Deposition of Christ (Bronzino)

The dead Christ is lowered into his mother's lap amid a tight, brilliant crowd of mourners, putti wheeling overhead with the cross, all of it keyed to Bronzino's jewel-bright blues, pinks, and golds and his cool, enamel-smooth flesh (John 19:38-42). Where his master Pontormo, whose own Deposition is also in this collection, made the subject swirl with anxious feeling, Bronzino composes it with courtly polish and control - grief made elegant. Painted for the private chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Duke Cosimo I, in the Palazzo Vecchio, it is Florentine Mannerism at its most refined and richly colored.