Pontormo

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This figure from the Deposition from the Cross (1525-1528) is believed to be a self-portrait of Pontormo as Joseph of Arimathea.

Jacopo Carucci (May 24, 1494 — January 2, 1557), usually known as Jacopo da Pontormo, Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo, was a Florentine Mannerist painter and portraitist given to contorted poses, distorted perspective and peculiar, markedly unnatural colors, which appear to mirror his restless, neurotic temperament.

Biography

Jacopo Carucci was born at Pontormo, near Empoli. Vasari relates how the orphaned boy, "young, melancholy and lonely," was shuttled around as a young apprentice:

"Jacopo had not been many months in Florence before Bernardo Vettori sent him to stay with Leonardo da Vinci, and then with Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo, and finally, in 1512, with Andrea del Sarto, with whom he did not remain long, for after he had done the cartoons for the arch of the Servites, it does not seem that Andrea bore him any good will, whatever the cause may have been."

The Deposition from the Cross: A group of almost immaterial figures in transparent garments is arranged so as to represent a sequence of downward movements, rather than a single scene.

Pontormo painted only in and around Florence, supported by Medici patronage. A foray to Rome, largely to see Michelangelo's work, influenced his later style. Haunted faces and elongated bodies are characteristic of his work. An example of Pontormo's early style is The Visitation of the Virgin and St Elizabeth, with its dancelike, balanced figures, painted from 1514 to 1516 for the parish church of St. Michele in Carmignano, a few miles from Florence. In 1519-20 Pontormo also took part in the fresco decoration of the salon of the Medici country villa at Poggio a Caiano, not far from Florence. There he painted frescoes in a pastoral genre style, very uncommon for Florentine painters; their subject was the obscure classical myth of Vertumnus and Pomona in a lunette.

In 1522, when the plague broke out in Florence, Pontormo left for the Certosa di Galuzzo, a cloistered Carthusian monastery where the monks followed vows of silence. He painted a series of frescoes, now quite damaged, on the passion and resurrection of Christ.

Deposition from the Cross

The large altarpiece canvas for the Brunelleschi-designed Cappella Capponi in Santa Felicita in Florence is considered by many his surviving masterpiece (1528). The decoration in the dome of the chapel is now lost, but four roundels with the Evangelists still adorn the pendentives, worked on by both Pontormo and Agnolo Bronzino. At the altar is Pontormo's masterpiece Deposition from the Cross. The figures, with their sharply modeled forms and bright, harsh colors are united in a stark and flattened space. Those who are lowering Christ appear as anguished as the mourners. This bleak and tumultuous oval of figures took three years for Pontormo to complete. He collaborated on the rest of its decor so intimately with Bronzino, his chief pupil, that specialists dispute which roundels each of them painted. The Annunciation frescoed on adjacent columns resembles the Visitation at Carmignano in both the style and swaying postures. The nearby Uffizi gallery holds his mystical Supper at Emmaus as well as portraits. Many of Pontormo's well known canvases, such as Joseph being sold to Potiphar and the Martyrdom of St Maurice and the Theban Legion (c.1531) depict crowds milling about in awkward contrapposto of greatly varied positions. His portraits, acutely characterized, show similarly mannerist proportions.

Lost or damaged works

Between 1989 and 2002, Pontormo's Portrait of a Halberdier held the title of the world's most expensive painting by an Old Master.

