Today #PMAMembers explored the roles of love, romance, and intrigue in art in a members-only tour. This painting, for example, was made at the time of ’s marriage to Eleanor of Toledo. It depicts Cosimo as the mythological musician and poet Orpheus after having calmed Cerberus, the doglike guardian to Hades from which Orpheus wished to retrieve his wife, Eurydice. All love stories have drama!
“Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus,” c. 1537–39, by Agnolo Bronzino
