Joseph in Egypt (painting)
Joseph in Egypt is a painting by the Italian mannerist Jacopo da Pontormo .
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| Joseph in Egypt |
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| Jacopo da Pontormo , before 1515-18 |
| oil on wood |
| 96 × 109 cm |
| National Gallery (London) |
The picture is part of a four-part series that depicts the life of Joseph , the son of Jacob , the ancestor of the Israelites according to the Bible . In his picture Pontormo shows four different scenes from the life of Joseph in Egypt: 1. Joseph introduces his father Jacob to the Pharaoh ; 2. Joseph in a triumphal chariot and starving Egyptians asking for bread; 3. Joseph and his sons go up the stairs; 4. Joseph on his father Jacob's deathbed.
Client
The picture was intended , together with paintings by Andrea del Sarto , Francesco Granacci , Bachiacca and Franciabigio , for a bedroom in the house of the Florentine banker Francesco Borgherini (1480–1558) in the Borgo SS. Apostoli in Florence . The father of the groom is considered to be the client, and the occasion was Borgherini's wedding with Margarita Acciaiuoli. The architect of the house was Baccio d'Agnolo, who also designed the walnut paneling for the wedding room. The wedding took place in Florence in 1515.
history
According to Vasari, the room should be cleared after the siege of Florence in 1530 and the return of the Medici to Florence and the pictures should be sent to Francis I against Margarita’s resistance , which was initially delayed by the intervention of Francesco I de 'Medici . Only four pictures went to France. After 1584, however, the images were gradually dispersed. Two stayed in the Palazzo Pitti , four went to London, including Pontormos Josef in Egypt , four hang in the Villa Borghese in Rome, two in the Uffizi and the Granacci Tondo with a depiction of the Trinity came to the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
According to Giorgio Vasari , the darkly clad boy on the stairs in the foreground is supposed to be a youthful self-portrait of Pontormo. Others see it as a portrait of Pontormo's pupil Bronzino .
description
The image is divided into four different zones. In the foreground on the left, Joseph introduces his old father to the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh stands in the middle of his entourage on the upper level of a five-step pedestal, leans towards Joseph, who approaches him bareheaded, his red beret in hand. The old man crouches on his knees on the steps while one of Jacob's wives looks up at Pharaoh with pleading eyes and clasped hands.
The scene on the right shows Joseph on a triumphal chariot. Josef is sitting at the feet of a pillar with a prancing putto with a large loincloth, who is watching the scene and looks as if he is about to toss an arrow down at Josef. A second putto is about to slip out from under Josef's arm, and a group of three other putti are engrossed in a game with a neatly dressed boy. Josef accepts the letter from a supplicant. At a respectful distance from Joseph, the Pharaoh's governor, a dense crowd of starving people approaches, led by a young man who holds out an empty bread basket to Joseph.
The third and fourth scenes are set in a surreal, unreal architecture. An elegantly curved staircase leads from the outside around a cylinder-like building, the upper floor of which is open over the full width. Here Jacob's family has gathered around the bed of the dying patriarch . Josef, as always in the picture, wearing a red beret and a delicate lilac-colored toga , walks up the stairs, one of his sons by the hand, the second one has already stormed ahead and is received by his mother Asenat .
In the dying room, Jakob lies bare-chested on a bed covered with a pink sheet. He clasps the hand of Joseph, who is sitting at his side with his sons Manasseh and Ephraim .
The rest of the picture space is filled by a loamy, sandy, almost vegetation-free landscape. Round rock and terrain formations, isolated sparse deciduous and coniferous trees and a wall with a mighty gatehouse in front of an almost cloudless sky complete the picture space. In the representation of landscape and architecture, the influences of Central European landscape painting are clearly evident .
A connection between the individual scenes is established on the one hand by three groups of staffage figures , the number of which are continuously decreasing. On the other hand, it is created in a dynamic way through the three nude figures placed on high pedestals . The movements of the putto on the triumphal chariot reflect both the brightly lit female sculpture at the top of the stairs and the male figure in the backlight on the left side of the picture. The movement, swinging up the stairs, is brought back to the scene in the foreground, Jacob's encounter with Pharaoh, through this figure and the column.
As in many of Pontormo's pictures, the complementary colors red and green dominate in this picture in front of a richly graduated palette of cool gray tones of the architecture and warm ocher colors of the landscape. The blue of the two large foreground figures finds its opposite pole in a pastel blue sky.
Art historical classification
The painting is considered a masterpiece of mannerism . In his picture, Pontormo breaks with all painting norms and conventions that were valid at the time. There is no plausible , uniform pictorial space. The space in which the individual scenes unfold has no rationally calculable probability. Pontormo is free to use perspective and proportions, light and color are used as desired to achieve brilliance , delicacy and sophistication of the image effect.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vasari: The Life of Pontormo. Edited by Alessandro Nova . Berlin 2004.
- ↑ Krystof 1998 p. 36.
literature
- Carol Plazzotta, Rachel Billinge: The Underdrawings of Pontorm's 'Joseph and Jacob in Egypt'. In: The Burlington Magazine. 2002. (online)
- Doris Krystof: Jacopo Carrucci, called Pontormo. 1494-1557. Cologne 1998. ISBN 3-8290-0696-9 .
