left hand in entering the Palace
of Castello. Whereupon, setting to work, Jacopo first designed all the
ornaments that were to be painted there, and had them executed for the
most part by Bronzino and the masters who had executed those of
Careggi. Then, shutting himself up alone, he proceeded with that work
after his own fancy and wholly at his leisure, studying with all
diligence, to the end that it might be much better than that of
Careggi, which he had not executed entirely with his own hand. This he
was able to do very conveniently, having eight crowns a month for it
from his Excellency, whom he portrayed, young as he was, in the
beginning of that work, and likewise Signora Donna Maria, his mother.
Finally, after that loggia had been closed for five years, no one
being able to have even a glance at what Jacopo had done, one day the
above-named lady became enraged against him, and commanded that the
staging and the screen should be thrown to the ground. But Jacopo,
having begged for grace and having obtained leave to keep it covered
for a few days more, first retouched it where it seemed to him to be
necessary, and then caused a cloth of his own contriving to be made,
which should keep that loggia covered when those lords were not there,
to the end that the weather might not, as it had done at Careggi, eat
away those pictures, which were executed in oils on the dry plaster;
and at last he uncovered it, amid the lively expectation of everyone,
all thinking that in that work Jacopo must have surpassed himself and
done something altogether stupendous. But the effect did not
correspond completely to the expectations, for the reason that,
although many parts of the work are good, the general proportion of
the figures appears very poor in form, and certain distorted attitudes
that are there seem to be wanting in measure and very strange. But
Jacopo excused himself by saying that he had never worked very
willingly in that place, for the reason that, being without the city,
it seemed much exposed to the fury of the soldiery and to other
suchlike dangers; but there was no need for him to be afraid of that,
seeing that time and the weather, from the work having been executed
in the manner already described, are eating it away little by little.

In the centre of the vaulting, then, he painted a Saturn with the Sign
of Capricorn, and a Hermaphrodite Mars in the Sign of the Lion and of
the Virgin, and some little Angels who are f