Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/49

Rh Titian, with the Duke Alessandro, whom he took from a painting by Pontormo. This work did not attain to the perfection that had been expected; but as in the same Guardaroba, Battista saw that Cartoon of the Noii me tangere, which had been made by Michelagnolo, and had been executed in colours by Jacopo Pontormo, he set himself to prepare a similar Cartoon, but with figures somewhat larger, and having done that, he painted a picture from it, in which he acquitted himself much better as to the colouring than he had done in the one above-mentioned; as to the Cartoon, as it was exactly copied from that of Michelagnolo, and done with great patience, it was in fact very beautiful.

The affair of Montemurlo, in which all the exiles and rebels to the Duke were routed and taken prisoners, having then ensued, Battista painted a story of the battle which had been fought, and mingling with the facts certain poetic fancies of his own which displayed good invention, the work was much extolled. It was, nevertheless, easy to perceive that in the deeds of arms, in the taking of the prisoners, and in many other parts, there was very much that was taken bodily from the works and designs of Buonarroti: in the distance was the battle, but in the foreground were the huntsmen of Ganymede, standing with their eyes turned upwards towards the Bird of Jove, who is carrying the youth away to the skies: this part Battista had borrowed from the design of Michelagnolo, and had used it in his picture to signify that the Duke, while still young, had been taken from the midst of his friends by the will of God, and so borne up into heaven: to signify this, I say, or some such matter.

That story, I repeat, was first designed by Battista in a Cartoon; it was afterwards painted by him with extraordinary care in a picture, and is now with his other works in the upper rooms of the Pitti Palace, which his most Illustrious Excellency has caused to be entirely finished. By these and similar labours, Battista Franco was detained in the service of the Duke, until the time when that sovereign took the Signora, Donna Leonora di Toledo, to wife, and he was then employed in the preparations made for those nuptials, for the triumphal arch erected at the Porta di Prato that is to say, where Bidolfo Ghirlandajo caused