Pontormo: Paintings and Frescoes
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Performing Arts
Pontormo: Paintings and Frescoes Details
From School Library Journal Nigro here assembles critical and literary references to the Mannerist artist who admired and was influenced by Michelangelo and was a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. The bulk of this book consists of beautiful color plates with dissonant commentaries. Although similar in style and format to Pontormo: Drawings (Abrams, 1992), it differs in offering a chronology based on Vasari's Lives instead of the artist's own diary and provides detailed bibliographic notes as well. Libraries that own Drawings should definitly purchase this compliment; both are suitable for Mannerist and other collections serving advanced studies in the period.Ellen Bates, New YorkCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Booklist The author is a professor of Italian literature in Sicily, his subject the Italian painter Jacobo Carrucci (1494-1557), known as Pontormo. Pontormo's importance is as a bridge between the Renaissance and the baroque; and it's obvious, in examining the excellent, one-per-page reproductions, that in his use of color, in his sense of movement, and in his genius for exploiting light to enhance dimension, Pontormo looked toward the baroque period's consciousness of fluidity and away from the reserve and even staginess of Renaissance art. In his text--an introductory essay and full captions to the plates--Nigro emphasizes Pontormo's visionariness as opposed to realism; what he rendered on canvas and plaster was visions stamped with deeply personal interpretations of biblical events and even human nature. For active art collections used by readers well versed in art history. Brad Hooper Read more Language Notes Text: English (translation) Original Language: Italian Read more
Reviews
Yes, Guercino. Or maybe Domenico Fetti? It is a long way to Courbet, but no distance seems to intimidate the author of the notes for this magnificently illustrated book devoted to artist Jacopo Carucci, detto Pontormo.The book was composed and edited by a professor of Italian language in Catania Salvatore Nigro. Sig. Nigro's preface reads as a desperate attempt to say something new and different, and to approach with innovation the works of an artist firmly in annals of art history, with Pontormo being the most famous protagonist of the Italian Mannerism. Indeed to present Pontormo in an innovating way should be a daunting task, and Sig. Nigri in the preface drops many names, showing off his deep erudition in artistic,literary and cinematographic matters - the texts jumps from references to Michel de Montaigne to Pier Paolo Pasolini and from there to Orson Wells and so on.Yet it all begs a question - does Pontormo really need such a strange start, with Courbet's "Les Baigneuses" (1853, Musee Fabre, Montpellier, France):Gustave Courbet Nudes Ceramic Tile Mural 12 | 30x36 using (30) 6x6 tilesa picture so notoriously scandalous that even on Amazon it exists in this well-veiled disguise (while apparently popular enough!, accused of vulgarity in its own time, with its dubious fame obviously having made such a deep impression on stunned members of the public like Salvatore Nigri that he deemed it necessary to begin Pontormo's book with it? What is ironic that Sig. Nigro, despite his deep familiarity with French Romantics and Realists, apparently did not know of a similar work by Guercino "Landscape with bathing women" (1621, Museum Boijmans-van-Beuningen in Rotterdam), who in turn was influenced by a Venetian artist Domenico Fetti in 1620s.Ironically, those canvases depicting corpulent ladies nude did not seem to steer much passion in their own time, and no wonder - from 1620s there will be a long time, a century and a half, before the fateful French Revolution put a firm end to all things refined and elegant and enthroned a self-conceited bourgeois with his worship of crude, rough, ugly, banal and vulgar, the taste to which Courbet and the following French Impressionists, headed by Renoir, catered so faithfully, until chocked on its own emptiness and replaced by Dolce Stil Nuovo pioneered by Kandinsky, Picasso, Braque and other avant-guard artists who dealt a final blow to the decayed world of straw hats, cow-like facial expressions of dumb fleshy nudes and primitive irregularities of flat apples and pears.Luckily, the preface eventually arrives on Vasari and from there the story of Pontormo finds itself in a more agreeable company - Andrea del Sarto, Rosso Fiorentino, Bronzino and other figures and artists who had a direct influence on the artist, be it his teacher Andrea, a colleague Rosso or a pupil Agnolo Bronzino. Vasari describes Pontormo's style with such completeness that makes it difficult indeed to add much to it. Reviewing art heritage of Pontormo, it emerges to the