Subversive Painting

Giovanni da San Giovanni and His Circle in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Hansen, Morten Steen

Morten Steen Hansen’s richly illustrated book describes a new incarnation of the court artist in the seventeenth century; one who bonded with male aristocrats through a transgressive wit. The study centers on the painter-poet Giovanni da San Giovanni (1592–1636), the leading fresco painter in Florence of his day. Against commonly held assumptions about artists at the absolutist courts, Hansen argues that in Florence artistic satire could even be directed against the patrons, Tuscan culture resisting containment by the Medici rulers.