovid's story of Neptune's calming the storm, a traditional metaphor of the ruler's putting down civil strife. For the connection between this imagery and Cosimo's Capricorn device, see CoxRear., p. 267. 25. See Adelson, 1974, pp. 33–38; Wright, 1976, chap. V; and CoxRear., pp. 268–69. 26. See CoxRear., pp. 38–40, 141. It may not be coincidental that this healing scene is over the doorway to the chapel, for its only prototype in Medicean art, Pontormo's St. Veronica in the Cappella del Papa, S. Maria Novella, is also on the chapel's entrance wall. There, the healing image of the sudarium alludes to Pope Leo X, who used the Medicimedici pun often in his art (see CoxRear., pp. 39–40). 27. Nerli, 1728, p. 246. 28. For the attributes of SS. Cosmas and Damian (who can also carry the martyr's palm), see Réau, 1955–59, III, pp. 332–38. Montorsoli's St. Cosmas in the New Sacristy in S. Lorenzo carries a medicine jar, as he does in most Medicean works (especially when he is a portrait). 29. The serpent itself would have been recognized as an allusion to the Medici: it refers to the Medicean device of a snake curling back on its tail, which signified the eternity of Medici rule. See CoxRear., pp. 30, 70, 77, 86, 278, and pl. 48. 30. The work was executed in 1553–54 by Antonio Lorenzi. See H. Keutner, "Niccolò Tribolo und Antonio Lorenzi: Der Askulapbrunner im Heilkräutgarten der Villa Castello bei Florenz," in Studien zur Geschichte des Europäischen Plastik, Festschrift Theodor Müller, Munich, 1965, pp. 235–44. See also Tribolo's design for the fountain, Paris, Louvre 49. 31. Before the crossing of the Red Sea, the people said that "it would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness" (Exodus 14:12); before the fall of manna, "the whole congregation of the people of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness" (Exodus 16:2); before the miracle of the rock, "the people thirsted there for water, and the people murmured against Moses" (Exodus 17:3); and before the installation of the healing serpent, "the people spoke against God and against Moses" (Numbers 21:5). 32. This work clearly reads as a warning to Cosimo's enemies of the consequences of dissent: the head of Medusa, ancient symbol of discord, will turn the discordant—those who oppose
Page 410
Cosimo's rule—into stone (see Spini, 1971, p. 838). Ironically, the Perseus was not unveiled until 1554, by which time the political issues of Cosimo's consolidation of power and suppression of opposition to it were no longer relevant. 33. For this interpretation, see CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 54–58. For a contemporary account of the battle, see C. Paoli and E. Casanova, "Cosimo I de' Medici e i fuorusciti del 1537, da lettere di due oratori senesi," Archivio storico italiano, 11, 1893, pp. 278–338. For Cosimo's historians the victory indicated the uselessness of protest against the inevitable rule of the Medici. See Nerli, 1728, pp. 299–302; Nardi, 1838–41, II, pp. 341–47; Segni, 1723, pp. 227–30; Adriani, 1871, pp. 13–18; and Adriani, 1587, pp. 55–62. For a modern account, see Spini, 1945, pp. 113–22. 34. See CoxRear., pp. 257–58, 269–72; and Rousseau, 1985, chap. I. 35. See Giam., p. 28 (Min.&Mit., p. 208). 36. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 445. 37. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 443. Giovanni's "fulmine di Giovio" was the device of the picture, also connecting Cosimo with his father. See also Min.&Mit., p. 134 n. 74; and CoxRear., pp. 241–42. 38. Even Cosimo's biographers do not attempt to put him at Montemurlo. See Mannucci, 1586, p. 72, on the duke's reception of the news of the victory: "Venne la nuova in Firenze della vittoria l'istesso giorno, che si hebbe, et essendo il Sig. Cosimo andato in Chiesa per ringratiar Iddio di sì felice avvenimento, grandissimo numero di Cittadini concorse à rallegrarsi con lui, et con lietissime, et alte, voci à salutarlo." 39. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 575, describes Battista's "la cosa di Montemurlo, dove furono rotti e presi i fuorusciti e rebelli del duca," as painted before Cosimo's marriage, on the apparato of which the painter also worked. The picture is listed in the 1553 Palazzo inventory as "Uno quadro di pittura detto il Rapto di Ganimede con la rotta di Montemurlo" (see Conti, 1893, p. 102; and M. G. Vaccari, in Pal.Vec. cat. 504). 40. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 575. 41. See Lang., I, p. 79 n. 2. This interpretation would seem to be confirmed by Vas.Rag., p. 70, where Vasari explains his own version of the subject in the Sala di Giove in the Palazzo: "Questo dinota l'essere chiamato da' suoi cittidini nella sua giovanezza, destinato principe di questa città, e da Cesare vostro, cioè dall'aquila, portanto in cielo e confermato duca." 42. Vas.Mil., VI, p. 575; see also E. Merkel, in Da Tiziano a Greco: Per la storia del manierismo a Venezia, 1540–1590, Venice, Palazzo Ducale, 1981, pp. 202–4, cat. 74; and J. M. Saslow, Ganymede in the Renaissance: Homosexuality in Art and Society, New Haven, 1986, pp. 166–67, who discusses it, together with other Ganymede images commissioned by Cosimo, as an example of the devaluation of the myth's sexual significance in favor of political and dynastic symbolism. 43. For the political symbolism of this work, see Rousseau, 1985, pp. 203–4; and T. Hirthe, "Die PerseusundMedusaGruppe des Benvenuto Cellini in Florenz," Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, 26–27, 1987–88, pp. 211–16. 44. Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. H. J. Lawlor, London, 1932, II, 361–65. E. Becker, "Konstantin der Grosse, der 'neue Moses': Die Schlacht am Pons Milvius und die Katastrophe am Schilfmeer," Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 31, n.d., pp. 161–71, suggested that the sudden appearance of the Red Sea subject on sarcophagi in the fourth century may have been due to this ConstantineMoses analogy and related the compositional formula for the scene to a lost mosaic commemorating Constantine's victory.
Page 411
45. See S. SindingLarsen, Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic, Rome, 1974, pp. 141, 150–52. 46. See M. Muraro and D. Rosand, Tiziano e la silografia veneziana del cinquecento, Venice, 1976 (published in English as Titian and the Venetian Woodcut, Washington, 1976), p. 82; and L. Olivato, "La Submersione di Pharaone," in Tiziano e Venezia: Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Venice, 1976; Vicenza, 1980, pp. 531–37. Another example is Andrea Previtali's Crossing of the Red Sea (Venice, Accademia), where the Israelites are in contemporary dress with banners flying. According to W. Barcham, The Religious Paintings of Giambattista Tiepolo: Piety and Tradition in EighteenthCentury Venice, Oxford, 1989, p. 19, this work also refers to Agnadello. Lost works depicting the Red Sea are also recorded (see Muraro and Rosand, p. 82; and Olivato, p. 531 n. 10). 47. I thank Edward Maeder for pointing out that the man being pushed off the horse wears the Turkish spiked crown and that two of the soldiers near him wear the Turkish pointed turban. 48. See also St. John Exorcizing in the Temple of Hieropolis, where two red banners with white crescents similar to the one in Bronzino's fresco are carried by members of the crowd. For the arms, see P. Litta, Famiglie celebre italiane, Milan, 1819–85, ser. I (S–V), pl. 1. 49. Letter of 15 January 1537. See P. B. Bigazzi, "Documenti inediti, spettanti alla vita politica e letteraria di Filippo Strozzi," in G. B. Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi, Florence, 1847, pp. 221–22; also Varchi, 1843–44, III, pp. 291–94. In the same letter Strozzi compared Cosimo unfavorably with Augustus, summing up the republican's pessimistic view of the situation after Cosimo's election: "Mi pare che possiam poco sperare; onde sto di mala voglia, e parmi che il benefizio del nostro Bruto riesca vano, come di quell'altro, succedendo Augusto in luogo di Cesere." 50. Vasari's work of 1559 is described and the prisoners named in Vas.Rag., pp. 190–91; see also All.&Cec., p. 144. This episode was embellished by the duke's biographers. For example, after noting the news of the victory, Mannucci, 1586, p. 72, continues: "Poco appresso giunsero i soldati con la preda, et con i prigioni: i quali condissero innanzi al S. Cosimo: et egli, senza schernire, nè insaltargli, nè con atti, nè con parole, modestamente li confortò." 51. There was to have been a battle scene on the other side of the base, which might have made the allusion to Montemurlo more pointed (see Bandinelli's letter of 12 October 1554, in Bottari, 1822–25, VI, p. 27). 52. Baldini, 1578, p. 26. 53. Eusebius's comparison (see n. 44) of Constantine to Moses quotes liberally from Moses' song of praise in Exodus 15 for God's deliverance of the Israelites. 54. In Salviati's Camillus frescoes (see Fig. 2), Fortitude is also adjacent to an allegory of Cosimo and the Battle of Montemurlo; and it may not be coincidental that Fortitude and Prudence stand beside the duke in Vasari's painting in the Sala Grande of Cosimo planning his second campaign against the fuorusciti (see Chapter 10, n. 54). 55. Rosello, 1552, p. 27v. 56. See CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 58–66. 57. I identified this portrait as Riccio (CoxRear., p. 108), as, independently, did Simon, 1984, pp. 16–17.
Page 412
58. For the practice as taken for granted in the midsixteenth century, see Vas.Rag., p. 87, on portraits in quattrocento frescoes that Vasari used as models for the personages in his historical frescoes in the Palazzo. 59. A midsixteenthcentury example using Old Testament imagery: in connection with a typological Old Testament programme for Vasari's projected decoration of the vault of the Pauline Chapel in the Vatican (a chapel of the Sacrament), Borghini proposed that Moses Investing Aaron and The Chair of St. Peter be paired and inscribed REGALE SACERDOTUM to demonstrate that "queste cerimonie e vesti esteriori non sono trovati umani, ma ordini divini" (see Bottari, 1822–25, I, pp. 253–62). 60. Moses reading the Law, the main episode, is presented as the prefiguration of the institution of the Eucharist, painted on the wall opposite (see Redig De Campos, 1971, p. 116). The tituli are REPLICATIO LEGIS SCRIPTAE A MOISE and REPLICATIO LEGIS EVANGELICE A CHRISTO. 61. See Ettlinger, 1965, p. 73. 62. For this lost work, see M. Lisner, "Josua und David—Nannis und Donatellos Statuen für den TribunaZyklus des Florentiner Doms," Pantheon, 32, 1974, pp. 232–43. 63. See Summers, 1969, pp. 82–83; also Richelson, 1975, pp. 113–14. 64. See Ettlinger, 1965, p. 73, who quotes the authority of St. Augustine and others. 65. The baton of rule had often been used in Medici art (see CoxRear., pp. 32, 160, 224, 234–35, 280, 283). 66. Given the coincidence of the other Moses episodes in the chapel with those cited in Il Principe, this scene might even reflect Machiavelli's citation of Moses as an exemplar of the prudent and virtuous founder who provides for the future of the state (see the Discorsi, bk. I, chap. 9, where Moses is the "prudente ordinatore d'una republica"). 67. See CoxRear., p. 272. 68. As G. B. Adriani, Orazione di M. Gio. Batista Adriani fatta in Latino all'essequie del Sereniss. Cosimo de' Medici Gran Duca di Toscana, Florence, 1574, n.p., commented: "Il nascimento del primo figliuol maschio reco al padre speranza e quasi certezza di havere in brieve a ricoverar le sue fortezze come Caesar li haveva promesse." See also, at greater length, Adriani, 1587, pp. 128–29. 69. See Giam., p. 19 (Min.&Mit., p. 124 n. 37). 70. See Giam., pp. 25–29 (Min.&Mit., pp. 130–35). Gelli's song for Apollo expressed similar ideas (Giam., p. 44; Min.&Mit., p. 168): Apollo prays, "Che di voi nasca stirpe al mondo tale / Che spieghi insino al Ciel secura l'Ale." 71. See CoxRear., pp. 283–85, with particular reference to Francesco's horoscope, which seemed to connect it with the horoscope of the founding of Florence. 72. ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, p. 224 (Settimanni). Vasari painted a vignette of the procession of the court to the baptistery in the Sala di Cosimo in the Palazzo (see Vas.Rag., VIII, p. 196). 73. See Gelli, 1969, p. 60: Donagli, santo Iddio, cotal valor che contro' a' miei nemici empi e ribelli, ribelli a quel che tu sol per mio bene ne l'alta mente tua vedesti sempre, porga non men terror, che 'l nome solo
Page 413 che si facesse e vivo e morto l'avo. Ben ne diede ei, Signor, al nascer seno porse l'ardita mano al duro ferro, che all'opra intenta la nutrice avea.
