BORN 1488, DIED 1530.
By Himself.
HE was the son of a tailor in Florence; and this trade, which is so often (for one reason or another) spoken of derisively in England, has surely gained to Italian ears a species of glorification, from the sobriquet attached to this illustrious painter. When only seven years old, the little Andrea was taken from the school where he received instruction in reading and writing, and placed with a goldsmith in the city. Even at that tender age his predilection for drawing, and even designing, showed itself, and, in like manner, his aversion to handling the mechanical instruments used in the handicraft. Indeed, the boy’s drawings were so clever as to attract the attention of one Gian Barile, a Florentine painter; so much so, that he did not rest until he had secured Andrea for his own studio; and as old Vasari quaintly says, ‘No sooner did the boy begin to exercise himself in the art of painting than he acknowledged that Nature had created him for that employment.’ In a very short space of time, Andrea, or Del Sarto, as he was called, produced such excellent pieces of colour as to excite the admiration of his master and all the artists in Florence, more especially Piero Cosimo, whose works were much esteemed in the city, and who proceeded to engage Andrea as his pupil. Nothing could be more diligent than the young man proved himself, studying and copying the cartoons of Michel Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc., which were allotted the scholars as models; and he surpassed all his fellow-workers in the studio and academy, with one of whom, Francia Bigio, he soon formed an intimate friendship. One day, working, as was their custom, side by side, the two young men began to compare notes, with respect to the manner in which they were treated by their respective masters; they had each complaints to make; they were each discontented with their lot. After some little discussion, they resolved to set up house, or rather to take a room, together, which they accordingly did, in the Piazza del Grano. Here they laboured diligently, painting chiefly sacred subjects for galleries, churches, etc., both in oil and in fresco. There was at that time a confraternity, ‘Detto del Scalzo,’ whose meetings were held in the Via Larga. They were formed for the most part of the artificers of the city, but included men of all classes, who met for charitable and religious purposes; although not essentially a religious order, they took the name of The Scalzo, from the fact that when they met in prayer, or to walk in procession, they went barefoot. This company was most desirous that Andrea del Sarto should adorn the walls of their court with paintings from the life of their patron saint, St. John the Baptist. The company was not very wealthy, neither was our painter grasping, whatever may have been said of him later on, when subjected to a bad influence. He cheerfully undertook the work for a small remuneration, and reaped his reward, for these frescoes added so considerably to his fame that innumerable orders came in from all sides. He now moved to better quarters (in company with Francia Bigio), from the Piazza del Grano to a house situated in the neighbourhood of the Annunziata, where he made acquaintance with Jacopo Tatti, better known as the celebrated Sansovino, in whose society and conversation Andrea took so much delight that the two young enthusiasts in art became almost inseparable. Del Sarto was now gaining a good income, and might have been happy in the company of his friends, and the pursuit of his beloved art, but for a false step which involved his whole life in ruin and disaster. In the Via San Gallo lived a certain hatter, who had married Lucrezia Bartolommeo de Fede, the daughter of indigent and ill-conditioned parents. She was a young woman of exceeding beauty, violent and arrogant by nature, exercising a tyrannical influence over her many admirers, of whom Andrea was one of the most infatuated. Unfortunately for our painter, the husband died suddenly, and nothing would content Del Sarto but he would immediately espouse his inamorata. From the very beginning of their married life she possessed such a mastery over him that he was her slave in everything, and spent all his time and money on her and her relations, neglecting, in consequence, his own aged parents, whom he had hitherto supported. His friends shunned his society, his servants quitted his service, so ungenial and unamiable was the behaviour of Lucrezia.
