_Angelo Bronzino_ (Florentine: 1502-1572).
Angelo di Cosimo, called Il Bronzino, was born in a suburb
of Florence, of poor parents; he became a popular artist,
"nor have we any one in our day," says Vasari, "who is more
ingenious, varied, fanciful, and spirited in the jesting kind
of verse." He was also good at a more serious kind of verse;
amongst other things he wrote sonnets on Benvenuto Cellini's
"Perseus," of which Cellini says, "they spoke so generously
of my performance, in that fine style of his which is most
exquisite, that this alone repaid me somewhat for the pain
of my long troubles." Vasari was a great friend of his, and
speaks in the warmest terms of his generosity and kindness. He
was the favourite pupil of Pontormo, some of whose works, left
unfinished, he completed. His portraits, if sometimes hard and
cold, are often excellent, and form a gallery of great interest
to the historian of Florence. In his frescoes and allegories,
he belongs to the period of decline. His "Descent of Christ
into Hell," in the Uffizi, is among the most celebrated of
his works. "Want of thought and feeling, combined with the
presumptuous treatment of colossal and imaginative subjects,
renders his compositions inexpressibly chilling" (_Symonds_,
iii. 365). Ruskin cites him as an instance of the "base
grotesque of men who, having no true imagination, are apt,
more than others, to try by startling realism to enforce the
monstrosity that has no terror in itself" (_Modern Painters_,
vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. viii. § 8).
This charming portrait was formerly attributed to Pontormo. Sir Edward
Poynter, following Frizzoni, has transferred it to Bronzino. (See _Arte
Italiana del Rinascimento_, p. 267.)