Major Works Conserved Especially for Bronzino Exhibition
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The Opificio delle Pietre Dure of Florence is currently restoring three of Bronzino’s masterpieces, which will be included in the landmark exhibition Bronzino. Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, from 24 September 2010 to 23 January 2011. See Bronzino. Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici
Venus, Cupid and Jealousy, on loan from the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest and painted for an unknown patron, is one of three allegories on the subject by Bronzino. The other two are in the National Gallery in London and the Galleria Colonna, Rome. Inspired by love poetry, the three pictures focus on the theme of carnal love and its influence on man’s existence. This painting shows Venus debating with her son Cupid, holding an arrow that she has stolen from him pointing downards while his arrow points upwards. Behind her is a large vase of roses, one of her iconographic attributes, while in the background a monstrous figure (Envy or Jealousy) with serpents in its hair seems to be fleeing. In the foreground, two children play with a garland of flowers beside two masks, one of which depicts a satyr.
Reflectography conducted prior to conservation revealed changes in the composition, which was normal practice for Bronzino. In the foreground, where the child’s back is in the finished painting, the face of a satyr gazes flirtatiously up at Venus, whose arrow would have pointed at him to emphasise her preference for carnal love, while Cupid held his arrow pointing upwards to indicate heavenly love. Bronzino’s initial design was similar to the painting in the Colonna collection where a young satyr, also a symbol of carnal love, breaks into a room in which Venus is engaging in playful banter with Cupid. In this finished Budapest composition the satyr is symbolised by a mask.
The Crucified Christ loaned by the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret, Nice, was described by Vasari but thought to have been lost. It has now been identified and attributed to Bronzino by Carlo Falciani and Philippe Costamagna. It is one of the most significant additions to the artist’s oeuvre on display in the exhibition, in which two other previously unknown works will also be shown. Commissioned by Bartolomeo and Lucrezia Panciatichi, whose portraits are in the Uffizi, it is a key work to understanding the approach to reformed religion in Florence in the 1540s. Bartolomeo and Lucrezia were charged with subscribing to Luther’s teachings and brought to trial in 1551. Rather than being a graphic depiction of crucifixion it takes the form of an altar niche with an almost sculptural portrayal of the Christ on the Cross, testifying to the patrons’ belief in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as expounded by Juan de Valdés in his Benefit of Christ.
Reflectographic inspection of the Panciatichi painting revealed a preparatory drawing which greatly differs from the finished work. In the drawing, Christ’s body seems to be crushed beneath its own weight, his head bowed, and his arms, now parallel to the cross, portrayed at an acute angle, while the entire torso is set lower down on the cross, forcing the legs to bend to the right.
If the final painting had followed the underlying drawing, the result would have been closer to the dramatic images associated with the teachings of Savonarola, where Christ’s suffering was held up as a warning against the sins of mankind. It would have exalted the suffering associated with death by crucifixion and therefore, by extension, the suffering that man needs to experience for his salvation, and achieved a pathos akin to that found in many crucifixions of the Trecento, or in some of Michelangelo’s later studies for a Crucified Christ. But salvation offered through faith alone, in the words of Valdés so dear to the Panciatichi, did not demand suffering, it demanded trust. Benedetto Varchi himself wrote of Him “who awaits all / with open arms on His chosen cross, / to offer salvation to the good, and forgiveness to the bad. / Forgiveness I humbly beg of Him, and certain / am I that I shall have it, for His words / cannot lie.” Bronzino abandoned the sketch which, according to Vasari, he had drawn from an authentic cadaver nailed to a cross, and made his composition sweeter and more serene, taking his inspiration both from the thinking of Valdés and from early Quattrocento statuary.
After completing an altarpiece for the cathedral in Pisa, Vasari records that “Bronzino then painted a portrait of Duke Cosimo Morgante, a naked dwarf in full figure, and in two ways, namely on one side of the picture his front and on the other side his back, with that extravaganza of monstrous limbs that the dwarf possesses, and the painting in that respect is beautiful and a marvel to behold”. The Double Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante is listed in a Medici inventory dated 1553, and it is the only such work produced by Bronzino. It directly parallels the burlesque verses in which the painter excelled, as well as illustrating the painter’s stance in a dispute on whether painting or sculpture was the nobler art, known as the Maggioranza delle arti promoted by Benedetto Varchi some years earlier.
The painting was intended to be displayed on a pedestal in the centre of the room, like a statue, so that it could be viewed from either side. In this way Bronzino attempted to illustrate not only the naturalistic potential of painting, which could depict even the deformed limbs of Cosimo I’s court dwarf, but also painting’s supremacy over sculpture. This, because while both painting and sculpture can offer several different viewpoints, at the same time painting can depict the passage of time, which sculpture cannot. While Morgante is shown with the implements of a nocturnal hunter on the front, on the reverse Bronzino depicts him at the end of the hunt, with the birds he has caught. The full-frontal view was subsequently held to be obscene, probably when the painting hung in the villa of Poggio Imperiale in the 19th century, and so Morgante was transformed into a Bacchus serving wine, thus totally altering the iconography of one of Bronzino’s masterpieces. The 19th century additions have now been removed, so that the complexity of Bronzino’s thought, as evinced also by the various naturalistic symbols in the painting such as the large moths fluttering around the deformed figure of Morgante, can be fully appreciated once again.
These exciting revelations will enthral both scholars and admirers of Bronzino and give new insights into the work of this great Mannerist painter.
