IN EARLY SCHOOLS OF ITALIAN ART--THE BELLINI, 1422-1512--MANTEGNA,
1431-1506--GHIRLANDAJO, 1449-1498--IL FRANCIA, 1450-1518--FRA
BARTOLOMMEO, 1469-1517--ANDREA DEL SARTO, 1488-1530.
I have come to the period when Italian art is divided into many
schools--Paduan, Venetian, Umbrian, Florentine, Roman, Bolognese, etc.,
etc. With the schools and their definitions I do not mean to meddle,
except it may be to mention to which school a great painter belonged.
Another difficulty meets me here. I have been trying so far as I could
to give the representative painters in the order of time. I can no
longer follow this rule strictly, and the grouping of this chapter is
made on the principle of leading my readers up by some of the
predecessors who linked the older to the later Italian painters, and by
some of the contemporaries of these later painters, to that central
four, Lionardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Titian, who
occupy so great a place in the history of art.
In the brothers Bellini and their native Venice, we must first deal with
that excellence of colouring for which the Venetian painters were
signally noted, while they comparatively neglected and underrated
drawing. A somewhat fanciful theory has been started, that as Venice,
Holland, and England have been distinguished for colour in art, and as
all those States are by the sea, so a sea atmosphere has something to do
with a passion for colour. Within more reasonable bounds, in reference
to the Venetians, is the consideration that no colouring is richer,
mellower, more exquisitely tinted than that which belongs to the blue
Italian sky over the blue Adriatic, with those merged shades of violet,
green, and amber, and that magical soft haze which has to do with a
moist climate.
The two brothers Gentile and Gian or John Bellini, the latter the more
famous of the two, were the sons of an old Venetian painter, with regard
to whom the worthy speech is preserved, that he said it was like the
Tuscans for son to beat father, and he hoped, in God's name, that
Giovanni or Gian would outstrip him, and Gentile, the elder, outstrip
both. The brothers worked together and were true and affectionate
brothers, encouraging and appreciating each other.
Gentile was sent by the Doge at the request of the Sultan--either
Mahommed II, or Bajazet II., to Constantinople, where Gentile Bellini
painted the portrait of the Sultan and the Sultana his mother, now in
the British Museum. The painter also painted the head of John the
Baptist in a charger as an offering--only too suitable--from him to the
Grand Turk. The legend goes on to tell that in the course of the
presentation of the gift, an incident occurred which induced Gentile
Bellini to quit the Ottoman Court with all haste. The Sultan had
criticized the appearance of the neck in John the Baptist's severed
head, and when Gentile ventured to defend his work, the Sultan proceeded
to prove the correctness of his criticism, by drawing his scimitar and
cutting off at a stroke the head of a kneeling slave, and pointing to
the spouting blood and the shrinking muscle, gave the horrified painter
a lesson in practical anatomy. On Gentile's return from the East, he was
pensioned by his State, and lived on painting, till he was eighty years
of age, dying in 1501.
Gian Bellini is said to have obtained by a piece of deceit, which is not
in keeping with his manly and honourable character, the secret,
naturally coveted by a Venetian, of mixing colours with resin and oil. A
Venetian painter had brought the secret from Flanders, and communicated
it to a friend, who, in turn, communicated it to a third painter, and
was murdered by that third painter for his pains, so greedy and criminal
was the craving, not only to possess, but to be as far as possible the
sole possessor of, the grand discovery. Gian Bellini was much less
guilty, if he were really guilty. Disguised as a Venetian nobleman, he
proposed to sit for his portrait to that Antonella who first brought the
secret from Flanders, and while Antonella worked with unsuspicious
openness, Gian Bellini watched the process and stole the secret.
Gian Bellini lived to the age of ninety, and had among his admirers the
poet Ariosto and Albrecht Dürer. The latter saw Gian Bellini in his age,
and said of him, when foolish mockers had risen up to scout at the old
man, and his art now become classic, 'He is very old, but he is still
the best of our painters.' Gian Bellini had illustrious pupils,
including in their number Titian and Giorgione.
The portraits of Gentile and Gian, which are preserved in a painting by
Gian, show Gentile fair-complexioned and red-haired, and Gian with dark
hair.
Gian Bellini is considered to have been less gifted with imagination
than some of his great brother artists; but he has proved himself a man
of high moral sense, and while he stopped short at the boundary between
the seen and the unseen, it is certain he must still have painted with
much of 'the divine patience' and devout consecration of all his powers,
and of every part of his work, which are the attributes of the earliest
Italian painters. When he and his brother began to paint, Venetian art
had already taken its distinctive character for open-air effects, rich
scenic details in architecture, furniture and dress (said to be
conspicuous in commercial communities), and a growing tendency to
portraiture. Gian went with the tide, but he guided it to noble results.
