Saint Anthony Abbot

This Saint Anthony Abbot of 1519 dates to Pontormo's early maturity, when he was beginning to move beyond the influence of Andrea del Sarto toward his own distinctive style. Anthony, the 4th-century Egyptian hermit, was one of the most frequently depicted saints in Italian art, patron of those suffering from skin diseases and associated with the resistance of demonic temptation. Characteristic of Pontormo's approach, the work displays intense psychological expressiveness, acidic colors, compressed spatial drama, anti-classical tension.

The figure of the saint is rendered with a solidity and weight that reflects Pontormo's early absorption of Fra Bartolomeo's monumental figure style. Warm earth tones and careful attention to the traditional attributes—the tau cross and bell—ground the image in recognizable iconographic convention.