CONVERSATION: Bronzino Revealed

| BRONZINO REVEALED

THE HIDDEN SECRETS OF THREE MASTERPIECES edited by James M. Bradburne

| ALIAS

This publication was written to coincide with the exhibition BRONZINO ARTIST AND POET AT THE COURT OF THE MEDICI Florence Palazzo Strozzi 24 September 2010 23 January 2011 Promoted and organized by Ente Cassa di Risparmio Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali Soprintendenza PSAE e per il Polo Museale della città di Firenze with Comune di Firenze Provincia di Firenze Camera di Commercio di Firenze Associazione Partners Palazzo Strozzi and Regione Toscana Technical Sponsors Ferrovie dello Stato Apt Firenze Ataf Aeroporto di Firenze Coop-Unicoop Firenze Firenze Parcheggi Miles & More International/Lufthansa www.palazzostrozzi.org

COMMUNICATION AND PROMOTION Susanna Holm – CSC Sigma PRESS OFFICE Antonella Fiori (National) Sue Bond Public Relation (International)

A PUBLICATION OF Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi CONCEPT AND CREATIVE DIRECTION James M. Bradburne EDITED BY James M. Bradburne TEXTS James M. Bradburne Marco Ciatti Carlo Falciani

EDITORIAL COORDINATION Ludovica Sebregondi TRANSLATION Stephen Tobin Julian Haxby GRAPHIC DESIGN AND LAYOUT RovaiWeber design ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Miel de Botton-Aynsley

The conversation was recorded in Florence on 11 June 2010 PARTICIPANTS TO THE CONVERSATION James M. Bradburne Ezio Buzzegoli Marco Ciatti Carlo Falciani Antonio Natali Chiara Rossi Scarzanella Ludovica Sebregondi Caterina Toso TRANSCRIPTION Maddalena Mancini Caterina Rocchi

This volume was produced with the much-valued cooperation of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure di Firenze

The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Programme has funded the restoration of: Bronzino, Crucified Christ, Nice, Musée des Beaux-Arts Bronzino, Venus, Cupid and Jealousy (or Envy), Budapest, Szépmu˝vészeti Múzeum; Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze has funded the restoration of: Bronzino, Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

PHOTO CREDITS © O’Mara & Ryan (pp. 12-15, 20, 25-28, 30-34, 37, 38, 42, 43, 46, 48, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 67-69, 74, 77); Foto Saporetti (p. 23); George Tatge (p. 45); Serge Domingie (p. 47); Odile Guillon, CICRP (pp. 41, 54, 87); OPD (pp. 29, 63, 91-93); INOA-CNR Istituto Nazionale di Ottica Applicata-Firenze (pp. 18, 57, 83, 86);Antonio Quattrone (pp. 6, 53, 80, 87, 89, 90).

© 2010 Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze © 2010 Alias All rights reserved Printed in Italy

by LitoTerrazzi, Florence September 2010 ISBN 978-88-96532-20-1 No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,without permission in writing from the publisher.

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A PROPOSITO DEL BRONZINO James M. Bradburne

It is difficult to think of a painter more Florentine than Bronzino.The exhibition Bronzino.Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici is a landmark, and the Palazzo Strozzi the perfect setting for the first ever monographic exploration of Bronzino’s paintings.The son of a butcher,Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano, better known by his nickname Agnolo Bronzino, was born on November 17, 1503, in Monticelli, then a suburb of Florence. From 1515—17 he was apprenticed to the painter Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557), and by the early 1520s he had gained some independence as a collaborator in his workshop. The friendship and professional association between Pontormo and Bronzino, who were actually relatively close in age, continued for almost four decades. Pontormo’s impact in Bronzino lasted into the early 1530s.

Bronzino is one of the greatest artists in the history of Italian painting, and embodies the ripening of the ‘modern manner’ in the years in which Cosimo I de’ Medici ruled Florence. Bronzino conveyed the elegance of the Medici court with an austere beauty and ‘naturalness’ yet, at the same time, a kind of icy aristocratic splendour.A sophisticated court painter, Bronzino was accepted into the Accademia degli Umidi (later the Accademia Fiorentina) as a poet. His poetry covered the full range of contemporary styles, from the academic style of Petrarch to ironic and satirical verses such as Il piato, where he describes an imaginary and symbolic journey through a giant’s entrails, or La cipolla, a playful and erotic homage to the multi-layered complexity of female physical and metaphysical anatomy. Nor were Bronzino’s interests limited to the links between painting and poetry, he also took up both pen and brush in the dispute about whether painting or sculpture was the nobler art.This dispute, known as the Disputa della maggioranza dell’arti, was fuelled by Benedetto Varchi who published a book on the subject in 1549/50, containing an intense ex-

Bronzino Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, 1541−5, oil on panel Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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change of poems by a variety of artists including Bronzino, Michelangelo, Pontormo, and Cellini. Bronzino even responded with the Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante, Cosimo I’s court dwarf, who is shown naked on two sides of the same canvas – a picture intended to be placed in the centre of a room as though it were a sculpture.

Bronzino’s legacy was continued by his pupil Alessandro Allori, who developed his master’s austerely formal style, while at the same time adding a strongly sentimental quality, strengthened by a naturalism whose presence became increasingly marked as the new century advanced.Allori was to paint until 1607, by which time the naturalism of Caravaggio was spreading unchecked, marking the beginning of a new era in painting. All art is contemporary in the moment of its creation, and although Bronzino’s ‘modern manner’ was soon seen by the younger generation as old-fashioned, to modern eyes, it once again seems fresh and contemporary.

The exhibition will host a large selection of Bronzino’s masterpieces, some of them on display together for the very first time.The exhibition has also made it possible to restore over a dozen works from museums around the world, thanks to which the visitor will be able to admire and to fully appreciate the extraordinary jewel-like quality of many of Bronzino’s masterpieces, a quality which vied with enamel and precious stones, and which historical sources recognized as being a decisive factor in forging his reputation. Not only does restoration bring masterpieces back to life – there are often surprises lurking beneath the painted surface. Invisible to the naked eye, modern imaging techniques allow conservators to examine the painting using infrared and ultraviolet light and x-rays. By looking at the painting under several different wavelengths, conservators—like detectives—can reveal hidden evidence, such as under-drawings,‘pentimenti’, where the artist altered the fin-

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ished image—and even whole new paintings never seen before! In the case of Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid and Jealousy (or Envy), wholly new figures were discovered under the finished surface, opening a new chapter in the public appreciation of this Renaissance master.

The restoration of the allegory and the Crucified Christ, along with taht of Bronzino’s Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi and a detached fresco by Bronzino’s master, Pontormo, were funded with a generous grant from the The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Programme.

Debate, discussion and dialogue are at the core of a healthy civil society, and intelligent conversation is at the heart of a dynamic culture. In the museum or exhibition, we rarely go just to look. More often we go to talk about our looking— and our enjoyment of art is heightened by sharing our discoveries with others.

Speaking about the role of the art museum in society, the American philosopher Nelson Goodman said that “works work when, by stimulating inquisitive looking, sharpening perception, raising visual intelligence, they participate in… the making and re-making of our worlds”.

This book—and the conversation it records—is part of the ongoing discovery and rediscovery of our cultural heritage. Every reader is also a part of the process—so welcome to the conversation!

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DISCUSSING THE BRONZINO RESTORATIONS

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Conversation recorded on Friday 11 June 2010 in the restoration workshop of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence

PARTICIPANTS

JAMES M. BRADBURNE isAnglo-Canadian.An architect,designer and museologist, he has designed world expo pavilions, science parks and international art exhibitions. He was educated in Canada and in England, graduating in architecture with the Architectural Association and taking his doctorate in museology at University ofAmsterdam.Over the past twenty years he has produced exhibitions and organised research projects and conferences for UNESCO,national governments,private foundations and museums in many parts of the world. He is currently the director general of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, an organisation whose goal is to turn Palazzo Strozzi in Florence into a dynamic cultural centre.

MARCO CIATTI is the director of the canvas and panel painting restoration workshop and the fabric restoration section at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure e Laboratori di Restauro in Florence;he is also chief lecturer in the history and theory of restoration at the Opificio’s Scuola di Restauro. He has directed the restoration projects of masterpieces by Botticelli, Coppo di Marcovaldo,Cimabue,Giovanni Pisano,Giotto,Gentile da Fabriano,FraAngelico, Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Fra Bartolomeo, Raphael, Rosso Fiorentino, Caravaggio and Rubens, also taking charge of such tie-ins as the publication of the attendant catalogue and the organization of exhibitions linked to the newly restored works of art.

EZIO BUZZEGOLI is a restorer and director of conservation who works in the Movable Paintings section of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure workshop in the Fortezza da Basso, Florence. He has both planned and executed a wide variety of restoration projects: in addition to his work as technical director on the restoration project of Bronzino’s Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante,his most important projects includes Michelangelo’s DoniTondo,Andrea del Sarto’s Woman with“Petrarchino”,Botticelli’s Portrait of aYoung Man with a Medal in the Uffizi and the same artist’s Lamentation over the Dead Christ from the Poldi Pezzoli Musum in Milan.

He has devised and implemented a number of innovative and original techniques for the non-invasive analysis of works of art.

