Style in the Service of Power: portraits at the court of the Medici in Florence

As the political structures in Florence shifted from a republic to a hereditary monarchy in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, portraiture began to take on further symbolic value. Artists, merchants and bankers became courtiers, and a group of painters, led by Pontormo, Bronzino and Salviati, created the look of the newly coined Medici court, gleaned from recommendations on behaviour, dress and deportment from writers such as Baldassare Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier) and Pietro Bembo (The Asolani).

This lecture will explore that relationship between style and power while considering in detail some of the greatest portraits ever painted for an elite who were both conscious of their image and the need to reinvent themselves.