One simply doesn’t associate Florentine Renaissance art with whimsical invention and bizarre grotesquery. We know all too well about that city’s devotion to proportion, equilibrium, and symmetry. Anyone who has visited the city will have passed—but probably not noticed—the façade of Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni. The lovely Piazza Santa Trinita, which it faces, functions as a gateway to Via Tornabuoni—and far more familiar destinations: Bulgari, Gucci, and the one or two traditional local shops that can still afford the rent. But Palazzo Bartolini is worth a second look. Designed by Baccio d’Agnolo in 1520, it is the very essence of high-style Florentine Renaissance decorum and clarity; every element of its classical vocabulary is quietly but emphatically necessary and is in its divinely allotted place. If it were a painting, it would be a cross between an Andrea del Sarto and a Fra Bartolomeo.

But while that sort of Apollonian perfection is a hallmark of the creative imagination as it evolved in Florence from Giotto onwards, the path was not necessarily always so straight and so narrow. There are abundant examples—the late works of Donatello come to mind—where tempers flare and sparks fly; almost nothing is in the right place. Pontormo is another famously