Franciabigio (Francesco di Cristofano) was a Florentine painter, a minor master of the High Renaissance style. He was a pupil of Marinotto Albertinelli and collaborated with Andrea del Sarto (on the frescoes in the Annunziata church in Florence), who was the dominant influence on his style, as may be seen in his frescoes of this Convent. His best works are generally considered to be his portraits.
This painting is one of the painted side panels Franciabigio contributed to frame Nanni Unghero’s wooden statue on the San Niccolò da Tolentino altar in S. Spirito. The two flamboyant angels reveal Franciabigio’s distinctive lexicon with their proto-Baroque sensibility and deep pathos painted in excited, jagged contours, combined with the strong raking light and almost smoldering atmosphere.
Around 1512-13 several painters were employed by the Servite friars to fresco the atrium of the SS Annunziata in Florence. The mostly young artists included Franciabigio, Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo, Francesco Indaco and Bandinelli, they were symbolically led by Andrea del Sarto.
The Betrothal of the Virgin in the atrium was considered by Vasari Franciabigio’s masterpiece. It contains moderately sized figures and expansive architecture which resembles a church facade with a loggia, perhaps meant as an idealized representation of the Annunziata itself. The painting contains a great deal of anecdotical details and superb portraits of contemporary males at the left edge; furthermore, it features Old Testament scenes in fictive reliefs in the upper architecture.
The fresco is badly damaged by abrasion in the paint layers, in the face of the Virgin and other places.
This painting was attributed to Raphael until Franciabigio’s monogram was discovered on the hem of Mary’s robe. The treatment of the theme is indeed related to Raphael’s Madonna del Prato, and St John’s pose is taken from the Madonna dell’Impannata.
The banderole in the Christ Child’s hand reads: ECCE AGNUS DEI (Behold the Lamb of God).
The scene shows two episodes from the New Testament. To the left, in the background, Mary Magdalen is seen with two other women discovering that the tomb of Jesus is empty. An angel dressed in pure white sits on the tomb, giving the women the news of Christ’s resurrection. In the foreground, the resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalen, who has moved away from her companions.
Originally, the fresco adorned the covered terrace at the top of a weaver’s house in the heart of Florence in the bustling quarter of artisans and merchants known as the Mercato Vecchio. It was removed from the wall for preservation before the quarter was torn down in around 1890.
Franciabigio’s most compelling works are private portraits for which he had a particular talent. An example is this portrait, signed and dated 1522, which magnifies the qualities for which the mature Franciabigio was valued throughout his final years. It belongs to a particular genre of portrait featuring individuals who pause while working on their account books as if disturbed by the viewer’s sudden presence. The figure here stands at a desk in front of his ledger with a certain feigned casualness before a deep landscape and stormy sky.
This portrait, showing an elegantly dressed gentlemen, reveals the general tendency towards a psychological approach in portraits, found most markedly in the portraits of Lorenzo Lotto.
The painting shows the influence of Raphael’s Florentine portraits, such as the portrait of Agnolo Doni.
The convent where Franciabigio painted the whole back wall with a representation of the Last Supper used to be called S.Giovanni alla Porta di San Pier Gattolino. Its current name derives from the hood worn by the monks.
Franciabigio was a Florentine painter, a minor master of the High Renaissance style. He was a pupil of Marinotto Albertinelli and collaborated with Andrea del Sarto (on the frescoes in the Annunziata church in Florence), who was the dominant influence on his style, as may be seen in his frescoes of this Convent. His best works are generally considered to be his portraits.
The twenty-five-year old Ottaviano de’ Medici, on behalf of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and his cousin Pope Leo X, commissioned Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio and Pontormo for decorations celebrating the pope’s father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and other family members inside the family’s villa at Poggio a Caiano. The iconographical programme, designed by the historian Paolo Giovio, aimed to evoke the celebrations of the Medici house through a series of episodes drawn from Roman history.
Work in the Salone was halted with the death of Leo X in December 1521. Pontormo was the only one to have finished his lunette fresco, frescoes by Franciabigio and Andrea del Sarto on the long walls were partially incomplete. The decoration was completed by Alessandro Allori in 1578-82, a commission of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici.
The Return of Cicero to Rome by Franciabigio is on one of the long walls of the Salone. The young man, who is being raised up by a group of men excitedly gesturing, is Cicero being borne to the Capitol in triumph by Romans on his return from exile. This scene is an allusion to the exile and return of Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder.
The strip with the obelisk and rostral column as well as the statue of the river god Tiber and the group of four figures in the right foreground were added later by Alessandro Allori.
The young man, who is being raised up by a group of men excitedly gesturing, is Cicero being borne to the Capitol in triumph by Romans on his return from exile. This scene is an allusion to the exile and return of Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder.
Franciabigio enjoyed a close relationship with the Medici. He was the artist given the commission about 1520 by Giulio de’ Medici for the entire cycle of frescoes at Poggio a Caiano, which he was expected to divide with Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo. Like Sarto, he frescoed one of the larger and more prominent lower fields in the room. His Triumph of Cicero is based on Plutarch in which the ‘Pater Patriae’, following a period of exile, is carried by a vigorous frieze of figures to the Capitoline reconstructed above in the background - an apparent allusion to Cosimo il Vecchio’s return from Milan from his own exile. The fresco takes its place comfortably alongside what are now the more celebrated images by Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo, which together evoke the notion of a Medici Golden Age in an impressive private setting outside Florence. Like Sarto’s, this fresco has lateral additions by Alessandro Allori in the right half.
Many of the most positive and characteristic qualities of Franciabigio’s art are exemplified by the Saint Job altarpiece produced for the high altar of the church of the confraternity of the same dedication to which he himself belonged by 1509 at the latest. It features the Virgin and Child enthroned with Sts Job and John the Baptist and is signed with his monogram and dated 1516. This is a work with concentrated power and monolithic scale and weight of its figures. The altarpiece has darkened considerably but the rich paint surface is still very much in evidence.
