Alessandro Allori – painter

Artist was Bronzino’s favourite pupil

Alessandro Allori's 1570 painting, The Pearl
Fishers, is considered to be his masterpiece

Prolific painter Alessandro Allori, whose style of painting was to influence many other famous artists in the late 16th century, was born on this day in 1535 in Florence.

His father, who was a sword maker, died when he was five. The painter Agnolo Bronzino became guardian of the Allori family and little Alessandro spent a lot of his time in the artist’s workshop while he was growing up.

Bronzino was the court painter for Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He painted mainly portraits, but also some religious and allegorical subjects. It is said that Allori was his favourite pupil.

Allori was so close to him that he incorporated Bronzino’s name into his own, as can be seen on the inscription on one of his paintings that was dated 1552  – Alessandro Allori, foster son of Agnolo Bronzino. He even sometimes signed himself Alessandro Bronzino or Alessandro Bronzino-Allori.

It was also Allori who completed Bronzino’s last fresco, The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, in Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence, which Bronzino was unable to finish before his death in 1572.

Allori spent six years studying in Rome, where he was highly influenced by Michelangelo’s work. On his return to Florence, he also became one of the leading painters for the members of the Medici family who ruled Florence at the time.

Much of his work displays the complicated, twisting poses typical of Florentine Mannerist painting. To help him paint realistic figures he conducted anatomical research, which included the dissection of human corpses supplied by the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.

He painted altarpieces, frescoes and portraits and also designed tapestry, having been made director of the Florentine tapestry factory in the 1570s.

In 1570, Allori painted The Pearl Fishers, a landscape showing figures diving for pearls, for the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici in Palazzo Vecchio and this is generally considered to be his masterpiece. Working under the guidance of Giorgio Vasari, Allori’s painting shows the influence of Michelangelo, with its figures in complex poses as they dived, which became emblematic of late Florentine Mannerism.

A self-portrait that Allori is thought
to have painted in about 1555

Allori was the father of the painter Cristofano Allori, who was born in 1577 and was taught to paint by his father. Alessandro Allori had many other pupils, including Giovanni Bizzelli.

Suffering from gout, Allori died in Florence in 1607. He is buried with many other famous artists from the period in the Cappella di San Luca (Chapel of the Painters) at the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. 

After his death, Allori’s style of painting was to influence artistic developments in Tuscany for another 50 years. 

It is estimated that anywhere between 100 and 200 of Allori’s works have survived. The largest single collection is held by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; others are in galleries around the world or in private collections.

One work, a 16th century portrait of Eleonora of Toledo, the first wife of Cosimo I de’ Medici, was returned to the Gemaeldegalerie in Berlin in 2006 after spending more than half a century in the possession of British broadcaster Charles Wheeler.

Wheeler, who worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC for 61 years until his death in 2008, was given the painting, which measures only 16cm by 12cm, as a gift by a contributor to a programme he was making while working at the BBC’s Berlin Bureau in 1952. 

He assumed it was a copy but liked it enough to take it with him on various assignments around the world before it found a more permanent home on a bookshelf in his office.

It was not until 54 years later, while making a programme about missing art, that he decided to look into the history of the painting.

His enquiries revealed that it was not a copy but a priceless original, one of an estimated 400 paintings at the Gemaeldegalerie that had been looted or destroyed during World War Two.

The Palazzo Vecchio in Florence's Piazza
della Signoria is a familiar landmark

Travel tip:

Palazzo Vecchio, which Allori helped to decorate with his painting, is the town hall of Florence. It overlooks the Piazza della Signoria as well as the gallery of statues in the Loggia dei Lanzi. The palace was originally called the Palazzo della Signoria, after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence.  The building acquired its current name when the Medici Duke's residence was moved across the Arno to the Palazzo Pitti. The cubical palazzo is made of solid rusticated stonework topped by a simple tower with a clock, known as the Torre d’Arnolfo after its designer, Arnolfo di Cambio. The Palazzo Vecchio acquired renewed importance as the seat of united Italy's provisional government from 1865 to 1871, at a moment when Florence had become the temporary capital of the Kingdom of Italy.  Although most of the building is now given over to a museum, since 1872 it has housed the office of the mayor of Florence, and it is the seat of the City Council.

