Pontormo
Pontormo, Visitation , ca. 1528–1529, Parrocchia di San Michele Arcangelo a Carmignano (Prato). Image: Su concessione della Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per la Città Metropolitana di Firenze e per le Province di Pistoia e Prato. Photo © Antonio Quattrone, Florence
A leader of the great Florentine season of the 16th century, which embodied the transition from the High Renaissance to Mannerism, an eccentric innovator of classical models and, for this reason, the object of vast 20th-century fortune, from Pasolini to Bill Viola, a revered object of desire of collectors around the world, popular and beloved also by the general public for the highly original traits of his creative personality, Pontormo is, for the first time, the protagonist of a major exhibition entirely dedicated to him.
The exhibition brings together all the artist's major masterpieces and an extraordinary selection of works on paper. In addition to the significant number of works from the Uffizi Galleries, the Scuderie will also receive exceptional loans from museums and collections around the world (the Galleria dell'Accademia and the Bargello Museums, the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, the Louvre, the National Gallery, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and others). These will be displayed in the exhibition rooms, beginning with Pontormo's most famous and recognized masterpiece, the Visitation, from the Church of San Michele Arcangelo in Carmignano.
The Pontormo exhibition unfolds along a highly spectacular path, predominantly chronological although not without thematic insights.
The catalogue, published by Electa, seeks to represent a rigorous and up-to-date reference point for understanding Pontormo in the historical and cultural context of 16th-century Florence and painting between the High Renaissance and Mannerism.