Nitidissima solis imago: Pontormo, Vertumnus, and the Sun

Jacopo Pontormo’s fresco in the grand salone of the Medicean villa at Poggio a Caiano (fig. 1) has been the subject of extensive analysis, which has yielded what might be called a partial consensus. Following Giorgio Vasari, most scholars accept that the painting alludes to the story of the shape-shifting god Vertumnus and the nymph Pomona. It seems clear, too, that the painting is partially rooted in Ovid’s detailed account, in Metamorphoses, of Vertumnus’s assumption of various guises in an attempt to seduce Pomona. At the same time, the fresco also features references