Jacopo Pontormo had left the Chapel of San Lorenzo unfinished at his death, and the Signor Duke commanded that Bronzino should complete the same, when he added many nude figures wanting to the lower part of the Deluge, giving infinite perfection to that portion of the work. In the Resurrection of the Dead also, many figures were wanting, and in the space of about a braccio high, but along the whole width of the wall, Bronzino executed these in the beautiful manner we see. Between the windows, in a part left wholly unadorned, he likewise depicted a San Lorenzo stretched naked on the Gridiron, and with Angels in the form of children around him; and here Bronzino displayed judgment superior to that shown by Pontormo his master in the same place; he also depicted the Portrait of his said master in a corner of the chapel, and to the right of San Lorenzo.
The Duke subsequently ordered Bronzino to paint two large pictures, one, a Deposition from the Cross, with numerous figures, to be sent to Porta Ferrajo in the Island of Elba, where it was destined to adorn the Convent of the Barefooted Friars, which his Excellency had built in his city of Cosmopoli;[1] the other, a Birth of Christ, being intended for the new Church of the Knights of San Stefano, which has since, together with their Palace and Hospital, been erected in Pisa after the designs of Giorgio Vasari. Both these pictures were painted with all the art, diligence, design, invention, and beauty of colouring that can be conceived, nor was less than that due to a Church erected by so great a Prince, and one who founded and endowed the abovementioned order of Knights.[2]
Bronzino has furthermore depicted the great men of the House of Medici, on plates of metal, all of the same size, beginning with Giovanni di Bicci, and Cosimo the Elder, and coming down to the Queen of France in that line. In the other line he has gone from Lorenzo, brother of the Elder Cosimo, down to the Signor Duke Cosimo, and his children; all these portraits are ranged in due order, behind
- ↑ This picture was waslied by certain ignorant persons with a strong lye and much injured, but it is now in the Academy of the Fine Arts at Florence, where it will soon be, so far as possible, restored to its former state. — Masselli.
- ↑ When Cosimo obtained the relics of St. Stephen from the Pope, he caused the Altar to be entirely reconstructed of porphyry, and the picture of Bronzino was removed. —Ibid.
