ng and employing his time as best suits his
nature.

But to return, leaving these matters on one side, to the works of
Jacopo: Duke Alessandro had caused to be restored in some parts the
Villa of Careggi, formerly built by the elder Cosimo de' Medici, at a
distance of two miles from Florence, and had carried out the
ornamentation of the fountain and the labyrinth, which wound through
the centre of an open court, into which there opened two loggie, and
his Excellency ordained that those loggie should be painted by Jacopo,
but that company should be given him, to the end that he might finish
them the quicker, and that conversation with others, keeping him
cheerful, might be a means of making him work without straying so much
into vagaries and distilling away his brains. Nay, the Duke himself
sent for Jacopo and besought him that he should strive to deliver that
work completely finished as soon as possible. Jacopo, therefore,
having summoned Bronzino, caused him to paint a figure on each of five
spandrels of the vaulting, these being Fortune, Justice, Victory,
Peace, and Fame; and on the other spandrel, for they are in all six,
Jacopo with his own hand painted a Love. Then, having made the design
for some little boys that were going in the oval space of the
vaulting, with various animals in their hands, and all foreshortened
to be seen from below, he caused them all, with the exception of one,
to be executed in colour by Bronzino, who acquitted himself very well.
And since, while Jacopo and Bronzino were painting these figures, the
ornaments all around were executed by Jacone, Pier Francesco di
Jacopo, and others, the whole of that work was finished in a short
time, to the great satisfaction of the Lord Duke. His Excellency
wished to have the other loggia painted, but he was not in time, for
the reason that the above-named work having been finished on the 13th
of December in the year 1536, on the 6th of the January following that
most illustrious lord was assassinated by his kinsman Lorenzino; and
so this work and others remained without their completion.

The Lord Duke Cosimo having then been elected, and the affair of
Montemurlo having passed off happily, a beginning was made with the
works of Castello, according as has been related in the Life of
Tribolo, and his most illustrious Excellency, in order to gratify
Signora Donna Maria, his mother, ordained that Jacopo should paint the
first loggia, which one finds on the