ll in the manner wherein they are to be
seen, very beautiful; and between the windows, at the foot, in a space
that remained there unpainted, he depicted a nude S. Laurence upon a
gridiron, with some little Angels about him. In that whole work he
demonstrated that he had executed his paintings in that place with much
better judgment than his master Pontormo had shown in his pictures in
the work; the portrait of which Pontormo Bronzino painted with his own
hand in a corner of that chapel, on the right hand of the S. Laurence.
The Duke then gave orders to Bronzino that he should execute two large
altar-pictures, one containing a Deposition of Christ from the Cross
with a good number of figures, for sending to Porto Ferraio in the
Island of Elba, for the Convent of the Frati Zoccolanti, built by his
Excellency in the city of Cosmopolis; and another altar-piece, in which
Bronzino painted the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the new
Church of the Knights of S. Stephen, which has since been built in Pisa,
together with their Palace and Hospital, after the designs and
directions of Giorgio Vasari. Both these pictures have been finished
with such art, diligence, design, invention, and supreme loveliness of
colouring, that it would not be possible to go further; and no less,
indeed, was required in a church erected by so great a Prince, who has
founded and endowed that Order of Knights.

On some little panels made of sheet-tin, and all of one same size, the
same Bronzino has painted all the great men of the House of Medici,
beginning with Giovanni di Bicci and the elder Cosimo down to the Queen
of France, in that line, and in the other from Lorenzo, the brother of
the elder Cosimo, down to Duke Cosimo and his children; all which
portraits are set in order behind the door of a little study that Vasari
has caused to be made in the apartment of new rooms in the Ducal Palace,
wherein is a great number of antique statues of marble and bronzes and
little modern pictures, the rarest miniatures, and an infinity of medals
in gold, silver, and bronze, arranged in very beautiful order. These
portraits of the illustrious men of the House of Medici are all natural
and vivacious, and most faithful likenesses.

It is a notable thing that whereas many are wont in their last years to
do less well than they have done in the past, Bronzino does as well and
even better now than when he was in the flower of his manhood, as the
works demonstra