Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet by Deborah Parker Review by: Arthur J. Di Furia The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 2003), pp. 194-195 Published by: The Sixteenth Century Journal Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20061338 . Accessed: 10/01/2014 22:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Sixteenth Century Journal. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 69.41.96.102 on Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:37:43 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 194 XXXIV/1 Sixteenth Century Journal (2003) at dismantling All told, Knutson ismuch more effective a that together the companies The evidence ing replacement. not concrete. Nor is it clear what it means tive but certainly the guilds were than produc existing narratives behaved like a guild is sugges to behave like a guild at a time enormous at plays have looked Indeed, Knutson pressure. might to explore and others the playwrights' disparate in its method and findings, and their values. Nonetheless, guildsmen, Playing on those in Shakespeare's Time should have significant and Commerce writing impact when by Shakespeare, views of guilds, Companies material histories the drama under Dekker, Francis Beaumont, on our and Jacobean drama, even if its influence readings of Knutson of sharp less. Though the notion something torpedoes to preserve is careful the fact of competition among companies. a troupe for example, their competitors' have sug successes, might of Elizabethan to be promises commercial rivalry, she on to capitalize a a playwright to subject or genre. What particular gested to do with such basic choices, reflects additional however, Seeking or collaborators the writer personal, ideological, chose and literary as a revenge play" to answer John Marston's^4nion/o plays "two-part "humor into the category Hamlet, plays," or insisting Jonson's Poetaster lumping Twelfth Night Satiromastix their audiences' "taste for the and Dekker's different equally exploit strikingly at a certain the existence time and atrics" might the fact of However, plays' place. explain concerns. Characterizing sense of and adds little to our efforts to make such categorizing discounts their idiosyncrasies to to outcome is attention redirect of Knutson's careful research, them. A surprising then, as a legitimate basis from rather than commercial and theatrical concerns, content, poetics cross talk. to explore which dramatic Bronzino: Press, University as Poet. Painter Renaissance 2000. 233 by: Arthur J. Di and Design Reviewed Deborah ISBN pp. $55.00. Parker. Cambridge Cambridge: 0521781663. Furia, University of Delaware/Moore College of Art more wrote Bronzino than three (1503-72) painter Agnolo to such profuse painter expect literary output by an important attract at least a fair amount this has hardly been the case. attention. of scholarly However, is a long overdue first on this lesser-known Parker's book Deborah aspect of the painter's Florentine hundred poems. creativity. In her Cinquecento One would introduction, Parker painted portraits; his meticulously are ultimately "unknowable." who Bronzino elusiveness, s poetry, which frames her surfaces s the intractability of Bronzino study by noting are their focus rather than his doll-faced sitters, to Parker, similar can be something According as aworld Mindful she describes of "evasive representation." to clarify the meanings She also hopes of his paintings. she aims of his poems her book will and demonstrate said of of this their usefulness establish their literary merit and analyses further studies. of for lines suggest inquiry a to Bronzino's with the book's first half exclusively Parker dedicates poetry, beginning are burlesque in the anti-Petrarchan mode poems practiced most chapter on his capitoli.These for Berni. Nothing is sacred in these scabrous of Bronzino's sophisticated, and pornographic sociopolitical parodies famously by Francesco Parker shows evidence conceal irreverent of Bronzino's the lyric poetry in the mainstream participates canzionere, which literary current Parker satiric wit; analyzes of Petrarchism verses, double eroticism. turn at every triple entendres contrast In direct is and and in chapter 2. Here, Bronzino it and instead of satirizing This content downloaded from 69.41.96.102 on Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:37:43 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Book Reviews maintains order social Bronzino's canzionere 265 poems, of subverting it. Comprised of an impressive a "Who's Who" sonnet exchanges encomiastic of Flor with Benedetto In Parker's view, the canzio Varchi and Laura Battiferri. instead contains entine literati, especially for nere's recurring themes?praise on Pontormo's meditations death?all in a ruthless ship world. and political, their contents, contextualize scene. Throughout her embedded within and locate him like this prepare Chapters of friends, and praise for the Medici, theme of the solace of friend the unifying the reader 3 and 4 address how Unsurprisingly, respectively. Bronzino when wishes for wicked, critical, in the thick Parker chapters, literary analysis. For are analogous of Petrarch appropriations observations vehicle fall under is thorough in these chapters and poetry analysis of Bronzino's ear for Flor and she knows her wordplay sixteenth-century enables her to interpret Bronzino's poems, literary history. This these erary ings, model Her the achievements has a sensitive Parker engaging. entine social, 195 instance, to his for of Florence's lit mid-Cinquecento to comments of painting 2 she suggests that Bronzino's limits her discussion in chapter of Michelangelesque use the book's second motifs. Passing half. Bronzino's we discuss art, and the poetics of his paint poems in chapter 3 that Petrarch is the appropriate the arts or individual artists, and the capitolo is his on the Parker's thoughts pitfalls of his profession. learn to praise or humorous to demonstrate are deft of panegyrics pastiches the from Bronzino's derived by Shearman, pleasure on his audience's to recognize refractions" like these. After poems depends ability "myriad raison d'?tre; now it is the book's that Parker has shown us the this, chapter 4 feels as though on painting, we are to his thoughts and its extension poetry duality of Bronzino's properly erudition enables Petrarch. Influenced to prepared much-debated see her its visualization. Allegory of Venus that Bronzino's she states Thus, she that refutes asserts its "profound at length?makes it a and conclusive sense of the interpretations of equivocation" which? to his analog confounding and convincingly painted this chapter by demonstrating, all too briefly, capitolo, "II piato." She concludes exists in his other paintings. reviews have criticized Parker's inattention Early Parker argues not paintings. While upon ing more unfounded, this is a bit unfair; art historians will find that ambiguity to Bronzino's themselves want more this chapter, and her discussion is ultimately of the paintings But Parker does indeed keep (as the lack of colorplates confirms). suggestive to show us that Bronzino's her promise poetry might help us interpret his paintings. A few more words of warning these lines: Parker's contextual sometimes along emphasis finishing than detailed on some of the her writing and readers may feel rushed where she touches diffuse, never leads to a sustained discussion ."The title's echo of Horace of the "big questions to Bronzino, scattered Parker also uses the term "Man ory as it pertains suggestions. only as if it were nerism" when could be farther from the truth at present. uncontested, nothing makes field's cannot expect a book that shoots such awide literature gap in the existing and scholars should not let these quibbles them from everything, Cinquecento keep this important an book. reasoned Finally, we have carefully poetry, insights on Bronzino's a poet, and sound as a of his life for in about his understanding suggestions thinking artistry more holistic light. However, we to do This content downloaded from 69.41.96.102 on Fri, 10 Jan 2014 22:37:43 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions