ANDREA DEL SARTO (1486-1530), Italian painter, was born in Florence on July 16, 1486. There were four other children. His surname has been given as Vanucchi; his name "del Sarto" was given him because his father, Agnolo, was a tailor. In Andrea was put to work under a goldsmith. He took to drawing from his master's models and was soon transferred to a skilful woodcarver and inferior painter named Gian Barile, with whom he remained until 1498. Barile recommended him to Piero di Cosimo as draughtsman and colourist. Piero retained Andrea for some years, allowing him to study from the famous cartoons of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Finally Andrea agreed with his friend Franciabigio, who was somewhat his senior, that they would open a shop conjointly; at a date not defined they took a lodging together in the Piazza del Grano. Their first work in partnership may probably have been the "Baptism of Christ," for the Florentine Compagnia dello Scalzo. Soon afterwards the partnership was dissolved. From 1509 to 1514 the brotherhood of the Servites employed Andrea, as well as Franciabigio and Andrea Feltrini, the first-named undertaking in the portico of the Annunziata three frescoes illustrating the life of the Servite saint Filippo Benizzi (d. 1285). The subjects are the saint sharing his cloak with a leper, cursing some gamblers, and restoring a girl possessed with a devil. The second and third works excel the first, and are impulsive and able performances. These paintings gained for their author the pre-eminent title "Andrea senza errori" (Andrew the unerring). Andrea went on to the Death of S. Filippo and the Children cured by touching his Garment—all the five works being completed before the close of 1510. The youth of 23 was already, in technique, about the best fresco-painter of central Italy, barely rivalled by Raphael, who was the elder by four years. Michelangelo's Sixtine frescoes were then only in a preliminary stage. Andrea always worked in the simplest, most typical, and most trying method of fresco—that of painting the thing once and for all, without any subsequent dry-touching. He now received many commissions. The brotherhood of the Servites engaged him to do two more frescoes in the Annunziata at a higher price; he also painted, towards 151 2, an Annunciation in the monastery of S. Gallo.
The "Tailor's Andrew" appears to have been an easy-going plebeian, to whom a modest position in life and scanty gains were no grievances. As an artist he must have known his own value; but he probably rested content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant, and did not aspire to the rank of a great inventor or leader, for which, indeed, he had no vocation. He led a social sort of life among his compeers of the art, was intimate with the sculptor Rustici, and joined a jolly dining-club at his house named the Company of the Kettle, also a second club named the Trowel. At one time, Franciabigio being then the chairman of the Kettle-men, Andrea recited, and is by some regarded as having composed, a comic epic, "The Battle- of the Frogs and Mice"—a rechauff e, as one may surmise, of the Greek Batrachomyomachia. He fell in love with Lucrezia (del Fede), wife of a hatter named Carlo Recanati; the hatter dying oppor tunely, on Sept. 1, 1516, Andrea married her. She was a very handsome woman and has come down to us treated with great suavity in many a picture of her lover-husband, who constantly painted her as a Madonna and otherwise ; and even in painting other women he made them resemble Lucrezia in general type. Vasari, who was at one time a pupil of Andrea, describes her as faithless, jealous, overbearing, and vixenish with the apprentices. She lived to a great age, surviving her husband 4o years.
By 1514 Andrea had finished his last two frescoes in the court of the Servites, the "Nativity of the Virgin," which shows the influence of Leonardo, Domenico Ghirlandajo, and Fra Barto lommeo in effective fusion, and the "Procession of the Magi," intended as an amplification of a work by Baldovinetti; in this fresco is a portrait of Andrea himself. He also executed at some date a much-praised head of Christ over the high altar. By Nov. 1515 he had finished at the Scalzo the allegory of Justice, and the "Baptist preaching in the desert"—followed in 1517 by "John baptizing" and other subjects. Before the end of 1516 a "Pieta" of his composition and afterwards a Madonna were sent to the French court. At the invitation of Francis I. Andrea went in June 1518 to Paris, where, for the first and only time in his life he was handsomely remunerated. Lucrezia, however, wrote urging his return to Italy. The king assented on the under standing that his absence from France was to be short ; and he gave Andrea a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for his royal patron. Andrea spent the king's money and some of his own in building a house for himself in Florence.
