Bernardino Poccetti’s ceiling of the loggia in Palazzo Marzichi-Lenzi: An iconological study

Abstract

Bernardino Barbatelli, known as Il Poccetti(1542–1612), was an Italian Mannerist artist, who was a prolific fresco painter, decorator, and printmaker. During his artistic career, he completed religious frescoes for Santa Maria Novella, Saint Mark, the Cloister of Santissima Annunziata, and the vault at the entrance of the Hospital of the Innocents. He also decorated numerous secular ceilings, façades, and palaces in Florence, including the ceiling with Apollo and the Muses of 1575, for Casa Zuccari (now Kunsthistorisches Institute), the sale of Palazzo Capponi Lungarno of 1583–85, the sgraffitifaçade of the Palazzo of Bianca Cappello of 1580, and the grotteschi ceiling in the loggia of the Palazzo Marzichi-Lenzi of 1585, the last of which is the focus of this study (Figs. 1 and 2)1.