JACOPO CARUCCI called PONTORMO
Pontormo 1494 – Florence 1556
Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist
Oil on panel
74.6 x 60 cm
PROVENANCE
Identified by P. Costamagna (1994) with the painting said by Vasari (1568) to have been found in Pontormo’s studio after his death “Furono dopo la costui morte trovati in casa sua molti disegni, cartoni, e modelli di terra bellissimi; et un quadro di Nostra Donna stato da lui molto beno condotto, per quello che si vide, e con bella maniera, molti anni innanzi; il quale fu venduto dagli eredi sui a Piero Salviati (1);
Inherited with the rest of Pontormo’s estate by Andrea Chiazzella, a weaver and relative of Pontormo, and sold by him for 15 gold scudi to Alessandro Allori: bought from him by
Piero Salviati, Florence, c.1556, for 35 scudi, and kept in his Villa Baroncelli (now Poggio Imperiale);
Piero Salviati’s estate was confiscated on his death (apparently because of his renegade son Alessandro, declared a fuoruscito) and delivered to Duke Cosimo de Medici, and the painting was listed in the 1599 inventory as being ‘Nella camera sudetta (i.e. ‘del piano della loggia’ ) Quadro di Nostra Donna, di mano del Pontormo, come dissono, con coperta di taffettà verde’.
In 1564 December, the property confiscated from Piero Salviati’s widow, including ‘Un quadro di Nostra Donna con la coperta di taffettà verde ... scudi 40, it is listed in the guardorobba of Villa Baroncelli, and a few days later ( 13 December) was taken from Palazzo Baroncelli in the quarter of S. Felicità to Grandduke Cosimo’s secretary “Un quadro di Nostra Donna che si dice essere di mano di Jacopo da Puntormo, stimato scudi 40: el quale si fe’ portare del medesimo ordine a messer Bartolomeo Concini, Secretario di Sua Eccellentia” [Bartolomeo Concini, 1507-1578, was Cosimo’s envoy to the Emperor Maximilian]; Pietro Salviati’s Villa at Poggio Imperiale, and presumably its contents, stayed in the Medici estate, to be given in 1565 to Paolo Giordano Orsini, who married Cosimo I’ s daughter Isabella de’ Medici];
Probably Hamilton Gibbs Wilde (1827-1884);
Private Collection, Boston (late 19th-century to 1991);
Mark Borghi collection, New York, by 1993 to at least 1994;
Private collection, New York
EXHIBITED
Boston Art Club Exhibition, Boston, April 1879 (lent by Hamilton Wilde)
L’ officina della maniera, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 1996–1997, no. 100 (entry by E Cropper)
LITERATURE
G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architettori, 1568, VI, p. 288;
F. M. Clapp, Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo, his life and work, New Haven, pp. 80, 262
L. Berti, Pontormo, Florence 1964, pp. 96, CLXX;
K. W. Forster, Pontormo: Monographie mit kritischen Katalog, Munich 1966, p. 144;
J. Cox-Rearick and S. Freedberg, “A Pontormo (partly) rediscovered”, in The Burlington Magazine, CXXV, 1983, p. 522;
P. Costamagna, Pontormo, Milan,1994,pp. 20-21, 266-67, 326, illus.
E. Cropper, in L’officina della maniera, Florence,1996,pp.20,288–89, illus;
A. Forlani Tempesti, exhibition review in Antichità viva, 35, no.4, 1996, p.62;
J. Cox-Rearick, review of “Pontormo” in The Burlington Magazine, 139, no. 1127, February 1997, p. 127;
E. Pilliod, Pontormo Bronzino Allori, New Haven, 2001 p. 259;
J. Cox-Rearick and P. Costamagna, “A Bronzino discovery,” Apollo, 159, no. 506, April 2004, p. 16
From the beginning of his career, Pontormo worked closely with some of the most successful artists of the day. He studied with Leonardo da Vinci and Piero di Cosimo, and his first surviving works date to early in the second decade of the 16th century, when he was an assistant to Andrea del Sarto. The present panel was painted towards the end of this decade, when del Sarto’s influence was still strong on the young painter, and before Pontormo had fully developed the mannerist style of the Capponi chapel that would define his later religious works. It is particularly interesting to see it in the context of the work of the same subject by Andrea del Sarto, painted but a few years earlier and with the intention of putting his pupils on the road of designing and executing their own variations of the theme, which was to become one of the most successful subjects of the Italian High Renaissance. Interestingly, the painting evidently shares some of the motifs, and preparatory drawings of the altarpiece Pontormo painted for the Pucci chapel in Santa Maria Visdomini. Francesco di Giovanni Pucci set about (2) getting the rights to a family chapel (at first in SS. Annunziata) as early as January 1517; Pontormo’s altarpiece is dated 1518. Fra Bartolomeo died in October 1517, and in the following year del Sarto set off for France, thus leaving Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino as the most important painters in Florence.
