Alessandro Allori (1535-1607) - Late Mannerism, Florence - III

Alessandro Allori
Vault Fresco
ca. 1560-64
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Adam and Eve
ca. 1560-64
vault fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Jonah
ca. 1560-64
vault fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
The Annunciation
ca. 1560-64
vault fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Eritrean Sibyl
ca. 1560-64
vault fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
The Flight into Egypt
ca. 1560-64
vault fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori's fresco-work covering every available surface of the Montauti Chapel in Florence's Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, executed between 1560 and 1564.  The painter was in his late twenties at this time, and clearly in thrall to monumental models seen in Rome by both Michelangelo [as above] and Raphael [as below]. 

Alessandro Allori
Christ among the Doctors in the Temple
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ among the Doctors in the Temple (detail)
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ among the Doctors in the Temple (detail)
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ among the Doctors in the Temple (detail)
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ driving the Money Changers from the Temple
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ driving the Money Changers from the Temple (detail)
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ driving the Money Changers from the Temple (detail)
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ driving the Money Changers from the Temple (detail)
ca. 1560-64
wall fresco
Cappella Montauti
Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, Florence

Alessandro Allori (1535-1607) - Late Mannerism, Florence - II

attributed to Alessandro Allori
Penitent St Peter in a Landscape
before 1607
oil on copper
National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire

Alessandro Allori
Charity
ca. 1560
oil on copper
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Alessandro Allori
Penitent Magdalen in the Wilderness
before 1607
oil on copper
National Trust, Calke Abbey, Derbyshire

Alessandro Allori
The Flagellation
ca. 1560-65
oil on copper
private collection

This group largely consists of Allori's small-scale cabinet images painted on smooth and non-yielding surfaces such as copper or slate, intended for private devotion and/or intimate display.  As such, they were expected to offer a high-polished, jewel-like finish – ready to reward minute observation and contemplation.

attributed to Alessandro Allori
Lamentation over the Dead Christ
ca. 1553
oil on metal (lead alloy)
Courtauld Gallery, London

Alessandro Allori
Body of Christ anointed by Two Angels
ca. 1593
oil on copper
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Alessandro Allori
Laocoön
(after the famous antique sculpture group at the Vatican)
ca. 1570
oil on panel
private collection

attributed to Alessandro Allori
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
ca. 1575
oil on panel
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

attributed to Alessandro Allori
Portrait of Francesco de' Medici
(shown displaying a precious antique gem)
ca. 1560
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Alessandro Allori
Portrait of a Young Man Writing
ca. 1560-65
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Alessandro Allori
Allegory of Human Life
(after a presentation drawing by Michelangelo)
ca. 1570-90
oil on copper
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Alessandro Allori
The Pearl Fishers
(based on Michelangelo's cartoon for The Battle of Cascina)
1570-72-
oil on slate
Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Pearl Diver
(study for figure at top right in The Pearl Fishers)
ca. 1570
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

attributed to Alessandro Allori
Zenobia
(copy of Michelangelo's drawing of idealized female bust)
before 1607
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Alessandro Allori (1535-1607) - Late Mannerism, Florence - I

Alessandro Allori
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1560
oil on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alessandro Allori
Portrait of Bianca Cappello
before 1587
tempera on plaster
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Allegorical Portrait of a Young Man
in the guise of Mercury slaying Argus
ca. 1575-80
oil on panel
Harvard Art Museums

Alessandro Allori
St Jerome
1606
oil on panel
Princeton University Art Museum

In 1929 the great art historian Walter Friedlaender felt able to dismiss "Alessandro Allori, who flooded all Tuscany with his insipid pictures."  The adopted ward and apprentice of Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572), Allori inherited a Florentine Renaissance style of scrupulous drawing and complex, elongated postures.  Much of his subsequent career was devoted to Medici service – designing tapestries; painting portraits, cabinet miniatures, altarpieces; executing vast decorative schemes in fresco for villas and churches.  Yet well before Allori's death in 1607, the "Mannerist" movement had begun to lose vigor and drift out of fashion.  He has consequently been punished by many writers for the historical accident of his time and place, his awkward positioning between eras.  Too little praise has been granted to his compensating strengths of design, construction, draftsmanship and sheer painterly craft.   