His simplicity and good sense, with his purity and dignity of mind, were
always present. He introduced into his pictures 'singing boys, dancing
cherubs, glittering thrones, and dewy flowers,' pressing the outer world
into his service and that of religious art. It is said also that his
Madonnas seem 'amiable beings imbued with a lofty grace;' while his
saints are 'powerful and noble forms.' But he never descended to the
paltry or the vulgar. He knew from the depths of his own soul how to
invest a face with moral grandeur. Especially in his representations of
our Saviour Gian Bellini 'displays a perception of moral power and
grandeur seldom equalled in the history of art.' The example given is
that of the single figure of the Lord in the Dresden Gallery, where the
Son of God, without nimbus, or glory, stands forth as the 'ideal of
elevated humanity.'
The greater portion of Gian Bellini's pictures remain in the churches
and galleries of Venice. But the first great work at which the two
brothers in their youth worked in company--the painting of the Hall of
Council in the palace of the Doge, with a series of historical and
legendary pictures of the Venetian wars with the Emperor Frederick
Barbarossa (1177), including the Doge Ziani's receiving from the Pope
the gold ring with which the Doge espoused the Adriatic, in token of
perpetual dominion over the sea--was unfortunately destroyed by fire in
1577. Giovanni Bellini's greatest work, now at St Salvatore, is Christ
at Emmaus, with Venetian senators and a Turkish dragoman introduced as
spectators of the risen Lord.
Of another great work at Vicenza, painted in Gian Bellini's old age,
when neither his skill nor his strength was abated, 'The Baptism of
Christ,' Dean Alford writes thus:
'Let us remain long and look earnestly, for there is indeed much
to be seen. That central figure, standing with hands folded on
His bosom, so gentle, so majestic, so perfect in blameless
humanity, oh what labour of reverent thought; what toil of
ceaseless meditation; what changes of fair purpose, oscillating
into clearest vision of ideal truth, must it have cost the great
painter, before he put forth that which we see now! It is as
impossible to find aught but love and majesty in the Divine
countenance, as it is to discover a blemish on the complexion of
that body, which seems to give forth light from itself, as He
stands in obedience, fulfilling all righteousness.
'And even on the accessories to this figure, we see the same
loving and reverent toil bestowed. The cincture, where alone the
body is hidden from view, is no web of man's weaving; or, if it
were, it is of hers whose heart was full of divine thoughts as
she wove: so bright and clear is the tint, so exquisitely
careful and delicate every fold where light may play or colour
vary. And look under the sacred feet, on the ground blessed by
their pressure; no dash of hurrying brush has been there: less
than a long day's light, eve, did not suffice to give in
individual shape and shade every minutest pebble and mote of
that shore of Jordan. Every one of them was worth painting, for
we are viewing them as in the light of His presence who made
them all and knew them all.
'And now let us pass to the other figures: to that living and
glowing angelic group in the left hand of the picture. Three of
the heavenly host are present, variously affected by that which
they behold. The first, next the spectator, in the corner of the
picture, is standing in silent adoration, tender and gentle in
expression, the hands together, but only the points of the
fingers touching, his very reverence being chastened by angelic
modesty; the second turns on that which he sees a look of
earnest inquiry, but kneels as he looks; and indeed that which
he sees is one of the things which angels desire to look into.
The third, a majestic herald-like figure, stands, as one
speaking, looking to the spectator, with his right hand on his
garment, and his left out as in demonstration, unmistakeably
saying to us who look on, "Behold what love is here!" Then,
hardly noticing what might well be much noticed, the grand dark
figure of the Baptist on the right, let us observe how
beautifully and accurately all the features of the landscape are
given.'
Of the same work another critic records: 'The attendant angels in this
work (signed by the artist) are of special interest, instinct with an
indefinable purity and depth of reverential tenderness elsewhere hardly
rivalled. But the picture, like that in S. Giovanni Crisostomo, with
which it is nearly contemporary, is almost more interesting from the
astonishing truth and beauty of its landscape portions. _These_ form
here a feature more important, perhaps, than in any work of that period;
the stratification and form of the rocks in the foreground, the palms
and other trees relieved against the lucid distance, and the
mountain-ranges of tender blue beyond, are as much beyond praise for
their beauty and their truth, as they have been beyond imitation from
the solidity and transparent strength of their execution! The minute
finish is Nature's, and the colouring more gem-like than gems.'
