Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I - Hardcover

Langdon, Gabrielle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802038255 ISBN 13: 9780802038258

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2006

Synopsis

The ducal court of Cosimo I de' Medici in sixteenth-century Florence was one of absolutist, rule-bound order. Portraiture especially served the dynastic pretensions of the absolutist ruler, Duke Cosimo and his consort, Eleonora di Toledo, and was part of a Herculean programme of propaganda to establish legitimacy and prestige for the new sixteenth-century Florentine court.

In this engaging and original study, Gabrielle Langdon analyses selected portraits of women by Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, Alessandro Allori, and other masters. She defines their function as works of art, as dynastic declarations, and as encoded documents of court culture and propaganda, illuminating Cosimo's conscious fashioning of his court portraiture in imitation of the great courts of Europe. Langdon explores the use of portraiture as a vehicle to express Medici political policy, such as with Cosimo's Hapsburg and Papal alliances in his bid to be made Grand Duke with hegemony over rival Italian princes.

Stories from archives, letters, diaries, chronicles, and secret ambassadorial briefs, open up a world of fascinating, personalities, personal triumphs, human frailty, rumour, intrigue, and appalling tragedies. Lavishly illustrated, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I is an indispensable work for anyone with a passion for Italian renaissance history, art, and court culture.

About this title

From the Back Cover

'Briefly put,Medici Womenis a thorough study of portraits of Medici women at the court of Duke Cosimo I. Langdon not only brings to light a plethora of information about these women (and their portraits), but also rediscovers long-lost portraits and convincingly identifies a number of sitters who were previously misidentified or not identified at all. For these reasons alone, the book makes an important contribution to scholarship, and greatly advances our understanding of these women's role in the dynastic strategies of the Medici family.'

-- Konrad Eisenbichler, Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, University of Toronto

About the Author

Gabrielle Langdon is an indepedent scholar and former curator who has taught Renaissance art history in Europe, the United States, and Canada.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0802038255
• ISBN 13: 9780802038258
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480