Many of Pontormo's works have been damaged, including the lunnettes for the cloister in the Carthusian monastery of Galluzo. Most tragic is the loss of the unfinished frescoes for the church of San Lorenzo which consumed the last decade of his life. His frescoes depicted a judgement day composed of an unsettling morass of writhing figures. The film of Giovanni Fago, Pontormo, a heretical love evokes his lonely and ultimately paranoid dedication to this project, which he often kept shielded from unlookers. The remaining drawings, showing a bizarre and mystical ribboning of bodies, had an almost hallucinatory effect. Florentine figure painting had mainly stressed linear and upright sculptural figures. Jesus in the Sistine Chapel wall is a massive painted block stern in his judgement; by contrast, Pontormo's Jesus in the Last Judgment squirms sinuously, as if rippling through the heavens in a final dance. Heaps of liquified angels amass about him. In his Last Judgment Pontormo went against pictorial and theological tradition by placing God the Father at the feet of Christ, instead of above him, an idea Vasari found deeply disturbing:

Critical assessment and legacy

Vasari's Life of Pontormo, depicting him as withdrawn and steeped in neurosis while at the center of the artists and patrons of his lifetime, makes a fine introduction to the artistic life of the 16th century. A diary of his last two years survives. His personality and idiosyncrasies gave Pontormo a style that few were able to imitate with the exception of Bronzino. He shares some of the mannerism of Rosso Fiorentino and of Parmigianino. In some ways he anticipated the Baroque as well as the tensions of El Greco. His eccentricities also resulted in an original sense of composition. At best, his compositions are cohesive. The figures in the Deposition, for example, appear to sustain each other: removal of any one of them would cause the edifice to collapse. In lesser works, as in the Joseph canvases, the crowding makes for a confusing pictorial melee. It is in the later drawings that we see a graceful fusion of bodies in a composition which includes the oval frame of Jesus in the Last Judgement.

Anthology of works

Early works (until 1521)

• Leda and the Swan (uncertain attribution) (1512-1513) - 55x40 cm, [Uffizi Gallery], Florence.
• Holy Conversation (1514) - Fresco, 223 x 196 cm, Santa Annunziata, San Luca Chapel, Florence.
• Episode of Hospital Life (1514) - Fresco, 91 x 150 cm, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence [1]
• Veronica and the Image (1515) - Fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Medici Chapel.
• Visitation (1514-1516) - Fresco, 392 x 337 cm, Santa Annunziata, Florence. [2]
• Lady with Basket of Spindles (1516-1517) - 76 x 54 cm, Uffizi, Florence (attributed also to Andrea del Sarto)
• Marriage Bedchamber Panels for Pier Francesco Borgherini. (Two other panels by Bachiacca)
  • Joseph reveals himself to his brothers - 35 x 142, National Gallery, London.
  • Joseph sold to Potiphar (1516-17) - 58 x 50 cm, National Gallery, London. [3]
  • Joseph's Brothers Beg for Help (1515) [4]
  • Pharaoh with his Butler and Baker (1516-1517) - 58 x 50 cm, National Gallery. [5]
  • Joseph in Egypt (1517-18) - 93 x 110 cm, National Gallery. [6]
• St. Quentin (1517) - 163 x 103 cm, Pinacoteca comunale, Sansepolcro (Attributed to Giovanmaria Pichi or Pontormo)
• Portrait of Furrier (1517-1518) - 69 x 50 cm, Louvre, Paris. [7]
• Madonna with Child and Saints (1518) - Oil on canvas, 214 x 185, San Michele Visdomini, Florence.
• Portrait of Musician (1518-1519) - 86 x 67 cm, Uffizi. [8]
• St Anthony Abbott (1518-1519) - Uffizi, Florence. [9]
• Portrait of Cosimo the Elder (1518-1519) - 86 x 65 cm, Uffizi, Florence. [10]
• John the Evangelist and The Archangel Gabriel (1519) - From an altarpiece, 173 x 59 cm, Church of S. Michele, Empoli.
• Adoration of the Magi (1519-21) - 85 x 190 cm, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
• Vertumnus and Pomona (1519-1521) - Fresco 461 x 990 cm, Villa Medici, Poggio a Caiano.
• Study of Man's Head - Drawing, Metropolitan Museum of Art[11]

(1522-1530)

