(c) 2014 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Alessandro Allori

Florence, 1535 - 1607, Florence

BiographyAlessandro (di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino) Allori
(b Florence, 31 May 1535; d Florence, 22 Sept 1607).

After the death of his father in 1540, he was adopted by Bronzino, a friend of his father, and he trained in Bronzino’s workshop. From 1554 to 1560 Allori was in Rome, where he studied antique statuary and the works of Michelangelo and became known as a portrait painter. His first documented work on his return to Florence was an altarpiece, heavily influenced by Michelangelo, depicting the Last Judgement, painted in 1560 for the Montauti Chapel, SS Annunziata. Allori became involved in a number of projects relating to Florence’s recently formed (1563) Accademia del Disegno. These included preparation of the decorations for the funeral of Michelangelo in 1564 and for the marriage the following year of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s son, Francesco (later Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany) to Joanna of Austria.

Between 1570 and 1571 Allori executed the Pearl Fishers as part of the prestigious commission given to Vasari and his followers to decorate Francesco’s studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. It is located on the western wall of the studiolo, which is devoted to scenes connected with water. Its elegant artificiality reveals Allori’s careful study of Vasari’s decorative paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio (Vasari’s Perseus for the studiolo heavily inspired Allori’s panel). The smooth bodies of the divers have a marmoreal quality like that found in Bronzino’s work, and Allori quoted directly from Michelangelo for certain poses. Thematically a seascape, the idyllic scene conveys a sense of unnatural, arrested energy that is reinforced by the use of soft colours. The Pearl Fishers has become perhaps the most familiar painting from the second half of the 16th century in Florence, almost a symbol of the late Florentine maniera.

In 1571 Allori executed a fresco of the Trinity for the seat of the Florentine painters’ guild, the chapel of St Luke in SS Annunziata. Two related projects in the 1570s were executed for members of the Salviati family, who were cousins of the Medici. From 1570 to 1572 Allori painted three large mythological panels for Alamanno Salviati’s villa at Ponte alla Badia near Florence, depicting the Rape of Proserpina (Malibu, CA, Getty Mus.), Aeneas and Anchises and Narcissus (both Washington, DC, Turk. Embassy). Between 1574 and 1580 he painted a series of frescoes depicting scenes from the Odyssey for the Florentine palazzo of Jacopo Salviati.

In 1575 Allori painted an altarpiece depicting Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Florence, S Maria Novella). The panel is typical of a number of his religious paintings that adopt Santi di Tito’s Counter-Reformation revival of pre-Mannerist aesthetic values. Rejecting Bronzino’s often cluttered and confused religious compositions, Allori concentrated on the previously unfashionable didactic and inspirational role of sacred art and produced an easily legible and devout altarpiece. The narrative theme is emphasized by the placing of Christ, seated, on the well and the prominent display of the Samaritan woman’s vessel. Christ and the Samaritan woman are depicted in natural poses and are simply dressed. Facing one another in the foreground, they serve as a frame for the apostles, who are seen returning from the village in the background. In the 1570s Allori also painted the frescoes of the cupola of the Gaddi Chapel in S Maria Novella, designed by Giovanni Antonio Dosio (1575–6). During the 1580s Allori closely followed Andrea del Sarto, another model for Counter-Reformation values, in three versions of the Last Supper (1582, Bergamo, Accad. Carrara B.A.; 1582, fresco, Florence, S Maria del Carmine; 1584, Florence, S Maria Novella) and a Virgin and Child with Saints (1583; Cardiff, N. Mus.).

Allori’s most significant secular decorative commission was a series of frescoes (1578–82) for the Salone Grande of the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, near Florence. The two central scenes, Scipio Entertained by Syphax and the Oration of Titus Flaminius, function iconographically as historical allegories for the Medici family’s diplomatic successes. The design of the frescoes is clearly dependent on Veronese’s banqueting scenes, for example the Feast in the House of Levi (Venice, Accad.), both in the architectural perspectives of their backgrounds and in the lavish staffage compositions. Allori’s Florentine Mannerist style remains evident, however, in the almost comical overposturing of his Michelangelesque cast and the general lack of clarity in the figural arrangement. In 1581 Allori supervised the execution, by assistants, of the extensive series of Grotesques in the corridors on the top floor of the Uffizi, Florence, and from c. 1583–8 he again undertook work for the Salviati family: a commission to decorate the family chapel dedicated to S Antonino in S Marco, Florence. In addition to a series of frescoes in the upper zone of the chapel depicting scenes from the Life of St Anthony, Allori executed the central altarpiece, depicting the Descent into Limbo. This work ranks among his most important religious paintings and, like the Samaritan Woman, continues Allori’s imitation of Santi di Tito, which is also apparent in his work as a draughtsman (see 1970 exh. cat.), which includes drawings that are primarily figural sketches in charcoal, with the occasional compositional sketch in pen and ink.

