The Visitation

This luminous copper was painted by the Florentine artist Lorenzo Vaiani. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, Vaiani was an artist of 'good promise' and a pupil of Agnolo Bronzino, the leading painter in Florence in the mid-16th century. Vaiani was enrolled at the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in 1564 and was later among the artists employed under Vasari's direction to decorate Francesco I de' Medici's Studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. He was a proficient fresco painter, but very few easel paintings by him are known, making this a rare signed example. The rich color palette, so typical of Florentine Mannerist painting and reminiscent of Bronzino's ward and pupil Alessandro Allori, is here enhanced by the smooth copper support. Vaiani was also active as a portraitist, as attested by his official likeness of Eleonora di Toledo, painted in 1584 and today in the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, and his Portrait of Agnolo Guicciardini, painted for the Accademia in 1596. Vaiani died on June 2, 1598, and was buried in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

We are grateful to Carlo Falciani for proposing the attribution on the basis of photographs (verbal communication, February 2026).