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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

Bronzino’s Time to Shine
Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi Launches Extensive Retrospective
By AARON MAINES

In Florence, a new art exhibition opening today at Palazzo Strozzi hopes to acquaint the general public with an Italian master who has remained relatively unknown and decidedly uncelebrated for almost five centuries.

It’s about time. Agnolo di Cosimo Tori, or Bronzino, the nickname by which the painter is best known, deserves a more prominent place in the public consciousness.

As Antonio Natali, one of the curators of the show, points out, Bronzino was arguably the greatest master of mannerism, the highly stylistic and profane style that dominated Florentine art through the middle of the 16th century. “Today art historians continue to debate the dates and definitions of mannerism,” says Mr. Natali, “but no one questions Bronzino’s place in history.”

Picture 1

The son of a butcher, Bronzino was born in Florence in 1503. He was apprenticed to painter Jacopo Pontormo as a young man, and the two artists maintained a friendship and professional association throughout their lives. Appropriately, the exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi opens with four portraits ascribed alternatively to Bronzino, Pontormo, or both.

The show in Florence boasts as complete a retrospective of Bronzino’s paintings as has been offered anywhere in the world: 54 of 70 paintings attributed to the artist, including three paintings freshly restored, analyzed and attributed to the Florentine master.

“Venus, Cupid and Jealousy” (circa 1550) is an allegory focusing on the theme of carnal love and its influence on mankind. In it, Venus debates with her son Cupid while a monstrous, serpent-haired figure that may represent envy or jealousy flees into the background. Reflectology tests conducted during restoration show that Bronzino’s original design included a young satyr depicted beneath Venus’s downward-pointing arrow, indicating her preference for earthly pleasure.

Another work, the “Crucified Christ” (1540-41), was only recently identified and attributed to Bronzino. The third is one of the most striking pieces in the exhibition, the “Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante” (before 1553), a two-sided canvas portraying the court dwarf to Cosimo I de’ Medici. Bronzino created the portrait to respond to a debate raging between artists and thinkers of his day over which art form was nobler: sculpture or painting. Like a marble sculpture, the painting offers a full view of the subject, a frontal view on one side of the canvas and a rear view of the subject on the other.

But Bronzino took the portrait a step further in order to prove that painting can depict something sculpture cannot: time. Seen from the front, the dwarf holds aloft a trained owl, preparing to set out for a hunt. Looking at the rear view, visitors see the subject holding the passel of birds he caught, strung up and flung over one shoulder.

The Janus-faced portrait has been placed on a pedestal at the center of the room and surrounded by marble sculptures by Bronzino’s contemporaries, a subtle echo of what was once a heated dispute.

Anyone accustomed to visiting exhibitions in Italy knows it can be a trying experience, where odd hours, decaying structures and inadequate services often make enjoying artwork an affair reserved for diehards and the elite. Under the direction of James Bradburne, director of the Palazzo Strozzi Foundation since 2006, the museum has taken leaps forward in offering a more complete, comprehensive cultural experience, and its efforts are a prominent part of the Bronzino exhibition.

Touch-screen displays set up in the courtyard allow visitors to view and explore famous Bronzino artworks located elsewhere. One option allows visitors to perform their own restoration on selected artworks, experiencing firsthand what it is like to uncover differences in color and composition.

The effect can be startling. In the “Descent of Christ into Limbo” (1552), a Bronzino painting that can be seen in the nearby Basilica of Santa Croce, a brush of the finger turns a tattered, one-eyed figure into a delicately bearded, detailed alabaster portrait of Christ. Another swipe of the finger on the touch screen turns what looks like black background into a portrait of the artist’s master, Pontormo.

Other initiatives are designed to get families and young children involved. The exhibition is accompanied by “Hide and Seek,” a book of poems the museum commissioned from Roberto Piumini, one of Italy’s leading children’s authors. Trained actor-teachers perform theater presentations in Florentine schools and piazzas, using illustrated images from the exhibition to tell the story of Bronzino’s artwork.

Some of the museum’s efforts are less evident, but potentially even more far-reaching. Prior to each major exhibition, the museum hosts a special catered event that is free for all of Florence’s taxi drivers, hotel concierges and their families. “The idea is to get the whole city involved,” says Mr. Bradburne. “We want everyone in Florence not simply to be aware of what we’re doing, but to feel like they’re part of it as well.”

Mr. Bradburne, who is Anglo-Canadian, admitted that as a foreigner he was received with some skepticism in Florentine art circles. The foundation’s efforts may be changing that attitude, an effect underlined when Claudio Rosati, the head of museums and museum affairs for the Tuscany region, announced plans to increase Palazzo Strozzi’s funding to €400,000 a year for the next three years to support new programs.

Although this Bronzino exhibition was organized independently of the Bronzino drawing exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earlier this year, Mr. Bradburne described collaboration between the two institutions as “productive” and “collegial.” Even without any formal collaboration, the two shows are
wonderfully complementary. The New York show concentrated on the sketches that preceded Bronzino’s paintings, and now the show in Florence is highlighting the final product.

Taken together, the two exhibitions provide the most comprehensive perspective of Bronzino’s genius ever offered to the general public.

Until Jan. 23

www.palazzostrozzi.org

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