ELO BUONARROTI

IN the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had
attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a
supreme genius it could hardly hope to escape from the common lot of
all things in nature, and begin to decline. After Botticelli and
Leonardo, the works of Andrea del Sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has
been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than Michelangelo
was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than Raphael of
rivalling them.

Vasari prefaces his life to ANDREA DEL SARTO (1486-1531) with something
more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "At length we have
come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists
distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the
truly excellent Andrea del Sarto, in whom art and nature combined to
show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and
invention unite in one and the same person. Had he possessed a somewhat
bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher
qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he
practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. But
there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence
and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and
animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing
in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages,
would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are
wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous
in those of many other masters.

"His figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect
in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste.
His airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while
both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. His
draperies are marvellously beautiful. His nudes are admirably executed,
simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring--nay, they are truly divine."

And yet? Well, let us turn to Michelangelo.

"While the best and most industrious artists," says Vasari, "were
labouring by the light of Giotto and his followers to give the world
examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied
character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous
of imitating the perfection of Nature