Bronzino (1503-1572)
Ritratto di donna anziana con libro, Maria Salviati? (Portrait of an Elderly Lady with a book, Maria Salviati?)
c.1540
Oil on wood panel, 127 x 100 cm
Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Agnolo Bronzino executed this stoic portrait around the time he became court painter to the powerful Medici family, rulers of his native Florence. The sitter’s identity remains unknown; she has sometimes been identified as Maria Salviati, mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici. Wearing a widow’s mourning dress, she holds a prayer book that attests to her piety. The legible text—Deus misereatur—is the opening of Psalm 67 (“God be merciful unto us, and bless us”). Bronzino’s elegant style earned him the admiration of the biographer Giorgio Vasari, who called him “a Florentine painter truly most rare and worthy of all praise.” (FAMSF)
See also:
• Salviati, Maria (1499-1543)