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Jacopo Carrucci (Pontormo, near Empoli, May 24,
1494 - January 2, 1557), usually known as  Jacopo
da Pontormo, or simply Pontormo, was a
Florence|Florentine painter and portraitist, and
one of the classic exemplars of the
Mannerism|Mannerist style of the 16th century.

He trained with the High Renaissance artist Andrea
del Sarto, who became his jealous rival, and spent
his whole life in Florence, where he was supported
by the Medici. His experimentive distortions of
perspective, and harsh jarring colors, hint at his
profoundly unsettled personality. A foray to Rome,
largely to see Michelangelo's work, influenced his
later style.

Giorgio Vasari|Vasari relates how after the
orphaned boy, "young, melancholy and lonely," was
sent to Florence:

:"Jacopo had not been many months in Florence
before Bernardo Vettori sent him to stay with
Leonardo da Vinci, and then with Mariotto
Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo, and finally, in
1512, with Andrea del Sarto, with whom he did not
remain long, for after he had done the cartoons
for the arch of the Servites it does not seem that
Andrea bore him any good will, whatever the cause
may have been."

An example of Pontormo's early style is the fresco
of The Visitation of the Virgin and St Anne (1514
- 1516), in St. Michele, Carmignano.

A turning point in Pontormo's art was the fresco
decoration he executed in the Medici villa at
Poggio a Caiano, not far from Florence. Pontormo
took part in the decoration of the salone  where
he represented the somewhat obscure classical myth
of Vertumnus and Pomona in a lunette.

Pontormo's masterpiece is the Deposition from the
Cross executed in the Capponi Chapel, Church of
Santa Felicità in Florence, about 1528, a
whirling oval of figures around the pale dead
Christ that took him three years to accomplish The
chapel itself was an Early Renaissance work of
Brunelleschi, and Pontormo collaborated on the
rest of its decor so intimately with Agnolo
Bronzino that specialists argue over the precise
joint roles they played. Critics are reduced to
saying that Pontormo "prefigures" the Baroque or
"anticipates" El Greco or Michelangelo
Merisi|Caravaggio, signs of his immense though
somewhat studied originality, his strange poses,
grimaces and private gestures, entangled
compositions, bizarre choices of models.

Vasari's Life of Pontormo, describing him living
withdrawn and steeped in neurosis, while at the
center of the artists and patrons of his lifetime,
makes a fine introduction to the artistic life of
the 16th century. A diary of his last two years
survives.


==External links==
*http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/p/pontormo/
Pontormo's paintings and drawings illustrated
*http://www.artist-biography.info/artist/jacopo_da
_fontormo/ Giorgio Vasari's Vita (English)