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In company with his favourite pupil, Bronzino, he did the frescoes in the Loggie of the Medici villa at Careggi; one Loggia was soon completed, to the great delight of the Duke, but Jacopo shut himself up in the second and allowed no one to see what he was doing for five years; when at length he uncovered the frescoes general disappointment was the result.
The sentiment of woman, what really distinguishes the sex, whether voluptuously or passionately or poetically apprehended, emerges in no eminent instance of his work. There is a Cartoon at Naples for a Bacchante, which Bronzino transferred to canvas and coloured. This design illustrates the point on which I am insisting.
The Lord Duke then brought to Florence the Flemings, Maestro Giovanni Rosso and Maestro Niccolò, excellent masters in arras-tapestries, to the end that the art might be learned and practised by the Florentines, and he ordained that tapestries in silk and gold should be executed for the Council Hall of the Two Hundred at a cost of 60,000 crowns, and that Jacopo and Bronzino should make the cartoons with the stories of Joseph.
He was seen at once rummaging with ardor in an old box, in which he found some brushes, a little gnawed by the rats, but still passable; some colors in bladders almost dried up; some linseed-oil in a bottle, and a palette which had formerly belonged to Bronzino, that dieu de la pittoure, as the ultramontane artist, in his ever young enthusiasm, always called him.
Finally, as far as the literature treated of in this chapter is concerned, I have only one work to recommend, but it is an excellent one: I mean a poetical epistle in terzo rimo by the famous painter Bronzino, entitled "De' Romori: a Messer Luca Martini" It describes fully and amusingly the torture to which one is put by the many kinds of noises of a small Italian town.
His intention so chilled her, from the moment she found herself divining it, that, just for the pleasure of going on with him fairly, just for the pleasure of their remembrance together of Matcham and the Bronzino, the climax of her fortune, she could have fallen to pleading with him and to reasoning, to undeceiving him in time.
The other and this spurred him more strongly was the sight of Agnolo, who was called Bronzino, being much brought forward by Jacopo on account of his loving submissiveness and goodness and the untiring diligence that he showed in imitating his master's works, not to mention that he drew very well and acquitted himself in colouring in such a manner, that he aroused hopes that he was destined to attain to that excellence and perfection which have been seen in him, and still are seen, in our own day.
It was impossible to feel any ill-will toward this captivating mite with the dark Bronzino face, and yet to Wilhelm he seemed to represent a distinct act of treachery. How could she have been so underhand as to hide the fact from him that her connection with the fashion-plate diplomat had not been without results!
I used to believe that it was after this work, and not before, that the same Jacopo had painted in fresco the two most lovely and graceful little boys who are supporting a coat of arms over a door within a passage on the Lungarno, between the Ponte S. Trinita and the Ponte alla Carraja, for Bartolommeo Lanfredini; but since Bronzino, who may be supposed to know the truth about these matters, declares that they were among the first works that Jacopo executed, we must believe that this is so without a doubt, and praise Pontormo for them all the more, seeing that they are so beautiful that they cannot be matched, and yet were among the earliest works that he did.
In the historical pictures of these men, whether sacred or secular, it is clear how much was done for Florentine art by Fra Bartolommeo and Del Sarto independently of Michael Angelo and Lionardo. Angelo Bronzino, the pupil of Pontormo, is chiefly valuable for his portraits. Hard and cold, yet obviously true to life, they form a gallery of great interest for the historian of Duke Cosimo's reign.
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