File:Portrait of Francesco I de' Medici (by Alessandro Allori).jpg

Following the death of his father in 1540, Alessandro Allori was adopted by the leading painter of sixteenth-century Florence and court artist to Cosimo I de’ Medici, Agnolo Bronzino. After training in Bronzino’s workshop, from 1554 to 1560 Allori travelled to Rome, where he studied antique statuary and the works of Michelangelo and became known as a portrait painter. After returning to Florence, Allori became involved in a number of projects relating to Florence’s recently formed Accademia del Disegno, including the decorations for the funeral of Michelangelo in 1564 and for the marriage the following year of Cosimo’s son Francesco to Joanna of Austria. Between 1570 and 1571 Allori executed the Pearl Fishers as part of the prestigious commission given to Vasari and his followers to decorate Francesco’s studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio. Its elegant artificiality reveals Allori’s careful study of Vasari’s decorative paintings in the Palazzo Vecchio, while the smooth bodies of the divers have a marmoreal quality like that found in Bronzino’s work, and Allori quoted directly from Michelangelo for certain poses. Thematically a seascape, the idyllic scene conveys a sense of unnatural, arrested energy that is reinforced by the use of soft colours. The Pearl Fishers is one of the most recognizable paintings from the second half of the sixteenth century in Florence, almost a symbol of the late Florentine maniera.

The present portrait of Allori’s most illustrious patron, Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1541–1587), is clearly informed by Bronzino, who habitually concentrated on details of costume, jewellery, and decoration, to the extent of conceiving the faces of his ducal sitters as polished stones rendered with a scrupulous surface frigidity in a consciously artificial style. By the 1580s, when the present portrait was painted, Allori’s smooth luminous, Bronzinesque style had begun to incorporate more naturalistic effects, especially a tactile sensitivity in defining the details of the clothing—in the present portrait, the fur on the cape is soft and almost seems a bit tousled—revealing Venetian influences also evident in the works of other Florentine artists of the day.