The editor identifies "avo" in line 6 as a reference to Giovanni delle Bande Nere. The poem was read at a meeting of the Accademia degli Umidi. 74. This gesture derives ultimately from Roman funerary art, where female mourners pull veils over their heads. For the motif of the Christ child wrapped in the Virgin's veil, see Michelangelo's Madonna of the Stairs (Casa Buonarotti), a number of Madonnas by Alonso Berruguete and the Master of the Manchester Madonna, as well as Raphael's Madonna di Foligno (Vatican) and the Bridgewater House Madonna (Edinburgh), where the child pulls the veil over his own head. 75. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut 5601. This copy of a lost drawing (or reworked original?) is a variant on the composition of Bronzino's London Holy Family. 76. Married in June 1539, Eleonora gave birth to Maria in the spring of 1540, Francesco in the spring of 1541, and Isabella in the summer of 1542. It would have been during the last pregnancy that Bronzino painted the Red Sea–Joshua fresco. 77. They also patronized the Franciscans later in their lives. Eleonora, whose personal devotion to St. Francis may have reflected the widespread Spanish devotion to the saint, left money to the Church of Ognissanti (which became Franciscan in 1561) for the celebration of masses there in her memory. See Cantini, 1805, p. 426, who states (without documentation) that masses were still being said in memory of Eleonora. For the church and the Franciscans, "tanti amati dal Cosimo e Eleonora," see A. Razzoli, La Chiesa d'Ognissanti in Firenze: Studi storicacritici, Florence, 1898, pp. 2–3. In 1561, Cosimo commissioned Bronzino to paint a Lamentation (see Fig. 108) for the "convento de' Frati Zoccolanti" at Cosmopoli on Elba (see Vas.Mil., VII, p. 602). 78. It is notable that with the exception of Maria (the first daughter, named after both Cosimo's and Eleonora's mothers), Giovanni (named after Cosimo's father), and Lucrezia (the third daughter, named after Cosimo's grandmother, Lucrezia Salviati de' Medici), all the children were named after members of Eleonora's family. Isabella (b. 1542) and Anna (b. 1553) were the names of Eleonora's sisters (the third was Giovanna); Garzia (b. 1547) was the name of the brother who was close to her and accompanied her to Florence. See BNF, ms. II.I.313, f. 171v: "A di [blank] di Ottobre la Duchessa partori un figliuol' maschio al quale ella fece per nome Gratia [recte Garzia] per amore all' suo fratello." In a clear example of "remaking" a dead relative by baptizing him with the same name (see KlapischZuber, 1985, pp. 283–309), Eleonora's last child, Pietro, born in 1554, was named after her father, who had died in Florence on 2 February of the same year (f. 179): "La Duchessa partori un bambino maschio . . . la Duchessa in memoria di suo padre gli fece por' nome Pietro." 79. Ammirato, 1641, III, pp. 460–61. See also ASF, Manoscritti 126, II, I, p. 114 (Settimanni): "gli fu posto nome Francesco, qual nome volle la madre porgli per devozione di S. Francesco d'Assisi, al quale si era racommandata per ingravidare in un figliuolo maschio, quando andò a visitare il sacro monte della Vernia." The story of the vow at La Verna is repeated by Segni, 1723, p. 248; Adriani, 1587, p. 129; and Cini, 1611, p. 111, among others. I have discussed the connection between The Stigmatization of St. Francis on the vault and Francesco's baptism (CoxRearick, 1987, pp. 64–67); Wright, 1986, p. 95, mentions it in relation to Eleonora's vow to the Virgin Mary in the Church of S. Maria degli Angeli at La Verna. Cosimo returned to La Verna
Page 414
on 17 November 1541 in remembrance of the vow (Spini, 1945, p. 187); and in 1549 he and Eleonora supported the building there of the Forestiera, where there are two MediciToledo stemme by Della Robbia. 80. See Gelli, 1969, p. 61: Ben ne dà certa speme il nome santo che dal divino oracolo ispirata ne' sacri voti suoi pensò la madre. Che se colui per cui Francesco ha nome, prosso al loco ond'io ho le mie prime acque, da te, sopra il gran sasso de la Vernia, . . .
81. Cock's engraving (see Fig. 155) interprets this fresco as a continuous tableau of the arrival of the Israelites after the Exodus, yet it incorporates motifs from Bronzino's depiction of the departure. Moreover, the Joshua episode has been suppressed by shifts in the placement of figures and other details: the pregnant woman is obscured; the group around Moses is more closely linked to the Red Sea episode; the rocky mass above Eleazar, which effectively separates the foreground scene from the Red Sea in Bronzino's fresco, has been removed; and—right above Moses—a man carrying his possessions (obviously part of the Red Sea episode) has been added. Evidently, a second version of the fresco composition—a disegno di stampa—was produced in Bronzino's studio about 1550 and sent to Antwerp, where it was reproduced in the engraving published by Cock. At this time, at a decade's remove from his original fresco, Bronzino (or possibly Allori) had the composition reworked so that the appointing of Joshua scene, relevant only in the context of the Chapel of Eleonora and only at the time of Francesco de' Medici's birth, was eliminated. For this interpretation of the print in relation to Bronzino's fresco, see CoxRearick, 1971, p. 16; and idem, 1987, p. 50; see also Smyth, 1971, p. 19, who dates the print to the early 1550s or later, and ByamShaw, 1976, I, p. 70, who dates it about 1560. There is a similar rearrangement of the fresco's composition, even less like the original, in a drawing attributed to Allori (Oxford, Christ Church 0170, 1142). See CoxRearick, 1971, pp. 13–17 (erroneously attributed to Bronzino); Smyth, 1971, p. 19 (attributed to Allori for Cock's engraving); Bac., p. 92; Cheney, 1973, p. 166; ByamShaw, 1976, nos. 133–34; All.&Cec., p. 27; McCorquodale, 1981, p. 82 (all attributing the drawing to Allori). Lecchini Giovannoni, 1988, p. 20; and Elizabeth Pilliod (oral communication) have expressed doubts (which I share) about the attribution to Allori, suggesting that the drawing is a work of Bronzino's shop. The engraving (or the drawing for it) may have been the stimulus for the Oxford drawing, which contains two details that appear in the engraving but not in the chapel fresco: the bearded man to the right of Moses in front of the nolongerpregnant woman and the two women conversing to the far left (deriving ultimately from the arrival scene in the fresco). Chapter 13 1. See A. Balletti, Gli Ebrei e gli Estensi, Modena, 1913, pp. 65–66; and C. Roth, The History of the Jews in Italy, Philadelphia, 1946, p. 215, who describes Donna Benvenida as "the most notable Jewess intellectual of the time." 2. See U. Cassuto, Gli Ebrei a Firenze nel rinascimento, Florence, 1918, p. 89. The relevant passage (quoted by Cassuto from Aboab, Nomologia, Venice, 1629, p. 304) is as follows: "Siendo alli [in Naples] Visrey don Pedro de Toledo, quiso que su hija, dona Leonor de Toledo, se criasse
Page 415
debaxo de la disciplina de la senora Benvenida, y en su casa, y despues que casò con el Serenissimo gran Duque Cosmo de Medices . . . siempre en su cosas se valia de la señora Benvenida que havitava en Ferrara, à quiem llamava madre, y como à tal la tratava, y venerava." 3. Ferrai, 1882, pp. 44–45, notes that Riccio was known for his lectures on Petrarch, his love of Virgil, and his collecting of books and sacred texts, but we have no evidence of any further scholarly activity. 4. See ASF, MDP 358, f. 602r (letter from Pierfrancesco Riccio in Florence to Lorenzo Pagni in Pisa, 11 November 1542); and f. 617r (15 November 1542). 5. Giambullari, 1546, p. 186 (noted by Gaston, 1983, pp. 53, 31). 6. Gelli, 1979, p. 85. See also pp. 82, 87, 90, 91, 94, 108, 111, etc. 7. See R. S. Samuels, "Benedetto Varchi, the Accademia degli Infiammati, and the Origins of the Italian Academic Movement," Renaissance Quarterly, 29, 1976, pp. 625–27. Varchi dedicated his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses on 1 May 1538 to Bronzino and Tribolo (see Pirotti, 1971, p. 271). 8. See Annali dell' Accademia degli Umidi poi Fiorentina, I (Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana, ms. B.III.51, f. 3). For Bronzino and other artists and the poet members of the Academy, see Heikamp, 1957, pp. 139–50; Plaisance, 1972, pp. 363, 369, 374–75; and Gaston, 1983, pp. 62–64. 9. See Vas.CdL, VIII, p. 22 (Vas.Mil., VII, pp. 599–600). For Pontormo's portrait, see Chapter 6, n. 54. Varchi is portrayed in Bronzino's Accademia Lamentation (see Chapter 6, n. 64). For Bronzino's portraits of other Academy members, see A. Cecchi, "Il Bronzino, Benedetto Varchi e l'Accademia Fiorentina: Ritratti di poeti, letterati e personaggi illustri della corte Medicea," Antichità viva, 30, 1991, pp. 17–28. 10. Gelli's portrait is noted by Matteoli, 1969, pp. 296–98, who mentions Gelli's interest in art as author of a Vite degli artisti; Giambullari's portrait is noted by Gaston, 1983, pp. 48, 52–53. 11. See "Al Bronzino Pittore," BNF, ms. Magl. VII.376, f. 378v (quoted in Heikamp, 1957, p. 154). Gaston, 1983, p. 53, suggests that Gelli might be Abraham. 12. See De Gaetano, 1976, p. 32, who unconvincingly suggests that the line refers to the portrait in Bronzino's Christ in Limbo, which the poet called an arazzo to make a rime with the last word of the verse, pazzo. The whole verse is as follows: Gello, io t'ho visto in un panno d'arazzo e spero di vederti in un orciuolo perché tu sei al mondo unico e solo non dico per poeta, ma per pazzo.
13. See Grazzini, 1882, p. 357. The entire poem is as follows: A Giambattista Gelli Così lo Ignogni, il Gallo, e 'l re Piccino, qualche quagnele sciatto e trafurello si tratta sempre, come il mio Bronzino trattato ha quel buffon magro del Gello acciò che per vendetta del divino monsignor Bembo ognun possa vedello filosofo volgar, poeta pazzo, dipinto vivo in un panno d'arazzo.
Page 416
F. Petrucci Nardelli, the editor of Bronzino's Rime in burla (1988, p. 403 n. 3), analyzed the secret language of burlesque poetry that Bronzino uses and suggests that this poem is about sodomy and implies a sexual relationship between the two men. In the fundamental volumes on this subject, J. Toscan, Le carnaval du langage: Le lexique érotique des poètes de l'équivoque de Burchiello à Marino (XV–XVII siècles), 4 vols., Lille, 1981, it is clear that most of the words in the poem belong to this language: for example, panno d'arazzo and magro (= behind), filosofo and poeta, as well as the adjective pazzo (= sodomite); vivo (= active sodomite), piccino (= anus), and tratto (= anal intercourse). Both poets suggest by way of this language that Bronzino and Gelli were homosexuals, but not necessarily in a relationship with one another. I am grateful to Michael Rocke for his assistance in interpreting this poetry. For related writings in prose by Lasca, see M. Plaisance, "Réécriture et écriture dans les deux commentaires burlesques d' Antonfrancesco Grazzini," Réécritures, I, Commentaires, parodies, variations dans la littérature italienne de la renaissance, Paris, 1983, pp. 185–223. I thank Leatrice Mendelsohn for this reference. 14. Gelli's features are recorded in a number of portraits reproduced by Matteoli, 1969, figs. 134–35, and in Bronzino's own Christ in Limbo. 15. See Chapter 12, nn. 73, 80. Appendix of Documents 1. Noted by Emiliani, 1960, p. 66. 2. Published in an incorrect transcription with no date in Poggi, 1909, p. 263. 3. Published in Gaye, 1839–40, II, pp. 328–30, with an old archival reference. 4. Referred to without archival reference in Castan, 1881, p. 462, and partially quoted in Castan, 1881, Mémoires, pp. 33–34; partially quoted with incorrect reference, date, and writer in Poggi, 1909, p. 263 n. 1; McComb, 1928, p. 19; and Emiliani, 1960, text to pl. 54. 5. Partially quoted in Castan, 1881, Mémoires, p. 34, as ff. 498r–v. 6. Partially quoted in Castan, 1881, Mémoires, p. 35. 7. Published in Gaye, 1839–40, II, pp. 330–31, in a slightly different transcription. 8. Partially quoted in Baia, 1907, pp. 74–75. 9. I am grateful to Alison Cross for bringing this document to my attention. 10. The ricordo on the delivery of blue pigment is quoted in Castan, 1881, p. 462; Castan, 1881, Mémoires, p. 11. I thank Alison Cross for indicating to me the entry for 26 March 1553. 11. Published in Conti, 1893, pp. 79–205, in a slightly different transcription. 12. F. 59r quoted by Beck, 1974, p. 65. 13. Partially quoted in All.&Cec., p. 28. 14. Noted in All.&Cec., p. 28. 15. Published in Gaye, 1839–40, III, pp. 134–35, with an old archival reference and in a slightly different transcription. 16. Cited in Lensi, 1929, p. 270 n. 17. 17. Partially quoted with the wrong date in All.&Cec., p. 28. 18. Partially quoted with the wrong date in All.&Cec., p. 28.
Page 417
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Adriani, G. B., Istoria de' suoi tempi di Giovambattista Adriani, Florence, 1587. ———, Scritti varii editi e inediti di G. B. Adriani e di Marcello suo figliuolo, ed. A. Bartoli, Bologna, 1871; rept., Bologna, 1968. Albèri, E., ed., Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, Florence, 183963, ser. II, Relazioni d'Italia, 5 vols. Ammirato, S., Istorie fiorentine di Scipione Ammirato, 3 vols., Florence, 1641. Baldini, B., Vita di Cosimo de' Medici Primo Gran Duca di Toscana, Florence, 1578. Baldinucci, F., Notizie dei professori del disegno, 7 vols., Florence, 184547. Barocchi, P., ed., Trattati d'arte del cinquecento, fra manierismo e controriforma, 3 vols., Bari, 196062. ———, Scritti d'arte del cinquecento, 3 vols., Milan and Naples, 197177. Bocchi, F., Le bellezze della città di Firenze, Florence, 1591; ed. G. Cinelli, Florence, 1677. Borghini, R., Il Riposo, Florence, 1584. Borghini, V., Carteggio artistico inedito di Don Vincenzo Borghini, ed. A. Lorenzoni, Florence, 1912. Bottari, G., Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura ecc., continuata fino ai nostri giorni da Stefano Ticozzi, 8 vols., Milan, 182225. Bronzini, C., Della dignità e nobiltà delle donne, 2 vols., Florence, 162432. Bronzino, A., Sonetti di Angiolo Allori detto il Bronzino ed altre rime inedite di più insigni poeti, ed. D. Moreni, Florence, 1823.
