Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters

At the end of the 1520s, at the time of the siege that brought to an end the last Florentine Republic (1529–1530), the painter Jacopo Carucci, known as Pontormo, (1494–1557) created one of his most moving and groundbreaking paintings, the altarpiece of The Visitation. 

The recent restoration of this masterpiece of Mannerist art has created the extraordinary opportunity for the work to travel for the first time from Carmignano (near Florence in Italy) to the United States. 

Following it's showing at the Galleria degli Uffizi Florence, Italy, Pontormo: Miraculous Encounters presents Pontormo’s spectacular altarpiece together with its preparatory drawing and with another masterpiece by the artist, the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni?).

Pontormo (1494–1557), was the leading painter in mid sixteenth-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary Mannerist artists. His extremely personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo, though he also drew from northern art, especially the work of Albrecht Dürer.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.         

Image: Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1556), Visitation, 1528–1529, oil on panel, Parrocchia dei Santi Michele e Francesco, Carmignano. Photography by Antonio Quattrone.

Whether or not you go, the exhubition catalog, Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting,  brings together a small but important group of preparatory drawings and finished paintings that center on Pontormo’s great masterpiece, The Visitation, one of the most moving and mesmerizing works by the artist. The Visitation represents the intense moment of encounter between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, who reveal to each other that both are pregnant. The painting is presented—for the first time—along with its highly finished preparatory drawing, which is squared for transfer to the larger surface of the panel. The combination of rigorous research and gorgeous reproductions reveals the painter’s creative process as never before. Other acclaimed paintings, including Portrait of a Halberdier and Portrait of Carlo Neroni, will also be shown alongside their preparatory drawings. Readers will encounter Pontormo both as a religious painter and a painter of portraits, in this original and nuanced account of the celebrated artist.

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