; and in it are portrayed his father and some lads who were
working with him, and, of his friends, Poggino, Scheggia, and Nunziata,
the head of the last-named being very lifelike. That Nunziata, although
he was a puppet-painter, was in some things a person of distinction, and
above all in preparing fireworks and the girandole that were made every
year for the festival of S. John; and, since he was an amusing and
facetious person, everyone took great pleasure in conversing with him. A
citizen once saying to him that he was displeased with certain painters
who could paint nothing but lewd things, and that he therefore wished
him to paint a picture of a Madonna that might be seemly, well advanced
in years and not likely to provoke lascivious thoughts, Nunziata painted
him one with a beard. Another meaning to ask from him a Christ on the
Cross for a ground-floor room where he lived in summer, and not being
able to say anything but "I want a Christ on the Cross for summer,"
Nunziata, who saw him to be a simpleton, painted him one in breeches.

But to return to Ridolfo. Having been commissioned to paint the Nativity
of Christ in an altar-piece for the Monastery of Cestello, he exerted
himself much, in order to surpass his rivals, and executed that work
with the greatest diligence and labour at his command, painting therein
the Madonna, who is adoring the Infant Christ, S. Joseph, and two
figures, S. Francis and S. Jerome, kneeling. He also made there a most
beautiful landscape, very like the Sasso della Vernia, where S. Francis
received the Stigmata, and above the hut some Angels that are singing;
and the whole work was very beautiful in colouring, and passing good in
relief. About the same time, after executing an altar-piece that went to
Pistoia, he set his hand to two others for the Company of S. Zanobi,
which is beside the canonical buildings of S. Maria del Fiore; which
altar-pieces were to stand on either side of the Annunciation that
Mariotto Albertinelli had formerly painted there, as was related in his
Life. Ridolfo, then, carried the two pictures to completion with great
satisfaction to the men of that Company, painting in one S. Zanobi
restoring a boy to life in the Borgo degli Albizzi in Florence, which is
a very lively and spirited scene, for there are in it many heads
portrayed from life, and some women who show very vividly their joy and
astonishment at seeing the boy reviving and the spirit returning to him.
In