Page 418
———, Rime in burla, ed. F. Petrucci Nardelli, Rome, 1988. Cellini, B., Opere di Benvenuto Cellini, ed. G. G. Ferrero, Turin, 1971. Cini, G. B., ''Descrizione dell'apparato fatto in Firenze per le nozze dell'Illustrissimo ed Eccellentissimo Don Francesco de' Medici . . .," in Vas.Mil., VIII, pp. 518– 622. ———, Vita del Serenissimo Signor Cosimo de' Medici Primo Gran Duca di Toscana, Florence, 1611. Cirni, A. F., La Reale Entrata dell'Ecc.mo Sig.nor Duca e Duchessa di Fiorenza in Siena con la significatione delle latine inscrittione e con alcuni sonetti, Rome, 1560. Conti, C., La prima reggia di Cosimo I de' Medici nel Palazzo già della Signoria di Firenze, descritta ed illustrata coll'appoggio d'un inventario inedito del 1553 e coll'aggiunta di molti altri documenti, Florence, 1893. Didron, A. N., Christian Iconography, 2 vols., London, 1891. Domenichi, L., Nobiltà delle donne, Florence, 1549. Ferrero, G. G., ed., Lettere di Paolo Giovio, 2 vols., Rome, 195658. Gaye, G., Carteggio inedito d'artisti dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI, 3 vols., Florence, 183940. Gelli, G. B., Opere, ed. A. Corona Alesina, Naples, 1969. ———, Dell'origine di Firenze, ed. A. D'Alessandro, in Atti e memorie dell'accademia toscana di scienze e lettere la Colombaria, 44 (n.s. 30), 1979, pp. 61 122. Giambullari, P. F., Origine della lingua fiorentina altrimenti il Gello, Florence, 1546. Giovio, P., Dialogo dell'imprese militari e amorose, Rome, 1556. Grazzini, A. F., Le rime burlesche edite e inedite, ed. C. Verzone, Florence, 1882. Lapini, A., Diario fiorentino di Agostino Lapini dal 252 al 1596, ed. G. O. Corazzini, Florence, 1900. Machiavelli, N., Il Principe, trans. A. H. Gilbert, Durham, N.C., 1965. ———, Il Principe e Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. S. Bertelli, Florence, 1968. Mannucci, A., Vita di Cosimo de' Medici primo Granduca di Toscana, Bologna, 1586. Mellini, D., Ricordi intorno ai costumi, azioni, e governo del Sereniss. Gran Duca Cosimo I, scritti da Domenico Mellini di commissione della Serenissima Maria Cristina di Lorena e ora per la prima volta pubblicati, Florence, 1820. Molanus (J. Vermeulen), De picturis et imaginibus sacris, Antwerp, 1594. Nardi, J., Istoria della città di Firenze di Jacopo Nardi, ed. L. Arbib, Florence, 2 vols., 183841.
Page 419
Nerli, F. de', Commentari de' fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze, Augsburg, 1728. Pino, P., Dialogo di pittura (Venice, 1548), in Barocchi, 196062, I, pp. 96139. Ragusa, I., and R. B. Green, eds., PseudoBonaventure, Meditations on the Life of Christ, Princeton, 1961. Rosello, L. P., Il ritratto del vero governo del principe dall'esempio vivo del gran Cosimo de' Medici, Venice, 1552. Segni, B., Storie fiorentine di Messer Bernardo Segni, Florence, 1723. Spini, G., ed., Cosimo I de' Medici: Lettere, Florence, 1940. Varchi, B., Storia fiorentina, ed. L. Arbib, 3 vols., Florence, 184344. Vasari, G., Le vite de' piú eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani, da Cimabue insino a' tempi nostri nell'edizione per i tipi di Lorenzo Torrentino Firenze 1550, ed. L. Bellosi and A. Rossi, Turin, 1986. Vettori, P., Lauditio Eleonorae Cosmi Medices, Floren. et Sen. ducis uxoris . . ., Florence, 1562 (Italian trans. by N. Mini, Orazione di M. Piero Vettori nella morte dell'Illus. et Excellen. Donna Leonora Di Toledo Duchessa di Firenze et di Siena, tradotta in lingua fiorentina, da Niccolò Mini, Florence, 1563. Secondary Sources Adelson, C., "Fiorenza lieta": Benedetto Varchi's Program for the Villa and Gardens of Castello," Master's thesis, New York University, 1974. ———, "Bachiacca, Salviati, and the Decoration of the Sala dell'Udienza in the Palazzo Vecchio," in Le Arti del Principato Mediceo, Florence, 1980, pp. 141 200. ———, "Cosimo I de' Medici and the Foundation of Tapestry Production in Florence," in Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del '500, III, Florence, 1983, pp. 899924. ———, "The Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Tapestry: The "Joseph" Cycle and other Precedents for Vasari's Decorative Campaigns," in Giorgio Vasari: Tra decorazione ambientale e storiografica artistica, Arezzo, 1981; ed. G. C. Garfagnini, Florence, 1985, pp. 14577. Albertini, R. von, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. C. Christolini, Turin, 1970.
Page 420
Baia, A., Leonora di Toledo, Duchessa di Firenze e di Siena, Todi, 1907. Barolsky, P., Why Mona Lisa Smiles and Other Tales by Vasari, University Park, Pa., 1991. Becherucci, L., Manieristi toscani, Bergamo, 1944. ———, Bronzino, Florence, 1949. Beck, J. H., "Bronzino nell'inventario mediceo del 1560: Nell'occasione del quattrocentesimo anniversario della morte," Antichità viva, 11, no. 3, 1972, pp. 1012. ———, "The Medici Inventory of 1560," Antichità viva, 13, no. 3, 1974, pp. 6466; no. 5, pp. 6163. Berenson, B., Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, London, 1936. ———, The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, 3 vols., Chicago, 1938. ———, I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, 2 vols., Milan, 1961. ———, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Florentine School, 2 vols., London, 1963. Berti, L., Sembianze del Pontormo (Quaderni Pontormeschi no. 5), Empoli, 1956. ———, Gli Uffizi: Catalogo generale, Florence, 1979. ———, ed., Il primato del disegno, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici nell'Europa del cinquecento, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, 1980. Bigazzi, I., Prato e i Medici nel '500: Società e cultura artistica, Prato, Palazzo Pretorio, 1980. Booth, C., Cosimo I, Duke of Florence, Cambridge, 1921. Borsook, E., "Art and Politics at the Medici Court: The Funeral of Cosimo I de' Medici," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 12, 196566, pp. 3154. Bosch, L. M. F., "Time, Truth, and Destiny: Some Iconographical Themes in Bronzino's Primavera and Giustizia," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 27, 1983, pp. 7382. Bryce, J., Cosimo Bartoli (15031572): The Career of a Renaissance Polymath, Geneva, 1983. ByamShaw, J., Drawings by Old Masters at Christ Church, Oxford, 2 vols., Oxford, 1976. Campbell, M., review of K. Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, in The Burlington Magazine, 127, 1985, pp. 38688. Cantini, L., Vita di Cosimo de' Medici primo granduca di Toscana, Florence, 1805.
Page 421
Caron, L., "The Use of Color by Rosso Fiorentino," The SixteenthCentury Journal, 19, 1988, pp. 35578. Castan, A., "Le Bronzino du Musée de Besançon," Mémoires de la Société d'Emulation du Doubs, 12 March 1881, pp. 540. ———, "Le Musée de Besançon et la Déposition de Croix du Bronzino," Gazette des BeauxArts, 33, 1881, pp. 45864. Cheney, I. H., Francesco Salviati (15101563), Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1963; Ann Arbor, 1963. ———, review of C. H. Smyth, Bronzino as Draughtsman, in Master Drawings, 11, 1973, pp. 16571. Cochrane, E., Florence in the Forgotten Centuries: 15271800, Chicago, 1973. Collareta, M., review of E. Allegri and A. Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici, in Bollettino d'arte, 65, 1980, pp. 11518. Cope, M. E., The Venetian Chapel of the Sacrament in the Sixteenth Century, Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1965; New York, 1979. Corti, R., "Pontormo a San Lorenzo: Un episodo figurativo dello 'spiritualismo' italiano," Ricerche di storia dell'arte, 6, 1977, pp. 536. CoxRearick, J., The Drawings of Pontormo, 2 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1964 (2nd ed., New York, 1981). ———, "Some Early Drawings by Bronzino," Master Drawings, 2, 1964, pp. 36382. ———, "Les Dessins de Bronzino pour la Chapelle d'Eleonora au Palazzo Vecchio," Revue de l'Art, 14, 1971, pp. 722. ———, "Bronzino's Young Woman with Her Little Boy," Studies in the History of Art, National Gallery of Art, 12, 1982, pp. 6779. ———, "Bronzino's Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua: Prolegomena to the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo," The Art Bulletin, 69, 1987, pp. 4567. ———, "A Saint Sebastian by Bronzino," The Burlington Magazine, 129, 1987, pp. 15562. ———, "From Bandinelli to Bronzino: The Genesis of the Lamentation from the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 33, 1989, pp. 3784. D'Alessandro, A., "Il Gello di Pierfrancesco Giambullari: Mito e ideologia nel
Page 422
principato di Cosimo I," in La nascita della Toscana: Dal convegno di studi per il IV centenario della morte di Cosimo I de' Medici, Florence, 1974; ed. M. Tarassi, Florence, 1980, pp. 73104. ———, "Il mito dell'origine 'aramea' di Firenze in un trattatello di Giambattista Gelli," Archivio storico italiano, 138, 1980, pp. 33989. D'Ancona, M. L., The Garden of the Renaissance: Botanical Symbolism in Italian Painting, Florence, 1977. Daniélou, J., Sacramentum Futuri: Etudes sur les origines de la typologie biblique, Paris, 1950. ———, Biblia e liturgia: La teologica biblica dei sacramenti e delle feste secondo i padre della chiesa, Milan, 1965. Davidson, B. F., Raphael's Bible: A Study of the Vatican Logge, University Park, Pa., and London, 1985. Davies, M., The Earlier Italian Schools, London, National Gallery, 1971. De Gaetano, A. L., "The Florentine Academy and the Advancement of Learning through the Vernacular: The Orti Oricellari and the Sacra Accademia," Bibliothéque de humanisme et renaissance, 30, 1968, pp. 1952. ———, Giambattista Gelli and the Florentine Academy: The Rebellion against Latin, Florence, 1976. Dolcini, L., ed., Gli arazzi della Sala dei Dugento: Studi per il restauro, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio, 1985. Emiliani, A., Il Bronzino, Busto Arsizio, 1960. ———, "Il Bronzino e la Cappella di Eleonora da Toledo in Palazzo Vecchio," Acropoli, I, 1961, pp. 12138. ———, Bronzino (I maestri del colore), Milan, 1966. Ettlinger, L. D., The Sistine Chapel before Michelangelo: Religious Imagery and Papal Primacy, Oxford, 1965. ———, "Hercules Florentinus," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 16, 1972, pp. 11942. Ferrai, L. A., Cosimo de' Medici duca di Firenze, Bologna, 1882. Ferruzzi, F., "La Camera del Granduca," Rivista d'arte, 38, 1986, pp. 299326. Fleming, J. V., From Bonaventure to Bellini: An Essay in Franciscan Exegesis, Princeton, 1982. Forlani Tempesti, A., Mostra di disegni dei fondatori dell'Accademia delle Arti del
Page 423
Disegno nel IV centenario della fondazione, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 1963. Forster, K. W., "Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of Cosimo I de' Medici," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 15, 1971, pp. 65104. Freedberg, S. J., "Observations on the Painting of the Maniera," The Art Bulletin 47, 1965, pp. 18797. ———, Painting in Italy, 15001600, Harmondsworth, 1971 (2nd ed., 1990). Furno, A., La vita e le rime di Agnolo Bronzino, Pistoia, 1902. Galluzzi, R., Istoria del Granducato di Toscana sotto il governo della casa Medici, 2 vols., Florence, 1781. Garfagnini, G. C., ed., Giorgio Vasari: Tra decorazione ambientale e storiografico artistica, Convegno di Studi, Arezzo, 1981; Florence, 1985. Garrucci, R., Storia dell'arte cristiana nei primi otto secoli della chiesa, 5 vols., Prato, 187280. Gaston, R. W., "Iconography and Portraiture in Bronzino's Christ in Limbo," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 27, 1983, pp. 4172. Geisenheimer, H., "Le pitture di Alessandro Allori nel Refettorio di S. M. Novella," Rivista d'arte, 3, 1905, pp. 93111. Goffen, R., "Friar Sixtus IV and the Sistine Chapel," Renaissance Quarterly, 39, 1986, pp. 21862. Goldschmidt, F., Pontormo, Rosso und Bronzino, Leipzig, 1911. Hall, M. B., Renovation and CounterReformation: Vasari and Duke Cosimo in Sta Maria Novella and Sta Croce, 15651577, Oxford, 1979. Hatfield, R., Botticelli's Uffizi "Adoration": A Study in Pictorial Content, Princeton, 1976. Hautecoeur, L., "Le Concile de Trente et l'art," in Il Concilio di Trento e la riforma tridentina: Atti del convegno storico internazionale, Trent, 1963; Rome, 1965, I, pp. 34562. Heikamp, D., "Rapporti fra accademici ed artisti nella Firenze dell '500: Da memorie e rime dell'epoca," Il Vasari, n.s. 1, 1957, pp. 13963. ———, "Baccio Bandinelli nel Duomo di Firenze," Paragone, 15, 1964, pp. 3242. Jacquot, J., Les fêtes de la Renaissance, II, Fêtes et céremonies au temps de Charles Quint, Paris, 1960.
Page 424
Kemp, M., "From Mimesis to Fantasia: The Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration, and Genius in the Visual Arts," Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 8, 1977, pp. 34798. KlapischZuber, C., "The Name 'Remade': The Transmission of Given Names in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries," in Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. L. Cochrane, Chicago and London, 1985, pp. 283309. Lecchini Giovannoni, S., Mostra di disegni di Alessandro Allori (Firenze 15351607), Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 1970. ———, "Osservazioni sull'attività giovanile di Alessandro Allori—prima parte," Antichità viva, 27, 1988, pp. 1022. Lensi, A., Palazzo Vecchio, Milan, 1929. Levey, M., Bronzino (The Masters, no. 82), London, 1967. McComb, A., Agnolo Bronzino, His Life and Works, Cambridge, Mass., 1928. McCorquodale, C., Bronzino, New York, 1981. McGrath, E., "'Il senso nostro': The Medici Allegory Applied to Vasari's Mythological Frescoes in the Palazzo Vecchio," in Garfagnini, 1985, pp. 11734. Matteoli, A., "La Ritrattistica del Bronzino nel Limbo," Commentari, 20, 1969, pp. 281316. Meiss, M., The Great Age of Fresco: Discoveries, Recoveries, and Survivals, New York, 1970. Mellinkoff, R., The Horned Moses in Medieval Art and Thought, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1970. Mendelsohn, L., Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi's "Due Lezzioni" and Cinquecento Art Theory, Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1978; Ann Arbor, 1982. Mitchell, B., Italian Civic Pageantry in the High Renaissance: A Descriptive Bibliography of Triumphal Entries and Selected Other Festivals for State Occasions, Florence, 1979. MonbeigGoguel, C., Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins, Inventaire général des dessins italiens: I, Maîtres toscans nés après 1500, morts avant 1600: Vasari et son temps, Paris, 1972. Moreni, D., Pompe funebri celebrate nell'Imp. e Real Basilica di San Lorenzo, Florence, 1827. Parker, K. T., Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum: Italian Schools, 2 vols., Oxford, 1972.
