Galleria Borghese logo
Search results for
X
No results :(

Hints for your search:

  • Search engine results update instantly as soon as you change your search key.
  • If you have entered more than one word, try to simplify the search by writing only one, later you can add other words to filter the results.
  • Omit words with less than 3 characters, as well as common words like "the", "of", "from", as they will not be included in the search.
  • You don't need to enter accents or capitalization.
  • The search for words, even if partially written, will also include the different variants existing in the database.
  • If your search yields no results, try typing just the first few characters of a word to see if it exists in the database.

Saint John the Baptist

Agnolo di Cosimo called Bronzino

(Florence 1503 - 1572)

This painting has formed part of the collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese since at least 1610, the year that a payment was made for its frame. Signed in the lower left-hand corner, the work is believed to be a portrait of Giovanni de’ Medici in the guise of John the Baptist; it was commissioned to celebrate the most important stages of his career, namely his nomination as cardinal in 1560 and as archbishop of Pisa the following year.


Object details

Inventory
444
Location
Date
c. 1560
Classification
Period
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
120 x 92 cm
Frame

18th-century frame with frieze with pierced acanthus leaf motifs, 140.5 x 118 x 7.5 cm

Provenance

Collection of Scipione Borghese, documented in 1610 (payment for frame); Inventory 1693, room VII, no. 44; Inventory 1700 room XI, no. 9; Inventory 1790, room X, no. 36; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 20, no. 12. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.

Exhibitions
  • 1940 Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi
  • 2010-2011 Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi
  • 2021 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Conservation and Diagnostic
  • 1936 Carlo Matteucci 1992 Istituto Centrale del Restauro (pest control) 2001 INOA (diagnostics) 2001 Paola Mastropasqua

Commentary

The painting bears the inscription ‘Bro(n)zino Fiore(ntino)’ on the stone in the lower left-hand corner: the work in fact appears with this attribution in the Borghese inventories. The panel has formed part of the Collection since at least 1610, the year that a payment of six scudi was made to ‘Anibale Coradino [...] for the frame for the St John the Baptist by Bronzino’ (document cited in Della Pergola 1959, p. 216, n. 54). It is likely that Cardinal Scipione came into possession of the painting at a slightly earlier date, yet the details of its provenance are not known.

The work appears in the 1693 inventory as ‘a painting on panel of imperial-canvas dimensions, with St John in the desert, no. 470, gilded frame, by Bronzino fiorentino’. It is likewise listed in the inventories of 1700 and 1790 and again in the 1833 Inventario Fidecommissario, each time with an attribution to the Tuscan painter.

Critics have attempted to reconstruct the context of the work’s execution. Janet Cox-Rearick (1987, p. 159; see also Brock 2002, p. 175) convincingly proposed that the painting is a portrait of Giovanni de’ Medici, son of Cosimo I, in the guise of the saint after whom he was named. Destined for a career in the Church from boyhood, Giovanni was made cardinal in 1560 and archbishop of Pisa the following year. The portrait was presumably commissioned to Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo) in that period to celebrate those nominations, while at the same time providing the occasion to announce – through a representation of Florence’s patron saint – the new territorial stability under Cosimo’s rule in the wake of the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559). At the time of his nominations, Giovanni was between 16 and 17 years old, which seems to correspond to the age of the young man in the portrait.

This reconstruction contradicts the hypothesis previously put forth by Luisa Becherucci (1944, p. 49) that our painting is ‘Infant Saint John the Baptist’ cited in the Medicean cloakroom in 1553. In that year Giovanni was only 10 years old, too young to match the appearance of the portrayed figure; and in any case the description of the subject does not fit this representation of the saint, who although still young is certainly no longer a child.

The saint is depicted with his typical attributes, including the animal skin on his shoulder, the cross made of reeds and the baptism bowl in his right hand, which he has just filled at a spring shown on the edge of the composition. The scroll with the words ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ – another typical element of the saint’s traditional iconography – is just visible in the lower portion of the work: its truncated appearance is probably the result of a reduction of the panel at an unknown date. The shaded area behind John is characterised by a tangle of vegetation on walls of rock: while some critics have defined this motif as an allusion to the temptations that tormented the hermit in the desert (Brock, 2002; Tazartes 2003, p. 188), in the view of Angelo Maria Monaco (2010, p. 308) such an intent would conflict with the painter’s usual approach of representing iconography in straightforward, easily readable terms.

In spite of the fact that the saint’s typical attributes are clearly visible, certain features of the figure – his statue-like body, dense curls and reddish lips – seem intended to distance the image from its mystical dimension in order to place it in a more profane setting (Tazartes, 2003; Monaco, 2010).

