Portrait de Bartolomeo Panciatichi

Around 1540 Bronzino was the portraitist of the Medici court in Florence, and his sitters tend to look sealed inside their own composure. This man is Bartolomeo Panciatichi, from a rich merchant family, a diplomat trusted by Duke Cosimo de' Medici. But there is a private tension behind the cool surface. As a young man Panciatichi had spent time in France and picked up the new Protestant ideas spreading across Europe, and in Medici Florence, closely tied to the Catholic Church, that was dangerous. He would later be forced to recant. Bronzino gives you almost nothing of that openly. The face is long and pale, the gaze sharp, the red beard painted strand by strand into two neat points. He wears a black overgarment over red satin and holds a book and a glove. The only warmth in the whole austere image is a small black puppy that pokes its head in at the lower right.