Fra Bartolommeo Part 7

[Footnote: _Firenze antica e moderna_ Ed. Flor. 1794, vol. vi, p. 216.]

These have perished completely.

CHAPTER III.

SOCIAL LIFE AND MARRIAGE. A.D. 1511-1516.

This chapter will speak of the _man_, and not of the _artist_. As it is now understood that history is not a dry record of battles and laws, but the story of the inner life of a people, so the biography of a painter ought not to consist wholly in a list and description of his works, but a picture of his life and inner mind, that we may know the character which prompted the works.

First, as to personal appearance. There are two portraits of Andrea del Sarto in his youth; one in the Duke of Northumberland's collection represents him as a young man with long hair, and a black cap, writing at a table. It is painted in a soft, harmonious style, but not masterly as regards chiaroscuro. It might be by Francia Bigio, as it has something of the manner of his master, Albertinelli.

Another now in the Uffizi is a most life-like portrait of sombre colouring, but not highly finished. Here we have the same black cap and long hair; the dress is a painter's blouse of a blue-grey, which well brings out the flesh tints. The face is intelligent, but not refined; the clear dark eyes bespeak the artist spirit, but the full mobile mouth tells the material nature of the man. In looking at this one can solve the riddle of the dissonance between his art and his life. As a young man Andrea was full of spirit; he loved lively society, and knew almost all the young artists who lived very much as students now. They met each other in the art schools, and dined and feasted together in the wine shops. Sometimes they formed private clubs, meeting in certain rooms for purposes of youthful merriment.

Of this kind was the "Society of the Cauldron" ("Societa del Paiuolo"), held at the apartment of the eccentric sculptor, Rustici, which was in the same street as that of Andrea himself.

Sansovino, who also lived near, was not a member of this rollicking club; he was one of Andrea's more serious friends, and served as companion when his most exalted moods were upon him. Perhaps Rustici's rooms did not please Sansovino, for strange inmates were there--a hedgehog, an eagle, a talking raven, snakes and reptiles, in a kind of aquarium; besides all these gruesome familiar spirits, Rustici was addicted to necromancy. The Society of the Cauldron seems only a natural outgrowth from such a character. It consisted of twelve members, all artists, goldsmiths, or musicians, each of whom was allowed to bring four friends to the supper, and bound to provide a dish. Any two members bringing similar dishes were fined, but the droll part of it was that the suppers were eaten in a huge cauldron large enough to put table and chairs into; the handle served as an arched chandelier, the table was on a lift, and when one course was finished it disappeared from their midst, and descended to be replenished. As for the viands, the sculptors displayed their talents in moulding cla.s.sical subjects in pastry, and turning boiled fowls into figures of Ulysses and Laertes. The architects built up temples and palaces of jellies, cakes, and sausages; the goldsmith, Robetta, produced an anvil and accoutrements made of a calf's head, the painters treated roast pig to represent a scullery-maid spinning.

Andrea del Sarto built up the model of the Baptistery with all kinds of eatables, with a reading desk of veal, and book with letters inlaid with truffles, at which the choristers were roast thrushes with open beaks, while the canons were pigeons in red mantles of beetroot--an idea more droll than reverential.

After this, in 1512, another club, called that of the "Trowel," was inst.i.tuted, of which Andrea was not a member, but was chosen as an a.s.sociate. The first supper was arranged by Giuliano Bugiardini, and was held on the _aja_ or threshing floor of S. Maria Nuova, where the bronze gates of the Baptistery had been cast.

In this no two members were allowed to wear the same style of dress under penalty of a fine. The members were in two ranks, the "lesser" and the "greater," a parody on the guilds of the city. They were shown the plan of a building, and the "greater" members, furnished with trowels, were obliged to build it in edibles, the "lesser" acting as hodmen, and bringing materials. Pails of ricotta or goat's milk cheese served for mortar, grated cheese for sand, sugar plums for gravel, cakes and pastry for bricks, the bas.e.m.e.nt was of meats, the pillars fowls or sausages.

Some suppers were cla.s.sical scenes, others allegorical representations, always in the same edible form. We can imagine the wit which sparkled round these strange tables, the jokes of the artists, the songs of the musicians. Andrea del Sarto is said to have recited an heroi-comic poem in six cantos called the "Battle of the frogs and mice." Biadi gives it entire; it seems a kind of satire on Rustici's tastes, with perhaps a hit at the government, and shows no lack of wit of rather unrefined style; but the authorship is not proved. Some say Ottaviano de Medici a.s.sisted Andrea in it.

