La Visitation de Carmignano

Pontormo painted this meeting of Mary and her older cousin Elizabeth around 1528, for a modest parish church in Carmignano, west of Florence, where it still hangs today. These were unsettled years. Rome had just been sacked by mutinous imperial troops in 1527, plague had swept through Tuscany, and the calm certainties of the High Renaissance were coming loose. You can feel that in the picture. The four women are impossibly tall and weightless, their robes glowing in shot colours of pink, green and orange, their gazes crossing in a way that feels more like a shared vision than a street meeting. Historians count it among the first great works of Florentine Mannerism, the style that pulled away from classical balance. The American artist Bill Viola later built a slow video piece around these two embracing figures.