New color, new studies, some lessons from Pontormo’s mastery

 

How many thoughts behind a painting, how many sketches on paper, how many changes of ideas and intentions under the color. Behind the structured composition of the Holy Conversation (dated 1518) belonging to San Michele Visdomini Church in Florence, also known as Pucci Altarpiece [FIGURES 1-2], a lot of thoughts and a precise direction are to be followed. This is Jacopo Carucci called Pontormo, 24 years old, who trained in Andrea del Sarto’s workshop, yet distinguished since he was 20 with his sense of shape and gesture, proportion and invention.

 

On an extremely intense wall the exhibition “Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism” (curated by Carlo Falciani and Antonio Natali, Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, until 20 July) puts on display three paths in painting, one close to the other, both for style and for the following developments: Andrea del Sarto’s Madonna of the Harpies (1517), Rosso’s Spedalingo Altarpiece (1518) and the Pucci Altarpiece by Pontormo.

 

The latter was accurately cleaned and restored, under the supervision of Maria Matilde Simari of the Soprintendenza of Florence, by Lisa Venerosi Pesciolini and Anna Monti in a fruitful collaboration, demonstrating how two high quality professionals can overcome competition and individualism in order to reach the best expression of their experience. Fully respecting the integrity of the original matter, the removal of a dense veil of dirt brought again to light the “color so vibrant” described by Vasari [FIGURE 1], who addressed to this painting as the “most beautiful altarpiece that was ever executed by this truly rare painter”. In this sentence we perceive Vasari’s disapproval for Pontormo’s subsequent work, but we also clearly understand the meaning of “vibrant” color, in Italian “vivo”, also signifying “alive”.

 

The sense of life and reality depends both on the naturalness of gestures and on the well studied chiaroscuro and color variations in respect to light source. And light is indeed the hidden protagonist of the painting, coming from the left-side: St. John the Evangelist and Joseph have turned their faces to it. It may not be a coincidence that the beginning of St. John Gospel deals with themes regarding Divine Light, its incarnation and our knowledge of it. In the meanwhile, the young Jesus plays with the small cross taken from the young St. John Baptist.

 

Breaking the traditional shape of Florentine Holy Conversations, here the painter invents a V and inverted V structure, to convey a peculiar sort of movement which is harmonized by gestures, balanced by the four babies (including the two angels) and the four saints at different heights. What a difference from a first solution sketched on a paper, with the figures distributed into two groups, generally organized along two oblique lines, failing dialogue [FIGURE 3].

 

Under the superb invention of the Pucci Altarpiece, IR reflectographic exams (carried out by Art-Test and partly by me) show Pontormo’s characteristic under-drawing [FIGURES 4-5] and his approach to painting: an outline drawing, thin and angular, especially geometric in folds, at times revised, probably traced with a black pencil. It is a concentrated and synthetic line, overflying details, needing a larger work for brush in inventing directly with color many solutions. What a different under-drawing from his detailed one of the later Deposition in Santa Felicita, for example.

 

Pontormo, at this early stage, uses a lot of black in his under-layers, to surround some heads and to grant a strong modeling to shadows.Structure, vivid masses of color, a pondered chiaroscuro, a peculiar care to movements, Pontormo introduces a strong rhythm in his painting. On the back of the panel, a charcoal drawing of a male figure – a colleague? – was found [FIGURE 6], seen from behind, wearing a long tunic and bending over a work table. Pontormo: never loses the occasion to record a piece of life.

 

Gianluca Poldi

 

Gianluca Poldi is a physicist (PhD), specialised in scientific exams on artworks and in pictorial technique (https://unibg.academia.edu/GianlucaPoldi). He contributed with research, books and essays to many exhibitions and projects, in Italy and abroad, usually working on the15-16^th and  19th-20th century. He collaborates with the Visual Art Centre of the University of Bergamo (http://cav.unibg.it/diagnostica/web/en).

 

September 7, 2014