Page 425
Picenardi, G. S., "Esumazione e ricognizione delle ceneri dei principi Medici fatta nell'anno 1857," Archivo storico italiano, 1888, pp. 33360. Pieraccini, G., La stirpe de' Medici di Cafaggiolo, 3 vols., Florence, 192425. Pirotti, O., Benedetto Varchi e la cultura del suo tempo, Florence, 1971. Plaisance, M., "Une première affirmation de la politique culturelle de Côme Ier: La transformation de l'Académie des Humidi en Académie Florentine (15401542)," in Les écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l'époque de la Renaissance, II, Paris, 1972, pp. 361438. ———, "Culture et politique à Florence de 1542 à 1551: Lasca et les Humidi aux prises avec l'Académie Florentine," in Les écrivains et le pouvoir en Italie à l'époque de la Renaissance, III, Paris, 1974, pp. 149242. Plazzotta, C., "'Il Pennel Dotto': The Presentation of Women in Three Portraits by Bronzino," Master's thesis, University of London, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 1988. Poggi, G., "La Pietà del Bronzino del quartiere di Eleonora da Toledo," Rivista d'arte, 6, 1909, pp. 26263. Pollard, G., Italian Renaissance Medals in the Museo Nazionale of Bargello, II, 15131640, Florence, 1985. PopeHennessy, J., The Portrait in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1966. Pouncey, P., review of B. Berenson, I disegni dei pittori fiorentini, in Master Drawings, 2, 1964, pp. 27893. Rau, A. F., and M. Rastrelli, Degli uomini illustri nella pittura, scultura, e architettura con i loro elogi, e ritratti, 12 vols., Florence, 176376. Réau, L., Iconographie de l'art chrétien, 3 vols., Paris, 195559. Redig de Campos, D., "I 'Tituli' degli affreschi del Quattrocento nella Cappella Sistina," Studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Valeriano Mariani, Naples, 1971, pp. 11321. Richa, G., Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine divise ne' suoi quartiere, 10 vols., Florence, 175462. Richelson, P. W., Studies in the Personal Imagery of Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1973; New York, 1975. Rousseau, C., Cosimo I de' Medici and Astrology: The Symbolism of Prophecy, Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1983; Ann Arbor, 1985. Rubin, P., "The Private Chapel of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the Cancelleria," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 50, 1987, pp. 82112.
Page 426
Saltini, G. N., Tragedie medicee domestiche (15371587), Florence, 1898. Scaduto, M., L'epoca di Giacomo Laínez: Il governo 15561565, Rome, 1964. Schaeffer, E., "Bronzino," ThiemeBecker Künstlerlexikon, V, Leipzig, 1911, pp. 6063. Schiller, G., Iconography of Christian Art, trans. J. Seligman, 2 vols., London, 1972. Schulze, H., Die Werke Angelo Bronzinos, Strassburg, 1911. Shapley, F. R., Catalogue of the Italian Paintings, National Gallery of Art, 2 vols., Washington, 1979. Shearman, J., review of A. Emiliani, Il Bronzino, in The Burlington Magazine, 105, 1963, pp. 41516. ———, Mannerism, Harmondsworth, 1967. ———, "Pontormo's Altarpiece in S. Felicita." The Fiftyfirst Charlton Lecture, University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1968); Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971. Simon, R. B., "Bronzino's Portrait of Cosimo I in Armour," The Burlington Magazine, 125, 1983, pp. 52739. ———, Bronzino's Portraits of Cosimo I de' Medici, Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1982; Ann Arbor, 1984. ———, "Bronzino's Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus," Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, 81, 1985, pp. 1727. Simoncelli, P., La lingua di Adamo: Guillaume Postel tra accademici e fuorusciti fiorentini, Florence, 1984. Smith, G., "Cosimo I and the Joseph Tapestries for the Palazzo Vecchio," Renaissance and Reformation, n.s. 6, 1982, pp. 18396. ———, "Bronzino's Allegory of Happiness," Art Bulletin, 66, 1984, pp. 39099. Smyth, C. H., "The Earliest Works of Bronzino," Art Bulletin, 31, 1949, pp. 184210. ———, Bronzino Studies, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1955; Ann Arbor, 1956. ———, Mannerism and "Maniera," Locust Valley, N. Y., 1962. ———, Bronzino as Draughtsman: An Introduction, Locust Valley, N. Y., 1971. Spini, G., Cosimo I de' Medici e l'indipendenza del principato mediceo, Florence, 1945; rept. 1980. ———, "Architettura e politica nel principato Mediceo del cinquecento," Rivista storica italiana, 83, 1971, pp. 792845. Stechow, W., "Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus?" in Studien zur toskanischen
Page 427
Kunst: Festschrift für Ludwig Heinrich Heydenreich, ed. W. Lotz and L. L. Möller, Munich, 1964, pp. 289302. Stoichita, V. I., "Pontormo und die 'Aramäer': Neue Betrachtungen zur Ikonographie der zerstörten Fresken im Chor von San Lorenzo in Florenz," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 32, 1988, pp. 12743. Summers, D., "The Sculptural Program of the Cappella di San Luca in the Santissima Annunziata," Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institutes in Florenz, 14, 1969, pp. 6790. ———, Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton, 1981. Tervarent, G. de, Attributs et symboles dans l'art profane, 14501600: Dictionnaire d'un langage perdu, Geneva, 195864. Tinti, M., Bronzino, Florence, 1920. Torriti, P., ed., Domenico Beccafumi e il suo tempo, Siena, 1990. Turner, N., Florentine Drawings of the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge and New York, 1986. Vasoli, C., "Considerazioni sull'Accademia Fiorentina," in La nascita della Toscana: Dal convegno di studi per il IV centenario della morte di Cosimo I de' Medici, Florence, 1974; ed. M. Tarassi, Florence, 1980, pp. 3361. Venturi, A., Storia dell'arte italiana, IX, 6, La pittura del cinquecento, Milan, 1933. Viale Ferrero, M., Arazzi italiani, Milan, 1961. Vloberg, M., L'Eucharistie dans l'art, 2 vols., Grenoble and Paris, 1946. Voss, H., Die Malerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz, 2 vols., Berlin, 1920. Ward, R., Baccio Bandinelli as a Draughtsman, Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1982. ———, Baccio Bandinelli, 14931560: Drawings from British Collections, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 1988. WeilGarris, K., "Bandinelli and Michelangelo: A Problem of Artistic Identity," in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor of H. W. Janson, ed. M. Barasch and L. F. Sandler, New York, 1981, pp. 22351. WeilGarris Brandt, K., "The SelfCreated Bandinelli," in World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity. Acts of the Twentysixth International Congress of the History of Art, 1986, ed. I. Lavin, University Park, Pa., and London, 1990, II, pp. 497501. Weinstein, D., Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1970.
Page 428
Weitzmann, K., ''The Origin of the Threnos," in De Artibus Opuscula XL: Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. M. Meiss, New York, 1961, I, pp. 47690. Wilpert, J., I sarcofagi christiani antichi, 3 vols., Rome, 192936. Winspeare, E., Isabella Orsini e la corte medicea del suo tempo, Florence, 1961. Wright, D. R. E., The Medici Villa at Olmo a Castello: Its History and Iconography, Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1976; Ann Arbor, 1976. ———, "Benedetto Pagni's Medici Madonna in Sarasota: A study in Medici Patronage and Iconography," The Burlington Magazine, 128, 1986, pp. 9099. Zeri, F., "Agnolo Bronzino: Il San Giovanni Battista della Cappella di Palazzo Vecchio," Paragone, 3, 1952, pp. 5759.
PLATES 1–33
Plate 1 Duke Cosimo de' Medici. Galleria degli Uffizi.
Plate 2 Eleonora di Toledo. Prague, National Gallery.
Plate 3 Chapel of Eleonora, view to the altar.
Plate 4 Chapel of Eleonora, view to the entrance.
Plate 5 Chapel of Eleonora, vault.
Plate 6 Chapel of Eleonora (south wall), The Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua.
Plate 7 Chapel of Eleonora (west wall), The Brazen Serpent.
Plate 8 Chapel of Eleonora (north wall), Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna; Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe [Allori].
Plate 9 Chapel of Eleonora, altar (east) wall.
Plate 10 St. John the Baptist (from the Chapel of Eleonora). Malibu, Calif., J. Paul Getty Museum.
Plate 11 Lamentation (from the Chapel of Eleonora). Besançon, Musée des BeauxArts.
Plate 12 Chapel of Eleonora, King David and The Erythraean Sibyl.
Plate 13 Chapel of Eleonora, spandrel with Justice.
Plate 14 Chapel of Eleonora, Annunciation.
Plate 15 Modello for the vault of the Chapel of Eleonora. Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut.
Plate 16 Chapel of Eleonora, St. Michael Fighting the Devil.
Plate 17 Chapel of Eleonora, St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata.
Plate 18 Chapel of Eleonora, St. Jerome in Penitence.
Plate 19 Chapel of Eleonora, St. John the Evangelist on Patmos.
Plate 20 Chapel of Eleonora, putto to the left of St. Michael.
Plate 21 Chapel of Eleonora, putto to the right of St. Michael.
Plate 22 Study for The Crossing of the Red Sea. Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi.
Plate 23 Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, figures on the right.
Plate 24 Chapel of Eleonora, The Brazen Serpent, detail, figures on the left.
Plate 25 Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Striking the Rock, detail, lower section.
Plate 26 Chapel of Eleonora, The Gathering of Manna, detail, lower section.
Plate 27 Lamentation, Besançon, detail, holy women.
Plate 28 Lamentation, Besançon, detail, three men.
Plate 29 Lamentation, Besançon, detail, angels.
Plate 30 Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Appointing Joshua.
Plate 31 Lamentation, Besançon, detail, head of a holy woman.
Plate 32 Chapel of Eleonora, Moses Appointing Joshua, detail, woman to the right.
Plate 33 Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet (tapestry). Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale.
Page 429
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS CITED Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale Recueil Boisot ff. 325–328v 3, n. 12 Florence, Archivio di Stato Carte d'Urbino cl. 1, Div. G., 266 f. 659r–v 1, n. 36 Fabbriche Medicee 2, f. 48 3, n. 35 f. 91 3, n. 38 10, f. 24v Doc. 22 f. 27r Doc. 23 f. 66v Doc. 25 f. 73r Doc. 26 f. 91r Doc. 27 11, f. 136r Doc. 29 Depositeria generale 393 2, n. 37 573 3, n. 1 f. 131 Doc. 5 f. 195v 2, n. 12 Guardaroba Medicea 8 2, n. 9 f. 4 2, n. 37 9, ff. 5v–13v 3, n. 9 10, f. 4 Doc. 7 ff. 21v, 22r, 32v, 43v, 47r 2, n. 14 f. 37 Doc. 6 12, f. 5v 3, n. 30 21, f. 42r 3, n. 31 23, f. 3r Doc. 18 27, ff. 49v, 65r Doc. 19 28, ff. 30r, 37r, 44 Doc. 20 45, ff. 28r, 59r Doc. 21 f. 60r 1, n. 73 87, f. 68v Doc. 28 189, f. 4 3, n. 20 289, f. 111v Doc. 30 Manoscritti 126, II, I p. 114 12, n. 79 pp. 161–64 1, n. 16 pp. 166–67 1, n. 25 p. 224 12, n. 72 pp. 294, 301 1, n. 42 p. 296 1, n. 37 p. 300 10, n. 6 p. 301 10, n. 5 127, II, II p. 453 1, n. 79 p. 488 7, n. 5 128, III pp. 239–40 1, n. 86 129, IV p. 134 7, n. 6 Mediceo del Principato 1, 13, ff. 64r–66r 1, n. 7 2, ff. 121v–123r 1, n. 5 ff. 138–139 1, n. 2 3, I, ff. 50r–51v 1, n. 10 f. 61r 1, n. 13 ff. 63v–64r 1, n. 11 6, ff.160r–163r Doc. 11 ff. 242r–248v Doc. 14
Page 430
