Pontormo
Diario

afterword by Sara Fanucci

On Easter Sunday of 1554, at the age of sixty Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo, decided to start keeping a diary, jotting down details about his health as well as his progress on his frescoes, and, above all, his eating habits. Discovered in 1902 and conserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence in the Codex Magliabechiano VIII 1490, the document known as “diario” or “libro mio” (“diary” or “my book”), written between 1554 and 1556 when the artist was frescoing the choir of the basilica of San Lorenzo, has played a central role in reconstructing his personality. The diary is divided into two parts: one composed of a memoir that the painter wrote between 7 January 1554 and 23 October 1556, and a shorter one commonly referred to as “Prescrizioni e ricordi”, offering healthcare advice. The text, which documents the exceptionally rich language used in the fields of nutrition and food in sixteenth-century Florence, is followed by an afterword by Sara Fanucci, providing an exhaustive philological note on the history of the diary, as well as an extensive and detailed commentated glossary that illustrates the culinary terminology used by the artist.