Retrato de Giovanni de' Medici quando criança

Bronzino was court painter to Cosimo the First de' Medici, and most of his portraits are cool, guarded, almost frozen. This one is different. It shows Cosimo's small son Giovanni, not yet two years old, caught mid-laugh in a heavy dress of gold-embroidered red, one dimpled hand closed around a goldfinch. In the 1540s the Medici were rebuilding themselves as hereditary dukes of Florence, and a happy, healthy heir was part of the message. The goldfinch carried its own meaning, a bird long linked in painting to the Passion of Christ, so even this cheerful baby portrait holds a thread of something graver. Giovanni was groomed for the Church and made a cardinal as a teenager. He died of malaria at 19, before he could take up the role.