It would have been well for Andrea if this innocent jollity had sufficed for him, but unfortunately he admired a woman whose beauty was greater than her merits. Probably he began by mere artistic appreciation of her personal charms, for she sat to him for the _Madonna of the Visitation_, which was painted in 1514, two years before their marriage. This Lucrezia della Fede was the wife of a hatter who lived in Via San Gallo.

Her husband dying after a short illness, Andrea del Sarto married her, and whatever were her faults, she retained his life-long love. Biadi and Reumont give the date 26th of December, 1512, as that of the death of her husband, but Signor Milanesi, from more authentic sources, proves it to have been in 1516.

A great deal has been said and written of the evil influence this woman had on him, and his very house bears an inscription recording his fame together with "affanni domestici," but it would seem that posterity has taken for truth more than the facts of the time imply. That she was proud, haughty, exacting, and not of a high moral nature, that she was selfish, and begrudged his helping his own family, her every action proves. That her manners were not conciliating to the pupils is possible, perhaps their manners savoured too much of familiarity for a woman who believed in her own charms; but that she was faithless, which her biographers a.s.sert on the strength of Vasari's phrase, "that Andrea was tormented by jealousy," there is literally nothing to show.

In the first place Vasari--who was one of the scholars she offended and put down--gives vent to his private pique in his first edition, and in the second, which only contains a slight mention of her, omits almost all he had previously said. Now, if the first a.s.sertions were true why should he retract them? Secondly, the sixteenth century was an age of license in writing and speaking, and had any immoralities been laid to her charge, not a biographer would have scrupled to particularize them; but no! her name is never mentioned, except with her husband's, even by her greatest enemies, who say she was as haughty as she was beautiful.

Thirdly, a faithless woman could never have kept her husband's devoted love, and had she been so, would that affectionate though exaggerated letter of hers, recalling him from France, have been written? That a man who thinks his wife the most lovely creature living may be tormented with jealousy without wrong doing on her part is more than possible.

Let us then place Lucrezia's character where it ought to stand in Andrea del Sarto's life--as a powerful influence, lowering his moral nature, weaning him from his duties as a son and brother, by fixing all his care and affection on herself; she, however, not allowing her own family to be losers by her marriage, although causing him to slight his own. Even this much-spoken-of neglect of his own family seems disproved by his will, which, after a very little more than her own dot left to his wife, makes his brother and niece heirs of all his estate.

Except that she cared more for her own pleasure than his true advancement, she was not any great hindrance to his artistic career; he painted an incredible number of pictures, and she was willing to sit for him over and over again. Indeed if she were his model for all the Madonnas in which her features are recognisable, she must have had either inexhaustible patience or great love for the artist.

In fact she was thoroughly selfish; as long as she reaped the benefit of his work she furthered his art; where she was left out of his consideration he must be brought back to her side at any sacrifice to him. This is not the stuff of which an artist's wife ought to be made; the influence of a strong-willed selfish nature on his weak and material one was not good, and his _morale_ became lowered.

He felt this deterioration less than his friends felt it for him; even Vasari says that "though he lived in torment, he yet accounted it a high pleasure." It was one of those unions in which the man gives everything, and the woman receives and allows every sacrifice. Her family were kept at his expense, her daughter loved as his own, and if she were haughty or exacting, he suffered with a Socratic patience, thinking life with her a privilege.

It is to be supposed that a member of the societies of the Cauldron and the Trowel would appreciate good living. He was so devoted to the pleasures of the table that he went to market himself early every morning and came home laden with delicacies. [Footnote: Biadi, _Notixie inedite_, &c., chap. xix. p. 62.] A curious confirmation of this is to be found in his house, the dining-room of which is beautifully frescoed, the arched roof in Raphaelesque scrolls and grotesques; while the lunettes of one wall have two large pictures, one of a woman roasting birds over a fire, the other of a servant preparing the table for dinner. This love of good living, however, in the end shortened his life, according to Biadi.

After his marketing was over he turned his attention to art, going to his fresco painting followed by his scholars, or superintending their work in the "bottega." He was always a kind and thorough master, his manner just and fatherly.

Sometimes he and Sansovino or other friends lounged away an hour in the neighbouring shop of Nanni Unghero, where their mutual friend, Niccol Tribolo, did all the hard work, fetching and carrying blocks and saws grumblingly. Tribolo often begged Sansovino to take him as his pupil, which he did afterwards, and he became a famous sculptor. One of Andrea's acquaintances was Baccio Bandinelli, who, as he thought he could equal Michelangelo in sculpture, imagined that only a knowledge of Andrea del Sarto's method of colouring was necessary to enable him to surpa.s.s him in painting. To gain this knowledge he proposed to sit to Andrea for his portrait. His friend, discovering his motive, succeeded in frustrating it by mixing a quant.i.ty of colours in seeming confusion on his palette, and yet getting from this chaos exactly the tints he required. So Baccio never rivalled his friend in colouring after all, not being able to understand his method.

