Performing palettes: Doni, Anguissola, and the origins of poeitic self-portraiture

Abstract

Abstract Agnolo Bronzino performs a visual experiment in Anton Francesco Doni’s I Marmi (Venice, 1552). “Do you see these pigments?” he asks as he shows his palette to a group of Florentine artisans. Bronzino had mentally dismantled a painting by Andrea del Sarto and loaded his palette with those pigments that Sarto would have used. With them, he painted a copy of the Sarto. How was this strange mind game rendered as a form of art criticism, as a demonstration of craft and technique, and as a visual exercise for a lay audience who could not paint? Doni’s Bronzino invited viewers and readers to think and see with the imagination and eyes of painters, a strategy adopted by painters of self-portraits, notably Anguissola Sofonisba’s Self-Portrait (Łańcut), c.1555.