The colour always favoured by Eleanor was red, and the entrance to this exhibition devoted to her life and patronage, which has just closed at Palazzo Pitti, was hung with a sumptuous crimson curtain. Beyond it, the visitor was at once confronted by what at first glance seemed to be the most famous portrait of Eleanor and her son, by Bronzino, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a good replica made some 40 years later by a pupil, the little-known painter Lorenze Vaiani, or Lo Sciorina. He replaced the portrait of Eleanor’s son Giovanni with another son, Garzia. The significance of giving this work pride of place as an introduction to the exhibition is that it demonstrates how Eleanor’s image was often replicated to perpetuate her importance as a member of the Medici court.

Two Utens lunettes, from his famous series of paintings of the Medici villas around Florence, depict Poggio a Caiano (with its garden and extensive estate) where Eleanor was received on her arrival in the city, and which remained her favourite residence, as well as the place where she chose to rest before the birth of each of her eleven children. The lunette of the Boboli behind the Pitti reminds us of how much Eleanor did to create that famous garden, ten years after she had married Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1539. It was her immense wealth that enabled her to purchase Palazzo Pitti and the park behind it.

Eleanor’s family background was Spanish: on loan from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich came an imposing portrait of her father, Don Pedro de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples. Holding a long pilgrim’s staff, symbol of the Spanish military order of the Knights of Santiago, the portrait has been attributed to Titian. The beautiful marble statue of a young river god, by Pierino da Vinci (now in the Louvre), was a gift from Eleanor to her father. Many ancient Roman statues, often reworked or restored by 16^th-century sculptors, were chosen to adorn the Boboli gardens. Alongisde these, there were a number of much less pretentious ones, recording ordinary farmers about their work. These were a particular feature of the gardens which were largely created by Eleanor, and a genre sculpture of a peasant emptying a small barrel (designed as a fountain), which was part of the exhibition and is now replaced in the gardens by a copy, is known to have been specially commissioned by her from Baccio Bandinelli (his was the design but not the execution). The peasant, dressed in his work clothes, has a very expressive face and he introduced an entirely new type of sculpture to populate Italian gardens, a type which was to remain a feature of all subsequent formal gardens of this kind.

In quite a different spirit, Bandinelli was also responsible for the pair of small bronze busts, very refined portraits of Eleanor and Cosimo. The couple are also depicted, with five of their children, in a precious little agate cameo made by Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi (displayed beside a drawing of it by Vasari from Christ Church, Oxford).

The most magnificent portraits of Eleanor and her husband, however, are those by Bronzino, and it is he who was inevitably the star of the show. His portraits are all still in Florence, including some very small portraits of the children, in oil on tin. He also possessed extraordinary skill as a draughtsman, producing studies for the chapel in Palazzo Vecchio which he painted for Eleanor.

It is known that Eleanor kept two weavers at her court and some very fine 16^th-century tapestries survive.

Also part of the show were Eleanor’s exquisite little Book of Hours (now in the V&A in London) and a very small Deposition by Gérard David (1515–20), which is in the Uffizi but not normally on view and is thought to have been owned by Eleanor’s mother. Some of the most precious pieces of jewellery were fashioned by setting engraved Roman gems in gold mounts worked by Florentine jewellers. Two rings found in Eleonora’s tomb (opened in 1947) are Roman but refashioned by a Florentine craftsman, and almost certainly commissioned by Eleanor herself.

Also found in Eleanor’s tomb was a corset and pair of knitted stockings, both in her favourite red, apparently worn in her lifetime to keep her warm and taken with her to the tomb for the same purpose (she died of malaria in 1562). Displayed close by was an alarming steel corset which we are told she also wore on occasion.

The closing images were a pair of oval portraits of Eleanor and Cosimo, carved in maroon and green porphyry, an exceptionally hard rock occasionally used for imperial portraits in ancient Rome: these are certain to perpetuate for all time the couples’ remarkable lives.  

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence

Pietro Vannucci, the artist always known as Perugino, after Perugia, the chief city of his native Umbria, was born c. 1450. A superb new exhibition, which celebrates the 500^th anniversary of his death in 1523, is currently on show at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria.

