The Deposition of Christ

This is Bronzino's second version of the altarpiece for the private chapel of Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Duke Cosimo de' Medici, in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. He painted it in 1553, eight years after the first had been sent abroad as a diplomatic gift. When that first version stood on this altar, it had two tall panels beside it, Saint John the Baptist, the patron of Florence, and Saint Cosmas, the name saint of Cosimo himself. Those saints never came back. By 1553 they had been put away in storage, and Eleonora had asked for an Annunciation to stand on either side instead. The angel and the Virgin that flank the altar today were only finished after the duchess died in 1562. One of the missing saints, the John the Baptist, resurfaced in 1951 and now hangs in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.