CARLO FALCIANI, an art historian and lecturer at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, has been a scholarship fellow both ofVilla I Tatti and of the Center for Advanced Study in theVisualArts inWashington.He specialises inTuscan Cinquecento painting and has published a monograph on Rosso Fiorentino,among other work.He has also curated an exhibition of Pontormo drawings for the Uffizi. He has written several essays on the relationship between painting and literature,focusing in particular on their meaning.His work includes an essay on the decoration by Rosso Fiorentino and Le Pri0matice at Fontainebleau as well as essays on the Ferrarese school of painting and,more recently,on Giorgione’s Tempest.

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ANTONIO NATALI Antonio Natali has been director of the Uffizi Gallery since 2006 and a lecturer in museum studies at Perugia University since 2000. He achieved recognition as full professor in the history of modern art in 2006. He is also the scientific director of “Pontormo’s House”. He specialises in the study of Tuscan Quattrocento and Cinquecento sculpture and painting. His published work includes: La Bibbia in bottega; La piscina di Betsaida; L’umanesimo di Michelozzo; Andrea del Sarto.

Maestro della “maniera moderna”; Leonardo. Il giardino di delizie; Rosso Fiorentino. Leggiadra maniera e terribilità di cose stravaganti. He has curated both classical art exhibitions and exhibitions hosting the work of contemporary painters and photographers.

CHIARA ROSSI SCARZANELLA

conducts experiments and researche into innovative techniques in the field of painting restoration, focusing in particular on the problems involved in the consolidation of panel paintings. She has written on the technical and conservation aspects of her work, and has restored numerous 13th to 18th century paintings including work by Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, Pietro da Cortona and Rubens, and notably Bronzino’s large panel painting depicting the Descent of Christ into Limbo which was seriously damaged in the flood of 1966. She is the technical director of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure’s painting restorating workshop. She has lectured, and indeed continues to lecture, at a variety of Italian and foreign universities.

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LUDOVICA SEBREGONDI is an art historian who has focused on lay associationism, publishing books and curating exhibitions on the subject. She has also devoted her attention to the iconographic fortunes of numerous figures,in particular to those of Girolamo Savonarola. He has lectured, and continues to lecture, in several universities both in Italy and abroad. She has published books on the art history of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. She curated the new Museo delTesoro di San Lorenzo in Florence, and worked on the MUDI project, the new Museo degli Innocenti. She is in charge of scientific and editorial coordination for the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence.

CATERINA TOSO has worked with the national fine arts Soprintendenze while

continuing to lecture at the Università Internazionale dell’Arte in Florence, focusing on the study of medieval artistic techniques. She has been working with the Opificio delle Pietre Dure since 2001, also teaching at the institute’s Scuola di Alta Formazione. She has written on the technical and conservation aspects of her work and currently conducts scientific experiments and research into innovative techniques. She has restored numerous masterpieces including work by Giotto, Lorenzo Monaco, Fra’Angelico, Mantegna,Titian and Andrea del Sarto.

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BRADBURNE |

I’d like to start this conversation by stressing that this restoration reveals the invisible, it shows what you can’t see with the naked eye. It’s like a mystery, a genuine discovery. I saw the painting a few months ago and it was a kind of greyish colour.Now it positively glows;and then we also have this,which was a revelation to me and to others too.A hidden satyr has appeared out of nowhere. How can that be? Can anyone tell me?

CIATTI | In technical terms these pictures are the product of a sophisticated exploration technique known as infrared reflectography, or IR, which is conducted using a multispectral HD scanner designed and perfected by the Italian National Optics Institute. What we’re looking at is a drawing made by the artist on a clear ground preparation. Luckily for us he used charcoal for the drawing,so with infrared exploration the rays aren’t absorbed, they’re reflected (hence the term reflectography) and the monitor picks this up.That’s the technical side, but my colleagues here will explain the importance of all this in art historical terms. I’d like to stress that this kind of positive interaction is always necessary,and we’ve seen it at work here.In other words,restoration mustn’t be seen as a series of more or less complex or sophisticated technical operations but as a tool with which art historians, restorers and scientific experts can work together to achieve a deeper understanding of a work of art, because the work of art is the focus of our work, and quite rightly so,but we approach it from many different standpoints.Thus one is also attracted by diagnostic exploration, particularly of the non-invasive imaging kind.

BRADBURNE | But my question remains unanswered.Bronzino changed his mind; he wanted to do a different picture.What is it that prompted him to do that?

NATALI | I have no idea what lies behind it, but I’d like to tell you what it sug-

Bronzino Venus, Cupid and Jealousy (or Envy) c. 1550 oil on panel Budapest, Szépmu˝vészeti Múzeum.

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Multi-Nir scanner Reflectogram.

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Bronzino Venus, Cupid and Jealousy (or Envy), detail c. 1550 oil on panel Budapest, Szépmu˝vészeti Múzeum.

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gests to me: the idea that a satyr is already growing inside that child at the sight of this nudity.He turns towards this other being,who watches him.That is the visible part.that’s the part we see.What we don’t see is the little satyr living in him.

FALCIANI | Actually that may not be so far-fetched, in the sense that this may already be a burlesque allusion in a child’s game to an initial idea that was subsequently given what we might call a symbolic rather than a narrative role in the masks, when the satyr who was originally supposed to be alive was turned into a mask.

BRADBURNE | Carlo has shown us another picture which will be on display in the Palazzo Strozzi exhibition and which very clearly illustrates this line of thought.

FALCIANI | The Venus, Cupid and Satyr from the Colonna Collection shows a satyr entering the scene and discovering the love betweenVenus and Cupid.

NATALI | [smiles] As long as kids don’t get hold of this book, we might even add that children of that age already frequented cultural circles where there was a very special approach to things physical, especially to children’s physique.

BRADBURNE | Happily this book isn’t meant for children [laughs]. Here we can see that all of this current concern about the Calvin Klein ads, and its heightened attention to children’s sexuality, was also a subject of conversation four hundred years ago…

NATALI | Think of the portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi. Lenzi as a child was already in those intellectual circles where debating wasn’t the only thing they did.

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Bronzino Venus, Cupid and Satyr, c. 1553−5, oil on panel Rome, Galleria Colonna.

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Bronzino Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi, 1527−8, oil on panel Milan, Civiche Raccolte Artistiche - Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco.

FALCIANI | Yes, the

portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi represents the Platonic love that BenedettoVarchi felt for the young scholar,along the lines of what Michelangelo felt forTommaso Cavalieri, although Lenzi was aged about twelve when Bronzino did the painting.

BRADBURNE | And then there’s the famous picture that isn’t going to be in the exhibition [the National Gallery’s Allegory of Venus and Cupid]. It’s incredibly erotic, and could even be considered transgressive in our pedophilia-concerned times, and it still shocks some people.

NATALI | It’s dangerous by today’s moral standards, and in fact it may even have been dangerous by the moral standards of the day, but the context was completely different back then.

FALCIANI | We should remember that it was a diplomatic gift, so it wasn’t danger22

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ous. It was part of the culture of the day because it was a gift from Florence to François I. SEBREGONDI | And of course people had a different take on children back then.

Children weren’t perceived the way we see them today, they were thought of as small adults.The concept of infancy was totally different.

NATALI | Then there’s the whole Greek tradition.

BRADBURNE | And the concept of an under-age minor was also different.A young boy of six was one thing,but a twelve-year-old girl was considered a woman ripe for marriage.

NATALI | Of course.

BRADBURNE | Where does this picture come from?That’s an interesting question too.

FALCIANI | We don’t know who commissioned it.

BRADBURNE | How did it get to Budapest?

FALCIANI | Through the normal collectors’ market circuit in the 19th century.

BRADBURNE | But we don’t know where from?

FALCIANI | We don’t know whom Bronzino painted it for. Unfortunately that’s

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one of the gaps in our records. He painted these three large allegories, all of different sizes but all monumental and all of them crucial for the period.The London allegory was painted for François I of France andVasari tells us that another one was painted for Alamanno Salviati, but we have no idea whom this one was made for.

NATALI | But regardless of who commissioned it, we need to see it in the context of a network of relations among humanists, of the rediscovery of ancient values and the invention of new allegories.

BRADBURNE | What kind of a reception did it get? When I think of this painting being received as a gift by the humanist circle, what did they say about it? How do you imagine this encounter to have been, the first encounter with this picture as a gift to someone?

NATALI | I think the first thing we need to do is to think of today’s intellectual circles and then immediately discard the thought. Only then can we start reconstructing and recreating the circles in which debates were held at various different levels. I always

Bronzino Allegory of Venus and Cupid 1544−5 Oil on panel London National Gallery.

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remember something Eugenio Garin said, although he was talking about the situation a few decades earlier.He gave this wonderful definition of the spread of culture in Florence.

Based on a letter from John Argyropoulos to a pupil,Garin imagined what happened after a teacher met with his pupils. He said:They go out, they saunter through the streets of Florence,in Piazza Santissima Annunziata they bump into a Servite friar,one of the scholars, a humanist who’s just emerged from the library of some noble palazzo,and they start debating with an artist, a young hopeful.While they are talking, a doctor from Santa Maria Nuova appears on the scene and acquaints them with the results of his recent inspection of a body.That was the way culture and learning was disseminated in those days.

It was a bit of a closed shop but learning was disseminated like that, in the street.

BRADBURNE | And you suggest that we should see this picture in that context?

NATALI | I don’t really see this picture fitting into that context,no.But if we imagine a situation where learning and culture radiate in tight circles, we can still see relations based on exchange, on the exchange of poetry, verses, works of art, because works of art are poetry too, figurative poetry.

