Studies on the early career of Alessandro Allori.

Abstract

The youth and early artistic activity of Alessandro Allori (1535-1607), who became the premier Florentine painter of the last four decades of the sixteenth century, were almost completely defined by his relationship with the superb Mannerist painter, his master and surrogate father, Agnolo Bronzino. The newly-discovered documents presented in this study shed light on a number of issues, as well as correcting misconceptions about Allori's artistic development. Bronzino had been acquainted with the Allori Family over ten years before, following the death of Aless and ro's father in c. 1540, he assumed legal responsibility for it. Aless and ro subsequently repaid Bronzino's kindness by refashioning his modest tomb in S. Cristoforo into an impressive monument, replete with a family coat-of-arms, newly created to embody in pictorial terms Bronzino's relationship to the Allori. In 1554 Alessandro first went to Rome, and although he was profoundly influenced by Michelangelo's late works, he remained artistically involved with Bronzino, often returning to Bronzino's bottega. In 1560 Alessandro began his first major independent commission, the altarpiece and frescoes for the Montauto family chapel in the SS. Annunziata at Florence. The history of this family and the chapel commission are clarified for the first time through documents such as the deed for the chapel and an autograph family chronicle. Also in 1560 Bronzino and Allori collaborated on the Cavalcanti family chapel in S. Spirito (1560-1562). Through an analysis of the newly-discovered account for the chapel, as well as the testament of the chapel's founder and a variety of other documents, one discovers the carefully choreographed interaction among the various components of the chapel, and Allori's foray into architecture. Finally, Allori's other early commission, an altarpiece for a lay confraternity, the Compagnia del Gesu, is examined. Although scholars date this painting 1560, documents incontrovertibly establish that it was begun no earlier than 1564 and installed in 1571. Furthermore, Allori's membership in the same confraternity seems to have provided Allori's most effective patronage network.