t
friendship, that Ammanati took Battista into his house, as well as Genga
of Urbino, and they lived thus in company for some time, attending with
much profit to the studies of art.

Duke Alessandro having then been done to death in the year 1536, and
Signor Cosimo de' Medici elected in his place, many of the servants of
the dead Duke remained in the service of the new, but others did not,
and among those who went away was the above-named Giorgio Vasari, who
returned to Arezzo, with the intention of having nothing more to do with
Courts, having lost Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, his first lord, and
then Duke Alessandro; but he brought it about that Battista was invited
to serve Duke Cosimo and to work in his guardaroba, where he painted in
a large picture Pope Clement and Cardinal Ippolito, copying them from a
work by Fra Sebastiano and from one by Tiziano, and Duke Alessandro from
a picture by Pontormo. This picture was not of that perfection that was
expected; but, having seen in the same guardaroba the cartoon of the
"Noli me tangere" by Michelagnolo, which Pontormo had previously
executed in colours, he set himself to make a cartoon like it, but with
larger figures; which done, he painted a picture from it wherein he
acquitted himself much better in the colouring. And the cartoon, which
he copied exactly after that of Michelagnolo, was executed with great
patience and very beautiful.

The affair of Monte Murlo having then taken place, in which the exiles
and rebels hostile to the Duke were routed and captured, Battista
depicted with beautiful invention a scene of the battle fought there,
mingled with poetic fantasies of his own, which was much extolled,
although there were recognized in the armed encounter and in the taking
of the prisoners many things copied bodily from the works and drawings
of Buonarroti. For the battle was in the distance, and in the foreground
were the huntsmen of Ganymede, who were standing there gazing at Jove's
Eagle carrying the young man away into Heaven; which part Battista took
from the design of Michelagnolo, in order to use it to signify that the
young Duke had risen by the grace of God from the midst of his friends
into Heaven, or some such thing. This scene, I say, was first drawn by
Battista in a cartoon, and then painted with supreme diligence in a
picture; and it is now, together with his other works mentioned above,
in the upper apartments of the Pitti Palace, which his most ill