Portrait of a Young Girl with a Prayer Book

Bronzino painted the cool, perfect elegance of the Medici court. His portraits show sitters with pale, porcelain-smooth skin, composed, unreadable faces and sumptuous clothes, every thread of velvet, brocade and lace rendered with precision against plain or architectural backgrounds. His mythologies are equally polished and full of hidden meanings. Agnolo di Cosimo, called Bronzino, was born in Florence in 1503 and trained with Pontormo, whose style he made calmer and more controlled. He spent his whole career in Florence and from the late 1530s was court painter to Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, painting the duke, his wife Eleonora of Toledo and their children. His Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, perhaps his most famous painting, is in the National Gallery, London, where it is known as An Allegory with Venus and Cupid. He was also a poet. He died in Florence in 1572. In A Lady with a Puppy and Bartolomeo Panciatichi, study the hands.