Pontormo
Portrait of Pontormo from an edition of Giorgio Vasari's Vite. The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters Sculptors and Architects, or Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori as it was originally known
Birth name	Jacopo Carucci
Born	May 24, 1494(1494-05-24) Pontormo, Italy
Died	January 2, 1557 (aged 62) Florence, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Field	Painting
Training	Leonardo da Vinci, Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea del Sarto
Movement	Mannerism

Jacopo Carucci (May 24, 1494 — January 2, 1557), usually known as Jacopo da Pontormo, Jacopo Pontormo or simply Pontormo, was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist from the Florentine school. Events 1218 - The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. 1276 - Magnus Ladulås is crowned Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Events 366 - The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers invading the Roman Empire. Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Painting (pān'tīng in Art, is the practice of applying Color to a Surface (support base such as e Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( April 15 1452 – May 2 1519 was an Italian Polymath, having been a scientist Mathematician, Engineer Mariotto di Bigio di Bindo Albertinelli ( October 13, 1474 - November 5, 1515) was a High Renaissance Italian painter Piero di Cosimo (also known as Piero di Lorenzo) ( January 2, 1462 &ndash April 12, 1522) was an Florentine painter Andrea del Sarto (1486 &ndash 1531 was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early- Mannerism Mannerism is a period of European art which emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. Events 1218 - The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. 1276 - Magnus Ladulås is crowned Events 366 - The Alamanni cross the frozen Rhine River in large numbers invading the Roman Empire. Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest Mannerism is a period of European art which emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. The Florentine School refers to artists in from or influenced by the naturalistic style developed in the 14th century largely through the efforts of Giotto di Bondone His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm perspectival regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine Renaissance. In Art and Painting, style can refer either to the Aesthetic values followed in choosing what to Paint (and how or to the physical techniques Perspective (from Latin perspicere to see through in the graphic arts such as drawing is an approximate representation on a flat surface (such as paper of an image as it is perceived The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere He is famous for his use of twining poses, coupled with ambiguous perspective; his figure often seem to float in an uncertain environment, unhampered by the forces of gravity.

Biography and Early Work

Visitation, 1514-16; Fresco; 392 x 337 cm; SS. Annunziata, Florence

Jacopo Carucci was born at Pontorme, near Empoli. Empoli is a town in Tuscany, Italy, about 30 km southwest of Florence. Vasari relates how the orphaned boy, "young, melancholy and lonely," was shuttled around as a young apprentice:

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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. Giorgio Vasari ( 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian painter and Architect, who is today famous Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci ( April 15 1452 – May 2 1519 was an Italian Polymath, having been a scientist Mathematician, Engineer Mariotto di Bigio di Bindo Albertinelli ( October 13, 1474 - November 5, 1515) was a High Renaissance Italian painter Piero di Cosimo (also known as Piero di Lorenzo) ( January 2, 1462 &ndash April 12, 1522) was an Florentine painter Andrea del Sarto (1486 &ndash 1531 was an Italian painter from Florence, whose career flourished during the High Renaissance and early- Mannerism

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Visitation, 1528-29; Oil on wood; 202 x 156 cm; San Michele, Carmignano (Florence)

Pontormo painted in and around Florence, often supported by Medici patronage. Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany A foray to Rome, largely to see Michelangelo's work, influenced his later style. Rome ( Roma ˈroma Roma is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city with more than 2 Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime One of them by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all 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 (at left). The Visitation is the visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Saint Elizabeth as recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

This early Visitation makes an interesting comparison with his painting of the same subject (at right), which was done about a decade later for the parish church of St. Michael in Carmignano, a few miles from Florence. Michael (מִיכָאֵל Micha'el or Mîkhā'ēl; Μιχαήλ Mikhaíl; Michael or Míchaël; ميخائيل Mikhā'īl) is an For the comune in the Province of Padua, see Carmignano di Brenta Carmignano is a Comune (municipality of c Placing these two pictures together—one from his early style, and another from his mature period—throws Pontormo's artistic development into sharp relief. In the earlier work, Pontormo is much closer in style to his teacher, Andrea del Sarto, and to the early sixteenth century renaissance artistic principles. For example, the figures stand at just under half the height of the overall picture, and though a bit more crowded than true high renaissance balance would prefer, at least are placed in a classicizing architectural setting at a comfortable distance from the viewer. Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe in which there was a In the later work, the viewer is brought almost uncomfortably close to the Virgin and St. Elizabeth, who drift toward each other in clouds of drapery. Drapery refers to Cloths or Textiles ( Old French drap, from Late Latin drappus) used for decorative purposes--such on windows--or to Moreover, the clear architectural setting that is carefully constructed in earlier piece has been completely abandoned in favor of a peculiar nondescript urban setting.

