Bronzino

Agnolo Bronzino (or Agnolo di Cosimo) was a Florentine painter in the 1500s, a painter I've never really paid much attention to and have glanced at his paintings in galleries (such as the famous 'Allegory with Venus and Cupid' in the National Gallery). I've never really 'looked' at his paintings - they're all very professional with clear, smooth surfaces, but not really anything out of the ordinary, at least to my eyes (although this Allegory is rather strange in composition).

He was clearly a very good painter but, then again. there have been lots of very good painters. It usually takes that something extra to make me actually 'notice' a painter and start looking at their works in a different light. That's what happened with Bronzino.

I first 'noticed' Bronzino at the very good 'Charles I' exhibition at the Royal Academy earlier this year which featured loads of works from his collection. Including a painting by Bronzino, 'Portrait of a Woman in Green'. When I saw this painting form across the room I had to take a closer look. It's a portrait of a woman, a real life, living and breathing woman, in amazing detail that brings her to life - give her modern day clothes to wear and you could see her on a bus any day of the week. Looking at that sumptuous gown and I put it in the category of 'show off' paintings with Bronzino saying 'look what I can do so effortlessly, commission me and I'll do the same for you'.  I went back a couple of times to see that painting before leaving the exhibition. Bronzino was now on my radar.

A few months later, I went to Florence, not looking for Bronzinos but I couldn't help but find them in his home town.

The first painting I found was at the marvellous basilica of Santa Croce, a very large painting of 'The Descent of Christ into Limbo'. This was, apparently, one of the first acts of the risen Christ, to save the 'good' souls of people from their eternity in Limbo, starting with his forefather, Adam. We see an athletic Christ helping the old man out of the morass of bodies consigned to Limbo, surrounded by lots of other very individual-looking people - there's no homogenisation here. I think the thing that first attracted me to the painting was the skin tone - I'd recently finished a course in portrait painting and I'd started looking at paintings and wondering how they'd achieved different colours, wondering what paints had been mixed to arrive at those tones.

In particular, there's the two slightly elongated women in the front of the scene at bottom right, with one looking out at the viewer. I've got no idea who they're meant to be but they do pull the eye away from Christ. The skill that's gone into this painting is quite incredible.

A day or two later I went to the Uffizi to look at paintings and, in a small corridor, I found a series of paintings that Bronzino had completed of people in the Medici family.

The 'Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo and her Son' is gorgeous with that elaborate dress, the stately, almost stiff, pose, with her arm around her son. She looks impassive, an almost total lack of emotion in her face but it's an incredible rendering of a young woman at the peak of her almost cold beauty. Apparently she was aged 22 when this painting was made and that was one of her favourite dresses.

It's the detail of the face that kept me looking at this painting, the almost photographic realism that brings it to life.  What was she thinking while she sat there, probably wanting to be off doing something else while he son fidgets at her side. I think the frame is a bit too ornate and detracts form the beauty of the painting.

Another incredible portrait is that of Bia de Medici. The painting was commissioned after the child had died and is based on her death mask. It's a lovely little painting and, as ever, it's the details that add to the whole, like the hints of movement in her hands, almost as if she's fidgeting on the chair to get comfortable as she sits still for the painting, bringing her back to life. There's little emotion in the face but it's still a warm and welcoming portrait.

The rather impassive, if not cold, nature of his portrait faces seems to be a trademark of his particular style but that doesn't affect their beauty or the skill exhibited. You can't really look into the soul of his sitters, their faces are a mask which the real person hides behind. Does that matter? I don't think so.

There are a few paintings by Bronzino at the National Gallery and a painting attributed to his studio in the Wallace Collection so he's not under-represented in London. I'll certainly keep my eyes peeled for more when I'm wandering around galleries.

Vasari's Corridor, Florence

Vasari's Corridor is the not-so-secret passageway between the Palazzo Vecchio on the north side of the green Arno river and the Pitti Palace south of the river. It was commissioned by Cosimo di Medici in 1564 and was designed and built by Georgio Vasari whose main claim to fame is that he is the biographer of all the artists of the Renaissance (see his 'Lives of the Artists'). He was also a painter in his own right and he has a large work in Santa Maria Novella.

The Corridor is exactly that - a corridor dotted with square and round windows. It's about three yards wide and four yards high and is just over a kilometre in length. It starts in the Palazzo Vecchio, crosses over to the Uffizi Gallery (which was originally government offices) and then runs along the north bank of the green Arno until it crosses on top of the shops over the Ponte Vecchio bridge, through the church of Santa Felicita (with a private balcony for the Medici's to attend services) and on into the Pitti Palace. On the south side it passes around some buildings where their owners refused to have holes knocked in them. It was originally a means of passing unseen between the different buildings with escape doors every so often in case the Medicis and their chums needed to get out quickly. Today it is an exclusive art gallery, an extension of the Uffizi. It's not generally open to the public but you can book to go on short tours with a guide and security guards to keep the paintings inside the Corridor safe.

The tour starts at the Uffizi entrance so, after going through security and up in the staff lift to the second floor, we were escorted through some of the corridors of the Uffizi to stand before a nondescript wooden door that was unlocked and opened to reveal a staircase heading downwards and we joined the Corridor with the wooden door locked behind us. This early section of the Corridor suffered bomb damage by a Mafia bomb in 1993 and some of the damaged paintings are still on display as a memory of the event.  Our guide, Lucia, explained the history and pointed out the interesting paintings. The place is full of them so you can't see them all in any detail.

The early paintings are a collection of 16th and 17th century works, none particularly grabbed my attention but there were some nice pieces. The real interest comes with the collection of self-portraits by artists from the Renaissance through to the modern period, a great collection of varying standards but it's interesting to see how different artists chose to portray themselves. They're hung in roughly chronological order filling all the available space. They're not all necessarily what they might appear - the self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci apparently has another painting underneath that uses paint that wasn't available until 100 years after Leonardo died. Ahem.

Strolling through the Corridor is a kind of time travel, seeing the faces and clothes change every few yards, seeing when beards and 'taches came in and out of fashion, ruffs making an appearance, wigs appearing and vanishing again, gradually moving forward in time. It was nice to see a surprising number of self-portraits of women artists, none of whom I've heard of, but they're represented in the collection. Many artists gave their self-portraits to the collection over the years so they'd feature in it even though their main works would never be part of the Uffizi collection. So many unheard of artists whose image is now part of the gallery.

In the middle of the Ponte Vecchio bridge section of the Corridor is a big window that gives a great view down onto the bridge itself and up-river to the other bridges spanning the Arno. It was apparently put in on orders of Mussolini to give Hitler a grand view when he visited Italy and so has the unfortunate name of Hitler's Window.

I was lagging behind the group when I heard Lucia mention a self-portrait by George Leighton who has his own gallery in London and my ears pricked up - that's Leighton House Museum, I thought, so let's have a look at the man himself. It's okay as far as it goes but of far greater interest was the self-portrait hanging beside it - Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema whose work I first saw in Leighton House earlier this year. What a coincidence! He did several self-portraits but this is my favourite, showing himself as any other man of the time wearing glasses and with creases around his eyes. I didn't realise that this is where the painting is. He looks like the kind of person you could sit down with a good cup of tea and have a nice long chat about anything.

Alma-Tadema and Leighton were mid/late-Victorians so we were speeding up in time by now and round another corner in the Corridor began the home straight of modern self-portraits from the early 20th Century onwards. Hung close together to cram in as many as possible, Lucia told us that it was around then that the Uffizi started to refuse to accept portraits that weren't of a suitable standard since it already had more than it could comfortably display or house.

The most famous self-portrait was one by Marc Chagall but it wasn't the weirdest by any means. Apparently he asked the Uffizi to choose one of several he presented them with and this is the chosen painting.

The Corridor continues into the Pitti Palace but the tour ends at the exit to the Boboli Gardens behind the Palace. It was quite warm in the Corridor so it was nice to exit down a few steps into the sunlight and gentle breeze beside the Grotto with some of Michelangelo's 'slave' forms writhing in the stone. The Grotto is closed to the public at the moment but I wandered into it ten years ago. Looking back to where we'd just exited all I could see was a closed grey door, a nondescript door that could lead anywhere or just be a storage cupboard. But I know it leads to treasures.

What a great adventure that was, to wander through time for an hour and a half, gradually moving forward until you meet the modern day again. So many paintings seen by so few people (relatively speaking). I thoroughly enjoyed the journey and would recommend it to anyone with some free time in Florence. Vasari's Corridor is one of Florence's many wonders.