A detailed examination of the 16th-century Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo, created by Agnolo Bronzino, the chief painter of the Medici court. The study reveals the Chapel as an intimately devised decorative programme that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule.

The Chapel of Eleonora was the first painted chapel to be commissioned by the Medici in the 16th century. Was the chapel a gift from Duke Cosimo to his bride, Eleonora? Or did she commission a chapel in order to have private devotions in her native Spanish? These and other speculations are addressed in Cox-Rearick's book. Her study is the first monograph on Agnolo Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora of Toledo. Bronzino, chief painter to the Medici court, was largely responsible for the invention in Florence of the highly self-conscious, elegant Maniera style. Cox-Rearick interweaves her account of the Medici biography with an examination of Bronzino's commission in the broader context of his oeuvre. Cox-Rearick reveals the Chapel of Eleonora as an intimately devised decorative programme that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule. Detailed colour photographs of the newly restored art document this early tour de force by a major artist whose works are still relatively unexamined.