Bernardino Poccetti and the Art of Religious Painting at the End of the Florentine Renaissance

By almost any measure Bernardino Barbatelli, called Poccetti, was a successful and sought after painter in late sixteenth-century Florence, but his works have remained largely overlooked. This study situates representative examples of his religious painting within their respective contexts to demonstrate how Poccetti and his patrons negotiated the increasingly fraught terrain of sacred painting in the period of religious reform. These case studies demonstrate how patrons ranging from the Dominicans to the Carthusians to prominent Florentine patricians relied on Poccetti’s skill in creating compelling narratives that reflected current concerns within the Catholic world. In the process, Poccetti invoked an august Florentine tradition of fresco painting, shaping it to better address the demands placed on religious imagery at the end of the Renaissance.

Douglas N. Dow is Associate Professor of Art History at Kansas State University, where he teaches courses on Renaissance and Baroque art. Co-editor of Visualizing the Past in Italian Renaissance Art, he is also the author of Apostolic Iconography and Florentine Confraternities in the Age of Reform. His other publications have appeared in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals and focus on questions of historiography, style, and artistic reform in late sixteenth-century Florence.