Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/377

Rh charge of the work was entrusted to Jacopo Puntormo, who having first ordered scaffolding and an enclosure to be erected, then began to prepare the cartoons, but suddenly falling into his whims and fantasies, he wasted his time in cogitations and proceeded no further in the work. This might not perhaps have been the result had Bronzino been in the country, but he was then absent, being employed at the Imperiale, a place belonging to the Duke of Urbino and situate near Pesaro. He was indeed daily urged by Puntormo to rejoin him at the Poggio-a-Cajano, but Bronzino could not leave the Imperiale at his own pleasure, seeing that, having painted an exceedingly beautiful Cupid, a nude figure, in a corbel of one of the ceilings, and prepared the cartoons for other parts of the work, the Prince Guidobaldo, who perceived the ability of that youth, commanded him to remain, intending to have his own likeness taken by him: but Guidobaldo desired to be portrayed in armour, a particular suit of which he was expecting from Lombardy, and as the arrival of this armour was delayed, Bronzino was compelled to remain at the Imperiale longer than he could have wished. In the interval also he painted for Guidobaldo the case of a harpsichord, which pleased that prince mightily; ultimately however the portrait was completed, and being an extremely beautiful one, it gave great satisfaction to the Duke.

Jacopo meanwhile had written so many letters, and was constantly making so many efforts to procure the return of Bronzino, that he finally succeeded; but notwithstanding the presence of his disciple, there was nothing that would prevail on that strange man Puntormo to get forward with the work beyond the preparation of the cartoons, although he was earnestly solicited to do so by the magnificent Ottaviano and the Duke Alessandro; these cartoons are now for the most part in the house of Ludovico Capponi, and in one of them is a Hercules strangling Antseus; another has Venus and Adonis; and on a third is a group of nude figures engaged in the game of football.

Now about this time the Signor Alfonso Davalo, Marchese di Guasto, had obtained a cartoon from Michelagnolo Buonarroti by the intervention of Fra Niccolò della Magna, the