Mediceo del Principato (continued) 10, f. 114v 2, n. 4 30, AC 1, n. 7 220, ff. 76r, 78v 3, n. 47 321, ff. 15, 17, 22, 28 Intro., n. 5 327, ff. 107ff 1, n. 85 335, II, ff. 468r–472v 1, n. 4 337, f. 134r 1, n. 8 338, f. 55r 1, n. 12 339, ff. 79r–81r 1, n. 19 351, ff. 326–327 2, n. 7 353, f. 317r 1, n. 12 ff. 259r–260r 1, n. 44 f. 324 1, n. 67 f. 369r 1, n. 43 354, ff. 15r, 16r–18r, 34r–v, 36, 132r–v 1, nn. 43, 45 358, f. 37 2, n. 8 ff. 602r, 617r 13, n. 4 f. 613 Intro., n. 12 373, f. 505r–v Doc. 10 394, ff. 549r–550r Doc. 15 ff. 580r–581r Doc. 16 497A, f. 1140 3, n. 45 600, f. 4v 2, n. 2 f. 8v, 18r, 21r 2, n. 11 f. 10v 2, n. 18 ff. 10r, 11r, 13r, 14v, 16r, 17r, 19r, 20v Doc. 1 f. 24v 2, n. 33 f. 25r–v Doc. 4 613, ins. XIV, f. 25v 3, n. 34 616, ins. I, ff. 9–10, 12–13 3, n. 3 1169, ins. IV, f. 1 1, n. 8 ins. IV, no. 13, f. 121r 1, n. 14 ins. V, f. 15 2, n. 6 ins. IX, f. 1 Doc. 9 ins. IX, f. 2 Doc. 12 1170, f. 363 5, n. 22 ins. IV, f. 207 2, n. 33 ins. VI, f. 336 1, n. 50 ins. VI, f. 361 9, n. 14 1170A, I, ins. IIIbis, f. 34 Doc. 13 f. 36 Doc. 8 f. 537 4, n.7 ins. II, no. 6, f. 14r 1, n. 52 1171, ins. I, f. 15 2, n. 33 1176, ins. I, f. 6r Doc. 17 ins. IX, f. 40 1, n. 72 ins. X, f. 3 1, n. 80 4296, ff. 299r–301r, 307r–v 1, n. 4 4299, ff. 88r–v 1, n. 7 f. 199 3, n. 5 4591, f. 41 Intro., n. 5 5922a, ins. XXVIII, ff. 128–131r 1, n. 84 Miscellanea Medicea VIII, 3 1, n. 7 Pergamene Medicee 90, p. 12 1, n. 7 p. 32v 1, n. 54 Trattati internazionali 1, ins. C 1, n. 55; 9, n. 25 Florence, Biblioteca Marucelliana B.III.51, f. 3 13, n. 8 Florence, Biblioteca MediceaLaurenziana ASL, Libro dei Partiti C ff. 2, 7, 14 11, n. 29 Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale II.I.313, f. 171 10, n. 27 ff. 171v, 179 12, n. 78 II.X.191, f. 4v 1, n. 1 Bandinelli 2.10, ff. 7–10, 17, 19, 34, 53 5, n. 14 6, f. 84r Doc. 2 ff. 91, 95, 118 5, n. 21 f. 99r Doc. 3 Magl. II.II.19, ff. 30–33 10, n. 6 VI.163, ff. 222–249 11, n. 18 VII.376, f. 378v 13, n. 11 VIII.80, I, f. 203v 1, n. 48 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana 2862, f. 163r 10, n. 23 f. 165r 1, n. 1 Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Archivio 70, f. 9 10, n. 9 1771A, III, ins. 27, f. 16v Doc. 31 Madrid, Royal Palace Library 2259 3, n. 10 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 1346–47 Doc. 24 Naples, Archivio di Stato Manoscritti nobiliari del march. Livio serra di Gerace, VI, f. 1506 1, n. 3
Page 431
GENERAL INDEX A Abravanel, Benvenida, 321 academies degli Umidi, 252, 287, 323 del Disegno, 283 Fiorentina, 252, 287, 322, 323 Adelson, Candace, 365n32 Adriani, Giambattista, 54 Agnolo, Baccio d': Chapel of the Priors, Fig. 15, 15 Alba, duke of, 22 Alberti, Leon Battista, 385n49 Aldana family, 392n5 Alessandro, Fra (chaplain of Eleonora di Toledo), 81 Allori, Alessandro and Bandinelli, 160 and the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, 88, 90 drawings Düsseldorf, Print Room FP4749, 379n36 Florence, Uffizi: 714F, Fig. 153, 227; 1787E, Fig. 136, 204; 10322F, 389n36 Oxford, Christ Church 0170,1142 (att. to), 414n81 paintings Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe, Pl. 8, Fig. 38, 63, 66, 67, 90, 143, 144, 225–26, 228, 248 Christ among the Doctors, Fig. 135, 203, 204, 209, 211 Christ in Limbo, Fig. 138, 205, 385n55 Deposition (Madrid), 378n29 Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock, Fig. 152, 226–27 Trinity, Fig. 137, 205 portraits Cosimo de' Medici (Studiolo), 52 Eleonora di Toledo (Studiolo), Fig. 31, 52 portraits of, Fig. 143, 212, 386n68 Almeni, Sforza, 82, 329 Ambrigia, Niccolò del: Punishment of the Sons of Aron, 215 Ammannati, Bartolommeo, 60 Fountain of Juno, 45 Fountain of Neptune, 10 portrait of, Fig. 8, 9 Ammirato, Scipione, 51, 296, 318 Andrea (chaplain of Eleonora di Toledo), 72 Angelico, Fra, 375n75, 386n67 Crucifixion (S. Marco), 191 Deposition (S. Marco), 201 Entombment (Munich), 384n38 Madonna and Saints (follower of), 239 Madonna and Saints (S. Marco), Fig. 162, 261 Anonymous engraving: Agnolo Bronzino, Fig. 1, 1 manuscripts Book of Hours of Eleonora di Toledo, Annunciation, Fig. 24, 37, 40, 277
Page 432
Anonymous (continued) Moses Appointing Joshua, 391n60 painting: Agnolo Bronzino, Fig. 139, 207 sculptures Apostles (Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo), 81, 144 St. John the Baptist (Bargello), 375n2 antique and Early Christian works Aphrodite, 113 Arch of Constantine, Liberalitas, 292 battle sarcophagi, 129 Belvedere Torso, Fig. 68, 117, 148 Crossing of the Red Sea sarcophagus, Fig. 146, 217, 229, 232, 234 Drunken Market Woman, 134 Dying Alexander, Fig. 81, 130 Idolino, Fig. 72, 122, 137 Jupiter torso, 75 Laocoön, 129 Moses Striking the Rock sarcophagus, Fig. 151, 224 Niobids, Fig. 78, 129, 130 S. Maria Maggiore, mosaics, 217, 219, 229, 392n62 S. Sabina, doors, Fig. 147, 217, 222, 229, 232 Aramei, 287, 289, 290, 295 Aretino, Pietro, 116, 266 Argent, Pierre d': Lamentation (after Bronzino), 78, 385n53 Arimathea, Joseph of, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201 Ariosto, Ludovico, 370n21 Ark of the Covenant, 223 arma Christi, 180, 192, 200, 240 Augustine, St., 213 Augustus, 278, 302 B Bachiacca, il, 327 and Bandinelli, 160 paintings Return from Exile of Cosimo il Vecchio, 400n25 scrittoio of Cosimo de' Medici, 57, 68 Stories of Moses (Gathering of Manna and Moses Striking the Rock), 219, 221, 225 terrace ceiling (Palazzo Vecchio), 84 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 3 portrait of, Fig. 10, 323 tapestries Months, 84 Sala delle Udienze, 57 Baia, Anna, 92 Baldini, Baccio, 308–9 Baldovinetti, Alessio: Madonna and Saints, 15 Bandinelli, Baccio, 2, 201 and Cosimo de' Medici, 155–59 drawings Amherst, Mass., private coll., Fig. 100, 157–59, 173, 176, 203, 265 Florence, Horne Museum 5608, 379n40 London, Katz coll., Fig. 121, 174, 203 Madrid, Academia de San Fernando 87, 379n41 Milan, Ambrosiana, cod. F.265 inf., no. 70, 378n29 Moscow, Pushkin Museum, 384n35 Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung 2215 , 378n26 New York, Metropolitan Museum 63.125, Fig. 118, 172 Paris, Louvre 99, Fig. 101, 159; 101 B, Fig. 117, 171; 106, 379n40; 117, Fig. 123, 177 Stockholm, National Museum 128, Fig. 119, 172 Turin, Royal Library 15595r, 379n40 Windsor Castle 0396, 379n41 drawings (lost) Birth of the Virgin, 160 Cleopatra, 378n29 Deposition (Palazzo Salviati), 378n29 Lamentation (Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo), 155–57, 159, 166, 177, 178, 209, 320, 321 Massacre of the Innocents, 159 Old Testament scenes, 159 and Dürer, 198 and Eleonora di Toledo, 156–59 engraving: Cosimo de' Medici as Hercules, 276 letters, 155–56, 376n14, 377n20, 411n51 paintings Dead Christ with Nicodemus (fragment), 384n45 Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo (unexecuted), 159 Martyrdom of SS. Cosmas and Damian (unexecuted), 159 Pietà with Nicodemus (lost), 379n46 Selfportrait (Boston), Fig. 142, 209 portraits of, Figs. 8, 109,118,119,120,121,141,142, 9, 172, 201, 203, 209, 212 salary, 359n12
Page 433
sculptures Andrea Doria as Neptune, 113, 378n33 Birth of the Virgin, Fig. 115, 168 Coronation of Charles V by Clement VII, 377n25 Cosimo de' Medici (Bargello), 254, 258 Cosimo de' Medici (relief), 377n24 Dead Christ with an Angel, Figs. 112,114, 8, 168 Dead Christ with Nicodemus, Fig. 109, 162, 168, 194, 201, 209 Descent from the Cross (S. Marino), Fig. 120, 173, 203 Duomo choir, 6, 8, 157, 407n33 Eleonora di Toledo, Fig. 21, 36 Giovanni delle Bande Nere Receiving Prisoners, Fig. 116, 168, 307 God the Father, 377n14 Lamentation (London), 379n43, 385n52 Monument to Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Fig. 4, 4, 10, 57, 157, 254, 266 Pietà (silver), 379n46 Udienza, 4, 57, 157, 254, 256 Bandini, Giovanni, 23, 29, 219, 350 Baptism, sacrament of, 191, 216, 217, 224, 229, 230, 319 Barbieri, Filippo, 381n4 Barolsky, Paul, 292, 370n21 Bartoli, Cosimo, 45, 251, 252, 287, 289; Discorsi istorici, 296 Bartolommeo, Fra Lamentation (lost), 376n11 Lamentation with SS. Peter and Paul, 376n9 Salvator Mundi, 389n34 battles Actium, 302 Agnadello, 305 Montemurlo, 22, 255, 258, 274, 297, 302–10 passim, 314, 315, 319, 325 Veii, 43 Beccafumi, Domenico, 2 paintings Four Evangelists, 215 Punishment of Korah, Fig. 77, 129, 215, 373n49 Siena cathedral pavement Moses Striking the Rock, Fig. 150, 129, 221, 225 Scenes of Moses on Mt. Sinai, 129, 222, 295 bella maniera, 178, 180, 182, 188 Bellini, Gentile: Crossing of the Red Sea and Flight into the Desert, 390n49 Bellini, Giovanni: St. Francis (New York), 389n25 Berruguete, Alonso, 413n74 Bettini, Bartolomeo, 368n3 Biblia pauperum, 213, 224 Bilivert, Giovanni, 383n29 Boccardi, Francesco di Giovanni, 356n55, 397n25; Cosimo de' Medici, 377n24 Bocchi, Francesco, 90 Bonaventure, St.: Legenda minor, 246 Borghini, Raffaello, 90, 290 Borghini, Vincenzo, 11, 52, 216, 251, 372n35, 406n27 Bosch, Lynette, 366n43 Botticelli, Sandro Adoration (Uffizi), 382nn15, 18 Birth of Venus, 315 Madonna delle Convertite, 398n1 Moses in Egypt and Midian, Fig. 148, 219, 390n51 Brandt, Kathleen WeilGarris, 379n39, 386n60 Brescia, Moretto da: Gathering of Manna, 390n38 Bronzini, Cristoforo, 51 Bronzino, Agnolo and Accademia Fiorentina, 252, 319, 323, 324 and the antique, 112, 113, 117, 122–23, 129–30, 134, 137, 148, 224 and artists Bandinelli, 127, 160, 162, 168–77, 193–94, 209, 212 Donatello, 174–75 Dürer, 198 Gozzoli, 15 Jacopino del Conte, 137 Michelangelo, 96, 105–7, 121, 124, 127, 137, 143, 152, 168, 193, 381n4 Perugino, 152, 198 Pontormo, 15, 70, 73, 94, 98, 100, 113, 135, 143, 152–53, 180, 203, 211, 368n2 Raphael, 96, 98, 124, 144, 200 Salviati, 160, 196 Tribolo, 107, 112 Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, Pls. 3–5 Angels with a Chalice, Host, and Globe. See Allori Annunciation, Pls. 9, 14, Fig. 128, 14, 78–79, 88, 92, 185–86, 188, 194, 248, 330
Page 434