No praise can exceed that bestowed on Gian Bellini's colouring for its
intensity and transparency. 'Many of his draperies are like crystal of
the clearest and deepest colour,' declares an authority; and another
states' his best works have a clear jewel brightness, an internal
gem-like fire such as warms a summer twilight. The shadows are intense
and yet transparent, like the Adriatic waves when they lie out of the
sun under the palace bridges.'
Portrait-painting, just beginning, was established in Venice, its later
stronghold, by Gian Bellini. His truthful portrait of the Doge Loredano,
one of the earliest of that series of Doges' portraits which once hung
in state in the ducal palace, is now in our National Gallery.
Of Gentile Bellini, whose work was softer, but less vigorous than his
brother's, the best painting extant is that at Milan of St Mark
preaching at Alexandria, in which the painter showed how he had profited
by his residence at Constantinople in the introduction of much rich
Turkish costume, and of an animal unknown to Europe at the time--a
camelopard.
Andrea Mantegna was born near Padua. He was the son of a farmer. His
early history, according to tradition, is very similar to that of
Giotto. Just as Cimabue adopted Giotto, Squarcione, a painter who had
travelled in Italy and Greece, and made a great collection of antiques,
from which he taught in a famous school of painters, adopted Andrea
Mantegna at the early age of ten years. It was long believed that
Mantegna, in the end, forfeited the favour of his master by marrying
Nicolosa Bellini, the sister of Gentile and Gian Bellini, whose father
was the great rival of Squarcione; and farther, that Mantegna's style of
painting had been considered Bellini. Modern researches, which have
substituted another surname for that of Bellini as the surname of Andrea
Mantegna's wife, contradict this story.
Andrea Mantegna, a man of much energy and fancy, entered young into the
service of the Gonzaga lords of Mantua, receiving from them a salary of
thirty pounds a year and a piece of land, on which the painter built a
house, and painted it within and without--the latter one of the first
examples of artistic waste, followed later by Tintoret and Veronese,
regardless of the fact that painting could not survive in the open air
of Northern Italy.
Andrea Mantegna had his home at Mantua, except when he was called to
Rome to paint for the Pope, Innocent VIII. An anecdote is told by Mrs
Jameson of this commission. It seems the Pope's payments were irregular;
and one day when he visited his painter at work, and his Holiness asked
the meaning of a certain allegorical female figure in the design, Andrea
answered, with somewhat audacious point, that he was trying to
represent _Patience_. The Pope, understanding the allusion, paid the
painter in his own coin, by remarking in reply, 'If you would place
Patience in fitting company, you would paint Discretion at her side.'
Andrea took the hint, said no more, and when his work was finished not
only received his money, but was munificently rewarded.
Andrea Mantegna had two sons and a daughter. One of his sons painted
with his father, and, after Andrea Mantegna's death, completed some of
his pictures.
Andrea Mantegna's early study of antique sculpture moulded his whole
life's work. He took great delight in modelling, in perspective, of
which he made himself a master, and in chiaroscuro, or light and shade.
Had his powers of invention and grace not kept pace with his skill, he
would have been a stiff and formal worker; as it was, he carried the
austerity of sculpture into painting, and his greatest work, the
'Triumph of Julius Cæsar,' would have been better suited for the
chiselled frieze of a temple than it is for the painted frieze of the
hall of a palace. Yet he was a great leader and teacher in art, and the
true proportions of his drawing are grand, if his colouring is harsh. I
am happy to say that Mantegna's 'Triumph of Julius Cæsar' is in England
at Hampton Court, having been bought from the Duke of Mantua by Charles
I. These cartoons, nine in number, are sketches in water-colour or
distemper on paper fixed on cloth. They are faded and dilapidated, as
they well may be, considering the slightness of the materials and their
age, about four hundred years. At the same time, they are, after the
cartoons of Raphael (which formed part of the same art collection of
Charles I.), perhaps the most valuable and interesting relic of art in
England.
The series of the 'Triumph' contain the different parts, originally
separated by pillars, of a long and splendid procession. There are
trumpeters and standard bearers, the statues of the gods borne aloft,
battering-rams and heaps of glittering armour, trophies of conquest in
huge vases filled with coin, garlanded oxen, and elephants. The second
last of the series, presents the ranks of captives forming part of the
show, rebellious men, submissive women, and unconscious children--a
moving picture. In the last of the series comes the great conqueror in
his chariot, a youth in the crowd following him, carrying his banner, on
which is inscribed Cæsar's notable despatch, 'Veni, vidi, vici;' 'I
came, I saw, I conquered.'
