ANDREA DEL SARTO AND OTHERS

“God and the glory! never care for gain. The present by the future what is that? Live for fame, side by side with Angelo! Raphael is waiting: up to God all three.”

Opposite Michael Angelo’s work is a portrait long reputed to be the likeness of Andrea del Sarto, called the “faultless” painter. It is that of a beautiful and sensitive face—the face of a true artist. Look at the brown eyes as they gaze appealingly out of the canvas. Look at the sensitive mouth, at the delicate chin that bears the fatal mark of weakness. The face fits in so well with our idea of the artist, that we would fain believe it to be that of Andrea del Sarto. Its melancholy seems to betoken a soul clouded by a sad memory.

Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531) carried about with him a consuming remorse and sorrow. What a contrast there is between Michael Angelo’s rugged countenance and the melancholy charm of this man’s features. A beautiful face, it was said, had the power to lead Michael Angelo’s soul to heaven, as that of Beatrice led Dante’s up to the mysteries of the white rose of Paradise. A beautiful face had the power to drag down Andrea del Sarto to depths of dishonour. He was married to a lovely woman named Lucrezia, and he loved her passionately. She was always needing money to buy jewels, to spend on pleasures, and he never could refuse her. “He was of a soft and pliable disposition where honour was concerned,” says Vasari, the genial gossip, and we can understand this verdict as we look at this appealing face long held to be that of Andrea del Sarto.

King Francis the First of France had seen two pictures by the “faultless painter” which he greatly admired, and he commissioned Andrea to ornament one of his palaces. Andrea went, miserable at leaving his wife, still full of high hopes for the future. He was received by the King of France with magnificent hospitality. He set to work, and his work was appreciated by the monarch and his courtiers. All was going well with him, but for Lucrezia’s letters. She was weary of waiting; she entreated him to come back; at last she said he would find her dead if he did not return. Andrea asked the King’s permission to leave for a time, promising to return with his wife, swearing on the Bible that he would come back. Francis allowed him to depart with regret, and gave him large sums of money in payment for future toil and for the purchase of works of art. Andrea hurried back to Lucrezia, but he never returned. He spent the money that had been given him in buying jewels for her, in building her a beautiful house. He never went back to finish the pictures he had been commissioned to paint; he never purchased the works of art he had been entrusted by the king to buy. He broke his troth; he squandered money that did not belong to him. That is the great stain on his character.

He was a pupil of Piero di Cosimo, and a friend of the great painter Francia. Opposite to the portrait long believed to be his, on the other side of the door, is a “Holy Family” (17) by him. Lucrezia was his model, and she sat for the Virgin. It is a pretty domestic scene; St. Elisabeth, with her infant son St. John, has come to visit the Madonna and infant Christ. The symbolic cross of John the Baptist, the faint circle of gold round the Virgin’s head, alone testify to the divinity of the scene. It is difficult to believe that the soft lips painted here were addicted to violent words as Lucrezia’s are reported to have been, that the brow so lofty and pure belonged to one who was a seductress, winning her husband away from the straight path, leading him into another path whose end was destruction.

Look out for the works of Andrea del Sarto in other galleries; you will always recognise them by the softness of their outline, by the rounded curves he loved to paint, by the subtle gradations of the light and shade—by their cool sweet colour. Andrea died in 1531 when he was forty-five years of age, of the plague, and Lucrezia survived him forty years.

Before we leave this room I want you to glance at Lorenzo di Credi’s “Virgin Adoring” (648) and the “Virgin and Child” (593). These pictures are full of fervid and poetic fancy. In “The Virgin Adoring the Infant Christ” the scene is the corner of an old-world city. See the pretty background, the river winding through wooded banks crowned by a formal garden. We can imagine di Credi walking down that zigzag path. It is not Bethlehem but Italy he has painted. It is the garden he loved, the familiar corner of the river he had looked upon so often. The sweet and gracious Virgin is kneeling before her Babe; the light of mother love is on her face, and something of the awe of the spirit before its God is also upon it.

“Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One! My flesh, my Lord! what name? I do not know A name that seemeth not too high or low, Too far from me or Heaven.”

Lorenzo di Credi lived in troublous times (1459–1537) but he kept his faith unsullied. He was a disciple of Savonarola, and he took part in the great sacrifice, when men and women threw into the fire lit at the door of the Cathedral their most precious treasures. How delicate is the painting of these pictures, how painstaking it is in all its details. Look at the veil over the Virgin’s head, at the exquisiteness of the flowers growing near the Child.

Here is a lovely picture by Fra Bartolommeo (1475–1517), entitled “The Virgin and Child with St. John” (1694). The Virgin is seated on the ground out in the open air, behind her is the river on the shores of which grow some feathery trees; a distant town and blue mountains are beyond. It is a charming and peaceful landscape. She is seen in profile with her left hand supporting the head of the little John the Baptist, pressing it towards the Child who is leaping forward to embrace His cousin. We might imagine just such a scene on a sunshiny day hundreds of years ago,—a young Italian mother, graceful with the unconscious grace of nature, her baby at her knee, and the painter sketching her.

Bartolommeo was a disciple of Savonarola and he, too, had taken part in the great sacrifice. He was a painter then, and his thoughts had not yet turned towards the holy life. The preaching of Savonarola moved his heart, and Vasari tells us that when the monk was condemned to death Bartolommeo took the vows and joined the order of the Dominicans. He died at the age of forty-two.