Thesis--Princeton University. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1982. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 363-399).

Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 2006. / online-publiziert: 2008.

My dissertation “Bronzino in Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Court: Manufacturing Propaganda in Sixteenth-Century Italy” challenges entrenched scholarly approaches on the artist which developed during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bronzino (1503-1572) is best known for his autograph portraits and the painting Allegory with Venus and Cupid; yet the scholarship on the artist has suffered due to the inordinate focus on this very select portion of his artwork. The portraits and allegory have been scrutinized so intensely because they have been deemed masterpieces of the Western canon. However, almost three-quarters of his oeuvre, in particular the copies of the ducal portraits made by Bronzino and his workshop, as well as the religious paintings, have been neglected due to their non-masterpiece status. To bring a fresh approach to Bronzino scholarship, my research hinges on the matter of how the painter’s artistic practices changed when he began to manufacture propaganda for the court of the second duke of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574). This topic elicits questions such as how an artist transformed their workshop to a salaried court studio as well as the complicated realities of manufacturing propaganda for a principality. By focusing my dissertation on this topic, my study offers a different way of understanding Bronzino and a way to think with the painter on broader questions related to the life of an early modern court artist. / Art History

This dissertation examines paintings by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino, and by his teacher, Jacopo Pontormo. It takes as its focus works created during the period of 1529-39, a decade of political uncertainty and social unrest predating Bronzino's career as court painter. The study begins during the brutal Siege of Florence in 1529-30, which brought an end to the last Florentine republic. Although the republic's defeat made way for the establishment of the Medici duchy, the 1530s were marked by fervent and unrelenting republican opposition to the new dukes. These circumstances provide the background to this study, in which paintings by Bronzino and Pontormo are shown to offer eloquent--if sometimes cautious--comment on recent political events. The initial chapters address the relationship between two paintings carried out during the Siege, reconciling Pontormo's Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi) with its allegorical cover, Bronzino's Pygmalion and Galatea. The first chapter reconsiders the role of Venus in Bronzino's painting, attributing to her a rousing, rather than pacifying, influence; she is shown to be a deity especially well-suited for reverence by young Florentine soldiers, and a fitting subject for the cover of Pontormo's republican portrait. The second chapter explores the specific political significance of Bronzino's artistic choices, paying special attention to his allusion to Michelangelo's marble David, whose form he incorporates into the figure of Pygmalion's beloved Galatea. The young hero David--shown to be one of the period's most potent republican symbols--is somehow manifest in each of the paintings considered, linking the four chapters. But whereas the Pygmalion and Galatea and Portrait of a Halberdier are explained as republican pictures created under republican rule, the portraits examined in the third and fourth chapters are presented as subversive images created under the Medici dukes. The third chapter reinterprets Bronzino's Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (c. 1537), as an expression of republican opposition to ducal rule. The fourth chapter proposes a new dating for Pontormo's Portrait of Carlo Neroni--presently understood as a republican picture dating to the period of the Siege--relocating its origin to c. 1538-9, well after the republic's defeat. This reassessment has important implications for a number of portraits by both artists, and it calls into question currently accepted art-historical approaches to Florentine culture in the 1530s. By identifying examples of republican factionalism in portraits painted by Pontormo and Bronzino under Medici rule, this dissertation discovers political dissent where previously considered impossible.

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