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Andrea del Sarto
(1486-1530) |
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Think that you may own a painting by Andrea del Sarto? We authenticate, appraise and research all paintings by this great artist. |
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Self-Portrait
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Andrea del Sarto was an Italian Renaissance painter, a master in his own right and known by his peers and art historians as Andrea senza errori or Andrea the perfect. During his lifetime, his skill was often overshadowed by his Italian contemporaries, like Raphael, however, he was equally talented and his work is just as highly valued today. |
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Virgin with the Child and Saints
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The Annunciation
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Virign with Four Saints
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| Del Sarto was born near Florence and was the son of a tailor. His real name was Andrea d’Agnolo di Francesco di Luca di Paolo del Migliore, and he was originally apprenticed to a goldsmith and a wood carver. However, his influence and training as a painter came when he was still a young boy and was apprenticed to Piero di Cosimo and Raffaellin del Garbo. |
Lamentation of Christ, 1520
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John the Baptist
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The Virgin and the Infant with Saint Elizabeth and John the Baptist
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| One of the best known paintings by del Sarto is “Madonna of the Harpies”, originally completed in 1517 for the convent of San Francesco de Macci. Art historians believe that del Sarto used his wife Lucrezia as the model for the virgin and for many of his other paintings as well. While during the Italian Renaissance painting of the Madonna and child could be found by the dozens, del Sarto’s composition is said to be one of the finest and purveys a da Vinci-like quality. |
Madonna of the Harpies
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Portrait of the Artists Wife
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| While the bulk of del Sarto’s oeuvre consists of portraits, religious paintings, genre scenes and altar pieces, he was also known for his beautifully executed frescoes. He was commissioned to create frescoes all over Florence in monasteries, courts, porticos and convents. His last fresco “The Birth of the Virgin,” which is also considered one of his masterpieces, is located at the Scalzo and is said to incorporate the influences of Ghrilandaio and da Vinci. There are also a number of self-portraits attributed to him that are housed all over Europe. |
Portrait of a Young Man * Thought to be a self-portrait of the artist
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St. Sebastian Holding Two Arrows and the Palm of Martyrdom
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The Holy Family
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| Del Sarto worked and lived in Florence for almost his entire career, but with a few exceptions. In 1518, he received an invitation from François I to paint for the French court. However, he was shortly called back home by his wife, much to the French king’s dismay. The king, however, agreed to let him leave and even gave him a large sum of money to purchase paintings for the court on his travels. It is said, however, that del Sarto used that money instead to build a house for himself, and somehow avoided punishment. In 1524, the bubonic plague was running rampant through Florence and del Sarto was forced to move his family, but returned the following year. |
Figure Studies
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| Among his many originals, it is also known that del Sarto created copies of some of his masterworks, and masterworks of other artists as well. One in particular is surrounded with an air of scandal and was a group portrait of Pope Leo X by Raphael. It is said that this painting was bought by the duke of Mantua for Ottaviano de’ Medici. However, the duke loved it so that he did not want to part with it and had del Sarto create a duplicate. The duplicate was so good that it is said that even Raphael was fooled. Today, these paintings are housed in separate museums in Italy. Since del Sarto was also a proven skilled master of copying the works of others, a great possibility exists that works rejected as forged or unauthentic could actually have been created by del Sarto. |
Pope Leo X Group Portrait by del Sarto
Coutesy insecula.com
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Pope Leo X Group Portrait by Raphael
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| In 1526, it is thought that del Sarto created his final works, “Birth of the Baptist” for the Scalzo, followed by a painting of the “The Last Supper” fresco the following year. |
The Last Supper, Fresco, Convent of San Salvi, Florence
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It is generally thought that he did not create any paintings for the few years before he died of an infectious disease, probably because he was too ill to execute them. Still wondering about an Italian Renaissance painting in your family’s estate? Contact us…it could be by Andrea del Sarto.
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Sarto Discoveries |
Experts late last year determined that a "Madonna and Child" painting owned by the All Saints' Church in West Newbury, Massachusetts -for decades thought to be an 18th-century copy of a del Sarto painting--was in fact the real thing.
The painting was sold on Jan. 28 at auction at Sotheby's in New York to private dealers in London for $1.1 million.
"To my untrained eye, it was an attractive old painting, but it was actually too large to hang in our little chapel out here, and it really didn't fit the aesthetics of the place," the rector, the Rev. William Murdoch said of the 500-year-old work.
The painting had been discovered in the rectory attic in 1986 by a former priest.
Andrea del Agnolo (known as Andrea del Sarto, in reference to his father's trade as a tailor) lived from 1486 to 1530 and was a major Florentine painter of religious works, including frescoes and numerous depictions of the Madonna and Child.
Painted on a wood panel--canvas was not yet commonly used--it depicts a richly costumed Mary supporting the nude Christ child with her right arm; she holds a closed book in her left hand.
In the course of authenticating the painting, infra-red reflectography was used, a technique involving a special camera that allows the artist's preparatory drawing to be viewed through the layers of paint.
The infra-red viewing revealed that the artist first sketched an open book in the Madonna's hand, but reworked it into a closed one as he painted.
Another version of this Madonna and Child, is held by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. |
Madonna and Child
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A rediscovered drawing by Andrea del Sarto, the last great Florentine artist of the High Renaissance, sold today at Christie's in London for US $11,395,008, a world record price for the artist.
Head of St Joseph, a study for a picture now in the Pitti Palace, Florence, has become the third most expensive old master drawing ever sold at auction.
A photograph from the 1920s had alerted scholars to the existence of this work, but its whereabouts have been a mystery. The work reappeared after more than 50 years in a private Swiss collection.
The drawing sold at Christie's is a study for the head of Saint Joseph in the altarpiece of the Holy Family now in the Pitti Palace, Florence. This work was commissioned directly from del Sarto by Zanobi Bracci in about 1523.
The drawing shows the head of Saint Joseph in a startlingly realized study fully developed in a subtle combination of black and red chalk, with a secondary drawing below it in which del Sarto revisits the subject with Saint Joseph's eyes open. The verso shows two studies of legs in red chalk, an unpublished addition to del Sarto's works which was unknown save for a misleading reference in an 18th century footnote. |
Sketch, Head of Saint Joseph
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The first known owner of the drawing was the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari who was one of del Sarto's pupils. Vasari was the first 'modern' collector of drawings, and is most famous for his Lives of the Artists, perhaps the earliest work of modern Art History and Criticism. He assembled a collection of drawings by notable artists from the 14th Century to his own time and arranged them in albums with distinctive decorative frames drawn around the mounts, as can be seen in the Head of Saint Joseph. Throughout the Lives of the Artists Vasari refers back to his own collection of drawings, often using it is a source of comparative information. |
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