PONTORMO, Jacopo

Pontormo executed several drawings in preparation of the frescoes of the choir, or great chapel of the Medici family, in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. This decoration was the artist’s last commission (1546-56). These drawings are the only surviving evidence of the decorative cycle entrusted to Pontormo by Pier Francesco Ricci, the private secretary and major-domo of Cosimo I, which were irremediably destroyed in 1742 on the occasion of restoration work inside the church.

Adam and Eve at Work is one of the surviving drawings.

In this portrait, Duke Alessandro de’ Medici is shown making a drawing in metalpoint of a woman in profile. In the latter part of the fifteenth century artists such as Verrocchio and Leonardo began to draw idealized female heads, often in profile. Michelangelo continued this practice. Alessandro’s drawing seems to relate to this practice, possibly Pontormo was teaching the duke to draw.

The melancholy that saturates this portrait is characteristic of much of Pontormo’s paintings.

This is a preparatory study of the head of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici for his large-scale portrait, now in Philadelphia. This picture remained in Florence and was available over the following decades as an official image of the duke for artists to copy. There are more than twenty known version of the image.

This drawing was used for a medal of Alessandro de’ Medici by Francesco dal Prato, and for a large-scale portrait by Vasari. The drawing is in a 1609 mount bound in a volume of drawings of Medici portraits by Daniele Eremita (Flemish, 1584-1613).

This drawing relates to the San Lorenzo high altar commission.

The decoration of the Cappella Capponi in Santa Felicità is completed by the Annunciation frescoed on the wall of the window. As a theme, the Annunciation has a long history in Western art, but rarely has it been represented with as much pictorial excitement.

The detail shows Gabriel. The Angel hovering in arrested flight looks up and to his left, as if seeking instructions. The light which flickers on the youthful figure seems to land idiosyncratically, highlighting the cheek, for example. Not since Piero della Francesca has light been treated as subject of this extent.

The detail shows the Virgin annunciated.

The frescoed figures of the Annunciation belong to the same decorative program as the Deposition. The colours are somewhat deeper than in the Deposition, which may be explained, however, by a severe cleaning performed on during eighteenth century. The power of the representation lies more in the form than in any psychological interpretation, which is, in fact, unusual for Pontormo anyway.

The birth tray (desco da parto) was a ceremonial object typically used in Tuscany in the 15th century. It was a large circular wooden tray used to serve meals to new mothers. The families of the more wealthy classes usually commissioned them to the most renowned workshops at the time, and they were also decorated by famous artists, who painted both sides with family coats of arms, religious episodes, allegorical figures or subjects taken from classic literature related to the theme of birth, or bearing good wishes for the newborn baby.

The present birth tray was painted by Pontormo for the birth of Alderighi della Casa, the first son of Girolamo della Casa and Lisabetta Tornaquinci, born in Florence on 15 January 1527.

Ritualistic objects like this were already obsolete at the time, but Pontormo, who had worked with master carpenters in Andrea del Sarto’s workshop on the decorations for the carnival carriages of 1513, would have had lots of time to try his hand at making something of this kind. In fact, by shaping it from a single piece of poplar wood, he was able to show off all his technical expertise in this field.

The front of the plate shows a shield with the spouses’ coats of arms, alongside two anthropomorphic grotesques, with extremely expressive weird, beaked faces. The painted frame, a perfect imitation of porphyry, is also admirable.

The Birth of St John the Baptist is depicted on the back. In the centre of the scene, a maidservant is holding the newborn St John in her arms. The diagonal position directs the beholder’s gaze towards St Elizabeth, who has just given birth and is sitting on the bed, watching her husband Zacharias write down the name he will decide on for their son. Other maidservants are bustling round the bed.

Even when working in the small space offered by the tray, Pontormo does not forgo the characteristic features of the painting style present in his large-scale works.

The birth tray (desco da parto) was a ceremonial object typically used in Tuscany in the 15th century. It was a large circular wooden tray used to serve meals to new mothers. The families of the more wealthy classes usually commissioned them to the most renowned workshops at the time, and they were also decorated by famous artists, who painted both sides with family coats of arms, religious episodes, allegorical figures or subjects taken from classic literature related to the theme of birth, or bearing good wishes for the newborn baby.

The present birth tray was painted by Pontormo for the birth of Alderighi della Casa, the first son of Girolamo della Casa and Lisabetta Tornaquinci, born in Florence on 15 January 1527.

Ritualistic objects like this were already obsolete at the time, but Pontormo, who had worked with master carpenters in Andrea del Sarto’s workshop on the decorations for the carnival carriages of 1513, would have had lots of time to try his hand at making something of this kind. In fact, by shaping it from a single piece of poplar wood, he was able to show off all his technical expertise in this field.

The front of the plate shows a shield with the spouses’ coats of arms, alongside two anthropomorphic grotesques, with extremely expressive weird, beaked faces. The painted frame, a perfect imitation of porphyry, is also admirable.

The Birth of St John the Baptist is depicted on the back. In the centre of the scene, a maidservant is holding the newborn St John in her arms. The diagonal position directs the beholder’s gaze towards St Elizabeth, who has just given birth and is sitting on the bed, watching her husband Zacharias write down the name he will decide on for their son. Other maidservants are bustling round the bed.

Even when working in the small space offered by the tray, Pontormo does not forgo the characteristic features of the painting style present in his large-scale works.

Pontormo produced a cycle of frescoes of immense religious force for the cloister of the Certosa at Galuzzo, just outside of Florence. Due to their exposure to the elements, they have survived in poor condition whwich, oddly enough, enhances their mysterious appeal. In part relying upon German prints, including those of Albrecht D�rer, for some compositional suggestions, Pontormo operates within complex spatial and proportional systems. The central figure of Christ, shown in profile, is thin, frail and elongated. He is placed in opposition to the robust youth in the distance, higher on the vertical axis and in a much smaller scale.

Pontormo’s last major commission was the decoration of the choir of S. Lorenzo in Florence for Duke Cosimo. He worked on these frescoes from 1546 until his death in 1557. This now destroyed programme, including a Resurrection and Last Judgment but mainly a cycle of scenes from the Genesis, constituted Pontormo’s final artistic testament. Drawings, such as that shown by the picture, provide the basis for its reconstruction.

