ANDREA DEL SARTO
The highly technical skill and mellow colouring of Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531) have long been known in France, where he was invited by François i. For that monarch he executed the Charity (No. 1514), which, having been transferred from panel to canvas by Picault in 1750 when the process was little understood, suffered accordingly. In its present state we can get little idea of the former brilliance of the picture which secured to the “faultily faultless painter” in 1518—the year he arrived in France—a very considerable income. It is inscribed:
ANDREAS SARTUS
FLORENTINTUS ME PINXIT
MDXVIII.
A Holy Family (No 1515), by the same facile painter, has been said by some to portray in the features of the Virgin those of his own infamous wife Lucrezia del Fede. It has been enlarged, and has suffered in the operation. Less authentic are the Holy Family (No. 1516), which is said to bear the inscription:
ANDREA DEL SARTO FLORENTINO FACIEBAT
followed by a monogram, and a lunette of the Annunciation (No. 1517). The Portrait of Andrea Fausti, which is given in the Catalogue under the name of Sarto, and described as being the work of a pupil, is held by some critics to have been painted by Franciabigio (1482–1525), who came under the influence of Andrea.
The insignificant Portrait of a Young Man (No. 1506), which since 1709 has passed under the quite fictitious title of the Portrait of Raphael, and is indeed still catalogued under his name, is an ill drawn and badly coloured production. It seems to issue from the influences we have just outlined. Morelli regarded it as the work of Bacchiacca (1494–1557), who churned up reminiscences of Andrea del Sarto, Franciabigio, and Perugino. Mr. Berenson has tentatively assigned it to Sogliani, who imitated Albertinelli and many other Florentines.
An unattributed Florentine Portrait of a Young Man (No. 1644), which has been enlarged about three inches all round, had at one time or another been ascribed without much discrimination to Raphael, Giorgione, Sebastiano del Piombo, Francesco Francia, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, and Franciabigio! It is apparently from the hand of Giuliano Bugiardini (1475–1554), a mediocre artist who endeavoured to appropriate all the conflicting influences that he came under. It has long been hung to the left of Raphael’s La Belle Jardinière.
A Florentine painter of no great accomplishment or originality in the first half of the sixteenth century was Jacopo da Pontormo (1494–1557), who painted the Portrait of an Engraver of Precious Stones (No. 1241) and the large Holy Family (No. 1240). The Visitation (No. 1242) is a copy by a pupil of his fresco in the Annunziata, Florence. By another pupil, Agnolo Bronzino (1502–1572), are the Christ and the Magdalene (No. 1183), not now exhibited, and the Portrait of a Sculptor (No. 1184); the Holy Family (No. 1183a or No. 1183b) which was formerly in the Vandeuil collection is only a copy. Giovanni Battista Rosso (1496–1541), who is called Rosso Fiorentino to distinguish him from Francesco Rosso (Il Salviati), came to work at the French Court about 1530; he painted a Pietà (No. 1485), and a Challenge of the Pierides (No. 1486), which are hung among the French pictures. The Portrait of a Musician (No. 1608), by Paolo Zacchia; the Madonna, St. John and St. Stephen (No. 1133), by Michelangelo Anselmi; the David overcoming Goliath (No. 1462), a repulsive production painted by Daniele da Volterra (Ricciarelli) on both sides of a large piece of slate; a Flight into Egypt (No. 1209), by Lodovico Cardi (Il Cigoli), and Matteo Rosselli’s Triumph of David (No. 1483), are unworthy of comment. They show unmistakably the characteristics of the Decadence in full operation.