this picture in his possession, and it is now in the monastery of the Angeli in Florence.[1] There are several copies of this painting, seeing that Don Silvano Razzi, having entrusted it to the painter Zanobi Poggini, to the end that he might make a copy of it for Bartolommeo Gondi, who had requested to have one, some others, which are held in high estimation in Florence, were also made from the work.[2]
In this manner Andrea passed the time while the plague was raging without danger, while the nuns of that convent obtained such a work from the talent of so distinguished a man, that it may well endure comparison with the best paintings executed in our times; wherefore it is not to bo wondered at if Ramazzotto, chief of the party of Scaricalasino,[3] made all possible endeavours to obtain it during the siege of Florence, or that he should many times attempt to gain possession of the same, since he desired to send it to Bologna, where he proposed to place that work in his chapel in the church of San Michele in Bosco.[4]
Having returned to Florence, Andrea del Sarto painted a picture for the worker in glass, Beccuccio da Gambassi, who was his intimate friend: the subject of this work was Our Lady represented in the heavens with the Divine Child in her arms; there are besides four figures beneath; San Giovanni Battista namely, Santa Maria Maddalena, San Sebastiano, and San Rocco.[5] In the predella are this Beccuccio and his wife, taken from nature, and these figures are portraits of the most life-like truth: the picture is now at Gambassa, a fortified place in the Valdelsa, between Volterra and Florence. For Zanobi Bracci, Andrea painted an
- ↑ No authentic information can now be obtained respecting it.— Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
- ↑ There are in fact many, and in the hands of private individuals, all of whom believe themselves the possessors of original pictures.—Ibid.
- ↑ Of this Ramazzotto some mention is made by Varchi, in the tenth book of his Storia.
- ↑ Masini speaks of this chapel in his Bologna perlustrata.
- ↑ Bottari assures us that the fourth Saint is not San’ Rocco, but Sant’Onofrio; but this is a question not difficult of determination, since Sant’Onofrio is represented as a man so worn and haggard that scarcely a vestige of humanity remains in his whole person, while San’ Rocco, the patron saint of prisoners and the sick, but more especially of those stricken with plague, is usually and most correctly depicted as a young man, or ono in the prime of life, and of delicate and refined, although somewhat
