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Michele Tosini and the Ghirlandaio Workshop in Cinquecento Florence
Heidi J. Hornik
Heidi J. Hornik is Professor of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art History at Baylor University in Texas. She received her degrees from Cornell University and The Pennsylvania State University. In addition to publications on Michele Tosini, Hornik has co-authored three interdisciplinary volumes on art and theology, Illuminating Luke, and co-edited one book, Interpreting Christian Art, with Mikeal C. Parsons.
This book sets out to establish Michele Tosini’s critical role in sixteenth-century Mannerist art in Florence. He was well-trained, well-educated and well-liked, and created a highly productive workshop environment that not only succeeded but thrived in one of the most competitive ages of artistic production in the history of art.
To date, scholarship executed on Tosini (Carlo Gamba in 1928, Sydney Freedberg in 1974) has produced a plethora of misunderstandings about Tosini’s role in the Florentine artistic community. The verdict that Tosini was a “hack” painter who could make his works look like those of more “established” painters in order to get commissions, and that he was an uneducated “second-rate” painter who could not formulate complex iconographical programs, is at odds with the evidence presented in this current research. Tosini was much more than just “the right man in the right place at the right time”. He not only promoted Mannerism, but was part of its process; indeed, the formation of the Accademia del Disegno took place at the height of his artistic career. Given his business acumen it is perhaps understandable that “misunderstandings” have arisen. (To borrow from William Wallace, Tosini can legitimately be thought of as “Genius as Entrepreneur”.)
Michele Tosini and the Ghirlandaio Workshop in Cinquecento Florence is not only essential reading for all students of Late Renaissance / Mannerist art history, but a majestic story of the process of artistic endeavor and how it unfolds that is so deeply admired today.
