Art Review: Pontormo Exhibition at Bowdoin College

I was on Mount Desert Island for a week on vacation but, going up and back, I visited favorite museums. Last week, I wrote about the Farnsworth in Rockland. It’s observing its 75th anniversary. Today I’ll write about the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, a winning gem in normal times. But little that happens today on college campuses is normal.

It’s always nice to visit the Bowdoin museum. There, I was a man on a mission. I went to see Metamorphosis and Malice, an exhibition gathering the three known monochromatic paintings by Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557). They depict Apollo and Cupid and Daphne and Apollo, both from 1513. Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel is from 1515. I’ve seen them before, but these small, gray, spectral things are, to me, snapshots of a deep, mystical past. They’re magical. Bowdoin owns one of the three. The museum borrowed the other two and shows them along with works on paper from the same era.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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I was on Mount Desert Island for a week on vacation but, going up and back, I visited favorite museums. Last week, I wrote about the Farnsworth in Rockland. It’s observing its 75th anniversary. Today I’ll write about the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, a winning gem in normal times. But little that happens today on college campuses is normal.

It’s always nice to visit the Bowdoin museum. There, I was a man on a mission. I went to see Metamorphosis and Malice, an exhibition gathering the three known monochromatic paintings by Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557). They depict Apollo and Cupid and Daphne and Apollo, both from 1513. Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel is from 1515. I’ve seen them before, but these small, gray, spectral things are, to me, snapshots of a deep, mystical past. They’re magical. Bowdoin owns one of the three. The museum borrowed the other two and shows them along with works on paper from the same era.