_Andrea del Sarto_ (Florentine: 1486-1531).
The cabinet pictures of Andrea del Sarto, "the faultless
painter," are well known to all visitors in the great galleries
of Europe. There is a certain mannerism in them which makes
them very easy of recognition. His type of Madonna is constant,
for it was taken from the beautiful wife whom he loved so
well, and who requited his love so ill. In his angels there
is a delicate, misty beauty; and over all his works there is
"that peculiar softness, harmony, and delicacy of colouring
which the Italians call _morbidezza_, and which is to be
seen in its perfection in the 'Madonna di San Francesco' in
the Uffizi." That Holy Family (painted in 1517) is generally
considered his masterpiece, and may be taken as the supreme
type of similar pictures in all the galleries. Another typical
work is the "Charity" of the Louvre (painted 1518). But it is
only in Florence among his frescoes--now unhappily fading,
but preserved in part by copies in the Arundel Society's
collection--the frescoes of the Santissima Annunziata, the
convent of S. Salvi, and, above all, the cloister of the
Scalzo, that a full conception of Andrea's power can be
obtained. "There only," says Mr. Swinburne, "can one trace and
tell how great a painter and how various he was. There only,
but surely there, can the influence and pressure of the things
of time on his immortal spirit be understood.... In the little
cloister of the Scalzo there is such exultation and exuberance
of young power, of fresh passion and imagination, that only by
the innate grace can one recognise the hand of the master whom
hitherto we knew by the works of his after life, when the gift
of grace had survived the gift of invention. This and all other
gifts it did survive; all pleasure of life and power of mind.
All these his charm of touch, his sweetness of execution, his
'Elysian beauty, melancholy grace' outlived and blossomed in
their dust" (Mr. Swinburne's eloquent piece on this painter's
works is in the first series of _Essays and Studies_, where
also are some notes on the master's drawings in the Uffizi
collection).
The painter's life is told in great detail and with much
vivacity by Vasari, to whose pages every reader should turn.
He was the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, and the friend and
fellow-worker of Franciabigio. All their spare, time, we are
told, was spent in drawing from the cartoons of Michelangelo
and Leonardo. "After the exhibition of Michelangelo's
celebrated 'Cartoon of Pisa,' in 1506, he became a decided
imitator of that painter in design: in colour and light and
shade Fra Bartolommeo appears to have been his model." His
celebrated frescoes in the convent of the Annunziata (not
completed till 1514) were among his earliest works. Those in
the Scalzo were done in 1514. In 1517 he married, and in 1518
he went to Paris, returning to Florence in the following year.
The story that he embezzled sums of money given him by the king
for the purchase of pictures is open to suspicion, since the
accounts of the king have been discovered. No trace of such
moneys occurs, nor did the king ever make any effort to obtain
restitution. Andrea died of the plague at the early age of
forty-five.
Browning's poem, in which he sets forth the pathos of the artist's
life, is the best commentary on this beautiful portrait--so masterly
in workmanship, so rich in suggestion of character. The real name of
Andrea del Sarto--"Andrew of the Tailor," so called from his father's
trade--was Andrea d'Agnolo: his monogram, formed of two inverted A's,
may here be seen on the background to the left. The Italians called him
"the faultless painter": faultless, they meant, in all the technical
requirements of painting--
All is silver-grey,
Placid and perfect with my art.
But men may be "faultily faultless"; and what he lacked was just the
one thing needful--the consecration and the poet's dream, which lift
many works by less skilful hands than his into the higher region of
imaginative art--
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,...
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
And the self-reproach was not less bitter for the knowledge of "what
might have been." There is a story that Michael Angelo visited his
studio, and said afterwards to Raphael--
"Friend, there's a certain little sorry scrub
"Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
"Who, were he set to plan and execute
"As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
"Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"
Yet Andrea himself too was once pricked on by kings. Two pictures of
his had been sent to Francis I., who thereupon invited the painter to
his court. And there for a time he worked and was honoured; but in the
midst of it all he sat reading the letters which Lucrezia, his wife,
sent him to Paris. "You called me and I came home to your heart." It
is her face which we see everywhere in Andrea's Madonnas, and if at
any time he took his model from any other face, there was always a
resemblance to hers in the painting--
You smile? why, there's my picture ready made!
But Lucrezia served as his model, not his ideal. She had been married
before to a hatter, but was remarkable, says Vasari, who worked in
Andrea's studio and had a grudge against her, "as much for pride and
haughtiness, as for beauty and fascination."[167] And
Had the mouth there urged
"God and the glory! never care for gain....
"Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
"Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"
I might have done it for you. So it seems.
It is in some such mood of communing with himself that we seem here to
see the painter; yet there is a certain undercurrent of contentment
below the look of melancholy. "The force of a beautiful face carries me
to heaven": so sang Michael Angelo. Lucrezia dragged her husband down;
his rivals overcame him--
Because there's still Lucrezia,--_as I choose_.