Vasari's "Life" of Pontormo depicts him as withdrawn and steeped in neurosis while at the center of the artists and patrons of his lifetime. This image of Pontormo has tended to color the popular conception of the artist, as seen in the film of Giovanni Fago, "Pontormo, a heretical love". Fago portrays Pontormo as mired in a lonely and ultimately paranoid dedication to his final "Last Judgment" project, which he often kept shielded from onlookers. Yet as the art historian Elizabeth Pilliod has pointed out, Vasari was in fierce competition with the Pontormo/Bronzino workshop at the time when he was writing his "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects". This professional rivalry between the two "bottega"s could well have provided Vasari with ample motivation for running down the artistic lineage of his opponent for Medici patronage.