"Metamorphosis and Malice" opens
By Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Daphne and Apollo, 1513, oil on canvas, by Jacopo da Pontormo, Italian, 1494–1557. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, Bowdoin College Museum of Art. 1961.100.9
On August 3, the Museum of Art will open a new exhibition, Metamorphosis and Malice: Pontormo’s Three Monochrome Paintings from Renaissance Florence and Related Works, that brings together the only three extant paintings done in grisaille by Jacopo Carucci, also known as Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557). These rare paintings come from the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University, and a private lender. The exhibition explores Pontormo’s choice to paint these works entirely in shades of grey.
It also investigates how Pontormo and his contemporaries engaged with themes of the supernatural, violence, and the destabilizing force of unchecked desire. The artists featured in this exhibition gravitated towards scenes from the Old and New Testaments, as well as works by the Roman poet Ovid, during a historical moment characterized by dramatic social and political change on the Italian peninsula.
A leading painter in sixteenth-century Florence, Pontormo apprenticed with Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto. His most celebrated works often involve contortions of the body and a sense of supernatural energy over grounded physicality. They mark a profound stylistic departure from the perspectival regularity, balance, and tranquility of his High Renaissance forbears. These three monochromatic paintings, created early in his career, anticipate this turn. Related drawings, prints, and other works from artists in the Florentine School and elsewhere help to contextualize the subject matter and style of Pontormo’s work.
This exhibition was curated by Ingrid Astley ’24, with support from Frank H. Goodyear, Co-Director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and Susan Wegner, Associate Professor of Art History at Bowdoin College. Astley and Wegner will present a public tour of the exhibition on Thursday, September 7 at 5 pm. Later in the month, on September 28, New York University art history professor Dennis Geromimus, a leading Pontormo scholar, will visit campus to speak about his forthcoming biography of the artist’s life.
Frank Goodyear
Co-Director, Bowdoin College Museum of Art