This drawing is a study for Christ in Glory and Creation of Eve.

This portrait depicts Cosimo I de’ Medici at the age of about eighteen. It is based on a drawing definitely made by Pontormo. In making the painting, another artists, probably Pierfrancesco Foschi, may have assisted him. The painting was made soon after Cosimo became duke, it may have served as a model for a more finished portrait or for sculptors or medalists who needed to portray him.

This portrait shows Cosimo I de’ Medici at about eighteen years old, just after he came to power on January 9, 1537, and before he grew a beard, probably later that year. This design was transferred to a panel, now in the Galleria Palatina in Palazzo Pitti. The profile view suggests that the drawing was a study for a sculpture or coin commission. Indeed, the same view of Cosimo appears in a marble relief from the workshop of Baccio Bandinelli and in a number of medals and coins meant to diffuse the image of the young ruler.

After the duke’s official image was painted by Bronzino in 1544, Pontormo no longer needed the drawing, so he used the verso to draw a group of nudes for the murals of San Lorenzo in Florence, a project that he worked on from 1545 to the end of his life.

Ordinarily, Pontormo painted portraits studied from life, with a deeper attention to the rendering of appearances than character and personality. The subject of this rewarding portrait is Cosimo il Vecchio, the founder of the Medici clan and the preeminent citizen of Florence during most of his explosive expansion in culture and finance in the fifteenth century. It is, of course, a posthumous representation painted, according to Vasari, for Goro Gheri da Pistoia, secretary to the Medici. It is based upon previous portraits, and particularly a medal, and is thus more a symbolic than a true physical likeness.

The Deposition can perhaps justly be described as the artist’s masterpiece. The compositional idea is extravagant and totally unprecedented: an inextricable knot of figures and drapes that pivots around the bewildered youth in the foreground and culminates above in the two lightly hovering figures emerging from vague background. This complicated bunch of forms arranged in the shape of an upturned pyramid defies any attempt at a rational exploration or identification of planes.

The compositional complexity is accompanied by a significant and probably deliberate ambiguity in the representation of the subject, which may be interpreted as halfway between the theme of the Deposition and that of the Pietà or Lamentation over the Dead Christ. The painting appears to represent the moment in which the body of Christ, having been taken down from the cross, has just been removed from the mother’s lap. The Virgin, visibly distraught, and perhaps on the point of fainting, still glazes longingly towards her Son, and gestures with her right arm in the same direction. In the centre of the painting, the moment of the separation is underlined by the subtle contact of Mary’s legs with those of Christ, now freed from his Mother’s last pathetic embrace. The twisted body of Christ is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà (1498).

An intense spiritual participation in the grief of the event profoundly affects the expressions and attitudes of all the figures present, even that of the woman turned away from the onlooker, probably Mary Magdalene, who communicates her anguished psychological condition by reaching out sympathetically towards the swooning body of the Virgin. Some scholars have interpreted the two young figures holding up the deceased’s body as angels in the act of drawing Christ away from the main group and leading him finally into the arms of his Father. The general direction of the movement is, in fact, a rising one, and is created by the ethereal quality of the weightless figures, and their slow, almost dance-like rhythm. The two presumed angelic presences, moreover, seem to be unaffected by the weight of the lifeless body, and the figure in the foreground appears to be in the act of raising himself up by lightly pressing down on the front part of his foot.

The intricately connected group of figures, involved in a highly dramatic atmosphere, takes on the appearance of a rich frieze in the harmony of highly refined colour tones of pinks, blues and greens. The transparent shadows do not annul the colours, but actually become them, in the flesh tones invested with subtle shades of pink and green.

The cloaked man wearing a strange hat, almost imperceptible against the background of the painting behind the arm of the Virgin, may possibly be the artist himself. Staring at something beyond the confines of the painting and looking as though he were about to leave the pictorial space, he presents us with this complex and refined decoration of colours, forms.

The Deposition can perhaps justly be described as the artist’s masterpiece. The compositional idea is extravagant and totally unprecedented: an inextricable knot of figures and drapes that pivots around the bewildered youth in the foreground and culminates above in the two lightly hovering figures emerging from vague background. This complicated bunch of forms arranged in the shape of an upturned pyramid defies any attempt at a rational exploration or identification of planes.

The compositional complexity is accompanied by a significant and probably deliberate ambiguity in the representation of the subject, which may be interpreted as halfway between the theme of the Deposition and that of the Pietà or Lamentation over the Dead Christ. The painting appears to represent the moment in which the body of Christ, having been taken down from the cross, has just been removed from the mother’s lap. The Virgin, visibly distraught, and perhaps on the point of fainting, still glazes longingly towards her Son, and gestures with her right arm in the same direction. In the centre of the painting, the moment of the separation is underlined by the subtle contact of Mary’s legs with those of Christ, now freed from his Mother’s last pathetic embrace. The twisted body of Christ is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà (1498).

An intense spiritual participation in the grief of the event profoundly affects the expressions and attitudes of all the figures present, even that of the woman turned away from the onlooker, probably Mary Magdalene, who communicates her anguished psychological condition by reaching out sympathetically towards the swooning body of the Virgin. Some scholars have interpreted the two young figures holding up the deceased’s body as angels in the act of drawing Christ away from the main group and leading him finally into the arms of his Father. The general direction of the movement is, in fact, a rising one, and is created by the ethereal quality of the weightless figures, and their slow, almost dance-like rhythm. The two presumed angelic presences, moreover, seem to be unaffected by the weight of the lifeless body, and the figure in the foreground appears to be in the act of raising himself up by lightly pressing down on the front part of his foot.

The intricately connected group of figures, involved in a highly dramatic atmosphere, takes on the appearance of a rich frieze in the harmony of highly refined colour tones of pinks, blues and greens. The transparent shadows do not annul the colours, but actually become them, in the flesh tones invested with subtle shades of pink and green.

The cloaked man wearing a strange hat, almost imperceptible against the background of the painting behind the arm of the Virgin, may possibly be the artist himself. Staring at something beyond the confines of the painting and looking as though he were about to leave the pictorial space, he presents us with this complex and refined decoration of colours, forms.

