Jacopo Carucci, known as Pontormo after his birthplace near Empoli, was a major Florentine painter of the sixteenth century and a leading figure of early Mannerism. He moved away from the balance of High Renaissance classicism toward a more personal, emotionally charged style. Orphaned young and trained in Florence, he was shaped first by Andrea del Sarto, then by Michelangelo and by Northern prints, especially Dürer’s. His masterpiece is the Deposition in the Capponi Chapel of Santa Felicita (c. 1525-28), where elongated figures float in an almost spaceless setting. He worked for the Medici and was also an outstanding portraitist. In his last years he kept a diary and worked on the San Lorenzo frescoes, which were later destroyed. His pupil Bronzino carried his legacy forward.
Early Life
Pontormo was born Jacopo Carucci in May 1494 at Pontorme, near Empoli, and took his artistic name from the village. Sources disagree on the exact day: Britannica gives 24 May, while the Oxford-derived entry gives 26 May. His father, Bartolomeo, was a painter who reportedly trained in Ghirlandaio’s workshop, though no works by him are known. Tragedy struck early. His father died in 1499, and his mother followed in 1504, leaving him an orphan at about ten. The boy was placed under the Florentine magistracy that handled orphans’ property and taken in by his maternal grandmother, Brigida, who had him educated and sent him to Florence at thirteen. He lived there for almost the rest of his life.
His training comes mainly from Vasari. According to Vasari, he was apprenticed to Leonardo da Vinci, then to Mariotto Albertinelli and Piero di Cosimo, and at eighteen entered Andrea del Sarto’s workshop, an influence that is most visible in his early works. The date of 1512 for entering Sarto’s workshop is also traditional. Vasari wrote decades later and favoured dramatic anecdotes, so these details should be read with caution. He also tells how Michelangelo, on seeing the young artist’s frescoes for the Servite friars, predicted that he would exalt the art to the heavens. Whatever its accuracy, the story shows how early Pontormo was seen as a prodigy. The same sources describe him as precocious, and already praised by Michelangelo as a youth.
Artistic Journey
Pontormo’s career moves from graceful early work to extreme, intensely personal late work. His early Visitation (1514–16) in the Annunziata courtyard shows the influence of Sarto and Fra Bartolommeo. Around 1516–18 he collaborated with Sarto, Bacchiacca and Granacci on the “Borgherini bedroom” decoration, contributing the Joseph scenes now in the National Gallery, London. His 1518 altarpiece for San Michele Visdomini, with its agitated, almost neurotic emotion, departs from the balance and calm of the High Renaissance. His Medici work followed. In 1520–21 he painted a mythological scene at Poggio a Caiano, and its idyllic surface hides a strong undercurrent of neurosis.
He left Florence in 1522 to escape the plague and painted the Passion fresco cycle at the Certosa del Galluzzo in 1523–4. His peak came with the Capponi Chapel in Santa Felicita. The banker Ludovico Capponi commissioned the Deposition in 1525, and it was ready in 1528. The composition has almost no spatial setting, only figures filling the panel. In the 1530s, he painted a Noli me tangere and a Venus and Cupid from Michelangelo’s cartoons, and his Medici villa decorations at Careggi and Castello are lost. In 1545 he also contributed tapestry designs for the Story of Joseph series for Cosimo I. His last great commission, the San Lorenzo choir frescoes (1546–56), was destroyed in 1742, and he kept a diary while working on it.
Influences
Pontormo absorbed several traditions and combined them into something his own. His first frescoes show the influence of Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, who gave him a Florentine foundation in naturalistic figure drawing. Michelangelo was the next great force. The high, brilliant colour of the Joseph panels owes a great deal to the newly unveiled Sistine Chapel ceiling (1512). The influence on his draughtsmanship is obvious and became stronger in the 1530s, when he worked from Michelangelo’s designs.
Northern European art mattered just as much. He was influenced by Northern art, especially the prints of Dürer and Lucas van Leyden. The best-known case is the Certosa cycle. Vasari reports that Dürer’s Engraved Passion prints reached Florence, and Pontormo based figures in some of his Certosa frescoes on them. Clapp suggested that Dürer’s Four Nude Women of 1497 may have influenced the circular grouping of the four figures in Pontormo’s Visitation.
Scholars debate what the borrowing meant. A review of Maratsos’s book says she rightly dismisses the idea that contemporaries would have read these adaptations as references to Luther and the northern reform movements. Harbison’s article of 1984 raised the question of Pontormo and the early Reformation. His setting also shaped his art. Maratsos argues that he drew on contemporary performance, including Florentine sacred plays, to give the Certosa frescoes urgency and accessibility.
Impact
Pontormo’s most direct legacy was through Bronzino. Bronzino was his pupil and adopted son, and the Met’s catalogue describes the two painters exchanging ideas and vocabulary into the early 1530s. At Pontormo’s death, Bronzino was entrusted with finishing the San Lorenzo frescoes. The line continued to Alessandro Allori, whom Bronzino adopted after the death of Allori’s father in 1540. Vasari described the relationships between Pontormo and Bronzino, and between Bronzino and Allori, as resembling those between fathers and sons. Pilliod’s 2001 study is built on this “genealogy” of Florentine art.
His wider influence is tied to Mannerism. The Deposition is considered one of the founding masterpieces of the style. Mannerism was born in Florence, with Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino as its main exponents, and it spread across Italy and into France. His reputation depends on scholarship partly because so much of his work is lost. The San Lorenzo frescoes are known only from drawings. That is why Cox-Rearick, the leading authority on his drawings, has been so important to understanding his career. The diary, discovered in 1902, has also played a central role in reconstructing his personality. Research is still active, including recent work on his devotional art and a major exhibition on his drawings and paintings, planned for Florence, New York and Los Angeles.