Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/369

Rh depict that Avhole work with a colouring in fresco which is so soft and so good, that if in that picture he had been proceeding after any other manner than the German, it would indubitably have proved to be an exceedingly beautiful one; there is indeed so much excellence in the heads of those soldiers lying so fast asleep that they are almost like dead men, so varied are their attitudes and so perfect is the whole work, that one could not believe it possible to do anything better.

Continuing these Stories of the Passion m other divisions of the Cloister, the master depicted Our Saviour Christ proceeding towards the Mount Calvary and bearing his Cross; behind him are the people of Jerusalem who follow his steps, while before him are led the two thieves, naked and surrounded by the ministers of justice. Some of the latter are on foot and some on horseback, some bear the ladders, one has the inscription for the Cross, others carry the nails, ropes, hammers, and other instruments of similar kind. In the uppermost part of the picture, and partly concealed behind a slight elevation of the ground, is Our Lady with the Maries, weeping and awaiting the arrival of the Saviour. In the centre of the painting is Christ himself, who has fallen to the earth, and is surrounded by certain of the Jews, by whom he is despitefully smitten; while Veronica is seen to offer him the handkerchief wherewith he wipes the drops from his brow. Veronica is accompanied by other women old and young, who are bewailing the cruelties which they behold inflicted on their Lord.

This story, either because Jacopo had been warned by his friends, or that he did himself at length perceive, although tardily, the great injury which his study of the German engravings had done to his own soft manner, this story, I say, is much better than the others executed by him in the same place. There are, indeed, certain nude figures of Jews, with some heads of old men, which are so well painted in fresco that better could not be, although it is obvious that Puntormo has adopted that same manner of the Germans, to a certain extent in them all.

The Crucifixion of Christ, with his Deposition from the Cross, were then to be executed in other parts of the Cloister, but these Puntormo determined to leave, with the intention