It was probably in Umbria that Perugino’s apprenticeship began and the exhibition begins with that background, with works by Benedetto Bonfigli (d. 1496) and Bartolomeo Caporali (d. before 1505), then considered the best artists of the Umbrian school. However, it was in Florence that Perugino reached his artistic maturity, in the workshop of Verrocchio—whose members included Botticelli and Leonardo. Looking at examples of the art of Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio and the Florentines, of which this show has several examples, it is clear how Perugino’s pictorial imagination was shaped. Altarpiece after altarpiece is populated with colourfully clad characters of somewhat ambiguous gender, standing in sinuous contrapposto, eyes rolling almost epileptically heavenwards.

Perugino’s reputation was made when, together with a group of Florentine painters, he was called to Rome in 1481 to produce works for St Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel. As a result, some of the finest connoisseurs of the age, among them Lorenzo the Magnificent and Isabella d’Este, sought his services. He was described as “Italy’s finest maestro”; the colours of his palette were acknowledged to possess a special “sweetness”—a quality he is thought to have learned to convey from time spent in the lagoon light of Venice in the mid-1490s. The quality of his palette seems to suggest an everlasting sunny springtime.

Perugino, in his heyday, was formidable and prolific and maintained a large workshop. His self-portraits reveal a man of stocky, thickset appearance, probably capable of driving a hard bargain. He had no interest whatsoever in God, Vasari tells us, and an obsessive compulsion to make money. The star exhibit in this show is his Marriage of the Virgin, painted for the cathedral of Perugia in 1504. It hung there, in the Chapel of the Holy Ring, until 1797 when it was stolen by Napoleon. It is still in France, in Caen, but has returned to Umbria for this show. It contains many of the elements for which Perugino is distinctive: the serene and idealised backdrop; the rolling eyeballs; the outlandish headdresses; the rich colour blocks provided by the protagonists’ robes; the acute portrait studies in some of the faces.

But Perugino often overstretched himself. “Pietro always had so much to do,” Vasari tells us, “that he frequently repeated himself, and his theory of art led him so far that all his figures have the same air.” It is true. There are undeniable similarities between his Holy Ring and the Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter, which he had painted for the Sistine Chapel in 1481–2. The Renaissance building in the centre, the enigmatic figures in the middle ground, the crowd at the front, the mountainous backdrop, the heavily stylised trees, the mixture of idealised, androgynous faces and contemporary portraits from life. It was the formula which had made him famous and he saw no reason to diverge from the tried and tested path. All of its elements can be found again in his Marriage of the Virgin.

Perugino, at his height, was very influential. The Marriage of the Virgin painted in the same year by Raphael is nothing short of a downright copy (though Raphael places his signature very prominently on the central building).

Raphael—Perugino’s greatest pupil— went on to far surpass his master, even though he predeceased him. Perugino, on the other hand, remained a painter of the 15^th century, and as the 16^th century wore on and revolutionary younger artists began to break the old moulds, he found that he could no longer get away with recycling past successes. Vasari tells a story about an altarpiece for the Annunziata in Florence, completed by Perugino after the death of Filippino Lippi. “But when this work was uncovered it was severely criticised by all the new artists, chiefly because Pietro had employed figures of which he had already made use. Even his friends declared but he had not taken pains, but had abandoned the good method of working, either from avarice or in order to save time. Pietro answered, ‘I have done the figures which you have formerly praised and which have given you great pleasure. If you are now dissatisfied and do not praise them, how can I help it?’” This was 1507, four years after Leonardo had painted his Mona Lisa and three since Michelangelo had sculpted his David. Perugino could not cling on forever to his spot at the top of Fortune’s wheel.

This show is clever, though, in that it ends on a high note. One skill that Perugino had that perhaps neither Michelangelo nor Raphael could ever equal was his gift at taking a keen and vivid likeness. In one of the last rooms of the exhibition are displayed a number of his portraits, many of them from the Uffizi. His own self-portrait is among them and there is something about the face that is instantly knowable. You feel you’ve seen this man. He might be the municipal carpark attendant or the man behind the fish counter in the supermarket. The waiter at the corner café. The man who came to fix the boiler. Back in Renaissance central Italy, he was the painter of softly serene altarpieces who didn’t believe in God.

