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.)
650. PORTRAIT OF A LADY.
Angelo Bronzino (Florentine: 1502-1572). See 649.
See also (p. xix)
"In the rich costume of the sixteenth century," says the Official Catalogue,—and the picture therein resembles most portraits of the time. For it is a remarkable thing how much great art depends on gay and dainty gowns. Note first, in going round these rooms, how fondly all the best painters enjoy dress patterns. "It doesn't matter what school they belong to—Fra Angelico, Perugino, John Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoret, Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci—no matter how they differ in other respects, all of them like dress patterns; and what is more, the nobler the painter is, the surer he is to do his patterns well." Then note, as following from this fact, how much of the splendour of the pictures that we most admire depends on splendour of dress. "True nobleness of dress is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good historical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful; and had it not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, neither French nor Florentine nor Venetian art could have risen to anything like the rank it reached" (see, e.g., under 294). And with regard to this nobleness of dress, it may be observed lastly how "the best dressing was never the costliest; and its effect depended much more on its beautiful and, in early times, modest arrangement, and on the simple and lovely manner of its colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or embroidery" (Cambridge Inaugural Address, p. 11; A joy for ever, § 54).
651. AN ALLEGORY: "ALL IS VANITY."
Angelo Bronzino (Florentine: 1502-1572). See 649.