Medici Portraits

Aside from the well-known and iconic Bronzino young men from the Frick and the Met and Eleonora and son from the Uffizi, the exhibition of Medici portraits at the Met featured a lot of pedestrian, undistinguished family portraits from a distinctly unfavored era of Art History: Mannerism. Collecting them together brought out what a severe age it was, at least in Medici Florence. Military attire was de rigeur, power and seriousness of purpose were valued, and lighthearted whimsy was nowhere to be seen. We learned that Cosimo was an autocratic tyrant, the opposite of his 15th-century ancestor Lorenzo, under whom the arts flourished. The 16th-century artists here–Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Sebastiano del Piombo, Francesco Salviati in addition to Bronzino–seemed to operate in the same straitjacket. Big bodies, small heads near canvas top, unsmiling lips and generally uninteresting backgrounds. The pleasant aspect and light of intelligence that make Renaissance portraiture so captivating were all but banished. Compared to portraits by Raphael, Titian, Botticelli, Domenico de Ghirlandaio, Antonello da Messina, even Santo di Tito, the Medici portraits are heavy and bland. Artists working in Venice and Rome even at the same time had a lighter touch and, seemingly, more fun.
As art goes, there wasn’t much here that excited, with one exception. The final gallery was devoted to contrasting Bronzino with Salviati, in one case presenting a work which scholars had variously attributed to the two. In general, Salviati came across as the much weaker, to the extent that his absence from traditional Art History seemed warranted. But one portrait, of Bindo Altoviti, woke me from my torpor. Maybe it was its glow from being painted on marble. Or the unusual black background, from which the glowing face and hands emerge. Or the Columbia blue rosettes on the background curtain. His expression is more thoughtful than severe. His body is again a Mannerist mountain, but with his jacket the same black as the background, its effect is softened. The Met label called this a “masterpiece,” and I would agree. Too bad there weren’t more of them in the show.