The story
Carmignano is a small hill town in the wine country west of Florence, and art lovers come to its parish church for one painting. The church is primarily a place of worship, home to the Visitation by Pontormo, the Florentine painter, who made it around 1528 to 1530 for an altar belonging to the Pinadori, a local family.
It shows the Virgin Mary meeting her older cousin Elizabeth, both of them pregnant. The two women lean into each other in a close embrace, while two attendants stand behind them and look straight out at the viewer, all in vivid colours against a narrow, almost empty street. It is one of the most admired altarpieces of Florentine Mannerism, the restless style that followed the High Renaissance.
The church stands on the site of one of the earliest Franciscan houses, which tradition dates to 1211, and it has been Carmignano's parish church since the late 18th century. In 1995 the American video artist Bill Viola based his slow-motion work The Greeting on the painting. In 2018 and 2019 the Visitation left the town for exhibitions at the Morgan Library in New York and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which helped raise support for conserving the church and its former convent.
