Posts by Davide Trevisani

ROMA APRE LE PORTE A Un protagonista della Maniera fiorentina

The major exhibition devoted to Jacopo Carucci, known as Pontormo (1494-1557), at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome offers the public an exceptional opportunity to rediscover one of the most original and innovative figures of sixteenth-century Italian painting, bringing together an extraordinary selection of his most important works.

A leading exponent of first Florentine Mannerism, Pontormo developed a remarkably modern pictorial language in which the grace of his figures, the refinement of his colour harmonies and the boldness of his compositional inventions combine to define a highly distinctive artistic style, transforming Renaissance ideals of harmony and beauty into a new vision of reality.

Yet what conception of art lies behind the extraordinary beauty and elegance of his painting? To explore this question, we have chosen to revisit a valuable testimony from the artist himself: the letter he addressed to the humanist scholar Benedetto Varchi during the celebrated debate on the paragone delle arti - the relative merits of painting and sculpture - in which he offers a profoundly original reflection on the relationship between nature, beauty and artistic creation.