Maria mit Kind, dem heiligen Josef und Johannes dem Täufer

Pontormo painted this Holy Family in the early 1520s, when he was still young and helping to pull Florentine painting away from the calm balance of the High Renaissance. His teacher's generation had prized clarity and repose. Pontormo wanted nerves and strangeness instead, restless outlines and cool, slightly acid colour. Here the Virgin sits with the Christ Child, Saint Joseph and the young John the Baptist gathered close, yet nothing settles into the steady pyramid a painter like Raphael would have built. Look at the body of the Christ Child, deliberately twisted into the shape of a letter S, and at the odd, fanciful folds of the Virgin's headdress. A preparatory drawing for it still survives in the Uffizi.