Portrait of Francesco I de' Medici as a Child

In 1551 the Medici were busy turning a family into a dynasty. Cosimo I ruled Florence and wanted everyone to see that his line would continue, and Bronzino, his court painter, was the man who put that message on panel. Here the message is a boy of ten, Francesco, the eldest son and the heir. Bronzino paints him as he painted the grown Medici, with a cool, polished, almost enamelled finish that makes the child look composed and already a little remote. The picture could not foresee the man he became. Francesco did inherit and ruled Tuscany as its second grand duke, yet he cared far more for his private laboratory and his experiments with alchemy and glass than for the business of governing. He and his second wife died within a day of each other in 1587, long blamed on poison, though modern study points to malaria. Bronzino worked here in tempera on panel, and that exacting old technique gives the boy's face its hard, jewel-like calm.