Andrea Del Sarto
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Andrea del Sarto (Florence, July 16, 1486 – January 21, 1531) was an Italian painter in the Mannerist style whose career flourished during the High Renaissance. He was known as a prominent fresco decorator, altarpiece painter, portraitist, draughtsman, and colorist. Due to his refined style, he was nicknamed "Andrea senza errori" ("Andrea without errors ») although his popularity was eclipsed after his death by that of his contemporaries Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.
Biography and career
He owes his nickname “del sarto” to the fact that he was the son of a seamstress (“sarto” in Italian) named Agnolo di Francesco. His mother, Costanza di Silvestro, was also the daughter of a seamstress.
Early Years
Andrea del Sarto, baptized Andrea d'Agnolo di Francesco di Luca, was born in Florence on July 16, 1486. Like his father, Agnolo, he was a tailor (Italian: sarto)., he became known as "del Sarto", son of the tailor. Since 1677 some have attributed the surname Vannucchi to him with little documentation. In 1494, Andrea was apprenticed to a goldsmith, and then to a woodcarver and painter named Gian Barile, with whom he remained until 1498. According to Vasari, he was later apprenticed to Piero di Cosimo and later to Raffaellino del Garbo (Carli).
Andrea and an old friend, Franciabigio, decided to open a workshop together in an apartment in Piazza del Grano. The first product of their association may have been the Baptism of Christ for the Florentine Compagnia dello Scalzo, the beginning of a series of monochrome frescoes. When the partnership dissolved, Sarto's style bore the stamp of individuality. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica , he "was marked throughout his career by an interest, rare among Florentines, in the effects of color and atmosphere and by a sophisticated informality and expressiveness." nature of emotion.
His first works date from 1508, directly inspired by the painters he and his friend Francesco Franciabigio were most familiar with: Fra Bartolomeo and Mariotto Albertinelli, next to the studio of Raphael Sanzio. A Pieta by Andrea in the Borghese Gallery in Rome recalls Fra Bartolomeo, and the Madonna and Child in Palazzo Barberini unites the subtle delicacy of Leonardo; Another Virgin with Child , from 1509, combines the structural solidity of Raphael's composition with greater ease and cordiality in his representation.
The friars of the Annunziata convent, to complete the frescoes begun in 1460 by Alessio Baldovinetti and continued by Cosimo Rosselli, who did not finish them, commissioned Andrea in 1509 with five stories of Miracles of Saint Felipe Benizzi, which ended the following year. These frescoes are very descriptive in nature, somewhat in the style of those by Ghirlandaio in the Church of Santa Trinidad and Santa Maria Novella, but renewed in terms of their language, which leans more towards an atmosphere close to Leonardo, and with a more dynamic pace.
1510s
It is considered probable that he traveled to Rome in 1510, which would have allowed him to learn about Raphael's pictorial developments, visible in the Adoration of the Magi of 1511 and in the Birth of the Virgin from 1514. Its unwrapped formal language, with a narrative serenity typical of the 15th century, is enriched by the nuanced atmospheres and styles of Leonardo and Raphael.
The large number of drawings from the following period, which made Andrea the cartoonist famous, show him attentive to the teachings of Michelangelo, to the singularization of the plastic image, as in the Virgin with Child and Saint John the Child from the Borghese Gallery, together with the elaborate foreshortenings of the child's face and the tense arm of Saint John, represented in a frenetic dynamism accentuated by the cold composition of colors.
Frescoes on the SS Annunziata in Florence
From 1509 to 1514, the Servite Order employed Del Sarto, Franciabigio and Andrea Feltrini in a fresco program at the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata di Firenze. Sarto completed seven frescoes in the esplanade or atrium (the chiostro dei voti) before the church of the Servants, five of which illustrated the Life and miracles of Filippo Benizzi, a Servant saint who died in 1285 (canonized in 1671). He quickly executed them, representing the saint healing a leper by the gift of his robe; predicting the bad end of some blasphemers; and restore a girl possessed by a demon. The final two frescoes in the series depict the healing of a child on the deathbed by Filippo Benizzi and the healing of sick adults and children through his relic garment found in the church. All five frescoes were completed before the close of 1510. The original contract also called for him to paint five scenes from the life and miracles of Saint Sebastian, but he told the Servites that he no longer wished to continue with the second cycle. Probably due to low pay. The Servites convinced him to do two more frescoes on the esplanade, albeit on a different subject: a Procession of the Magi (containing a self-portrait) completed in 1511, and a Nativity of the Virgin.
If monochrome conveys a design conceived as a bas-relief, the Virgin of the Harpies from the Uffizi Gallery, from 1517, which also has clear references to Fra Bartolommeo, is also reminiscent of a sculpture. In a niche, in warm gloom, the virgin appears as a statue on a pedestal.
At the end of 1517 or beginning of 1518, he married Lucrezia del Fede, widow since September 1516 of Carlo di Domenico Berrettaio. According to some chronicles, this marriage harmed the artist, supposedly because Lucrezia was greedy and pressured him in her desire to earn more money.
Andrea took up portraiture sporadically. This was a genre far from Andrea's dispositions, more prone to the complex articulation of figuration. The Portrait of a Woman in the Museo del Prado in Madrid is identified as his wife Lucrezia and in the one formerly considered Portrait of a Sculptor in the National Galley in London, some people recognize his friend Jacopo Sansovino, or even Baccio Bandinelli. From this period is the Dispute of the Trinity in the Pitti Palace.