In 1520 he resumed work in Florence, and executed the "Faith" and "Charity" in the cloister of the Scalzo. These were succeeded by the "Dance of the Daughter of Herodias," the "Beheading of the Baptist," the "Presentation of his head to Herod," an allegory of Hope, the "Apparition of the Angel to Zacharias" (1523), and the monochrome of the Visitation (1524). In 1525 he painted the very famous fresco named the "Madonna del Sacco," a lunette in the cloisters of the Servites, generally accounted his master piece. His final work at the Scalzo was the "Birth of the Baptist" (1526), executed with some enhanced elevation of style after Andrea had studied Michelangelo's figures in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo. In the following year he completed at S. Salvi, near Florence, a celebrated "Last Supper," in which all the personages seem to be portraits. This also is a very fine example of his style, though the conception of the subject is not exalted. It is the last monumental work of importance which Andrea del Sarto lived to execute. He caught the plague at Florence, and died on Jan. 22, 1530, at the comparatively early_ age of 43. He was buried in the church of the Servites.
Of the various portraits by Andrea said, though with doubtful reason, to represent himself, one, an admirable half-figure is in the National Gallery, London; others are in the gallery at Panshanger, in the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace. Other of his works are : in the Uffizi, the "Madonna di S. Francesco," or "Madonna Belle Arpie," from certain figures of harpies which are decoratively introduced, c. 1517, and the altar-piece painted for the monastery of S. Gallo, the "Fathers disputing on the doctrine of the Trinity," c. 1517; in the Louvre, "Charity," perhaps the only painting which Andrea executed while in France; in the Bel vedere of Vienna, "The Pieta"; at Poggio a Caiano—a celebrated fresco (1521), completed by Alessandro Allori, representing Julius Caesar receiving tribute—various figures bringing animals from foreign lands; in the Pitti Gallery two separate compositions of the "Assumption of the Virgin," also a fine "Pieta"; in the Madrid museum the "Virgin and Child"; in the Louvre the "Holy Family," the Baptist pointing upwards; in Berlin a portrait of his wife; and in Panshanger a fine portrait named "Laura." The Uffizi and the Louvre possess many fine drawings from nature by his hand.
In 1523 Andrea del Sarto produced at the request of Ottaviano de' Medici a copy of the portrait group of Leo X. by Raphael; it is now in the Naples museum, the original being in the Pitti Gallery. Even Giulio Romano, who had himself manipulated the original to some extent, was misled.
Andrea had true pictorial style, a very high standard of correct ness and an enviable balance of executive endowments. The point of technique in which he excelled least was perhaps that of discriminating the varying textures of different objects and surfaces. There is not much elevation or ideality in his works— much more of reality. His chiaroscuro is not carried out accord ing to strict rule, but is adjusted to his liking for harmony of colour and fused tone and transparence ; in fresco more especially his predilection for varied tints appears excessive. It may be broadly said that his taste in colouring was derived mainly from Fra Bartolommeo, and in form from Michelangelo ; and his style partakes of the Venetian and Lombard, as well as the Florentine and Roman—some of his figures are even adapted from Albert Diirer. In one way or other he continued improving to the last. It is in his portraits that Andrea ranks among the greatest.
In this account of Andrea del Sarto the main lines of the narrative of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, supplemented by Vasari, Lanzi, and others, have been followed.
See H. Guinness, Andrea del Sarto (1899) ; F. Knapp, Andrea del Sarto (Beilefeld and Leipzig, 1907) ; C. Pfeiffer, Les Madones d'Andrea del Sarto Etude Critique (1913).