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FALCIANI | That’s

true. But it’s also true that a work of art like that could turn a lesson at the Accademia Fiorentina on a topic connected with love into a figurative composition.

BRADBURNE | But because as an allegory there are riddles, there are always hidden meanings to be dicovered.

FALCIANI | Of course there are.Take the allegory of Venus, Cupid, Folly andTime in London, for instance.

BRADBURNE | What’s the significance of that figure? [points to the figure on the left] FALCIANI | It is rather like the London Allegory,where the illusions of carnal Love are revealed by Time. So we have the allegorical figures of Jealousy, Folly and Pain.And that is the sense of this figure.

BRADBURNE | How about these flowers?

FALCIANI | Well, roses for instance are sacred to Venus, of course.This, though [points to the children], is rather more complex because they’re playing a kind of game, crowning each other with flowers. It’s very intriguing because if this part were in a reli-

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Bronzino Descent of Christ into Limbo, detail 1552, oil on panel Florence, Museo dell’Opera di Santa Croce.

gious painting, it might symbolise the crown of thorns; and sure enough, the two children are almost identical in the Descent of Christ into Limbo.

NATALI | Not to mention the fact that while roses are sacred toVenus, they also became the flower par excellence of theVirgin Mary.

FALCIANI | They did indeed. So it’s a game, of course, it is linked to the poetry, which changes the game.

NATALI | We shall see this clearly when we look at the Crucified Christ, too.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | There’s a great deal of ambiguity. But do you think that Bronzino devised all of this—this Allegory and the others too—on his own,or did he have the help of some literary scholar?

FALCIANI | Bronzino was one of the most cultivated painters of the Cinquecento.

He wrote an extraordinary and very intricate and complex corpus of rhyming verses.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | But can he have conceived it on his own?

NATALI | I was thinking of the way the carnality is so openly displayed—there’s a distinctly sensual side to its naturalism—and I was thinking of the picture we’ll be look-

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ing at later, the Crucified Christ, where the carnal aspect of the naturalism is also enormously underscored and there’s a kind of sensuality in Christ’s dead body too.The same symbols, the same stylistic and even physical attributes also work in a completely different environment. On the one hand we have a subject that could hardly be more “profane”, while the other picture’s subject matter is about as “sacred” as you could possibly get.

CIATTI | When you said that this is a kind of poem in paint, I was prompted to think that the difference is that here it’s as though we had found all the sketches too, the lines the poet crossed out when drafting the poem.There isn’t just the satyr, there are all the various positions too.The position ofVenus’s arm and legs,for instance,have changed a lot, and this latter element also provides a material explanation for the way the painting’s support was first enlarged.What I’m trying to say is that even if we’d harboured any doubts before, because of course the painting looked as though it were of worse quality than the London picture in autographical terms, this discovery has put paid to any possible doubts.The changes and the second thoughts tell us that the painter pondered, al-

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tered and generally continued to develop his composition in exactly the same way as a writer hones his work while he writes.

FALCIANI | Getting back to the poetry aspect, we shouldn’t forget that an allegory of Venus and Cupid with masks and roses was also drawn by Michelangelo and painted by Pontormo; in other words, the ideal drawing plus a painting with the sensitive variable of colour, devised for a room glorifyingTuscan poetry in the vulgar tongue and linked to love.At the centre of Bartolomeo Bettini’s room was the Allegory ofVenus drawn by Michelangelo and then painted by Pontormo, and portraits of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, in other words the poets who had sung of love in Tuscan verse, were set around it.

NATALI | Going back to what Dr. Rossi Scarzanella was saying about Bronzino’s skill in developing themes of this kind,quite apart from the fact that,as Carlo said,he may well have been the most learned painter of his time—along with Michelangelo,that is— we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that other thinkers may have been involved in this

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kind of compositions because the ultimate aim wasn’t widespread dissemination at all. In fact the aim was to communicate ideas within a tight circle.That said,inside an Academy...

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | So it could have been spawned in the course of a debate among intellectuals from different backgrounds.

NATALI | Dissemination existed, of course, but it wasn’t their aim; indeed, keeping to this field,their interest lay in communicating inside an established circle.This ended up being the case in the religious sphere too.We’ll see that from what Carlo will be saying and also, presumably, when we look at the Crucified Christ; there, too, there is a skindeep message which jumps out at you, though it might even lend itself to misinterpretation. But if you dig a little deeper you realise that, apart from what appears to be an absolutely orthodox message on the face of it,the picture may contain other messages, perhaps even subtly heterodox messages. But here again, only a few people would actually perceive and understand those messages.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | Yes, but that’s Bronzino’s second level.

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FALCIANI |

Or even his third level!

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | Or his multiple level! There’s a purely aesthetic level, a more immediate iconographic first level, a more complex and elaborate level, and then lastly there’s the painting’s iconological significance.

FALCIANI | You realise that when you read Il piato del Bronzino pittore, one of the most obscure works of 16th century poetry because it contains sexual allusions and all manner of things, but it’s still a voyage inside the body of a giant as though it were a grotto, a mountain whose deeper significance continues to escape the reader. But we were talking about flesh. I wanted to read to you a passage by Bronzino which I feel highlights the anti-Michelangelo attitude we also find in his painting [draws close to the painting, holding a computer].

NATALI | Careful, don’t let it slip. Don’t worry, it’s not the computer I’m worried about – it’s the Bronzino [laughs].

FALCIANI | I won’t let it slip, don’t worry.Anyway, he says:“All men are flesh, and

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even though a man may wash his flesh,or adorn it and anoint it with perfume more than his neighbour, he’ll still only ever be flesh”.We’re looking at an extremely carnal painting and so I thought…

BRADBURNE | And this connection with poetry is very strong in Bronzino because he considered himself a poet rather than just a painter, didn’t he?

FALCIANI | He did, he did. He was quite right to consider himself a poet.

BRADBURNE | Are the references in his poems concrete or abstract, or simply allusions?

FALCIANI | His poems don’t always directly reflect his work. Obviously the relationship is always difficult to perceive and to understand because it isn’t a perfect mould, a perfect reflection; this, among other reasons because Bronzino has this twin register, a Petrarch vein and a burlesque vein.The question is this: how does his poetry tie in with his painting? Can you tell he’s a poet by looking at his painting? How does his painting dovetail with his burlesque register? As we shall see in the exhibition catalogue,a religious painting like the Descent of Christ into Limbo from Santa Croce also contains a reference 34

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to his most extraordinary verses, such as Il piato.

NATALI | If I’m not sticking my neck out too far, I believe that we art historians should get into the habit of applying what we’re saying about Bronzino (who we know for sure was both a painter and a poet) to all artists. In Italy (although less so in the English-speaking world) paintings tend to be interpreted in a linguistic, philological manner.

So it’s difficult to envisage a painted panel as though it were a poem in figures rather than words.We have a far simpler job here with Bronzino because we know that he was a painter and a poet,and so it’s easy for us to seek out the content in poetic form.The trouble is—of course, I may be straying a little from the main theme of this discussion here but I find it a really fascinating topic—the trouble is that we need to be clear about the fact that a picture is a poem which uses figures rather than words to get its meaning across. Content is never of secondary importance.Who can possibly appreciate a poem like the Infinito without delving beneath the surface of its words, its rhythm and its cadence? The things that get our heartstrings vibrating are the themes, the underlying thought, the atmospherics that emerge from it. Half the figurative text disappears if we fail to explore the content. Now we’re looking at a text which—thank Heavens!—tells us:“Look, I’m not a group of figures, I’m a group of concepts”.And in that sense we are privileged in this instance.

BRADBURNE | Bronzino wrote poetry and he painted pictures but he didn’t produce any sculpture as far as we know, did he?

NATALI | No, he didn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had. In any event, he solved the problem for us when he said:“If I were to carve a statue, I would make it like the Dwarf Morgante”.

BRADBURNE | Exactly—he painted a picture like a statue. How about music?

Did he write any music?

FALCIANI | It has been suggested that some of Bronzino’s poems were devised for music, that they were meant to be sung.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | He did some stage design for the Medici court circle too.There were numerous musicians in the circles and they took part in the debates.

SEBREGONDI | How does this Allegory fit in with the other two?

FALCIANI | That’s a major problem. Let’s say that this one is more similar to the one in Rome,among other things because,with the satyr underneath,we can see an analytical similarity. In the Rome picture, the bed withVenus lying on it is more explicit.

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In other words, the ‘odd man out’ of the three allegories is the painting in London because it was designed to reflect the principles espoused by François I.The French king had ordered his gallery in Fontainebleau to be decorated with a depiction of the way in which sacred and profane love affect men’s lives, using ancient mythology.The London Allegory portrays that kind of thing,things like the illusion of carnal love exposed by time.

In other words, it presents it in a negative light, but at the same time it turns the viewpoint on its head,displaying its beauty and sensuality.Just think of the way Cupid is holding, touchingVenus’nipples,andVenus has her tongue between her teeth.It’s a deliberately erotic painting.

SEBREGONDI | Far more erotic than these two.

FALCIANI | Because one might say that it’s job is to issue a warning,but given that it was a diplomatic gift for François I, it also has to show the beauty of what it in fact appears to be disparaging.

BRADBURNE | But the visual vocabulary is very similar in all three:in the way the child’s shoulders twist, there’s a visual vocabulary that’s common to all three.

FALCIANI | Yes, there, too, there’s a child who enters the scene and strews roses, and his foot has been pierced by a thorn. In that instance the beauty of the rose brings with it the pain of its thorns.

