Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/383

Rh Bronzino, wlio acquitted himself exceedingly weil on that occasion.

While Jacopo and Il Bronzino were occupied with these figures, the ornaments around them were in process of execution by Jaeone, Pier Francesco di Jacopo, and others, so that the whole work was completed in a very short time, to the no small satisfaction of the Signor Duke. And his Excellency would have had the second Loggia decorated in like manner, but he had not time to do so, for the first was not finished until the 13th of December, 1536, and on the sixth day of the January following, that most illustrious Signor was slain by his kinsman Lorenzino, an event which caused not this only, but many other works also, to be left unfinished, f The Signor Duke Cosimo having then succeeded, and the affair of Montemurlo being happily over, the works of Castello were commenced, as we have related in the life of Tribolo, when his most illustrious Excellency, willing to do a pleasure to the Signora Donna Maria his mother, commissioned Jacopo to paint the first Loggia, that on the right hand namely, and at the entrance to the palace of Castello. Wherefore, setting hand to the work, Puntormo first designed all the ornaments that were to be used there, and which, for the greater part, he made Bronzino execute, assisted by those who had worked at the same parts of the undertaking at Careggi. Jacopo then shut himself up in the Loggia by himself, and went on with the work in his own fashion, and at his good pleasure, studying with all diligence, in the hope of making it a much better performance than that of Careggi; which he had not executed entirely wij;h his own hand. And this he could do very commodiously, seeing that be had a stipend of eight crowns a month from his Excellency, whose portrait, as the youth he then was, with that of his mother Donna Maria, Puntormo placed in that part of the work which was first completed.

But when the Loggia had remained thus enclosed for the space of five years, while no one was permitted to see what he had done there, the lady above-named became very angry with him, and one day in her displeasure she commanded that the scaffolding and enclosure should be thrown to the earth. It is true that Jacopo found means to avoid the