Agnolo Tori or Angelo Bronzino, better known as Il Bronzino, was an Italian painter and a Pontormo’s disciple. He was influenced by Michelangelo. He worked as the chamber painter of Cosimo I de’ Medici, who was the first Grand Duke of Tuscany and one of the more representative Mannierism’s portraitists.
It is not known so much about his childhood, but it is believed that he was born into a very humble family. His first teacher was the Florentine painter Raffaellino del Garbo. In 1515, he was admitted in the studio of Jacopo Carucci, better known as Pontormo, who made him his adoptive son, becoming a key man in the artistic career of Il Bronzino.
The main best of his paintings are portraits of great literati and of members of the Medici family or their closest friends, as for example, Leonor de Toledo, who was the daughter of the viceroy of Naples and who was connected with a Medici.
He realized for the Medici family the decorations in the Old Palace (chapel of Leonor of Toledo, 1555-1564), and several portraits (Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo and his son, Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Portrait of Don García de’ Medici, El Prado). He also painted paintings of mythological, allegorical and religious subject.
