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One of his first paintings (c. 1518–1521) was the "Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, adored by the family Van de Velde", a diptych that can be seen in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges and its left panel in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. |
It was common practice for major artists, such as Isenbrandt, to paint only the major parts of his paintings, such as faces and the flesh parts of his figures. His faces and flesh areas are set apart by brown pigment. The background was then filled in by assistants. The end quality of a work depended largely on the quality of the execution and the competency of the assistants, leading to an uneven quality of his works. These assistants also painted, as this was common practice in those times, many versions of the "Madonna and Child", that were then attributed to Isenbrandt, giving him the reputation of having had an enormous body of work. The exhibition in Bruges of Early Netherlandish painting in 1902 showed therefore a large collection of his works. Unlike many contemporary colleagues, he is only documented with one assistant, Cornelis van Callenberghe, who joined his workshop in 1520. |
In 1520 he worked, together with Albert Cornelis and Lanceloot Blondeel, on the decorations for the Triumphal Entry of Emperor Charles V into Bruges. |
His paintings are executed meticulously and with great refinement. His figures are painted in warmer tones and more lively colours, than the works of Gerard David. Especially the flaming red or the dark blue set against an idyllic background of a lush, hilly landscape with castles situated on top of a vertical rock (typical for Isenbrandt), sinuous rivers and thick-leaved trees (showing the influence of Gerard David). He not only copied the compositions of Gerard David, but also from older painters such as Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes and Hans Memling. He borrowed compositions from Jan Gossaert (leading to the confusion with this painter) and drawings from Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schongauer. Such borrowing from older compositions was the order of the day and common practice. Nevertheless, the paintings of Adriaen Isenbrandt retain their individuality. |
He also painted some portraits, such as the portrait of Paulus de Nigro (Groeninge Museum, Bruges ), "Man weighing gold" (1515–1520) (Metropolitan Museum, New York ) and "Young Man with a Rosary" (Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California ). These portraits, even if they are stereotypical and lifeless, are executed with a soft touch and sfumato effect in the contours. |
The influence of the Italian Renaissance can be seen in the detailed addition of fashionable scenery elements such as volutes, antique pillars and ram's heads, such as in his painting of the "Mass of Saint Gregory the Great" ( J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles ). and "Mary and Child" (1520–1530) (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam ). Through these elements he may be regarded as a precursor of the Renaissance painter Lanceloot Blondeel. |
He is often compared with Ambrosius Benson (c. 1495–1550), a painter from Lombardy who emigrated to Bruges. He may have introduced the sfumato technique to Isenbrandt. |
Together with Benson, Isenbrandt belongs to a generation overlapping and succeeding the generation of Gerard David and Jan Provoost. |
Selected works |
Many works are now in the collections of the major museums of the world, such as: |
Virgin and Child (Museu Nacional Machado de Castro, Coimbra, 1505–1510) |
Virgin and Child Enthroned (Private collection) (1510s) |
Triptych of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (Sint-Salvator Cathedral, Bruges) |
Triptych with St. Jerome, St. Catherine and the Magdalen (Kunsthalle, Hamburg) (1510–1520) |
Madonna and Child with a member of the Hillensberger family (Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida) |
Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows (Church of Our Lady, Bruges) (c. 1518) |
The Magdalen in a landscape (National Gallery, London) (1515–1520) |
Portrait of Paulus de Nigro (Groeningemuseum, Bruges) (1518) |
Virgin and Child (Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest) ) (1520s) |
Rest during the Flight into Egypt (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) |
Rest during the Flight into Egypt (Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent) (1520–1530) |
Rest during the Flight into Egypt (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) (1520–1530) |
Rest during the Flight into Egypt (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) (1520–1530) |
Rest during the Flight into Egypt (Koninklijke Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp) (1520–1530/40) |
Crucifixion (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) (c. 1525) |
Crucifixion church of Noddebo, Fredensborg, Seeland (Copenhague) (1515–1521) (follower of Isenbrandt) |
The Madonna Nursing the Infant Christ (Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City) (ca. 1530–1535) |
Madonna and Child with cherub musicians (San Diego Museum of Art, California) (1540) |
Gethsemane (Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund) (1530–1540) |
Archangel St Michael, St Andrew and St Francis of Assisi (Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest) ) |
