The gendered paragone in late sixteenth-century art theory: Francesco Bocchi and Jacopo Pontormo's S. Lorenzo frescoes1

Abstract

Jacopo Pontormo's frescoes of the Last Judgement and Deluge in the choir of the Medici church of S. Lorenzo (1546-56) in Florence were the most prestigious Florentine commission during the mid-Cinquecento. Yet, their appearance remains unknown to modern scholars since they were painted over in the eighteenth century during a period of reforming zeal. To reconstruct the programme of the frescoes modern scholars have been forced to rely on preparatory drawings, on an etching made of the choir of S. Lorenzo during the funerary ceremonies for Philip II in 1598 (only the upper range of frescoes is represented): and on descriptions of the narrative and style of the frescoes in contemporary sources. The desire to use these textual sources as verbal documents of the original appearance of the frescoes had led scholars to overlook evidence of another kind, which arises from the complex rhetorical roles these descriptions play within the art criticism and theory of the period. I contend that in these texts, Pontormo's work at S. Lorenzo functions like a fault line where the political, epistemological, aesthetic and historiographic claims of Cinquecento art theory and criticism are tested and submitted to criticism.