Every drawing is illustrated in color and is accompanied by comparative photographs. In the sixty-two entries that follow, each individual sheet is analyzed in substantial detail. The authors contributed research that adds greatly to our understanding of Bronzino's place in the history of Florentine drawing. The five essays in this catalogue cover the subject of Bronzino's draftsmanship through consideration of his life, the critical responses to his drawings from his lifetime to the twentieth century, his theory and practice in drawing, and his portraits. The younger generations of Florentine artists particularly admired him for his technical virtuosity as a painter, and even Giorgio Vasari grudgingly praised him for his powers as a disegnatore (designer and draftsman) in his well-known Lives of the Artists. Bronzino was among the founders of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, the first art academy in Europe, and he is said to have had many pupils. Also included are sheets that contributed to his designs for a series of tapestries on the Old Testament Story of Joseph, intended for one of the audience halls of the Palazzo Vecchio. One of the artist's most ambitious projects for the princely couple is a fresco cycle for the private Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, and this book includes drawings he executed for that Chapel in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. They demonstrate Bronzino's sensitivity for elegant composition as well as his acute powers to create mood and capture the psychology of his aristocratic sitters. These qualities are vividly apparent in each stroke of the chalk, pen, or brush in works on paper that range from studies of singular heads to modelli of complex scenes made for tapestries.įrom 1540 onward, Bronzino was court painter to Cosimo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and herein you will see examples of his portraits of Cosimo, his wife, Duchess Eleonora di Toledo, and their children. Combining detailed scholarly content and lavish illustrations, the volume explores Bronzino's talent as a draftsman, together with his mastery of anatomy and perspective. For the first time ever, nearly all the sixty sheets known to be reasonably attributed to this leading artist of sixteenth-century Italy are brought together in this important and beautiful publication. Drawings by this famed Italian Mannerist painter are extremely rare. "I say to you briefly that by drawing I mean all those things that can be formed with the value, or force, of simple lines." This definition was offered by Agnolo Bronzino (Florentine, 1503–1572) in a dialogue written in 1560–70.
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