eclare, in Ancisa, a township in
the Upper Valdarno, famous enough because from it the ancestors of
Messer Francesco Petrarca likewise derived their origin. But, whether
it was from there or from some other place that his elders came, the
above-named Bartolommeo, who was a Florentine, and, so I have been
told, of the family of the Carrucci, is said to have been a disciple
of Domenico Ghirlandajo, and, after executing many works in the
Valdarno, as a painter passing able for those times, to have finally
made his way to Empoli to carry out certain labours, living there and
in the neighbouring places, and taking to wife at Pontormo a most
virtuous girl of good condition, called Alessandra, the daughter of
Pasquale di Zanobi and of his wife Monna Brigida. To this Bartolommeo,
then, there was born in the year 1493 our Jacopo. But the father
having died in the year 1499, the mother in the year 1504, and the
grandfather in the year 1506, Jacopo was left to the care of his
grandmother, Monna Brigida, who kept him for several years at
Pontormo, and had him taught reading, writing, and the first rudiments
of Latin grammar; and finally, at the age of thirteen, he was taken by
the same guardian to Florence, and placed with the Pupilli, to the end
that his small property might be safeguarded and preserved by that
board, as is the custom. And after settling the boy himself in the
house of one Battista, a shoemaker distantly related to him, Monna
Brigida returned to Pontormo, taking with her a sister of Jacopo's.
But not long after that, Monna Brigida herself having died, Jacopo
was forced to bring that sister to Florence, and to place her in the
house of a kinsman called Niccolaio, who lived in the Via de' Servi;
and the girl, also, following the rest of her family, died in the year
1512, before ever she was married.

But to return to Jacopo; he had not been many months in Florence when
he was placed by Bernardo Vettori with Leonardo da Vinci, and shortly
afterwards with Mariotto Albertinelli, then with Piero di Cosimo, and
finally, in the year 1512, with Andrea del Sarto, with whom, likewise,
he did not stay long, for the reason that, after Jacopo had executed
the cartoons of the little arch for the Servites, of which there will
be an account below, it appears that Andrea never again looked
favourably upon him, whatever may have been the reason. The first
work, then, that Jacopo executed at that time was a little
Annunciation for o