Alessandro Allori

Florentine Mannerist painter, adopted and trained by Bronzino, whose name he and his son, Cristofano (1577–1621), later adopted. They both were portrait painters at the Medici court, and executed religious works for the churches of Florence.

Alessandro di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino Allori (May 31, 1535 - September 22, 1607) was an Italian portrait painter of the late Mannerist Florentine school.

Born in Florence, he was brought up and trained in art by his uncle, Angelo Bronzino, whose name he sometimes assumed in his pictures. In some ways, Allori is the last of the line of prominent Florentine painters, of generally undiluted Tuscan artistic heritage: Andrea del Sarto worked with Fra Bartolomeo (as well as Leonardo Da Vinci), Pontormo briefly worked under Andrea, and trained Bronzino, who trained Allori.

Freedburg derides Allori as derivative, claiming he illustrates "the ideal of Maniera by which art (and style) are generated out of pre-existing art." It can be said of late phase mannerist painting in Florence, that the city that had early breathed life into statuary with the works of masters like Donatello and Michelangelo, was still so awed by them that it petrified the poses of figures in painting. While by 1600 the Baroque elsewhere was beginning to give life to painted figures, Florence was painting two-dimensional statues.

He is the father of Cristofano Allori (1577-1621).

Christ and the Samaritan Woman, (Altarpiece, 1575, Santa Maria Novella, now Prato) Road to Calvary, (1604, Rome) Dead Christ and Angels, (Museum Fine Arts, Budapest) Pearl Fishing, (1570-72, Studiolo of Francesco I (Palazzo Vecchio), Florence)image Sussana and the Elders Allegory of Human Life, The Miracle of St. Peter Walking on Water,image Venus and Cupid, image (Musée Fabre, Montpellier)

In 2006 the BBC foreign correspondent Sir Charles Wheeler returned an original Alessandro Allori painting to the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.