Sunday, July 22, 2012

il VENTIDUE di luglio

via Gino Capponi, no. 22
Where Andrea del Sarto died.


Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530), the artist "without errors," was probably more famous when he was alive than after his death. His monochromatic frescoes in the Chiostro dello Scalzo stand out in contrast to the bright blues and reds and golds in most Renaissance art.


Why all the skulls? This was the meeting place of a company of men dedicated to helping the disenfranchised (poor, prisoners, those condemned to death) at the end of their lives. Also, according to the most helpful guard I've ever come across at any site in Italy, the catacombs had just been discovered in Rome and there was a fascination with the dead and the grotesque at that time.


Vasari, the author of The Lives of the Artists, was an apprentice to Andrea del Sarto. He wrote at length of Vasari's submission to his "faithless" and "vixenish" wife.

The art critic John Ruskin was not a fan. He called Andrea del Sarto's Madonna with St. John and St. Francis a "heap of cumbrous nothingness and sickening offensiveness."

Here's hoping that you have a good day and that it not be a "heap of cumbrous nothingness."


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