JACOPO DA

PONTORMO (1494-1557)  , whose family name was Carucci, Italian painter of the Florentine school, was born at Pantormo in 1494, son of a painter of ordinary ability, was apprenticed to Leonardo da Vinci, and afterwards took lessons from Piero di Cosimo . At the age of eighteen he became a journeyman to Andrea del Sarto, and was remarked as a young man of exceptional accomplishment and promise . Later on, but still in early youth, he executed, in continuation of Andrea's labours, the " Visitation," in the cloister of the Servi in Florence —one of the principal surviving evidences of his powers . The most extensive series of works which he ever undertook was a set of frescoes in the church of S . Lorenzo, Florence, from the " Creation of Man to the Deluge," closing with the " Last Judgment." By this time, towards 1546, he had fallen under the dangerous spell of Michelangelo's colossal genius and super-human style; and Pontormo, after working on at the frescoes for eleven years, left them incomplete, and the object of general disappointment and disparagement . They were finished by Angelo Bronzino, but have long since vanished under whitewash . Among the best works of Pontormo are his portraits, which include the likenesses of various members of the Medici family; they are vigorous, animated and highly finished . He was fond of new and odd experiments both in style of art and in method of painting . From Da Vinci he caught one of the marked physiognomic traits of his visages, smiles and dimples . At one time he took to direct imitation or reproduction of Albert Diirer, and executed a series of paintings founded on the Passion subjects of the German master, not only in composition, but even in such peculiarities as the treatment of draperies, &c . Pontormo died of dropsy on the 2nd of January 1557, mortified at the ill success of his frescoes in S . Lorenzo; he was buried below his work in the Servi .