Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori A Genealogy of Florentine Art

"Pilliod compares information from documents she has discovered with Vasari's versions of the artists' lives and shows how Vasari manipulated their biographies - for example, suppressing any mention of Pontormo's status as a court artist, including his salary from Duke Cosimo I - in order to diminish their reputations, to obliterate memory of the traditional Florentine workshops, and to enhance the importance of the Academy instead. She also discusses such subjects as the evidence for Pontormo's association with the Medici court; Pontormo's house and its place in the urban fabric of Florence; Bronzino's and Pontormo's intimate association with poets and theatrical spectacles; and Allori's painted challenge to Vasari's view of the artistic scene in sixteenth-century Florence.