Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio

by Janet Cox-Rearick

• ISBN13: 9780520074804
• ISBN10: 0520074807
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2023-12-22
• Publisher: University of California Press

Summary

Do the sacred decorations of a Florentine Renaissance chapel--saints, symbols, and scriptural stories--hold personal and political meanings? Cox-Rearick's ground-breaking book explores the message hidden in the frescoes and altar panels of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, painted in the early 1540s by Agnolo Bronzino for the Spanish-born wife of Duke Cosimo I de Medici. Bronzino, then the chief painter to the Medici court, was largely responsible for the invention in Florence of the highly self-conscious, elegant Maniera style. Cox-Rearick interweaves her account of the Medici biography with an examination of Bronzino's commission in the broader context of his oeuvre. Cox-Rearick reveals the Chapel of Eleonora as an intimately devised decorative program that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule. Detailed color photographs of the newly restored art splendidly document this early tour de force of a major artist whose works are still relatively unexamined.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Photograph Credits
Preface
Introduction	p. 1
The Patron and Her Chapel
Eleonora Di Toledo, Duchess of Florence	p. 22
The Chronology of the Frescoes	p. 54
The Altarpiece and the Completion of the Decoration	p. 74
Bronzino's Paintings in the Chapel
The Frescoes	p. 94
The Altarpieces	p. 145
Devotional Imagery in the Chapel
The Altar Wall	p. 190
The Stories of Moses	p. 213
The Saints of the Vault	p. 238
The Medicean Meaning of the Chapel Decoration
History, Myth, and Propaganda in Cosimo De' Medici's Early Art	p. 250
Imagery of Dynasty and Rule	p. 260
Cosimo De' Medici as an Old Testament Hero	p. 282
Cosimo De' Medici, a New Moses	p. 294
The Programme of the Chapel	p. 320
Appendix of Documents	p. 327
List of Abbreviations	p. 347
Notes	p. 349
Selected Bibliography	p. 417
Index of Documents Cited	p. 429
General Index	p. 431
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