The Holy Family

For nearly 50 years this panel hung in Washington under another man's name. It was still catalogued as a Pontormo into the 1980s, and the mistake was an honest one. Bronzino was Pontormo's pupil and his near-constant assistant, and around 1527, when this was painted, the two worked so closely that their hands are hard to separate. That was the year imperial troops sacked Rome and Florence threw the Medici out again. Bronzino was in his mid-20s and still years away from the court portraits that made his name, and the cool enamelled surface he became known for is only beginning here. The panel reached Washington through Samuel Kress, who made a fortune in five-and-ten-cent stores and bought Italian paintings by the hundred. It entered the National Gallery in 1939 with Pontormo's name on it.