Bronzino, Agnolo (continued) architecture (painted), 140, 145, 190, 278 Brazen Serpent, Pls. 4, 7, 23–24, Figs. 41, 74, 79, 13, 62, 67, 120, 123–30, 135, 140, 143, 144, 146, 228–29, 243, 299, 300–302, 309 Cardinal Virtues, Pls. 5, 9, 13, Figs. 35–37, 13, 19, 62, 63, 72, 88–90, 118–19, 271–75 Crossing of the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua, Pls. 6, 30, 32, Figs. 40, 156, 180, 183, 185, 13, 62, 67, 72, 88, 120–23, 140, 142, 143, 146, 214, 229–37, 299, 302–19, 391n52 (copies after) dedication, 228 Erythraean Sibyl, Pls. 9, 12, 63, 68, 72, 142, 145–47, 190–91, 271 fruits, 241, 248, 278–80 giornate, 66–68, 143 inscriptions, Fig. 34, 60–62, 190–91 King David, Pls. 9, 12, 63, 68, 72, 142, 145–47, 190–91, 271 Lamentation, Pl. 9, 14, 78–79, 84–85, 91, 92, 185–88, 328, 330 Lamentation (Besançon), Pls. 11, 27–29, 31, Figs. 97, 113, 125–27, 11, 14, 19, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149–85, 190, 191–212, 260–65 Lamentation (after; Castrojeriz), Fig. 44, 85 Lamentation (after; Pierre d'Argent), 78, 385n53 Moses Striking the Rock and the Gathering of Manna, Pls. 4, 8, 25, 26, Figs. 42, 82, 85, 14, 62, 67, 72, 73, 90, 120, 130–38, 140, 143, 146, 147, 193, 214, 222–27, 232, 299–300 putti, Pls. 20–21, Figs. 59–60, 63, 107–12, 117–18, 241, 279, 280 restorations, 368n67 St. Cosmas, 14, 79, 149, 266–70, 330 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Pls. 5, 17, 13, 62, 71, 101, 224, 242, 243–47 St. Jerome in Penitence, Pls. 5, 18, Fig. 57, 13, 62, 79, 100, 101–2, 105, 242–43 St. John the Baptist, Pl. 10, Fig. 91, 14, 79, 147–49, 191, 265–66, 268–70, 330 St. John the Evangelist, Pls. 5, 19, 13, 62, 71, 101, 242 St. Michael Fighting the Devil, Pls. 5, 16, 13, 62, 71, 101, 102, 105, 309, 317, 318 Trinity, Pl. 5, Fig. 46, 88, 248 vault, Pls. 5, 16–19, Figs. 39, 57, 59–60, 63, 58, 71, 97–111, 238–48, 276–81 color, 84, 140–44, 148–49, 182–85, 188, 196, 207, 329 competition with other artists, 10–12, 153, 155 drawings Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen C85r, Fig. 62, 107 Florence, Uffizi 576F, Fig. 56, 102;6639 F, 370n19; 6698F, Fig. 134, 196, 203; 6704F, Pl. 22, 122, 231; 10320Fr, Fig. 84, 134; 10320Fv, Fig. 89, 138; 10894F, Fig. 124, 181, 265; 13846F, Fig. 129, 186; 15559F, 373n53; 15721F, 370n16 Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut 5601 , Fig. 186, 316; 4344, Pl. 15, 101–2, 240, 242, 243, 276, 278 London, British Museum 1909612177, 370n16 Milan, Ambrosiana, Codice Resta 48, Fig. 90, 138; 61 , 370n16 Munich, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung 2147, 370n19 Paris, Louvre 17, Fig. 83, 132; 6356r, Fig. 58, 102, 122; 6356v, Fig. 171, 276 Paris, private coll., Fig. 80, 130 as homosexual, 324 letters, Fig. 45, 79–80, 87–88, 156, 328, 329, 330, 355n53, 369n7; to Varchi, 114, 116, 125 paintings Allegory of Happiness, 402n56 Allegory of Venus, Fig. 11, 12, 94, 178, 184, 272, 280, 375n1 Christ in Limbo, Figs. 10, 140, 187, 11, 85, 94, 147, 188, 203, 207, 212, 313, 323, 386n64, 415n12 Dead Christ with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene, Fig. 93, 149, 152, 184, 263 Evangelist tondi, 15 Holy Family (London, Vienna), 193, 382n13 Holy Family (Uffizi), 113, 149 Holy Family (Washington), Fig. 64, 107, 134, 149 Lamentation (Accademia), Fig. 108, 162, 188, 386n64 Man of Sorrows with Two Angels, 368n3 Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo, Figs. 47, 143, 94, 160, 209–12
Page 435
Nativity (Budapest), Fig. 55, 101, 117, 120, 137, 146 Nativity (Pisa), 87–88, 188 Noli me tangere, 186 Pietà (S. Croce), 198 Pietà with Angels, Fig. 49, 96, 152, 192 Pygmalion and Galatea, 118 Raising of the Daughter of Jairus, 186 Resurrection, 85, 94, 188, 198 St. Benedict Tempted in the Wilderness, Fig. 48, 94 St. John the Baptist (Rome), 364n21, 400n30 St. Sebastian, Fig. 67, 113 paintings (lost) Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, 368n3 Dispute of Duke Alessandro de' Medici with the Exiles at Naples, 31, 96 Madonna and Child (after Leonardo), 86 MarriagebyProxy of Duke Cosimo, 31, 96 Noli me tangere, 368n3 Victories of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, 266, 369n6 Villa Imperiale (Pesaro), 96 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 3, 31, 71, 266 painting technique fresco, 66–68, 132, 140–44 oil, 148–49, 181–82, 184, 209, 381n63 payments to, 68, 70, 74, 87, 88, 327, 330, 361n33, 365n34 poetry, 374n66 rime in burla, 280 sonnets, 105, 106, 371n34 to Eleonora di Toledo, 51 portraits Andrea Doria as Neptune, 113, 378n33 Cosimo de' Medici (London), Fig. 22, 37, 254, 268 Cosimo de' Medici (Uffizi), Pl. 1, 12, 36, 254, 267, 268, 275 Cosimo de' Medici (workshop; Turin), 357n73 Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo (after), Fig. 170, 275 Cosimo de' Medici as Orpheus, Fig. 19, 33, 117, 137, 259, 280, 377n24 Eleonora di Toledo (Berlin), Fig. 29, 46 Eleonora di Toledo (Prague), Pl. 2, 12, 23, 36, 37, 42, 46, 254, 259, 264, 275 Eleonora di Toledo (replica; lost), 86 Eleonora di Toledo (workshop; Washington), 357n73 Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Francesco (workshop), Fig. 26, 42, 321 Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni, Fig. 23, 37, 149, 254, 259, 321 Francesco de' Medici (Uffizi), 356n60 Morgante, 372n39 Sculptor, 118 Unknown Gentleman (Ottawa), 118 Young Man (London), 118 Youth with a Lute, 118 portraits of, Figs. 1, 135–40, 143, 1, 204–7, 209, 212 tapestries, 57, 74, 82, 84, 119 Allegory of the Dynasty of Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo, Fig. 107, 160, 279, 403n61 Benjamin Received by Joseph, Fig. 86, 135, 292 Dovizia (Pitti), 365n34 Jacob Blessing Joseph's Children, Fig. 176, 292 Joseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife, Fig. 69, 119, 291 Joseph in Prison and the Pharaoh's Banquet, Pl. 33, 128, 291, 324 Justice Liberating Innocence, Fig. 103, 146, 160, 274, 310 Selling of Joseph, Fig. 105, 160, 291 Story of Joseph, Fig. 5, 6, 10, 57, 84, 94, 120, 146, 253, 254, 256, 291–92, 294, 302 and sculpture, 107, 112–18, 121–23, 125–26, 129–30, 134, 137, 147 travels Pesaro, 96 Rome, 96, 137 and Varchi, 386n64 Brown, David Alan, 374n60 Brunelleschi, Filippo: Barbadori (Capponi) Chapel, Fig. 14, 73, 100 Bugiardini, Giuliano: Francesco Guicciardini, 286 Buontalenti, Bernardo, 383n29 Butteri, Francesco Maria, Madonna and Saints, Fig. 163, 261 C Camerini, Giovanni, 75 cangianti, 142, 143, 184
Page 436
Capi rossi, 298 Capponi, Piero di Gino, 353n20 Cardinal Virtues, 272–73 Caro, Annibale, 361n35 Castagno, Andrea del: Uomini illustri, 278 Cellini, Benvenuto, 157 letter to Varchi, 114, 115 medals Joseph Reveals Himself to His Brothers, 292 Moses Striking the Rock, Fig. 177, 299 poetry, 370n21, 371n34 portraits of, Fig. 8, 9 sculptures Cosimo de' Medici, 254, 258, 276, 279 Perseus, Fig. 7, 6, 254, 302, 305, 396n15 chapels Capponi, S. Felicita, Fig. 14, 15, 73 Château de la Bastie d'Urfé, 214, 219 Cosimo de' Medici, Palazzo Vecchio, Fig. 16, 18, 228, 286 New Sacristy, S. Lorenzo, 254 Novitiates, S. Croce, 15, 239 Old Sacristy, S. Lorenzo, 239 Palazzo Medici, Fig. 13, 15, 140, 155, 261 Pisa cathedral, 214–15, 219 Pope's, S. Maria Novella, 409n26 Pregadi, Venice, 230 Priors, Palazzo Vecchio, Fig. 15, 15, 17, 57, 73, 81, 90, 155, 228, 238, 365nn25, 32, 402n47 of the Sacrament, 214, 228, 389n38, 412n59 St. Luke, at SS. Annunziata, 205, 283, 402n54 S. Giacomo dall'Orio, Venice, 228 S. Giovanni Evangelista, Brescia, 390n38 Sistine, Rome, 219, 224, 230, 295, 313, 391n59, 393n10 Villa Cafaggiolo, 15 Charles V (emperor), 75, 76, 85, 174, 255, 295 and the baptism of Francesco de' Medici, 315 and Cosimo de' Medici, 22, 23, 29, 30, 256, 258, 277 eagle of, 276, 277, 278, 295 entry into Florence, 2 and the Florentine fortresses, 34, 35, 258, 278 patronage, 174 portrait of, 30 Chigi, Agostino, 280 Christus, Petrus: Lamentation, 200 Cibò, Caterina, 354n36 Cini, Giovanni Battista, 51; Descrizione dell'apparato, 52, 253 Cione, Nardo di: Lamentation (Uffizi), 383nn25, 28 Clement VII (pope [Giulio de' Medici]), 299 Clovio, Giulio: Eleonora di Toledo, Fig. 165, 264 Cock, Hieronymous: engraving after Bronzino's Crossing of the Red Sea, Fig. 155, 231, 414n81 Colle, Raffaellino dal, 368n4 Colonna, Camillo, 354n43 Constantine (emperor), 305, 309 Conte, Jacopino del: Preaching of St. John the Baptist, Fig. 111, 2, 137, 166 Cope, Maurice E., 228 Corteccia, Francesco, 30, 31 Corti, Gino, 327 Cortona, Elias of, 246 Council of Trent, 188, 382n19, 394n25 Covenants (Old and New), 213, 223, 237, 246, 295 Cross, Alison, 416nn9, 10 D Danti, Vincenzo, sculptures Brazen Serpent, Fig. 175, 284 Cosimo de' Medici as Joshua, Fig. 173, 283, 310, 313 David (king), 190, 194, 271 Dini, Daniella, 361n31 Dini, Giovanni, 366n45 Dionigi di Matteo, 88, 330 disegno, 116, 125–26, 157, 178, 180, 182 Domenichi, Ludovico: Nobiltà delle donne, 42 Domenico, Santi di, 330 Dominican order, 263 Donatello Joshua, 313 Lamentation (S. Lorenzo), Fig. 122, 173, 174–75, 203 St. John the Evangelist reliefs, 239 Doni, Anton Francesco, 90 Donnino, Antonio di: The Taking of Montemurlo, 303 Dossi, Battista and Dosso, 368n4 Dürer, Albrecht Entombment (Large Passion), 196, 199 Entombment (Small Passion), 384n34 Lamentation (Small Passion), Fig. 131, 198, 383n28
Page 437
Mass of St. Gregory (woodcut), 384n35 Trinity (woodcut), 384n35 E Empoli, Jacopo da: Lamentation (after Pontormo), Fig. 96, 376n10 Erythraean Sibyl, 191, 271, 381n4 Este, Alfonso d' (duke), 400n19 Eucharist (theme in art), 192–94, 214, 217, 222–28, 232, 242, 248, 299 Eusebius, 305 F Falconieri, Carlo, 91 Farnese, Alessandro, 223, 367n55 Farnese, Ottavio, 23 Farnese family, 75 Fedeli, Vincenzo, 49, 283 Feltrini, Andrea di Cosimo, 350n3, 362n2 festivals (apparati) baptisms Filippo de' Medici, 216 Francesco de' Medici, 216, 254, 279, 289, 315 Garzia de' Medici, 40, 216 entries Charles V into Florence, 2 Cosimo de' Medici and Eleanora di Toledo into Rome, 49 Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo into Siena, 47–48, 49 Eleonora di Toledo into Florence, 29–30 funerals Cosimo de' Medici, 395n3 Eleonora di Toledo, 50–51 marriages Alessandro de' Medici and Margaret of Austria, 3 Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo, 3, 29–31, 42, 250, 253, 254, 256, 258, 259, 266, 268, 288–89, 313, 322, 324 Francesco de' Medici and Giovanna d'Austria, 52, 253, 404n4 Fiammingo, Luigi, 355n49 Figueroa (commendator of Cosimo de' Medici), 77 figura serpentinata, 137, 147 Forlì, Melozzo da: Sacristy of St. Mark (Loreto), 369n12 Forster, Kurt W., 258 Foschi, Pierfrancesco: Giovanni delle Bande Nere Taking Biagrassa, 303 Francis, St., 239, 240, 242, 245–47, 317, 393n12 Francis I (king of France), 12 Franciscan order, 246 Franco, Battista, 2 Battle of Montemurlo with the Rape of Ganymede, Fig. 179, 303–4 Gathering of Manna, Fig. 145, 214, 223 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 29 Fröschl, Daniel: Eleonora di Toledo (copy), 399n9 fuorusciti, 255, 258 G Gamberelli, Bernardo, 350 Garbo, Raffaellino del, 70; Lamentation (Munich), 382n7 Gaston, Robert W., 378n34 Gelli, Giambattista, 353n24 and the Accademia Fiorentina, 252, 287 Apparato et feste, 29, 31, 253, 277, 278, 288, 300, 303, 322 and the Aramei, 287–88, 290, 322 and Bronzino, 323–24 and the Chapel of Eleonora, 321–22, 324–25 Dell'origine di Firenze, 288, 290, 322 Eclogue, 287–88 poetry, 252, 279, 315, 319, 325, 400n23 poetry to, 324 portraits of, Pl. 33, Fig. 187, 323–24 Genga, Girolamo, 368n4 Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 142 Calling of SS. Peter and Andrew, 120, 230 Madonna and Saints (lost), 392n3 St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, Fig. 159, 243 Sassetti Chapel, 381n4 Ghirlandaio, Michele di Ridolfo, 356n55 Madonna with SS. John the Baptist and Cosmas, 269–70 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 29 Ghirlandaio, Ridolfo, 2 Camera Verde, Fig. 32, 59, 277 Chapel of the Priors, Fig. 15, 15–16 Lamentation, 382n7 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 29 Giambologna, 371n29 Giambullari, Bernardo, 352n16
Page 438
