value; but he probably rested content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant, and did not aspire to the rank of a great inventor or leader, for which, indeed, he had no vocation. He led a social sort of life among his compeers of the art, was intimate with the sculptor Rustici, and joined a jolly dining-club at his house named the Company of the Kettle, also a second club named the Trowel. At one time, Franciabigio being then the chairman of the Kettle-men, Andrea recited, and is by some regarded as having composed, a comic epic, “The Battle of the Frogs and Mice”–a rechauffé, as one may surmise, of the Greek Batrachomyomachia, popularly ascribed to Homer. He fell in love with Lucrezia (del Fede), wife of a hatter named Carlo Recanati; the hatter dying opportunely, the tailor’s son married her on the 26th of December 1512. She was a very handsome woman and has come down to us treated with great suavity in many a picture of her lover-husband, who constantly painted her as a Madonna and otherwise; and even in painting other women he made them resemble Lucrezia in general type. She has been much less gently handled by Vasari and other biographers. Vasari, who was at one time a pupil of Andrea, describes her as faithless, jealous, overbearing and vixenish with the apprentices. She lived to a great age, surviving her husband forty years.
By 1514 Andrea had finished his last two frescoes in the court of the Servites, than which none of his works was more admired—the “Nativity of the Virgin,” which shows the influence of Leonardo, Domenico Ghirlandajo and Fra Bartolommeo, in effective fusion, and the “Procession of the Magi,” intended as an amplification of a work by Baldovinetti; in this fresco is a portrait of Andrea himself. He also executed at some date a much-praised head of Christ over the high altar. By November 1515 he had finished at the Scalzo the allegory of Justice, and the “Baptist preaching in the desert,”—followed in 1517 by “John baptizing,” and other subjects. Before the end of 1516 a “Pietà” of his composition, and afterwards a Madonna, were sent to the French court. These were received with applause; and the art-loving monarch Francis I. suggested in 1518 that Andrea should come to Paris. He journeyed thither towards June of that year, along with his pupil Andrea Sguazzella, leaving his wife in Florence, and was very cordially received, and for the first and only time in his life was handsomely remunerated. Lucrezia, however, wrote urging his return to Italy. The king assented, but only on the understanding that his absence from France was to be short; and he entrusted Andrea with a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for his royal patron. The temptation of having a goodly amount of pelf in hand proved too much for Andrea’s virtue. He spent the king’s money and some of his own in building a house for himself in Florence. This necessarily brought him into bad odour with Francis, who refused to be appeased by some endeavours which the painter afterwards made to reingratiate himself. No serious punishment, however, and apparently no grave loss of professional reputation befell the defaulter.
In 1520 he resumed work in Florence, and executed the “Faith” and “Charity” in the cloister of the Scalzo. These were succeeded by the “Dance of the Daughter of Herodias,” the “Beheading of the Baptist,” the “Presentation of his head to Herod,” an allegory of Hope, the “Apparition of the Angel to Zacharias” (1523), and the monochrome of the Visitation. This last was painted in the autumn of 1524, after Andrea had returned from Luco in Mugello,—to which place an outbreak of plague in Florence had driven him, his wife, his step-daughter and other relatives. In 1525 he painted the very famous fresco named the “Madonna del Sacco,” a lunette in the cloisters of the Servites; this picture (named after a sack against which Joseph is represented propped) is generally accounted his masterpiece. His final work at the Scalzo was the “Birth of the Baptist” (1526), executed with some enhanced elevation of style after Andrea had been diligently studying Michelangelo’s figures in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo. In the following year he completed at S. Salvi, near Florence, a celebrated “Last Supper,” in which all the personages seem to be portraits. This also is a very fine example of his style, though the conception of the subject is not exalted. It is the last monumental work of importance which Andrea del Sarto lived to execute. He dwelt in Florence throughout the memorable siege, which was soon followed by an infectious pestilence. He caught the malady, struggled against it with little or no tending from his wife, who held aloof, and he died, no one knowing much about it at the moment, on the 22nd of January 1531, at the comparatively early age of forty-three. He was buried unceremoniously in the church of the Servites.
Various portraits painted by Andrea are regarded as likenesses of himself, but this is not free from some doubt. One is in London, in the National Gallery, an admirable half-figure, purchased in 1862. Another is at Alnwick Castle, a young man about twenty years of age, with his elbow on a table. Another at Panshanger may perhaps represent in reality his pupil Domenico Conti. Another youthful portrait is in the Uffizi Gallery, and the Pitti Gallery contains more than one. Among his more renowned works not already specified are the following. The Virgin and Child, with St Francis and St John the Evangelist and two angels, now in the Uffizi, painted for the church of S. Francesco in Florence; this is termed the “Madonna di S. Francesco,” or “Madonna delle Arpie,” from certain figures of harpies which are decoratively introduced, and is rated as Andrea’s masterpiece in oil-painting. The altar-piece in the Uffizi, painted for the monastery of S. Gallo, the “Fathers disputing on the doctrine of the Trinity”—SS. Augustine, Dominic, Francis, Lawrence, Sebastian and Mary Magdalene—a very energetic work. Both these pictures are comparatively early—towards 1517. “The Charity” now in the Louvre (perhaps the only painting which Andrea executed while in France). The “Pietà,” in the Belvedere of Vienna; this work, as well as the “Charity,” shows a strong Michelangelesque influence. At Poggio a Caiano a celebrated fresco (1521) representing Julius Caesar receiving tribute, various figures bringing animals from foreign lands—a striking perspective arrangement; it was left unfinished by Andrea and was completed by Alessandro Allori. Two very remarkable paintings (1523) containing various incidents in the life of the patriarch Joseph, executed for the Borgherini family. In the Pitti Gallery two separate compositions of the “Assumption of the Virgin,” also a fine “Pietà.” In the Madrid museum the “Virgin and Child,” with Joseph, Elizabeth, the infant Baptist and an Archangel. In the Louvre the “Holy Family,” the Baptist pointing upwards. In Berlin a portrait of his wife. In Panshanger a fine portrait named “Laura.” The second picture in the National Gallery ascribed to Andrea, a “Holy Family,” is by some critics regarded as the work rather of one of his scholars—we hardly know why. A very noticeable incident in the life of Andrea del Sarto relates to the copy, which he produced in 1523, of the portrait group of Leo X. by Raphael; it is now in the Naples Museum, the original being in the Pitti Gallery. Ottaviano de' Medici, the owner of the original, was solicited by Frederick II., duke of Mantua, to present it to him. Unwilling to part with so great a pictorial prize and unwilling also to disoblige the duke, Ottaviano got Andrea to make the copy, which was consigned to the duke as being the original. So deceptive was the imitation that even Giulio Romano, who had himself manipulated the original to some extent, was completely taken in; and, on showing the supposed Raphael years afterwards to Vasari, who knew the facts, he could only be undeceived when a private mark on the canvas was named to him by Vasari and brought under his eye. It was Michelangelo who had introduced Vasari in 1524 to Andrea’s studio. He is said to have thought very highly of Andrea’s powers, saying on one occasion to Raphael, “There is a little fellow in Florence who will bring sweat to your brow if ever he is engaged in great works.”
Andrea had true pictorial style, a very high standard of correctness and an enviable balance of executive endowments. The point of technique in which he excelled least was perhaps that of discriminating the varying textures of different objects and surfaces. There is not much elevation or ideality in his works—much more of reality. His chiaroscuro is not carried out according to strict rule, but is adjusted to his liking for harmony of
