Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio

Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio PDF

Author: Janet Cox-Rearick

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0520375998

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Do the sacred decorations of a Florentine Renaissance chapel—saints, symbols, and scriptural stories—hold personal and political meanings? Cox-Rearick's ground-breaking book explores the message hidden in the frescoes and altar panels of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, painted in the early 1540s by Agnolo Bronzino for the Spanish-born wife of Duke Cosimo I de Medici. Bronzino, then the chief painter to the Medici court, was largely responsible for the invention in Florence of the highly self-conscious, elegant Maniera style. Cox-Rearick interweaves her account of the Medici biography with an examination of Bronzino's commission in the broader context of his oeuvre. Cox-Rearick reveals the Chapel of Eleonora as an intimately devised decorative program that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule. Detailed color photographs of the newly restored art splendidly document this early tour de force of a major artist whose works are still relatively unexamined.

The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo

The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo PDF

Author: Konrad Eisenbichler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 1351545175

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Eleonora di Toledo was a powerful and influential woman who, over the course of nearly a quarter century (1539-62), contributed profoundly to the cultural flowering of ducal Florence. Her patronage of some of the leading artists of the time, her support of newly arrived Jesuit preachers, her involvement in charitable activities, her unfailing devotion to her husband and his policies, not to mention her successful farming and business ventures are only some of the areas where her influence was unambiguously exercised and felt. She also provided the House of Medici with a full stable of children to re-invigorate the failing family line, ensure male succession even in the face of unexpected calamities, and provide enough females to establish marriage connections with a variety of noble and ruling houses in Italy. In spite of all these contributions, Eleonora has attracted little attention from scholars. This apparent disinterest may be a factor of Eleonora's personal style, or of the bad press that, as a Spanish noblewoman, she quickly received from her Florentine subjects, or of modern antipathy for some of the basic characteristics of ducal Florence. An examination of her impact on Tuscany is long overdue. In fact, a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the duchess can shed a more profound light not only on her as a person, or on her impact on Tuscan culture in the sixteenth century, but also on the contribution of female consorts to the vitality of a successful early-modern state. The essays collected here bring together a variety of scholars working in various disciplines. While many of the articles take their cue from art history (a natural reflection of the innovative research recent art historians have carried out on the duchess), they also reach out towards other disciplines - political history, literature, spectacle, and religion to mention just a few. In so doing, they expand our understanding of Eleonora's place in her society and reveal a very complex,

The Drawings of Bronzino

The Drawings of Bronzino PDF

Author: Carmen Bambach

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1588393542

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Drawings by the great Italian Mannerist painter and poet Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572) are extremely rare. This important and beautiful publication brings together for the first time nearly all of the sixty drawings attributed to this leading draftsman of the 16th century. Each drawing is illustrated in color, discussed in detail, and shown with many comparative photographs. Bronzino's technical virtuosity as a draftsman and his mastery of anatomy and perspective are vividly apparent in each stroke of the chalk, pen, or brush. The younger generations of Florentine artists particularly admired Bronzino for his technical virtuosity as a painter, and Giorgio Vasari praised him for his powers as a disegnatore (designer and draftsman).

A Companion to Cosimo I de’ Medici

A Companion to Cosimo I de’ Medici PDF

Author: Alessio Assonitis

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-01

Total Pages: 659

ISBN-13: 9004465219

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Mining the rich documentary sources housed in Tuscan archives and taking advantage of the breadth and depth of scholarship produced in recent years, the seventeen essays in this Companion to Cosimo I de' Medici provide a fresh and systematic overview of the life and career of the first Grand Duke of Tuscany, with special emphasis on Cosimo I's education and intellectual interests, cultural policies, political vision, institutional reforms, diplomatic relations, religious beliefs, military entrepreneurship, and dynastic concerns. Contributors: Maurizio Arfaioli, Alessio Assonitis, Nicholas Scott Baker, Sheila Barker, Stefano Calonaci, Brendan Dooley, Daniele Edigati, Sheila ffolliott, Catherine Fletcher, Andrea Gáldy, Fernando Loffredo, Piergabriele Mancuso, Jessica Maratsos, Carmen Menchini, Oscar Schiavone, Marcello Simonetta, and Henk Th. van Veen.

Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance

Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance PDF

Author: Anne R. Larsen

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2007-03-01

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1851097775

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This work is a revealing combination of biographies and topical essays that describe the outstanding and often-overlooked contributions of women to the science, politics, and culture of the Renaissance. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England is the first first comprehensive reference devoted exclusively to the contributions of women to European culture in the period between 1350 and 1700. Focusing principally on early modern women in England, France, and Italy, it offers over 135 biographies of the extraordinary women of those times. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance provides vivid portraits of well known women such as Catherine of Siena, Joan of Arc, Mary Queen of Scots, and Christine de Pizan. Also included are less familiar but equally important women like Elena Lucrezia Cornaro, the first woman in Europe to earn a doctorate; the renowned Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi; and the acclaimed author of medical textbooks and midwife to a French queen, Louise Boursier. Based on the latest research and enhanced with thematic essays, this groundbreaking work casts our understanding of women's lives and roles in Renaissance history and culture in a provocative new light.

Women’s Agency and Self-Fashioning in Early Modern Tuscany

Women’s Agency and Self-Fashioning in Early Modern Tuscany PDF

Author: Autori Vari

Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice

Published: 2022-06-13T13:24:00+02:00

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13:

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The women profiled in these chapters come from diverse cultural, social, economic and spiritual backgrounds: from patrician heads of household to widows, from saints to artistic patrons, each of the women featured in this interdisciplinary study offers us fresh insight and a broader perspective on the position and role of female protagonists in the history of early modern Tuscany. Employing a variety of methodological approaches, and aided by new archival material, this volume examines women’s ordinary and extraordinary experiences through their writings, cultural and religious activities, social and political networks, and commercial endeavors. In so doing, the volume raises insightful questions about the scope of women’s accomplishments and provides new direction for the future study of women’s agency and self-fashioning.

Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors, and Connoisseurs

Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors, and Connoisseurs PDF

Author:

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780271042350

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This anthology reflects a larger impulse to recover women's involvement in the creation of an aesthetic culture from the late medieval through the early modern periods. By asking how the perspectives and experiences of female patrons contributed to the invention of particular styles or iconographies, or how they shaped taste, or how they influenced demand, these twelve original essays introduce significant new information about specific women patrons while raising theoretical issues for patronage studies more generally. While most of the projects discussed are consistent with the period's male-sanctioned concept of female patronage as an expression of conjugal devotion or dynastic promotion, at the same time the women involved devised strategies that circumvented these rules, allowing them to explore the potential or art as a means of proclaiming their own identity and taste.

Fecundity, Security, Eternity

Fecundity, Security, Eternity PDF

Author: Catherine Vassaux

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 60

ISBN-13: 9781339672373

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This thesis offers a new perspective on the relationship between the duchess Eleonora and the art of Bronzino in her private chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio, with an emphasis on her centrality to the conception of the chapel's subject matter and design. Building on previous scholarship, this project views the chapel's iconography and theological program as extensions of the allegorical images of fecundity, security, and eternity that decorated Eleonora's initial procession into Florence and which were used to construct her dynastic identity. Consequently, it is argued that the chapel imagery aided its primary viewer, the new duchess, in her duty to provide the Medici line with healthy male heirs, and provided her with the sacred model of the Virgin Mary to emulate. Also building on previous scholarship emphasizing the importance of the Eucharist to the chapel's program, this study expands on this thematic aspect by underscoring the extensive emphasis on the Virgin's maternal role in salvation as a statement of Eleonora's parallel influence in the Medici dynasty.

Bronzino

Bronzino PDF

Author: Agnolo Bronzino

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9788874611546

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This catalogue traces the career of Agnolo di Cosimo known as Bronzino, a protagonist of sixteenth-century Florentine culture. It charts his life from his apprenticeship in the workshop of Jacopo da Pontormo and sojourn in the Marche region to his career