intained in the work
as a whole.

After these he was to have gone on with the Crucifixion and the
Deposition from the Cross in the other corners; but, putting them
aside for a time, with the intention of executing them last, he
painted in their stead Christ taken down from the Cross, keeping to
the same manner, but with great harmony of colouring. In this scene,
besides that the Magdalene, who is kissing the feet of Christ, is most
beautiful, there are two old men, representing Joseph of Arimathaea and
Nicodemus, who, although they are in the German manner, have the most
beautiful expressions and heads of old men, with beards feathery and
coloured with marvellous softness, that there are to be seen.

Now Jacopo, besides being generally slow over his works, was pleased
with the solitude of the Certosa, and he therefore spent several years
on these labours; and, after the plague had finished and he had
returned to Florence, he did not for that reason cease to frequent
that place constantly, and was always going and coming between the
Certosa and the city. Proceeding thus, he satisfied those fathers in
many things, and, among others, he painted in their church, over one
of the doors that lead into the chapels, in a figure from the waist
upwards, the portrait of a lay-brother of that monastery, who was
alive at that time and one hundred and twenty years old, executing it
so well and with such finish, such vivacity, and such animation, that
through it alone Pontormo deserves to be excused for the strange and
fantastic new manner with which he was saddled by that solitude and by
living far from the commerce of men.

Besides this, he painted for the Prior of that place a picture of the
Nativity of Christ, representing Joseph as giving light to Jesus
Christ in the darkness of the night with a lantern, and this in
pursuit of the same notions and caprices which the German engravings
put into his head. Now let no one believe that Jacopo is to blame
because he imitated Albrecht Duerer in his inventions, for the reason
that this is no error, and many painters have done it and are
continually doing it; but only because he adopted the unmixed German
manner in everything, in the draperies, in the expressions of the
heads, and in the attitudes, which he should have avoided, availing
himself only of the inventions, since he had the modern manner in all
the fullness of its beauty and grace. For the Stranger's Apartment of
the same mon