Another of Mantegna's best pictures is in distemper--in which, and on
fresco, Mantegna chiefly painted,--and is in the Louvre, Paris. It is
the Madonna of Victory, so called from its being painted to commemorate
the deliverance of Italy from the French army under Charles VIII., a
name which has acquired a sardonic meaning from the ultimate destination
of the picture. This picture--which represents the Virgin and Child on a
throne, in an arbour of fruit and flowers, between the archangels,
Michael and St Maurice, in complete armour, with the patron saints of
Mantua and the infant St John in the front, and the Marquis Ludovico of
Mantua and his wife, Isabella D'Este, kneeling to return thanks--was
painted by Mantegna at the age of seventy years; and, as if the art of
the man had mellowed with time, it is the softest and tenderest of his
pictures in execution. A beautiful Madonna of Mantegna's, still later in
time, is in the National Gallery.
When Mantegna was sixty years old he took up the art of engraving, and
prosecuted it with zeal and success, being one of the earliest painters
who engraved his own pictures, and this accomplishment spread them
abroad a hundredfold.
Domenico Ghirlandajo was properly Domenico Bicordi, but inherited from
his father, a goldsmith in Florence,[3] the by-name of Ghirlandajo or
Garland-maker--a distinctive appellation said to have been acquired by
the elder man from his skill in making silver garlands for the heads of
Florentine women and children. Domenico Ghirlandajo worked at his
father's craft till he was twenty-four years of age, when, having in the
mean time evinced great cleverness in taking the likenesses of the
frequenters of Ghirlandajo the elder's shop, the future painter
abandoned the goldsmith's trade for art pure and simple. He soon
vindicated the wisdom of the step which he had taken by giving proofs of
something of the strength of Masaccio, united with a reflection of the
feeling of Fra Angelico.
Ghirlandajo was summoned soon to Rome to paint in the Sistine Chapel,
afterwards to be so glorious; but his greatest works were done in the
prime of his manhood, in his native city, Florence, where he was chosen
as the teacher of Michael Angelo, who was apprenticed to Ghirlandajo for
three years.
While still in the flower of his age and crowned with golden opinions,
being, it is said with effusion, 'the delight of his city,' Ghirlandajo
died after a short illness, in Ghirlandajo's time Florence had reached
her meridian, and her citizens outvied each other in the magnificence of
their gifts to their fair mother city. Ghirlandajo was fitted to be
their painter; himself a generous-spirited artist, in the exuberance of
life and power, he wished that his fellow-citizens would give him all
the walls of the city to cover with frescoes. He was content with the
specified sum for his painting, desiring more the approbation of his
employers than additional crowns. His genius lying largely in the
direction of portrait painting, he introduced frequently the portraits
of contemporaries, causing them to figure as spectators of his sacred
scenes. One of these contemporaries thus presented, was Amerigo
Vespucci, who was to give his name to a continent. Another was a
Florentine beauty, a woman of rank, Ginevra de Benci.
Ghirlandajo was lavish in his employment of rich Florentine costumes and
architecture. He even made the legends of the saints and the histories
of the Bible appear as if they had happened under the shadow of
Brunelleschi's duomo and Giotto's campanile, and within sound of the
flow of the Arno. In the peculiar colouring used in fresco painting
Ghirlandajo excelled.
He painted a chapel for a Florentine citizen, Francesco Sasetti, in the
church of the Trinità, Florence, with scenes from the life of St
Francis. Of these, the death of St Francis, surrounded by the sorrowing
monks of his order, with the figures of Francesco Sasetti and his wife,
Madonna Nera, on one side of the picture, is considered the best. As a
curious illustration of the modernizing practice of Ghirlandajo, he has
painted an old priest at the foot of the bier, chanting the litanies for
the dying, with spectacles on his nose, the earliest known
representation of these useful instruments.
Ghirlandajo painted during four years the choir of the church of Santa
Maria Novella, Florence, for one of the great Florentine benefactors,
Giovanni Tornabuone, and there are to be seen some of Ghirlandajo's
finest frescoes from the history of John the Baptist and the Virgin.
A Madonna and Child with angels in the National Gallery is attributed to
Ghirlandajo.
