Reaserch Entry 4: On Friendship

Pontormo, Portrait of Two Friends, 1524

 
Pontormo’s, Two Men with a passage from Cicero’s “On Friendship,” is closer in spirit to the paintings of the North, than it is to the contemporary court paintings in Europe. The man on the left holds a piece of paper with a passage in which Cicero talks of friendship as being important to life “because it embraces countless ends, is never untimely and is never in the way.” (Strehlke, 14). Vasari recognized this as being a portrait of two of Pontormo’s close friends- but being ever the Medici Courtier- he denied knowing the name of either man, saying, “it is enough that these portraits are by the hand of Pontormo.” (Strehlke, 17). Vasari also noticed the change in style in Pontormo’s paintings- but simply wrote about them as being stylistic changes (Again- he big his tongue for the Medici) (Strehlke, 12).

“Pontormo implies that these few lines from Cicero, which epitomize the values of true friendship- faithfulness, honor, honesty, love and indeed every republican virtue-- have been sent like a letter through without address or signature. The parallel between letters and portraits was particularly favored by humanists in discussions of the relative merits of the two forms of self representation between friends.” (Strehlke, 18).
Essential to the reform of Italy was the art of Literacy. By the end of the 15^th century, young Florentine men- nearly 30% were able to read and write and attended some sort of school (Strehlke, 15). Bronzino and Pontormo were both literate and shared an engagement in the reading writing and discussion of vernacular texts (Strehlke, 14). Their engagement in the literary art linked them to their contemporary, Michelangelo. A remarkable number of portraits are accompanied by texts which discuss clear reasons on how their portraits should be read (Strehlke, 14).

The role of poetry was enormous to Pontormo and Bronzino. As a writers methods evolve- so does a painters