Joseph in Egypt, 1515-18; Oil on wood; 96 x 109 cm; National Gallery, London

The Joseph canvases (now in the National Gallery in London) offer another example of Pontormo's developing style. Joseph or Yosef (יוֹסֵ Standard Yosef Tiberian Yôsēp̄, يوسف Yusuf; "He London's National Gallery, founded in 1824 houses a rich collection of over 2300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900 in its home on Trafalgar Square. Done around the same time as the earlier Visitation, these works (such as Joseph in Egypt, at left) show a much more mannerist leaning.

In the years between the SS Annunziata and San Michele Visitations, Pontormo took part in the fresco decoration of the salon of the Medici country villa at Poggio a Caiano (1519-20), not far from Florence. Fresco (plural either frescos or frescoes) is any of several related Painting types done on Plaster on walls or A villa was originally an Upper-class Country house, though since its origins in Roman times the idea and function of a villa has evolved considerably Poggio a Caiano is a town and commune in the Province of Prato, Tuscany region Italy. 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. Pastoral, as an adjective refers to the lifestyle of Shepherds and Pastoralists moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability The Fresco decoration of Vertumnus and Pomona in the Medici country villa at Poggio a Caiano (near Montalbano) is a masterpiece by Jacopo Pontormo In architecture a lunette (French lunette "little moon" and also "glasses" is a half-moon shaped space either masonry or void

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. The Certosa del Galluzzo is a monastery located in the Florence suburb of Galluzzo in Italy. The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of St Bruno, is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monastics. This article concerns the buildings occupied by monastics. For the life inside monasteries and its historical roots see Monasticism. MONK is a Monte Carlo software package for simulating nuclear processes particularly for the purpose of determining the neutron multiplication factor or k-effective He painted a series of frescoes, now quite damaged, on the passion and resurrection of Christ.

Main works in Florence

The Deposition from the Cross, 1525-1528

The large altarpiece canvas for the Brunelleschi-designed Capponi Chapel in the church of Santa Felicita in Florence, portraying The Deposition from the Cross, is considered by many Pontormo's surviving masterpiece (1528). Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 – April 15, 1446) was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance. The chiesa di Santa Felicita (Church of St Felicity is a church in Florence, Italy, probably the oldest in the city after San Lorenzo. The Deposition from the Cross —an Altarpiece by the sixteenth century painter Jacopo Pontormo, completed in 1528—is broadly considered to be the artist's surviving

Deposition detail

The figures, with their sharply modeled forms and brilliant colors are united in an enormously complex, swirling ovular composition, housed by a shallow, somewhat flattened space. In the Visual arts — in particular Painting, Graphic design, Photography and Sculpture — composition is the placement or arrangement Although commonly known as The Deposition from the Cross, there is no actual cross in the picture, making the subject matter of this painting is as uncertain as the space in which it takes place. A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two lines or bars perpendicular to each other dividing one or two of the lines in half The scene might more properly be called a Lamentation. A lament or lamentation is a Song, Poem or piece of music expressing Grief, Regret or Mourning. Those who are lowering (or supporting) Christ appear as anguished as the mourners. Christ is the English term for the Greek ( Khristós) meaning "the anointed " Though they are bearing the weight of a full-grown man, they barely seem to be touching the ground; the lower figure in particular balances delicately and implausibly on his front two toes. These two boys have sometimes been interpreted as Angles, carrying Christ in his journey to Heaven. The Angles is a modern English word for a Germanic-speaking people who took their name from the cultural ancestral region of Angeln, a modern district located in Heaven may refer to the physical heavens the sky or the seemingly endless expanse of the Universe beyond In this case, the subject of the picture would be more akin to an Entombment, though the lack of any discernible tomb disrupts that theory, just as the lack of cross poses a problem for the Deposition interpretation. Burial, also called interment and inhumation, is the act of placing a person or object into the ground For the New York prison see The Tombs. A Tomb is a repository for the remains of the dead. Finally, it has also been noted that the positions of Christ and the Virgin seem to echo those of Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome, though here in the Deposition mother and son have been separated. This article is about the earliest and best-known Pietà by Michelangelo Thus in addition to elements of a Lamentation and Entombment, this picture carries hints of a Pietà. The Pietà (pl same Italian for pity) is a subject in Christian art depicting The Virgin Mary cradling the dead body of Jesus, most ^[1] It has been speculated that the bearded figure in the background at the far right is a self-portrait of Pontormo as Joseph of Arimathea. A Self-portrait is a representation of an artist drawn painted photographed or sculpted by the artist Joseph of Arimathea was according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion

Annunciation, 1527-28; Fresco; 368 x 168 cm

On the wall to the right of the Deposition, Pontormo frescoed an Annunciation scene (at right). In Christianity the Annunciation ( grc Ευαγγελισμός της Θεοτόκου, Evangelismós tēs Theotókou in Greek) is the revelation As with the Deposition, the artist's primary attention is on the figures themselves rather than their setting. Placed against white walls, the Angel Gabriel and Virgin Mary are presented in an environment that is so simplified as to almost seem stark. The fictive architectural details above each of them, are painted to resemble the gray stone pietra serena that adorns the interior of Santa Felicità, thus uniting their painted space with the viewer's actual space. The startling contrast between the figures and ground makes their brilliant garments almost seem to glow in the light of the window between them, against the stripped-down background, as if the couple miraculously appeared in an extension of the chapel wall. The Annunciation resembles his above mentioned Visitation in the church of San Michele at Carmignano in both the style and swaying postures. For the comune in the Province of Padua, see Carmignano di Brenta Carmignano is a Comune (municipality of c

Vasari tells us that the cupola was originally painted with God the Father and Four Patriarchs. In Architecture, a cupola or lantern is a radially symmetrical ornamental structure (often dome-shaped or quadrilateral located on top of a larger In many religions the supreme Deity ( God) is given the title and attributions of Father. The Patriarchs (also known as the Avot in Hebrew) according to the Judeo-Christian Old Testament are Abraham, his Son 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 his chief pupil Agnolo Bronzino. A dome is a common structural element of Architecture that resembles the hollow upper half of a Sphere. A roundel in Heraldry is any circular shape in military use it is an Emblem of nationality employed on military aircraft and air force flags generally round and A pendentive is a constructive device permitting the placing of a circular Dome over a square room or an elliptical Dome over a rectangular room Agnolo di Cosimo ( November 17, 1503 &ndash November 23, 1572) usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino (mistaken The two artists collaborated so intimately, that specialists dispute which roundels each of them painted.

This tumultuous oval of figures took three years for Pontormo to complete. According to Vasari, because Pontormo desired above all to "do things his own way without being bothered by anyone," the artist screened off the chapel so as to prevent interfering opinions. Vasari continues, "And so, having painted it in his own way without any of his friends being able to point anything out to him, it was finally uncovered and seen with astonishment by all of Florence. . . "^[2]

A number of Pontormo's other works have also remained in Florence; the Uffizi Gallery holds his mystical Supper at Emmaus as well as portraits. The Uffizi Gallery (Galleria degli Uffizi one of the oldest and most famous Art Museums in the world is housed in the Palazzo degli Uffizi, a

Many of Pontormo's well known canvases, such as the early Joseph in Egypt series (c. 1515) and the later Martyrdom of St Maurice and the Theban Legion (c. 1531) depict crowds milling about in extreme contrapposto of greatly varied positions. Contrapposto is an Italian term meaning "counterpoise" used in the Visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot

His portraits, acutely characterized, show similarly Mannerist proportions.

Lost or damaged works

Many of Pontormo's works have been damaged, including the lunnettes for the cloister in the Carthusian monastery of Galluzo (at left). The Carthusian Order, also called the Order of St Bruno, is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monastics.

Perhaps most tragic is the loss of the unfinished frescoes for the church of San Lorenzo which consumed the last decade of his life. The Basilica di San Lorenzo ( Basilica of St Lawrence) is one of the largest churches of Florence, Italy, situated at the centre of the city’s His frescoes depicted a last judgement day composed of an unsettling morass of writhing figures. In Christian eschatology, the Last Judgment or Day of the Lord is the judgment by God of every human who ever lived The remaining drawings, showing a bizarre and mystical ribboning of bodies, had an almost hallucinatory effect. Florentine figure painting had mainly stressed linear and sculptural figures. For example, the Christ in Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel is a massive painted block, stern in his wrath; by contrast, Pontormo's Jesus in the Last Judgment twists sinuously, as if rippling through the heavens in the dance of ultimate finality. The Last Judgment is a Mural by Michelangelo on the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. Sistine Chapel (Cappella Sistina is the best-known Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. Angels swirl about him in even more serpentine poses. If Pontormo's work from the 1520s seemed to float an a world little touched by gravitational force, the Last Judgment figures seem to have escaped it altogether and fly through a rarefied air.

