Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/385

Rh performance did nevertheless not give much satisfaction, or rather it pleased less than it had been expected to do; and although his Excellency would not withhold such marks of approval as he could justly confer, and continued to employ Puntormo on all occasions, this was principally because that painter was held in great veneration by the people, on account of the many beautiful and excellent works which he had executed at an earlier period.

The Duke had meanwhile invited two Flemish artists to Florence, Maestro Giovanni Rosso, and Maestro Niccolò, namely, both excellent masters in cloth of arras, his Excellency proposing that the Florentines should learn, and ultimately exercise, the art of preparing the same. He commanded that hangings of silk and gold should be prepared at a cost of 60,000 crowns, for the hall of the Council of Two Hundred; Jacopo and Bronzino being directed to make the Cartoons, the subject of which was the History of Joseph. But Puntormo having made two, they were not found satisfactory either to the Duke or to those masters who had to put them in execution. The subject of one was the Announcement brought to Jacob of the Death of his son Joseph, by laying before him the coat of many colours; the other was the Flight of Joseph from the wife of Potiphar, in whose hands he leaves his vestment. They did not, however, as I have said, appear to be well calculated for copying in woven cloth, nor likely to succeed as applied to the work in question. Puntormo did not therefore continue his labour of the Cartoons any further, but, returning to his accustomed occupations, he shortly afterwards executed a picture of Our Lady, which was presented by the Duke to the Signor Don —————, who took it into Spain.

Now his Excellency, pursuing the footsteps of his predecessors, has ever sought to benefit and embellish his native city; wherefore, proceeding with that intent, he determined to cause the principal chapel of the magnificent church of San Lorenzo, built aforetime by the great Cosimo de’ Medici the elder; he resolved, I say, to have that chapel adorned with paintings, and gave the charge of the work to Jacopo Puntormo. The artist was exceedingly rejoiced at receiving that favour, whether he owed it, as is said, to the intervention of Messer Pier Francesco Ricci, the Steward of the Household,