Agnolo di Cosimo Allori Bronzino, 1503 Florenz... Lot n° 309

Portrait of a young man Oil on wood. 38,7 x 32,4 cm. Verso a slide-in bar and red lacquer seal of the Corsini family collection with princely hat over the coat of arms. In Renaissance frame. The painting has already been acknowledged as a work of the master by several art-scientific reviews, expertises and publications (see below). It shows the portrait of a young man, the head almost life-size, brought close to the viewer in the picture format. A dark background, which brightens only slightly greenish towards the bottom, and the anthracite-colored, almost black costume are restrained insofar as this makes the face appear all the more effective in the light. The illumination from the upper left initially hits primarily the forehead area and the bridge of the nose. The dark brown irises and the black short hair contrast picturesquely with the lighter, reddish-brown short beard. A narrow pleated white collar wraps the head area. The full lips are lined by the beard hair, the speaking gaze is directed towards the viewer. The painter is one of the most important representatives of the Italian-Florentine late Renaissance or Mannerism. In addition to his frescoes, altarpieces and devotional paintings, he became famous above all as a portraitist. This was not least because, as a painter of the highest education, he was in the closest social and friendly contact with celebrities of his time, as well as with personalities of the Medici court, from whom he received portrait commissions. The works of the great authors such as Dante, Petrarch or Pietro Bembo were naturally familiar to him, which significantly promoted his access to the court. Already as a pupil of Jacopo Pontormo he worked for the Medici, as well as for the court of the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria I and Guibaldo della Rovere. Around 1533 he moved entirely to the Medici court and was given the status of court painter after the duke summoned a select circle of literati and artists. The festive decorations in Florence on the occasion of the wedding of Cosimo I with Eleonora di Toledo, 1531, are no longer preserved. Of his portraits - especially of the Medici family - only a few authorized replicas and variations survive, not infrequently created in his workshop or by Alessandro Allori, his pupil. All the rarer are works by his hand, such as this one. In the accompanying appraisals, reviews and studies, stylistic affinity but also portait similarity with other works of Bronzino have already been established. Completely convincing is the similarity of the sitter with a "Portrait of a Man with a Pen and a Book" assigned to Bronzino, whose whereabouts cannot be named, illustrated in the enclosed essay by Alessandro Nesi (see below). The author quotes in another publication exhibition catalog- "Tra Sacro e Profano" (collection Giorgio Baratti, Milano) - the text entry of Ulderigo Medici in his catalog published in 1880 with the formulation: Bronzino Angiolo - Portait of a member of the Medici family, with dimensions, identical to the present painting. Ulderigo Medici was formerly the curator of the collection of the Corsini princes in Florence, therefore also a connoisseur of the portraits of the master, as well as the collection of that time (San Casciano Val di Pesa), Archivio Corsini. He was also familiar with the works of all the painters of the time, such as Salviati, which were part of the collection. A comparative painting, formerly assigned to the painter Andrea del Sarto, but eventually brought close to Bronzino, appeared on the market in 2015 and, as mentioned above, can be undoubtedly associated with the present painting. Furthermore, the comparison with other works of Bronzino was made in the research. For example, the representational affinity with the head of St. Mark in the church of Sta. Felicita in Florence, a work that Bronzino created between 1525 and 1528 in collaboration with his master Pontormo in the Capponi Chapel, is established here. The face of Saint Joseph in the "Holy Family with Elizabeth and John" (National Gallery Washington, c. 1625-1628) or the head of Christ in the Uffizi Pietá of 1529, once created for the Cambi Chapel in Sta. Trinita in Florence, were also used here for comparison. A.R. Provenance: Princely Corsini Collection. Giorgio Baratti Collection. Literature: Cf. Elizabeth Pilliod, Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori. A Geneaolgy of Florentine Art. New Haven/ London 2001. Cf. Maurice Brock, Bronzino. Paris 2002. Cf. Carlo Falciani Bronzino. Pintore e poeta alle corte dei Medici, exhibition catalog, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence 2010. Cf. Alexander Rauch, Kunst der Italienischen Renaissance, Malerei der Hochrenaissance und des Manierismus in Rom un