Il BRONZINO
Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici in armor - Toledo (USA)
This is an extraordinary portrait. Let's look at the details.
The shoulder, the elbow hinge. He succeeds in portraying the blurriness of the
engraving under the elbow, due to the metal's wear and, most of all, in
contrast, the completely feminine hand, which shows or betrays Cosimo's true
nature, which included an unbelievable temper, unbelievable will power and
absolutism and, from time to time, monstrous cowardice and hypocrisy,
animal-like in nature.
Il Bronzino betrayed the model's secret nature, using only the hand resting on steel.
Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo - Detroit (USA).
She was Spanish. She was part of the House of Alba, and her father was the Marquis of Alvarez, Viceroy of Naples for the Spanish Royal House. She was a Neapolitan Spaniard. It was the Medicis' need to possess Naples that raised their interest in Eleanor. This young woman, fragile and reserved, was always surrounded by her chaperons and her cockatoos; this system which would still exist in Velasquez' time, this completely exotic side of the Spanish women of that era, but who, in Florence, would have to learn the rigors of etiquette and live at Cosimo's side; we will never know whether she loved or hated him. She bore him ten children.
This was painted at the very beginning of her marriage. One of her first sons, Giovanni, is at her side. This is the most extraordinary portrait of all, the best known, the most famous and the most beautiful. The gown is astonishing.
André Chastel said: "This gown has the sumptuousness of mortuary finery". A woman who was afflicted with moroseness and then later with a total depression, bordering on schizophrenia. Here is a portrait of Eleanor of Toledo, several years later.
She constantly imagined herself dead and wanted to be painted as a corpse in her coffin. She died of a fever, as did most of the Medicis, before reaching the age of forty.
The extraordinary thing is that in 1982, twenty years after Chastel's statement, Florence opened the Medici tombs and was stupefied to discover that Eleanor of Toledo had been buried in that same dress. Her embalmed body and her gown with the chain around her waist were found in a fabulous state of preservation.
The incredible pearl necklace was not there. These are the famous Medici pearls which were later worn by all those women whose lives ended badly, including Marie-Antoinette. The pearls are cursed...