NATALI | If we take a look at everything we’ve said so far, I believe that the most serious mistake we can make in iconological terms,in this and in other pictures,is to presume that we’ve immediately grasped the picture’s meaning, because we inevitably tend to interpret it in the light of our own culture. Unless we start with and stay with the culture of the day, we seriously risk offering—or rather, we are almost certain to offer—a mistaken interpretation because there’s been a stratification of concepts which distances us from the cultural mindset of the time and which can sometimes prompt us to offer interpretations that actually clash with those behind the work of art we’re assessing.

BRADBURNE | So there are things that were obvious to the audience of the day but that are obscure to us.

CIATTI | Things always need to be set in context.

FALCIANI | Excellent, that puts our conversation back on more solid ground!

NATALI | Iconology loses all credibility as soon as people think of putting forward their own interpretation on the basis of a modern mindset. Iconologists often write the first thing that comes into their heads without spending too much time studying peo36

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ple’s mindsets from the past, and that ends up undermining the discipline. Do you see?

That’s why it’s crucial to read Bronzino’s poems. But of course, they also need to be set in the context of the specific humanism espoused by the circle in which they were composed and read,because poetry naturally lends itself to serious errors of interpretation too.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | Three pictures,three similar subjects.Do you think there’s a sequential development from one to the other, or are they simply different approaches to the same topic?

FALCIANI | We know whom the London painting was painted for and we’re very familiar with the culture of François I. It was designed specifically for him, for Fontainebleau, for the king in person. I don’t think there’s any kind of sequential development as we would understand it today. I think there are variations on a theme.The meanings may be similar even if they don’t perfectly coincide,rather like composing different speeches using almost identical words.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | What I mean by sequential development is an enrich-

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ment of the layers of meaning.

FALCIANI | I think you’ll find that they’re different,that they adopt a different approach.

NATALI | Well, quite frankly I don’t see the concept of sequential development.

FALCIANI | There you go!

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | What I mean is, did he develop their meaning? Did he develop the concept more by adding further elements or by changing others?

NATALI | It’s a path, a journey.

FALCIANI | But we’d do well to remember that they weren’t designed to be seen in any kind of sequence.

NATALI | No, they weren’t.

FALCIANI | Although people will be seeing two of them in sequence in the exhibition.

NATALI | They should be displayed with a wall separating them,precisely in order to avoid that risk.We’re not “telling a story”.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | It isn’t a story—it’s a transformation of meaning.

NATALI | The development of culture,if it exists at all,reflects the development of mankind, with all of the variants that each one of us can harbour in his or her mind. It’s the story of the refinement of thought, with other concepts being added along the way.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | That’s exactly what I meant, the refinement of an initial concept with Bronzino gradually developing and perfecting it as he translates it into images.

NATALI | Each and every one of us refines and perfects our thought, unless of course Alzheimer’s gets in the way.

CIATTI | There is a link in the sense that the pictures are connected with one another, yet they’re the result of three separate commissions.

FALCIANI | The flesh mask is beautiful too.

NATALI | Do you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the flesh mask we put on display in Palazzo Medici alongside the so-called Nun [the Portrait cover attributed to Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio], where there’s the bust of a woman and the portrait cover in front of it is a female mask;but it’s a flesh mask,and about as disquieting as a flesh mask can be. Because while it’s a mask, it’s also living flesh. I don’t want to venture any interpretation of it, because otherwise I’ll make the same mistake as the phoney iconologists we were talking about, but it gives us food for thought all the same.

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Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, attributed Portrait cover, c. 1510, oil on panel Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

Bronzino Crucified Christ, 1540, oil on panel Nice, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

FALCIANI | Indeed it’s no mere coincidence that masks signify illusion, or deception. Or at any rate that they conceal a person’s true features, and that applies particularly to a satyr’s mask.

BRADBURNE | Do we have that thought right from the start?

FALCIANI | Bronzino initially envisaged it as a full,living figure,and then he transformed the same concept, adding the word illusion, which wasn’t there.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | So you see, there was a kind of sequential development!

FALCIANI | In that sense, yes there was.What we have here is the development of Bronzino’s thought,adding words to this hypothetical poem.Because while a living satyr symbolized carnality in the drawing, he added the word “deception” or “illusion” to the

initial carnality by changing it into a mask.

ROSSI SCARZANELLA | Its an enrichment of his thought that is translated into an image.

SEBREGONDI | At this point we might move on to the religious picture,the Crucified Christ.

BRADBURNE | There are not just the discoveries beneath the painted surface here.

In this case the painting itself is a revelation.

FALCIANI | Yes, you’re right.

BRADBURNE | How did it come to be discovered?

FALCIANI | When I tell the story,it sounds rather like a holiday adventure [smiles].

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I had seen the painting, which is housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice, listed as a 17th century work. I was staying with Philippe Costamagna in Nice and we decided to go and have a look at it. I recall that both Philippe and I were dumbstruck when we got to the painting, which was hung high up in a corridor in perfect lighting. I said: “That’s a Bronzino”.So the discovery was a kind a happy holiday memory.It sounds silly when I tell it like that, but it’s actually a very serious discovery. Philology can be a sudden flash at times.

NATALI | Well, in any case, we can call it a revelation.

FALCIANI | Yes, a revelation.

NATALI | On the road to Nice rather than Damascus.

FALCIANI | On the road to Damascus. It was in full light, and as we looked at it from an unusual angle, it revealed itself as an extraordinary work of art whose formal qualities showed that there was nothing 17th century about it at all.Of course having said that, it is perfectly obvious that the 17th century, or rather several 17th century Floren-

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tine artists, drew inspiration from it.

SEBREGONDI | To whom was it attributed in the museum in Nice?

NATALI | To Sassoferrato.

FALCIANI | Yes, the caption said Sassoferrato, then there was an old attribution to Andrea Commodi and an even older attribution to Giovan Battista Stefaneschi,and it had been donated to the museum by a late 19th century Niçois physician as a Fra Bartolomeo.

We know nothing else, because if this really is the Panciatichi Crucified Christ thatVasari describes, the painting…

NATALI | If it isn’t,this is the last exhibition you’ll be putting on for Palazzo Strozzi.

SEBREGONDI | [smiling] Or even worse, the last exhibition you’ll be putting on anywhere.

BRADBURNE | But that’s precisely what’s so interesting.What proof is there that this is in fact the missing Bronzino?

FALCIANI | To me,at least,it’s obvious that it’s a Bronzino from the way it’s painted,

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from the way the nails are drawn in a style that’s still very much influenced by Pontormo, from the colour, from the way the fabric is portrayed, from the background with the clear tactile feel of the profiles which are still the same as in the Panciatichi portraits. In other words,I believe that it is so anomalous in iconographical terms that it may have misled people who may not have seen it with their own eyes. If you’ve only ever seen it in a photograph, in one of those old black-and-white photographs in photo libraries that always look smudged and faded, then you could be forgiven for mistaking it for a 17th century painting.

NATALI | Actually, Carlo isn’t in any danger of being banned from Palazzo Strozzi because this painting is unquestionably a Bronzino. Of course it has certain formal innovations, and indeed that may well be why it hasn’t seen as a Bronzino until now, because we tend to expect something very different from Bronzino.

FALCIANI | That’s true!

NATALI | You don’t expect this approach to a theme of such clear formal definition and, at the same time, with a naturalism that almost foreshadows Caravaggio.At this stage in the cleaning I would urge you to look at those two arms. Only the light tells us we’re not in the presence of a painter from Caravaggio’s entourage. But the naturalism is very extreme,underscored,highlighted.I think that’s why people thought of Sassoferrato, or even Stefaneschi: the pink of the loincloth... but then even the pink becomes clear when seen in the context of Bronzino’s figurative training.And then,of course,the thing I find most moving is the depiction of the flesh (living flesh, with living blood beating in the veins).And then there is the traditional feel. Because this is a Crucified Christ in the mould of Donatello;it’s of the same type—although I admit the suffering may be less evident—but it’s of the same type as the Crucified Christ in the convent of Bosco ai Frati

Donatello, attributed Crucified Christ, c. 1460, pear wood San Piero a Sieve, Convento di San Bonaventura a Bosco ai Frati.

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(Donatello-Michelozzo).With that head…

FALCIANI | The face has almost the same profile.

NATALI | Yes, the same profile, and it’s helped a bit by the fact that the Bosco ai Frati Christ, which was damaged in an earthquake in the Mugello (unfortunately one of those earthquakes that are a regular feature of the area), has lost part of its hair, thus acquiring an even rougher and more rugged air than it originally possessed. Because otherwise...What I mean is that it’s like a revisitation of Donatello’s carnality along the lines of Desiderio da Settignano, with its ivory finish.

FALCIANI | Lean.

NATALI | And this is where what I think we should all try to reflect on at some length comes into play.We should all try to improve our understanding by carefully pondering what Carlo says about the possibility that it is a body within a body, but perhaps you can explain it better.

FALCIANI | The trouble is that Vasari describes this work by saying that

Santi di Tito Christ Before St.Thomas, 1573, oil on panel Florence, former Oratorio di San Tommaso dei Nobili.

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Bronzino—I’ll read you the passage if you like—Vasari describes this work of art and he says: “For the same patron [Bartolomeo Paciatichi] he also painted a crucified Christ, with such study and diligence that it is clear that he drew it from a real dead body nailed to a cross”. In other words, he portrayed a cadaver nailed to a cross.

