Fra Bartolommeo Part 9

S. John and the Virgin raise the dead Saviour, the Magdalen and S.

Catherine weep at his feet; S. Peter and S. Paul at the back express their grief in the manner natural to their characters. S. Peter, in his vehemence, flings up his arms in a madness of sorrow. S. Paul, with more dignity, is half stupefied with the intensity of woe.

If those saints had been left in Fra Bartolommeo's _Pieta_, the two pictures would have had the very same figures, in each: but how different the composition, feeling, and expression! The Frate's group is a compact triangle; that of Andrea a scattered arrangement. The Magdalen of the Frate is overwhelmed with the very excess of love and grief, all of which is expressed intensely, yet her face is hidden; that of Andrea is a mere woman dressed in flying scarf and flowing garments, but with very little soul in her face.

The characteristics of the two painters can be well studied in these works, so near together, so similar, and yet so different.

For the three works painted at Luco Andrea was paid ninety florins in gold. The _Pieta_, was bought in later years by the Grand Duke Leopold, and now adorns the Pitti Palace.

The _Visitation_ was placed in the church of the convent over a presepio. [Footnote: In 1818 it was restored by Luigi Scotti and sold.]

Biadi gives the following doc.u.ment:--"Io Andrea d'Angiolo del Sarto, a di 11 Ottobre 1528 ho ricevuto fiorini 80 d' oro di quei larghi [_i.e._ of two scudi each] della Tavola dell' Altar grande e di una mezza tavola della Visitazione, da Donna Caterina della Casa Fiorentina, Badessa di Luco." [Footnote: 2 Vol. in. p, 571, note.]

Andrea was paid ten florins for the _Head of the Saviour_, through his a.s.sistant, Raffaello. This receipt would prove either that he went to Luco later than 1524, or that he returned there to finish the works in the year 1528.

On their return to Florence in the autumn Andrea painted a fine work for his friend, Beccuccio da Gamba.s.si, a gla.s.s-worker. It is an apotheosis of the _Madonna_, with four figures beneath--S. John Baptist, Mary Magdalen, S. Sebastian, and S. Rocco; not S. _Onofrio_, as Bottari has named it. The predella, now lost, had portraits of the patron and his wife. Crowe and Cavalcaselle speak of six saints in this picture, four standing and two kneeling.

This description seems to point more certainly to the Sarzana _Madonna_, which is now in the Hall of Apollo, in the Pitti Palace. That for Beccuccio is described, with the four above-mentioned saints only, by all the Italian authors.

The tabernacle, at the corner of the convent, outside the Porta Pinti, Florence, was painted about this time. It is now quite destroyed by age and weather; a good copy by Empoli, exists, however, in the western corridor of the Uffizi. It is a charming _Holy Family, with the infant S. John_,--a sweet laughing face. The Madonna is a portrait of Lucrezia.

In the siege when the convent of the Ingesuate--at the corner of which it stood--was razed to the ground, this fresco, although loosened from the wall, was spared by the soldiers, who had not courage to injure it.

The Grand Duke Cosimo was anxious to have it brought to Florence, and often came with engineers and architects, but they never hazarded its removal. [Footnote: Bocchi, _Bellezze di Firenze_, p. 482.]

The Duomo of Pisa has five saints painted by Andrea; they originally formed one large picture in five compartments, and were painted for the church of the now suppressed convent of S. Agnes; but in 1618 they were divided into five pictures, and removed to the Duomo, where _S.

Catherine Martyr_, _S. Margaret_, _S. Peter_, and _S. John the Baptist_ hang on each side of the altar. _S. Agnes_, with her lamb by her side, is placed on a pilaster towards the southern door. This and _S.

Margaret_ are especially graceful and expressive. There is much of the feeling of Correggio, but with more natural grace and less voluptuousness. The cutting and retouching had injured them greatly, but in 1835 Antonio Garazalli took off the repainting and restored them more delicately.

In 1525 Andrea had a commission to draw cartoons for painting the bal.u.s.trade of the Ringhiera--a kind of wide terrace in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, from which speeches were made to the populace.

His designs were very beautiful and appropriate, the compartments being emblematical of the different quarters of the city; besides which were allegories of mountains, rivers, and virtues. The designs were left unfinished at his death, and the Ringhiera was never painted.

In 1526-7 he worked at the fresco of the _Last Supper_, at S. Salvi, which was intended to have been done when he began the four saints there, in 1510, had not some misunderstanding between the rulers of the order prevented their continuation. [Footnote: Vasari's _Lives_, vol.

iii. p. 224.] Even now he worked in a desultory manner, doing it bit by bit, but in the end producing a marvellous work.

