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. Three works here, all variations on the Holy Family, including the Panciatichi Holy Family and the Madonna Stroganoff.