CHAPTER I. YOUTH AND EARLY WORKS. A.D. 1487-1511.
Andrea Del Sarto is a curious instance of the vital power of art, which, like a flower forcing its way to the light through walls or rocks, will find expression in spite of obstacles.
Andrea the painter, "senza errori," was an artist in spite of lowering home influences, of want of encouragement in his patrons—for his greatest works only brought the smallest remuneration—and even in spite of his own nature, which was material, wanting in high aims, and deficient in ideality; yet his name lives for ever as a great master, and his works rank close to those of the leaders of the Renaissance.
In looking at them one sighs even in the midst of admiration, thinking that if the hand which produced them had been guided by a spark of divine genius instead of the finest talent, what glorious works they would have been! The 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 his mind, and was reproduced. He lived precisely at the time of the culmination of art, when all the highest masters were bringing forth their grandest works; therefore he could not do otherwise than to follow the best examples.
He gathered the experience of all—the force of Michelangelo, the handling of Leonardo, the sentiment of Raphael, so blending them as to form a style seemingly his own, and in execution following closely on their excellence.
In Giotto's or Masaccio's case the master created the art; in Andrea's it was the art of the age which made the artist.
The question of Andrea del Sarto's birth is a mooted one. Biadi dates it 1478, but the register he quotes is both vague and doubtful. He also tells a curious story of his Flemish origin. Signor Milanesi has deduced, from the archives of Florence, an authentic pedigree from which we learn that his remote ancestors 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 Florence, about 1487, with his wife Constanza, and here Andrea was born, he being the eldest of a family of five—three girls and two boys. From the tax papers of a few years later it is proved that Andrea was born in 1487. His full name is Andrea d'Agnolo di Francesco. It is by mistake that he has been called Vannucchi.
His parents were young, his father being only twenty-seven years of age at Andrea's birth. They lived at that time in Val Fonda, where Albertinelli had his shop, but in 1504 they removed to the popolo, or parish, of S. Paolo. Boys were not allowed to be idle in those days, but were apprenticed at an early age; thus Andrea, like most artists of his time, was bound to a goldsmith. It would be interesting to investigate the great influence of the guild of goldsmiths on the art of the Renaissance. The reason why 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 trained especially as a painter, offering himself as instructor. If Andrea, a contadino by birth, an artisan by education, was not originally of the most refined nature, his artistic training did not go far towards refining him. Giovanni Barile was a coarse painter and a rough man; he had, however, generosity enough to see that the boy was worthy of better teaching, and got him entered in the bottega of Piero di Cosimo, who had attained a good rank as a colourist, his eccentricities possibly adding to his reputation.
Accordingly in 1498, Andrea being then eleven years of age, a life of earnest study began. Piero di Cosimo, odd and misanthropic as he was, had yet a true appreciation of talent, and showed an earnest interest in his pupil, giving him—with plenty of queer treatment—a thorough training. "He was not allowed to make a line which was not perfect" [Footnote: Rosini, Storia della Pittura, chap. xvii. p. 40.] while in Piero's school. But excellent as his art teaching may have been, the boy's morale could not have been raised more here than under the rough but good-natured Barile. We have seen Piero di 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 basket, to which he had recourse when the pangs of hunger compelled him. All this was morally very bad for a boy so young. And then woe betide the poor little fellow if he whistled, sneezed, or made any other noise! his nervous master would be out of temper for a day afterwards. On wet days Piero was merrier, for he would watch the drops splashing into the pools, and laugh as if they were fairies. Sometimes he would take Andrea for a walk, and all at once stop and gaze at a heap of rubbish, or mark of damp on a lichened wall, picturing all kinds of monsters and weird scenes in its discolourations.
No doubt he was literally carrying out Leonardo da Vinci's advice, headed, in his treatise, "A new Art of Invention." "Look at some old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some old streaked stones; you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, humorous faces, &c., to furnish the mind with new designs." [Footnote: Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting.] Cosimo's mind being fantastic, the pictures he saw were incomparably grotesque. He delighted in drawing sea monsters, dragons, 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 more time for study away from the bottega. Rosini tells us that "Fra Bartolommeo taught him the first steps." [Footnote: Storia della Pittura, chap, xxvii. p. 2.] The influence of the Frate may have reached him in two ways. It is not unlikely that Piero di Cosimo kept up an interest in his old fellow-pupil; and then again, as Andrea lived in Val Fonda, it is probable he often visited Albertinelli's studio in that street, and the friendship with Francia Bigio began before the cartoons of Michelangelo ripened there.