CHAPTER IV.

WORKS IN FLORENCE. A.D. 1511-1515.

From 1511 to 1514 Andrea was employed on the two last frescoes in the courtyard of the SS. Annunziata the _Epiphany_ and the _Nativity of the Virgin_. The sum fixed for these was ninety-eight lire, but the Servite brothers augmented it by forty-two lire more, seeing the work was "veramente maravigliosa"; thus these two were paid at the same rate as the other five of S. Filippo--seventy lire or ten scudi each.

In the _Nativity_, one of the finest of his frescoes, we see his favourite double grouping, the interest in the mother being kept to one side, that of the child and its attendants to the other-a balance of form united by Joachim, a stern, finely moulded figure in the centre.

The att.i.tudes are natural, the draperies free and graceful. Old Vasari justly remarks "pajono di carne le figure." The woman standing in the centre of the room is Lucrezia della Fede; this is the first known likeness of her. There is a richness of colour without impasto, a modulation of shade giving full relief without startling contrast, a clear air below and celestial haze in the angel-peopled clouds above.

This might well be cla.s.sed as on the highest level ever reached in fresco. Nearly fifty years after it was painted, while Jacopo d'Empoli was copying this fresco, an old woman came through the courtyard to ma.s.s, and, stopping to watch the young artist at his work, began to talk of the days of her youth and beauty when she sat for the likeness of that natural figure in the midst, no doubt sighing as she looked at the freshness of the fresco, and thought of her many wrinkles and aged limbs, she being nearly fourscore at the time.

The _Epiphany_ is also a remarkable work, more lively than the last; it is also less carefully painted, the graceful feminine element is wanting; there is plenty of activity, a crowded composition, and richness of colour. Three figures are especially interesting as likenesses; that of the musician Francesco Ajolle--a great composer of madrigals, who went to France in 1530, and spent the remainder of his life there; Sansovino, on the right of Ajolle; and near him Andrea himself--the same face as the portrait in the Uffizi already spoken of.

The _Madonna del Sacco_, over the door of the entrance to the church from the cloister, would seem to have been painted in the same year, 1514, judging from Biadi's extract from the MS. account books of the Servite Fathers existing in the archives, where is an entry "Giugno, 1514, ad Andrea del Sarto, per resto della Madonna del Sacco, lire 56."

This term _resto_ (remainder) would imply a previous payment. The money was a thank-offering from a woman for having been absolved from a vow by one of the Servite priests. Like all his other frescoes of this church, Andrea only gained ten scudi for this masterpiece. The date of MDXXV.

and the words "Quem genuit adoravit" on the pilasters of this work have led most writers to suppose it painted in that year; but it is probable they were added by a later hand. Biadi [Footnote: Biadi, _Notizie_, &c., p. 42 note.] says the letters are of the style of nearly two centuries later, that Andrea would have signed it, like all his other and works, with his monogram of the crossed A's (i.e. Andrea d' Agnolo). For charming soft harmonies of colour, simplicity, and grace of design, this surpa.s.ses all his other frescoes. The Madonna has an imposing grandeur of form, there is a boyish strength and moulding in the limbs of the child which is very expressive, the dignity of Joseph and majesty of the Virgin are not to be surpa.s.sed; and yet the whole is given in a s.p.a.ce so cramped that all the figures have to be reclining or sitting.

[Ill.u.s.tration of Monogram]

After this Andrea returned to the Scalzo, the Barefoot Brothers offering better pay than the Servites. Here he did the allegory of _Justice_ and the _Sermon of S. John_ in monochrome. In these he took a fancy to retrograde his style, for they have the rugged force and angular form that recalls the more stern old Italian masters, or that t.i.tan of northern art, Albrecht Durer.

Of his works in oil at this era we may cla.s.s--

1. The _Story of Joseph_, painted for Zan.o.bi Girolami Bracci, which Borghini judges a beautiful picture. The figures were small, but the painting highly finished. It came afterwards into the possession of the Medici family.

2. A _Madonna_, with decorations and models surrounding it like a frame, was painted for Sansovino's patron, Giovanni Gaddi, afterwards clerk of the chamber to Ferdinand I. It was existing in the collection of the Gaddi Pozzi family in Borghini's time.