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:

Christ before Pilate, 1523-25; Fresco, 300 x 290 cm; Certosa, Galuzzo

Portrait of a Halberdier, 1530s; Oil on canvas, 92 x 72 cm; J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu

Critical assessment and legacy

Vasari's Life of Pontormo, depicts him as withdrawn and steeped in neurosis while at the center of the artists and patrons of his lifetime. The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters Sculptors and Architects, or Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori as it was originally known This image of Pontormo has tended to color the popular conception of the artist, as seen in the film of Giovanni Fago, Pontormo, a heretical love. Fago portrays Pontormo as mired in a lonely and ultimately paranoid dedication to his final Last Judgment project, which he often kept shielded from onlookers. Yet as the art historian Elizabeth Pilliod has pointed out, Vasari was in fierce competition with the Pontormo/Bronzino workshop at the time when he was writing his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects. The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters Sculptors and Architects, or Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori as it was originally known This professional rivalry between the two bottegas would well have have provided Vasari with ample motivation for running down the artistic lineage of his opponent for Medici patronage. ^[3]

Portrait of a Lady in Red, 1532; Oil on wood; 89,7 x 70,5 cm; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt

Perhaps as a result of Vasari's derision, or perhaps because of the vagaries of aesthetic taste, Potormo's work was quite out of fashion for several centuries. The fact that so much of his work has been lost or severely damaged is testament to this neglect, though he has received renewed attention by contemporary art historians. Indeed, between 1989 and 2002, Pontormo's Portrait of a Halberdier (at right), held the title of the world's most expensive painting by an Old Master. " Old Master " (or " old master " is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such

Regardless as to the veracity of Vasari's account, it is certainly true that Pontormo's artistic idiosyncrasies produced a style that few were able (or willing) to imitate, with the exception of his closest pupil Bronzino. Agnolo di Cosimo ( November 17, 1503 &ndash November 23, 1572) usually known as Il Bronzino, or Agnolo Bronzino (mistaken Bronzino's early work is so close to that of his teacher, that the authorship of several paintings from the 1520s at '30s are still under dispute—for example the four tondi containing the evangelists in the Capponi Chapel, and the Portrait of a Lady in Red now in Frankfurt (at left).

Pontormo shares some of the mannerism of Rosso Fiorentino and of Parmigianino. Giovanni Battista di Jacopo (1494-1540 known as Rosso Fiorentino (meaning "the Red Florentine" in Italian or Il Rosso, was an Italian Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola ( 11 January 1503 - 24 August 1540) also known as Francesco Mazzola or more commonly as In some ways he anticipated the Baroque as well as the tensions of El Greco. Baroque art redirects here Please disambiguate such links to Baroque painting, Baroque sculpture, etc El Greco' ("The Greek " 1541 &ndash April 7 1614 was a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance 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 other 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.

References

1. ^ One attempt at defining mannerist art is to characterize it as art that follows art rather than art that follows nature, or life. Mannerism is a period of European art which emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. [See for example Sydney Freedberg's notion of the 'quoted' form in "Observations on the Painting of the Maniera" Art Bulletin 47 (1965), pp. 187–97. ] Though Freedberg did not classify Pontormo as a strictly maniera painter, if we accept that the Deposition does hold a quotation from Michelangelo's Pietà, then perhaps we can understand better how Pontormo fits in as a mannerist and into his own larger history of sixteenth century art.
2. ^ Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, tr. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 409
3. ^ See "An Introduction to Vasari's Story" in Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori: A Genealogy of Florentine Art (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).

Anthology of works

Early works (until 1521)

Mature works (1522-1530)

Late works (after 1530)

External links

• Pontormo at Gallery of Art
• Pontormo's paintings and drawings illustrated
• Giorgio Vasari's Vita (English)
• Pontormo's 1554 diary
• Frescoes at San Lorenzo
• A diary of his last two years survives [39]