Agnolo Bronzino

Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572) was born and died in Florence, trained under Pontormo — with whom he remained close for life — and also studied with Girolamo Genga. He spent his career in Florence, much of it as court painter to Cosimo I de' Medici. He is the defining painter of Florentine Mannerism at its most polished. His surfaces are cool, enamel-hard and almost without visible brushwork; his figures are elongated, self-possessed and emotionally sealed. In the court portraits this reads as an argument about dynastic power. In the religious paintings it produces something stranger — sacred subjects rendered with the same crystalline detachment, holy figures arranged like sculpture. Alessandro Allori trained in his studio and inherited the manner. Two works here: The Panciatichi Holy Family and The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist (Madonna Stroganoff).