Francesco Del Brina (Florence, 1529 – 1586), Nativity

Francesco Del Brina (Florence, 1529 – 1586)

Nativity

Oil on panel, 70 x 47,5 cm

With frame, 80 x 58 cm

Critical note Prof. Alessandro Delpriori

Born into a family of artists – his brother Giovanni, with whom he often worked together, was an equally prominent figure in the pictorial panorama of Florence in the second half of the sixteenth century – Francesco Del Brina (known alternatively as Brina or Brini) trained in the industrious workshop of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, one of the most lively cultural environments of sixteenth-century Tuscany. According to the American scholar Freedberg, one of the personalities closest to Ghirlandaio, Michele Tosini, also known as Michele di Ridolfo (Florence, 1503 –1577), directly followed the training of the young Florentine painter. From him he learned the pictorial dictates of Vasari's doctrine, which he followed to the letter throughout his entire production. Vasari himself, from whom Brina deliberately draws inspiration, makes a rapid reference, unchanged between the Torrentiniana and Giuntina editions of the Lives, to the activity of the artist, who is presented, in the appendix to the life of Grardo the miniaturist as a “young Florentine painter” who collaborates with Gherardo del Fora in the creation of the fresco on the external façade of the church of Sant'Egidio in Florence. Among the most significant projects concerning the first phase of Francesco's career is certainly the one relating to the design of the installations for the triumphal entry into the city of Francesco de' Medici following his marriage to Giovanna of Austria: there are numerous preparatory sketches for these ephemeral architectures – many of which were exhibited at the acclaimed Exhibition of Vasari Drawings at Palazzo Pitti in 1966 – which demonstrate Brina's great technical expertise not only as a painter but also as a draftsman. The painter was active between the 1950s and 1960s at the Cathedral of San Gimignano, where he created the lost fresco of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, and at Palazzo Vecchio, alongside Vasari's numerous students: in this period, his hand was indistinguishable. Of particular importance in defining the style of Brina's maturity is a painting signed and dated 1570, the Conception for St. Michael in Visdomini (Paatz, IV, p. 208 n. 42). Although the works attributed to him are not very numerous, those certainly ascribed to him show the artist's ability to intelligently converge the suggestions drawn from the production of Vasari and the activity of Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio: this is the case of the Holy Family of the Bandini Museum in Fiesole, of the Holy Family in the Palatine Gallery and of the Madonna and Saints from the church of SS. Iacopo and Lorenzo and now in the deposits of the Florentine Galleries. The altarpiece of 1570 for S. Michele in Visdomini is worth a fixed point to identify Francesco's style, even though the painting is now very dark and deteriorated: a rather archaic culture is revealed, with frequent references to Andrea del Sarto - the Virgin follows the gesture of Andrea's Madonna in the altarpiece for the Vallombrosan monks, now in Palazzo Pitti - while the dense composition follows the lines of the cumbersome altarpieces of Florentine painting of the time dominated by Vasari, even if it rejects the most exaggerated Mannerist forcing.