The Deposition can perhaps justly be described as the artist’s masterpiece. The compositional idea is extravagant and totally unprecedented: an inextricable knot of figures and drapes that pivots around the bewildered youth in the foreground and culminates above in the two lightly hovering figures emerging from vague background. This complicated bunch of forms arranged in the shape of an upturned pyramid defies any attempt at a rational exploration or identification of planes.

The compositional complexity is accompanied by a significant and probably deliberate ambiguity in the representation of the subject, which may be interpreted as halfway between the theme of the Deposition and that of the Pietà or Lamentation over the Dead Christ. The painting appears to represent the moment in which the body of Christ, having been taken down from the cross, has just been removed from the mother’s lap. The Virgin, visibly distraught, and perhaps on the point of fainting, still glazes longingly towards her Son, and gestures with her right arm in the same direction. In the centre of the painting, the moment of the separation is underlined by the subtle contact of Mary’s legs with those of Christ, now freed from his Mother’s last pathetic embrace. The twisted body of Christ is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà (1498).

An intense spiritual participation in the grief of the event profoundly affects the expressions and attitudes of all the figures present, even that of the woman turned away from the onlooker, probably Mary Magdalene, who communicates her anguished psychological condition by reaching out sympathetically towards the swooning body of the Virgin. Some scholars have interpreted the two young figures holding up the deceased’s body as angels in the act of drawing Christ away from the main group and leading him finally into the arms of his Father. The general direction of the movement is, in fact, a rising one, and is created by the ethereal quality of the weightless figures, and their slow, almost dance-like rhythm. The two presumed angelic presences, moreover, seem to be unaffected by the weight of the lifeless body, and the figure in the foreground appears to be in the act of raising himself up by lightly pressing down on the front part of his foot.

The intricately connected group of figures, involved in a highly dramatic atmosphere, takes on the appearance of a rich frieze in the harmony of highly refined colour tones of pinks, blues and greens. The transparent shadows do not annul the colours, but actually become them, in the flesh tones invested with subtle shades of pink and green.

The cloaked man wearing a strange hat, almost imperceptible against the background of the painting behind the arm of the Virgin, may possibly be the artist himself. Staring at something beyond the confines of the painting and looking as though he were about to leave the pictorial space, he presents us with this complex and refined decoration of colours, forms.

Christ is carried by two young men (one of the shown in this detail) both of whom look forward to where they are doing. There is a general influence from Michelangelo’s Cascina cartoon in the thin, muscular figures that crouch and turn.

An intense spiritual participation in the grief of the event profoundly affects the expressions and attitudes of all the figures present, even that of the woman turned away from the onlooker, probably Mary Magdalene, who communicates her anguished psychological condition by reaching out sympathetically towards the swooning body of the Virgin.

Pontormo’s figure of Christ may be compared to Michelangelo’s marble figure of Christ in his Pietà in St Peter’s. Although Pontormo tends to de-emphasize the sculptural qualities of his figures, he was nonetheless an ardent admirer and friend of Michelangelo. The painting demonstrates Pontormo’s power as a draftsman, particularly in his treatment of forms: the contours, as well as the hands and features facial, are impeccably rendered.

This painting was executed for the altar of a very dark chapel in Santa Felicita in Florence. The colour of the painting takes into account the darkness of the chapel, so that it glows with an unearthly radiance of pinks, greenish blues, pallid flesh tones, and a vivid orange-scarlet.

This painting was executed for the altar of a very dark chapel in S. Felicita in Florence. The colour of the painting takes into account the darkness of the chapel, so that it glows with an unearthly radiance of pinks, greenish blues, pallid flesh tones, and a vivid orange-scarlet.

Pontormo’s last major commission was the decoration of the choir of San Lorenzo in Florence for Duke Cosimo. He worked on these frescoes from 1546 until his death in 1557. This now destroyed programme, including a Resurrection and Last Judgment but mainly a cycle of scenes from the Genesis, constituted Pontormo’s final artistic testament. Drawings, such as that shown by the picture, provide the basis for its reconstruction.

On both sides of this sheet are preliminary drawings for the portrait of the young Florentine Francesco Guardi as a halberdier. Presumably Guardi himself posed for the more finished drawing on the recto, in which he holds the pommel of his sword but not the pole arm of the finished painting.

In the painting the young halberdier is intent on guarding the defensive rampart painted in the background. As in other works by Pontormo, the intense light that invests the foreground of the painting, contrasts strongly with the dark background and emphasizes the colour of the young man’s clothing: the beige of the jacket, the white of the shirt, and the bright red of the pants and beret. A remarkable artistic skill is also discernible in the rendering of the various materials of the objects that distinguishes the figure of this young soldier: the burnished metal of the hand-guard, the leather of the thick belt to which it is attached, the fine grain of the wooden halberd, the gold of the light chain hanging rounded the man’s neck and the medallion with the relief of Hercules and Anthaeus on the cap.

Although the identity of the halberdier portrayed on this famous picture is debated, it is most likely the portrait of Francesco di Giovanni di Gherardo Guardi, a resident in Florence. Based on a seventeenth-century inventory of the estate of Riccardo Riccardi, formerly it was thought to be the portrait of the young Duke Cosimo I, who triumphed at Montemurlo over the last republican initiative led by Filippo Strozzi and Baccio Valori (1537).

The painting had a cover, painted by Bronzino, depicting Pygmalion and Galatea. The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea related to contemporary discourse about the relative merits of sculpture and painting. (Pygmalion was a sculptor who prayed to Venus for his statue to come alive.)

A preparatory drawing of the painted version is in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

This portrait represents Giovanni della Casa, who had the title of Florentine cleric and was in the city at various times between 1541 and 1544. He was one of the great literary personalities of his time. He was sent by Pope Paul III to Florence as emissary to Cosimo I de’ Medici in January 1541.

This drawing on the verso of a sheet is a preliminary study for the portrait of Giovanni della Casa, one of the great literary personalities of his time. The recto depicts a youth with a recorder.

