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Official portraitist at the Medici court of Cosimo I, Bronzino painted also portraits of members of Florentine aristocracy or upper middle class, as Bartolomeo Panciatichi was. Born in 1507 and died in 1582, he held important public offices and lived in France as ambassador. In this picture he is around thirty years old, austere and proud, sitting before his family palace, whose coat of arm appears on the right. He also commissioned Bronzino to paint the portrait of his wife Lucrezia and the Sacra Famiglia con San Giovannino, both at Uffizi Gallery now.
Here the influence of Parmigianino may be obvious, in the elongated figure and the vigorous line which creates broken surfaces on the sleeves of Bartolomeo Panciatichi. The imposing, idealized structure behind the portrait refers to fifteenth-century styles, while the lucid surfaces of colour define once again all the ideal and intellectual splendour of this man of the court: a work, therefore, totally in keeping with the taste and mentality of the Florentine painter.
The painting was restored in 1970.
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