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Saint John the Baptist (Portrait of Giovanni de' Medici)
Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) Italian
Not on view
In 1560 Pope Pius IV made Giovanni de’ Medici, Cosimo’s sixteen-year-old son, a cardinal. Probably to celebrate this politically momentous elevation, Cosimo commissioned this remarkable painting of the young Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence and name saint of his son. Bronzino strikes a balance between a symbolic image and an idealized likeness, thereby conveying both the glorious prospects for the city and the personal destiny of the duke’s son. The statuesque treatment of the figure—complex and spatially dynamic—situates the work within the era’s debate about the superiority of painting to sculpture.
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