NATALI | For that matter look at the hands, because the hands are eloquent.

FALCIANI | The hands are a dead man’s hands.They’re already dry: stiff, dry flesh.

TOSO | I think that kind of assessment can be made in the drawing stage.The first version has all of the weight imparted by the pull of gravity.

FALCIANI | Exactly. In the drawing Bronzino has portrayed a body that has collapsed on the cross…

TOSO | And then raised up.

FALCIANI | Then, when he painted it, it became more peaceful. He shelved the idea of the suffering involved in death.

TOSO | ... its sheer physicality, its earthly weight …

FALCIANI | Yes, of course, but we should remember that in Florence that was a sign of Savonarola’s teaching.All of Savonarola’s Christs have this emphasis on the suffering involved in death on the cross.

NATALI | Yes, but what this painting has as well is the fact that, despite the shadows suggesting an external source of light, the body shines with a light of its own, as in-

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deed it should with a Christ inspired by the gospel of St. John. St. John’s Christ is light in the darkness, and this is a body that radiates its own light. But I don’t want to take the words out of Carlo’s mouth.

FALCIANI | No, please go on.

NATALI | … because this is something that Carlo says on the basis of the Scriptures and of historical sources.What is certain is that Bronzino’s Christ is possessed of a naturalism that was to have a very major impact,for instance,on Florentine Counter-Reformation painting.You just have to think of Santi diTito’s renditions of Christ Before St. Thomas, both the one in San Marco and the one currently in the Uffizi (though it will eventually be going back to the Oratory in via della Pergola), where there’s a Christ on the altar becoming flesh before St.Thomas’s very eyes because,in becoming flesh,He lends substance to the phrase Bene scripsisti de me Thoma [Thou hast written well of me], and His flesh becomes the source of light.When looking at Bronzino’s Christ, you can’t tell whether it’s a sculpture portrayed inside a niche, or whether it really is Christ made flesh, with all that this entails for the fate of mankind.

FALCIANI | That is indeed the difficulty in interpreting this picture, because if we didn’t know that its two owners were brought to trial for adhering to Lutheranism (Bartolomeo was said by this Pietro Manelfi to be a Lutheran and to have read Lutheran books), we might take it for one of the most orthodox paintings of the whole Florentine Cinquecento. But at the very least, they were followers ofValdes’ and of the Benefit of Christ.

CIATTI | Quite, but if we think back to some of the Laboratorio’s earlier experiences, there’s an austere strain of devout classicism in Florentine painting that could allow us to cover the entire century, isn’t there? From things in the style of Fra Bartolomeo, or

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those paintings for San Marco.

SEBREGONDI | The whole of the so-called “San Marco School” in fact.

CIATTI | A school with the same austere architectural setting initially, this classicism which is also due to Savonarola’s influence, and thus imbued with a certain idea of religion that later linked up with the mood of the Counter-Reformation.

FALCIANI | Absolutely.These were the years when Cosimo was hostile, openly hostile,to the monks who were following in Savonarola’s footsteps.But let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a painter who has been asked to paint a picture for two patrons favourable to the Reformation but who has no pro-Reformation images in his repertoire. He may well have harked back to a tradition that best represented Christ in ..

CIATTI | … Savonarola’s tradition.

FALCIANI | Yes, in the Savonarola tradition, but he made it more peaceful, less turbulent.

CIATTI | Do we know anything about Bronzino’s personal religious convictions?

NATALI | Well, if the people he mixed with are anything to go by …

FALCIANI | That’s a very complex question.

BRADBURNE | Quite, but it’s also very interesting.

FALCIANI | I think this is a work that reflects the Panciatichi’s religious beliefs. If Bronzino added anything personal at all, it’s the game in which painting depicts a sculpture as though it were alive, several years before the Dwarf Morgante orVarchi’s Dispute.

SEBREGONDI | The fact of the matter is that, if anyone needed to find anything close to the spirit of the Reformation in Florence at the time, they had to turn to Savonarola who was a kind of spiritual precursor of the movement. Savonarola has often been called a herald of the Reformation, and Luther himself held him in high esteem.

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So Bronzino could take his inspiration from him.And then there is the idea of devotion.

According to Savonarola,art is supposed to trigger an emotion in the viewer,moving him or her to devotion.

FALCIANI | So was it a moment of purity? A return to purity perhaps?

SEBREGONDI | An extreme kind of purity and also a specific need for clarity.Because the art that Savonarola espoused had to serve an educational purpose, it had to be easy for everyone to understand and it had to captivate its audience, unlike the complexity and the cryptic artistic vocabulary of a Botticelli, for instance.

BRADBURNE | Is there also a practice of private devotion here?That isn’t always clear.

NATALI | As a believer and a practising Catholic, allow me to “skip centuries” in historical terms for a moment. I would like to tell you what a believer feels today when confronted with a crucifix like this. First of all, from an art historical point of view I am now going to adopt a different personality, preaching the exact opposite of what I told you just now, in the other room. So, at a time like this when there’s a move to rediscover Savonarola (to the point where people are even talking about his being canonised), at a time when concepts promoted by the SecondVatican Council (and quite possibly overlooked to some extent since then) are being rediscovered, at a time when a great deal of attention is being paid to ideas from across the Alps—notice, however, that I say “attention”, not “acceptance”—well, at a time like this, in the believer’s heart these names, these docrtines which we consider to be so distant from us—Savonarola, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation—all come together once again in the modernity, in the relevance of the one Christ,a Christ who is both a tradition and a promise,both the shock of death and the source of light.These are thoughts, now that we’re metaphorically get-

Bronzino Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi 1541−5, oil on panel Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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ting inside this crucifix painted in such a vibrantly natural manner, which are clearly and openly embodied in Bronzino’s Christ.The painting enhances my ability to believe. I’m not trying to involve anyone else,nor do I want to bring my Church into it.I don’t want to end up being made to stand trial like the Panciatichi.

BRADBURNE | Perhaps we can see this as a kind of icon…

NATALI | He’s flesh! He’s flesh!

FALCIANI | We shouldn’t forget that it was painted for two special people:Lucrezia is portrayed in a niche almost identical to the niche that Christ is in, and she’s wearing a necklace bearing the legend“amour dure sans fin”[love lasts forever],which doesn’t refer to conjugal love as some have surmised but to Christ’s love for mankind.

NATALI | Which is circular.

FALCIANI | Which is indeed circular because the motto on the necklace reads:dure sans fin amour dure…

NATALI | Yes, it’s circular in form as well as meaning.

SEBREGONDI | How about the position in this niche, which turns it into a kind of trompe l’œil?

FALCIANI | That highlights the evidence, the game between painting and sculpture. This may be an idea of Bronzino’s. In other words, it’s a picture without a story, it doesn’t depict the crucifixion, it doesn’t tell the story, the historical truth, it simply shows a genuine dead body, as though it were a polychrome statue on an altar. I wonder— though this may take us down an iconological avenue perhaps we shouldn’t be exploring—whether this was possibly meant to be only a memory through another work of art of a crucifixion that did take place. So the work may be a parallel to what the host meant in the mass for those who believed in justification by faith alone rather than be-

Bronzino Crucified Christ, c. 1540, oil on panel Nice, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

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lieving in transubstantiation. I wonder whether, when all is said and done, this elimination of the historical truth,this depiction of the memory alone through another work of art isn’t in fact one and the same thing. But I realise that that might be a very questionable interpretation.

NATALI | We’re moving onto very shaky ground here,but I believe that the beauty of conjecture lies precisely in the fact that it fosters debate.The important thing is that the debate not turn into empty prattle. Certainly, thinking of what faith (regardless of a person’s deeds) meant for a follower of the Reformation,in other words the kind of faith that enlightens you and saves you, well, I would say that—if you allow me to “skip centuries” again and to emerge from the 16th century—this picture by Bronzino is a depiction of the kind of faith that consoles and saves its adepts.The kind of faith that saves people without taking anything else into consideration.

FALCIANI | By way of an example, I can read you two passages from Juan de Valdés’Christian Alphabet,where he says:“I love you and Christ loves you infinitely”:that’s almost amour dure sans fin, it was written for Giulia Gonzaga, thus for a woman just like Lucrezia Panciatichi;and he goes on:“Men cannot know and believe in or love God other than through the contemplation of a crucified Christ”. He goes on:“Lady, I wish you to impress wholly in your memory the image of the crucified Christ”.

NATALI | That’s an icon.

FALCIANI | It’s an icon for storing in the memory. It’s something different. In the Benefit of Christ he wrote:“True Christians don the image of the crucified Christ”, and: “Just as that some don fine and precious garb when they wish to present themselves before the Lord, so the Christian decked and covered in the innocence of Christ and of all His perfections presents himself before God”. So, storing Him in your memory was like donning a splendid gown to appear before God.Lucrezia Panciatichi is in the same niche wearing a gown that is red, like Christ’s blood as it pours down Christ’s thigh, and she wears around her neck a necklace that speaks of the love of Christ.He says:“I don Christ

Multi-Nir scanner Reflectogram.

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for the love that He has brought me” and he adds:“The life of Christ in whose imitation we must dress was a perpetual cross full of suffering. Our faith, as refined as gold in the furnace of suffering, must shine in His praise”. She is wearing a gold necklace and talking about the praise of Christ, so she is in fact being portrayed as though she had that image lodged in her memory.

