Customer Reviews

Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal in the Court of Duke Cosimo I

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Even if you have read other books on Renaissance painting you are bound to lean a lot by reading this one. This is a very academic overview of the paintings of Medici women in Florence during the reign of Cosimo 1st. The centrepiece portraits are those done by Bronzino with the portrait of Duchess Eleonora and her son Giovanni given a whole chapter to itself.

The author brings an impressive depth of scholarship to this book - and outlines the social and intellectual expectations that are encoded within these somewhat seemingly simple portraits. There are layers of meaning in these paintings - even the most simple looking - that would have been read by contemporary viewers but have been lost to modern viewers as society has changed.

Half this book is references and the author has extensively footnoted her sources. These a selection of colour images at the front of the book of the central portraits discussed and sections of black and white images of other portraits that are used on a comparison basis. This is not a picture book as such, but you'll learn a lot by reading it and the paintings in the colour section will quite literally come alive for you after you have read their subjects backgrounds and meanings painted within them. This book is highly recommended if you want an in-depth understanding of Florentine women's portraits in the 16th century, but it will be a disappointment if you are looking for a large selection of colour images of Medici women.

This magnificent book displays the best of the art history AND history being written today. Gabrielle Langdon's years of research and writing have paid off in a study that offers new evidence about one of the most significant periods of Florentine history (the sixteenth century) and about one of its most fabled dynasties, the Medici. She furnishes well-researched accounts of the major artists working in Florence at the time, and she demonstrates a breath-taking command of the ample theoretical material on topics such as iconography, artistic restoration, gender studies, and issues of race in history.
Langdon has been instrumental in uncovering the importance of Alessandro de' Medici and his progeny for Florentine history, as his brief reign as Duke of Florence has not been scrutinized sufficiently by modern historians. Alessandro's African (or "moorish") ancestry is a crucial aspect of Langdon's study, and it is refreshing to see this topic dealt with in a sensitive manner. Together with some forthcoming research by Professor John Brackett on Alessandro, we will soon have a better picture of a complex, violent, and crucial phase of European history.
A final comment: Langdon is a scrupulous researcher, whose copious notes demonstrate her command of the literature of this period, but she is also a gracious scholar, who pays tribute to the work of others and presents differences of opinion in an even-handed and non-acrimonious manner.
This is one of the best books I have read in the last ten years.