It is usual for the public to be given an indication of the ‘reasons for the exhibition’. In this specific case, it was considered useful to present for the first time in its entirety the collection of drawings by Jacopo Carucci (Pontorme, 1494 – Florence, 1556): an artist better known as Pontormo from his place of birth, whose fame rivalled that of the greats, from Raphael to Andrea del Sarto, from Bronzino to Vasari.
A direct and indirect pupil of Leonardo and Michelangelo, Pontormo grew up in the city of the Renaissance, frequenting the Giardino di San Marco where the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici had placed his collection of antique sculptures to educate young artists at a time when Roman excavations had not yet brought to light the Lacoonte or other masterpieces of classical statuary. He excelled to the point of becoming the painter of the Medici Popes in Florence.
Celebrated in his lifetime and still today, Pontormo is represented in the Fondo Corsini of the Istituto centrale per la grafica in Rome with a significant number of drawings that make this nucleus the most substantial after that in the Uffizi.
The sheets, almost all of which are double-sided, speak of the artist’s most intimate creative activity and can be admired and finally compared with each other: hence the title of the exhibition “by Jacopo da Puntorme“, which deliberately leaves no ambiguity as to the autography of what can be seen.
No historical reconstruction, no critical text, can surpass in evocative capacity and involvement the direct sight of so many palpable and exciting masterpieces.The line, now clustered, now stretched out and parallel, speaks of the state of mind, of the fast or slow pursuit of the thought of an image by an artist whose creativity remains a unique testament of our art.
On this occasion, it was possible to enhance the extraordinary notebook of studies (Taccuino) made by the artist in conjunction with the commission of the Pucci Altarpiece in 1518, while the exact sequence of the sheets being recorded.
This is not a monographic exhibition, therefore, but a review of the most spontaneously creative graphic manifestation of a master, although with the ambition of clarifying and focusing on certain chronological and stylistic passages.