“Madonna of Demidovs” and “Madonna of Stroganovs”: to the Question of the Sociocultural Space Forming

This work demonstrates results of study of museum and exhibition activity, which forming modern sociоcultural space at the examples of Renaissance and Mannerism art works from the Stroganovs and the Demidovs collections. The members of these families of Ural and Siberian industrialists, patrons of arts and philanthropists possessed the richest collections of world-class art works. Authors pay attention on such work as “Madonna del Popolo”, also known as “The Holy Family”. Now this masterpiece is stored in the Nizhny Tagil Municipal Museum of Fine Arts. Academician Igor Grabar, who saved it from destroy, considered that this artwork belongs to the authorship of Raphael Santi. The second masterpiece “The Holy Family with Infant Saint John the Baptist” by Agnolo Bronzino now is in the Pushkin State Art Museum (Moscow). Each painter in its own way have revealed the images of the Holy Family, especially Madonna and Infant Christ. Raphael did it in the traditions of the High Renaissance and Bronzino followed the best achievements of Mannerism. These paintings are especially important and valuable because Italian painter, architect and writer Giorgio Vasari, known as the founder of art history as branch of science, have paid his attention on them. The researchers give characteristics to members of the Stroganovs and the Demidovs families on the context of the stated problem. The President of the Academy of Arts and the Director of the Imperial Public Library, the Count A. S. Stroganov bought for his collection the “Holy Family with Infant Saint John the Baptist” by Agnolo Bronzino. The owner of Nizhny Tagil factories N. N. Demidov, who also was a Russian envoy to the Duchy Tuscany (Florence), is connected with inclusion of “Madonna” by Raphael in his art collection. In the study the materials of Grabar’s monograph are analyzed, the results of author’s own scientific research and the detailed section on the Demidovs’ Madonna attribution are given. There are used cultural research and art criticism methods of analysis, for instance, with attraction of “Madonna Doni” by Michelangelo. The acquisition and transfer to Russia of this unique incarnations of the “Holy family” enriched the historical and cultural space not only of the owners and people close to the families, but also of the wider social circles, because these paintings were becoming an integral part of museum and exhibition activities. As a modern example authors analyze the exhibition “Madonna by Raphael from Nizhny Tagil”, where the samples from the collection of the Demidovs, Ural and Sibirian magnates, in the Hall of Arts of the South Ural State University were presented. It is established that, using them, the university academic exhibition has fulfilled the important task of the complex formation of cultural identity of students in the interaction of its regional, national and supranational (universal) aspects

Towards a Reading of Bronzino's Burlesque Poetry

In his “Capitolo in Lode Del Dappoco,” a facetious tribute to the worthless person, the painter Agnolo Bronzino (1503-72) muses to his cat Corimbo about how he likes to spend his evenings: “Tu sai Corimbo, che tal volta io leggo/ così nel letto, per adormentarmi,/ o quando, com'or teco al fuoco seggo;/ e hai veduto anche scombiccherarmi/ qualche foglio e compor qualche cosetta/ per passar tempo e ‘1 cervel ricriarmi (You know Corimbo that I read like this in bed in order to fall asleep, or when as now, I sit with you at the fire; and you have seen me scribbling on some papers and composing some little thing in order to pass the time and refresh my mind) (“Capitolo in lode del dappoco,” 3 7-42).

A Hidden Sphinx by Agnolo Bronzino, “ex tabula Cebetis Thebani”

In 1568 Giorgio Vasari Described (from already dim memories) a now-famous allegorical painting that had been painted by Bronzino (Agnolo Allori) for Cosimo I de’ Medici. Now usually known as The Exposure of Luxury, the picture in the National Gallery in London seems by general acknowledgement to have been done around 1545 (Fig. I). According to Vasari's recollection Bronzino had “made a picture of singular beauty” that was sent to the king of France, François I. As best as Vasari could recall, the particulars of its complicated iconographic program were all devoted to variations on an erotic theme inasmuch as the picture included figures of “a nude Venus with [her son] Cupid, who was [shown] kissing her, and alongside [them] there were [other representations of] ‘Pleasure - il Piacere’ and ‘Idle Sport - il Giuoco’ accompanied by other ‘Loves-Amori.’