Bronzino's chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio (review)

162 Reviews Catholic predecessors and study virtually all the spiritual interests of then verse with a subdety that they could seldom equal (p. 127). Cousins fails in his attempt to enhance the reputations of the distinctively and deservedly minor figures. For the most part, however, he does assess them effectively as historically curious figures who provided essential contexts for a fuller study of then more interesting and more talented contemporaries: Southwell and Crashaw. His prose style is clear, lucid, devoid of cant and leaden critical jargon. His material is generally well-organized and accessible. Overall, I found this a useful and interesting work, though one that might perhaps have been bettertitled,'Catholic poetics' in the English Renaissance. William P. Shaw Department of English Le Moyne College Cox-Rearick, Janet, Bronzino's chapel ofEleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio (California studies in the history of art, XXLX), Berkeley/Los Angeles/ Oxford, University of California Press, 1993; cloth; pp. xxx, 445; 187 illustrations; R.R.P. US$75.00. The chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio has long been recognized as pivotal to the development of mannerism. While at work on it during the early 1540s, Bronzino moved decisively from the influence of his early master, Pontonno, to the creation of a personal style of extreme grace and refinement which we now term the Florentine 'high maniera'. This mature style was, in part, a product of patronage. The chapel was thefirstmajor commission for the newly acquired ducal residence by an artist who was then not much practised in public commissions but who rapidly became the archexponent of the Florentine courdy style. His portraits of the duke and duchess and abstruse, erotic allegories captured the essence of Medicean courtly culture with an unmatched vividness and sophistication. Janet Cox-Rearick is ideally placed to uncover the often complex interrelationships between art and culture which are embedded in works such as these. Her background of over twenty years study of the chapel and of Medicean iconography enables her to make a number of significant contributions not only to the literature on the chapel but also to our understanding of Florentine mannerist art and patronage. The discussion of the complicated history of the construction of the chapel and the chronology Reviews 163 of thefrescoes,for example, is a model of its kind. The conclusions drawn from a close reading of the documents are constantly tested against the evidence of the chapel's fabric itself. Thisresultsin a more precise set of dates for the chapel than has hitherto been attained and a detailed picture of just how organic the construction of such spaces could be. The assessment of the professional concerns motivating Bronzino is equally to be commended. Cox-Rearick is sensitive to the factors of ambition,rivalry,and the cultivation of personal and professional contacts which are often crucial to the creation of art but which are frequendy omitted from studies of the period. Of particular interest is her reading of the importance of an emerging official style which favoured the idealising classicism of Bronzino and the sculptor Bandinelli over the alternatives presented by artists such as Salviati or Cellini, whose ultimate failure to win favour with the Medici could also have been cited in this context. The discussion of Bandinelli's involvement in the commission forms one of the principle contributions of the book. Building on an article of 1989, CoxRearick presents documents which establish that Bandinelli supplied Bronzino with the modello for the chapel's altarpiece and expands on this initially puzzling piece of information by surveying a range of sources attesting to his pre-eminence in Medicean patronage of painting as well as of sculpture. Bandinelli was thus responsible for the composition of one of the key paintings of the Florentine maniera H e is more than the second-rate foil to Michelangelo and Celhni which he has frequendy been presented as, and his career stands in need of further reassessment. It is perhaps paradoxical that one of the most problematic aspects of the book derives from what is, in otherrespects,one of its principle strengths. By drawing on the concerns of her earlier Dynasty and destiny in Medici art, Cox-Rearick is...