Giambullari, Pierfrancesco, 27, 352n16 and the Accademia Fiorentina, 252, 287, 322 Apparato et feste, 27, 29, 31, 253, 322 and the Aramei, 287, 290, 322 and Bronzino, 323 canon of S. Lorenzo, 290 and the Chapel of Eleonora, 321–22, 324 Il Gello, 287, 290, 322 portraits of, Fig. 187, 323–24 giornate, 66–68, 143 Giovane, Palma: S. Giacomo dall'Orio, 228 Giovanna d' Austria, 52, 88, 90 Giovio, Paolo, 90, 251, 268, 355n52, 361n35; Medici imprese, 43–45, 271 Giulio Romano, 2 Goffen, Rona, 393n18 Gombrich, Ernst W., 251 Gonzaga, Eleonora, 354n36 Gozzoli, Benozzo Old Testament cycle (Pisa), 219, 224, 230 Procession of the Magi, Fig. 13, 15, 140, 261, 310 Granvelle, Antoine de, 78, 363n10, 385n53 Granvelle, Nicolas Perrenot de, 75–77, 362n4 grazia, 127, 179, 182, 185, 200, 373n51 Grazzini, Anton Francesco (Il Lasca), 280, 287, 324 Grifoni, Ugolino, 45, 157 Guadagni, Giovanni, 358n87 Guzmán, Diego de, 45, 46, 49 H Hall, Marcia, 184 Heath, Samuel K., 366n43 Heikamp, Detlef, 389n36 Hieronymite order, 239, 243 Holderbaum, James, 118, 284, 372n42 Holy Women, 398n7 Hood, William, 390n40 I invenzione, 178 J Jacone (Jacopo di Giovanni di Francesco): Stories of Moses, 219 Jerome, St., 239, 242, 243 Jesuit order, 45 John the Baptist, St., 191 John the Evangelist, St., 239 Gospel, 193, 194, 222, 242 Revelation, 241, 242, 393n12 Jonah, 217 Joseph, 291–92 Joshua, 234–36, 241, 283 K Karcher, Nicholas, 82 Kraft, Adam: Entombment, 384n41 L Lactantius, 191 Laínez, Giacomo, 45, 46 Lapini, Agostino, 50 Lavin, Marilyn A., 392n63, 393n18 League of Cambrai, 305 Leo X (pope [Giovanni de' Medici]), 22, 37, 261, 269, 295; patronage, 254, 256, 407n34, 409n26 Levey, Michael, 239 Lippi, Filippino Moses Striking the Rock, 389n31 Strozzi Chapel, 305 Lippo, Filippo Madonna and Saints (Uffizi), 15 Nativity (Berlin), 15 Seven Saints, 398n1 Loyola, Ignazio di, 46 Luna, Giovanni de', 398n34 M McComb, Arthur, 120 Machiavelli, Niccolò Discorsi, 297, 412n66 Il Principe, 296–98, 300, 308 Maeder, Edward, 383n26, 411n47 Maiano, Benedetto da: Justice, Fig. 2, 274 Maniera, 1, 3, 6, 101, 105, 118, 123, 127, 137, 138, 142, 200, 235, 349n2, 370n17 Mannucci, Aldo, 51 Mantovano, Camillo, 368n4 Margaret of Austria, 3, 22, 23 Mariotto di Francesco Mettidoro, 74, 328 Martelli, Niccolò, 252; poetry, 20, 22, 268, 350 Martini, Luca, 252, 284, 323, 377n20 Master of the Manchester Madonna, 413n74 Medici, Agnolo Marzi de', 155, 327, 361n33, 377n21 Medici, Alessandro de' (duke), 2, 277 murder, 22, 255, 282 wedding apparato, 3 Medici, Alfonsina Orsini de', 352n16 Medici, Anna di Cosimo de', 413n78
Page 439
Medici, Antonio de', 397n24 Medici, Bernardo Antonia de' (bishop of Forlí), 157 Medici, Carlo de', 366n45 Medici, Chiarissimo de', 26, 398n34 Medici, Cosimo I de' (duke, then grand duke) abdication, 52, 86 as Abraham, 291 and the Accademia Fiorentina, 252 as Aeneas, 314 ancestry, 22, 31, 239, 255, 256 apartment. See Palazzo Vecchio as Apollo, 255, 279 and the Aramei, 287–88 as architect of the state, 275–76 artistic/cultural advisers to, 19, 252, 287 and astrology, 256, 271–72, 302–3, 395n3 as Augustus, 255, 258, 259, 286, 302–3, 404n1, 411n49 burial, 358n86 chapel. See Palazzo Vecchio and the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, 18–19, 68, 71, 79–80, 85, 88 and Charles V, 22, 34, 35, 75, 255, 258, 277, 303–4, 405–20 coat of arms, 30, 40, 59, 82, 88, 276–78, 279, 280 coinage, 269 and Cosimo de' Medici il Vecchio, 268, 269 as David, 283 destiny (theme in art), 256 devices, 268, 271–72, 303, 409n24 diplomatic gifts, 12, 75–77, 85 and Eleonora di Toledo, 23, 33 elevation to duke, 22, 255, 258 elevation to grand duke, 52 entry into Rome, 49 entry into Siena, 48 and the Florentine fortresses, 35, 75, 258, 278 fortuna, 271–72 and the Franciscans, 413nn77, 79 funeral orations, 404n79 and the fuorusciti, 305–7 as Ganymede, 304 and Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici, 37, 269 and Granvelle, 75–77, 362n5 as Hercules, 258, 272, 286, 401n45 historians to, 251, 252, 257 illness, 34, 52 imperial privilegio, 392n5 as Joseph, 286, 289–92 as Joshua, 283, 310, 313 as Jupiter, 45, 255 later years, 52 legitimacy (theme in art), 255–56 and Leo X, 254, 256 letters, 23, 26, 28, 50, 54, 76–77, 156, 320, 327, 328, 329, 350, 362n5, 366n47, 377n21, 397n33 and Lorenzo il Magnifico, 254 and Machiavelli, 296, 300 marriagebyproxy, 23–24, 26 medals, 254, 305 medico, 259, 300 and the Mendozas, 85 as Moses, 286, 287, 294–319 passim move to Palazzo Vecchio, 54 in Naples, 22, 23, 31 as Neptune, 300 as Noah, 286, 288–89, 290, 292, 315 Order of the Golden Fleece, 47, 75, 355n49, 403n61 patronage, 3–13 passim, 33, 36, 37, 56–57, 84, 85, 96, 115, 151–57 passim, 239, 361n33, 413n77 and the piagnoni, 298 poetry to, 268, 278, 288, 300, 303, 400n23 political agenda, 34, 37, 46, 54, 75, 251, 252, 255, 256, 258, 286, 397n23 portraits of, Pl. 1, Figs. 8, 19, 22, 30, 100, 163, 164, 170, 173, 174, 182, 9, 12, 33, 36, 37, 43, 46–47, 52, 117, 137, 159, 254, 258, 259, 261, 266–68, 270, 271, 274, 275–76, 280, 283, 292, 300, 313, 377nn21, 24, 397n25, 402n56, 404n4, 407n33 power (theme in art), 258 promise (theme in art), 259 as St. Comas, 265, 266–70, 300 as Solomon, 283 travels in Tuscany, 33–34, 35 treatises dedicated to, 273, 288, 309, 402n54 victory at Montemurlo. See battles Medici, Cosimo I de' (duke, then grand duke) (continued) virtù, 271–72, 283 wedding apparato. See festivals Medici, Cosimo de' (il Vecchio, Pater Patriae), 261, 268, 269, 291 patronage, 15, 239 portraits of, 261, 267, 400nn24, 26 Medici, Eleonora di Toledo de'. See Toledo, Eleonora di
Page 440
Medici, Ferdinando I de' (cardinal, then grand duke), 41, 50, 84, 261, 290 Medici, Filippo di Francesco de', 216 Medici, Francesco I de' (grand duke), 50, 86 baptism, 216, 254, 279, 315 birth, 33, 314, 318–19, 325 horoscope, 412n71 marriage, 52, 88 poetry to, 279, 315, 319 portraits of, Fig. 26, 42, 261, 321 in Vasari's Ragionamenti, 251 Medici, Garzia di Cosimo de', 40, 49, 50, 216, 413n78 Medici, Giovanni de' (delle Bande Nere), 22, 255, 269, 412–13n73; portraits of Pl. 10, Figs. 4, 166–67, 4, 10, 57, 157, 254, 265–66 Medici, Giovanni di Bicci de', 239 Medici, Giovanni di Cosimo de', 17, 33, 49, 50, 269, 355n53, 413n78; portraits of, Fig. 23, 37 Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo de'. See Leo X Medici, Giuliano de', 401n38 Medici, Ippolito de', 398n7 Medici, Isabella di Cosimo de', 33, 261, 413n78 Medici, Jacopo de', 23, 26, 350 Medici, Lorenzino de', 255, 282 Medici, Lorenzo de' (il Magnifico), 37, 254, 256, 261, 269, 298 Medici, Lorenzo de' (the younger), 296 Medici, Lucrezia di Cosimo de', 398n19, 413n78 Medici, Lucrezia Salviati de', 261 Medici, Maria di Cosimo de', 33, 54 Medici, Maria Salviati de'. See Salviati de Medici, Maria Medici, Ottaviano de', 273 Medici, Piero di Cosimo de', 15, 261 Medici, Pietro di Cosimo de', 41, 47, 413n78 Medici, Tanai de', 74 Medici family (see Fig. 17, genealogy) devices laurel (broncone), 37, 256, 268, 277, 278–79, 353n30, 400n24 palle, 40, 43, 276, 277, 278–79, 292 snake, 316, 409n29 given names, 269 Golden Age, 256, 259, 278, 286, 288, 290, 291, 295, 314, 315 and the Magi, 15, 261 palace. See palaces patron saints, 239, 261, 266–71 passim, 392n3, 398n1 return (topos), 256, 257, 291, 292 use of porphyry, 278 villas. See villas Meditations on the Life of Christ, 193, 196 Meiss, Millard, 243 Meller, Peter, 372n40 Mendelsohn, Leatrice, 416n13 Mendoza, Diego Hurtado Diaz de and Francisco, 85 Menzocchi, Francesco, 368n4 Michael, St., 239, 241, 246 Michelangelo, 60, 96, 114, 115, 159, 380n55 cartoons: Noli me tangere and Venus and Cupid, 1 color, 142, 143 drawings Florence, Uffizi 598E, Fig. 75, 1, 127–28 Last Judgment (copy), 370n21 Windsor Castle 12767r, 373n54 painting: Doni tondo, 142, 182 poetry to, 105–6 portrait of, 201 sculptures David, 286, 405n10 Madonna of the Stairs, 413n74 Moses, Fig. 70, 121, 191, 295, 300 New Sacristy, 1, 254, 370n21 Pietà (St. Peter's), Fig. 98, 152, 168, 193, 382nn15, 18 Pietà with Nicodemus and the Magdalene, 201 Victory, Fig. 88, 1, 105, 137 Sistine Chapel frescoes, 60, 96 Ancestors of Christ, 142–43 Brazen Serpent, Fig. 73, 124, 228 Creation of Adam, 121 ignudi, Fig. 61, 107 Jonah, 107 Sibyls, 381n4 Michelozzo, 201 Church of the Zoccoli di S. Francesco, 239 Palazzo Medici chapel, Fig. 13, 15, 140 Migna, Andrea del, 159 Misuroni, Gasparo, 383n29 mito etrusco, 287–90 Montepulciano, Andrea Mancinelli da, 361n37 Montorsoli, Giovanni Angelo: St. Cosmas, 409n28 Morel, Philippe, 280 Morgante (Medici servant), 42, 405n9 Moses, 217–37, 294–319 passim
Page 441
N Nardi, Jacopo de', 296 Neghittosa, Dionigi di Matteo della, 366n48 Nerli, Filippo de', 251, 252, 290–91, 296, 300 Niccolò dell'Arca: Compianto (Bologna), 384n41 Nicodemus, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201 Noah, 287, 288, 322 O Orcula sibyllina, 191 Orsini, Paolo, 261 Ottimati, 256 P Pace, Gian Paolo: Giovanni delle Bande Nere, 266 Pagni, Benedetto: Medici Madonna, 365n33, 403n70 Pagni, Christiano, 329, 353n18, 369n7 Pagni, Lorenzo, 27, 56, 80, 322; letters, 46, 49, 55, 75, 76, 188, 253, 328, 350n5, 352n12, 355n44, 359n6 palaces Palazzo Medici, 15, 30–31, 54, 55, 392n2 Palazzo Pitti, 41, 90, 159 Palazzo Vecchio, Figs. 12, 20, 13, 33, 41, 54–56, 84, 350n10 Apartment of Cosimo de' Medici, 55, 57, 59, 68, 81 Apartment of Eleonora di Toledo, Figs. 25, 32–33, 19, 33, 41, 55, 57, 59, 80, 81, 84, 91, 92, 97, 279, 360n16 Apartment of the Elements, 84 Camera Verde, Fig. 32, 42, 57, 58, 59, 72, 80 Chapel of Cosimo de' Medici, Figs. 16, 50, 228, 269, 286 Chapel of Eleonora, Pls. 3–4, 57–92. See also Bronzino, Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo Chapel of the Priors, Fig. 15, 15, 17, 57, 73, 81, 90, 155, 228, 238, 365nn25, 32, 402n47 guardaroba, 55, 81, 86, 90, 265; inventories, 72, 79, 81, 82, 355n53, 359n9, 366n36, 367n55 later history, 90–92 Sala de' Dugento, Fig. 5, 6, 57, 254 Sala delle Udienze, Fig. 2, 3, 57, 90, 254, 274 Sala Grande, 4, 57, 254 Studiolo of Francesco de' Medici, 52 winter dining hall, 360n19 paragone, 36, 114–18, 137, 147 Parmigianino, il, 2; Rocca di Fontanellato, 369n10 Paul, St., 213, 216, 217, 224, 229 Paul III (pope), 23 Paul IV (pope), 408n8 Pax Augustae, 259 Pax Medicea, 54, 313 Pazzi, Alamanno de', 366n45 Pazzi, Alfonso de', 324, 385n48 Perondini, Pietro, 358n87 Perugino, Pietro: Lamentation (Pitti), Fig. 94, 151, 179, 195, 198, 199, 200, 263 Pescia, Fra Mariano da: Madonna with SS. John and Elizabeth, Fig. 15, 17 piagnoni, 256, 298 Piccolomini, Francesco Bandini, 408n5 Pilliod, Elizabeth, 378n29, 386nn62, 68 Pino, Paolo: Dialogo di pittura, 140–41 Pisano, Andrea: Baptistery doors, 272 Pitti, Jacopo, 395n9 Pius IV (pope), 49 Pocetti, Bernardo: Triumphs of David, 404n4 Poggi, Giovanni, 360n21 Poggini, Domenico: medal of Eleonora di Toledo, Fig. 28, 45 Polo, Domenico di: medals of Cosimo de' Medici, 254, 305, 377n24, 400nn24, 26 Pontormo, Jacopo da, 2, 114, 180 Capponi Chapel Annunciation, Fig. 14, 15, 73, 143 God the Father and Patriarchs, 15, 100 LamentationEntombment, Figs. 14, 99, 15, 152–53, 182, 183, 201, 203, 209 St. John, 147 drawings Florence, Uffizi 458, Fig. 52, 98; 6528F, 377n24; 6644Fr, Fig. 53, 98; 6749F, Fig. 87, 135, 289; 8966S, Fig. 54, 100 London, British Museum 19744636, 406n24 paintings Lamentation (Certosa), Fig. 96, 143, 151, 195, 198, 383n28 St. John the Evangelist and St. Michael, 149 S. Lorenzo choir, Fig. 6, 6, 10, 115, 159, 211, 254, 289–90, 292, 322 Story of Joseph, 292, 386n69 Vertumnus and Pomona, 107, 278 Villa Castello, 3, 98, 254, 272 Visitation (Carmignano), 316
Page 442