Italy’s Best Maestro: Perugino and his Day, curated by Marco Pierini and Veruska Picchiarelli, runs until 11^th June at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia.

The simplicity of the title of this marvellous exhibition (open until 31 July at Palazzo Strozzi and the Bargello in Florence) prepares us for the presence of a series of masterpieces by the greatest Western sculptor of all time. On show in two Florence venues, there are loans from all over the world, especially from the V&A in London. Some of the works have just been restored while others are in the process of restoration. The decision was taken to exhibit some of the statues much higher than usual, following documentation about their original pedestals, or quite simply by looking at their stance.

The exhibition gives us a unique opportunity to see up close some bronzes Donatello carried out for the baptistery font in Siena and for the high altar of the Basilica of Sant’Antonio (the ‘Santo’) in Padua. For the hexagonal font in Siena, six gilded bronze panels were commissioned from different Tuscan masters: two from Ghiberti, two from Turino di Sano and his son, and two from Jacopo della Quercia. But in 1423 Jacopo asked Donatello to take on one of his scenes, the Banquet of Herod. This has just been restored in Florence and is exhibited here before being returned to Siena. In the dramatic scene with the Baptist’s severed head presented at the table, it is fascinating to see all Donatello’s innovative details and his use of extraordinary architectural perspective (derived from Brunelleschi). It at once overshadowed the panels by all the other sculptors.

Three works in bronze have been removed from their setting, especially for this exhibition, from Donatello’s famous high altar of the Santo in Padua. When in situ in the dark sanctuary they are very difficult to see. The Miracle of the Mule (one of the miracles performed by St Anthony, to whom the Santo basilica is dedicated) shows a mule owned by a non-believer showing the way to Christ by kneeling in front of the Host. This charming scene is in quite a different spirit to the life-size Crucifix(the technical difficulties overcome by Donatello in creating this work in bronze, unique for its size in the 15^th century, are described in the catalogue). Not content to show just the drama of Christ on the Cross, he gives a delicate flick to the loin cloth, as if caught in a gust of wind. The third work on show from the Padua altar is a relief of Christ as the Man of Sorrows.

Marble reliefs by Donatello using his famous ‘schiacciato’ technique are displayed throughout the exhibition, culminating in the last room at the Bargello, which celebrates the ‘Dudley’ Madonna (so named because it was acquired by the V&A from the Dudley family in 1927, although we know it was once in Cosimo I’s study in Florence). This tiny work, thought to date from c. 1440, was only recognized as being by Donatello’s hand around 1992. It had an extraordinary influence on generations of artists, including Leonardo (represented by a drawing from the British Museum) and Michelangelo (his famous relief, recently restored, from the Casa Buonarroti in Florence). It is not always easy to see a direct influence in all twelve works displayed here, but the very fine painting by Artemisia Gentileschi demonstrates an affinity with the marble panel at late as the 17^th century.

Much attention has been given to works in terracotta, a medium frequently used in Antiquity but which only came back into favour with sculptors in the first years of the 15^th century. The curators have exhibited a number of Madonna reliefs in terracotta, some of them painted, which they believe to be by Donatello’s own hand and which show his early interest in terracotta. They write amusingly that they are fully expecting scholars to contest these new attributions. The majestic Madonna with a playful Christ Child from the Museo Bardini in Florence, and always recognized as by the master, stands out above the others for its remarkable beauty.

Donatello clearly enjoyed experimenting with media other than bronze and terracotta: he even used pietro macigno in three of his works, one of which, his genial Marzocco lion with an almost human face, guards the ‘entrance’ to the exhibition in the Bargello. The name Marzocco, apparently used since the Middle Ages to denote the protector of the city, has mysterious origins. It was originally intended to sit on a column.

There is a room of Donatello’s bronze ‘spiritelli’, or what we now usually call putti. These winged nude children are also familiar from Antique sarcophagi. The most beautiful of these are the small-scale dancing figures – perhaps the one dancing on a scallop shell (from the Bargello) is the most memorable for its joyful grace. Some of these small bronzes used to be taken for Antique works.

