Agnolo di Cosimo, called Bronzino

August Grahl (L.1199)

Laid down. The lower section of the sheet torn irregularly and made up and small tiny losses on the left and right at the top two corners. Some light staining at the top corner and at the left margin and more light beige-pink staining around the neck and mouth and nose. The silvery chalk still strong.
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This previously unknown study is an important addition to the quite small corpus of surviving drawings by Bronzino.  He was a very influential painter, who at the height of his career enjoyed fame both in Florence, where he spent almost all his life, and beyond.  He was the court artist of the powerful Cosimo de'Medici from 1539, and often his works were used as diplomatic gifts to seal relations between the Medici and other European courts. This meticulously drawn head, very characteristic of his style, resembles similar examples which can be found in his works from the mid 1540s to the beginning of the 1550s, a dating recently suggested by scholars for the present study as well.  Although an exact connection cannot be found, it is worth mentioning the very close similarity to the head of the female allegorical figure, seen in profile, to the extreme upper right in Bronzino's modello, circa 1545-6, for Justice Liberating Innocence,¹ the second tapestry woven from his designs in the Arazzeria Medicea.  Both are gazing at the same angle and it is entirely plausible that this study is a first idea which was then elaborated in the modello.  Another association, but a less convincing one, can be made with the head of an old woman, looking up, near the decorative border to the left, below the main scene, in another of Bronzino's tapestries, Joseph Receiving Benjamin, which is documented as being finished in September 1553.²  In the tapestry the head of the old woman appears in reverse to the present drawing. 

In any case, this study seems to date from the period of Bronzino's intense activity as a tapestry designer, between 1545 and 1553, and probably to be related to his work in that medium.  He took enormous care in the execution of the preparatory drawings for the tapestries, and must have made many studies in preparation for his modelli, of which eleven have survived.  The discovery of the present lot adds to an understanding of his working method for these important projects and of his dedication to the careful preparation of the compositions.  In a comment in his Vita of Giovanni Antonio Lappoli, Vasari mentioned Bronzino's qualities as a draughtsman while enumerating his many virtues as a painter: '...Agnolo chiamato il Bronzino era molto tirato innanzi da Iacopo, per una certa amorevole sommessione, bontà, e diligente fatica, che aveva nell'imitare le cose del maestro; senza che disegnava benissimo, e si portava ne' colori di maniera, che diede speranza di dovere a quell'eccellenza e perfezione venire, che in lui si è veduta e vede ne' tempi nostri'. ³  

1. Ambrosiana, Milan, inv. no. F 261 inf. no. 65 , fol. 61;
The Drawings of Bronzino, exhib. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,  2010, p. 150-53, no. 34, reproduced p. 151

2. For an image of the whole tapestry, see ibid., p. 274, pl. 51; a detail, p.184, reproduced fig. 44-1

3.  G. Vasari, Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori, scritte da M. Giorgio Vasari, ed. G. Milanesi, Florence, 1881, vol. VI, pp. 6-7