Pontormo and the Art of Devotion in Renaissance Italy

It presents an innovative interpretation of the religious paintings of Pontormo, one of the most important painters of the Renaissance.

Jessica A. Maratsos (Author)

9781316510551, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 September 2021

272 pages
26 x 18 x 1.9 cm, 0.77 kg

Both lauded and criticized for his pictorial eclecticism, the Florentine artist Jacopo Carrucci, known as Pontormo, created some of the most visually striking religious images of the Renaissance.  These paintings, which challenged prevailing illusionistic conventions, mark a unique contribution into the complex relationship between artistic innovation and Christian traditions in the first half of the sixteenth century. Pontormo's sacred works are generally interpreted as objects that reflect either pure aesthetic experimentation, or personal and cultural anxiety. Jessica Maratsos, however, argues that Pontormo employed stylistic change deliberately for novel devotional purposes. As a painter, he was interested in the various modes of expression and communication - direct address, tactile evocation, affective incitement - as deployed in a wide spectrum of devotional culture, from sacri monti, to Michelangelo's marble sculptures, to evangelical lectures delivered at the Accademia Fiorentina. Maratsos shows how Pontormo translated these modes in ways that prompt a critical rethinking of Renaissance devotional art.

Introduction: Drawing devotion, imitating nature in Cinquecento Florence
1. Performing the Passion at the Certosa del Galluzo
2. Pictorial theology and the Paragone in the Capponi Chapel
3. Elusive rhetoric at San Lorenzo
4. A Pontormo legacy in Florence?

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800 [ACQ], Renaissance art [ACND], History of art & design styles: c 1400 to c 1600 [ACN]