Pontormo executed several drawings in preparation of the frescoes of the choir, or great chapel of the Medici family, in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. This decoration was the artist’s last commission (1546-56). These drawings are the only surviving evidence of the decorative cycle entrusted to Pontormo by Pier Francesco Ricci, the private secretary and major-domo of Cosimo I, which were irremediably destroyed in 1742 on the occasion of restoration work inside the church.

Group of the Dead is one of the surviving drawings.

The verso of the sheet was executed a few years earlier than the Study for a Portrait of a Youth on the recto and is one of several drawings for the figure with a basket in Pontormo’s Vertumnus and Pomona for Poggio a Caiano.

The theme of the nude figure depicted anatomically and characterized by particular twists of the body, which forms the leitmotif of Michelangelo’s figurative research, Pontormo addressed and reinterpreted in an entirely personal way in a series of extraordinary designs preparatory to cartoons which the artist executed from the beginning of the 1530s for the decoration of various rooms in the Florentine Medicean villas.

The theme of sexual ambiguity is presented in the Hermaphrodite Figure, one of the most interesting among those associated with the decorations for the loggia of the Villa di Castello.

The painting belongs to the series of four entitled Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Hebrew, now in the National Gallery, London. These works, together with others by Andrea del Sarto, Francesco Granacci, Bachiacca and Franciabigio, were intended for the decoration of the nuptial chamber of Francesco Borgherini and Margherita Acciaioli, who married in 1515. The group of fourteen paintings, broken up at the end of the 16th century, was contained within a wooden decoration made by Baccio d’Agnolo.

In Joseph Being Sold to Potiphar, as in the Punishment of the Baker, the artist uses the arrangement of figures to guide the onlooker’s gaze from the foreground towards the background of the painting. In the former the action follows a serpentine course, in the latter a zigzagging one.

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The painting belongs to the series of four entitled Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Hebrew, now in the National Gallery, London. These works, together with others by Andrea del Sarto, Francesco Granacci, Bachiacca and Franciabigio, were intended for the decoration of the nuptial chamber of Francesco Borgherini and Margherita Acciaioli, who married in 1515. The group of fourteen paintings, broken up at the end of the 16th century, was contained within a wooden decoration made by Baccio d’Agnolo.

In this panel the thesis proposed by Mannerism is fully elaborated: the painter is no longer to be bound by perspective, or by the necessity of presenting his subject in a rational, objective manner. He may use light and colour, chiaroscuro and proportion as he pleases; he may borrow from any source he chooses; the only obligation upon him is to create an interesting design, expressive of the ideas inherent in the subject, and the various parts need bear no relationship to each other. The colour must be evocative and beautiful in itself.

This work, traditionally entitled Joseph in Egypt, depicts the most significant episodes of Joseph reuniting with his family of origin. The painting is divided into four distinct zones. In the left foreground Joseph presents his family, who he invited to move to Egypt, to the pharaoh; according to Vasari, the boy with dark cloak and brown tunic sitting on the first step of the stairs on which the figures are arranged, is a portrait of the young Bronzino. On the right, Joseph is seen sitting on a triumphal cart pulled by three putti; hoisting himself up with his left arm and clutching firmly onto a putto with the other, he bends toward a kneeling figure who is presenting him a petition or reading him a message; a fifth putto, wrapped in a piece of cloth blown by the wind, dominates the scene from the top of a column, appearing to mime the gesture of one of the two half-living statues represented in the top left and centre of the painting. A restless crowd, curious to see what is going on, throngs the adjacent space between the two buildings in the background. Other mysterious figures, resting against one of the large boulders that dominate the landscape, turn their attention toward the action in the foreground.

The clothes, expressions and features of all these figures are inspired by northern European painting, as is the large castle and surrounding trees depicted in the background. On the unrailed staircase of the imposing cylindrical building to the right, Joseph takes one of his children by the hand; higher up, the other is greeted affectionately by his mother. Lastly, Joseph and his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, are portrayed inside the room at the top of the building, where Jacob, now old and near to death, imparts his paternal blessing. The curious combination of all these elements confers to the painting an anomalous and intriguing quality.

Two half-living statues are represented in the top left and centre of the painting. A restless crowd, curious to see what is going on, throngs the adjacent space between the two buildings in the background. Other mysterious figures, resting against one of the large boulders that dominate the landscape, turn their attention toward the action in the foreground.

The large castle and surrounding trees depicted in the background are inspired by northern European painting.

The theme of the nude figure depicted anatomically and characterized by particular twists of the body, which forms the leitmotif of Michelangelo’s figurative research, Pontormo addressed and reinterpreted in an entirely personal way in a series of extraordinary designs preparatory to cartoons which the artist executed from the beginning of the 1530s for the decoration of various rooms in the Florentine Medicean villas. For the villa of Poggio a Caiano, where the painter had already executed the fresco Vertumnus and Pomona, the artist prepared various cartoons among them one depicting a scene of ignudi playing football. Of the preparatory designs for the cartoon, the only surviving traces are the so-called Kicking Player, associated with the drawing of Titius which Michelangelo executed towards the end of 1532, and the remarkable red-ochre drawing with Two Nudes Compared.

The attribution of this painting is debated, recently it was assigned to Andrea del Sarto. Certain features of the lady’s face reveal characteristics that are unquestionable Pontormesque. The slightly frowning expression, the reflection of a certain inner unease recalls those of the saints portrayed in the Pucci Altarpiece. Raphael’s Velata has been proposed as the figurative model for the painting.

The work was already in the Tribune of the Uffizi in 1589, although without a precise attribution, which oscillated between Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Perin del Vaga. Even today the attribution is controversial; however, traditionally the work continues to be considered a youthful work by Pontormo, still influenced by Leonardo’s style.

The verso of Pontormo’s powerful self-portrait represents two Carthusian monks, the one on the left is probably the prior of the charterhouse of Galuzzo, Leonardo di Giovanni Buonaf�. The drawing is a study for the monks in the background of Pontormo’s Supper at Emmaus, painted for the Carthusian monastery at Galuzzo.