• 1520-30: Mary and Child with Four saints (Metropolitan Museum)
• 1522 ca: Portrait of two friends, 95x97 cm, Cini Collection, Venezia
• 1522 ca: Madonna with Child & Two Saints, 72x60 cm, Uffizi.(Bronzino?)[12]
• 1522-1524: Holy Family with St John, 120x99 cm, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg,[13]
• 1523-1525: Madonna with Child and St John, 87x67, Uffizi. Attributed to Rosso Fiorentino.
• 1523-1525: Pontormo retires to Carthusian Monastery of Galluzzo, near Florence (see originals and copies by Empoli) [14] Fresco series
  • Prayer in Gesthemane, 300x290 cm.
  • Christ before Pilate, 300x292 cm.[15]
  • Walk to Calvary, 300x292 cm. [16]
  • Deposition, 300x292 cm.
  • Resurrection, 232x291cm cm.[17]
• 1525: Supper in Emmaus, 230x173 cm, Uffizi. [18]
• 1525: Study of a Carthusian Monk, Drawing, Uffizi.[19]
• 1525: Madonna and child and two angels (San Francisco Museum Art) [20]
• 1525-1526: Portrait of young man in Pink, 85x61, Communal gallery, Lucca.
• 1525-1526: Tabernacle of Boldrone, San Giuliano, 275x127, Crucifix with Madonna and St. John, 307x175 and Sant'Agostino, 257x127 cm, Galleria dei Disegni, Florence.
• 1526: Birth of St. John Baptist, Uffizi. [21]
• 1526-1527: Saint Jerome Penitent, 105x80 cm, Landesmuseum, Hannover.
• 1526-1528: Madonna with Child & St John, 52x40 cm, Galleria Corsini, Florence. (Bronzino?)
• 1527-1528: Madonna with Child & St John, 89x73, Uffizi. [22]
• 1525-1526: Matthew, Luke, & John; 70 cm, St. Felicita, Capponi Chapel, Florence. (Mark by Bronzino).
• 1526-1528: Deposition, 313x192 cm, St. Felicita, Capponi Chapel. [23]
• 1527-1528: Annunciation, 368x168 cm, fresco, Sta. Felicita, Capponi Chapel.[24]
• 1528-1529: Visitation, 202x256, Church of S. Michele, Carmignano.[25]
• 1528-1529: Madonna with Child, Saint Anne and Four saints, 228x176, Louvre, Paris. [26]
• 1529-1530: Eleven thousand martyrs, Palazzo Pitti, Florence.

Mature works (after 1530)

• 1531: Martyrdom of San Maurizio and the Theban Legions.(Pontormo & Bronzino), 65x73, Uffizi.
• 1531: Noli me Tangere, Casa Buonarotti (Pontormo or Bronzino)[27]
• 1532-1533: Portrait of Lady in Red with puppy, 89x70, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt (Bronzino?)
• 1532-1534: Venus and Cupid, 128x197 cm, Galleria dell'Accademia,
• 1534-1535 ca.: Portraits of Alessandro de' Medici,, 97x79, Philadelphia Museum of Art, [28] and Art Instute of Chicago, [29]
• 1535: Adam and Eve, 43x31 cm, Uffizi.
• 1535 Study for the Three Graces, Drawing, Uffizi. [30]
• 1537: Portrait of Halbadier, 52x40 cm, Paul Getty Museum, Malibu. [31]
• 1541-1544: Portrait of Niccolò Ardinghelli, 102x97, National Gallery, Washington DC. [32]
• 1543-1545: Portrait of Maria Salviati, 87x71 , Uffizi. [33]
• c1545: Sacrificial Scene, tempera cloth 85x148, Capodimonte Museum, Naples.
• 1554-1556: My book (Pontormo's diary)), National Library of Florence.
• Portrait of Pontormo by Bronzino [34]
• Drawing of St. Francis (MFA, Boston) [35]
• Drawings for San Lorenzo Fresco [36][37][38]

External links

• Pontormo's paintings and drawings illustrated
• Giorgio Vasari's Vita (English)
• Pontormo's 1554 diary
• Frescoes at San Lorenzo