Disegno and desire in Pontormo’s

Pontormo’s portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici ( c . 1534–35), showing the duke drawing a portrait of his beloved, cleverly engages with the history and fictive nature of art-making. Pliny’s tale about the invention of drawing forms one resonance, Castiglione’s praise of the noble art of drawing another, the theorization of disegno by Vasari and others yet a third. Poetic conventions about the picturing of the beloved inform the image of a ruler who is prese ted as a courtly lover, adept observer, discerning patro , Medicean loyal , and cultivat d prince. L yers of prese ce and sence, naturalism and idealism are at work i the image, which addresses the perspicacity of s ght and the poe ics of its very maki g. The duke adop s a mythic persona but s too d e the painter endow his craft with a istinguis pedigree, anging from Pliny, Petr rch an poets like Lo enzo de’ Medici to the era’s otion of perceptual psy hology, amorous imprinting and the conceptual basis of disegno . Keyword : Alessandro de’ Medici, drawing, erotics, Pontormo, po traiture As the portrait of a man drawing a portrait, Pontormo’s painting of Alessandro de’ Medici (Fig. 1) is imbued with self-consciousness about the fictive nature of art-making. 1 By examining its dynamic interplay of drawing and poetic desire, a more multi-dimensional understanding of the painting emerges, one that also throws light on other interpretations of the act of drawing and on the poetic conception of a lover’s image. Portrayed around 1534–35, the first Medici Duke of Florence is shown sketching the outline of his beloved, whom the viewer is required to imagine seated in profile more or less directly ahead of Alessandro and thence projected into the viewer’s actual space. Shadows indicate that light falls obliquely from the painting’s upper left, falling on the nobleman’s pensive face and especially his hands, highlighting his manual labour at the task of disegno. In these circumstances, the woman has a strong light behind her, probably a window, and Alessandro would indeed chiefly discern her silhouette and main details, just those features recorded on the sheet he holds. The sitter is presumed to be the young widow Taddea Malaspina, the lady who received the painting as a gift from Alessandro according to Giorgio Vasari’s account published over three decades later. 2 Usually taken as a relatively straightforward avowal of love for the mistress whom the duke portrays from life, it need not refer to a direct model and may even represent another woman. In either case, the painting treats illusionary and metaphorical aspects of what the eye and hand could do. This article is dedicated to Tim McCall, whose question on behalf of a class he was planning to teach in Philadelphia spurred its completion. 1 On the painting, see Frederick Mortimer Clapp, Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo: His Life and Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917), 170–73, 280–82; Leo Steinberg, ‘Pontormo’s Alessandro de’ Medici, or, I Only Have Eyes for You’, Art in America 63 (January-February 1975): 62–5; Carl Brandon Strehlke, ‘Pontormo, Alessandro de’ Medici, and the Palazzo Pazzi’, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 81 (Autumn 1985): 3–15; Elizabeth Cropper, ‘Pontormo and Bronzino in Philadelphia: A Double Portrait’ in Carl B. Strehlke (ed.), Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence , exhib.cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art with the Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 19–22, and Carl B. Strehlke’s entry on the painting in ibid. , 112–15 no. 26, with further bibliography. Vanessa Walker-Oakes, ‘Representing the Perfect Prince: Pontormo’s Alessandro de’ Medici ’, Comitatus 32 (2001): 127–46 discusses the otherwise neglected aspect of the painting’s ‘potential for public propaganda’. 2 Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori , ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Sansoni, 1906), Vol. 6, 278 (hereafter cited as Vasari-Milanesi). Pontormo’s Alessandro de’ Medici 651 Drawing the outline of a beloved’s face recalls Pliny’s account of the invention of relief. Not popular as a subject for depiction, the tale was nevertheless known to the many humanists, art lovers and artists who read or heard about Pliny’s famed, compendious Natural History. The potter Butades invented the making of modelled portraits, and ‘he did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a relief.’ 3 The silhouette of a lover is Alessandro’s subject, though the genders of Pliny’s tale are reversed in Pontormo’s retelling. First illustrated in 1668, by which time Pliny’s anecdote was considered a story about the origin of painting, the Corinthian maid’s motivation to use drawing in a new way and make a romantic memento was the focus of paintings and prints issued from that time forward, primarily from the late eighteenth century. 4 3 Pliny, Natural History , trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1952), Vol. 9, 370– 73 (35.151): ‘eiusdem opere terrae fingere ex argilla similitudines Butades Sicyonius figulus primus invenit Corinthi filae opera, quae capta amore iuvenis, abeunte illo peregre, umbram ex facie eius ad lucernam in pariete lineis circumscripsit, quibus pater eius inpressa argilla tympum fecit.’ 4 Frances Muecke, ‘“Taught by Love”: The Origin of Painting Again’, Art Bulletin 81 (1999): 297–302. See also Robert Rosenblum, ‘The Origin of Painting: A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism’, Art Bulletin 39 (1957): 279–90 (whose earliest example is Sandrart of 1675). Fig. 1 Pontomo, Alessandro de’ Medici, c. 1534–35, oil on panel, 101.2 × 81.9 cm ( J83, © Philadelphia Museum of Art: John G. Johnson Collection, 1917)