Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/370

362 of doing them the last of all, he therefore next proceeded to paint a picture of Our Lord when he has been removed from the Cross, adhering still to the same German manner, but imparting infinite harmony to the colouring of his work. In this part of the picture, beside the Magdalen who is kissing the feet of the Saviour, and is indeed a most exquisite figure, there are two old men, intended for Joseph of Arimatheaand Nicodemus, and these, although both in the German manner, have yet the most beautiful expressions (such as are suited, that is to say, to the heads of old persons), writh the most softly flowing beards, and the most perfectly harmonious colouring that can possibly be conceived.

Jacopo was somewhat slow in the execution of his pictures, and on this account, as also because the solitude of the Certosa was agreeable to him, he spent several years over the works which he executed in this place; nay, after the pestilence had ceased and he had returned to Florence, he frequented the convent continually, going constantly backward and forward from the Certosa to the city; proceeding in this manner he was enabled to do many things for those fathers, which was greatly to their satisfaction. Among other paintings for example, he executed one in the church and over one of the doors which give entrance into the chapels; this was the half-length portrait of a Monk, who had attained the age of 120 years; he was a lay brother in the Monastery of the Certosa, and was then living there. In that portrait there is so much life and force, it is executed with so much animation, and finished so admirably well, that this work alone, may suffice to form an excuse for all the eccentricity of Puntormo, and should secure him his pardon for the new and whimsical manner which he had taken it into his head to adopt, during his abode in that solitary place, and when far removed from the commerce of the world.

For the apartments of the Prior of the Certosa also, Puntormo painted a picture representing the Nativity of Christ; in this he has depicted Joseph giving light to the Divine Child in the obscurity of the night, by means of a