Pontormo and Parmigianino

Pontormo

The frescoes and altarpieces painted between 1525 and 1528 by Jacopo da Pontormo (1494-1557) for the 100-year-old Capponi chapel in the church of Santa Felicità in Florence bear the hallmarks of early Mannerist painting. Pontormo’s ambiguous composition in the Entombment enhances the visionary quality of the altarpiece.

Shadowy ground and cloudy sky give no sense of a specific location, and little sense of grounding for the figures. Some press forward into the viewer’s space, while others seem to levitate or stand precariously on tiptoe. Pontormo chose a moment just after Jesus’ removal from the cross, when the youths who have lowered him pause to regain their hold on the corpse, which recalls Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà. Odd poses and drastic shifts in scale charge the scene emotionally, but perhaps most striking is the use of weird colors in odd juxtapositions – baby blue and pink with accents of olive-green, yellow, and scarlet. The overall tone of the picture is set by the unstable youth crouching in the foreground, whose skintight bright pink shirt is shaded in iridescent, pale gray-green, and whose anxious expression is projected out of the painting directly at the viewer.

Parmigianino

Left unfinished at the time of his early death is a disconcerting panting known as the Madonna with the Long Neck by Parmigianino (nickname meaning “little guy from Parma”) (1503-1540). The unnaturally proportioned figure of Mary, whose massive legs and lower torso contrast with her narrow shoulders and long neck and fingers, is presumably seated on a throne, but there is no seat in sight. The languid expanse of the sleeping child recalls the pose of the ashen Christ in a pietà. The plunge into a deep background to the right reveals a startlingly small St. Jerome, who unrolls a scroll in front of huge white columns that support absolutely nothing, whereas at the left a crowded mass of blushing angels blocks any view into the background. Like Pontormo, Parmigianino presents a well-known image in a challenging manner calculated to unsettle viewers. ^[1]