execute with
his own hand; and when he did wish to avail himself of one of them,
chiefly in order that they might learn, he allowed them to do the
whole work by themselves, as he allowed Bronzino to do here.

In the works that Jacopo executed in the said chapel up to this point,
it seemed almost as if he had returned to his first manner; but he did
not follow the same method in painting the altar-piece, for, thinking
always of new things, he executed it without shadows, and with a
colouring so bright and so uniform, that one can scarcely distinguish
the lights from the middle tints, and the middle tints from the darks.
In this altar-piece is a Dead Christ taken down from the Cross and
being carried to the Sepulchre. There is the Madonna who is swooning,
and the Maries, all executed in a fashion so different from his first
work, that it is clearly evident that his brain was always busy
investigating new conceptions and fantastic methods of painting, not
being content with, and not fixing on, any single method. In a word,
the composition of this altar-piece is altogether different from the
figures on the vaulting, and likewise the colouring; and the four
Evangelists, which are in the medallions on the spandrels of the
vaulting, are much better and in a different manner.

[Illustration: THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS

(_After the painting by =Jacopo da Pontormo=. Florence: S. Felicita_)

_Alinari_]

On the wall where the window is are two figures in fresco, on one side
the Virgin, and on the other the Angel, who is bringing her the
Annunciation, but so distorted, both the one and the other, that it is
evident that, as I have said, that bizarre and fantastic brain was
never content with anything. And in order to be able to do as he
pleased in this, and to avoid having his attention distracted by
anyone, all the time that he was executing this work he would never
allow even the owner of the chapel himself to see it, insomuch that,
having painted it after his own fancy, without any of his friends
having been able to give him a single hint, when it was finally
uncovered and seen, it amazed all Florence. For the same Lodovico he
executed a picture of Our Lady in that same manner for his chamber,
and in the head of a S. Mary Magdalene he made the portrait of a
daughter of Lodovico, who was a very beautiful young woman.

Near the Monastery of Boldrone, on the road that goes from there to
Castello, and at the corner of another