“The Faultless Painter,” though his paintings seem faultless, led a life that was by no means free from mistakes. All went well with him up to the age of twenty. He was born near Florence in 1486, and when but a seven-year-old goldsmith’s apprentice began to show such skill that he was soon afterward sent to Piero de Cosimo, one of the best artists in Florence. He was only twenty years old when he painted the seven frescos in the Annunziata from the life of Saint Philip.
Andrea was the son of Angelo the tailor. His name, Andrea del Sarto, means “the tailor’s Andrew,” and was not his real name at all, which was Andrea d’Angelo di Francesco. Sometimes he called himself Andrea del Sarto, sometimes Andrea d’Angelo, and again Andrea d’Angelo del Sarto. Andrea made his first great mistake by marrying the widow of a hatmaker. Lucrezia Fedi’s cold face was indeed the glory of his pictures, where she is nearly always to be seen in the robes of virgin, saint, or angel. As his model she was all that could be desired; yet when he married her the “faultless painter” lost many of his best friends and pupils, and worst of all the ideals of art. Blinded by her beauty, he could not see the failings that were plain to everyone else. All his life Andrea worked hard to support her and her sisters in their extravagances. Yet he went on painting faultlessly.
His fame spread so far that King Francis I invited him to France, and gave him important commissions there. But Lucrezia persuaded him to return to Italy. He was granted a month in which to return and bring his wife to France. Francis also intrusted him with money to buy Italian works of art for the royal palace.
A month passed. Andrea did not return; but purchased a plot of ground in Florence with the king’s money, and on it built a house for Lucrezia. King Francis never received his paintings, and the “faultless painter” had thrown away a chance of achieving supreme greatness.
In 1531 Andrea del Sarto died of the plague. As he lay on his deathbed Lucrezia fled from the house for fear of infection. Yet he left her all his property, and, so far as known, never ceased to believe in her.
Lucrezia lived forty years after the death of her husband. A former pupil of Andrea’s was at work one day copying frescos, when a withered old woman came into the hall. She asked him who had painted the fresco.
He replied, “Andrea del Sarto.”
“I was the original of that angel,” she said. “I was Lucrezia Fedi, the wife of Andrea del Sarto.”
Even to the last she was proud of the husband whom she had deserted on his deathbed, and whose genius she alone had dwarfed.