Dwarf Morgant

Description

The Dwarf Morgante, nickname for Braccio di Bartolo, was the most famous and popular of the court dwarfs of Cosimo I de' Medici, who lived in Florence in the second half of the 16th century. In many European courts there were dwarfs, also called homunculi, who were used as jesters and sometimes mocked and ridiculed. Many were portrayed in official works on a par with outlandish curiosities such as exotic extravagant animals. The Dwarf Morgante was portrayed by the major artists of the time to please his lord Cosimo. The most famous work about him is the Fountain of the Bacchus in the Boboli Gardens, where the sculptor Valerio Cioli portrayed him, already later in life, in all his overweening full-bodiedness naked and straddling a tortoise. Agnolo Bronzino painted a curious double portrait of him in which Morgante is depicted as a "uccellatore" (bird hunter with a bait-probably an owl-that was used to attract birds to traps set nearby). Morgante holds in one hand an owl tied with a string and waits. On the back is seen the result of his hunt. Note how the double painting fits into the discussion that Varchi introduced at the court of Florence in those very years concerning the comparison of the arts, that is, the primacy of sculpture or painting. Bronzino had thus executed a painting that could be viewed on several sides, like a sculpture, in which the temporal dimension is also represented: the before and after the hunt is depicted there.