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The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, with
its facade by Giovanni Battista Caccini

Travel tip:

Alessandro Allori is buried in the Chapel of San Luca in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. The chapel has belonged to the artists’ confraternity since 1565. Many artists are buried in its vault, including Benvenuto Cellini, and Pontormo. Inside there are murals by Alessandro Allori and works by other famous painters from his period. The Basilica, in the San Marco district of Florence, was founded by the Servite order in 1250 and later rebuilt by Michelozzo between 1444 and 1481. The facade of the church is by the architect Giovanni Battista Caccini. It was added in 1601 to imitate the Renaissance-style loggia of Filippo Brunelleschi's facade of the Foundling Hospital, which defines the eastern side of the piazza. 

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More reading:

Bronzino, the Medici court painter who became the master of Mannerism

Giorgio Vasari, the painter and architect credited with being the first art historian

Cosimo I de’ Medici, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany

Also on this day:

1594: The death of painter Tintoretto

1914: The death of coffee machine pioneer Angelo Moriondo

1921: The birth of royal jeweller Andrew Grima

1970: The birth of film director Paolo Sorrentino

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Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo – artist

Painter’s expressive style was the start of Mannerism

Jacopo Pontormo's masterpiece, The
Deposition from the Cross

Painter Jacopo Carucci, often referred to simply as Pontormo, was born on this day in 1494 in Pontorme near Empoli in Tuscany.

Pontormo is considered to be the founder of the Mannerist style of painting in the later years of the Italian high renaissance, as he was capable of blending Michelangelo’s use of colour and monumental figures with the metallic rigidity of northern painters such as Albrecht Dürer. His work represents a distinct stylistic shift from the art typical of the Florentine Renaissance.

According to Giorgio Vasari in his book, The Lives of the Artists, Pontormo’s father was also a painter but he became an orphan at the age of ten. As a young art apprentice he moved around a lot, staying with Leonardo da Vinci, Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo and Andrea del Sarto.

Pope Leo X, passing through Florence in 1515 on a journey, commissioned the young Pontormo to fresco the Pope’s Chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella.

Pontormo also participated in the decoration of the nuptial chamber of Pierfrancesco Borgherini with his Stories of Joseph, four paintings that are now in the National Gallery in London.

According to Vasari, the model for the boy seated on the step in one of the pictures was Pontormo’s young apprentice, Bronzino.

In 1522, when the plague broke out in Florence, Pontormo went to stay at a cloistered Carthusian monastery, the Certosa di Galluzzo, where he painted a series of frescoes on the passion and resurrection of Christ, but sadly these have been damaged over the years.

Pontormo’s surviving masterpiece is considered to be The Deposition from the Cross, a large altarpiece canvas in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence.

Pontormo's portrait, The Halberdier, was once
the most expensive painting in the world

In the last few years of his life, Pontormo worked on frescoes for the choir of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, but only the drawings for these have survived. The artist died, aged 62, in January 1557 before completing this work.

According to Vasari, Pontormo ‘was buried in the first cloister of the Church of the Servite friars under the scene he had previously painted there of the Visitation.’ This is the church of Santissima Annunziata in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

His body was moved in 1562 to the chapel devoted to artists and placed under the Trinity, which had been painted by his pupil, Bronzino.

Vasari portrays Pontormo as withdrawn, neurotic and miserly, but subsequent art historians have pointed out that the two were rivals for Medici commissions, which might have influenced Vasari’s judgment.

Pontormo’s work was out of fashion for centuries, but there has recently been renewed interest in him from art historians. Between 1989 and 2002, Pontormo’s portrait of The Halberdier held the title of the world’s most expensive painting by an Old Master.

The church of San Michele in Pontorme, Empoli, is just
a few steps from the house in which Pontormo was born

Travel tip:

The village of Pontorme, where Jacopo Carucci was born, is now a district of the town of Empoli, which can be found 20km (12 miles) southwest of Florence. Pontorme is essentially the network of streets around the church of San Michele Arcangelo. The house where Carucci spent his early years is now a museum in which visitors can see objects and artworks that include preparatory sketches for the altarpiece depicting Saints John the Evangelist and the Archangel Michael from the church of San Michele, a page from the painter’s diary and pieces of ceramic cookware uncovered during the building’s restoration.  The house is close to the church of San Michele in Via Pontorme, who can arrange visits.

The loggia facade of the Basilica della Santissima
Annunziata in Florence, where Carucci was buried

Travel tip:

The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, where Carucci was buried, is a Renaissance-style basilica in Florence. Considered the mother church of the Servite Order, it is located at the northeastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata near the city centre. The facade of the church is by the architect Giovanni Battista Caccini, added in 1601 to imitate the Renaissance-style loggia of Brunelleschi's facade of the Foundling Hospital, which defines the eastern side of the piazza. The building opposite the Foundling Hospital, designed by Sangallo the Elder, was also given a Brunelleschian facade in the 1520s.

