Pontormo

The Italian painter Pontormo (1494-1556) was an innovator of the mannerist style whose works influenced the subsequent development of Florentine mannerism.

Pontormo whose real name was Jacopo Carrucci, was born at Pontorme near Empoli. Apprenticed in rapid succession to several painters, including Leonardo da Vinci and Piero di Cosimo, when he was about 18 Pontormo became an assistant to Andrea del Sarto. Pontormo's first big commission, a fresco, the Visitation (1514), in Saints Annunziata, Florence, was part of a cycle of scenes from the life of Mary to which Andrea also contributed; it was such a success in Andrea's style that it aroused his jealousy.

The break with the classical style of the High Renaissance came about when the skill in realistic rendering had apparently reached a point in the work of Leonardo and other artists that could not be surpassed. Andrea and his contemporaries rearranged these realistic observations in handsome compositions which thus tended toward academic schemes, smooth and idealized. Andrea's pupils, in turn, formalized these patterns at one remove from nature. The mannerist artist emphasized the figure, as earlier High Renaissance painters had done, but he distorted its proportions and its relationship to space.

Pontormo's Visitation presents grandly robed, symmetrically grouped people in a niche, much as Andrea had done in his art, but in a series of small paintings of Joseph in Egypt (1515-1518) Pontormo scattered the figures over the picture surface, whimsically linked by impossible staircases. In the altarpiece (1518) for St. Michele Visdomini in Florence, black shadows separate the people and hide any spatial coordinates, and in the lunette fresco (1520) of the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, depicting the pastoral myth of Vertumnus and Pomona, the figures sit and gaze at us, making no gesture that links them in a narrative. All the figures are convincingly modeled, and his countless figure drawings are brilliant.

Of Pontormo's Passion frescoes (1523-1524) in the Certosa of Galluzzo, Christ before Pilate is the most famous. The figures, influenced by Albrecht Dürer, are sharply elongated, and the receding space is titled almost vertically upward. The Deposition altarpiece (1526) in St. Felicita in Florence is the climax of the artist's career, a mound of rising figures in odd shades of pink and green, each crisply drawn. This painting is a masterpiece of early Florentine mannerism.

Little of Pontormo's late work has been preserved. In the 1530s he painted stylized portraits and works closely derived from Michelangelo, another phase of the use of completed art as a tool that is basic to mannerism. Pontormo's last frescoes (1546-1556; destroyed), in St. Lorenzo in Florence, executed with a new style of fluid line, were generally disliked. He died in Florence in late December 1556.

Further Reading

Frederick M. Clapp, Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo: His Life and Work (1916), is excellent but outdated. Janet C. Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo (2 vols., 1964), is thorough and trustworthy. Pontormo is discussed in Walter Friedlaender, Mannerism and Antimannerism in Italian Painting (1957). □

Pontormo ( Jacopo Carucci) (b Pontormo, nr. Empoli, 26 May 1494; d Florence 31 Dec. 1556). Italian painter, active in and around Florence, where he was one of the outstanding artists of his generation. According to Vasari, he studied successively with Leonardo da Vinci, Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea del Sarto, whose workshop he is said to have entered in 1512; Andrea was certainly a major influence on his early work. Pontormo was precocious (he was praised by Michelangelo whilst still a youth) and by the time he painted his Joseph in Egypt (NG, London) in about 1518 he had already created a distinctive style—full of restless movement and disconcertingly irrational effects of scale and space—that put him in the vanguard of Mannerism. The emotional tension evident in this work reaches its climax in Pontormo's masterpiece, the altarpiece of the Entombment (c.1526–8) in the Capponi Chapel of S. Felicità, Florence, which is regarded as one of the summits of Mannerist art. It is sometimes described as the Deposition or the Lamentation, rather than the Entombment, and the uncertainty over the subject reflects its sublime otherworldliness; there is almost no conventional setting, the colours have an unearthly intensity, and the figures—lost in a trance of grief—seem to occupy a spiritual rather than a physical dimension.

