Del Sarto Quark - Abbeville Press

ART HISTORY
Andrea
del Sarto
by Antonio Natali
The most important painter working in Florence
when Raphael and Michelangelo were active in
Rome, Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) was a master of
tone and color, the teacher of Pontormo, Rosso,
Vasari, and other Mannerists. In this fresh and
engaging monograph illustrated with almost 200
splendid reproductions, Antonio Natali reviews
Andrea’s art and life, proposing a new understanding
of the man and the poetics of his paintings.
The author challenges the common wisdom
about Andrea del Sarto—proposed first in Vasari’s
Lives and perpetuated without revision by later writers—as a “timid soul.” Since the sixteenth century,
Andrea has been pictured as so cowardly and irresolute that he squandered his gift, living in near
obscurity and refusing prosperity and worldly honors because he was too shy for the spotlight. Natali
argues instead that Andrea chose a simple but culturally vibrant life in a circle of like-minded
friends—intellectuals and common folk who practiced material austerity and humility. How can we
label as timid an artist who painted a fresco cycle in
Florence’s most prestigious sacred institution when
he was barely twenty years old, asks Natali; an artist
who accepted an open-ended invitation from French
king Francis I to join his court, in an era when few
artists left Florence; who—amid rigid orthodoxy and
accusations of heresy—filled his sacred paintings
with bold theological content; and who headed
teams of renowned artists in learned artistic debates
and in the execution of major commissions?
By returning to the original sources, Natali
succeeds in introducing a new Andrea del Sarto, one
whose brilliant and moving pictures leap off the
pages with startling freshness. This is a volume that
will stimulate and delight art historians and nonscholars alike.
About the Author:
Antonio Natali is director of the Department of
Renaissance and Mannerist Paintings at the Uffizi.
Curator of numerous exhibitions at the Uffizi and
elsewhere in Florence, he is the author of several
books on Italian art of the fourteenth through the
sixteenth centuries.
Also available from Abbeville Press:
The Art of Florence
By Glenn Andres, John Hunisak,
and Richard Turner
ISBN 0-89659-402-5
Giovanni Bellini
By Anchise Tempestini
ISBN 0-7892-0433-9
Botticelli: Life and Work
By Ronald Lightbown
ISBN 0-89659-931-0
Fra Angelico
By John T. Spike
ISBN 0-7892-0322-7
Italian Frescoes
By Steffi Roettgen
The Early Renaissance: 1400–1470
ISBN 0-7892-0139-9
The Flowering of the Renaissance: 1470–1510
ISBN 0-7892-0221-2
Parmigianino
By Cecil Gould
ISBN 1-55859-892-8
Piero della Francesca
By Ronald Lightbown
ISBN 1-55859-168-0
Abbeville Press
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New York, N.Y. 10007
1-800-Artbook (in U.S. only)
Available wherever fine books are sold
Visit us at http://www.abbeville.com
Printed in Italy
Contents
8
11
3
Hearsay and Prejudice
Early Training and the “Partnership” with Franciabigio
The “School” of the Annunziata
67
Humanism and Theology
95
Friends, Gentlemen, Clerics, and a King
137
From the Plague of 1523 to the Fall of the Second Republic.
The Debate over “la Maniera” and Andrea’s Last Years
198
Notes
206
Bibliography
212
Index of Illustrations
216
Index of Names[p. 168]
170. Andrea del Sarto, Passerini
Assumption (Passerini Madonna).
Galleria Palatina, Florence.
196. Andrea del Sarto, Saint John
the Baptist, All Saints Church,
Worcester (Mass.); Worcester Art
Museum (on loan).
197. Andrea del Sarto, Portrait
of a Prelate, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York; The Jack and
Belle Linsky Collection.