or Messer Giovanni
de Statis, Auditor to Duke Alessandro, a little picture of Our Lady
which was a much extolled work, and shortly afterwards, for Monsignor
Giovio, his friend, the portrait of Andrea Doria; and for Bartolommeo
Bettini, to fill certain lunettes in a chamber, the portraits of Dante,
Petrarca, and Boccaccio, half-length figures of great beauty. Which
pictures finished, he made portraits of Bonaccorso Pinadori, Ugolino
Martelli, Messer Lorenzo Lenzi, now Bishop of Fermo, and Pier Antonio
Bandini and his wife, with so many others, that it would be a long work
to seek to make mention of them all; let it suffice that they were all
very natural, executed with incredible diligence, and finished so well,
that nothing more could be desired. For Bartolommeo Panciatichi he
painted two large pictures of Our Lady, with other figures, beautiful to
a marvel and executed with infinite diligence, and, besides these,
portraits of him and his wife, so natural that they seem truly alive,
and nothing is wanting in them save breath. For the same man he has
painted a picture of Christ on the Cross, which is executed with much
study and pains, insomuch that it is clearly evident that he copied it
from a real dead body fixed on a cross, such is the supreme excellence
and perfection of every part. For Matteo Strozzi he painted in fresco,
in a tabernacle at his villa of S. Casciano, a Pieta with some Angels,
which was a very beautiful work. For Filippo d' Averardo Salviati he
executed a Nativity of Christ in a small picture with little figures, of
such beauty that it has no equal, as everyone knows, that work being now
in engraving; and for Maestro Francesco Montevarchi, a most excellent
physicist, he painted a very beautiful picture of Our Lady and some
other little pictures full of grace. And he assisted his master
Pontormo, as was said above, to execute the work of Careggi, whereon the
spandrels of the vaults he painted with his own hand five figures,
Fortune, Fame, Peace, Justice, and Prudence, with some children, all
wrought excellently well.

Duke Alessandro being then dead and Cosimo elected, Bronzino assisted
the same Pontormo in the work of the Loggia of Castello. For the
nuptials of the most illustrious Lady, Leonora di Toledo, the wife of
Duke Cosimo, he painted two scenes in chiaroscuro in the court of the
Medici Palace, and on the base that supported the horse made by Tribolo,
as was related, some stories of the action