that climbs the hill and goes
to Cercina (that is, at a distance of two miles from Florence), he
painted in fresco in a shrine Christ Crucified, Our Lady weeping, S.
John the Evangelist, S. Augustine, and S. Giuliano; all which figures,
his caprice not being yet satisfied, and the German manner still
pleasing him, are not very different from those that he executed at
the Certosa. He did the same, also, in an altar-piece that he painted
for the Nuns of S. Anna, at the Porta a S. Friano, in which
altar-piece is Our Lady with the Child in her arms, and S. Anne behind
her, with S. Peter, S. Benedict, and other Saints, and in the predella
is a small scene with little figures, which represent the Signoria of
Florence as it used to go in procession with trumpeters, pipers,
mace-bearers, messengers, and ushers, with the rest of the household;
and this he did because the commission for that altar-piece was given
to him by the Captain and the household of the Palace.

The while that Jacopo was executing this work, Alessandro and Ippolito
de' Medici, who were both very young, having been sent to Florence by
Pope Clement VII under the care of the Legate, Silvio Passerini,
Bishop of Cortona, the Magnificent Ottaviano, to whom the Pope had
straitly recommended them, had the portraits of both of them taken by
Pontormo, who served him very well, and made them very good
likenesses, although he did not much depart from the manner that he
had learned from the Germans. In the portrait of Ippolito he also
painted a favourite dog of that lord, called Rodon, and made it so
characteristic and so natural, that it might be alive. He took the
portrait, likewise, of Bishop Ardinghelli, who afterwards became a
Cardinal; and for Filippo del Migliore, who was much his friend, he
painted in fresco in his house on the Via Larga, in a niche opposite
to the principal door, a woman representing Pomona, from which it
appeared that he was beginning to seek to abandon in part his German
manner.

Now Giovan Battista della Palla perceived that by reason of many works
the name of Jacopo was becoming every day more celebrated; and, since
he had not succeeded in sending to King Francis the pictures executed
by that same master and by others for Borgherini, he resolved, knowing
that the King had a desire for them, at all costs to send him
something by the hand of Pontormo. Whereupon he so went to work that
he persuaded Jacopo to execute a most beautiful picture