Art Institute of ChicagoPublic domain

Francesco de' Medici

Alessandro Allori · c. 1560

Analyst brief

What the record supports

"Francesco de' Medici" is an oil on panel painting by Alessandro Allori, created circa 1560. The artwork measures 97.9 × 76.4 cm (38 1/2 × 30 1/8 in.) and is classified as a painting from Italy, belonging to the European Painting and Sculpture department. Alessandro Allori was an Italian painter who lived from 1535 to 1607.

The provenance records that the painting was probably owned by Prince Anatole Demidoff and later by Sulley and Co., London, who sold it to Edward R. Bacon. It was subsequently inherited by Virginia Purdy Bacon and sold at Christie's, London, in 1919 for ₤620, attributed to Bronzino. Duveen Brothers, New York, owned it by 1925 before it was acquired by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who gifted it to the Art Institute in 1965.

Evidence for certain aspects of the painting's early provenance, such as its listing as lot 1387 in the 1880 Villa San Donato sale, is based on existing research cited within the catalogue record. No information regarding exhibition history is provided in the supplied data.

Generated from the catalogue fields shown on this page. Nartmad does not assert attributions, valuations or prices that no cited source supports.

Provenance

Ownership history

Probably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, Florence (d. 1870) [see McComb 1928; the painting may be the “Portrait de Come di Médicis” attributed to Bronzino that was sold in the March 15, 1880 sale of the contents of the Villa San Donato as lot 1387]. Sulley and Co., London [according to Townsend and Howard 1919]; sold by Sulley and Co. to Edward R. Bacon (d. 1915), New York and Netherdale House, Turriff, Aberdeenshire [according to Townsend and Howard 1919]; at his death to his sister-in-law, Virginia Purdy Bacon; sold Christie’s, London, December 12, 1919, no. 69, as Bronzino, Portrait of a Youth, for ₤620 [according to an annotated sale catalogue in the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles]. Duveen Brothers, New York, by 1925 [according to McComb 1928 and information on the mount of a photograph of this picture in the Witt Library, London]. Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Pittsburgh, by 1932 [according to Berenson 1932]; given to the Art Institute, 1965.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

Literature

Published references

James B. Townsend and W. Stanton Howard, Memorial Catalogue of Paintings by Old and Modern Masters Collected by Edward R. Bacon (New York, 1919), p. 224, n. 282.
Arthur McComb, Agnolo Bronzino: His Life and Works (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1928), p. 73.  Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (Oxford, 1932), p. 116.
Bernard Berenson, Pitture italiane del Rinascimento (Milan, 1936), p. 100.
Andrea Emiliani, Il Bronzino (Milan, 1960), pp. 70, 336.
Bernard Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Florentine School, vol. 1 (London, 1963), p. 43.
John Maxon, “Some Recent Acquisitions,” Apollo 84 (1966), p. 221, fig. 2.
Luciano Berti, Il principe dello studiolo: Francesco I dei Medici e la fine del Rinascimento fiorentino (Florence, 1967; new ed. Pistoia, 2002), p. 33, fig. 20.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (New York, 1970), pp. 254, ill., 278.
Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972), pp. 36, 515, 571.
Edi Baccheschi, L’opera completa del Bronzino, Classici dell’arte 70 (Milan, 1973), p. 106, no. 130, ill.
Christie’s, New York, Important Paintings by Old Masters, sale cat. (Christie’s, January 12, 1978), p. 102, under lot 86.
Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th – 18th Centuries, vol. 2 (Florence, 1983), p. 858, no. 42.13b.

Comparables