BRONZINO, ANGELO (AGNOLO TORI). - Painter and poet, b. at Monticelli (Florence) on 17 Nov. 1503, d. on 23 Nov. 1563. As a very young man he worked under Raffaellino del Garbo, but before long he collaborated with Pontormo in the Certosa of Florence (1522-25), and in the Capponi Chapel of S. Felicità (1524-26). After a stay in Pesaro (frescoes of the villa known as the Imperiale) he returned to Florence (1533) where, again with Pontormo, he painted for the Medici in the villas of Poggio a Cajano, of Careggi (1536), of Castello (1537-42) and in the Palazzo Medici on Via Larga (1539), frescoes that have been almost entirely lost; in 1540 he was appointed court painter by Duke Cosimo.
The portraits to which so much of the B.'s fame is tied were painted mainly after 1540; the most notable, in which the painter's style is best characterized by its crisp drawing, firm tone and abstract geometry of composition, are those of Eleonora of Toledo with her son, of the little Garcia, of Maria de' Medici and of Cosimo the First in the Uffizi; the Portrait of a Young Man, in the Agnew collection in New York; that of Stefano Colonna, in the National Gallery of Rome. Earlier than this series (1534-40) are those of Ugo Martelli in Berlin (Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum), of Bartolomeo and Lucrezia Panciatichi (Florence, Uffizi). Called to decorate the chapel of Eleonora of Toledo (1545-54) in the Palazzo Vecchio, he painted there the stupendous Deposition, now in Besançon, and some biblical stories (Crossing of the Red Sea, the Springing Forth of Water, and the Fall of the Manna), in which certain Raphaelesque and Michelangelesque mannerisms are profitably assimilated by the painter; who confers on these compositions hints of movement and of complex composition, hints that are developed in the warm works of a profane character, such as the allegories of London, Rome, Budapest. Probable Flemish influences contributed to this gradual moving away from crisp relief and sculptural forms; the painterly quality of the last works on sacred subjects is inferior to that of the portraits, since in them spontaneity falls short (Deposition from the museum of S. Marco, Sacrifice of Abraham, the Limbo, the Pietà of the Uffizi; Noli me tangere of the Louvre), or they reveal a too external influence of Michelangelo (Resurrection in the church of the S.ma Annunziata, in Florence; Nativity in the church of S. Stefano in Pisa), or even, albeit with the usual polish, border on artifice (Martyrdom of the Saint in the church of S. Lorenzo in Florence).
BBL: V. Mariani, Due disegni del B. al Louvre, in L'Arte, 29 (1926), pp. 58-60; A. Mc Comb, A. B., Cambridge 1928; P. Wescher, Enel B. s Portratt, in Pantheon, 1 (1930), p. 5; W. R. Valentiner, Eleonora da Toledo by B., in Bull. of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 22 (1942-43), pp. 1-3; C. Caversazzi, Un presunto ritratto di Torquato Tasso giovinetto, in Bergamun, 1 (1946), p. 47; L. Becherucci, Manieristi toscani, Bergamo 1944, pp. 42-51 (con bibl.).
