Saint Quentin

This early Saint Quentin was painted around 1517, when Pontormo was only twenty-three and already emerging as one of the most distinctive voices in Florentine painting. The work for the Museo Civico in Sansepolcro shows the young artist still working within the tradition of his teacher Andrea del Sarto while beginning to develop the expressive distortions that would define his mature style. Characteristic of Pontormo's approach, the work displays intense psychological expressiveness, acidic colors, compressed spatial drama, anti-classical tension.

The figure of the saint displays Pontormo's early command of monumental form, with muscular anatomy derived from his study of Michelangelo. Color choices already tend toward the unusual combinations that would become his signature.