Pontormo was primarily a religious painter, but he was also an outstanding portraitist (he was a major influence on his pupil and adopted son Bronzino) and in 1520–1 for the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano he painted a memorable mythological work (Vertumnus and Pomona according to Vasari, but the identification is disputed) in which an apparently idyllic scene reveals a strong undercurrent of neurosis. In his later work his style was enriched by the study of Michelangelo and Dürer's prints, but this stage of his career is known mainly through his superb drawings (best represented in the Uffizi, Florence), as the great fresco scheme in S. Lorenzo, Florence, that occupied him from 1546 until his death was destroyed in the 18th century. In the last two years of his life Pontormo kept a diary—a remarkable document that not only gives a day-to-day account of his progress in S. Lorenzo but also reveals his obsession with his failing health, as he notes every ache and pain and records every morsel he ate. It is a poignant testimony of a melancholy and introspective man; Vasari described him as ‘temperate and polite’, but also ‘solitary beyond belief’.

Pontormo ( Jacopo Carucci) (1494–1556). Italian painter, born in the Tuscan village of Pontormo, near Empoli, and active in and around Florence. According to Vasari, he studied successively with Leonardo da Vinci, Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea del Sarto, whose workshop he is said to have entered in 1512. Andrea was certainly a major influence on his early work. Pontormo was precocious (he was praised by Michelangelo whilst still a youth) and by the time he painted his Joseph in Egypt (NG, London) in about 1518 he had already created a distinctive style—full of restless movement and disconcertingly irrational effects of scale and space—that put him in the vanguard of Mannerism. The emotional tension evident in this work reaches its peak in Pontormo's masterpiece, the altarpiece of the Entombment (c.1526–8) in the Capponi Chapel of S. Felicità, Florence. Painted in extraordinarily vivid colours and featuring deeply poignant figures who seem lost in a trance of grief, this is one of the high points of Mannerism. Pontormo was primarily a religious painter, but he was also an outstanding portraitist (he was a major influence on his pupil and adopted son Bronzino) and in 1520–1 for the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano he painted a memorable mythological work (Vertumnus and Pomona according to Vasari, but the identification is disputed) in which an apparently idyllic scene reveals a strong undercurrent of neurosis. In Pontormo's later work his style was enriched by the study of Michelangelo and Dürer's prints, but this stage of his career is known mainly through his superb drawings (best represented in the Uffizi), as the great fresco scheme in S. Lorenzo, Florence, that occupied him from 1546 until his death, was destroyed in the 18th century. Pontormo's diary for part of 1554–6 remains, giving a day-to-day account of his progress. It tells us much of his neurotic character—melancholy and introspective, dismayed by the slightest illness.

Jacopo da Pontormo , 1494-1556, Florentine painter, one of the creators of mannerism . His real name was Jacopo Carrucci. He studied with Andrea del Sarto , Leonardo da Vinci , Mariotto Albertinelli , and Piero di Cosimo . While studying with Sarto, Pontormo met Il Rosso , who became his main rival. Among his earliest religious works were the altarpieces for the churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Annunziata, Florence. His altar for the church of San Michele Visdomini, Florence, is considered by many to be the first mannerist work in recorded history. Pontormo was also a talented portraitist; he made full use of his abilities in his Passion Cycle (1522-25) for the Florentine Certosa family, in which he gave animation and presence to several mythological scenes. His Lady with a Lap Dog is one of the first mannerist portraits. It is said that Pontormo was influenced by Michelangelo and Dürer as his work matured. For much of his life, Pontormo was a recluse. He painted several frescoes from 1546 to 1556, but these have since been lost. He is remembered mainly for his drawings from this period. Examples of his art are in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Fogg Museum, Cambridge; and the Yale Univ. Art Gallery. Pontormo also kept a diary in which he chronicled his neurotic obsessions.

Bibliography: See J. Cox-Rearick, The Drawings of Pontormo (2 vol., 1981).

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