Bronzino in Duke Cosimo I de' Medici's Court: Manufacturing Propaganda in Sixteenth-Century Italy

Abstract

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.