Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/368

360 the capture of his Master, and to this man as well as to those by whom he is accompanied, Puntormo has given a face of the strangest forms and most exaggerated expressions, all being entirely after the German type. It moves one to compassion indeed, as one remarks, on examining these works, the simplicity of the artist who would bestow so much labour and pains to acquire that which all others seek with so much care to avoid, or if they have it, to lose; and this is all the more extraordinary when it is considered, that Puntormo abandoned a manner which surpassed in excellence that of all others and gave infinite pleasure to every one merely to secure a defect. Did not Puntormo know that the Germans and Flemings come into these parts for the very purpose of learning that Italian manner which he with so much labour and pains was seekingto abandon as if it were a bad one?

Beside the picture just alluded to is one wherein Christ is led before Pilate, and here the face of the Redeemer gives evidence of all that humility which truly belongs to, or can be imagined to reside in, the person of Innocence betrayed to death by the sins of mankind. In the wife of Pilate is perceptible the compassion she feels, together with that dread by which those are wont to be possessed who fear the Divine justice; this woman, while recommending the cause of Christ to her husband, is contemplating the countenance of the Saviour with an expression of pitying wonder. Around the figure of Pilate are soldiers who are so completely German, in the character of their faces as well as in the manner of their habiliments, that whoever did not know by what hand the work was performed, would assuredly believe it to have been executed by foreigners, men from beyond the mountains. It is true that there is one exception in a cup-bearer of Pilate’s, who is seen in the distance, descending a flight of stairs with a basin and ewer in his hand, which he is carrying to his master, that he may wash his hands therewith; this figure, which is a very beautiful and lifelike one, has a certain something proper to the old manner of Puntormo.

Having next to execute in one of the other angles, a Resurrection of Our Saviour, the artist then took it into his head, as being one who, having no steadfastness in his character, was perpetually in search of some new whim, to change the manner of his colouring; and of a truth he did