| The Florentine Mannerist portrait has never been thoroughly studied as a recognizable and definable type within the history of sixteenth century Italian art. Aside from a few notable exceptions, past scholarship has generally categorized the portraiture of Florentine Mannerism's principle practitioners---Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Alessandro Allori---as "Renaissance," and studied their portraiture in this way. Although Mannerist portraiture drew artistically from the High Renaissance, this dissertation suggests that as a product of its environment, the Mannerist portrait type is ultimately different from its High Renaissance predecessors in several ways, including style and content.;The central thesis of this study proposes that a recognizable and definable Mannerist portrait type existed in Florence between about 1525 and 1600, and that in its mature form, this portrait type was shaped directly by its contemporary cultural, political, and artistic environment. These important external influences, which are themselves closely linked, include the Medici ducal court under Cosimo, the art of Bronzino, the popular tenants of Baldassare Castiglione's courtesy text, Il Cortegiano, and the important alignment of cultural ideals and artistic aesthetics. The impact of each of these elements is examined in this dissertation in relationship to the development of the Mannerist portrait, and are discussed within the broad stylistic evolution of the Florentine Mannerist portrait as seen in the works of Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori. This analysis provides a definition for the Mannerist portrait type in terms of style and content, proposes a date for its maturity, and gives a new importance to its cultural and political environment, while tracing the rise of the unique Florentine type, within the portrait production of Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori. |