Francesco Francia, or Il Francia, was born at Bologna, and was the son
of a carpenter, whose surname was Raibaloni, but Francesco assumed the
name of his master, a goldsmith, and worked himself at a goldsmith's
trade till he was forty years of age. Indeed he may be said never to
have relinquished his connection with the trade, and certainly he was no
more ashamed of it than of his calling as a painter, for he signed
himself indiscriminately 'goldsmith' and 'painter,' and sometimes
whimsically put 'goldsmith' to his paintings and 'painter' to his
jewellery. He was a famous designer of dies for coins and medals, and it
is quite probable, as a countryman of his own has sought to prove, that
he was the celebrated type-cutter, known as 'Francesco da Bologna.' But
it is with Francesco '_pictor_' that we have to do.
Though he only began to prosecute the painter's art in middle age, he
rose with remarkable rapidity to eminence, was the great painter of
Lombardy in his day, rivalling Squarcione, Mantegna's teacher in his
school, which numbered two hundred scholars, and becoming the founder of
the early Bolognese school of painters.
Francia is said to have been very handsome in person, with a kindly
disposition and an agreeable manner. He was on terms of cordial
friendship with Raphael, then in his youth, and thirty years Il
Francia's junior. Il Francia addressed an enthusiastic sonnet to
Raphael, and there is extant a letter of Raphael's to Il Francia,
excusing himself for not sending his friend Raphael's portrait, and
making an exchange of sketches, that of his 'Nativity' for the drawing
of Il Francia's 'Judith;' while it was to Il Francia's care that Raphael
committed his picture of St Cecilia, when it was first sent to Bologna.
These relations between the men and their characters throw discredit on
the tradition that Il Francia died from jealous grief caused by the
sight of Raphael's 'St Cecilia.' As Il Francia was seventy years of age
at the time of his death, one may well attribute it to physical causes.
Il Francia had at least one son, and another kinsman, painters, whose
paintings were so good as to be occasionally confounded with those of Il
Francia.
Il Francia is thought to have united, in his works, a certain calm
sedateness and frank sincerity to the dreamy imaginativeness of some of
his contemporaries. His finest works are considered to be the frescoes
from the life of St Cecilia in the church of St Cecilia at Bologna.
Of a Madonna and Child, by Francia, at Bologna, I shall write down
another of Dean Alford's descriptions,--many of which I have given for
this, among other reasons, that these descriptions are not technical or
professional, but the expression of the ardent admiration and grateful
comprehension of a sympathetic spectator. 'He,' speaking of the Divine
Child, 'is lying in simple nakedness on a rich red carpet, and is
supported by a white pillar, over which the carpet passes. Of these
accessories every thread is most delicately and carefully painted; no
slovenly washes of meretricious colour where He is to be served, before
whom all things are open; no perfunctory sparing of toil in serving Him
who has given us all that is best. On his right hand kneels the Virgin
Mother in adoration, her very face a magnificat--praise, lowliness,
confidence; next to her, Joseph, telling by his looks the wonderful
story, deeply but simply. Two beautiful angels kneel, one on either
side--hereafter, perhaps, to kneel in like manner in the tomb. Their
faces seemed to me notable for that which I have no doubt the painter
intended to express,--the pure abstraction of reverent adoration,
unmingled with human sympathies. The face and figure of the Divine
Infant are full of majesty, as he holds his hands in blessing towards
the spectator, who symbolizes the world which He has come to save. Close
to him on the ground, on his right branch in trustful repose; on his
left springs a plant of the meadow-trefoil. Thus lightly and reverently
has the master touched the mystery of the Blessed Trinity: the goldfinch
symbolizing by its colours, the trefoil by the form of its leaf.'
In our own National Gallery is a picture by Il Francia of the enthroned
Virgin and Child and her mother, St Anne, who is presenting a peach to
the infant Christ; at the foot of the throne is the little St John; to
the right and left are St Paul with the sword, St Sebastian bound to a
pillar and pierced with arrows, and St Lawrence with the emblematical
grid-iron, etc. etc. Opposite this picture hangs, what once formed part
of it, a solemn, sorrowful Pietà, as the Italians call a picture
representing the dead Redeemer mourned over by the Virgin and by the
other holy women. These pictures were bought by our Government from the
Duke of Lucca for three thousand five hundred pounds.
Fra Bartolommeo. We come to a second gentle monk, not unlike Fra
Angelico in his nature, but far less happy than Fra Angelico, in having
been born in stormy times. Fra Bartolommeo, called also Baccio della
Porta, or Bartholomew of the gate, from the situation of his lodgings
when a young man, but scarcely known in Italy by any other name than
that of Il Frate, or the Friar, was born near Florence, and trained from
his boyhood to be a painter. In his youth, however, a terrible public
event convulsed Florence, and revolutionized Baccio della Porta's life.
