(Florentine painter and draughtsman, who enjoyed the protection of three Medici dukes but had no fixed position at court. He studied briefly with Leonardo in 1508, and then with Piero di Cosimo, finally ending up in the shop of Andrea del Sarto in 1512. Both Raphael and Michelangelo are said to have noticed and commented on his prodigal talents.
For the Florentine carnival celebrations following Leo X’s election in 1513, Pontormo painted three chariots in Roman style with chiaroscuro paintings of the mythological gods and, with Bandinelli, painted one of the six others conceived by the writer Jacopo Nardi for the Medici Camillus masque of 1514, modelling them on the Triumph of the Golden Age. For Leo X’s entry into Florence a year later, Pontormo collaborated with other painters in decorating the Badia with figures dedicated to the general theme of Faith, and on the same occasion, also assisted Ridolfo Ghirlandaio in frescoing parts of the papal chapel adjoining S. Maria Novella which still survive. Besides creating numerous frescos and paintings on religious themes, he painted the lunettes of Vertumnis and Pomona at Leo X’s villa of Poggio a Caiano (c.1520-21), as well as mythological characters and allegories at Duke Alessandro’s villa of Careggi in 1536 and Duke Cosimo’s villa of Castello. In the Entombment for the Capponi family chapel in S.Felicita (1525-28), with its chorus of gestures and characters of distraught beauty, Pontormo linked coloristic refinement with profound emotion. Vasari believed that Pontormo’s increasing figural exaggeration was due to the influence of the «maniera tedesca» through the prints of Albrecht Dürer. After 1540, Pontormo painted primarily religious subjects, among them the frescoes of the capella maggiore at San Lorenzo for Cosimo de’ Medici.

(Alice Jarrard)