14 PONTORMO (Jacopo Carrucci) Italian, 1494­1557 Dead Christ Black and white chalk 15 28.4 x 40.5 cm (11 3/16 x 15 /16 in.) Cat. I, no. 35; 83.GG.379 This study belongs with a group of other drawings by Pontormo for the same figure in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and in Rotterdam. They are connected with a Pieta, the central panel of a predella (the series of small paintings sometimes grouped beneath an altarpiece), in the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. The exact purpose of the predella remains a matter of speculation, but it may have been intended to decorate the base of Pontormo's early altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints in the Church of San Michele Visdomini, Florence, painted in 1518. The predella, which is partly based on drawings by Pontormo, must, however, have postdated the altarpiece by several years and may well have been executed by an assistant. This identification of the connection of the drawing is supported by the study for a figure of Saint Francis on the other side of the sheet, which is unquestionably for one of the figures in the Visdomini altarpiece. With the drawing turned clockwise ninety degrees, it is possible to see more clearly a study for a woman standing in profile to the right drawn below the figure of Christ. This relates to a fragment of another study for this same figure cut off to the right by the edge of the sheet. Pontormo is regarded as a leading exponent of the anticlassical style known as Mannerism, which followed the High Renaissance. The term was first coined as an expression of disfavor to emphasize what was generally thought to be the decline that had taken place in Italian art immediately following its period of greatest achievement. Pontormo's work typifies this early phase of Mannerism, and it is true that the emotional intensity of much of his painting and drawing strikes a contrast with the harmonious, classical ideal that had gone before. ITALIAN SCHOOL 21