Trip to France
After May 1518 he traveled to France, invited by Francisco I, for whom he had already made in Florence the Virgin with Child, Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Child of the Louvre and other works now lost. The canvas with the theological virtues, together with its usual children, and the pomegranate in the foreground, typical of the Florentine culture of its time with its pyramidal construction and figurative plasticism, has a chalky pictorial quality, a sign of a crisis in which his contemporaries Rosso Fiorentino and Pontormo leaned towards Mannerist distortions, while Andrea, once his original vein had been exhausted, leaned towards reworking old motifs, frequently entrusted to his workshop.
Supposedly because of his wife Lucrezia, Andrea leaves France without fulfilling his commitments to Francis I and is back in Florence in 1520.
Last years
Andrea renews the traditional images of the Florentine Pietà in her compositions of Vienna and the Pitti Palace, the latter painted for the nuns of Saint Peter of Luco, in Mugello, where Andrea had taken refuge in 1523 to escape the epidemic of plague that ravaged Florence. He was inspired for her by the Pietà of Fra Bartolomeo.
In the Virgin with Child, an Angel and a Saint in the Prado Museum in Madrid, traditionally called Virgin of La Scala, the painter's attention is focused on the definition of a progressive rigor in the composition: all this reaffirming the effects of compositional monumentality, which express a substantial nature in the figures.
Private life
Andrea del Sarto married Lucrezia del Fede, widow of a hatter named Carlo, of Recanati, on December 26, 1512. Lucrezia appears in many of his paintings, often as a Madonna. However, Vasari describes her as unfaithful, jealous and a bitch with apprentices In the 19th century Robert Browning characterized her in a similar way in one of her poems.
Andrea del Sarto died in Florence at the age of 44 during an outbreak of the bubonic plague, at the end of September 1530. He was buried unceremoniously by the Mercy in the church of the Servites. In The Lives of the most excellent Italian architects, painters and sculptors Vasari claimed that Andrea de Sarto did not receive any attention from his wife during her terminal illness. However, it was well known at the time that the plague was highly contagious, so it has been speculated that Lucrezia was simply afraid of contracting the virulent and often fatal disease. If true, this well-founded caution was rewarded, as she outlived her husband by forty years.
Critical appraisal and legacy
It was Michelangelo who introduced Vasari in 1524 to Andrea's studio. It is said that he understood Andrea del Sarto's technique very well.Of those who initially followed his style in Florence, the most prominent would have been Jacopo Pontormo, but also Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Salviati and Jacopino del Conte. Other lesser-known attendees and alumni include Bernardo del Buda, Lamberto Lombardi, Nannuccio Fiorentino, and Andrea Squazzella.
Vasari, however, was highly critical of his teacher, claiming that although he had all the preconditions to be a great artist, he lacked ambition and that divine fire of inspiration that animated the works of his most famous contemporaries: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael.
On November 21, 1848, the play André del Sarto, by Alfred de Musset, premiered in Paris.
In 1968, the opera Andrea del Sarto by French composer Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur was based on the 1848 work by Alfred de Musset.
Works
- Alnwick Castle: Portrait of young, ~ 1511
- Chicago, Institut of Art: Authorport; Portrait of Lucrecia
- Cleveland, Museum: Sacrifice of Isaac1527 - 1530.
- Corsham Court, collection: St. John the Baptist in the desert- 1517.
- Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlung: Mystical weddings of Saint Catherine~ 1512; Sacrifice of Isaac1527-1530
- Edinburgh, National Gallery, Authorport, 1525
- Florence, Claustro degli Scalzi: Baptism of Christ~ 1510; Charity~ 1513; St. John the Baptist preaching1515; Justice1515; St. John the Baptist~ 1516; The capture of St John the Baptist1517; Dance of Salome~ 1521; Decapitation of the Baptist; Presentation of the head of the Baptist; Hope; Fe; Announcement to Zechariah, 1523
- Orsanmichele: Mary Magdalene, ~ 1509
- Davanzati Palace: Icaro, ~ 1508
- Pitti Palace: Visitation~ 1512; Scenes with Saint Joseph~ 1516; Dispute of the Trinity~ 1517; Assumption1522-1525; Pity~ 1523; Sagrada Familia~ 1528; San Sebastián~ 1528; St. John the Baptist~ 1528; Announcement Della Scala~ 1528; Virgin with Saint Elizabeth and Saint John1529; Pala de San Godenzo, ~ 1529
- S. Framework: Visitation, ~ 1509
- San Salvi: frescoes of the cloister; Five saints1511; Christ dead, ~ 1524
- SS. Annunziata: frescoes of the cloister; El Salvador, ~ 1515
- Uffizi: Noli me tangere~ 1510; Portrait of Baccio Bandinelli~ 1516; Santiago~ 1528, Authorport, ~ 1528
- London, Wallace Collection: Virgin with Saint John child- 1519.
- Madrid, Prado: Portrait of Lucrecia di Baccio del Fede, wife of the painter~ 1513; The Virgin with the Child between Saint Matthew and an angel1522; Sacrifice of Isaac1527-1530
- Naples, Capodimonte: Leo X and a Cardinal, copy of Rafael, 1525.
- New York, Metropolitan Museum: Sagrada Familia~ 1527
- Paris, Louvre: Virgin with child, Isabel, John the Baptist and two angels~ 1516; Sagrada Familia, ~ 1517
- Pisa, Duomo: Santa Inés, ~ 1530
- Poggio a Caiano: Tribute to Caesar, 1521
- Rome, Borghese Gallery: Mercy and saints, Altar1508; Virgin with child and Saint John child, ~ 1515
- Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica: Virgin~ 1508; Sagrada Familia, ~ 1528
- Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Tobias~ 1511; Pity, ~ 1521
- Washington, National Gallery: Charity, 1528
- Windsor Castle (Royal Collection(c): Portrait of lady, ~ 1528