Jacopo Pontormo Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, b. 1494 - d. 1557

(b 1494, Pontormo, Italy; d 1556/7, Florence, Italy). Late Italian Renaissance painter. Jacopo Carrucci (da Pontormo), a Florentine artist, son of the painter Bartolommeo Carrucci, separated himself from the classicism of the High Renaissance painting by developing more expressive style marking the beginning of Florentine Mannerism. At the age of 18 Pontormo joined the workshop of Andrea del Sarto. Commissions like “Joseph in Egypt” (c. 1515) and his altarpiece for the Church of San Michele Visdomini, Florence (c. 1518) showed the development of his distinctive style that rejected the balance and harmony of the Renaissance. He favored emotionalism which he expressed in distortions of perspective, scale and color. In 1521 Pontormo was employed by the Medici family to decorate the Poggi a Caiano Villa with mythological subjects. He borrowed compositional suggestions from German prints, including the engravings of Albrecht Durer, in the fresco “Passion Cycle” (c. 1525). His altarpiece “The Deposition” in the Capponi Chapel of Santa Felicità, Florence (c. 1528) is a prominent work in the Mannerism movement. Pontormo’s adopted son and student, Bronzino (1503- 1572), was more affected by his teacher’s portraits than his religious paintings. Bronzino’s early work is so close, however, to Pontormo’s that the authorship of several paintings during the 1520s and 30s have been under dispute. Drawings are the only surviving evidence of Pontormo’s frescoes that once adorned the walls of San Lorenzo; this project occupied him during the last decade of his life.