Thursday, January 8, 2015

Mannerism




Two digital images of The Descent from the Cross painted in the late 1520s by Pontormo, brave pioneer of Mannerism. The version at bottom looks as if it might have undergone cleaning. Italian conservators seem to have developed an increasing reluctance to preserve any trace of what used to be known as patina.

Below, a wider sampling of the radically stylized figure-types Pontormo cultivated. His distortions owed their greatest debt to Michelangelo, whose idiosyncratic sense of proportion became for a time more compelling than nature.  

Leda & the Swan
1512-15

Noli me tangere
1530s

Joseph Sold by his Brothers to Potiphar
1515-18

Joseph in Egypt
1515-18

Seated Nude
1520

Study for the Deposition
1525

Study for a Patriarch
1525

Two Nudes
1530s

Virgin & Child with Saints

Annunciation
1527-28

Lunette from Vertumnus & Pomona 
1520-21

Visitation
1528