Mass of St Gregory (Museo del Prado, Madrid) |
The Magdalen (Museo del Prado, Madrid) |
Triptych (Groeningemuseum, Bruges) |
The Deposition (Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford,) |
Virgin and Child (Fondation Bemberg Museum, Toulouse, France) |
Saints and donors (diptych) (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina) |
St Peter and donor (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) |
Image of a woman (Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome) |
Mary and Child (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) |
Adoration by the Magi (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) |
Beata Virgo inter Virgines (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) (copy after Gerard David) |
Triptych with the Assumption of Mary (Musée de Cluny, Paris) (1520–1530 ?) |
Donor with the saints Peter and Paul (Private collection, London) |
Birth of Christ (Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Kunstmuseum, Basel) (1520–1530) |
Birth of Christ (Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp) (1530–1550) |
Our Lady enthroned in a niche (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) |
St Jerome (Private collection, London) (1560–1570) (by follower of Adriaen Isenbrandt or Ambrosius Benson) |
No longer attributed to him by the owners: |
Rest during the Flight to Egypt (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) (1520) |
The Entombment (National Gallery, London) (about 1550) |
Notes |
References |
E. Benezit – Dictionnaire des Paintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et graveurs, Librairie Gründ, Paris, 1976 ISBN 2-7000-0153-2 (in French) |
Turner, J. – Grove Dictionary of Art – Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (2 January 1996); ISBN 0-19-517068-7 |
Till-Holger Borchert – "Adriaan Isenbrant" in the catalogue of the exhibition "Bruges and the Renaissance"; Bruges, 15 August-6 December 1998; ISBN 90-5544-230-5 |
Isenbrant, Adriaen at the National Gallery, Washington D.C. |
External links |
Media related to Adriaen Isenbrant at Wikimedia Commons |
Agnolo di Cosimo (Italian: [ˈaɲɲolo di ˈkɔːzimo]; 17 November 1503 – 23 November 1572), usually known as Bronzino (Italian: Il Bronzino [il bronˈdziːno]) or Agnolo Bronzino, was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. His sobriquet, Bronzino, may refer to his relatively dark skin or reddish hair. |
He lived all his life in Florence, and from his late 30s was kept busy as the court painter of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He was mainly a portraitist but also painted many religious subjects, and a few allegorical subjects, which include what is probably his best-known work, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, c. 1544–45, now in London. Many portraits of the Medicis exist in several versions with varying degrees of participation by Bronzino himself, as Cosimo was a pioneer of the copied portrait sent as a diplomatic gift. |
He trained with Pontormo, the leading Florentine painter of the first generation of Mannerism, and his style was greatly influenced by him, but his elegant and somewhat elongated figures always appear calm and somewhat reserved, lacking the agitation and emotion of those by his teacher. They have often been found cold and artificial, and his reputation suffered from the general critical disfavour attached to Mannerism in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Recent decades have been more appreciative of his art. |
Life |
Bronzino was born in Florence, the son of a butcher. According to his contemporary Vasari, Bronzino was a pupil first of Raffaellino del Garbo, and then of Pontormo, to whom he was apprenticed at 14. Pontormo is thought to have introduced a portrait of Bronzino as a child (seated on a step) into one of his series on Joseph in Egypt now in the National Gallery, London. Pontormo exercised a dominant influence on Bronzino's developing style, and the two were to remain collaborators for most of the former's life. An early example of Bronzino's hand has often been detected in the Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Pontormo designed the interior and executed the altarpiece, the masterly Deposition from the Cross and the sidewall fresco Annunciation. Bronzino apparently was assigned the frescoes on the dome, which have not survived. Of the four empanelled tondi or roundels depicting each of the evangelists, two were said by Vasari to have been painted by Bronzino. His style is so similar to his master's that scholars still debate the specific attributions. |
Towards the end of his life, Bronzino took a prominent part in the activities of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, of which he was a founding member in 1563. |
The painter Alessandro Allori was his favourite pupil, and Bronzino was living in the Allori family house at the time of his death in Florence in 1572 (Alessandro was also the father of Cristofano Allori). Bronzino spent the greater part of his career in Florence. |
Work |
Portraits |
Bronzino first received Medici patronage in 1539, when he was one of the many artists chosen to execute the elaborate decorations for the wedding of Cosimo I de' Medici to Eleonora di Toledo, daughter of the Viceroy of Naples. It was not long before he became, and remained for most of his career, the official court painter of the Duke and his court. His portrait figures – often read as static, elegant, and stylish exemplars of unemotional haughtiness and assurance – influenced the course of European court portraiture for a century. These well known paintings exist in many workshop versions and copies. In addition to images of the Florentine elite, Bronzino also painted idealized portraits of the poets Dante (c. 1530, now in Washington, D.C.) and Petrarch. |
