United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
That his error continued in the face of Andrea's stone is certainly more remarkable, though this also should be charged rather against her mismarksmanship than to the wearing quality of his electro-plate morality. It is doubtful if even the ancient Jews had found "stoning" as efficacious a "cure for souls" had they thrown wide as she.
Vasari, quoting this exaggerated letter, says in his first edition that she only wanted money to give her friends, but this also he retracts in the second. Whether it expressed her feelings truly or not, the letter had such an effect on Andrea's mind that he decided to return home at any cost.
Cardinal Tournon took him under his patronage, and he painted a large number of works in the style of Andrea. JACOPO, called JACONE, was another of Andrea's favourite disciples. His frescoes, of which some existed till of late years on the facade of the Palazzo Buondelmonte, in Florence, were much in Del Sarto's manner.
And one step away from him, by the wall of the next house, petrified like a statue leaning against the wall, stood the murderer, and his eyes were staring into the motionless features of the young man, trying in vain, filled with desperate fear, to deny this horrible certainty, to persuade himself that some ghost was deceiving him, that the features of that old man, who had just before, in Leonora's hall, arranged an ambush for Andrea's friend, were hidden under this young mask, which hell presented to him.
The precaution of covering the cloister with a glass roof has only been taken in modern times, and too late. Andrea's next patrons were the Eremite monks of S. Agostino, at San Gallo, who ordered of him two pictures for their church. In 1511 he painted Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen, and an Annunciation in 1512.
The finest of his frescoes is, unfortunately, spoiled by his own hand, and remains as a memorial of his genius and hasty temper. The composition is grand and carefully thought out, the colouring bright and pleasing; perhaps in emulating Andrea's luxurious style of drapery he has gone a little too far, and crowded the folds.
Though, through courtship, Andrea's stern composure had shown no trace of a thaw, it yet melted like snow under a south wind when she was once ensconced in their little home. Moreover, she unmasked undreamed of batteries, bewildering Paul with infinite variety of feminine complexities.
Now that she was suddenly brought face to face with it again she understood it for the first time. Had not Andrea's last prayer been that she might be given peace! There is no wild wind in his soul, No strength of flood or fire; He knows no force beyond control, He feels no deep desire. He knows no altitudes above, No passions elevate; All is but mockery of love, And mimicry of hate.
She kept away and he died quite alone, few caring that he was dead and no one taking the trouble to follow him to his grave. Thus one of the greatest of Florentine painters lived and died. Years after his death, the artist Jacopo da Empoli, was copying Andrea's "Birth of the Virgin" when an old woman of about eighty years on her way to mass stopped to speak with him.
Lucrezia lived to a good old age, being nearly ninety when she died; she seems to have lived a very quiet life, and to have kept Andrea's paintings with great care, except a few only which she sold.
Word Of The Day