Kaori Kitao's Whirlinggig: November 2018

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Pontormo's Visitation

Jacopo Pontormo’s Visitation or Miraculous Encounters (1517) from the Church of San Michele e San Francesco in Carmignano near Florence, recently cleaned and restored and brought to The Morgan Library and Museum, is a rare masterpiece, most significantly in the artist’s completely new treatment of the subject matter.

The Visitation, recounted in Luke 1, 39-56, concerns Mary’s visit of her cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant (with John the Baptist) shortly after the Angel’s Annunciation of the Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. Traditionally, before Pontormo, the subject was pictorially rendered as a narrative, as we see, for example, in the Visitation by Giotto in the Arena Chapel (1303-06) and something like the one by Marx Reighlich (1485).

Pontormo, instead, focused on the psychology of the protagonist, Mary. The setting is abstract and the group is arranged in stop action. The two attendants, presumably one for Mary and the other for Elizabeth, instead of standing behind their respective mistress in proper obeisance, stand guard upstage, looking straight out of the picture but unfocused, rather like two prison guards, between which Mary’s face, itself shaded in contrast to the better lit three other faces, is uncomfortably hemmed in, illustrative of her anxiety in her plight of unexpected pregnancy. Her unease is further demonstrated in the drapery over her shoulder in notable disarray, and one of her feet almost catches the hem as though she might trip and loose her balance. The four figures are placed in a tight rectangle and efficiently dissuades the viewer’s narrative reading.

The psychological iconography is clear and powerful. This is what makes this Visitation, in my opinion, a remarkable masterpiece.

11/27/18