Critics (McComb 1928, p. 79; Becherucci, 1944; Emiliani 1960, plate 70; Cecchi 1996, p. 58; Baccheschi 1973, p. 99) have frequently commented on John’s pose, which although elegant seems somewhat forced. Some scholars have interpreted this device as a playful way of juxtaposing the arts and of highlighting the plasticity of forms. While Becherucci (1944) read the saint’s depiction as betraying Michelangelo’s influence, Monaco (2010) pointed out that the motif is not a typical one for Bronzino. Faced with the task of portraying a contemporary figure, Bronzino chose to construct an image midway between idealisation and realistic representation, one which tends toward the natural while correcting incidental elements (Monaco, 2010; Falciani 2015, pp. 26-29; Fenech Kroke 2021, p. 234). In this context, the reference to the Belvedere Torso is significant, which is evoked by the figure’s nearly naked body, covered only by a light blue garment.

With regard to the chronology of the work, in the past scholars dated it to the 1550s (Emiliani 1960; and earlier by McComb 1928), noting similarities with the frescoes in the Cappella di Eleonora di Toledo in Palazzo Vecchio, which Bronzino painted in the first half of that decade; yet in the wake of the later interpretation that the subject represents Giovanni de’ Medici, the execution of the panel was post dated.  

Pier Ludovico Puddu




Bibliography
  • P. Rossini, II Mercurio Errante. Delle Grandezze di Roma, tanto antiche, che moderne; cioè de’ Palazzi, Ville, Giardini, & altre rarità della medesima, Roma 1693, p. 42.
  • F.W.B von Ramdohr, Ueber Malherei und Bildhauerarbeit in Rom für Liebhaber des Schönen in der Kunst, Leipzig 1787, I, p. 305.
  • M. Vasi, Itinéraire Instructif de Rome [1786], Roma 1792, p. 365.
  • E. Platner, Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, III, Stuttgart-Tübingen 1842, p. 288.
  • G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 255.
  • A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 207.
  • B. Berenson, Florentine Painters of the Renaissance, 3a ed., 1909, p. 123.
  • F. Goldschmidt, Pontormo, Rosso e Bronzino. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der Raumdarstellung mit einem Jndex ihrer Figurenkompositionen, Leipzig 1911, p. 55.
  • H. Schulze, Die Werke Angelo Bronzino, Strassburg 1911, p. XXVIII.
  • H. Voss, Die Molerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz, Berlin 1920, I, p. 212.
  • R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 221.
  • A. Mc Comb, Angelo Bronzino. His Life and Works, Cambridge 1928, p. 79.
  • A. Venturi, Storia dell’Arte Italiana, IX, Roma 1933, p. 73.
  • B. Berenson, Pitture Italiane del Rinascimento (tr. ita. E. Cecchi), Milano 1936, p. 100.
  • Mostra del ‘500 toscano. La prima retrospettiva a Palazzo Strozzi, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, 1940), Firenze 1940, p. 46.
  • L. Becherucci, Manieristi toscani, Bergamo 1944, p. 49.
  • A. De Rinaldis, Catalogo della Galleria Borghese, Roma 1948, p. 53.
  • P. Della Pergola, Itinerario della Galleria Borghese, Roma 1951, p. 31.
  • L. Ferrara, Galleria Borghese, Novara 1956, p. 39.
  • H. Wagner, Michelangelo da Caravaggio, Bern 1958, pp. 84, 205, nota 369.
  • P. Della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, p. 20, n. 18.
  • A. Emiliani, Il Bronzino, Busto Arsizio 1960, tav. 70.
  • E. Baccheschi, Il Bronzino, Milano 1973, p. 99, n. 85.
  • C. McCorquodale, Bronzino, London 1981, p. 123.
  • J. Cox-Rearick, A “St Sebastian” by Bronzino, in “The Burlington Magazine”, CXXIX, 1987, p. 159.
  • A. Cecchi, Agnolo Bronzino, Firenze 1996, p. 58.
  • J. Cox-Rearick, Bronzino, Agnolo, in The Dictionary of Art, a cura di J. Turner, IV, London 1996, p. 858.
  • C. Stefani in P. Moreno, C. Stefani, Galleria Borghese, Milano 2000, p. 240, n. 7.
  • M. Brock, Bronzino, Paris 2002, pp. 175-177.
  • M. Tazartes, Bronzino, Ginevra-Milano 2003, pp. 188-189.
  • K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 144.
  • A.M. Monaco, scheda in Bronzino. Pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici, catalogo della mostra (Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, 2010-2011), a cura di C. Falciani, A. Natali, Firenze 2010, pp. 308-309, n. VI.7.
  • C. Falciani, Typologies de l’art du portrait florentin au XVIe siècle, in Florence. Portraits à la cour des Medicis, catalogo della mostra (Parigi, Musée Jacquemart-André, 2015-2016), a cura di C. Falciani, A. Natali, Bruxelles 2015, pp. 26-29.
  • C. Falciani, Power and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Florentine Portraiture, in The Medici. Portraits and Politics, 1512-1570, catalogo della mostra (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021), a cura di K. Christiansen, C. Falciani, New Haven-London 2021, p. 36.
  • A. Fenech Kroke, scheda in The Medici. Portraits and Politics, 1512-1570, catalogo della mostra (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021), a cura di K. Christiansen, C. Falciani, New Haven-London 2021, p. 234, n. 67.