Just over the Ponte Vecchio, on the Oltrarno side of the city, is the church of Santa Felicita, believed to be the second oldest church in Florence, after San Lorenzo. The Medici's private, elevated walkway, the Vasari Corridor, which runs from the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace, designed to avoid the smells of city living, runs straight in front of the church. The Medici had windows created in the corridor so that they could listen to mass at Santa Felicita from above, without having to mix with the other celebrants.
We were welcomed inside by an elderly lady attendant, sat behind a perspex booth, who motioned us towards a rather tame depiction of the arrow-pierced St Sebastian in an altarpiece on the left of the entrance.
A large church of handsome proportions, Santa Felicita is distinguished by the many side chapels on either side of the nave that each contain a magnificent painted altarpiece. The most impressive of these is the Brunelleschi-designed Capponi Chapel which contains a Deposition by the great Mannerist artist, Jacopo Pontormo.
Mannerism is the rather unfortunate name given to the style which emerged in Italy, much of it in Florence, in the later part of the 16th century. It has suffered from its definition of the art that came after the Renaissance and before the Baroque but not as good as either. It was believed that art had reached its ultimate heights with the work of Michelangelo so where else was it to go? The answer was to model itself in the 'manner' of Michelangelo, or 'Il Divino' as he had now been hailed by Vasari. Gone is the calm, classicising composure of Raphael, replaced by a riot of bodies, flailing in numerous and bewildering attitudes. Artists had not yet discovered the dark, persuasive arts of the Baroque.
Pontormo’s painting is in beautiful condition, (it was restored in 2017), and the colours shine out like Dolly Mixture sweets. The distinctive cyclamen-pink ripples through the composition like a cherry gelato swirl and looks forward to the sugary palette of the Rococo. The treatment of bodily form is impressive but somehow incoherent. The well-toned bodies strike curious poses and the expressions are too detached and unreadable to move us. Jesus is being taken down from the (strangely, invisible), cross - but we do not feel the pathos of his precious weight in the same way as we do in a Deposition by Rubens or Caravaggio.
The poses of Christ and the Virgin echo the Pieta by Michelangelo*, which Pontormo had been to see in Rome, but mother and son have been separated from each other here as if Christ has just been lifted from her lap. The Virgin swoons and buckles at the knees but without any plausible support. Like Michelangelo's Pieta, she is by far the largest figure, disproportionate to the others, marking her's out as the greater sorrow. All of this sounds like it might be a pictorial disaster but of course, it isn’t. It has a grace and ethereal quality, with an almost melodic arrangement of hands and arms that weave their way through the vertical composition.
Pontormo and his apprentice, another future Mannerist master, Angelo Bronzino, also painted the four roundels in the corners of the chapel, each of which contain one of the four evangelists. These are darker and moodier than the Deposition, hinting at the Baroque that was to come.
As we left the church, the elderly attendant was now standing outside. She waved us goodbye, lighting a cigarette which she told us, with great relish, she had been waiting for all day.
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