649. PORTRAIT OF A BOY.
Angelo Bronzino (Florentine: 1502-1572).
Angelo di Cosimo, called Il Bronzino, was born in a suburb of Florence, of poor parents; he became a popular artist, "nor have we any one in our day," says Vasari, "who is more ingenious, varied, fanciful, and spirited in the jesting kind of verse." He was also good at a more serious kind of verse; amongst other things he wrote sonnets on Benvenuto Cellini's "Perseus," of which Cellini says, "they spoke so generously of my performance, in that fine style of his which is most exquisite, that this alone repaid me somewhat for the pain of my long troubles." Vasari was a great friend of his, and speaks in the warmest terms of his generosity and kindness. He was the favourite pupil of Pontormo, some of whose works, left unfinished, he completed. His portraits, if sometimes hard and cold, are often excellent, and form a gallery of great interest to the historian of Florence. In his frescoes and allegories, he belongs to the period of decline. His "Descent of Christ into Hell," in the Uffizi, is among the most celebrated of his works. "Want of thought and feeling, combined with the presumptuous treatment of colossal and imaginative subjects, renders his compositions inexpressibly chilling" (Symonds, iii. 365). Ruskin cites him as an instance of the "base grotesque of men who, having no true imagination, are apt, more than others, to try by startling realism to enforce the monstrosity that has no terror in itself" (Modern Painters, vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. viii. § 8).
This charming portrait was formerly attributed to Pontormo. Sir Edward Poynter, following Frizzoni, has transferred it to Bronzino. (See Arte Italiana del Rinascimento, p. 267.)