He had been employed to paint in that notable Dominican convent of St
Mark, where Savonarola, its devoted friar, was denouncing the sins of
the times, including the profligate luxury of the nobles and the
degradation of the representatives of the Church. Carried away by the
fervour and sincerity of the speaker, Baccio joined the enthusiasts who
cast into a burning pile the instruments of pride, vanity, and godless
intellect denounced by the preacher. Baccio's sacrifice to the flaming
heap of splendid furniture and dress, and worldly books, was all his
designs from profane subjects and studies of the undraped figure. A
little later Savonarola was excommunicated by the Pope and perished as
a martyr; and Baccio, timid from his natural temper, distracted by
doubt, and altogether horror-stricken, took a monk's vows, and entered
the same convent of St Mark, where for four years he never touched a
pencil.
At the request of his superior Fra Bartolommeo painted again, and when
Raphael visited Florence, and came with all his conquering sweetness and
graciousness to greet the monk in his cell, something of Il Frate's old
love for his art, and delight in its exercise, returned. He even visited
Rome, but there his health failed him, and the great works of Lionardo,
Michael Angelo, and Raphael, when he compared his own with theirs,
seemed to crush and overwhelm him. But he painted better for his visit
to Rome, even as he had painted better for his intimacy with Raphael.
Nay, it is said Raphael himself painted better on account of his
brotherly regard for, and confidence in, Fra Bartolommeo.
Fra Bartolommeo died aged forty-eight years. Among his best pupils was a
nun of St Catherine's, known as Suor Plautilla.
To Il Frate, as a painter, is attributed great softness and harmony, and
even majesty, though, like Fra Angelico, he was often deficient in
strength. He was great in the management of draperies, for the better
study of which he is said to have invented the lay figure. He indulged
in the introduction into his pictures of rich architecture. He was fond
of painting boy-angels--in which he excelled--playing frequently on
musical instruments, or holding a canopy over the Virgin. Very few of
his works are out of Italy; the most are in Florence, especially in the
Pitti Palace. His two greatest works are the Madonna della Misericordia,
or the Madonna of Mercy, at Lucca, where the Virgin stands with
outstretched arms pleading for the suppliants, whom she shelters under
the canopy, and who look to her as she looks to her Son,--and the grand
single figure of St Mark, with his Gospel in his hand, in the Pitti
Palace, Florence. Sir David Wilkie said of the Madonna of Mercy, 'that
it contained the merits of Raphael, of Titian, of Rembrandt, and of
Rubens.'
Andrea Vanucchi, commonly called Andrea del Sarto, from the occupation
of his father, who was a tailor (in Italian, _sarto_), was born at
Florence in 1488. He was first a goldsmith, but soon turned painter,
winning early the commendatory title of 'Andrea senza errori,' or
'Andrea the Faultless.' His life is a miserable and tragic history. In
the early flush of his genius and industry, with its just crown of fame
and success, he conceived a passion for a beautiful but worthless woman,
whom, in spite of the opposition of his friends, he married. She
rendered his home degraded and wretched, and his friends and scholars
fell off from him. In disgust he quitted Florence, and entered the
service of Francis I, of France; but his wife, for whom his regard was a
desperate infatuation, imperiously summoned him back to Florence, to
which he returned, bringing with him a large sum of money, entrusted to
him by the king for the purchase of works of art. Instigated by his
wife, Andrea del Sarto used this money for his, or rather her, purposes,
and dared not return to France. Even in his native Florence he was
loaded with reproach and shame. He died of the plague at the age of
fifty-five years, according to tradition, plundered and abandoned in his
extremity by the base woman for whom he had sacrificed principle and
honour. We may read the grievous story of Andrea del Sarto, written by
one of the greatest of England's modern poets.
As may be imagined, Andrea del Sarto's excellence lay in the charm of
his execution. His works were deficient in earnestness and high feeling,
and some will have it, that, evilly haunted as he was, he perpetually
painted in his Madonnas the beautiful but base-souled face of the woman
who ruined him. Andrea del Sarto's best works are in Florence,
particularly in the cloisters of the convent of the Annunziata. In the
court of the same convent is his famous Riposo (or rest of the Holy
Family on their way to Egypt), which is known as the 'Madonna of the
Sack,' from the circumstance of Joseph in the picture leaning against a
sack. This picture has held a high place in art for hundreds of years.