Agnolo Bronzino
Agnolo Bronzino was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. He was also the artist of the powerful Medici family, who ruled Florence at the time. He 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.
Today we present the portrait of the little Bianca, Bia, who was the daughter of Cosimo, born before his marriage in 1539.
In 1560, Francesco Maria II della Rovere’s ambassador to Tuscany, Simone Fortuna wrote in a letter that Cosimo “in his first years as duke, had, by a noblewoman of Florence, a girl who was baptized in the name of His Illustrious Excellence, and called Bia. And the Lady Duchess, finding her in her home, was raising the girl lovingly, as she was born to her husband before she became his wife.” The young girl was therefore brought up, as often happened, alongside the legitimate children of the household, surrounded by the affection of Eleanor of Toledo and her grandmother, Maria Salviati, with whom she spent a great deal of time and who was particularly fond of her.
Unfortunately, at the age of about five, Bia suddenly fell ill towards the end of January 1542 and died within a few weeks.
The duke was distraught and had a plaster funeral mask cast of the child, as listed in the Guardaroba inventory of 1553, which also contains the first record of the portrait of Bia by Bronzino, mentioned by Giorgio Vasari in his biography of the artist. Some scholars have advanced the theory that Bronzino did not paint the child while she was alive, but that he took the mask as his model. The date of the work is therefore between 1542 and 1545, when the painter also completed the Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo with her son, Giovanni (Uffizi) which you can find in our Archive and which uses the same solution as the other painting, placing the figure before a deep blue background that becomes lighter around the face.
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P.S. See the portraits of 4 powerful women depicted by Agnolo Bronzino!