Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio

Janet Cox-Rearick

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520375994
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Arte europea

Do the sacred decorations of a Florentine Renaissance chapel—saints, symbols, and scriptural stories—hold personal and political meanings? Cox-Rearick's ground-breaking book explores the message hidden in the frescoes and altar panels of the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, painted in the early 1540s by Agnolo Bronzino for the Spanish-born wife of Duke Cosimo I de Medici. Bronzino, then the chief painter to the Medici court, was largely responsible for the invention in Florence of the highly self-conscious, elegant Maniera style. Cox-Rearick interweaves her account of the Medici biography with an examination of Bronzino's commission in the broader context of his oeuvre.

Cox-Rearick reveals the Chapel of Eleonora as an intimately devised decorative program that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule. Detailed color photographs of the newly restored art splendidly document this early tour de force of a major artist whose works are still relatively unexamined.


Do the sacred decorations of a Florentine Renaissance chapel—saints, symbols, and scriptural stories—hold personal and political meanings? Cox-Rearick's ground-breaking book explores the message hidden in the frescoes and altar panels of the Chapel of Ele

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 10
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• I THE PATRON AND HER CHAPEL
• CHAPTER ONE ELEONORA DI TOLEDO, DUCHESS OF FLORENCE
• CHAPTER TWO THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE FRESCOES
• CHAPTER THREE THE ALTARPIECE AND THE COMPLETION OF THE DECORATION
• II BRONZINO’S PAINTINGS IN THE CHAPEL
• CHAPTER FOUR THE FRESCOES
• CHAPTER FIVE THE ALTARPIECES
• III DEVOTIONAL IMAGERY IN THE CHAPEL
• CHAPTER SIX THE ALTAR WALL
• CHAPTER SEVEN THE STORIES OF MOSES
• CHAPTER EIGHT THE SAINTS OF THE VAULT
• IV THE MEDICEAN MEANING OF THE CHAPEL DECORATION
• CHAPTER NINE HISTORY, MYTH, AND PROPAGANDA IN COSIMO DE’ MEDICI’S EARLY ART
• CHAPTER TEN IMAGERY OF DYNASTY AND RULE
• CHAPTER ELEVEN COSIMO DE’ MEDICI AS AN OLD TESTAMENT HERO
• CHAPTER TWELVE COSIMO DE’ MEDICI, A NEW MOSES
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE PROGRAMME OF THE CHAPEL
• APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• NOTES
• SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX OF DOCUMENTS CITED
• <INDEX>GENERAL INDEX