Bronzino and the Supreme Poet. An allegorical portrait of Dante in the Palazzo Vecchio

On occasion of the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, the exhibition “Bronzino and the Supreme Poet. An allegorical portrait of Dante in Palazzo Vecchio ”, presents to the public the“ Allegorical Portrait of Dante ”, work by Agnolo Bronzino. Giorgio Vasari tells us the story of this lunette in the Life of Bronzino. According to Vasari's reconstruction, the portrait of Dante, an oil on canvas dated 1532-1533, was commissioned to the painter together with the portraits of Petrarch and Boccaccio to decorate a room in the house of the Florentine banker Bartolomeo Bettini. The ambitious project, which remained unfinished, involved the major painters active in the city at that time and anticipated themes dear to the writers of the future Florentine Academy such as the superiority of the Tuscan language and the relationship between art and poetry. Of the three portraits commissioned from Bronzino, only Dante's has survived to this day.