Portraits of Agnolo and Maddalena Doni
The two paintings portray Agnolo Doni (1474-1539), a wealthy cloth merchant and prominent figure among the Florentine upper class, and his wife, the noblewoman Maddalena Strozzi (1489-1540), whom they married on January 31, 1504. According to Giorgio Vasari (Le Vite, Edizione Giuntina 1568) the works were commissioned from Raphael by Agnolo: “While living in Florence, Agnolo Doni, who was very careful with his money on other things but willing to spend it, although with the greatest economy possible - about works of painting and sculpture, in which he took great delight, he asked [Rafael] to make portraits of himself and his wife; This may be seen in the possession of Giovan Battista, his son, in the beautiful and most comfortable house of Agnolo, in Corso de' Tintori, near the Canto degli Alberti, in Florence." Agnolo also commissioned the round painting of the Holy Family, known as the Tondo Doni, from Michelangelo Buonarroti. Both portraits were painted on a pendant and originally formed a diptych, joined by hinges that allowed the scenes painted on the back to be seen. These are two episodes, one consequence of the other, taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses: The Flood, on the back of the portrait of Agnolo, and the following rebirth of humanity thanks to Deucalion and Pyrrha, on the back of the portrait of Maddalena . These stories, painted in monochrome, were the work of a colleague of the young Raphael, whose identity remains anonymous but who is believed to be the so-called Maestro di Serumido, a figure identified by Federico Zeri, who attributed a group of works in a similar style to this same artist. The choice to paint the works in black and white reflects a taste for the Flemish styles that were popular in 15th and 16th century Florence, where diptych and triptych panels would traditionally have monochromatic decorations on the back. The two scenes should be interpreted as allegories that seem to wish fertility for marriage. Ovid tells how the gods allowed Deucalion and Pyrrha, a childless elderly couple, to be saved from the flood and restore life to humanity after it. At Zeus's command, the pair threw stones on their shoulders, and once they touched the oil, the stones became people: those thrown by Deucalion became men and those thrown by Pyrrha became women. These references strengthen the theory, put forward by most critics, that the portraits were commissioned for the young couple's marriage, dating somewhere between 1504 and 1506, the year the furniture for the marriage chamber was completed. of Donis by Francesco del Tasso and Morto da Feltre.
The first of Raphael's portraits was that of Maddalena: radiographic analysis has shown that he made changes to the background, initially conceived as an interior, so that it overlooked a landscape through a side opening, while the portrait of Agnolo He inserted himself directly into the landscape, creating visual continuity with that of his girlfriend. These two masterpieces mark an essential stage not only in the art of Raphael, but also in the tradition of Florentine portraiture which, by developing solutions previously formulated by Verrocchio in the Woman with Flowers and by Leonardo in the Mona Lisa, acquire a new style. natural. half-bust presentation. The links with the Mona Lisa are close enough to suggest that Raphael was able to study it in Florence, at least towards the end of 1504. Raphael distances himself from Leonardo's model by preferring to use a solid and clear approach to study it. space, lowering the horizon behind the figures and bringing them strongly to the foreground, according to models influenced by his own teacher, Pietro Perugino and by the Flemish painters of the late 15th century, such as Hans Memling. The fascinating use of the sfumato technique, as seen on the Mona Lisa, has been replaced by an absolutely clear use of form and color, by a descriptive language that stops at detailed description of faces, fabrics and jewelry . Maddalena's pendant is particularly significant, made up of a golden setting in the shape of a unicorn and three precious stones (ruby, emerald and sapphire), and a pearl, an element that alludes to virginal purity and marital fidelity.
In Vasari's period, the portraits were still in the family home on Corso Tintori, where they were seen by Raffaello Borghini (1584) and Giovanni Cinelli (1667). As of this date, there is not much information about them. They definitely remained with the Doni family if, in 1826, Leopold II Grand Duke of Tuscany was able to purchase them from the heirs and add them to the collection of paintings he was creating in the Palatine Gallery in the Palazzo Pitti. Since June 5, 2018, Doni's portraits have been displayed in the Uffizi Galleries alongside Michelangelo's Tondo Doni, hanging on new supports that allow the stories on their back sides to be admired.