An excellent documentary shown recently on television explored Giorgio Vasari’s book “The Lives of the Artists”. The show re-acquainted me with the work of Jacopo Pontormo whom I had admired since my early interest in Italian Renaissance painting. Jacopo da Pontormo (1494-1556) was a Florentine Painter who attracted much praise from leading contemporaries during his lifetime – the illustrious Michelangelo and Rafael included! Quotes like “he will exalt his art to the heavens” and “astonishing” and “cannot be bettered” illuminate the text of Vasaris treatment of Pontormo in his famous chronicle of Italian renaissance art. Unfortunately, comparatively few of Pontormos works described in “The Lives” survive today; but even from what little remains, it is clear that this body of work exudes the same natural confluence of aesthetic and draftsman-like qualities that in so many ways characterises the achievements of only a few of his contemporaries; distinguishing them in modern terms as great masters of art. My study detail (Oil on Card, 2009) shown here is painted from the much admired Deposition from the Cross which can be found in the Capponi Chapel, Santa Felicita. It’s curious to me that in the apparant insatiable quest of art scholars to “rationalise the intuitive”, this painting is categorised in the style of so-called Mannerism! I think it entirely fitting not to squeeze Pontormo into that particular box and leave the final word on that to Vasari who said, “his genius always went about investigating new conceits and extravagant ways of working, never resting content with any of them” Just look at paintings like Supper at Emmans and one of his portraits e.g., Portrait of Maria Salviati hanging on the same wall in the Uffizi, and you will not fail to recognise such vivid and compelling contrasts.

In the red corner we have that old cockney geezer (JMW Turner) with his huge skies, huge weather, and huge ideas, and in the blue, the country gentleman (John Constable) who in contrast expressed a deeply felt view of the countryside albeit on such a scale – judging by the size of his canvases, to transcend the essentially claustrophobic intimacy of his subjects. I have always been intrigued by the well documented rivalry between these two lions as they grew obviously more expressionistic together as ageing RA’s! Was Turner really, as most people think, just a natural or is Constable’s part in this particular contest tainted with the legacy handed down to him by legions of chocolatiers? Sorry for verging on the predictable by repeating here one of the most often used cliches in British Art history, but now that’s done, I wonder whether that comfortable view might be challenged somewhat by Constable’s painting of Waterloo Bridge exhibited at the RA in 1835? This work is courageously expressive for its time especially when you consider that the painting was begun as early as 1817, but arguably it reveals a very linear progression on Constable’s own landscape tradition. It is intriguing that Turner’s contribution to the same exhibition is much weaker in its expressive ambition, maybe this was the turning point!

This work is probably the nearest I have ever come to Constable’esk if you take the popular view that is!  View from Meldon Hall, Northumberland (Oil on Linen, 36×48) As far as that old geezer is concerned, well his influence is woven like a thread through everything that I do!