Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/359

Rh cution of this picture, and not before, that Puntormo had depicted two most beautiful and graceful boys in fresco, supporting an Escutcheon of Arms over the door of a house belonging to Bartolommeo Lanfredini, and which is situate on the Arno, between the bridge of the Santa Trinità and that of the Carraja; but since II Bronzino, who must needs be supposed well acquainted with the truth of these matters, affirms that the work undertaken for Lanfredini was among the first executed by Puntormo, we cannot but believe that so it really was, and are bound to extol that artist all the more highly, seeing that, although thus shown to have been among the first of his productions, these boys are nevertheless incomparably beautiful that they cannot be equalled.

But to follow his pictures in their order as nearly as may be, after completing those above-named, Jacopo executed a painting for the men of Puntormo, and this was placed in their principal church, and in the chapel of the Madonna; the subject is the Archangel Michael with St. John the Evangelist.

At this time Jacopo had two young men with him, one of whom was Giovan-Maria Pichi, of the Borgo-a -San Sepolcro, who acquitted himself tolerably well, but afterwards became a Servite monk. He executed certain works at the Borgo and in the Deanery of San Stefano; and while still with Puntormo he painted a large picture of San Quintino, the Martyrdom of that Saint namely, who is represented nude. This picture, Jacopo, being desirous, out of the love which he bore to his disciple, that he should obtain honour for his work,—Jacopo, I say, set himself to retouch the painting, and not knowing where to stop, once he had laid his hands on it he could not take them off; so that touching the head to-day, the arm to-morrow, and the back the day after, the retouching was finally such as almost to justify the assertion that the picture was by his own hand. We are not to marvel, therefore, if this painting is a very beautiful one; it is now in the church of the Observantine Friars, at the Borgo.

The second of the two young men, of whom there is mention above, was the Aretine, Giovan-Antonio Lappoli, whose