works in company;[1] among them, certain hangings or curtains wherewith to cover the pictures on the High Altar of the Church of the Servites, the commission for which they received from a Sacristan who was a near relation of Franciabigio.[2] On one of these curtains they depicted an Annunciation of Our Lady; this was on the curtain suspended towards the choir, and on the other they executed a Deposition of Christ from the Cross, similar to that which is in the picture of the same church painted, as we have before observed, by Filippo and Pietro Perugino.[3]
The members of the Company called that of the Barefooted Brothers, of San Giovanni Battista, were accustomed to as- . se mble at the end of the Via Larga in Florence, above the houses which belong to the illustrious Ottavianode’ Medici, and opposite to the garden of San Marco, in a building which had been erected at that time by several Florentine artists, who had there constructed, among other things, an outer court or quadrangle, the loggia whereof reposed on columns of no great height. Some of the members of that brotherhood, therefore, perceiving that Andrea was likely to become a most excellent painter, and being richer in spirit than in pocket, resolved that he should paint stories in fresco from the life of San Giovanni around that cloister, twelve compartments namely, executed in chiaro-scuro with terretta.[4] Having set hand to this work accordingly, Andrea depicted the Baptism of Our Lord by San Giovanni in the first compartment,[5] executing the same with so much care and in so good a manner, that he acquired credit, honour, and fame thereby to
- ↑ There Ls a picture in the Dresden Gallery representing Bathsheba in the Bath, which is commonly enumerated among these works, but according to the German annotator, Förster, this is an error; he has, however, not assigned the grounds for his opinion, in which Reumont, who is usually well informed, does not support him.
- ↑ These curtains have long been lost.
- ↑ Now in the Florentine Academy of the Fine Arts.
- ↑ These works have suffered greatly from time and maltreatment. They have also been much injured by unskilful restorers, but much care is now taken to secure what remains. Four of the original sketches in oil for these frescoes are in the Pinacotheca, Munich; the latter have been frequently engraved, by Crüger for example, in 1618; by Credi, in 1783; and at Florence, in 1836. See Pitture a fresco d'Andrea del Sarto, &c.
- ↑ This bears the usual cipher of Andrea; the A intertwined with a V namely.