Alessandro Allori
Venus disarming Cupid (detail)
ca. 1570
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Alessandro Allori
Venus disarming Cupid
ca. 1570
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Alessandro Allori
Venus disarming Cupid
ca. 1570
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Alessandro Allori
Miracles of St Fiacre
ca. 1596
oil on panel
Basilica di Santo Spirito, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Miracles of St Fiacre (detail)
ca. 1596
oil on panel
Basilica di Santo Spirito, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Abduction of Proserpine
1570
oil on panel
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Alessandro Allori
Hercules crowned by the Muses
ca. 1568
oil on panel
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary
1605
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Alessandro Allori
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
1576-77
oil on panel
Basilica di Santo Spirito, Florence

Alessandro Allori
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
1576-77
oil on panel
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

The pair of duplicate paintings directly above serves as an additional demonstration of the distinction made at the end of the just-previous post on Massimo Stanzione – variations in national styles and standards of cleaning and conservation.  The version of Allori's Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery that has spent the past couple of centuries in Russia still displays the Old Master dimness of old varnish (and old dirt).  The version still housed in the Florentine church for which it was created probably looked much the same until the mid-20th century – when the Italians rather suddenly decided that their immense heritage of old paintings required a general brightening.  As far as I am aware, no one has theorized that the abrupt demand for brighter more colorful museum paintings coincided with the mass dissemination of Technicolor movies and Kodachrome film.

Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656) - Naples

Massimo Stanzione
Sacrifice to Bacchus
ca. 1634
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Massimo Stanzione
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
1640
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Massimo Stanzione
The Birth of John the Baptist announced to Zacharias
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Massimo Stanzione
 John the Baptist taking leave of his Family
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Massimo Stanzione
Beheading of John the Baptist
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

"Although Neapolitan artists stuck tenaciously to the various facets of Caravaggism – epitomized by the names of Battistello Caracciolo, Jusepe de Ribera, and Artemisia Gentileschi – the swing towards Bolognese classicism from the mid 1630s on is a general phenomenon.  . . .  The most important caposcuola of the mid century, Massimo Stanzione (1586-1656) turned in a similar direction.  His early development is still unclear, but his Caravaggism is allied to that of Simon Vouet, Carlo Saraceni, and Artemisia rather than to that of Caracciolo and Ribera.  In his best works, belonging to the decade 1635-45, he displays a distinct sense for subtle chromatic values, melodious lines, gracefully built figures, and mellow and lyrical expressions.  Stanzione was famed as the 'Neapolitan Guido Reni'.  . . .  He mediates between the art of the older generation and that of his pupil Bernardo Cavallino."

– Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, originally published in 1958, revised by Joseph Connors and Jennifer Montagu and reissued by Yale University Press in 1999

Massimo Stanzione
Adoration of the Magi
before 1656
oil on canvas
private collection

Massimo Stanzione
Lot and his Daughters
before 1656
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Cosenza

Massimo Stanzione
Bathsheba Bathing
ca. 1620-30
oil on canvas
private collection

Massimo Stanzione
Sacrifice of Moses
ca. 1628-30
oil on canvas
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Massimo Stanzione
Massacre of the Innocents
ca. 1625-50
oil on canvas
Schloss Rohrau, Austria

Massimo Stanzione
Penitent Magdalen
before 1656
oil on canvas
Museo Nazionale d'Arte, Matera

Massimo Stanzione
Woman in Neapolitan Costume
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Massimo Stanzione
St Agnes
ca. 1635-40
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona

Massimo Stanzione
Cleopatra
ca. 1630-50
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Paintings at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg generally retain the old-school European brown-gravy look that prevailed in most western museums up through World War I.  Centuries of dirty varnish counted as "patina" and were regarded as inextricable from Old Master status.  Nowadays in America, in Britain, Germany and Italy such varnishes tend to be routinely stripped off as thoroughly as possible.  In France, Spain and Russia identical layers of old varnish are – to varying degrees – respected and preserved.  The French in particular argue that top layers of glazes applied by artists to classical oil paintings are of such inherent fragility that they demand a protective varnish coating, and that a conservator who attempts to strip the painting back to its "original appearance" runs too great a risk of taking some of the actual painting off along with the varnish.  Certainly the fragile glazes that finished off Stanzone's Cleopatra [directly above] can be supposed to be safe under their heavy dark varnish. Safe, but no longer visible.

Massimo Stanzione
Apollo and Daphne
before 1656
drawing
Morgan Library, New York