Focus on Deposition of Christ (Bronzino) and explain the History.
The painting was originally commissioned to be the altarpiece for the chapel of Eleonora of Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Shortly after it was completed in 1545, Eleonora's husband, Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, shipped the picture to Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle, a chief counselor of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, as a diplomatic gift. Granvelle installed it in his private chapel in Besançon. In 1549, Granvelle commissioned the construction of a grander funerary chapel on his Besançon estate. A year later, he died. The new chapel, with Bronzino's altarpiece installed, was consecrated in 1551. Subsequently, there is no record of the work from the seventeenth century until the French Revolution. To preserve it after Granvelle's chapel was partially destroyed, the picture was housed in the Besançon city hall from 1793 until it became a part of the collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts when the museum opened in 1834.After sending the original to Granvelle in 1545, Cosimo requested a copy for Eleonora's chapel that Bronzino painted eight years later in 1553. The second version is the one found in the Palazzo Vecchio today.
To accompany the original altarpiece, Bronzino painted side panels depicting John the Baptist (the patron saint of Florence) on the left and Saint Cosmas (a patron saint of the Medici family and Cosimo's name-saint) on the right. Their inclusion in Eleonora's chapel was as much a political statement as a religious one and these panels may have been portraits of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (Cosimo's father) as John the Baptist and Cosimo as Saint Cosmas. At some point between 1545 and 1553, Eleonora requested that Bronzino replace the side panels of the saints with more pious panels depicting the Annunciation. This must have been a low priority because the new altar wings were not completed until 1564, two years after Eleonora's death. The Annunciation panels can be viewed in Eleonora's chapel today.
By 1553, the side panels of the saints were in storage. They were last recorded as being in the Medici inventory in 1609 and both were considered lost until the John the Baptist panel resurfaced in 1951. It is now housed in the Getty Center. A fragment purportedly of the Saint Cosmas panel has recently been rediscovered, but it is suspected to be a forgery associated with art dealer Giulano Ruffini.
Musée des Beaux-Arts Giovanni dalle Bande Nere Charles V Palazzo Vecchio Annunciation Florence Nicolas Perrenot de Granvelle Eleonora of Toledo Giulano Ruffini John the Baptist Bronzino altarpiece Holy Roman Emperor Besançon Cosimo I de' Medici Getty Center left Saint Cosmas French Revolution