5. An unfinished painting of Abraham holding Isaac by the Hand, now in the possession of the Zonadari family, who obtained it from the Peruzzi.
During the siege, work was found for artists, but of an unpleasant nature. Andrea was commissioned, in 1530, to paint the effigies of some traitors on the palace of the Signoria. He dared not refuse, but remembering that his namesake, Andrea del Castagno, who had been similarly employed, gained the name of "Andrea degli Impiccati," he was anxious that the same name should not attach to himself. Accordingly he had an enclosed platform made, and giving out that his pupil, Bernardino del Buda, was going to paint the effigies, he worked at them himself secretly, till, on being uncovered, they seemed to be real persons writhing on the gibbet.
No trace of them remains now, but the studies are in the collection of drawings in the Uffizi.
A fine half-length figure of S. Sebastian, for the brotherhood of that name, which had its head-quarters in the street in which Andrea lived, was almost his last work in Florence.
The siege was now over, but the influx of soldiers from the camp brought a return of the plague, which awakened great terror in the city. Andrea's mode of life and love of good living did not conduce to his safety; he was taken ill suddenly, and gave himself up for lost. Neither Vasari nor Biadi says he was entirely deserted by his wife; they only hint that she came to his room as little as she could, having a great fear of the plague.
It is more than probable that Andrea himself kept her away from him, for his love was always unselfish, and he thought only of her good. However this be, he died, aged forty-two, on the 22nd of January, 1531, and was buried very quietly by the "Brethren of the Scalzo" in the church of the S. Annunziata. His tomb is beneath the pavement of the presbytery, on the left hand. His older biographers seem to think this unostentatious funeral a great slight to his merits, but if there were any doubts as to his illness being the plague, it would only have been a natural precaution to avoid spreading contagion by making his interment quite private.
That Andrea had not wholly neglected his own family is proved by his will, which left his property (after paying back Lucrezia's dot of 100 scudi, and the money for the improvement of the new house in Via Crocetta for her and her daughter) to his brother Domenico, with the proviso that after his death half the bequest should be given to Domenico's daughter as dot, the rest to accrue to the hospital of the Innocenti (Foundlings). [Footnote: Ricordanze nel Archivio del E. Spedate degli Innocenti di Firenze. Biadi, Notizie, p. 127.]
Lucrezia lived to a good old age, being nearly ninety when she died; she seems to have lived a very quiet life, and to have kept Andrea's paintings with great care, except a few only which she sold. The house in Via Crocetta passed many years afterwards into the possession of another painter, Zuccheri, who embellished the studio front with reliefs in stone, representing the paraphernalia of an atelier; but it is Andrea's name which lives in the house, as his memory does in the hearts of the Florentine people, and his works in the cloisters of the Florentine churches. The people of the city always seem to claim Del Sarto as especially their own. He is always nostro pittore, or nostro maestro-and indeed as a master of fresco he never was surpassed. In colouring he was in his way unique; in modelling, original and graceful; while the transparent clearness of his shadows and brilliant blending of tints in the lights render his handling incomparable. A little more refinement and aesthetic feeling would have placed him on a level with the great leaders of the Renaissance.