Baccio del Bianco and the Cultural Politics of the Medici Court

Baccio del Bianco’s career, an artist with a polyvalent education and multiple talents, is examined in the light of the artistic politics dominant in Florence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, as a result of a cultural programme carefully coordinated by the Medici court: a clear emphasis on the manual, productive aspect of the arts, and on the “applied arts,” and a close connection between the artistic domain and the scientific one. For both of these fields the concept and practice of disegno is central; the almost exclusive use of the graphic medium by Baccio del Bianco and the circle of artists around Giulio Parigi is considered in relation to the role of the artist in this courtly milieu.