ANDREA del SARTO (ANDREA VANNUCCHI; ANDREA D'AGNOLO). — Painter, born in Florence on 16 July 1486, died there on 22 January 1531. Initially a pupil of Giovanni or Andrea Barile, then of Piero di Cosimo, he was strongly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci, and later, to a lesser extent, by Michelangelo, whose influence was harmful to him as it ran counter to the sweetness of his nature. Nor were Bartolomeo della Porta, for the theatricality of his poses, and Raphael, for the eurhythmy of his compositions, strangers to him. Andrea’s activity unfolded for the most part in Florence; in 1518, invited by Francis I, he spent a brief time in France.
His first work, the *Noli me tangere* in the Uffizi, reveals, rather than a pupil of Piero di Cosimo, as Vasari would have it, a Franciabigio (v.); soon, however, in the execution of the frescoes depicting the life of St Philip Benizi in the cloister of the Annunziata in Florence, his manner becomes freer and the composition attains a rhythm akin to that of Fra Bartolomeo. The taste for coloured shadows and atmospheric sfumato is evident in the *Annunciation* in the Pitti Palace and in the *Pietà* in the Gallery in Vienna; the planes are broken up to achieve a moving vibration of light. Indeed, in the *Procession of the Magi* at the Annunziata the figures achieve a perfect fusion with the atmosphere. From this period dates the admirable *Portrait of a Woman* in the Prado. Before his journey to France, Andrea began the frescoes in the small cloister of the Scalzi, in which the first Michelangelesque hints appear. In the monochromes, the harshness of the lights heightens the plastic vision of the detail, but in the insistent breaking up of the planes and in the overall effect, Andrea’s pictorialism asserts itself with originality.
The *Madonna of the Harpies* (1517), composed in the style of Fra Bartolomeo but enveloped in a soft coloured atmosphere, is a true masterpiece. This was followed by several works of sacred subject, such as the *Dispute of the Trinity* in the Pitti Palace, the *Madonna* in the Hermitage in Leningrad, the *Deposition*, also in the Pitti Palace, and various portraits. Then again, the so-called *Madonna of the Sack* in the cloister of the Annunziata in Florence, with its measured perspective and subtle chromatic qualities, offers a measure of the painter’s maturity. In the *Assumption* in the Pitti Gallery the composition becomes mechanical; and in other paintings, often, the work of collaborators diminishes the quality. The *Holy Family* in the Pitti Palace, the *Madonna of Bernino*, and the *Sacrifice of Abraham* in Dresden already belong to a Mannerist conception, and in these works the colour becomes garish, while the softness of the sfumato is attenuated.
While in the Florentine school, which is entirely devoted to drawing, the formal conception prevails, Andrea’s painting, deriving from Leonardo’s sfumato the subtlety of chiaroscuro and the blending of tones, is essentially colouristic. — See Pl. CV.