Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/384

376 necessity for obeying on the instant, and afterwards obtained permission to let the enclosure remain some few days longer, during which time he retouched such parts of the work as appeared to him to require amendment; then, having caused a cloth of his own contriving to be made, for the purpose of covering the paintings when the Duke and the other Signori were not there, to the end that the air might not corrode the pictures, which were executed in oil on the dry intonaco, as it had done at Careggi;—having taken this precaution, I say, Jacopo Puntormo uncovered his work, amidst the much excited expectation of every one, all believing that he would be found to have surpassed himself in that performance, and would have produced something marvellous. But the effect produced was not altogether what had been expected, for although there are certain parts which are very good, the figures on the whole are very badly proportioned, while the contortions and strange attitudes given to some of them are singularly extravagant; nay, some of them appear to be out of all reason.

The excuse offered by Jacopo was to the effect that he had never worked very willingly in that place, because, being outside the city, it was constantly exposed to the fury of the soldiery, and to other accidents of similar kind. But he might have spared himself the trouble of anxiety on that point, seeing that his work (having been executed in the manner which we have said), is even now being gradually consumed by time and the air.

In the centre of the vaulting, then,—to describe what was done—Puntormo represented the God Saturn, with the Zodiacal sign of Capricorn and Mars Hermaphrodite, with those of the Lion, and the Virgin. He added Children floating in the air, as at Careggi, with female figures of enormous size, and almost entirely nude, representing Philosophy, Astrology, Geometry, Music, and Arithmetic; the Goddess Ceres being furthermore depicted in the same place, as were various medallions, with small historical representations, appropriate to the above-named figures, and painted with various shades of colour. This painful and laboured