Pontormo’s early success was crowned by the official commissions he received from the Medici court. He took part in the decoration of the Salone of the Medicean Villa of Poggio a Caiano, a country villa at the foot of Montalbano much favoured by Lorenzo il Magnifico. He received the commission from Ottaviano de’ Medici and Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the future Clement VII. Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio were also included in the project. The iconographical programme, designed by the historian Paolo Giovio, aimed to evoke the celebrations of the Medici house through a series of episodes drawn from Roman history.

The theme of the lunette fresco by Pontormo is traditionally described as Vertumnus and Pomona, the pictorial representation of the classical myth taken from a story in Ovid’s Metamorphosis. This goes back to Vasari, who reported that Pontormo was asked to depict Vertumnus and some figures.

However. Vasari’s text is not a description of this fresco. Art historians have nevertheless tried to see Vertumnus and Pomona in the figures of the fresco. In the various attempts at interpretation thus far, each of the three male figures has been identified as Vertumnus, and each of the female ones as Pomona. It could be a possible explanation of the subject that the young woman at right in the upper part of the wall wearing a wreath of stalks of grain and various red flowers is Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. The naked youth on the left can be identified as Liber, the god of fertility (who had been identified with Bacchus since antiquity).

The four figures at the lower part of the fresco represent the personifications of the Four Seasons, Winter, Autumn, Summer and Spring.

This lunette was painted using only an almost frantic series of sketches as outline. The characters, unusually individualistic for such a work, are shown at various heights in front of a wall above which sprout long and slender fern-like shoots.

Around the oculus of the window are four naked putti: the lower ones are holding the two ends of a festoon of leaves and fruits, while the two above are sitting on large trunks, from which slender laurel branches grow outwards, holding two standards aloft.

The detail shows the left side of the lunette with the figure of Liber, the Roman god of fertility. Below are the personifications of Winter and Autumn. Between them, the skinny dog with a grumpy expression, almost ready to bark, is one of the most unusual and bizarre details of the fresco.

The detail shows the right side of the lunette with the fertility goddess Ceres wearing a wreath of stalks of grain and various red flowers. Grain and poppy flowers are characteristic attributes of Ceres. Below are the personifications of Summer and Spring. (The Italian words for summer and spring, ‘estate’ and ‘primavera’ are both feminine nouns.)

Around the oculus of the window are four naked putti: the lower ones are holding the two ends of a festoon of leaves and fruits, while the two above are sitting on large trunks, from which slender laurel branches grow outwards, holding two standards aloft.

The picture shows the figure of Liber, the Roman god of fertility. The boy is sitting on the low wall behind the old peasant representing the personification of Winter. Dangling his legs, he rests his right forearm on the wall and extends his left upwards, raising a pale mauve-coloured cloth to touch a bayleaf. His nakedness is displayed ostentatiously.

The picture shows the figure of the fertility goddess Ceres wearing a wreath of stalks of grain and various red flowers. Grain and poppy flowers are characteristic attributes of Ceres.

The picture shows the personification of Autumn.

The picture shows the personification of Summer.

The picture shows the personification of Winter

The picture shows the personification of Spring.

Pontormo executed this celebrated painting for the chapel of Francesco di Giovanni Pucci in the church San Michele Visdomini in Florence. The painting, usually mentioned as the Pucci Altarpiece, portrays the Virgin with St John the Evangelist, Joseph, holding the baby Jesus, the young St John, St Francis and St James, the latter being the artist’s self-portrait. This work shows clear references to classical figurative culture, although overall there is a definite break with the effects of harmony and equilibrium.

The figures are arranged in two areas, divided by a vertical axis, which forms the height of a triangle, at whose apex is the Virgin’s head. The painting, which also shows evident references to the psychological characterization and sfumato of Leonardesque works, nonetheless represents a moment of exasperation and overall saturation of classical motifs.

The compositions of both the right part and the left part, although symmetrical and populated by an identical number of figures, are organized very differently. The complex twisting of the bodies and the many different directions of the gestures suggest the use of a grid of extremely complicated and dynamic geometrical schemes. The lines of vision go in all possible directions; in no instance do they cross or match, this emphasizing the psychological isolation of the figures. The facial features and expressions of the older Joseph and St John the Evangelist, as well as the laughing putti, are exaggeratedly pronounced. In short, everything combines to create an atmosphere of restless instability. The effect of suffocating compression produced by the reduction of spatial depth, and by the dense chiaroscuro that attenuates the colours, is counterbalanced by a centrifugal energy generated by the agitation of the figures. This definitely breaks the harmonious unity of the classical compositional structure.

As time passed Pontormo moved toward an increasingly personal conception of the human figure, with small oval heads and smallish features upon elongated but also rather robust bodies. In this altarpiece, the colours are more full-bodied and deeper than in the Deposition.

The painting was executed for the convent of Sant’Anna in Verzaia, just outside Porta San Frediano in Florence. The theme of the Madonna and Child with St Anne, is especially revered in Florence, because of the expulsion of a tyrant ruler on St Anne’s day. On 26 July, the saint’s feast day, the painting marked the destination of a procession dedicated to the celebration of Florentine liberty. On this day the people remembered the revolution of 26 July 1343, which resulted in the overthrow and exile from Florence of the tyrant Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens. It seems the painting was commissioned by the captain of the infantry and by other servants of the Signoria of Florence who are represented in the tondo beneath the group of the Holy Family.

On 26 July, the St Anne’s feast day, the painting marked the destination of a procession dedicated to the celebration of Florentine liberty. On this day the people remembered the revolution of 26 July 1343, which resulted in the overthrow and exile from Florence of the tyrant Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens. On the lower part of the altarpiece the civic procession is shown.

In this superb example of Pontormo’s style, the theme of a premonition of the predestined Passion grows smoothly from the centre to the edges and from the surface into the depth. From the infant amusing himself wit a young goldfinch, our gaze shifts to the Virgin’s sad face, then to the resigned faces of Joseph and John the baptist, before finally plunging into the agitated gloom of the firmament, in front of the ominous cross looms.

Formerly the painting was attributed to Rosso Fiorentino.

Strong colour contrasts and calligraphic effects characterize this painting whose attribution to Pontormo is the object of some debate. Here, as in the Pucci Altarpiece, the harmony of the classical compositional structure is disrupted by the varied, diverging directions of the postures, expressions and gestures of the figures, most noticeably the nervously outstretched hand of St Francis.