Almost all Donatello’s most famous contemporaries are represented, even if only with one work: Luca della Robbia, Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Brunelleschi, Fra’ Angelico, Andrea del Castagno. But there are also works by the far less famous, including Nanni di Bartolo, who is here recognised as the author of the statue of a prophetin the Florence Duomo (which up to now has usually been attributed to Donatello). Bertoldo di Giovanni, one of Donatello’s most devoted pupils, is also re-evaluated: the lovely bronze bust of a young philosopher in the Bargello is now recognized as his work and not that of Donatello. A drawing from the Ashmolean of four soldiers (one of which is a direct copy from Donatello’s St George) is touching evidence that Raphael was in Florence at the age of 20 when he came to the city to study her works of art.

In the last room in Palazzo Strozzi is the astonishing sight of a huge horse’s head from Naples (much larger than life-size), until recently considered a Classical work but now attributed to Donatello and thought to have been made for an equestrian monument that was never carried out. It was owned by Lorenzo the Magnificent, who donated it to the court of Naples. The sculptor would have been proud to see it displayed beside a magnificent horse’s head of c. 340 BC, one of the least-known treasures in Florence’s archaeological museum but perhaps the most important ancient bronze in the city. Scholars believe it must have been seen in the Medici palace by both Verrocchio and Donatello before working on their equestrian statues in Venice and Padua.

The catalogue, although expensive, is full of interest. Once again, as in so many art historical contexts, it is interesting to note that Vasari is still taken as a fundamental source when describing works of art and their history.

This is an exhibition not to be missed.

By Alta Macadam. For descriptions of the places in Italy with works by Donatello see Blue Guide Florence, Blue Guide Venice & the Veneto, Blue Guide Central Italy. Alta Macadam is currently at work on a new edition of Blue Guide Venice.

There are just a few days left to catch this exhibition in Palazzo Pitti (Forged in Fire. Bronze sculpture in Florence under the last Medici; on until 12^th January 2020), which illustrates the bronze sculpture made for the Medici court in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, some of the most important work in this medium in Europe at the time. For long this period in Florence (beginning with the reign of Cosimo II) was equated with decadence and it has only been since the 1960s that scholars have begun to re-evaluate the role of the Medici grand-dukes in promoting excellence in art and their activity as collectors, and the exhibition has been an occasion to study in depth the sculptors at work in this Baroque period. Accompanied by a superb scholarly catalogue, complete with full biographies of each artist, it underlines the standing of artists such as Giovanni Battista Foggini, Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi and Giuseppe Piamontini, all three of whom produced large, sometimes life-size bronzes as well as the much more familiar small bronzes (masters of which including Antonio and Giovanni Francesco Susini and Pietro Tacca are well represented in the exhibition). The curators have even been able to retrieve eleven of the twelve celebrated bronze groups of religious subjects made between 1722 and 1725, by many of the artists present in the exhibition, for Anna Maria Luisa, the Electress Palatine, and which she kept in her rooms in Palazzo Pitti (these later found their way to museums as far afield as Madrid, Detroit, Berlin, Birmingham and St Petersburg). Soldani-Benzi’s patron was the Prince of Liechtenstein and works from the ‘Princely Collections, Vaduz-Vienna’ are also present in the exhibition—seen in Florence for the first time. The sculptures on show are mostly in patinated bronze, which sometimes takes on a greenish shiny tone, or reddish tint, rather than the more familiar ink black of Renaissance bronzes.

Apart from the numerous sculptures, a collection of drawings by Soldani-Benzi (only acquired by the Uffizi in 2017) is exhibited opposite a pair of very fine green porphyry vases with gilt bronze decoration by the same artist (and preserved in Palazzo Pitti).

The works by the lesser-known Piamontini include very impressive large-scale bronzes (lent from a Ministry in Rome) closely inspired by ancient marbles, some of which could be described as reproductions of Classical works in a different medium.

In 1687 Foggini, after a spell in Rome, was appointed court sculptor to the grand-dukes and was also responsible for producing furniture and other fine objects, some in pietre dure. His versatility as a sculptor is well illustrated in this exhibition and he emerges as the central artist of his time in Florence. For more details of the exhibition, see here.

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Florence.