Bronzino. Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici (Florence, 9/27/10-1//11)

Bronzino. Pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici
Florence. Palazzo Strozzi, Sept. 23, 2010 - Jan. 24, 2011

"One of the greatest painters of the sixteenth century, Agnolo di Cosimo Tori, known as Bronzino (1503-1572), embodied the fullness of the ‘modern manner’ in the years of the government of Cosimo I de’ Medici.
Florence is clearly the preferential location for a monographic exhibition on Bronzino, since the majority of his paintings are still conserved here, above all in the Uffizi, but also in other city museums and in the churches. This exhibition, the first devoted to Agnolo’s pictorial work, will also avail of loans from the most important museums all over the world.

Design and planning carried out well in advance will make it possible to offer visitors not only the latest critical and philological novelties, but also everything else that emerges from the constant commitment of the curators and the scientific committee in the three years prior to the opening of the exhibition in 2010.

However, this is not an exhibition conceived solely for the specialists. It will comprise a selection of only works of the very highest level: autograph works by Bronzino and other artists connected with him – such as Pontormo and Alessandro Allori. The idea is, through direct comparisons made possible for the first time, to enable a broad public to admire and comprehend the unrivalled poetic heights achieved by the artist.
Finally, it will be possible to study and compare several works, most of them attributed with certainty to Bronzino, that are being displayed to the public for the first time. The exhibition will be divided into chapters devoted to crucial phases, episodes or genres in Bronzino’s work.
The show will bring together a wide variety of Bronzino’s masterpieces, some of them displayed together for the first time, in addition to a selection of drawings originating from the greatest museums in the world. Alongside the works conserved in the Uffizi, the exhibition will present works such as Venus, Cupid and Jealousy from the Szépmuvészeti Múzeum in Budapest, the Portrait of young man with a book from the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Holy Family and Saint John, in the version of the Louvre (Paris) and of the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna.

The Scientific Committee will be composed of the major experts on the period, who will contribute to the exhibition catalogue with essays of elevated scientific importance.
The exhibtion project will be by Cristina Acidini, Superintendent of Florentine Museums, Carlo Falciani, one of the major experts of the artist, and Antonio Natali, Director of the Uffizi Gallery. The curators of the exhibition and editors of the catalogue will be Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali.
The show is designed to play a central role within the ambit of celebrations for the “Bronzino Year”, together with the major exhibition Drawings of Bronzino (January 20-April 18 2010) held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dedicated to the artist’s graphic production."