Also on this day:

1671: The birth of Gian Gastone de’ Medici, the last Medici to rule Florence

1751: The birth of Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia

1981: The birth of celebrity chef Simone Rugiati


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Bronzino – master of Mannerism

Florentine became Medici court painter

Bronzino's portrait of Eleonora of Toledo, wife
of Cosimo I de' Medici, with her son, Giovanni

The Mannerist painter Agnolo di Cosimo – better known as Il Bronzino or simply Bronzino – was born on this day in 1503, just outside Florence.

Bronzino is now recognised as the outstanding artist of what has become known as the second wave of Mannerism in the mid-16^th century.  His style bears strong influences of Jacopo Pontormo, who was an important figure in the first wave and of  whom Bronzino was a pupil as a young man in Florence.

The Mannerist movement began in around 1520, probably in Florence but possibly in Rome. In the evolution of art it followed the High Renaissance period.

Typical of Mannerist painters is their use of elongated forms and a style influenced by the attention to detail allied to restrained realism that was characteristic of the Renaissance masters Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

Bronzino became best known for his portraits, which were detailed and stylishly sophisticated, in which the subjects were superbly realistic but also tended to wear stoical, rather haughty expressions.

He also paid particular attention to fabric and clothing, his works often notable for his recreation of textures. He often used strong colours - sometimes cold blues, at other times warm reds – and created effects that were almost like theatrical lighting.

Cosimo I de' Medici in armour, as portrayed by
Bronzino in 1545

He painted many religious works, in which the influence of Michelangelo could be seen in his use of dramatic body shapes, but his greatest contribution to the Mannerist period was his portraiture, particularly during his time in the Medici court, where his ability to give his subjects an air of elegant nobility made him very popular.

Born in Monticelli, then a small town just outside Florence but now essentially a neighbourhood of the Tuscan city, Bronzino became apprenticed to Pontorno in 1515, their relationship developing almost as that of father and son. Indeed, when plague swept the city in 1522, Pontorno took his pupil with him to stay in the relative seclusion of the Certosa di Galuzzo, a monastery.

When they returned, Pontorno’s trust in Bronzino – who is thought to have acquired his nickname mainly on account of a dark complexion, possibly due to a pigment disorder – was such that he enlisted his help in creating what is seen as his own masterpiece, the Deposition from the Cross, an altarpiece in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence, not far from the Ponte Vecchio, where they also worked together on a sidewall fresco, Annunciation.

Indeed, Bronzino became so adept as following his master’s methods that there has at times been fierce debate between experts over whether certain paintings were the work of Pontorno or his pupil.

Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man, painted in
around 1540, is seen as one of his finest works

Bronzino left the city for a second time in 1530 when it came under siege from the armies of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, who were seeking to overthrow the Florentine republic established in 1527 and restore the Medici family to power.

When he rejoined Pontorno in Florence some years later, he had revealed his talent for portraiture while in the employ of the Duke of Urbino and it was not long before he was appointed by the Medici court as official portraitist, a role he would keep until he died in 1572, at the age of 69.

Bronzino’s figures influenced portraiture in Europe for almost a century. His best-known works include portraits of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici, and his wife, Eleonora, and other members of their court such as Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia.  He also painted idealized portraits of the poets Dante and Petrarch.

By the time of his death he had developed a relationship similar to that he had enjoyed with Pontorno with his own pupil, the late Mannerist painter Alessandro Allori.

The church of Santa Felicità in Florence

Travel tip:

The church of Santa Felicità is described as the oldest religious building in Florence, apart from the Basilica of San Lorenzo.  Although the current structure was built in 1739, it is thought that the first church on the site was probably built in the late fourth century.  As well as Pontorno’s painting, assisted by Bronzino, the church is famous for the fact that the Vasari Corridor, the enclosed passage built by the Medici to link the Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria with the Medici’s family residence, the Palazzo Pitti, passes through the façade.

Piero della Francesco's Flagellation

Travel tip:

The town of Urbino in Le Marche has long been associated with art, most famously as the birthplace of Raffaello Sanzio – better known by the anglicised name, Raphael.  Its Galleria Nazionale delle Marche houses many fine works, including Raphael’s La Muta, several paintings by Titian and Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesco’s Flagellation, measuring 59cm by 82cm and once described as ‘the greatest small painting in the world’.

Also on this day: 

1494 - the death of philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

1878 - Attempted Assassination of Umberto I

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