stro Jacopo, a
Servite friar, who was something of a poet, at his persuasion he painted
the Assumption of the Madonna in the cloister of the Servites, beside
the scene of the Visitation, which was executed by Jacopo da Pontormo.
In this he made a Heaven full of angels, all in the form of little naked
children dancing in a circle round the Madonna, foreshortened with a
most beautiful flow of outlines and with great grace of manner, as they
wheel through the sky: insomuch that, if the colouring had been executed
by him with that mature mastery of art which he afterwards came to
achieve, he would have surpassed the other scenes by a great measure,
even as he actually did equal them in grandeur and excellence of design.
He made the Apostles much burdened with draperies, and, indeed,
overloaded with their abundance; but the attitudes and some of the heads
are more than beautiful.

[Illustration: MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH SAINTS

(_After the panel by =Il Rosso=. Florence: Uffizi, 47_)

_Alinari_]

The Director of the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova commissioned him to paint
a panel: but when he saw it sketched, having little knowledge of that
art, the Saints appeared to him like devils; for it was Rosso's custom
in his oil-sketches to give a sort of savage and desperate air to the
faces, after which, in finishing them, he would sweeten the expressions
and bring them to a proper form. At this the patron fled from his house
and would not have the picture, saying that the painter had cheated him.

In like manner, over another door that leads into the cloister of the
Convent of the Servites, Rosso painted the escutcheon of Pope Leo, with
two children; but it is now ruined. And in the houses of citizens may be
seen several of his pictures and many portraits. For the visit of Pope
Leo to Florence he executed a very beautiful arch on the Canto de'
Bischeri. Afterwards he painted a most beautiful picture of the Dead
Christ for Signor di Piombino, and also decorated a little chapel for
him. At Volterra, likewise, he painted a most lovely Deposition from the
Cross.

Having therefore grown in credit and fame, he executed for S. Spirito,
in Florence, the panel-picture of the Dei family, which they had
formerly entrusted to Raffaello da Urbino, who abandoned it because of
the cares of the work that he had undertaken in Rome. This picture Rosso
painted with marvellous grace, draughtsmanship, and vivacity of
colouring. Let no one imagine th