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Graphite Drawing After Jacopo Pontormo

Graphite copy of a drawing by Jacopo Pontormo of a Young Man Holding a Small Child

The image accompanying this post is a copy in graphite pencil of a drawing by Jacopo Pontormo. The original drawing is described as “A Young Man Holding a Small Child”. On the other side of the paper, there is another drawing of “A Young Man Holding a Small Child”. The sheet of paper that has those two drawings is in the Scottish National Gallery of Art. Pontormo was an Italian artist that worked in the Mannerist style which strayed from the realism Renaissance art. He elongated his figures to create more expressive compositions.

According to Giorgio Vasari’s Life of the Artists, Pontormo was a very withdrawn and neurotic individual. This idea of Pontormo has managed to exaggerate the popular conception of the artist, as seen in the film, Pontormo, a Heretical Love by Giovanni Fago. It is Fago’s portrayal of Pontormo that he is engrossed in a lonely, paranoid, and often protected process of his final Last Judgment project. When Vasari was writing his Lives of the Artists, he was in intense competition with the Pontormo/Bronzino workshop, according to art historian Elizabeth Pilliod. The professional feud between the two studio owners might have provided Vasari with enough motive to run down his opponent’s artistic lineage in his quest for patronage by the Medici family.

Except for Bronzino, few were able or willing to emulate Pontormo’s artistic peculiarities. In some of Bronzino’s early paintings, the authorship is still debated whether it belongs to him or to his instructor. In some ways, Pontormo shares the Mannerism of Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino. It could be said that he anticipated the Baroque as well as the style of El Greco. It was also a result of his idiosyncrasies that he had an original and cohesive sense of composition. Unfortunately, Pontormo’s work was quite out of fashion for several centuries. The fact that so much of his work has been lost or harshly damaged is a testament to this neglect. Fortunately, he has received renewed attention from contemporary art historians.

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Graphite Drawing After Jacopo Pontormo

Graphite drawing of 3 nudes

This next drawing is of three nudes copied from a work by Jacopo Pontormo. Pontormo’s drawing is in the collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The museum is located across the street from, and I kid you not, the Polish Embassy and Consulate. Would it be too off topic to talk and make jokes about the Polish? I will try with all my might to focus on the drawings and the Morgan Museum.

The Morgan Museum consists of the East and West Morgan Stanley Galleries, Morgan’s Study, The Morgan Dining Room and most importantly The Morgan Souvenir Shop. It is there that you can purchase coffee mugs, tote bags, an umbrella, a necktie that has a map of New York City on it, just in case your phone battery dies, and so many other great items. You can also buy a tray that is inscribed with the words “There is no friend as loyal as a book”. It is perfect for that special someone in your life that you have hurt so deeply that they no longer even try to interact with the outside world. The price of the tray is $42 plus $24 for shipping. Now let’s get back to the drawing.

Jacopo Pontormo’s drawing is described as “Standing Male Nude Seen from the Back, and Two Seated Nudes”. Apparently on the other side of the drawing is another bonus drawing entitled “Striding Nude with Arms Raised”. Since I forgot to turn the paper over I only copied the one drawing*. According to the description, the media he used is “Red chalk with smudging”. I have looked everywhere for smudging and I couldn’t find it. So I drew my version with pencil. Pontormo’s drawing on the back was done with black, red, and white chalk and since I don’t see the word “smudging” I’ll assume there was no smudging involved.
*please note that I drew my copy from a reproduction and did not actually handle the original artwork.

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Graphite Drawing After Jacopo Pontormo

Graphite drawing after Jacopo Pontormo of female legs

Pictured above is a copy of a study of legs by Jacopo Pontormo. I drew mine in graphite pencil on Strathmore paper while the original by Pontormo was done in red chalk. I had mentioned earlier that I do not care for the scratchiness of chalk and I believed I talked about Jacopo Pontormo. Just in case you didn’t know about Pontormo, he was born in 1494 in Empoli, Italy. He was taught by numerous great painters including Leonardo da Vinci and became an important artist in the Sixteenth century. He help develop the expressive style of Mannerism. His work also became a big influence on the later Baroque style, influencing artists like his own student, Bronzino. Pontormo was also greatly admired by other artists at the time. Michelangelo Buonarroti happen to see a painting that Pontormo had done he said “This young man [age 19] will be such an artist, based on what can be seen, that if he lives and continues on, he will exalt this art to the heavens.” High praise indeed. This quote was taken from the “Lives of the Artists” written by Giorgio Vasari. He goes on to write about Jacopo Pontormo’s character. He states that Pontormo was a quite unique person. He was so afraid of death that he didn’t even want to hear it discussed. Varasi also states that he would run away from having any contact with dead bodies but is that really that unique or different. Perhaps in 16th century Italy people loved to hang around dead bodies. Apparently Pontormo would also avoid crowds and kept to himself. He also put so much thought into his work that some days he would just stand and think without painting anything. However he was able to create anything he put his mind to.

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Graphite Drawing After Jacopo da Pontormo

Jacopo da Pontormo copy

At the start of the pandemic, I was bored I mean like really bored. I had a book of 100 old master drawings. So I thought I might try to copy all of the drawings in the book. I have been posting them on my instagram and twitter accounts with brief and often inaccurate descriptions. I am now going to post them on my blog with longer, much longer and perhaps more inaccurate descriptions. Enjoy!
Please note that a few of the drawings were so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to posting them.
Our first offering is a copy of a drawing by Jacopo da Pontormo. His name originally was Jacopo Carrucci, (May 24, 1494 – January 2, 1557, Florence). I can only assume he changed it so he wouldn’t be associated with his dimwitted family members. We can all relate.

“…inaccurate information is preferable…”

He worked under Leonardo da Vinci and then joined Andrea del Sarto’s group of merry men. This is according to the writings of Giorgio Vasari. Most of what we know about Italian Renaissance artists, we learned from Giorgio Vasari. If Vasari was a pathological liar then the most of what we know about artists of the Italian Renaissance is totally wrong. But since inaccurate information is preferable to no information I will continue to paraphrase Vasari.
Da Pontormo painted mainly religious scenes because that were the money was. He also created work for the famous Medici family. He stole, I mean borrowed ideas from Albrecht Durer and Michelangelo. I stole, I mean copied some of Durer and Michelangelo’s work in posts to come later. Right now we are talking about Jacopo. Try to stay on topic.
The artist formerly known as Jacopo Carrucci, now Jacopo da Pontormo was extremely innovative. Art before him during the High Renaissance was balanced, tranquil and fairly mellow. Da Pontormo created a more expressive and emotional style often referred to as mannerism. More to come…

A reproduction of the original drawing by Jacopo da Pontormo can be found here.