Eleonora di Toledo's Contribution to the Patronage of Painters at the Ducal Court

Eleonora di Toledo is best known for her patronage of Bronzino for several portraits of her and her children and the private chapel in the Quartiere di Eleonora of the Palazzo Vecchio. As Giorgio Vasari related in the Lives, she also bought the Palazzo Pitti with its adjacent gardens. She would have happily spent 40,000 scudi in one year to see it in good conditions, he had it. But these were not Eleonora’s only contributions to the artistic patronage at the ducal court of Cosimo I de’ Medici. Based on archival research, this paper will provide new evidence concerning Eleonora’s contribution to the patronage of Francesco Bachiacca, Agnolo Bronzino, Bernardo Buontalenti, Giovanni Stradano (Jan van der Straet), and several other lesser-known painters and decorative artists in the final decade of her life. It shows that the artistic patronage at the Florentine ducal court was very much a hymeneal affair.