Abstract
In his biography of Jacopo Pontormo, Vasari was highly critical of two contrasting stylistic phases in the painter's career. Recent scholarship, concentrating on the (destroyed) frescoes in the choir of San Lorenzo, has concluded that Vasari was acting out of professional jealousy, or that he was attempting to obscure the frescoes’ heretical content. This article compares his criticism of the San Lorenzo frescoes with that of Pontormo's earlier Passion cycle at the Certosa del Galluzzo, showing that these parallel passages must be understood in light of contemporary debates about literary and artistic imitation and ideal exemplars – debates whose themes pervade the 1568 edition of Vasari's Lives. Vasari's purpose in Pontormo's biography is to present an object lesson in the danger of an artist's slavish imitation of other artists whose style is not sympathetic with his own.
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