The refectory is a long vaulted hall, and the frescoed table, with its life-size figures, fills the whole arch of the wall opposite the door.

One's natural impulse on entering it is to exclaim, "How life-like!"

There is a great and living animation in the figures; the characters of the Apostles are written on their expressive faces. Judas is not placed away alone, as in many renderings of the subject, but is next to Christ, the contrast of the two faces being thus emphasized by proximity. S.

Peter, though old, has all the vehemence and intensity of his character.

Add to the feeling a brilliancy of colour of which Andrea alone had the secret, for without deep shadows, and keeping up the same intensity of tone throughout, he yet obtained great harmony and full relief where others would have produced a clash and flatness. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle say with justice, "From the contemplation of the _Cena_, at Milan, we should say that the painter is high bred; looking at that of S. Salvi, that he is accustomed to lowly company." [Footnote: _Hist. of Painting_, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. 574.] But in some subjects a rugged strength is more important than a high refinement, and in the group of humble fishermen who formed the first church this is not out of place.

If he could only have spiritualised Christ, nothing would be left to be desired.

Andrea del Sarto was a member of a sacred company called the "Fraternita del Nicchio," for which he painted a standard to be carried in their processions. It is now in the Hall of the Old Masters in the Uffizi, and is a charming group of _S. James, with two children dressed in white surplices_--the habit of the company. The saint is caressing one, who kneels at his feet; the other has an open book in his hand.

The draperies are especially graceful, and the expressions soft and pleasing.

After finishing a portrait of the Intendant of the monks at Vallombrosa, which the said monk afterwards placed in an arbour covered with vines, regardless of the injuries of wind and rain--Andrea, having some colours still left on his palette, took up a tile and called his wife to sit for her portrait, that all might see how well she had kept her good looks from her youth; but Lucrezia not being inclined to sit, he got a mirror and painted _his own portrait_ on the tile instead. It was one of his later works, and Lucrezia kept it till her death. It is now in the room of portraits in the Uffizi, but much blackened by time; probably also from the tile not having been properly prepared. [Footnote: This portrait is given as a frontispiece.]

The next year or two were taken up in producing a number of large altar-pieces, and in painting pictures for the dealer, Giovanni Battista della Palla, who was still intent on supplying the King of France with Italian works of art. For him he painted a _Sacrifice of Abraham_, which Vasari thinks one of his most excellent works. The face of the patriarch is full of faith, and yet self-sacrifice; the nude figure of Isaac, bronzed in the parts which have been exposed to the sun, most tenderly expresses a trembling dread, mingled with trust in his father; the landscape is also very airy and beautiful, and a characteristic group of a servant and the browsing a.s.s is very effective in the background.

He also painted a lovely picture of _Charity with three Children_ for Della Palla. Both these works were done with great care, for he hoped by their means to regain the lost favour of the King of France. It was too late for this, however; and, as it happened, neither of these works reached its destination. The siege of Florence took place about this time (1529); the dealer, Battista della Palla, had his head cut off in his dungeon at Pisa, and all hope of his mediation with Francis I. was at an end. The _Charity_ was sold to Domenico Conti, the painter, after Andrea's death, and thence pa.s.sed into the hands of the Antinori family.

The _Sacrifice of Abraham_ has had more vicissitudes. Filippo Strozzi purchased and gave it to the Marchese del Vasto, who had it in his castle at Ischia many years. Later it was sent from Florence to Modena in exchange for a Correggio, and Augustus II. of Saxony becoming its purchaser, placed it in the Dresden Gallery.

This seems to have been a favourite subject with Andrea del Sarto, who repeated it five times.

1. The one done by himself for the King of France.

2. Also in France, having been purchased from the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

(See Argenville.)

3. The one mentioned above, done for G. B. della Palla.

4. A smaller one, painted for Paolo da Terra Rossa; a fine painting, for which the artist asked so small a price that the purchaser was ashamed to pay it. Paolo sent it to Naples.

5. An unfinished painting of _Abraham holding Isaac by the Hand_, now in the possession of the Zonadari family, who obtained it from the Peruzzi.

During the siege, work was found for artists, but of an unpleasant nature. Andrea was commissioned, in 1530, to paint the effigies of some traitors on the palace of the Signoria. He dared not refuse, but remembering that his namesake, Andrea del Castagno, who had been similarly employed, gained the name of "Andrea degli Impiccati," he was anxious that the same name should not attach to himself. Accordingly he had an enclosed platform made, and giving out that his pupil, Bernardino del Buda, was going to paint the effigies, he worked at them himself secretly, till, on being uncovered, they seemed to be real persons writhing on the gibbet.

No trace of them remains now, but the studies are in the collection of drawings in the Uffizi.

