Bronzino: 12 works

'In the finished work, Bronzino made only small changes to Pontormo's composition.'

'The present painting has been dated 1533, at a time when Bronzino was defining his own artistic personality following his assimilation of Pontormo's teachings. The present work has more opaque colours than Pontormo's, while the solid forms seem to be located in space in an immobile manner, both stylistic features characteristic of Bronzino.'

'According to Giorgio Vasari (1568) and Raffaello Borghini (1584), the painting was commissioned to Bronzino by Bartolomeo Panciatichi, whose coat of arms dominates the fort in the background.'

'The two paintings, characterized by the delicacy typical of Bronzino's art, were made by the artist to substitute the former ones, that is Saint John the Baptist and Saint Cosma.'

'Although unnaturally posed, Agnolo Bronzino's serpentine figure of Saint John achieves a graceful fluidity typical of the style called Mannerism.'

'Bronzino made this drawing as a study of the figure who personifies Jealousy in his painting of Allegory of Venus and Cupid.'

'It was painted in 1545 by Bronzino, who was a student of Pontormo and the court portrait artist of the Medici.'

'Bronzino's works are considered the epitome of Florentine disegno and, at the same time, its final pinnacle, which had already assumed the character of Mannerism. Bronzino, who was a pupil of Jacopo Pontormo and thus extremely familiar with the works of Michelangelo, served for many years as court painter to the Medici.'

'As a pupil and adopted son of perhaps the greatest and strangest of mannerist painters, Jacopo Pontormo, Bronzino graduated to artistic maturity with impeccable credentials in that consciously artificial style.'

'The human eye cannot see like this,' stated Wölfflin, the authoritative art historian, of Bronzino's art. And perhaps a healthy human mind cannot think so crookedly as Bronzino's did, for this bizarre picture is able to jolt even today's jaded viewer.'

'Bronzino's treatment of the young man's fingers reflects the Mannerist taste for exaggerated elegance and elongated proportions, while the enameled finish of the flesh tones is typical of Mannerist polished virtuosity.'