Cristofano Allori Detto Il Bronzino Biography
Cristofano Allori (Florence, 17 October 1577 – Florence, 1 April 1621) was an Italian painter, son of Alessandro Allori. Allori was born in Florence to Maria and the painter Alessandro di Cristofano Allori, pupil and pupil of the well-known Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino, a name that he had inherited from the master and which he would also pass on to his son. Alessandro, who after the death of Bronzino (1572) and Vasari (1574) could boast of being among the first painters of Florence and of enjoying great consideration at court, took him into his workshop very early, so much so that already in 1590 Cristofano he signed his first canvas, an immature Portrait of Count Ugo of Tuscany. In the workshop he assimilated his father's drawing, dedicated himself to copying the canvases of Raphael and Fra Bartolomeo, studying the works of Bronzino and Ligozzi, working on portraits: that of Francesco and Caterina de' Medici dates back to 1596. Cristofano, who looked following the examples of Cigoli and Santi di Tito, over the years and with the change in taste which now required a softer line and colour, he showed himself dissatisfied with the Michelangelesque manner and the cold colors of his father, who took his criticisms badly. which seemed to discredit him; for his part, Cristofano "used to reply to those who spoke to him that his father was a heretic in the art of painting", so that, one day in 1600, he went to paint in the workshop of Gregorio Pagani (1558-1605), exponent of the Florentine school of late mannerism, which sought to combine the rich color of the Venetians with the attention to design typical of the Florentines. The Blessed Manetto who heals a mute cripple is the first fruit of his activity independent of his father - depicted, according to Baldinucci, in the figure of Manetto, "white-haired old man with a small beard" - and, although it came from Pagani's workshop, "the painting offers only tenuous traces of Gregorio's style: the essential parts, such as the compositional progression and the dense pictorial material imbued with light, demonstrate the decisive and traditionally recognized role that Cigoli had in this first maturation of Cristofano" without forgetting the «concentrated severity» of the faces, typical of Passignano. His works stand out for their close adherence to nature and for the delicacy and technical perfection of their execution. His technical ability is demonstrated by the fact that some copies of Correggio's paintings appear to have been made by Correggio himself. His extreme fussiness limited the number of his works. Several works are exhibited in Florence. His masterpiece is probably Judith with the Head of Holofernes. It exists in three versions: one in Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the second in the Queen's Gallery in London and the third in a private collection in Arenzano in the province of Genoa. The model for Judith was her lover, the beautiful Mazzafirra, who is also represented in the Magdalene, and the head of Holofernes is generally considered a self-portrait.