A fine half-length figure of _S. Sebastian_, for the brotherhood of that name, which had its head-quarters in the street in which Andrea lived, was almost his last work in Florence.

The siege was now over, but the influx of soldiers from the camp brought a return of the plague, which awakened great terror in the city.

Andrea's mode of life and love of good living did not conduce to his safety; he was taken ill suddenly, and gave himself up for lost. Neither Vasari nor Biadi says he was entirely deserted by his wife; they only hint that she came to his room as little as she could, having a great fear of the plague.

It is more than probable that Andrea himself kept her away from him, for his love was always unselfish, and he thought only of her good. However this be, he died, aged forty-two, on the 22nd of January, 1531, and was buried very quietly by the "Brethren of the Scalzo" in the church of the S. Annunziata. His tomb is beneath the pavement of the presbytery, on the left hand. His older biographers seem to think this unostentatious funeral a great slight to his merits, but if there were any doubts as to his illness being the plague, it would only have been a natural precaution to avoid spreading contagion by making his interment quite private.

That Andrea had not wholly neglected his own family is proved by his will, which left his property (after paying back Lucrezia's _dot_ of 100 scudi, and the money for the improvement of the new house in Via Crocetta for her and her daughter) to his brother Domenico, with the proviso that after his death half the bequest should be given to Domenico's daughter as _dot_, the rest to accrue to the hospital of the Innocenti (Foundlings). [Footnote: Ricordanze nel Archivio del E.

Spedate degli Innocenti di Firenze. Biadi, _Notizie_, p. 127.]

Lucrezia lived to a good old age, being nearly ninety when she died; she seems to have lived a very quiet life, and to have kept Andrea's paintings with great care, except a few only which she sold. The house in Via Crocetta pa.s.sed many years afterwards into the possession of another painter, Zuccheri, who embellished the studio front with reliefs in stone, representing the paraphernalia of an atelier; but it is Andrea's name which lives in the house, as his memory does in the hearts of the Florentine people, and his works in the cloisters of the Florentine churches. The people of the city always seem to claim Del Sarto as especially their own. He is always _nostro pittore_, or _nostro maestro_-and indeed as a master of fresco he never was surpa.s.sed. In colouring he was in his way unique; in modelling, original and graceful; while the transparent clearness of his shadows and brilliant blending of tints in the lights render his handling incomparable. A little more refinement and aesthetic feeling would have placed him on a level with the great leaders of the Renaissance.

CHAPTER VIII.

SCHOLARS OF ANDREA DEL SARTO.

Andrea's scholars were numerous, though only a few rose to any great eminence. Of these, JACOPO CARRUCCI, "da Pontormo" (born 1494, died 1557), was by far the most talented. Left an orphan at an early age, the charge of his sister devolved on him, and he placed her with a relation while he was pursuing his art training. He studied under a diversity of masters, including Leonardo da Vinci, Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo; and finally, in 1512, he entered Andrea del Sarto's school, but did not stay long there either. Some say Andrea was jealous of his success; he, however, had generosity enough to praise and acknowledge his talent, and to show his appreciation by giving him important work to do in his own studio.

Pontormo did the predella to Andrea's altar-piece of the _Annunciation_ for the convent of S. Gallo. His hand is to be seen also in several of his master's works. He drew public attention first by painting two figures of _Faith_ and _Charity_ on the escutcheon of the Medici for Andrea di Cosimo, who had obtained the commission, but did not feel equal to executing it. Michelangelo, on seeing these figures, prophesied great things for the youth, who was at that time only nineteen years of age.

The people of Pontormo, his native town, were so proud of him, that they sent for him to emblazon the arms of Pope Leo over the gate of their city.

He was next employed by one of the festal companies of the age, called the Company of the Diamond, to design cars, banners, and costumes for a triumphal procession in honour of Leo X.'s elevation to the papal chair; and he organised a very suggestive array of the ages of man, ill.u.s.trated historically. He decorated the Papal Hall for Leo X.'s entrance, and later began to be employed on more serious and lasting works.

Some good frescoes of his existed in the convent of Santa Caterina, but were destroyed when the building was reconstructed in 1688.

A very charming fresco of the _Visitation_ still exists in the court of the SS. Annunziata. It shows him as a good pure colourist, the flesh tints being especially tender; the composition is lively, full, and effective.

In 1518 he painted a fine altar-piece for the church of S. Michele Visdomini, Florence, by commission of Francesco Pucci. The _Madonna_, seated, is showing the Child Jesus to S. Joseph, whose face is most expressive and full of smiling admiration. S. John Baptist stands near, at the sides are S. John Evangelist, S. James, and S. Francis, the latter kneeling in ecstatic admiration.