Agnolo Bronzino (di Cosimo di Mariano), court…

Agnolo Bronzino (di Cosimo di Mariano), court painter to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici of Tuscany, had studied under Jacopo Pontormo, from whom he absorbed the traditionally Florentine artistic penchants for elegant linearism, emotional intensity, and brilliant color.

From these and from his study of Michelangelo and Raphael, Bronzino has developed his characteristic style.

In his Allegory and his decoration of the Chapel of Eleonora da Toledo, both executed in the 1540s, Bronzino paints the forms with detailed accuracy and an extreme sensitivity to textures and surfaces, yet orders his spatial relationships in an often highly unnatural manner.

In Bronzino’s religious paintings, such as Deposition of Christ, painted in 1545, the artist appears less concerned with subject than with formal allusions to the art of Pontormo and Michelangelo and even to classical art.

A distinguished portraitist, he portrays his many prominent sitters as personifications of political power, exemplified in the court portraits Cosimo I in Armor and Eleonora da Toledo with Her Son.