Jacopo da Empoli
1551–1640 · Duchy of Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany · Florentine school, Reformist art, Mannerism
The story
Jacopo Chimenti took his working name from Empoli, the small Tuscan town his father came from, though he spent his life in Florence, born there in 1551. He trained under a late-Mannerist painter, Maso da San Friano, but formed himself mostly by copying the previous century's Florentine masters, especially Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo, whose calm, solid figures he preferred to the twisting excess fashionable around him.
That habit made him a superb draughtsman. He drew constantly, in black chalk with heavy outlines and deep folds of drapery, and a century later Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici bought a large group of those sheets for the Medici collection. Many still hang in the Uffizi's drawings cabinet.
Late in life, after the 1620s, Jacopo turned to still life, a subject most Florentine painters avoided. His pantry scenes lay out casks, game, meat and rough pottery on a shelf, painted plainly and close up. One of them hangs in the Uffizi today.