Bronzino's best-known works comprise the aforementioned series of the duke and duchess, Cosimo and Eleonora, and figures of their court such as Bartolomeo Panciatichi and his wife Lucrezia. These paintings, especially those of the duchess, are known for their minute attention to the detail of her costume, which almost takes on a personality of its own in the image at right. Here the Duchess is pictured with her second son Giovanni, who died of malaria in 1562, along with his mother; however it is the sumptuous fabric of the dress that takes up more space on the canvas than either of the sitters. Indeed, the dress itself has been the object of some scholarly debate. The elaborate gown has been rumoured to be so beloved by the duchess that she was ultimately buried in it; when this myth was debunked, others suggested that perhaps the garment never existed at all and Bronzino invented the entire thing, perhaps working only from a fabric swatch. In any case, this picture was reproduced over and over again by Bronzino and his shop, becoming one of the most iconic images of the duchess. The version pictured here is in the Uffizi Gallery, and is one of the finest surviving examples. |
Bronzino's so-called "allegorical portraits", such as that of a Genoese admiral, Portrait of Andrea Doria as Neptune, are less typical but possibly even more fascinating owing to the peculiarity of placing a publicly recognized personality in the nude as a mythical figure. Finally, in addition to being a painter, Bronzino was also a poet, and his most personal portraits are perhaps those of other literary figures such as that of his friend the poet Laura Battiferri. The eroticized nature of these virile nude male portraits, as well as homoerotic references in his poetry, have led scholars to believe that Bronzino was homosexual. |
Religious and allegorical subjects |
In 1540/41, Bronzino began work on the fresco decoration of the Chapel of Eleanora di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio and an oil on panel Deposition of Christ to be an altarpiece for the chapel. Before this commission, his style in the religious genre was less Mannerist, and was based in balanced compositions of the High Renaissance. Yet he became elegant and classicizing (cf. Smyth) in this fresco cycle, and his religious works are examples of the mid-16th-century aesthetics of the Florentine court – traditionally interpreted as highly stylized and non-personal or emotive. Crossing the Red Sea is typical of Bronzino's approach at this time, though it should not be claimed that Bronzino or the court was lacking in religious fervour on the basis of the preferred court fashion. Indeed, the duchess Eleanora was a generous patron to the recently founded Jesuit order. |
Bronzino's work tends to include sophisticated references to earlier painters, as in one of his last grand frescoes called The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo, 1569), in which almost every one of the extraordinarily contorted poses can be traced back to Raphael or to Michelangelo, whom Bronzino idolized (cf. Brock). Bronzino's skill with the nude was even more enigmatically deployed in the celebrated Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, which conveys strong feelings of eroticism under the pretext of a moralizing allegory. His other major works include the design of a series of tapestries on The Story of Joseph, for the Palazzo Vecchio. |
Many of Bronzino's works are still in Florence but other examples can be found in the National Gallery, London, and elsewhere. |
Selected works |
St. Mark (c. 1525) – Oil on Wood, Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicita, Florence |
St. Matthew (c. 1525) – Oil on Wood, Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicita, Florence |
Portrait of Lorenzo Lenzi (1527–28) – Oil on panel, castello Sforzesco, Milan |
Pietà (c. 1530) – Oil on panel, 105 x 100 cm, Uffizi, Florence |
Portrait of Dante (1530) – Oil on panel, Milan |
Portrait of a Lady in Green (1530–32) – Oil on panel, 76,7 x 65,4 cm, Royal Collection, Windsor |
St. Sebastian (c. 1533) – Oil on panel, 87 x 77 cm, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Holy Family (1534–40) – Oil on wood, 124.5 x 99.5 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Adoration of the Shepherds (1535–1540) – Oil on wood, 65,3 x 46,7 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (before 1537) – Oil on panel, 102 x 85 cm, State Museums, Berlin |
Portrait of Bartolomeo Panciatichi (c. 1540) – Tempera on wood, 104 x 84 cm, Uffizi, Florence |
Holy Family (c. 1540) – Oil on wood, 117 x 93 cm, Uffizi, Florence |
Portrait of a Young Man with a Book (c. 1540) – Oil on wood, 96 x 75 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time (Allegory; 1540–45) – Oil on panel, 146 x 116 cm, National Gallery, London |
Adoration of the Bronze Snake (1540–45) – Fresco, 320 x 385 cm, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence |
Deposition of Christ (1540–45) – Oil on panel, 268 x 173 cm, Musée des Beaux- Arts, Besançon |
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