Rome gives Pontormo his due

At the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, an exhibition devoted to Pontormo is open until 7 February 2027. Presented as the first major retrospective of the Mannerist painter, it arrives at a moment when museums are increasingly revisiting artists who worked in the shadow of the Renaissance’s best-known names.

For artists and for anyone interested in painting and drawing, the appeal lies in the way the show frames a practice. Pontormo belongs to a period in which the human figure, composition and colour are pushed toward a more restless, inventive language, shifting attention from subject matter to the decisions that shape an image.

Looking again at Pontormo also means seeing how a painter can belong to the Renaissance and still move against its expected balance. A retrospective like this makes it possible to follow a hand, a method and a visual temperament, and to better understand the range of Italian painting in the sixteenth century.

The Rome exhibition offers a close view of what Mannerist painting makes visible: bodies, spaces and gestures organized in ways that ask us to look at the making of the image as much as at what it depicts.