Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/365

Rh magnificent Ottaviano and of Madonna Francesca, daughter of Jacopo Salviati, and maternal aunt of the Signor Duke Cosimo. This work, but more particularly the head of Cosimo, procured for Puntormo the favour of Messer Ottaviano; and the great hall at Poggio-a -Cajano being then to be painted, the commission for the two ends of the same, wherein are the circular orifices which give light (the windows that is to say), was given to Jacopo, who was directed to execute the ornaments of that portion from the ceiling to the floor.

More than ever anxious to do himself honour on that occasion, from respect to the place as well as from the emulation awakened by the presence of the other masters who were employed there, Jacopo devoted so large an amount of care and study to this matter, that in his zeal he overstepped the due limit, doing over again to-day what he had completed yesterday, and so spoiling rather than improving his work; he racked his brains in this fashion until it was a pity to behold, and was incessantly labouring at new inventions, all which were to add to the beauty of the performance and to his own fame.

Among other parts of this work is a figure of Vertumnus with his husbandmen around him, and Puntormo has represented the god under the form of a peasant, seated and holding in his hand a gardener’s pruning knife, and this is so beautiful and so admirably executed that it may be truly considered wonderful, as may likewise the figures of certain children there portrayed, and which are indescribably natural and life-like. On the side opposite to this of the Vertumnus Puntormo painted figures of Pomona, Diana, and other deities, but these he has involved somewhat too closely in draperies; the whole work is nevertheless a very fine one and has been much commended.

These paintings were still in progress when Pope Leo died, the works of that hall were therefore left unfinished as were many others of like kind, not in Rome only but in Florence, Loretto, and many other places; nay, the whole world was rendered poor by that death, and all distinguished men were deprived of their true Maecenas.