Portraits, Politics and Pulchritude, The Court of Agnolo Bronzino

Katie Gibson
Trinity College Dublin
Department of History of Art and Architecture
2017
BA

Subject: Painting
Country: Italy
Period: 16th Century

10,000 words

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici, his wife Eleonora of Toledo and their children. These portraits were painted between 1540 and the early 1560s by the Medici court artist Agnolo Bronzino and members of his workshop. These family portraits will be examined individually and a group in order to show that Bronzino had an innate quality for linking images through subtle techniques including, expression, dress and symbols. Through the examination of these portraits we will see how each painting contributed to an idyllic construction of the Medici family image, with a political agenda at the heart of the purpose they served. This thesis also aims to highlight Bronzino’s outstanding skill as an artist and making one of the finest portraitists to come out of the Italian Renaissance.

Irish Georgian Society

Education Theses Register

Portraits, Politics and Pulchritude, The Court of Agnolo Bronzino