Having completely enclosed the chapel within walls, planks, and curtains, Jacopo then shut himself up from all the world, and kept the place so exclusively sealed against every one, that for the space of eleven years no one person, himself only excepted, no friend, no other living soul, in short, ever entered within the enclosure. It is very true that some young men who were drawing in the Sacristy of Michelagnolo, did climb on the roof, after the manner of such youngsters, and having removed the screws and bolt from one of the great gilded rosettes of the ceiling, they thus contrived to see all that was therein. When Jacopo discovered this, he was much displeased, but took no further notice of the matter than was implied by his closing up every opening more diligently than ever, although there are not wanting those who have reported that he persecuted those young men relentlessly, and sought to do them all the mischief that he could.
Imagining that in this work he was about to surpass all other painters, nay, very possibly, as is said, Michelagnolo himself, Puntormo depicted numerous stories in the upper part, the subjects of ail being scenes from the Life of Adam and Eve; their creation namely, the eating of the forbidden fruit, and their expulsion from Paradise: then followed the tilling of the earth, the sacrifice of Abel, the death of Cain, the benediction bestowed on the descendants of Noah, with that Patriarch occupied with the planning and measurement of the ark. These were succeeded in the lower part by one which is not less than fifteen braccia in each direction, and the subject of this was the Deluge, amidst the waters of which are seen weltering vast numbers of drowned and dead bodies,[1] with Noah himself, engaged in communication with the Almighty Father.
On the other side of the chapel is delineated the universal Resurrection of the dead, as it is to be at the last day, and here all the figures are so wonderfully commingled, so remarkable is the variety and confusion, that they can certainly not be greater at the last day, which will perhaps scarcely
- ↑ It is related of Jacopo da Pontormo, that he kept dead bodies in troughs of water, to give them the proper degree of inflation for the time when he should desire to paint them, to the end that he might depict them in the swollen state proper to the drowned. —Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