The fame of Del Sarto’s great talent had reached the ears of Francis I., King of France, who gave him orders for pictures, and invited him to Paris—a proposition which smiled upon Andrea; but he was detained in Florence to assist in the splendid decorations of the city, in which all the painters, sculptors, and architects were employed, to celebrate the triumphal entry of Pope Leo X., of the house of Medici; and the beautiful works of Andrea on this occasion inspired his Holiness with unqualified admiration. The unworthy woman to whom he was united interfered with his advancement in every way; although unable to throw off the spell by which she bound him, he began to find her tyranny irksome, and he listened to the advice of a friend, who bade him separate from her for a season, and assert his independence. This was in 1518, when Francis I., having renewed his invitation to our painter to enter his service, Del Sarto gladly accepted the money which had been sent him for the journey, and proceeded to Paris, where the King received him with every mark of distinction, and gave him a settled salary, together with gifts and garments of most costly description. Caressed and admired by the monarch and his whole Court, Andrea set to work in high spirits, and began, as it were, a new life. Amongst other pictures, he painted one of the King’s infant son, in rich swaddling-clothes, which so delighted Francis that he gave the artist on the spot three hundred dollars. This was a happy period in Andrea’s life; he painted numerous portraits and historical and sacred pictures for the King and his courtiers, and was much esteemed by all. These halcyon days were not destined to be of long duration. He was occupied in finishing a St. Jerome for the Queen-Mother when he received a letter from his evil genius; in this epistle Lucrezia appealed to his affection, his compassion, his duty as a husband, coaxing, menacing, exciting his easily roused feelings, and working on them so strongly as to make him seek the Royal presence and ask leave of absence, promising to return shortly with his wife, and to bring with him some fine works of painting and sculpture. He pledged his solemn word to this effect, and the generous-hearted King furnished him with fresh funds for the journey and the commission.
On his arrival in Florence, once more under the sway of his unworthy wife, Andrea gave in to her every wish, and with the money that he had made, and, it is also to be feared, the sums intrusted to him by the French King, he built a house, and lavished large sums on Lucrezia and her family, still to the detriment of his own parents. When the time of his leave had expired, he made a feeble attempt to return to his duty, but he could not withstand the prayers, tears, and expostulations of his wife, and thus broke his plighted word, and relinquished his hopes of honourable advancement in France. The King, exasperated at such conduct, expressed himself in most indignant terms, and vowed he would never harbour another painter from Florence. Thus was Andrea hurled from a high and honourable estate by the wicked woman he had made his wife,—the model for almost every picture he painted, sacred or secular, and whose lineaments were so vividly impressed on his memory that he often involuntarily reproduced them on canvas.
Leo X. had given a commission for the ornamentation and decoration of the dome of the great hall at Poggi a Cajano, one of the Medicean villas near Florence, to be executed in stucco and frescoes by the best Florentine artists, and Andrea’s contribution on that occasion is described in glowing terms by his admirer Vasari. It represented Cæsar receiving the present of innumerable animals of every description, the delineation of which, in their truth and variety, could not be surpassed. He interspersed the birds and beasts with Oriental natives in picturesque costume, and we quote Vasari’s words, ‘Altre belle fantasie, lavorate in fresco divinissimamente.’ The choice of this subject was supposed to convey an allusion to the menagerie of animals which had been sent to Lorenzo the Magnificent some years before by an Eastern potentate.
The works at Poggi a Cajano were stopped in consequence of the death of Pope Leo, and Andrea’s fresco was afterwards finished by Bronzino. He began bitterly to repent his ingratitude to the French King, and if he had had the slightest hope of obtaining pardon, he would have risked going to Paris. Several times he resolved to send some of his best pictures to the French capital, with the chance of their meeting the King’s eye, but the idea was relinquished. In 1523 the beautiful city of Florence and its environs were visited by the plague, which caused a terrible mortality; but in that country everything that happens seems to tend to picturesque and poetical results, and all the world knows how Boccaccio glorified that affliction by the production of his Decameron.
Andrea, with his wife and daughter-in-law, her sister, and a child, desirous of escaping from the infected neighbourhood, and at the same time to continue his labours, gladly accepted an order from the nuns of San Pier de Luco, of the Order of Camaldoli, to paint for them a Pieta in their convent at Mugello. In consequence of these holy women caressing and making much of the painter, his wife, and the whole ‘troop,’ he determined to stay on for some time in that place, and set himself to work with great zeal and delight. Vasari’s descriptions of the beauty and pathos of these paintings are most eloquent in their old-world style of expression; we regret we have no space for extracts. On his return to Florence, Del Sarto resumed his labours, and executed orders without number, chiefly on sacred subjects. He was as skilful in his copying as in his original paintings, and a curious anecdote is given in illustration of this fact.
Frederick, the second Duke of Mantua, in his passage through Florence to do homage to Pope Clement VII., saw the celebrated portrait of Pope Leo X., with two Cardinals, the work of the immortal Raphael d’Urbino, with which he was so much struck, as to excite in him an inordinate desire to possess that splendid picture; and he made so urgent a request to his Holiness that Clement knew not how to refuse him, but sent Ottaviano de Medici, his kinsman, an order to send the painting to Mantua.