Prof. Cox-Rearick has argued that the large Pucci altarpiece was in preparation as early as 1517, because of the references in it to del Sarto’s works like the Borghese Madonna, and the Madonna and Child with Angels in the Louvre. The smaller Madonna and Child with St John shown here is arguably born out of this moment of close collaboration with Andrea, and the Pontormo’s many drawings for the Pucci altarpiece show how interlinked this major project was with the production of a smaller domestic altarpiece, where the poses are closely related. In many ways the two children in the Pucci altarpiece are the same as those in this painting, and the framing of the Madonna’s head by the turban, and then a darker background, is paralleled in both paintings. The recent cleaning of the work shown here has brought out these qualities, showing the flowing mantle that surrounds the head of the Madonna, continuing either side as in the larger altarpiece. The unity of the whole composition, deliberately interrelating the various figures by means of gesture and expression, is matched by the pyramidal form of the design here and the turning of faces and bodies in different directions. The drawings themselves show how actively Pontormo was working on variety of language in the postures of his figures, and it is interesting to see this also in the two small panels of St Francis and St Jerome also included in this exhibition, which have been associated with the Pucci altarpiece.
Dr. Philippe Costamagna, who attributes the discovery in his 1995 monograph to Prof. Janet Cox-Rearick, identifies the work as the painting described by Vasari as purchased by Piero Salviati, also a patron of Andrea del Sarto, shortly after the artist’s death. The per quello che si vide of Vasari’s text has been taken to mean that it was unfinished, but does not actually imply this formally. The estate of the artist was the subject of considerable dispute: first awarded to a relative, Andrea Chiazzella, it was contested by Alessandro Allori and probably Bronzino himself. The lawyer Alfonso Quistella di Mirandola (whose daughter studied drawing with Allori) intervened with the Duke Cosimo de’ Medici, and he related that he had been approached by Alessandro (Allori/Bronzino) to buy the painting, and so he bought it from Andrea Chiazzella for 15 scudi. Alessandro asked him for it, gave it him for the same 15 scudi he had paid. Then he heard Alessandro sold it to Piero Salviati for 35 scudi, and Andrea Chiazzella tried to blacken the lawyer Quistella’s name. He urged that the estate had in fact belonged to the Duke Don Cosimo de’ Medici, and this resulted in Chiazzella being thrown into jail in the Bargello: but in a later installment, he is absolved, returns to the control of the estate and recovers Pontormo’s property, later renting out the painter’s house in Via Laura. Although Elizabeth Pilliod (2001) following K. W. Forster (1966) identified the Salviati painting as the one now in the Uffizi (Madonna and Child with St John, P. Costamagna 1995 No. 60), that is quite rightly regarded as a work of 1527/28 and so would not correspond with Vasari’s description which specifically speaks of a work done ‘many years earlier’.
This painting was recognized as a work by Pontormo some twenty years ago, after its emergence on the art market from a Boston private collection, where it had been at least since the late 19th century; it is quite likely the first painting by the artist to reach the USA. The painting’s existence had however been known for quite some time, however, as a 16th century copy by Pontormo’s student Jacone is preserved in the Villa di Varramista at Montopoli in Val d’Arno. Known to Bernard Berenson, it is published by P. Costamagna (op. cit, 1995, No. A. 128, p. 325/26).
Pontormo painted this subject a number of times throughout his career, and the present work seems to be one of his earliest treatments of the theme. While there are differing opinions on the exact dating of the work within Pontormo’s early oeuvre (Costamagna argues for 1513, while Cropper places it in 1516 or 1517), it has an important place in his career especially as he kept with him right until the end of his life. He was an eccentric painter, who kept himself very much to himself, even drawing up the ladder to his quarters so that he would not be disturbed, so it is not surprising to read Vasari’s words saying that it was found in his house after his death. The implication of Bronzino and Alessandro Allori in a conspiracy to deprive Pontormo’s true heir, the weaver Andrea Chiazzella, of it (they do not seem to have gone after the drawings, cartoons and clay models found in his studio) shows how much the picture was coveted by their generation, and by Cosimo I de’ Medici himself.
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(1)“After his death, many very fine designs, cartoons, and clay models were found in his home, as well as a painting of Our Lady in a beautiful style, which he had ably executed, from hat one could see, many years earlier, and was subsequently sold by the heirs to Pietro Salviati.”1 G. Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architettori, 1568, VI, p. 288
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(2)D. Franklin, ‘A Document for Pontormo’s San Michele Visdomini Altarpiece’ The Burlington Magazine, 1990, CXXXII, p. 487/89
