Pontormo could have stayed painting in the classical style for the rest of his life, and perhaps his posthumous reputation would have been higher if he had: Andrea del Sarto, who was only eight years older, never varied from it. In his lifetime, del Sarto was celebrated for painting pictures "without error" and he was consistently appreciated by art historians, artists and art-lovers for the next 400 years — unlike Pontormo, who although highly rated in the 16th century, was, by the end of the 17th, being scorned for his "fantastic" images which failed to "imitate nature" and broke all the rules of classical proportion. By the 19th century, Jacob Burckhardt was describing the forms characteristic of Pontormo's religious pictures as "repulsive and deviant".


Pontormo, "Visitation", 1528-29 (image courtesty of Pieve de San Michele Arcangelo)

It isimpossible to share that view when you look at the Visitation that Pontormo painted when he returned to the subject 15 years after his Santissima Annunziata fresco. It is in a totally different style from that earlier painting. It is astonishingly beautiful, emotionally intense — and deeply puzzling: no one understands why Mary and Elizabeth each have a copy of themselves standing behind them. But "repulsive and deviant" it is certainly not.

Rosso's fresco for Santissima Annunziata is of the Assumption of Mary. The Virgin, watched by apostles, saints and holy men, is borne up to heaven on a cloud of giggling angels and cupids. Rosso's style, like Pontormo's, moved quickly away from the classicism of Andrea del Sarto. Rosso never found favour with the Medicis — and perhaps he did not want to. He had republican sympathies. He left Florence in the early 1520s to wander around Tuscany, finally ending up in Rome. He produced some mildly erotic prints on classical themes. His paintings retained a fundamentally sunny outlook on the world. He painted a lot of images of the smiling, playful baby Jesus with his beautiful and imperturbable mother. In this period, even his depiction of the Deposition from the Cross takes place against the background of a clear blue sky.