The Italian painter Bronzino (1503-1572) was one of the leaders of the second generation of Florentine mannerists. He is noted chiefly for his stylized portraits, cold in color but impeccable in realism of detail.

Born at Monticelli near Florence on Nov. 17, 1503, Angelo di Cosimo, called Bronzino was trained principally under Raffaellino del Garbo and Pontormo. According to Giorgio Vasari, Bronzino's portrait appears in Pontormo's Joseph in Egypt (ca. 1515). In his earliest works, often produced in collaboration with Pontormo, Bronzino's style reconciles influences from his two masters. Intellectual dependence on the late-15th-century style of Raffaellino prevented Bronzino from fully understanding the visionary imagination of Pontormo, and Bronzino's fresco St. Benedict (ca. 1526-1530) in the Badia, Florence, with its hard modeling, classicizing types, and objectivity of form and detail shows the beginnings of his lifelong academicism.

After the siege of Florence in 1530 Bronzino fled to Urbino, but he was...