SEBREGONDI | One is also struck by the very obvious blood at the base of the cross, which is reminiscent of Fra Angelico’s frescoes in San Marco, where blood flows freely in the crucifixion scenes.There aren’t many 16th century crucifixes in which the body of Christ is so devoid of any sign of suffering as it is here.There is only a tiny, almost symbolic wound in His ribcage, and there is no blood. Not even the crown of thorns has caused any bleeding wounds.

NATALI | Almost as though it were a memento of that martyrdom.

SEBREGONDI | The body is intact; it shows no trace of the torture inflicted on it.

It’s absolutely perfect.

FALCIANI | Yes, the body shows no sign of suffering because faith is freely offered.

TOSO | But it has to be said that, from a conservation standpoint, the paint of Christ’s body is somewhat worn.We found brush hairs, which we thought had been shed during a previous restoration, mixed in with the paint itself; that means that the paint has suffered superficial abrasion.The blood was painted using an extremely delicate lacquer and that certainly did not help matters, but the overall depiction of it is very measured.

SEBREGONDI | The blood plays a far more prominent role in other crucifixions.

Here it’s confined to the base of the cross.

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NATALI | What

BRADBURNE | We

remains, what becomes visible? [turning to the restorers] Everything is genuine here, right?You see, it’s dripping onto the stone.

SEBREGONDI | Dripping onto the stone of the altar frame rather than onto Golgotha the way it normally does in crucifixions.

BRADBURNE | I’d like to move on to the discoveries, because the restoration has brought to light the existence of other traces in this picture too.Who can tell us about them?

For instance I see these parts [points to the reflectography] which aren’t in the picture.

CIATTI | Yes, in this case, too, the use of infrared (which we conducted in conjunction with our colleagues from the National Optics Institute just as we did in the other instance) has revealed an initial drawing in which Christ’s head was lower down and thus the arms were set at a different angle to peg the crucified Christ to the cross.

That meant the body as a whole hung further down, with all the adjustments that such a position demanded.The most obvious one was the head,but there were changes in the arms and legs too.The body hung a little lower down.

NATALI | A dead body…

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began to talk about the purity of the body that Bronzino painted,but he started out with a vision in which Christ’s suffering was far more obvious.

FALCIANI | Of course, but highlighting suffering in a work of art meant that the viewer was supposed to share in the suffering too, whereas such participation isn’t really necessary in the case of justification by faith alone because it’s an offering of faith.

CIATTI | Yes, in this case the change was probably made earlier on because it only exists at the drawing stage, while in the Allegory he had already begun to paint.There are layers of paint below the change,and in fact you can see the difference in the consistency of the paint. In the Allegory the change was more complicated to implement and it was made while painting was in progress, whereas in this picture he made the change at the drawing stage.

FALCIANI | No, he made an initial sketch here and then he finished it far more...

CIATTI | He redrew it again here.

FALCIANI | There’s another passage fromValdés which explains the use to which a painting like this is likely to have been put:“A believer may use the painting of the cru-

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cified Christ sufficiently to impress Christ’s suffering on his memory and to taste, to feel the benefit of Christ.And once he has acquired the memory and tasted the sense, he no longer has any use for the painting”.We might call it a memo that the believer uses to feel, but not to try and mortify himself.That’s something else.

SEBREGONDI | There is sublimation.

BRADBURNE | I find this a bit complicated. How did Bronzino conjugate his faith with his profane works,in his capacity as an artist,a poet and a painter? Did the artist who painted this painting based on these kinds of texts, yet who also wrote erotic poetry, personally experience both these aspects of life in his humanist circle?

NATALI | Are you asking me that question because basically I, too, am caught up in this dichotomy between spirituality and carnality? It’s easy.You just have to go to confession [laughs].

FALCIANI | In this case, the justification was faith.

TOSO | I’d just like to add that apparently Bronzino’s star sign was Scorpio [laughs], so he probably had a very complex personality in which mysticism and carnality were forced to coexist, sometimes even reaching extreme peaks.

NATALI | I believe that, just like everyone else, he lived in the era that fate had allocated to him. Even the Medici court itself didn’t really adapt to the Council of Trent as it unfolded.There was a kind of adherence or persuasion, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the individual.Some people subscribed to its rulings to avoid further trouble while others were afraid of the Inquisition, and yet others...

FALCIANI | But it was a widespread sentiment that was changing.

NATALI | But “skipping centuries” again, I can tell you as a person who lives his faith and makes every effort to live it properly, that you shouldn’t think all believers live like monks.There is the faith you live, but at the same time you also live your life.

BRADBURNE | Perhaps this is the right time to move on to the Medici court Dwarf.

NATALI | Since I was the one talking, let’s move on to the Dwarf [smiling].

BRADBURNE | We agree, let’s move on to the Dwarf Morgante [laughs].

SEBREGONDI | This case is a little different from the others, also in terms of the restoration itself.

CIATTI | I’d like to hear what the restorers have to say.This was a restoration spawned by a lengthy research and study project that Ezio Buzzegoli and Diane Kunzelman conducted over many years because, being painted on both sides of the canvas, 62

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Bronzino Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante (front and back), before 1553, oil on canvas Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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there were numerous additional difficulties involved.For instance,it was impossible to use traditional methods for consolidating a structure on canvas, and there was the bitterly questioned need to remove a repainting which,while of historical value itself,completely altered the meaning of the picture. Removing an old repainting in oil from an oil painting is extremely difficult in technical terms. So we had a series of technical problems which,taken in conjunction with problems regarding the subject matter as my colleagues will explain, meant in effect that we could have written a whole book on this painting alone.And indeed I plan to do just that once the exhibition is over.

BRADBURNE | We mentioned the painting earlier as being Bronzino’s only sculpture, didn’t we?

FALCIANI | Yes, it’s his only sculpture but it’s also a literary text.We mustn’t forget that it was painted in connection with a specific event. It is recorded as being in the Guardaroba in 1553.The “dispute on which is the nobler art, sculpture or painting” was organised in 1547,so it was painted between those two dates,after Bronzino failed to fin-

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ish his letter to Varchi.Varchi asked artists whether painting or sculpture was more important. He began to write a letter discussing the prerogatives of sculpture, but he never finished it. He put down his pen, took up his paint brush and produced a sculp... a painting that was more than a sculpture.I think that the fact that he didn’t finish the letter was basically a polemical move directed against the Accademia because it is unthinkable that Bronzino, a brilliant poet and a member of the Accademia Fiorentina, should have simply failed to finish a letter on the most important artistic dispute of the mid-16th century, and what’s more,a dispute promoted by a dear friend of his.Thus his failure to finish the letter is probably a mark of his displeasure because he had been expelled from the Accademia along with many other painters in 1547.

CIATTI | I didn’t remember that detail.

FALCIANI | It’s as though the letter,which he submitted for publication unfinished even thoughVarchi asked him to finish it,hid a polemical intent hinting at ironic self-denigration: “I’m not finishing it because I’m no longer a member of the Accademia.”And

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his response as a painter was in the same vein because he produced a work that was more than just a sculpture.

BRADBURNE | But the painting has two sides. One of them can’t be seen but it does have two sides, doesn’t it,Antonio?

NATALI | Yes, it has two sides [smiles]. It has two sides, but compared to a sculpture it doesn’t have much thickness to it. I think it’s a way of taking part in the dispute with his own choice of weapons, with a more personal and more original weapon.After all, with his Dwarf, Bronzino managed to show a front and a back, a before and an after, thus he came up with a two-faced response. But once again, the interesting thing about this painting is to be found in the culture underlying it. It’s interesting that few people would have understood the real meaning of this figure.They did not just cover the figure out of a sense of modesty, because in the end they concealed the time factor, the game and so on. Its meaning was difficult to interpret and it was easier to turn it into a kind of dwarf Bacchus.That way they concealed the parts that shouldn’t be seen, but at the same time they concealed the painting’s content for good. I’m curious to see the Dwarf in the Uffizi and I’m curious to see it surrounded by sculpture at the exhibition, because while I think the Christ with its figurative presence is going to be one of the major attractions of the show, I shall be interested from a cultural viewpoint to see people’s response to the Dwarf as it offers its two faces to them in the midst of real statues, just as the topic being discussed is supremacy in the arts. I believe that people will find it fairly easy to perceive the intellectual subtlety in this dispute and the levels of intelligence and poetry to which a painter or a sculptor could rise – though of course we can probably take it for granted that each one necessarily preferred his own discipline.

CIATTI | Are you planning to produce some educational material?

NATALI | With James it would’ve been impossible not to! [laughs] CIATTI | Of course,it would be impossible to explain this behind-the-scenes story in full.

FALCIANI | And in any case, what I hope will come through in the exhibition is the way a sculpture’s many faces depend on the material, as Bronzino and the painters claimed, while here you see several faces of the same figure but with the additional factor of time.The presence of the time factor is highlighted – now I don’t want to say the kind of thing people no longer say in this day and age – but it’s highlighted by a neo17th century form of painting. In other words, if a painting of this kind were to be dis66

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covered without any written record and completely out of context, well, before deciding for certain that it’s a Bronzino...

NATALI | On the contrary,in this day and age and in this country I think that“neo17th century” is one of the few things you can still say!

BRADBURNE | The painting was surely linked to the Medici court in its symbolism.

FALCIANI | He was Cosimo I’s dwarf.There are letters telling us that he organised bird hunts,in the garden in this case,and Cosimo found them amusing.The odd thing is that in this picture he is naked, thus there’s a reference there to the classical nudity of sculpture, and above all, he’s portrayed before the hunt from the front and after the hunt from the back; that’s where painting can build in the time factor.

