CHAPTER XXIV

WHEREIN THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY PERISHES AMIDST THE RUINS

ANDREA DEL SARTO
1486 - 1531

WE have seen that in Piero di Cosimo's studio was a youth called Andrea d'Agnalo, who was to become famous as ANDREA DEL SARTO-he being the son of a tailor (sarto) of Florence. Pupil of Piero di Cosimo he became, but caught little of his master's manner. He looked upon the art of Fra Bartolommeo, and it remained with him. He also, alas ! listened too much to the pæans of praise poured out upon Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo- indeed, these giants might well have been sent to overthrow Italian art by the very majesty of their greatness.

Andrea del Sarto had studied Michelangelo's cartoon of the Battle of Pisa; and through it, and through Michelangelo's master work, was revealed to him that sculptor-feeling for, and sculptor-treatment of, the human figure, and its arrangement in his design. The brilliant young fellow won early to repute by his facile touch, breadth of handling, and capacity for stating the depth of atmosphere surrounding the figure, for his mellow colouring, and his command of greys. He brought into the achievement of Florence a new revelation-essentially of the fifteen-hundreds-that marked advance in the skill of painting towards a fuller expression of the impression upon the vision.

[242] There has been for several generations a vogue to speak with contempt of the art of this true painter. He was wont to be called by the fatuous name of " the faultless painter," and his faultlessness is now dubbed the " perfection" of superficiality. He who can see but superficiality in Andrea del Sarto's superb Portrait of a Sculptor at the National Gallery in London, rather than one of the supreme portraits of the whole Italian Renaissance, must be strangely lacking in the faculty to sense Art. This superb Portrait of a Sculptor, long held to be a portrait of himself, shows not only his mastery of brushing and his command of statement in giving the light and shade on flesh seen through its varying depths of atmosphere, but his supreme power of seizing the melody that is in greys. Another famous masterpiece is the Portrait of a Lady, who seems to have been his wife, with a volume of Petrarch in her hands. His superb portraits of himself, which have been neatly described as one of the greatest of autobiographies in the world, hold the grim and tragic tale of the mighty promise of his career, wrecked by the girl Lucretia del Fede, the extravagant and black-hearted jade, who roused a mad infatuation in him which was as disastrous to him as artist as his marriage with her was to him as man. Her face appears in his several Madonnas, in The Holy Family at the Borghese Gallery in Rome, in the Madonna delle Arpie at the Uffizi in Florence-a long, handsome face, that drew him to dishonours manifold, to villainies, and to self-contempt. For her vile soul he flung his talents into the mere making of money. Her heartless extravagances and vile conceit kept him in a state of perpetual money-troubles. At last he flung up his handsome and lucrative employment by Francis I., King of France, whose confidence and trust he foully betrayed, filching the large sums of gold entrusted to him by the king for the purchase of works of art.

XXVI
ANDREA DEL SARTO
1486 - 1531
"THE SCULPTOR"
(NATIONAL GALLERY)
This, one of the most haunting portraits of the whole Italian achievement, was long supposed to be the portrait of Andrea Del Sarto himself. It displays the master's art in its most perfect form.

[243] The genius of Andrea del Sarto must be judged by his portraits ; and so judged he stands amongst the great painters. But he can also take high place with his larger work. He was harassed by the neighbourhood of the vast genius of Michelangelo ; in dreading comparison by the side of the other, he allowed his eyes to see, and his hand to create, the academic thing;-instead of being content to be great and express himself, he compelled his hand to employ the brush, and his eyes to see through the vision first of Leonardo da Vinci and then of Michelangelo-and the habit of aping the grand manner grew upon him. Michelangelo's manner of drawing draperies compelled him to follow ; and his efforts to rival their sculpturesque sense led him to the statuesque posings which slowly overwhelmed the significance of his own vigorous hand and the reality of things as discovered to his own subtle seeing. So he lost his gaiety and joy in life, and gave his strength to painting poses and draperies. The spiritual and significant things departed from his studio, and pose and draperies became the tricks of a mere clever painter. But the inborn vigour and strength of vision would not let him sink wholly into the academic habit. Even when the burden of Michelangelo was heaviest upon him, he roused himself at times and painted a figure with astounding power. His Last Supper is a masterpiece.

When Andrea del Sarto paints at his best, as in his portraits, he stands in achievement beside Giorgione and Titian, reaching, indeed, in some strange fashion, as near as the Florentine temperament and tradition allowed him, into a silvery-keyed rivalry with their vision and utterance. Of this searching sense of colour and forms he gave also [244] abundant proof in his Dispute concerning the Trinity. Amongst his greatest works are the frescoes in the Church of SS. Annunziata, gay, blithe, filled with the joy of life, in which, however, his frank vision gives way as he paints each new fresco to the aim of grandeur that is forcing itself into the fashion, until in the other famous frescoes of the Life of St. John the Baptist in the Chiostro dello Scalzo at Florence, he is torn this way and that between his innate and superb gift of painting the figure in its depth of atmosphere, and the overwhelming of this high artistry by the new grand manner in empty draperies.

But Andrea del Sarto's silver-grey harmonies, his translucent liquid blendings of lustrous cool colours, these are purely himself; nowhere else in Italy shall you find the like, and he wrought them with exquisite skill of craftsmanship. These and his large sense of the resonance of light and shade created in the subtle play of the atmosphere upon the object which it surrounds, will make his work live- and one day bring him back his bays. His lack of deep emotion, his absence of inspiration, these will ever hold him back from the seats of the mightiest ; but at least he can stand on the steps to the throne. He never fell to the triviality of prettiness ; his taste is balanced, he condescends to no mere tricks of thumb-yet his very skill of hand must have sorely tempted him-his hand hesitates or errs never ; his craftsmanship is solid. Strong, tranquil, serene, his thoroughness was not shaken even when he heard Lucretia's lover whistle for her at the twilight's ending of the day, saw her restless eagerness to be rid of posing for the Madonna.

At the studio of Piero di Cosimo was a lad from Milan, one FRANCIABIGIO (1482-1525), who became not only the [245] fellow-student but the faithful friend of Andrea del Sarto, who greatly influenced his art. He is remembered as a portrait-painter and for his frescoes, of which frescoes are two in the Chiostro dello Scalzo that display the strong influence of Andrea del Sarto. It is interesting to note that Vasari's judgment proclaimed Franciabigio as his favourite painter in fresco. Franciabigio, or FRANCIA BIGIO or BIGI, painted many of the portraits long given to Andrea del Sarto and to Raphael.

Amongst Andrea del Sarto's direct pupils were Pontormo and Rosso Rossi, or Rossi DE' SALVIATI or Rosso FIORENTINO (1494-1541), strongly affected by Michelangelo and by Pontormo. This Rosso was a friend of Vasari's. He spent the greater part of his life, and died, in France at the Court of the French king, where he was known as Maître Roux.