3. _Annunciation_, for Giovanni di Paolo Merciajo, now in the Hall of Saturn in the Pitti Palace. It is a pretty composition, the Virgin sitting, yet half kneeling, the angel on his knees before her. There is a yellowish light in the sky between two looped dark green curtains; the angel's yellow robe takes the light beautifully.

4. _Madonna and Child_, in the "Hall of the Education of Jupiter" in the Pitti Palace, one of his most pleasing groups. This is supposed by the commentators of Vasari to be the altarpiece painted for Giovanni di Paolo Merciajo, but Biadi traces it through the possession of Antonio, son of Zan.o.bi Bracci, to its present possessors. The mistake arises from Vasari often confusing the names Annunciations and a.s.sumptions with Madonnas.

5. A _Holy Family_, for Andrea Santini, which awakened great admiration in Florence. It was in the possession of Signer Alessandro Curti Lepri, by whose permission Morghen's print was taken.

6. The _Head of our Saviour_, over the altar of the SS. Annunziata, ordered by the sacristan of the order. A magnificent head, full of grandeur and expression, and very clear in the flesh tints. Empoli made several copies of it.

7. The _Madonna di San Francesco_, Andrea's masterpiece among easel pictures. It was a commission from a monk of the order of "Minorites of Santa Croce," who was intendant of the nuns of S. Francesco, and advised them to employ Andrea. In grandiose simplicity this surpa.s.ses Albertinelli's _Visitation_, in soft gradations and rich mellowness of colour it equals Fra Bartolommeo at his best, for tenderness in the att.i.tude of the child it is quite Raphaelesque. The Madonna is standing on a pedestal adorned with sculptured harpies. She holds the Divine Child in one arm; its little hands are twined tenderly round her neck, and it seems to be climbing closer to her. The two children at her feet give a suggestive triangular grouping, while the dignified figures of S.

Francis and S. John the Evangelist form supports on each side, and rear up a pyramid of beauty. Rosini's term "soave" just expresses this picture, so fused and soft, rich yet transparent in the colouring. The olive-brown robe of one saint is balanced by the rich red of the other.

In the Virgin, a deep blue and mellow orange are combined by a crimson bodice. The price paid to the painter for this was low because he asked little; but a century or two later, Ferdinando de' Medici, son of Cosmo III., spent 20,000 scudi to restore the church, and had a copy of the picture made in return for a gift of the original, which is now the gem of the Tribune in the Uffizi.

8. The _Disputa, di S. Agostino_ is another masterpiece, showing as much power as the last-named work displays of softness. It was painted at the order of the Eremite monks of San Gallo for their church of San Jacopo tra Fossi, where it was injured by a flood in 1557, and removed later to the Hall of Saturn in the Pitti Palace. The composition is level, the four disputing saints standing in a row, the two listeners, S. Sebastian and Mary Magdalen, kneeling in front. S Agostino, with fierce vehemence, expounds the mystery of the Trinity; S. Stephen turns to S. Francesco interrogatively, S. Domenico (whom Vasari, by the way, calls S. Peter Martyr) has a face full of silent eloquence--he seems only waiting his turn to speak. In S. Sebastian we have a good study from the nude, and in Mary Magdalen's kneeling figure--a charming portrait of Lucrezia--is concentrated the princ.i.p.al focus of colour.

9. _Four Saints_, SS. Gio. Battista, Gio. Gualberto, S. Michele, and Bernardo Cardinale, a beautifully-painted picture, once in the Hermitage of Vallombrosa. There were originally two little angels in the midst dividing the saints, as in our ill.u.s.tration. When the picture was transferred to the Gallery of the Belle Arti, where it now is, the angels were taken out and the divided saints brought into a more compact group. The angels are in a frame between two frescoed Madonnas of Fra Bartolommeo.

By this time the fame of Andrea del Sarto, both as a fresco and oil painter, had risen to the highest point. Michelangelo only echoed the opinion of others when he said to Raphael, "There is a little fellow in Florence who will bring the sweat to your brow if ever he is engaged in great works." His style of composition was important, his figures varied and life-like, his draperies dignified. "The main excellence, however, in which Andrea stands unique among his contemporaries rests in the incomparable blending of colour, in the soft flesh tints, in the exquisite chiaroscuro, in the transparent clearness even of his deepest shadows, and in his entirely new manner of perfect modelling."

[Footnote: _Lubke History of Art_, vol. ii. p. 241.] His method, as shown in an unfinished picture of the _Adoration of the Magi_ in the Guadagni Palace, was to paint on a light ground; the sketch was a black outline, the features and details not defined, but often roughly indicated. He finished first the sky and background. The flesh tints, draperies, &c., were all true in tone from the first laying in.