The composition is a great plastic concentration, echoing Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni. The elongated forms derive from a typology of a heroic nature, possibly drawn from Michelangelo’s Medici tombs in San Lorenzo, but Leonardo’s influence is also still present, in the affectionate attitude of the Madonna bending towards the Child.

The painting, which had previously been interpreted as a depiction of Charity because of the very human affection between the woman and the two children, is striking for its unusual use of light and the dramatic encroaching shadows which allude almost inevitably to the future deposition of Christ. The use of bright colours typical of Pontormo’s work brings a surreal element to the composition which assumes a dreamlike, theatrical quality.

The work is unfinished, perhaps due to its effective coincidence with the siege of Florence (from October 1529 to August 1530), a difficult period for the people of Florence and which likely had a profound effect on Pontormo’s sensitive character.

This painting is among the earliest in date of Pontormo’s small group of domestic works. However, the attribution to Pontormo is not universally accepted.

The portrait represents Maria Salviati in a widow’s veil with a little girl. Salviati’s only child was Cosimo I de’ Medici, the girl was identified as one of Alessandro de’ Medici’s illegitimate daughters - either Giulia or Porzia - who after their birth were placed in Salviati’s care. The younger of the two, Porzia, was placed in the Augustinian convent of San Clemente, therefore Giulia is more likely the girl depicted in the painting. The mother of Alessandro’s children is not known.

The medal that Salvia holds is probably one of the pieces depicting Alessandro produced by Francesco del Prato or Domenico de’ Vetri.

This picture represents a mass slaughter, including a series of crucifixions in the background. The battle scene on the left side of the panel recalls Leonardo’s cartoon for the Battle of Anghiari, known today only through copies. Elsewhere there are reflections of Michelangelo’s work, including the cartoon for the Battle of Cascina. Nevertheless, Pontormo always retains his own voice.

The various crucifixions in the background may have been based upon a single three-dimensional small-scale model turned at different angles and actually in one case lying on the ground. Throughout the picture and especially with the nudes, Pontormo shows himself to be a worthy follower of Michelangelo, but he has not accepted the older artist’s predilection for massive proportions, favouring instead a more delicate, lyric figural anatomy.

Pontormo executed several drawings in preparation of the frescoes of the choir, or great chapel of the Medici family, in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. This decoration was the artist’s last commission (1546-56). These drawings are the only surviving evidence of the decorative cycle entrusted to Pontormo by Pier Francesco Ricci, the private secretary and major-domo of Cosimo I, which were irremediably destroyed in 1742 on the occasion of restoration work inside the church.

Moses Receiving the Tables is one of the surviving drawings.

This painting was painted after a cartoon executed by Michelangelo in the early 1530s. The panel painting was intended for the private collection of the artist’s close friend Vittoria Colonna, who was particularly devoted to the penitent Magdalen.

Maria Salviati (1499-1543) was an Italian noblewoman, the daughter of Lucrezia di Lorenzo de’ Medici and Jacopo Salviati. She married Giovanni dalle Bande Nere and was the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici. Her husband died November 30, 1526, leaving her a widow at the age of 27. Salviati never remarried; after her husband’s death she adopted the somber garb of a novice, which is how she is remembered today as numerous late portraits show her attired in black and white.

Pontormo portrayed the mother of his principal patron Cosimo I de’ Medici, as a dignified, pious, grieving widow. Pure blacks and filmy whites set off the lady’s flesh tones in the painting.

According to Vasari, this painting portrays the son-in-law of a certain Becuccio Bicchieraio and another person, both of whom were friends of the artist. It is a significant example of Italian portraiture.

This portrait, traditionally attributed to Pontormo, is assigned by the Städelmuseum in Frankfurt to Bronzino as a work of his early maturity, painted while in the service of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici in Pesaro.

The painting stands out for the brilliant and complementary accord between the dark green of the sleeves and the bright red of the dress, recalling the gamut of colours used in the Capponi Chapel. The unidentified sitter was not averse to reading, as the two volumes that can be seen behind the lavishly decorated seat indicate.

The painting belongs to the series of four entitled Scenes from the Life of Joseph the Hebrew, now in the National Gallery, London. These works, together with others by Andrea del Sarto, Francesco Granacci, Bachiacca and Franciabigio, were intended for the decoration of the nuptial chamber of Francesco Borgherini and Margherita Acciaioli, who married in 1515. The group of fourteen paintings, broken up at the end of the 16th century, was contained within a wooden decoration made by Baccio d’Agnolo.

In the Punishment of the Baker, as in the Joseph Being Sold to Potiphar, the artist uses the arrangement of figures to guide the onlooker’s gaze from the foreground towards the background of the painting. In the latter the action follows a serpentine course, in the former a zigzagging one. From the pardon of the cup-bearer, newly admitted to serving the pharaoh, the various stages of the baker’s punishment are simultaneously represented.

The figure on the recto is typical of Pontormo’s rapid sketches of naked youth made while working on Vertumnus and Pomona, a wall painting in the villa of Poggio a Caiano.

The verso represents studies of heads.

The fresco was originally painted on a wall of the church of San Ruffillo and transferred to the chapel of the painters at the Annunziata at the beginning of the 19th century.

Pontormo worked on models of Fra Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto, however, he departed decisively from these models and presented a personal reworking of the figurative material they contained by dissolving once and for all the harmonious union of forms arranged in a rationally defined and measurable space, a characteristic of the compositions of the two masters. Pontormo reduced the depth and width of space producing an effect of compression, the figures being arranged in contrasting poses (standing and kneeling, facing forwards and backwards), and characterized by a marked twisting of the bodies, especially in the Virgin and the Child.

The expressions are also anticlassical: the fixed gaze outside the painting of St Lucia, the sigh of ecstasy, almost a grimace, that emanates from the presumed figure of St Agnes and expresses all the intensity of an entirely exclusive experience, the petulant and contrary reaction of the Child at the approach of the aged St Zacharias, and lastly the unprecedentedly languid and passionate gaze that the archangel Michael directs toward the Virgin Mary.

