LIBRI: Perspectives, by Laurent Binet (translated by Sam Taylor; Harvill Secker; 2025)
The latest book by the French author Laurent Binet is set in Florence in 1557, during the rule of Cosimo I de' Medici.
It's an epistolary detective novel in which the murdered victim is non other than Jacopo Pontormo, and the detective is non other than Giorgio Vasari! The premise alone hints at how much fun it is, as a host of characters, (who we've come across in history and art history classes, documentaries, and travels to Italy), send letters to and fro exonerating themselves or attempting to steer Vasari's investigations. One of these is none other than Benvenuto Cellini who has this to say about Vasari:
We owe this eternal building site (i.e. Vasari's renovation works to the Pallazzo Vecchio) to Vasari, the duke's whore, who is adept at giving the appearance of working quickly while actually dragging out his commissions to keep the ducats raining down onto his little rat's face. (p. 64)
Below is a BBC Radio 4 interview with Monsieur Binet regarding the book and a link to to The Guardian's review of Perspectives:
It is truly truly truly unfortunate that Pontormo's frescoes for the choir of San Lorenzo, which the painter had been working on for 11 years before his "natural" death, where destroyed in 1738 when the choir was structurally restored. But we still have some of Pontormo's preparatory drawings and even sketches and references in his diary to the sections and figures painted. Here is how Maurizia Tazartes in her wonderful book, Il «ghiribizzoso» Pontormo, describes the artist's undertaking:    
Pontormo lavora come un dannato per quasi undici anni, arrampicato sui ponteggi nel gelo dell'inverno e nel caldo soffocante dell'estate. Non è più giovane, né in buona salute. L'enorme fatica affrontata quotidianamente emerge dal Diario che, anche se scritto negli ultimi due anni di vita, riporta abitudini inveterate e sistema di lavoro. Jacopo segna meticolosamente ciò che mangia mattina e sera e i brani di figure che affresca ogni giorno a San Lorenzo, disegnandoli in piccolo accanto, come promemoria. Annota, ad esempio, in un giorno del marzo 1554 «mercoledì sancto sera 2 q(uattrini) di mandorle e uno pesce d'uovo [frittata] e noce e feci quella figura che è sopra la zucha»; e nel marzo 1555 «mercoledì feci quello resto del putto e ebi disagio a quello stare chinato tucto dì,
in modo che mi dolse giovedì le rene».

Cibi, figure, situazioni climatiche, segnate con grande attenzione, riflettono lo sforzo del pittore nel riuscire a realizzare un'opera gigantesca con pochi aiuti, che alla minima contrarietà poteva richiare di rimanere incompiuta. Pontormo deve affrescare una serie di scene dell'Antico Testamento su tre grandi pareti della cappella. Lavora contemporaneamente a diverse parti dell'opera, dall'alto verso il basso, ultimando la zona superiore nel 1551, per prseguire con tre grandi superfici al di sotto dell'architrave. Gli affreschi sono andati perduti, ma rimane la descrizione di Vasari... 
To find out more about Pontormo and his lost work at San Lorenzo, there is a truly wonderful blog by Luca of Speculum Artis who dedicates an amazing article to our great artist (link here and below), and a fascinating lecture by Elizabeth Pilliod, author of Pontormo at San Lorenzo: Art, History, Ritual:
We may no longer have Pontormo's
San Lorenzo frescoes but, only metres away from the Ponte Vecchio, on the Oltrarno side, the church of Santa Felicita - accent on the third last vowel, in this case on the "i", as it's the Italian for Felicity; felicità, with the accent on the final "a", of course means happiness and is also the title of an ancient song which was found in a baker's house in Pompeii, and also happens to be the favourite Italian song of one of our favourite students (ciao Sergii!)! Eccolo:
As we were saying, only metres away from the Ponte Vecchio, on the Oltrarno side, the church of Santa Felicita houses one of Pontormo's most famous and spectacular works: la Deposizione. Below, are some photos of Santa Felicita, the Cappella Capponi which houses Pontormo's masterpiece, together with his wonderful fresco of the Annunciazione - on your way to Santa Felicita you may well spot  sugli sportelli metallici del gas e della luce (on water and gas service panels) portraits of famous people or famous portraits in art, all wearing scuba masks in the water, by the street artist Blub (in the photos below we have Jacques Brel, sigaretta in bocca sott'acqua!, and Da Vinci):   
Sometimes, when you study art history, you get the impression that egg tempera was an old fashioned painting medium superseded by the much superior oil paint. La Deposizione  was restored in 2017 and one of the most fascinating discoveries is that the painting is actually executed in egg tempera not in oil paint as was previously thought. In the first video below, at 28:40, our marvellous guide, Waldemar Januszczak, compares a painting in egg tempera by Filippo Lippi, with The Annunciation  by Van Eyck. The second and third videos describe respectively the egg tempera technique and the oil painting technique. And, in the fourth video below, the restorer of la Deposizione, Daniele Rossi, discusses the restoration's findings. 
Pontormo is seen as one of the greatest exponents of Mannerism, a style which emerged around 1520 and lasted for about eighty years. This is how our truly trusty friend Waldemar describes the style followed by a brief description of Mannerism by Johnathan Jones in the Guardian: 
And here are some truly wonderful videos witch explore Mannerist art and introduce us to a plethora of truly amazing artists:    
To learn more about Giorgio Vasari, there's a wonderful book by Ingrid Rowland and Noah Charney called The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the Invention of Art  which is truly worth reading:
Here's a very funny excerpt from the book:
As you step out of the blinding Florentine sunlight and into the terracotta-scented Palazzo Vecchio, it will take a moment for your eyes to adjust. But when they do, and the Sala dei Cinquecento leaps into clarity, you may be surprised to find yourself surrounded by giants. The soaring walls of this vast meeting hall (12,750 square feet, the size of three basketball courts) are painted with larger-than-life frescoes of riding and ranting warriors. Four enormous battle scenes show the military triumphs of the Medici family, painted in 1563 by Giorgio Vasari. His soldiers bulge out of skin-tight armor as they assault a fortified city by lamplight.

The Mannerist style of painting, with its steroid-popping musculature and neon armor-clad warriors, is not everyone's cup of tea. Even fellow Mannerists mocked each other: The great sculptor Benvenuto Cellini got it just about right when he said that Baccio Bandinelli's Hercules looked "like a sack full of melons". Based on a technique developed by the followers of Michelangelo in sixteenth-century Florence, with its intentional contortions and refusal to adhere to the laws of physics and anatomy, Mannerist paintings look to many like piles of bodybuilders in Day-Glow spandex engaged in an overzealous round of Twister. Yet the colossal  frescoes that cover the walls of the Sala dei Cinquecento are undoubtedly awe inspiring, considered masterworks of sixteenth-century painting.