Pontormo’s work at the Getty captures his extravagant spirit A boldly divine visit

Jacopo Pontormo is among the strangest artists to have emerged from the Florentine Renaissance, a painter for whom nothing is poised and direct and everything seems on edge. There’s no one like him — not even his star pupil, Agnolo Bronzino, whose elegant iciness is anything but restless.

Spend some time with his large and spellbinding altarpiece, “The Visitation,” and the artist’s extravagant but peculiar gifts unfold. Turns out Pontormo’s odd because he’s radically distinctive — visionary and inventive.

The monumental panel painting — it’s oil on poplar wood — has never before traveled outside Italy. For centuries it has been housed in a small church in Carmignano, a sleepy hill-town about a dozen miles west of Florence, but currently “The Visitation” is visiting the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Pontormo’s greatest portrait painting, “Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi?),” is enjoying its 30th anniversary as one of the Getty’s matchless treasures. For the next 10 weeks it is joined by the altarpiece, along with a second handsome Pontormo portrait of a young soldier and four drawings by the artist: a self-portrait plus studies for the “Halberdier,” “The

Where: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood When: Through April 28; closed Mondays Info: (310) 440-7330, getty.edu