Pontormo, "Portrait of Cosimo the Elder", 1518-19 (image courtesy of Gallerie degli Uffizi)

Pontormo escaped unharmed. Between 1554 and 1556, the last years of his life, he kept a diary. What survives of it reveals him fussing about his health and his diet, and concerned about his work on those now-vanished frescoes in San Lorenzo. An intensely religious man, he seems to have had no political convictions. He was happy to work for the Medici, even for the thug and bully Duke Alessandro who, before he was murdered by his cousin, casually appropriated Pontormo's Leda and Cupid for himself although it had been painted for someone else.

Pontormo's portraits, many of which are in the Strozzi show, are works of exceptional psychological insight and acuteness, as well as immense technical skill. The man who is described as "a bishop" stares at you with an intense and unsettling gaze. His hands are almost as remarkable as his eyes. The same is true of the Gentleman with a book. Even the portrait of Cosimo the Elder — a piece of pure Medici propaganda, for its subject had been dead for 50 years, and the purpose of the picture was to demonstrate the continuity of Medici power in Florence — aims at truth rather than flattery: Cosimo looks less like a domineering potentate and more like a banker anxious about his investment portfolio.

If the word "Mannerism" does not describe the art Pontormo and Rosso produced, what does? The variety of works of art in this show, which includes drawings and tapestries as well as frescoes and oil paintings, suggests that no single term can encompass their work. The religious sensibility behind much of what they did is very hard to share, and may not be accessible at all. But the emotions they depict — of kindness and gentleness, as well as desolation and loss — and the supreme artistry that they brought to everything they did, are certainly available to anyone who is lucky enough to visit this magnificent exhibition.