Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea D'Agnolo

art, which, like a flower forcing its way to the light throug

reatest works only brought the smallest remuneration-and even in spite of his own nature, which was material, wanting in high aims, and d

truth is that Andrea's was a receptive, rather than an original and productive mind. His art was more imitative than spontaneous, and this forms perhaps the difference between talent and genius. The art of his time sunk into h

of Leonardo, the sentiment of Raphael, so blending them as to form a style

er created the art; in Andrea's it was

were peasants, first at Buiano, near Fiesole, and later at S. Ilario, near Montereggi. His grandfather, Francesco, being a linen weaver, came to live nearer Florence; his father, Agnolo, son of Francesco, followed the trade of a tailor-hence Andrea's sobriquet, "del Sarto"-he took a house in Via Gualfonda, in Flor

youths who showed a talent for design were entered in that guild is easy to assign-it was one of the "greater" guilds, that of the painters being a lesser one, and merged in the "Arte degli Speziali." At seven years old he left the school where he had learned to read and write, and entered his very youthful apprenticeship; but he showed so much more aptitude for the designing than for the executive part of his profession that Giovanni Barile, who frequented the bottega, was induced to counsel his being traine

Cosimo in his youth, the serious, absent young man, who never joked with his juniors in Cosimo Roselli's shop; we see him now, with his youthful oddities hardened into eccentricities, and his reserve deepened to misanthropy. No woman's hand softened and refined his house, no cleansing broom was allowed within his door, and no gardener's hand cleared the weeds or pruned the vines in his garden. He so believed in nature unassisted that he took his meals without the intervention of a cook. When the fire was lighted to boil his size or glue he would cook fifty or sixty eggs and set them apart in a b

s, wonderful adventures, and heathen scenes; in fact the boy could have learned neither Christian art nor manners from him. He learned how to use his brush, however, and, leaving Piero to his minotaurs and dragons, went off at every spare hour to study at more congenial shrines. He copied Masaccio at the Brancacci Chapel, and drew so earnestly from the cartoons in the Hall of the Pope that his achievements reached the ears of Piero himself, who was not sorry that his pupil surpassed the rest, and gave him mor

nced him more than those of Piero. Yet though his sphere was devotional, it was "impelled mo

ies which annoyed him. His friend, Francia Bigio, Mariotto's pupil, having just then lost his master, who was giving more attention to his father-in-law's business of innkeeper than his own, was wil

had work before is proved by the words in the contract of the Barefoot Friars, "dettero ad Andre

t in Via Larga (now Cavour), opposite San Marco. A new cloister had been erected there-an elegant little cortile, thirty-eight feet by thirty-two, adorned with lovely Corinthian pillars-an

, and twenty-one lire (three scudi) each for the lesser frescoes. The small ones were four figures of the Virtues, Faith, Hope, Justice, and Charity. Hope is exquisitely expressed, and Charity a charming group, t

g to Zacharias Andr

Andrea del S

John Andrea d

ing John before go

he d

the Virgin and In

ri

hrist Andrea de

S. John Andrea d

Gentiles Andrea

e presence of Herod An

Andrea del Sarto 6 152

1522. 12. Herodias rec

el Sarto

. Possibly this is the cause of the partners never working together afterwards, each taking his own subjects and signing his own name. The composition, in the Baptism of Christ, is n

, they are a complete work, and might be taken almost as an epitome of Andrea's career; from the one above mentioned in whi

altar, is wonderfully given; you feel sure he could not speak if he would. The other

d entirely. This is seen in Nos. 3, 10 and 12, which are all double groupings, the last completely divided in the centre by a table and an archway behind it. Nos. 7 and 9 are pyramidal compositions. The Preaching of S. John is one of the best works, and shows his most forcible style. S. John on a rock stands like a pillar in the centre, the hearers are dressed in

te "echo" subjects, a group in the background of John answering the Pharisees forming an echo to the principal subject. The muscular life of the spirited crowd of nude fi

France, showing that he had so far learned from his friend as almost to riva

f the child are very lovely; the action of Zacharias is not so well defined, the great force in the uplifted arm betok

only the lines form an angle receding from the one just mentioned. T

ing artists to copy them without the permission of Duke Cosimo. Cardinal Carlo de' Medici had them covered with curtains, [Footnote: Richa, Delle Chiese] but, in spite of

er is said to have had much softness and delicacy, the latter is to be seen in the Hall of Mars at the Pitti, and is a very pleasing picture. The Virgin kneels at her prayer desk, S. Joseph behind her-a rather unusua

the convent was demolished in 1529. They were still there in 1677, when Bocchi wrote his Bellezze di Firen