Pontormo attempted seemingly endless variations on the constricted universal of the male body in action, without decorative embellishment. This lead him to produce some highly wrought, extravagant figures of the type so prevalent in his later frescoes, as each gesture and pose was repeatedly and rationally investigated during the creative process.

This drawing - thought to be a self-portrait - is a study for the head of the figure in the upper right of Pontormo’s Deposition in the Cappella Capponi in Santa Felicità, Florence. Unlike the other preliminary sketches for the altarpiece, this drawing is highly finished, with a subtle rendering of the highlights of the face.

In this portrait drawing Pontormo used a mirror to depict himself. The recto shows a study of two Carthusian monks.

Four tondos with the Evangelists still adorn the pendentives that once supported the old cupola of the Cappella Capponi in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence. Except for the painting of St John, the precise authorship of the other three portraits has posed considerable problems for scholars. As Vasari only attributes two of the tondi to Bronzino, without specifying which, scholars are still divided over which and how many of them were painted by Bronzino, the apprentice to Pontormo. Probably Bronzino was responsible for the St Matthew with an intense gaze, half-closed mouth, and tousled red hair, painted with thickly laid-on and glowing brushstrokes and enlivened by the strong light that falls on the figure with a swirling crimson cloak, set against the dark background. Probably also Bronzino’s is the St Mark with its palette of yellow and red tones contrasting with the green of the mantle wrapped around the figure, which looks as if it is peering through a window, an idea drawn from the Gospel.

The bald St John with a long beard seems to share the same uneasy and sorrowful humanity lavished on the body of Christ in the Deposition by Pontormo in the same chapel, this tondo can certainly be attributed to Pontormo. St Luke is probably also a contribution by Pontormo.

The figures of the Evangelists, with their distinctly Michelangiolesque flavour, have a vigour deriving from the way their heads are twisted and pushed forward. They are wrapped in ample robes, whose bold colours stand out against the dark backgrounds. This play of strong contrasts, which exalts the delicate outlines of the coloured surfaces, is in keeping with the refined style of the entire decoration of the chapel.

Four tondos with the Evangelists still adorn the pendentives that once supported the old cupola of the Cappella Capponi in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence. Except for the painting of St John, the precise authorship of the other three portraits has posed considerable problems for scholars. As Vasari only attributes two of the tondi to Bronzino, without specifying which, scholars are still divided over which and how many of them were painted by Bronzino, the apprentice to Pontormo. Probably Bronzino was responsible for the St Matthew with an intense gaze, half-closed mouth, and tousled red hair, painted with thickly laid-on and glowing brushstrokes and enlivened by the strong light that falls on the figure with a swirling crimson cloak, set against the dark background. Probably also Bronzino’s is the St Mark with its palette of yellow and red tones contrasting with the green of the mantle wrapped around the figure, which looks as if it is peering through a window, an idea drawn from the Gospel.

The bald St John with a long beard seems to share the same uneasy and sorrowful humanity lavished on the body of Christ in the Deposition by Pontormo in the same chapel, this tondo can certainly be attributed to Pontormo. St Luke is probably also a contribution by Pontormo.

The figures of the Evangelists, with their distinctly Michelangiolesque flavour, have a vigour deriving from the way their heads are twisted and pushed forward. They are wrapped in ample robes, whose bold colours stand out against the dark backgrounds. This play of strong contrasts, which exalts the delicate outlines of the coloured surfaces, is in keeping with the refined style of the entire decoration of the chapel.

The three separate views of the same adolescent on the two sides of this sheet are studies for the never-executed Nailing of Christ to the Cross, planned for the mural cycle of the Passion in the cloister of Galuzzo.

From 1523 to 1525 Pontormo worked at the charterhouse of Galuzzo, near Florence, painting a mural cycle of the Passion for the cloister. This drawing is a study for the never-executed scene of the cycle. Pontormo used as his model a naked youth, whom he had lie on the floor.

These studies of expressions on young and old faces are not related to any known project.

On the recto of the sheet a reclining nude is depicted.

In this drawing for the Portrait of Maria Salviati, the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Pontormo shows Salviati with an aged face, suggesting that it was made toward the end of her life. In the painting, the sagging flesh around the eyes and mouth has been smoothed.

The three separate views of the same adolescent on the two sides of this sheet are studies for the never-executed Nailing of Christ to the Cross, planned for the mural cycle of the Passion in the cloister of Galuzzo.

This drawing demonstrates how the autonomy of the individual human figures is, in typical Mannerist style, overwhelmed by the movement of the linear composition.

The drawing on the recto of this sheet is related to the Youth in Pink Cloth in Lucca. Both the drawing and the panting have been associated with portraits ordered by Ottaviano de’ Medici of his young cousins Ippolito and Alessandro.

The verso was executed a few years earlier and is one of several drawings for the figure with a basket in Pontormo’s Vertumnus and Pomona for Poggio a Caiano.

This is a study for the figure of Liber in the lunette fresco in the Salone of the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. In two preliminary studies Pontormo depicted Liber as an ithyphallic god (a representation of a deity having an erect penis), shading his eyes with one hand. But such a characterization of the figure was clearly felt to be too indecent, and so it was abandoned in favour of the ingenious solution found in the fresco: the youth no longer covers his face with his hand but with a cloth, on which he is also sitting and which could easily have covered his genitals, but that is exactly what it does not do, and so attention is naturally directed to that point.

This is a study for the figure of Liber in the lunette fresco in the Salone of the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. In two preliminary studies Pontormo depicted Liber as an ithyphallic god (a representation of a deity having an erect penis), shading his eyes with one hand. But such a characterization of the figure was clearly felt to be too indecent, and so it was abandoned in favour of the ingenious solution found in the fresco: the youth no longer covers his face with his hand but with a cloth, on which he is also sitting and which could easily have covered his genitals, but that is exactly what it does not do, and so attention is naturally directed to that point.

This drawing is related to Pontormo’s San Lorenzo commission.

