Don Giovanni de’Medici

Artist Agnolo Bronzino (Italian, 1503-1572)

Place of OriginItaly, Florence

Dateabout 1551

DimensionsPainting: 18 1/8 × 12 in. (46 × 30.5 cm)
Frame: 25 1/2 × 19 1/2 × 2 in. (64.8 × 49.5 × 5.1 cm)

MediumOil on wood panel

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of William E. Levis

Object number

1951.305

Not on View

Label TextDon Giovanni (1543-1562) was the third of the five sons of Grand Duke Cosimo I de’Medici of Florence and his Spanish wife Eleonora da Toledo. Destined by his parents for a career in the Church at the young age of seven, he was sent to the Pope to be admitted to the clergy when he was eight (his probable age in this portrait). At the age of 17 he was made a Cardinal. He died two years later of a fever. In 1551, Agnolo Bronzino executed a series of portraits of the Medici children. Bronzino was court painter to Cosimo, and his workshop produced many copies of his portraits of the Grand Duke and his family for European rulers and other important dignitaries. Bronzino’s dignified and psychologically remote portraits set the fashion for court portraiture for the next century.Published ReferencesHeil, W., "The Lawrence P. Fisher Collection in Detroit," Antiquarian, XV, Dec. 1930, p. 46, repr.

Art News, vol. 31, April 8, 1933, p. 1, repr.

Fredericksen, B., and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth Century Italian Paintings in North American Collections, Cambridge (Mass.), 1972, pp. 36, 515.

Baccheschi, E., L'opera completa del Bronzino, Milan, 1973, p. 99, in no. 86 (as Don Giovanni).

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo, 1976, p. 31-32, pl. 14.

Exhibition HistoryDetroit Institute of Arts, Italian Paintings from the XIV to XVI Century, 1933, no. 33.