Portrait of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici as Orpheus is a painting by the Italian artist Agnolo di Cosimo.
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and... even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who could not hear his divine music. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, opera, and painting. For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called "Orphic" mysteries. He was credited with the composition of the Orphic Hymns, a collection of which survives. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles. Some ancient Greek sources note Orpheus's Thracian origins. The earliest literary reference to Orpheus is a two-word fragment of the sixth-century BC lyric poet Ibycus: onomaklyton Orphēn . He is not mentioned in Homer or Hesiod.more
Cosimo I de' Medici was Duke of Florence from 1537 to 1574, reigning as the first Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569. Cosimo was born in Florence, on June 12, 1519, the son of the... famous condottiere Giovanni dalle Bande Nere from Forlì and Maria Salviati. Cosimo came to power at 17, when the 26 year old Duke, Alessandro de' Medici, was assassinated in 1537, as Alessandro's only male child was illegitimate. Cosimo was from a different branch of the family, and so far had lived in Mugello, and was almost unknown in Florence: however, many of the influential men in the city favored him, several of them hoping to rule through him and thereby enrich themselves at the state's expense. However, as Benedetto Varchi famously put it "The innkeeper's reckoning was different from the glutton's." Cosimo proved strong-willed, astute and ambitious, and soon rejected the clause he had signed, which entrusted much of the power to a council of Forty-Eight. When the Florentine exiles heard of the death of Alessandro, they marshalled their forces with support from France and from disgruntled neighbors of Florence.more
The Belvedere Torso is a fragment of a nude male statue, signed prominently on the front of the base by an Athenian sculptor "Apollonios son of Nestor", who is unmentioned in... ancient literature. The statue is documented in Rome from the 1430s, not because it elicited admiration but because an antiquarian epigrapher, Ciriaco d'Ancona, made note of its inscription; a generation later it began its career as a catalyst of the classical revival. Early drawings of the Torso were made by Amico Aspertini, ca 1500-03, by Martin van Heemskerck, ca. 1532-36, by Hendrick Goltzius, ca 1590; the Belvedere Torso entered the visual repertory of connoisseurs and artists unable to go to Rome through the engraving of it by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, ca 1515. Around 1500 it was in the possession of the sculptor Andrea Bregno. It was in Palazzo Colonna at the Sack of Rome in 1527, when it suffered some mutilation. How it entered the Vatican collections is uncertain, but by the mid-16th century it was installed in the Cortile del Belvedere, where it joined the Apollo Belvedere and other famous Roman sculptures.more
Agnolo di Cosimo , usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino Allori, was an Italian Mannerist painter from Florence. His sobriquet, Bronzino, in all probability refers to his relatively dark skin. Bronzino was born in Florence, the son of a butcher. According to his contemporary Vasari, Bronzino was a pupil first of Raffaellino del Garbo, and then of Pontormo, to whom he was apprenticed at 14. Pontormo is thought to have introduced a... portrait of Bronzino as a child into one of his series on Joseph in Egypt now in the National Gallery, London. Pontormo exercised a dominant influence on Bronzino's developing style, and the two were to remain collaborators for most of the former's life. An early example of Bronzino's hand has often been detected in the Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Pontormo designed the interior and executed the altarpiece, the masterly Deposition from the Cross and the sidewall fresco Annunciation.more
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in... Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe. Stylistically, Mannerism encompasses a variety of approaches influenced by, and reacting to, the harmonious ideals and restrained naturalism associated with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and early Michelangelo. Mannerism is notable for its intellectual sophistication as well as its artificial qualities. The definition of Mannerism, and the phases within it, continues to be the subject of debate among art historians. For example, some scholars have applied the label to certain early modern forms of literature and music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The term is also used to refer to some Late Gothic painters working in northern Europe from about 1500 to 1530, especially the Antwerp Mannerists—a group unrelated to the Italian movement. Mannerism also has been applied by analogy to the Silver Age of Latin.more