Alessandro Allori – Kathrin Teh

After the death of Alessandro Allori’s father, Agnolo Bronzino – a famous artist and a family friend – took him in at only five years old, and raised him not only as a son, but as a pupil.

Allori was raised within Bronzino’s Florentine workshop and became his most beloved student – following in his footsteps where not only art, but also patronage, were concerned. Due to ties from his venerable guardian, Allori worked alongside many famous artists for equally renowned clients in his time (including the Grand Duke of Tuscany, from the Medici clan). His art is unsurprisingly heavily influenced by Bronzino’s, especially his style of painting figures in a statuesque fashion – illustrating them to appear more like porcelain dolls, rather than real human beings. His painting “Venus and Cupid” shows the clearest parallel between his own art and that of his teacher.

Alessandro had many students learn under him, who contributed to the Florentine art movement, such as Giovanni Maria Butteri, Lodovico Cigoli, and several others including his own son, Cristofano Allori.

I find this style of painting subjects to be unnerving and unattractive, though I can understand its appeal nonetheless, and still consider Alessandro to be a great painter of the Mannerism period.