During the 1590s Allori’s painting style fluctuated between such strikingly devout works as St Fiacre Healing the Sick (1596; Florence, S Spirito), again based on Santi di Tito’s style, and the highly mannered Vision of St Hyacinth (1596; Florence, S Maria Novella), an anachronistic revival of the mid-16th-century Mannerist compositions of Bronzino and Vasari. Towards the end of his career, Allori produced one of his most atypical works, the Sacrifice of Isaac (1601; Florence, Uffizi). The painting is unusual in that the predominant element is landscape instead of figural composition. Allori had painted the same theme during the 1580s (Florence, S Niccolò sopr’Arno), adhering to the compositional focus on Abraham and Isaac that had typified versions of the subject since Ghiberti’s bronze competition relief panel of 1402. The most probable source of inspiration for the 1601 composition, with its small figures scattered throughout an extensive landscape, was northern European painting. Paul Bril and Adam Elsheimer were among the many landscape artists in Italy during this period, and Jacopo Pontormo had set a precedent by borrowing from Dürer’s prints for his Joseph in Egypt (1515–18; London, N.G.).

Allori’s influence on 17th-century Florentine painting was limited. His oeuvre shows little stylistic evolution: the dominant impression that emerges from a career that spanned half a century is of imitation rather than innovation. He remained open throughout his life to a variety of stylistic influences, among which Michelangelo’s perhaps remains the most constant.
Bibliography

G. Vasari: Vite (1550, rev. 2/1568); ed. G. Milanesi (1878–85)

R. Borghini: Il riposo (Florence, 1584); ed. M. Rosci (Milan, 1967)

F. Baldinucci: Notizie (1681–1728); ed. F. Ranalli (1845–7)

A. Venturi: Storia (1901–40)

I. B. Supino: I ricordi di Alessandro Allori (Florence, 1908)

H. Voss: Die Malerei der Spätrenaissance in Rom und Florenz, ii (Berlin, 1920), pp. 338–49

W. Paatz and E. Paatz: Die Kirchen von Florenz: Ein kunstgeschichtliches Handbuch, 6 vols (Frankfurt am Main, 1940–55)

Mostra di disegni di Alessandro Allori (exh. cat., ed. S. Lecchini Giovannoni; Florence, Uffizi; 1970)

M. Hall: Renovation and Counter-Reformation: Vasari and Duke Cosimo in Sta Maria Novella and Sta Croce, 1565–1577 (Oxford, 1979)

J. Spalding: ‘Observations on Alessandro Allori’s Historical Frescoes at Poggio a Caiano’, Stor. A., lix (1987), pp. 11–14

A. Cecchi: ‘A Design for a Tapestry by Alessandro Allori’, Master Drgs, xxv (1987), pp. 146–9

E. Pilliod: ‘Alessandro Allori’s The Penitent St Jerome’, Rec. A. Mus., Princeton U., xlvii/1 (1988), pp. 2–29

S. Lecchini Giovannoni: ‘Osservazioni sull’attività giovanile di Alessandro Allori’, Ant. Viva, xxvii/1 (1988), pp. 10–31

S. Lecchini Giovannoni: Alessandro Allori (Turin, 1991)

J. Cox-Rearick: ‘Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori and the Lost Deluge at S Lorenzo’, Burl. Mag., v/134 (1992), pp. 239–48

F. De Luca: ‘La Cappella Salviati e gli altari laterali nella chiesa di San Marco a Firenze’, Altari e committenza: episodi a Firenze nell’età della Controriforma, ed. C. De Benedictis (Florence, 1996), pp. 114–35

E. Pilliod: ‘A Widow’s Choice: Alessandro Allori’s Christ and the Adulteress in the Church of Santo Spirito at Florence’, Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. S. E. Reiss and D. G. Wilkins (Kirksville, MO, 2001), pp. 301–5

Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori: A Genealogy of Florentine Art (New Haven, 2001)

E. Pilliod: ‘The Influence of Michelangelo: Pontormo, Bronzino and Allori’, Reactions to the Master: Michelangelo’s Effect on Art and Artists in the Sixteenth Century, ed. F. Ames-Lewis, P. Joannides (Burlington, 2003), pp. 31–52

G. Tal: ‘Disbelieving in Witchcraft: Allori’s Melancholic Circe in the Palazzo Salviati’, Athanor 22 (2004), pp. 57–65

Jack J. Spalding IV
Oxford Art online, accessed, 1/17/14. E. Reluga

Person TypeIndividual

Last Updated8/7/24

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