Mirabello Cavalori

Vasari mentions Mirabello Cavalori in the 1568 edition of his Lives of the Artists along with other painters “who have made and still make such painted works in oil, in fresco, and portraits, that one may hope for their most honourable success”, adding “Mirabello has made many portraits, and particularly that of the most illustrious Prince more than once, and many others owned by divers Florentine gentlemen”. Vasari certainly held Cavalori in great esteem because he summoned him to join the group of artists charged with decorating the Studiolo of Francesco I in Palazzo Vecchio, which was adorned with bronze sculptures and two registers of painted panels between 1570 and 1572, all of them produced by the finest names in the second generation of Florentine Mannerists. Mirabello was responsible in the Studiolo for painting the Wool Factory, a subject with which he must have had a particular affinity because his father Antonio was a wool merchant. He was also commissioned in the Studiolo to paint an oval on one of the doors depicting Lavinia at the Altar, a work – like the Wool Factory – remarkable for its strongly dramatic mood with its elongated figures, nervous drapery, swirling composition, icy palette and intense chiaroscuro reminiscent of the work of Jacopo Pontormo. These stylistic features also recur in a splendid panel depicting Isaac Blessing Jacob formerly in the Loeser collection in Florence before it was sold on the antique market (https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-1666161)

Cavalori’s work as a portrait artist, lauded by Vasari, must have been extremely popular with wealthy patrons. In addition to the interesting group of Florentine worthies (fifteen in all, each with his name written on his collar) accompanying the saint in an altarpiece depicting St. Thomas Aquinas and His Devotees (signed and dated 1568. Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, in storage), a further ten portraits by Cavalori have been identified to date (see A. Nesi, Mirabello Cavalori ritrattista tra devozione e quotidianità, in “Arte Cristiana” XCVII, 2009, 853, pp. 271-278), including the portrait in the Pinacoteca di Faenza.