Santi di Tito

Born in Florence in 1536, Santi di Tito trained first under Bastiano da Montecarlo and then under Bronzino. While clinging to Bronzino’s preference for luminous, sculpted volumes, however, he tempered those volumes with a clarity of composition and a naturalism demanded by the dictates of the Counter-Reformation. After training in Florence, Santi di Tito moved to Rome, dwelling in the city from 1560 to 1564 and it was probably here that Santi added a layer of complexity to the naturalism and calm simplicity that were such essential features of his painting and his major contribution to art in Florence, whither he returned in 1564 to take part in producing the apparatus for Michelangelo’s funeral. For the Studiolo of Francesco I de’ Medici, he painted The Creation of Amber, Hercules and Iole and The Crossing of the Red Sea, all three of which display an interest in rendering sentiment that is totally absent from the tenets of Mannerism.

In this portrait, the hand of Santi is instantly clear in the firm, oval design of the sitters’ faces and the porcelain-like treatment of the flesh, with a faint pink blush on the cheeks of both mother and daughter. These sensitive touches are the product of a specific method involving the use of dense, compact pigments that make it extremely easy to identify Santi’s hand. This, because while he was always careful to capture his sitter’s physical resemblance, he invariably displayed a clear, easily identifiable approach to draughtsmanship over the years – a stylistic ploy that also uses the sitters’ solid volumes to convey their communicative expressions.

The ovals of the sitters’ faces are firm and immediate while their clothing is brought to life by highlighting and by such decorative details as the gilt buttons or the slashed sleeves that impart variety and sumptuousness to their attire. In this, Santi is following in the footsteps of Bronzino and his Portrait of Eleonora of Toledo with Her Son Giovanni, where his virtuosity reached a new pinnacle in the depiction of the sitter’s gown, thus setting a trend for the entire generation of Florentine artists that followed. The daughter, too, with her gesture of modesty emulating that of her mother, wears a gown made of fabrics that gleam in different ways from one another, the artist displaying immense skill in the rendering of the satin sleeve with its small decorations in relief.