Giovanni Maria Butteri (florence 1540 - 1606), Portraits Of Francesco De 'medici And Bianca Cappello

Giovanni Maria Butteri (Florence, about 1540 - Florence, October 4, 1606)
Portrait of Francesco I de 'Medici
Inscriptions: brushed in sixteenth-century handwriting "FRANCESCO I"
Portrait of Bianca Cappello
Inscriptions: by brush, in sixteenth-century handwriting "BIANCA / CAPPELLO"

ORIGIN: Hampel, Monaco, GEMÄLDE ALTE MEISTER, 30.06.2022, lot 472 (estimate 30,000-50,000 euros)
LINK: https://www.hampel-auctions.com/online-catalogue-detail.html?a=132&s=805&c=472

The works are accompanied by a critical study written by Professor Emilio Negro.

Oils on table (cm. 51 x 41 each, in antique cassette frames cm. 68 x 58)

Direct link with full details at the following link

We are pleased to present this valuable pair of paintings, in excellent condition, which depict, as stated by the respective inscriptions, the official portraits of Francesco I de 'Medici (Florence, 1541-Poggio a Caiano, 1587) and his wife Bianca Cappello. (Venice, 1548-Poggio a Caiano, 1587), both portrayed half-length and slightly sideways.

It is a precious testimony of the great portraiture season of Tuscan Mannerism, Florentine in particular, whose particular stylistic features make it possible to assign the paternity to Giovanni Maria Butteri (Florence, c. 1540 - 1606), a talented epigone painter of Jacopo Pontormo and above all pupil of Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino.

The first portrayed of our couple was the very learned son of Cosimo I and Eleonora da Toledo, a lover of science, arts and alchemy, as evidenced by his famous "study" created in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence following a complex iconographic program by the humanist Vincenzo Borghini and under the artistic direction of Giorgio Vasari.

He is portrayed with well-groomed brown hair, mustache and beard, while he wears a late-Renaissance-style velvet jacket, with sleeves decorated in stripes and buttoned on the front, from which the white collar with golden edges emerges. of the underlying shirt; he completes the clothing with an elegant red cloak, lined with ermine, with a large white patent cross and a precious necklace to which another "patent" cross hangs.

The attractive noblewoman, Bianca Cappello, had been his charming Venetian mistress and, after the death of her consort Giovanna of Austria (1578), she became his legitimate wife.

She too, an equally good-looking young woman, with a sweet, softened blue-eyed look, wears her long hair, neatly styled at the nape of her neck, parted in two and gathered under a thin transparent veil held in place by a string of eleven pearls; she wears a bodice tied on the front of her with numerous small side openings and a white shirt with a lace ruff collar, with a pearl choker, also used in the precious earrings.

The proud gaze of both the portrayed characters and their statuary posture, or better still inspired by ancient classical numismatics, highlight the clearly celebratory intent of the paintings, intended to decorate the reception rooms of the most beautiful palaces of the time owned by nobles and rich Florentine merchants.

The desire of these collectors, who aspired to possess such noble half-length portraits made by the best painting workshops in the city, was to evoke in those who observed them virtuous examples to follow and pass on to posterity.

The figurative language that is deduced from the stylistic reading of the tables agrees with the most elegant male and female portraiture models of Central Italian Mannerism: in fact, the stylistic signs of the talented painter Giovanni Maria Butteri are revealed, who created a pair of portrait images extremely idealized while not neglecting precise realistic descriptions, such as Bianca's sweet blue eyes and the details of the clothes worn by the protagonists.

In the works it is therefore easy to recognize stylistic analogies with the best Florentine mannerism, of which they evoke the essential yet pleasant compositional taste, the peculiar chromatic range with warm and bright shades and the soberly classical temperie with robust neo-Michelangelo accents: stylistic features recurring in the best paintings fired both by Bronzino and by his pupil Butteri, in the years of their full artistic maturity.

Excellent conditions. The paintings are complemented by a pair of antique wooden frames.


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