viewer that Pontormo was never satisfied: "destroying and doing again every day what he had done the day before, he racked his brains for ideas so hard that it was piteous; yet all the time he kept on making new discoveries which gave honour to him and beauty to the work". According to Vasari Pontormo was a hermit devoted solely to his art, and his method of painting involved more his head rather than his heart.Pontormo's cerebral approach to painting, extreme study and learned inventiveness can be seen so well in his "Visitation" in the Church of San Michele, Carmignano painted in 1528, for which he used Durer's engraving as a base for the composition; his inverse coloring of paired women clothing is amazing to observe. It is this "Visitation that graces the cover of the book: FRAMED oil paintings - Jacopo Carucci (Pontormo) - 24 x 30 inches - Visitation 1While Pontormo's most famous "Deposition" is an epitome of his "seeing while thinking" approach, a superb product of mental construction.FRAMED oil paintings - Jacopo Carucci (Pontormo) - 24 x 40 inches - DepositionIt is while reading this book and looking at its plates that I realized how much the French painted Nicolas Poussin was indebted to Pontormo with his cold and mental style. It is possible that Poussin was influenced by a Pontormo's follower Francesco Primaticcio whose works he could have seen in his native France in Fontainebleau. The resemblance of Poussin's style to Pontormo's is especially striking when seeing Poussin's later pictures live in a museum; it is a wonder that he painted in a comparatively archaic manner, since he was living in a flagrant Baroque period in arts, being a contemporary of such artists as Pietro da Cortona, Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, whose works he all knew so well from his life in Rome. There are many examples, the ones on Roman history are especially impressive as related to Pontormo's maniera:Professionally Framed Nicolas Poussin (Rape of the Sabine Women) Art Poster Print - 13x19 with RichAndFramous Black Wood FrameApparently the mannerist, thinking, intellectual and sober style was much more natural to Poussin's artistic vision than the opulent decorative curly Baroque with its splendid excesses.The book's main and unsurpassed value is the color plates with individual, in-depth descriptions, stating all possible art historians who ever commented on each work of art presented in the book, including Bernard Berenson and Heinrich Wölfflin, the latter particularly admired by me for his great books: Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance. It appears that Wölfflin was mesmerized by the Pontormo's "Visitation" painted in 1514 in Santissima Annunziata in Florence: Hand Made Oil Reproduction - Jacopo Carucci (Pontormo) - 24 x 32 inches - VisitationThe commentary to Pontormo's fresco in the Medici Villa in Poggio a Caiano are also noteworthy, explaining the significance of this early work of the artist in the Villa, where he worked together with Franciabigio under the general artistic direction by Andrea del Sarto on the decoration of the palatial villa. With astonishment I found a reference to a quite famous Russian amateur art historian, akin to French Stendhal - Pavel Muratov, who is virtually unknown in the West. This confirms the incredibly diligent work that Sig. Nigri had done in preparing the book. On a side note, it is hilarious to read in the actual Muratov's book his attacks on the aforementioned Heinrich Wölfflin! How the world of art is full of jealousies...It is impossible to mention all the works listed and commented in the book; there are no drawings presented, which could be seen as a drawback. However, the book is already quite big, with each work and many details being well-discussed. It is a pity that a book in a similar format on Pontormo's drawings does not exist.The book ends with chronology - very useful and well-written; I learned from there that the painter's father Bartolommeo di Jacopo Martini, was already a painter who had been a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio. There is no wonder that they are all together now in the church of Santa Maria Novella, together with the forerunner of Renaissance Masaccio - and one can only hold her breath in anticipation of a visitation there soon.This book is a must for a study of the art of Pontormo; I have not yet seen of a better one when it comes to Pontormo's pictures and their descriptions. As I mentioned, the editor employed a highly personal approach in making of this book, but it makes it entertaining to read; certainly it is more vivacious and lively than a dry edition written by a bored professional who is often quite disinterested in art (a common case with mediocre art historians); this book is made by a passionate admirer and it adds to the pleasure of gazing at the marvelous plates of this greatly illustrated volume.