NATALI | Front and back, before and after.

BRADBURNE | And of course there’s a time factor there too.

FALCIANI | The time it takes the viewer to walk around the painting allows for the time of the hunt to occur as well, while if you walk around a sculpture, it shows dif-

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ferent faces but not different times. So in Bronzino’s view, at least, painting wins the dispute.

BRADBURNE | But isn’t the owl the symbol of Minerva? Or perhaps this painting isn’t intended to be symbolic or allegorical, but representative.

FALCIANI | The odd thing is that while on the back there’s a little hoot owl,which is the kind of owl used for hunting, on the front it looks like a long-eared owl, which is much larger.We should remember that “gufo” or “long-eared owl” was the nickname Bronzino used for Castelvetro in a literary dispute, so perhaps there’s a hidden meaning here, a mockery of Castelvetro in a burlesque vein, the way Bronzino did in his Mattaccini, although the dispute with Castelvetro came later.

SEBREGONDI | I was thinking, are these paintings painted on the front and the back of a canvas common? I mean apart from Bronzino, on a more general level?

CIATTI | Two-sided processional banners used in religious processions.

SEBREGONDI | But with banners it made sense because they were used in processions so that people could see them on both sides. First they processed before standing crowds then they moved beyond them, so you had to be able to see both sides with different images. But are there any other paintings like this?

FALCIANI | This painting is unique! But for instance, there were portraits on the back of which were …

SEBREGONDI | certainly, another image, often symbolic but not the same image 68

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seen from behind. So this really is unique!

FALCIANI | It’s unique.We may recall what Vasari tells us about Giorgione’s response to this dispute on which was the nobler art several decades earlier. He responded with an idea of Leonardo’s,who painted a standing nude reflected in water,on a burnished cuirass and with his back turned, so that you can see the figure’s different sides.

SEBREGONDI | But only on one side of the canvas!

NATALI | That is the game of mirrors, of self-portraits, but this is something completely different.

SEBREGONDI | But the image of the Dwarf matches perfectly on both sides,doesn’t it?

FALCIANI | No! No, it doesn’t at all because a certain amount of time has elapsed and thus the pose has changed.There’s the slate—the one that was in Fontainebleau and is now in the Louvre—the large slate with Daniele daVolterra’s David and Goliath.

NATALI | But is it really painted on both sides?

FALCIANI | Absolutely, front and back. It’s a large piece of slate where the poses don’t match but it’s a front and back showing David preparing to sever Goliath’s head.

You see the same scene as though it were a sculptural group but it lacks the sense of time passing.

BRADBURNE | I’d like to get back to the restoration. It’s a huge challenge for the restorer to have a two-sided painting – it must be a nightmare to restore!

69 BUZZEGOLI | That’s why I chose it!

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SEBREGONDI |

How long did the restoration take?

BUZZEGOLI | Where the timing is concerned, we need to be specific because if we only talk about dates, we’re only giving information that can then be used in a thousand different ways without people truly understanding what’s involved.This painting was submitted to me in 1987 because it had been requested for an exhibition in Dresden. I was asked to prepare a report on its condition, to say whether or not it was in a fit state to travel to the exhibition. I went to get it out of the Soffittone, the big storeroom under the eaves of Palazzo Pitti. It was in a room to one side, just lying on its side with all these cuts and tears on it. I reported that, in view of the condition I’d found it in, it was unfit to travel to the exhibition.Of course there was a bit of an argument because it wasn’t easy to say no to the loan. I added that:“Not only can it not travel to the exhibition, but it also needs to be restored”. I was told:“Well then, seeing as it needs to be restored and it can’t travel to the exhibition, you restore it!” I agreed, but I specified (as indeed I had no choice but to do) that it should be considered a case study, a project to pursue over time, also in view of the fact that it wasn’t in a gallery, it wasn’t on display to the public, so no one would be prepared to sponsor it.In the meantime,the laboratory continued to work along parallel lines. I did numerous other things such as the Botticelli Portrait of aYoung Man with a Medal in the Uffizi, Pontormo’s Martyrdom of St Maurice and theTheban Legion from the Galleria Palatina,and several other less important jobs;but the Dwarf was a kind of ongoing theme in the background that we kept talking about, step by step, as we tried to work out how to tackle the job. Later, the Opificio’s teaching programme entered the project, which allowed us to invite people to work here who had applied their research in fields akin to our own problems,in other words non-generic picture lining operations.

Of course,they had applied theories to“normal”paintings on canvas (i.e.with a front and a back) to avoid lining, because it’s an operation that on occasion has caused considerable “damage” to paintings over the years. So they had devoted their energies to searching for alternatives, to making up missing parts and to strengthening other components in a non-generic manner.In that sense we had two very important people working with us here for two weeks each, both teaching the students and training us in these preparatory technologies, in repairing cuts and tears in the thickness of the canvas.The first was Vishwa Raj Mehra, the father of cold lining, from the Amsterdam conservation institute, though he’s retired now.The other wasWinfried Heiber, who sadly passed away in 2008.

He was a restorer from Dresden who perfected this technique of “resoldering” threads with this material – the material I’m using now – which was the result of his research 70 and which is very versatile because, being water-based, when I use natural canvas, I can

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remodel and “re-solder” the old and modern threads almost perfectly head-to-head.

BRADBURNE | On both sides?

BUZZEGOLI | Yes, by going around the thread without causing major problems.

This is a finished graft; you can see that, if you touch it, it’s at the same level and has the same thickness as the original canvas next to it.That’s as far as repairing tears is concerned. But it was that very line of enquiry that led us to this job,via many years of study, exploration, research and application.When we started to talk about removing the overpainting, we knew exactly what lay underneath because we’d conducted a lengthy series of inspections. I’ll show them to you later if you like.There, that’s more or less the story so far,which explains why we’ve been taking care of this painting since 1987.That’s just the right word: we’ve been taking care of it.

BRADBURNE | And we’re very happy to have it in our exhibition on 20 September!

BUZZEGOLI | That statement worries me a great deal…

FALCIANI | … you’re almost there…

BUZZEGOLI | We’re prisoners on forced labour [laughs].

CIATTI | The exhibition has provided us with an opportunity to take a breather and to look at where we are now, because obviously the Laboratorio is always inundated with requests and demands of one kind or another.I would like to point out that our institution isn’t a restoration firm, it’s basically a research institute and the positive fallout from our experiments, from the research that we perfect here, is spread over dozens of operations.Even the portrait in the office of the Soprintendente del Polo Museale,which was sent to us for restoration, was restored by him [points to Buzzegoli] using one of the various methods he’d experimented with—not the one used here—but I’m just giving you an example. In other words, research and experimenting produces many excellent results given time.You can’t envisage an immediate economic return, because when you conduct research you learn so much.Over a period of time you need one thing,then another and so on. But now the exhibition has given us an opportunity to say fine, on the basis of what we’ve learnt, let’s sum up and draw a few conclusions.

BRADBURNE | Great, then if there’s nothing further to add on the Dwarf, I’d say we’re done.

NATALI | We can close by voicing a real hope for the future… namely that we’re given a room in the Uffizi to display this Dwarf Morgante, because if they don’t give us a room it will never be put on display.Thus spake a man in the grip of despair!

71 BRADBURNE | Excellent, my dear friends! Thank you all very much for taking part.

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BRONZINO RESTORED Marco Ciatti

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In association with the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation, a fascinating project has been under way for some time to restore a number of the Mannerist painter’s works with a view to the major exhibition, the first ever devoted entirely to him, due to open 24 September 2010.The Opificio delle Pietre Dure works on an ongoing basis with the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation as its partner in charge of both preventive conservation and problems related to individual presentations. In this instance an additional effort was required because the planned exhibition included paintings in major need of conservation work.

The first of these is the extraordinary Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante in hunting garb, painted from the front and the back on both sides of the same canvas, which belongs to the Uffizi Gallery and which had for some time been in storage for analysis by this Laboratory. Having originated within the context of the grand ducal court as a record of this unusual figure, it later gained a much more profound significance than that of a mere court divertissement, in relation to the so-called “paragon” artistic debate of the time, which sought to demonstrate whether painting or sculpture was the greater.This investigation, initiated by BenedettoVarchi, has bequeathed to us the interesting opinions of many artists, often in the form of written or verbal testimony, whereas Bronzino used this picture to demonstrate the obvious superiority of painting, which, as well as showing the subject in three dimensions, could also depict it at different moments in time, thus introducing the chronological factor. Later, as Diane Kunzelman’s research has shown, people preferred to change the work’s significance and use, showing only its front part, with much over-painting to provide the dwarf with the iconography of a Bacchus.

The fact that it is painted on both sides of the same canvas constitutes a major technical problem, because of structural damage such as cuts and tears to the canvas.Another equally complex matter is how to apply correct and even tension to the entire surface. Ezio Buzzegoli had been conducting specific research into these issues for years, but because of the exhibition his work had to be accelerated and turned into 74

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an active intervention project, which he has carried out with the help of Debora Minotti.Theoretical work on the extensive repainting, perhaps dating from the 18th century, originally focused on maintenance, while the task of revealing the work’s original appearance was entrusted to the diagnostic investigations of restorers. It was a meeting with Antonio Natali and Carlo Falciani, who wanted the exhibition to show Bronzino’s position in the debate on the comparison between the arts, and even more so the Uffizi Gallery Director’s wish to exhibit the work in the middle of a room, visible from both sides, thus restoring its original purpose, that persuaded us to change our plans. It became of crucial importance to reinstate the message masked by alterations, removing them safely by cleaning, while photographic documentation would record the work’s subsequent interpretation.

