From School Library Journal
Nigro here assembles critical and literary references to the Mannerist artist who admired and was influenced by Michelangelo and was a pupil of Andrea del Sarto. The bulk of this book consists of beautiful color plates with dissonant commentaries. Although similar in style and format to Pontormo: Drawings (Abrams, 1992), it differs in offering a chronology based on Vasari's Lives instead of the artist's own diary and provides detailed bibliographic notes as well. Libraries that own Drawings should definitly purchase this compliment; both are suitable for Mannerist and other collections serving advanced studies in the period.
Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ellen Bates, New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Booklist
The author is a professor of Italian literature in Sicily, his subject the Italian painter Jacobo Carrucci (1494-1557), known as Pontormo. Pontormo's importance is as a bridge between the Renaissance and the baroque; and it's obvious, in examining the excellent, one-per-page reproductions, that in his use of color, in his sense of movement, and in his genius for exploiting light to enhance dimension, Pontormo looked toward the baroque period's consciousness of fluidity and away from the reserve and even staginess of Renaissance art. In his text--an introductory essay and full captions to the plates--Nigro emphasizes Pontormo's visionariness as opposed to realism; what he rendered on canvas and plaster was visions stamped with deeply personal interpretations of biblical events and even human nature. For active art collections used by readers well versed in art history. Brad Hooper
