ABSTRACT
The greatest art work of the Protestant Reformation in the Florence of Cosimo I (1519-74) is Pontormo’s series of frescoes in the Medicean Basilica of San Lorenzo, completed after his death (1557) by his most competent collaborator, Bronzino.1 In this late work, Pontormo had pushed the theoretical, philosophical and religious prerequisites of his art, and of early Mannerism, to their furthest limits. No contract for Pontormo’s frescoes in the choir of San Lorenzo has so far come to light; but according to documentation recently examined by Elizabeth Pilliod, preparatory work in the choir started early in 1545. In that year Pontormo is recorded, amongst other artists and artisans, in the account book of the ‘Capitani di Parte Guelfa’ (a Florentine magistracy in charge of public works) as having received his annual provvisione ‘for works at San Lorenzo’.2 This documentation dates the beginning of the work in San Lorenzo back to
1 Giorgio Vasari offers an account of the circumstances of the frescoes’ composition: see Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. by Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols (Florence: Sansoni, 1973), VI, pp. 245-95, especially pp. 284-8. In his ‘Vita’ of Bronzino, Vasari informs us that Bronzino finished the frescoes of the lower range of the choir, namely the Deluge, the Resurrection of the Dead and the Martydom of St Lawrence (VII, p. 602).
