Artist · 12 prints
Bronzino Prints
About Bronzino
Bronzino, born Agnolo di Cosimo in Florence on 17 November 1503, was an Italian painter and poet. He trained with the painter Pontormo, and according to the sixteenth-century biographer Giorgio Vasari he appears as the boy on the steps in Pontormo's Joseph with Jacob in Egypt. Bronzino became court painter to Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and was the leading painter in mid-sixteenth-century Florence, the city where he spent his life and where he died on 23 November 1572.
Bronzino is known for cool, polished portraits of the Medici family and their court, with smooth skin, rich fabrics and reserved expressions. His style belongs to Mannerism, a mid-sixteenth-century approach that prized elegance and artifice over natural ease, and it shows the influence of Michelangelo. His portrait of Eleonora of Toledo with her son Giovanni is in the Uffizi in Florence. An Allegory with Venus and Cupid (about 1544–45), in the National Gallery, London, is one of the most puzzling paintings of the period. He also wrote poetry.
Bronzino prints: reproductions of paintings by the Florentine Mannerist painter Bronzino, made between about 1533 and 1553. The collection includes the Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo with Her Son Giovanni de' Medici (1544), Portrait of Laura Battiferri (1550), Bia di Cosimo de' Medici (1542), Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune (1550) and Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (1540).
This selection is mostly portraits of the Medici court and Florentine society: young men, noblewomen, children and the poet Laura Battiferri, shown with smooth skin, rich fabrics and composed faces against plain or architectural backgrounds. It also includes two mythological scenes with Venus and Cupid, a Saint Sebastian and the Panciatichi Holy Family. Strong blues, reds and greens recur throughout.
The formal portraits suit studies, dining rooms, entrance halls and offices; the Venus scenes are better placed in a bedroom or private sitting room. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