The other two current restorations of works by Bronzino reflect the excellent international reputation that the OPD has earned.They are both works from museums abroad, for which our Laboratory was expressly asked to deal with some conservation problems.

The first will be one of the novelties at the exhibition, a new attribution identified

by Carlo Falciani, a Crucified Christ belonging to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nice.

The strikingly clean sculptural lines of this Christ and its solemn and austere architectural framework show us another aspect of the range of expression on which the artist could draw, clearly related to the tormented spirituality of the age.

We were asked to correct several parts of the picture that had been repainted or altered by retouching. Following a close examination, Oriana Sartiani and Caterina Toso decided to remove all the retouching by careful cleaning and to reinstate the many, fortunately minor, lost features.

The other painting comes from the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and belongs to Bronzino’s happy series of mythological allegories with erotic references. It depicts Venus and Cupid, and its iconography, not yet completely decoded, is comparable, though different, to that of the famous Allegoria at the National Gallery in London.

The conservation problems, currently being dealt with by Chiara Rossi Scarzanella and Francesca Ciani Passeri, are more complex than with the other painting, and because it was impossible to bring it to the Laboratory soon enough in advance, some initial work had to be carried out with a view to its inclusion in the exhibition, to be followed by more thorough work later. Not only has the painting suffered 76

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considerable alterations to earlier retouching, repainting and abrasions, but the timbers have been affected by the attachment, across the grain, of two enlargements, one old and one more recent, which will require work by the wooden support restoration department and the experienced team of Ciro Castelli, Mauro Parri and Andrea Santacesaria.

During the preliminary examination of both paintings, the use of high-resolution scanner reflectography developed by the National Optics Institute revealed a number of interesting variants and changes in the underdrawing. For instance, in the allegory of Venus, Cupid and Jealousy (or Envy), a change was identified in the position ofVenus’ legs, and the face of a satyr, subsequently eliminated, emerged. In the Crucified Christ, the position of Christ’s head and arms was considerably rethought.

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LE OPERE Carlo Falciani

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Bronzino Venus, Cupid and Jealousy (or Envy) c. 1550 oil on panel Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum, inv. n. 163 This picture, painted for an unknown patron, is one of Bronzino’s three allegories depicting Venus and Cupid.

The other two are in the National Gallery in London and in the Galleria Colonna in Rome.The subject matter, inspired by love poetry, gravitates in all three pictures around the theme of carnal love and its influence on man’s existence.The painting shows Venus holding an arrow that she has filched from Cupid and debating with him, holding the arrow pointing downwards while her son’s arrow points upwards.

Behind the figure of Venus we see 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, we see two children playing with a garland of flowers next to two masks, one of which depicts a satyr.

Preliminary reflectography conducted prior to the restoration work proper revealed a clear change in the 81

iconography. In the foreground, at the level of the child’s back, there emerged in place of the mask, the face of a fullyfledged satyr drawn down as far as the neck and gazing flirtatiously up at Venus.Venus was pointing her arrow at him to emphasise her preference for purely carnal love, while her son was holding his arrow pointing upwards to indicate heavenly love. It was usual for Bronzino to change the composition of his paintings in mid-stream, but in this instance the presence of a figure subsequently removed causes the picture to resemble the panel painting in the Colonna collection, where a young satyr, another symbol of carnal love, breaks into a room in which Venus is engaging in playful banter with Cupid. Bronzino may have felt, while painting the picture, that the presence of the character he had drawn was excessive, and so he decided to introduce the same figure simply in the shape of a mask.Thus in addition to the symbolic significance of carnal love, he now also had an allusion to the deception that goes with it.

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Bronzino Crucified Christ c. 1540 oil on panel; 145 x 115 cm Nice, Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret inv. N.Mba 196

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The painting, described byVasari and thought to have been lost, has been identified and attributed to Bronzino by the author and Philippe Costamagna. It is one of the most significant additions to the artist’s corpus of work on display in the exhibition, in which another two previously unknown works will also be on show.This panel painting was commissioned by Bartolomeo and Lucrezia Panciatichi, whose portraits are in the Uffizi Gallery, and it is a key work in helping us to understand the approach to the reformed religion in Florence in the 1540’s. Bartolomeo and Lucrezia were charged with subscribing to Luther’s teachings and brought to trial in 1551.

This work does not show us a Crucifixion as such but an altar niche with an almost sculptural crucified Christ in it, testifying to the patrons' belief in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as expounded

by Juan deValdés and by Benedetto da Mantova in his Benefit of Christ.

A reflectographic inspection of the Panciatichi Christ revealed a preparatory drawing which, as had become customary practice85 with Bronzino, was then totally

changed in the painting stage. In the drawing, Christ’s body seems to be crushed beneath its own weight, his reclining head reaches down to his chest, and his arms, now parallel to the cross, are portrayed at an acute angle pointing more sharply upwards, while the entire torso is set lower down on the cross, forcing the legs to bend to the right. If the body in the final painting had faithfully mirrored the underlying drawing, the effect would have been more dramatic, far closer to the kind of image one might associate with the teachings of Savonarola, where Christ’s suffering was held up as a warning against the sins of mankind. In other words, the picture would have exalted the suffering associated with death by crucifixion and therefore, by extension, the suffering man that needs to experience for his salvation.The painting would have 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 ofValdés so dear to the Panciatichi, did not demand suffering, it demanded trust. BenedettoVarchi 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.”

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Bronzino Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante before 1553 oil on canvas Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi inv. 1890 n. 5959 After completing an altarpiece for the cathedral in Pisa,Vasari tells us 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 extravanganza of monstrous limbs that the dwarf possesses, and the painting in that respect is beautiful and a marvel to behold”.The picture is listed in a Medici inventory dated 1553, rappresenta un unicum nella pittura del Cinquecento. It directly parallels the burlesque verses in which Bronzino excelled, but it also evinces the painter’s stance in a dispute on whether painting or sculpture was the nobler art, a dispute known as the Maggioranza delle arti promoted by BenedettoVarchi some years earlier.The picture was designed for display 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 88

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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 from which to view a work, at the same time painting can also depict the passage of time, which sculpture cannot.

While Morgante is shown with the implements of a nighttime hunter on the front side, on the back side Bronzino offers us a view set at a different moment of the day: the end of the hunt, with “Morgante and the birds he has caught”.The full-frontal view was subsequently held to be obscene, probably when the painting hung in the Medici 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 were removed during the restoration process which will allow us to appreciate once again the complexity of Bronzino’s thought, as evinced also by the various naturalistic symbols in the painting like the large moths fluttering around the deformed figure of Morgante.

Bronzino Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante From the Front, Front after restoration, before 1553, oil on canvas Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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Bronzino Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante From the Back Back after restoration, before 1553, oil on canvas Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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Bronzino Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante From the Back Front and back during cleaning, before 1553, oil on canvas Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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Bronzino Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante From the Back Front and back during puttying before 1553, oil on canvas Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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Bronzino Ritratto del nano Morgante, recto e verso durante la stuccatura, ante 1553, olio su tela Firenze, Galleria degli Uffizi.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

GiorgioVasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori, nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, edited by Rosanna Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, 6 vols., Florence, 1966–87.

Juan deValdés, Alfabeto cristiano. Domande e risposte. Della predestinazione. Catechismo, edited by Massimo Firpo,Turin, 1994.

Raffaello Borghini, Il Riposo, Florence, Giorgio Marescotti, 1584; facs. reprint Hildesheim, 1969.

Alessandro Cecchi, Agnolo Bronzino,Antella (Florence), 1996.

Benedetto Varchi, ‘Lezzione nella quale si disputa della maggioranza delle arti’, in Trattati d’arte del Cinquecento, edited by Paola Barocchi, 3 vols., Bari, 1960–2, I. Benedetto Varchi, Sonetti, in Opere… ora per la prima volta raccolte, with an introduction by Antonio Racheli, 2 vols.,Trieste, 1858–9, II, 831–1010.

Carlo Falciani, Pontormo, disegni degli Uffizi, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, 28 September 1996–12 January 1997), Florence, 1996.

L’officina della maniera, exhibition catalogue (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, 28 September 1996–6 January 1997), edited by Alessandro Cecchi, Antonio Natali, Carlo Sisi,Venice, 1996.

Albertina Furno, La vita e le rime di Angiolo Bronzino, Pistoia, 1902.

Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier, Los Angeles, Calif., 1997.

Juan deValdés, Le cento e dieci divine Considerazioni, edited by Edmondo Cione, Milan, 1944.

Maurizia Tazartes, Bronzino, Milan–Geneva, 2003.

Edi Baccheschi, L’opera completa del Bronzino, Milan, 1973.

Maurice Brock, Bronzino, Paris, 2002.

Agnolo Bronzino, Rime in burla, edited by Franca Petrucci Nardelli, Rome, 1988.

Charles McCorquodale, Bronzino, London, 2005 (1st edition New York, 1981).

Janet Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the PalazzoVecchio, Berkeley, Calif.– Los Angeles, Calif.–Oxford, 1993.

The Drawings of Bronzino, exhibition catalogue (NewYork, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20 January –18 April 2010), edited by Carmen C. Bambach, New Haven, Conn., 2010.

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