This is a study, one of two early sketches, for the lunette fresco in the Salone of the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. These sketches depict a dry laurel branch and one sprouting new foliage, both coiled, in monumental form, around the oculus. In the fresco, by contrast, Pontormo produced an artistically more convincing version by having several thin branches sprout from the thick but sawn-off laurel branches on which the upper putti are sitting. The laurel - lauro in Italian - had long been a common and universally known metaphor for Lorenzo (Laurentius) the Magnificent. The dried laurel branch (the ‘broncone’), which gives off new leaves in the spring, became the image for the descendants of Lorenzo.

This is a study, one of two early sketches, for the lunette fresco in the Salone of the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano. These sketches depict a dry laurel branch and one sprouting new foliage, both coiled, in monumental form, around the oculus. In the fresco, by contrast, Pontormo produced an artistically more convincing version by having several thin branches sprout from the thick but sawn-off laurel branches on which the upper putti are sitting. The laurel - lauro in Italian - had long been a common and universally known metaphor for Lorenzo (Laurentius) the Magnificent. The dried laurel branch (the ‘broncone’), which gives off new leaves in the spring, became the image for the descendants of Lorenzo.

The drawing on the recto of the sheet relates to the painted portrait of Francesco Guardi as a halberdier, except that the pose is more frontal here than in the painting. It may represent an intermediate stage of the composition.

The verso contains a study of a male nude.

The drawing on the verso of this sheet is a study for the monk in the background of Pontormo’s Supper at Emmaus, painted for the Carthusian monastery at Galuzzo.

The recto is a study for the the figure in the left foreground of the same painting.

This drawing is a study for a portrait of a seated man (known only from a sixteenth-century copy), probably sketched from life. The identity of the sitter is not known.

The recto of this sheet is a study for the the figure in the left foreground of Pontormo’s Supper at Emmaus, painted for the Carthusian monastery at Galuzzo.

The verso is a study for the monk in the background of the same painting.

In this drawing a young woman is shown bust length in what has been identified as widows’s weeds. The costume and the pose of the face are identical to a portrait on panel identified as Maria Salviati, the mother of Cosimo I de’ Medici. If the present drawing is a portrayal of Salviati, then Pontormo either was planning a historicizing portrait of her as a young widow or had executed the drawing many years earlier than the painting. Perhaps this drawing is really a costume study for a portrait of Salviati, for which Pontormo posed a workshop assistant in a widow’s veil.

This drawing, which depicts two views of the head of the same youth, a workshop assistant labouring on a mural project, has been attributed to both Pontormo and Bronzino.

Pontormo executed the canvas for the Carthusian monastery at Galluzzo where he worked between 1523 and 1527. The painting depicts the episode in which the now risen Christ, repeating the same act of breaking the bread that he had made during the Last Supper, is about to be recognized by two of his disciples.

The inspiration behind the figurative concept is certainly D�rer, from an engraving belonging to the series of the Little Passion (1511). D�rer and northern figurative culture in general were also behind the most striking characteristics of the canvas, the close adherence to an everyday reality that has frequently induced authoritive scholars of Pontormo to interpret this extraordinary work as heralding the realistic research of Caravaggio, Vel�zquez and Zurbar�n.

The elimination of the distance between painted event and spectator and the foreshortened contact with reality are effects created by the inclusion of portraits of people living at the time and participating in the event, and the large naked feet of the disciples in the lower part of the painting, where the heads of cats can be seen, their inquisitive gazes directed towards the onlooker. A crouching puppy can just be seen in the lower left corner of the painting. The same attention to realism is also evident in the careful representation of the group of objects forming a still life on the table.

The eye of God, painted above Christ’s head, is a later addition.

Although not all scholars are in agreement, there is presently almost unanimous accord over the attribution of this small work to Pontormo. The panel is linked stylistically to a drawing with the Creation of Adam and Eve kept in the Prints and Drawings Collection of the Uffizi, which shows the influence of Michelangiolesque anatomy yet is further enriched by an expressiveness drawn from the study of Albrecht D�rer’s engravings.

Pontormo’s skill as a draftsman is universally admired, and his drawings are a highly approachable aspect of his vision. A delicacy of touch, a spirited line, and an emphasis upon surface is combined with an exciting concentration on silhouette.

This drawing is probably a study for a never-executed mural decoration. The twin-like nature of the two men suggests that the drawing is an allegory of the zodiac sign and constellation Gemini, which is symbolized by twins.

The theme of the nude figure depicted anatomically and characterized by particular twists of the body, which forms the leitmotif of Michelangelo’s figurative research, Pontormo addressed and reinterpreted in an entirely personal way in a series of extraordinary designs preparatory to cartoons which the artist executed from the beginning of the 1530s for the decoration of various rooms in the Florentine Medicean villas. For the villa of Poggio a Caiano, where the painter had already executed the fresco Vertumnus and Pomona, the artist prepared various cartoons among them one depicting a scene of ignudi playing football. Of the preparatory designs for the cartoon, the only surviving traces are the so-called Kicking Player, associated with the drawing of Titius which Michelangelo executed towards the end of 1532, and the remarkable red-ochre drawing with Two Nudes Compared.

The theme of the nude figure depicted anatomically and characterized by particular twists of the body, which forms the leitmotif of Michelangelo’s figurative research, Pontormo addressed and reinterpreted in an entirely personal way in a series of extraordinary designs preparatory to cartoons which the artist executed from the beginning of the 1530s for the decoration of various rooms in the Florentine Medicean villas. For the villa of Poggio a Caiano, where the painter had already executed the fresco Vertumnus and Pomona, the artist prepared various cartoons among them one depicting a scene of ignudi playing football. Of the preparatory designs for the cartoon, the only surviving traces are the so-called Kicking Player, associated with the drawing of Titius which Michelangelo executed towards the end of 1532, and the remarkable red-ochre drawing with Two Nudes Compared.

This informal study of workshop assistants was probably done while Pontormo was working at Galuzzo.

The verso of the sheet contains a black chalk drawing of a head of a man wearing a hat.

The bodies in Pontormo’s later work are extended and distorted for maximum expression but they still have a sense of flexible solidity derived from life studies and close anatomical observation.

Venus turns her massive body into the picture plane, confronting the viewer with it and with the incestuous kiss she gives her young son - a juxtaposition recalling more conventional allegories of Charity. Her coolly classical face resembles the second of the two masks, symbols of the misleading nature of dreams.