above all, to draw so well
from nature, that with supreme facility he gave his portraits an
extraordinary likeness to the life, although otherwise he was no
great draughtsman. And I have seen some heads portrayed from life by
his hand, which, although they have, for example, the nose crooked,
one lip small and the other large, and other suchlike deformities,
nevertheless resemble the life, through his having well caught the
expression of the subject; whereas, on the other hand, many
excellent masters have made pictures and portraits of absolute
perfection with regard to art, but with no resemblance whatever to
those that they are supposed to represent. And to tell the truth, he
who executes portraits must contrive, without thinking of what is
looked for in a perfect figure, to make them like those for whom
they are intended. When portraits are like and also beautiful, then
may they be called rare works, and their authors truly excellent
craftsmen. This Antonio, then, besides many portraits, executed a
number of panel-pictures in Florence; but for the sake of brevity I
will make mention only of two. One of these, wherein he painted a
Crucifixion, with S. Mary Magdalene and S. Francis, is in S. Jacopo
tra Fossi, on the Canto degli Alberti; and in the other, which is
in the Nunziata, is a S. Michael who is weighing souls.

The other of the two aforesaid disciples was Domenico Puligo, who
was more excellent in draughtsmanship and more pleasing and gracious
in colouring than any of the others mentioned above. He, considering
that his method of painting with softness, without overloading his
works with colour or making them hard, but causing the distances to
recede little by little as though veiled with a kind of mist, gave
his pictures both relief and grace, and that although the outlines
of the figures that he made were lost in such a way that his errors
were concealed and hidden from view in the dark grounds into which
the figures merged, nevertheless his colouring and the beautiful
expressions of his heads made his works pleasing, always kept to the
same method of working and to the same manner, which caused him to
be held in esteem as long as he lived. But omitting to give an
account of the pictures and portraits that he made while in the
workshop of Ridolfo, some of which were sent abroad and some
remained in the city, I shall speak only of those which he painted
when he was rather the friend and rival of Ridolfo than