Pontormo, Jacopo da (continued) portraits Cosimo de' Medici Pater Patriae, 267, 400nn24, 26 Maria Salviati and Cosimo de' Medici, Fig. 164, 261, 263 portraits of, Figs. 99, 134–37, 143, 201, 203, 204, 205, 211, 212, 323 tapestries, 6, 57, 135, 254 Poppi, il (Francesco Morandini): Studiolo of Francesco de' Medici, Fig. 31, 53 Portelli, Carlo: Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Fig. 167, 266 Previtali, Andrea: Chapel of the Pregadi, 230, 411n46 Promised Land, 235, 237, 283, 286, 297, 299, 305, 313, 318 R Raimondi, Marcantonio, engravings Baptism of Christ, Fig. 92; 147 Lamentation, Fig. 132, 200 Martyrdom of S. Lorenzo, 159 Parnassus, 375n76 Raphael, 60, 96, 142, 144 drawings: Oxford, Ashmolean 529, 199 Logge, Vatican, 407n34 Baptism of Christ, 224 Crossing of the Red Sea, 230 Joseph Fleeing Potiphar's Wife, 291 Meeting of Jacob and Rachel at the Well, 224 Moses Striking the Rock, 224 Stories of Moses, 219 paintings, 375n75 Chigi Chapel, 191 Entombment (Rome), 384nn36, 37 Loggia di Psyche, Fig. 51, 98. See also Udine, Giovanni da Madonna dell'Impannata, 269, 400n20 Madonna di Loreto, 193 Moses before the Burning Bush, 295 Parnassus, Fig. 71, 122, 124, 144 School of Athens, 386n67 portraits of, 211 tapestries: Acts of the Apostles, 254 Rau and Rastrelli: Degli uomini illustri nella pittura, Fig. 1, 204 Riccio, Pierfrancesco, 26, 46, 55, 79, 82, 157, 328, 329, 350n5, 361n33, 406n27 and the Accademia Fiorentina, 321, 322 and the Aramei, 287, 290 letters, 17, 27, 45, 55–56, 75, 76, 80–81, 322, 328, 329, 350n5 portraits of, Figs. 183–84, 9, 310, 321 secretary and majordomo to Cosimo de' Medici, 9, 10, 56–57, 115, 252, 253, 321 Richa, Giovanni, 90 Ridolfi, Luigi, 23, 26 Robbia, Andrea della Coronation of the Virgin, 393n14 Crucifixion (La Verna), Fig. 158, 243 Madonna and Saints (S. Croce), 15 Medici stemma (La Verna), 403n61 Robbia, Giovanni della Lamentation (La Verna), Fig. 160, 247 tabernacle (SS. Apostoli), 389n34 Robbia, Luca della: Virtue medallions (S. Miniato), 401n40 Rocke, Michael J., 416n13 Romano, Giulio, 2; death mask of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, 266 Rosello, Lucio Paolo: Il Ritratto del vero governo del principe, 273, 309 Rosselli, Cosimo: Crossing of the Red Sea, Fig. 148, 120, 219, 230, 234 Rossi, Giovanni Antonio de': cameo of Cosimo de' Medici and his family, Fig. 30, 46–47 Rosso Fiorentino, 2, 142, 201 drawing: London, British Museum Ff. 118, 388n15 painting: Moses and the Daughters of Jethro, Fig. 76, 129, 219 Rovere, Guidobaldo della, 96 Ruberti, Michele, 359n11, 362n1 Rubin, Patricia, 390n40, 396n17 S Salviati, Alamanno, 27 Salviati, Francesco, 10, 115, 201 drawings Florence, Uffizi 1766F, Fig. 102, 160; 14610F, Fig. 104, 160, 373n53 Oxford, Ashmolean 683, Fig. 106, 196; 685, Fig. 130, 196 paintings Deposition (S. Croce), Fig. 9, 11, 155 Lamentation (Pitti), Fig. 133, 201–3 Lamentation (Viggiù), 376n12 Moses and Aaron before the Tabernacle, 223, 407n2
Page 443
scrittoio of Eleonora di Toledo, Fig. 33, 59, 97, 279 Visitation, 2, 137 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 3 winter dining hall (Palazzo Vecchio), 360n19 portraits of, 201–3 Sala delle Udienze: Story of Camillus, Fig. 2, 3, 57, 115, 253, 254, 256, 279, 297, 302, 411n54 Arno with a View of Florence, 314 Battle of the Latins and the Volscians, Fig. 2, 305 Peace Burning Arms, Fig. 2, 259, 314 Sacrifice of Isaac, Fig. 2, 274, 406n33 Schoolmaster of Falieri, 402n48 Triumph of Camillus, Figs. 2, 27, 161, 42–43, 256, 258, 259, 274, 305, 313 tapestries, 57 Dead Christ with Nicodemus, 385n50 Lamentation, Fig. 43, 10, 18, 82, 155, 330 Story of Joseph, 6, 10, 57, 115, 254, 291, 292 Salviati de Medici, Maria, 22, 33, 55, 72, 261, 263, 264; portraits of, Pl. 11, Fig. 164, 261, 263–64 Sanchez, Edward, 327, 361n32, 363n10 Sandro, Raffaello di, 219 Sangallo, Aristotile da: wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 3, 254 Sangallo, Francesco da, 114 Giovanni delle Bande Nere (Bargello), 399n11 medal of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, Fig. 166, 265 San Marino, Giovanni Battista da, 9 Sarto, Andrea del, 142 Lamentation (Pitti), Fig. 95, 151, 179, 192, 390n39 Madonna and Saints (Pisa), 382n7 Tribute to Caesar, 375n69 Savoldo, Girolamo: Dead Christ with Nicodemus, 384n44 Savonarola, Fra Girolamo, 256, 298 Schlitt, Melinda, 396n14 Sebastiano del Piombo: Pietà (Ubeda), 193 Segni, Bernardo, 251 Sermoneta, Sicolante da: chapel of the Château de la Bastie d'Urfé, Fig. 144, 214, 219, 223, 389n23 Settimanni, Francesco, 216, 261, 315 Shearman, John, 179 Signorelli, Luca, 211 Chapel of S. Brizio, Orvieto, 386n67, 392n63 Lamentation (Cortona), 383n25 Last Acts and Death of Moses, Fig. 157, 235, 313, 393n16 Simon, Robert B., 33 Simoncelli, Paolo, 287 Sixtus IV (pope), 219, 295 Smyth, Craig Hugh, 361n32, 366n43 Sodoma, il, 386n67 Lamentation (Pisa), 215 Sacrifice of Isaac, 214 Sogliani, Giovanni Antonio Sacrifice of Abel, 214, 215 Sacrifice of Cain, 214, 215 Sacrifice of Noah, 214, 215 Soto Cornejo, Virgilio, 366n43 Speculum humanae salvationis, 213, 230 Stradano, Giovanni paintings Arrival of Eleonora di Toledo at Poggio a Caiano, Fig. 18, 28 Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora di Toledo Receiving in the Palazzo Ducale, Fig. 25, 41–42 Tribute to Duke Cosimo de' Medici, Fig. 20, 33 tapestry: David Anointed King by Samuel, 283 Strozzi, Filippo, 305–6, 307 Strozzi, Giambattista, 370n21 Strozzi coat of arms, Fig. 181, 305 Szafran, Yvonne, 364n21, 376n3 T Tadda, Francesco del: Justice, 278 Taddeo di Francesco, 330 Tasso, Battista del, 114, 115 baptism of Francesco de' Medici, 254 Mercato Nuovo, 60 Palazzo Vecchio, 56–57, 254 Apartment of Eleonora di Toledo, 80, 84 Apartment of the Elements, 84 Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, 58, 60, 72 portraits of, Fig. 8, 9 Thomas, William: History of Italy, 33 Tintoretto: Scuola di S. Rocco, 387n1, 389n23, 390nn38, 43 Titian, 141, 266 painting: Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, 362n4
Page 444
woodcut: Crossing of the Red Sea, Fig. 154, 231, 232, 305, 314 Tito, Santi di Madonna with SS. Francis and Jerome, 392n5 Solomon Building the Temple, 283 Toledo, Eleonora di apartment. See Palazzo Vecchio appearance, 23, 42, 51, 264–65 biography of, 92 birth, 22 birth of children, 33, 40–41, 290, 318–19, 413n78 Book of Hours, Fig. 24, 37, 39, 277 and Chapel of Eleonora, 72, 79, 80, 156, 320–21 childhood in Naples, 22, 26, 31, 321 coat of arms. See Medici, Cosimo I de' death and funeral, 50–52 device of the peahen, 43, 45 entry into Florence, 29–30 entry into Pisa, 27 entry into Rome, 49 entry into Siena, 48 as Eurydice, 33 finances, 258 genetrix, 30, 31, 37, 42, 45, 48–49, 51, 52, 53, 260, 276, 278, 279, 280, 290, 299, 314, 316, 318, 321, 325 as goddess, 30 handwriting and signature, 26, 352n12, 355n44 illness, 46, 49, 188 and the Jesuits, 45–46 journey to Florence, 26–28 as Juno, 31, 42, 43, 45, 51, 53, 356n65 letters, 26, 34–35, 354n43, 355n44 linguistic ability, 18, 26 marriagebyproxy, 23, 26, 31 as Minerva, 279 patronage, 37, 82, 86, 156, 157, 159, 277, 320, 361n33, 414n79 poetry to, 20, 22, 27, 51 portraits of, Pls. 2, 31, Figs. 21, 23, 25–26, 28–31, 100, 165, 170, 12, 23, 36–37, 42, 46–47, 52–53, 149, 159, 254, 259, 264–65, 275, 365n23. See also Pl. 32, 316, 318 pregnancy, 317 purchase of Palazzo Pitti, 41 regent of Florence, 34–35 religious life, 45–46, 392n5 and St. Francis, 318–19, 325, 413n77 tomb, 350 travels in Tuscany, 33–35, 47 unhappiness in Florence, 35, 45–46 will, 50 Toledo, Francesco di, 76, 77, 328, 329 Toledo, Garzia di, 27 Toledo, Isabella di, 23 Toledo, Pedro di, 85 Toledo, Pedro di Alvarez di, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 31, 54, 413n78 Toledo family, 30; coat of arms, 40, 276 Tomaso di Francesco, 330 Tosini, Michele: Pierfrancesco Riccio, 350n6 Tribolo, Niccolò, 2, 10, 114, 157, 252, 371n26 baptism of Francesco de' Medici, 254 drawings: Paris, Louvre 49, 409n30; 50v, 399n17 portraits of, Fig. 8, 9, 284 sculptures, Villa Castello, 3, 253, 254, 256, 259, 272 Aesculapius (after), Fig. 178, 300 Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus, Figs. 3, 65–66, 4, 107, 112, 118, 274, 305 Fountain of VenusFiorenza, 300 wedding apparato of Cosimo de' Medici, 3, 29, 254, 266 typology, 213–37 passim, 242, 271 U Udine, Giovanni da: Loggia di Psyche, Fig. 172, 280 V Vaga, Perino del, 2 drawing, Vienna, Albertina, Fig. 110, 166 painting: Crossing of the Red Sea, Fig. 149, 219, 231, 232, 391nn53, 55 Valori, Baccio, 304 Varchi, Benedetto, 251, 253, 323, 406n27 Due lezzioni, 114–15 poetry, 252 portrait of, 386n64 Storia fiorentina, 257 Vasari, Giorgio, 2, 4, 11, 116, 412n59 as architect, 9, 85 baptism of Francesco de' Medici (Baptism of Christ, Crossing of the Red Sea, and The Deluge), 216–17, 254, 289, 315
Page 445
drawings Florence, Uffizi 2 orn., 369n13 Gathering of Manna (lost), 116 London, British Museum 1895915754, 387n6 Stockholm, National Museum 60/1863, 387n6 letters, 398–99n7 letter to Varchi, 114, 180 Le vite (1550), 70, 178 Le vite (1568), 1, 127, 178–79, 180, 251, 253 Bachiacca, 219 Bandinelli, 157, 176–77, 201 Beccafumi, 225 Bronzino, 1, 31, 70, 71–72, 78–79, 85, 101, 107, 125, 141, 143, 180, 211, 323 Franco, Battista, 304 Pontormo, 98, 183, 289–90 Tribolo, 253, 274 Udine, Giovanni da, 250, 280 Vasari, 196, 273 paintings Dead Christ with Nicodemus, 385n45 Deposition (Arezzo), 196 Descent from the Cross (Camaldoli), 4, 383n29 Entombment (Arezzo), 196 Immaculate Conception (Uffizi), 4, 373n53 Martelli altarpiece, 11 Nativity (Camaldoli), 382n12 Palazzo Vecchio decorations, 45, 251 Apartment of Cosimo de' Medici, 283 Apartment of Eleonora di Toledo, 19, 41, 57 Apartment of the Elements, 84 Apotheosis of Duke Cosimo de' Medici, 404n79 Chapel of Cosimo de' Medici, Figs. 16, 50, 97, 273 Cosimo de' Medici and the Prisoners of Montemurlo, Fig. 182, 307 Cosimo de' Medici as St. Cosmas, Fig. 16, 266–67 Cosimo de' Medici Planning His Campaign against Siena, 402nn54, 56, 411n54 Cosimo de' Medici with His Architects, Engineers, and Sculptors, Fig. 8, 8–9, 107, 276 Cosimo il Vecchio as St. Damian, Fig. 16, 267 Marriage of Duke Alessandro de' Medici, 354n34 Marriage of Catherine de' Medici, 354n34 Sala di Cosimo, 412n72 Sala di Giovanni delle Bande Nere, 399n16 Sala di Giove, 410n41 Sala Grande, 250 Studiolo of Francesco de' Medici, 52 portraits Alessandro de' Medici, 266 Giovanni de' Medici as St. John, 400n30 Lorenzo de' Medici il Magnifico, 272–73 portraits of, Fig. 8, 9 Ragionamenti, 250, 251, 253 Verrocchio, Andrea del tomb of Cosimo de' Medici il Vecchio, 403n63 tomb of Piero and Giovanni de' Medici, 403n63 Verrocchio, Tommaso del, 90 Vettori, Piero, 51, 252 Vezzano, Paolo Zacchi da: Allegory of the Liberality of Duke Alessandro de' Medici, 409n22 Vico, Enea, engravings Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, Fig. 141, 209 antique vase, 196 villas Cafaggiolo, 15 Castello, 26, 33, 56, 254, 300 Poggio a Caiano, Fig. 18, 28, 35, 37, 55, 76, 79, 80, 254 Trebbio, 283 Vinci, Leonardo da, 86, 379n49 Vinci, Pierino da Cosimo de' Medici as Patron of Pisa, Fig. 174, 284, 313 portraits of, 118 Vitelli, Alessandro, 303 Volto Santo, 201 W Wallace, William, 366n43 Ward, Roger, 377n23 Weinstein, Donald, 409n19 Weyden, Roger van der: Madonna and Saints, 398n1 Wright, David, 362n3
Compositor: Wilsted & Taylor Text & Display : Granjon Printing & Binding Coordinated Through Bolton Associates Printing & Binding: Sung In Printing Co., Ltd., Korea
