The Best Artists

Some of Rafael Sanzio’s greatest painting is on the wall of the so-called Heliodoro Room in the Vatican. Covering walls with frescoes has problems that the studio painter, sitting in front of his rectangular canvas or panel, never even encounters. Here Rafael had to paint the spaces around a big door, including the one above it. He wanted to illustrate the Bible story of the escape of St. Peter from prison and not let that door break up the unity of his composition or the mood.

Here is his first idea of how to tell his story around the door.

There are three episodes, three frames, of the Bible narrative, not however in chronological order.
In the middle the angel appears to the sleeping Peter in his cell.
On the right the angel leads him out of jail right past the sleeping guards.
And on the left, just at the first violet tinge of morning in the sky, the officer who has discovered Peter’s escape, alerts the drowsy guards.

And here is the final painted version.

Rafael has discarded a strict balance of the figures left and right of the door. While doing the cartoons he has had a lot of great ideas not only for the individual figures but also for the “atmosphere” of the story.
To the central picture he added prison bars. He worked hard on the angel and the soldiers in the escape scene on the right. And he had fun painting the gleam on the sleeping soldiers’ armor.

But the real inspiration came to him for the left-hand scene.

He has given it a psychological dimension. The officer who in the sketch had been alerting the guards of Peter’s escape, is now shouting at them, threatening them. The look of incomprehension on the face of the lowest guard and the sleep-confused fuss of the one coming down the steps, fumbling with his gear, show that Rafael could invent more than placid Virgins.

But one of the almost magic achievements in this fresco is the painted light. At the top there is the bright moon in a black sky. While you look at it you might forget about color altogether and picture a cold winter night. But lower your eyes a foot and you have the dim yellow light of morning. That is another mood, another moment not strictly compatible with the black night above. And yet Rafael has made them fit together. That’s two lights. Two lights but they are only background.
It is the officer’s TORCH that lights the great scene itself. It shines on all the figures and their armor and its intensity is somehow not lessened by the other two sources of light in the picture, not confused by them. Try to paint a picture with three sources of light, each with its mood, and see what YOU get.

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That’s what his Florentine contemporaries called Andrea del Sarto. They thought he was perfection itself.
Yet nowadays people walk right past his works in a museum like the Pitti. Virgins with little Jesus and St. John arranged in the familiar triangle disposition, sometimes with an old Joseph leaning in. The colors are strikingly beautiful and the drawing is excellent. But often it is the faces that spoil the work. They are not idealized like the faces of Rafael’s people. Legend says most of the Virgins are portraits of Lucrezia del Fede, Andrea’s wife.

Lucrezia del Fede by Andrea del Sarto, in the Prado Museum, Madrid

According to Giorgio Vasari, who knew her, she was one of the evil women of the world. She spoiled not only Andrea’s pictures but his career. Until he met her, Vasari says, Andrea was respected and loved. She came along and brought out a shocking weakness in him. The rest of his life she had him wrapped him around her little finger. And she so mistreated his friends and even his apprentices that in time they all left him.

The worst she did was very, very bad. The King of France invited Andrea to come and work for him. He gave Andrea a place to live and a splendid salary. He treated him as a personal friend. One evil day Andrea got a letter from Lucrezia back in Florence. She said she was miserable. If he didn’t come right home she would—well, she would die.
Andrea immediately asked the king for permission to return to Florence. “It will only be for a short time,” he said. The king put on a very sour face. “Your Majesty loves great paintings, right? Well, while I’m home I can buy some good ones for you.”
The king agreed but urged Andrea to return soon. He had already had some bad experience with Italian artists. Yet he trusted Andrea enough to give him money to buy those good paintings.

What happened? Andrea hurried home to Florence and was reunited with his beloved Lucrezia. They celebrated their reunion with wonderful feasts. Lucrezia told Andrea that while he was away she had been dreaming of a beautiful Tuscan villa where they could live with dignity; and she showed him her plans. He happened to have some cash (the king’s) and so he told Lucrezia her wish was his command. They began to build the beautiful Tuscan villa. One day they ran out of funds. Andrea woke up remembering King Francis and his promise to return soon. “Lucrezia,” he told her after she had woken too. “I must go back to the king.”
“You’re not serious,” she said. “The king has already forgotten about you. And that money to him is nothing. Stay here with your little Lucrezia.” And she gave him a kiss of the kind that simply paralyzed him.
He never went back and King Francis cursed him and all Italians.

Lucrezia did one more nasty thing. When the plague was raging through Florence Andrea fell sick. Lucrezia quickly left not only the house but Florence too. She had great fear of contagion. Andrea died alone in the house and was found days later and buried just anywhere. Andrea, probably because of her foresight, survived that plague and forty more years of flu-s and other common maladies.

See Robert Browning’s famous poem, one of his dramatic monologues, in which Andrea talks to Lucrezia on a beautiful Tuscan evening.

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