Monday, November 14, 2022

Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) - Complex but Harmonious

Andrea del Sarto
Virgin and Child enthroned with Eight Saints
1528
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Andrea del Sarto
Virgin and Child enthroned with Six Saints
ca. 1528
oil on panel
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Andrea del Sarto
Virgin and Child enthroned
with Six Saints

(detail with St Sebastian)
ca. 1528
oil on panel
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Andrea del Sarto
Head of a Child
(study for young St John the Baptist)
ca. 1529
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto
Head of a Man, after the Antique
(study for Apostle)
before 1530 
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
ca. 1520-30
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Andrea del Sarto
Drapery Study
before 1530
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto
Drapery Study
before 1530
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto
Virgin and Child with St Elizabeth,
young St John the Baptist and an Angel

ca. 1515
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Andrea del Sarto
Virgin and Child
with young St John the Baptist and Angels

ca. 1517-19
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London

Andrea del Sarto
Study of Model for Figure of St Joseph
ca. 1525
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto after Baccio Bandinelli
Figure from Massacre of the Innocents
ca. 1520-30
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto after Baccio Bandinelli
Half-Length Figure Study
ca. 1520-30
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto after Michelangelo
Dragon devouring a Serpent
before 1530
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto after Michelangelo
Figure Study
ca. 1510
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

follower of Andrea del Sarto
Running Infant
ca. 1520-30
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) – The leading painter in Florence from c. 1510.  Influenced by Fra Bartolommeo (whom he displaced in importance both as executant and teacher), Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, contemporary Norther prints (Dürer, Lucas van Leyden), and by 15th-century Florentine tradition, he evolved a complex but harmonious individual style combining firm draftsmanship with energetic and expressive colour, naturalism with idealization, spontaneity and sketchiness of brushwork side by side with a high finish.  He rethought the work of Leonardo, adapting the latter's sfumato and complexities of pose whilst rejecting his monochrome chiaroscuro for a form of chromatic modelling.  Just as his colour range is warmer and more varied than Leonardo's, so the address of his painted figures to the viewer is more direct and less enigmatic, albeit almost equally poetic.  A measure of Andrea's success is that he was both a principal source of the development of Florentine Mannerism and an inspiration to the anti-Mannerist reformers at the end of the century." 

– Erika Langmuir and Norbert Lynton, Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists (2000)