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I F your name were Andrea, and if your father were a tailor, and if you were called Andrea of the Tailor, people would always be asking, “Can you paint pictures?” For Andrea of the Tailor was a famous painter; one of the Born Again painters of Florence. Italians, of course, didn’t use English words for the painter’s name. What they called him was Andrea del Sarto, which is the Italian way of saying Andrea of the Tailor.
When this son of the tailor grew up he married, strange to say, the widow of a hatter — a man who made hats. She was a beautiful woman but was always scolding and was very extravagant and selfish and spent Andrea’s money as fast as he could make it.
Two of Andrea’s paintings were sent to France and when the King of France saw them, he wanted the painter to come to France and paint for him. So to France Andrea went. The king was pleased with his work and paid him well, but soon Andrea got a letter from his wife telling him to come back to Italy. The king made him promise he would return to France very soon and gave him money to buy some pictures in Italy to bring back to France.
And now we see that Andrea’s pictures were better than he was, for Andrea was what we call a “weak” man. When he got home to Italy, his wife made him build her a fine house.And when Andrea found his own money wasn’t enough for the house he used the king’s money! Of course, after such dishonesty, he was afraid ever to go to France again.
In Italy, Andrea painted several pictures in fresco on the walls of monasteries. You remember I told you what fresco painting was. The artist painted on the plaster while it was still wet so the colors would soak into the wall. If a painter made a mistake in fresco painting, he couldn’t rub it out,because the picture was part of the plaster. So most artists touched up their fresco paintings after the plaster was dry.Andrea, however, never did this. He could paint so well that he didn’t have to correct mistakes after the picture was finished. There weren’t any mistakes to correct.
Andrea painted in oil as well as in fresco. You remember,don’t you, that the early Renaissance painters used to mix their paints with egg or glue? Then some one discovered that it was better to mix paints with oil, and soon all the painters were using oil paints except for fresco. In the old egg or glue way of painting artists had to paint on a board covered with a kind of smooth plaster called gesso (jes’so). With oil paints they could paint their pictures on canvas or boards without using gesso.This was much easier and it also made the pictures look better.
Andrea’s most famous oil painting is a Madonna. The baby Christ is in her arms, on one side stands Saint Francis, on the other Saint John, with two little angels between them. The picture has a peculiar name. It is called “The Madonna of the Harpies.” Do you know what harpies are? Harpies are makebelieve animals — birds with women’s heads. The Madonna in Andrea’s picture is standing on a block or pedestal which is decorated with two little harpies. That’s why we call it “The Madonna of the Harpies.”
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The Madonna in this picture is supposed to look like Andrea’s wife.He painted her likeness in almost all his pictures, but when poor Andrea finally caught the plague and became very ill, his selfish wife was so afraid of catching the disease herself that she left him alone and uncared for till he died.
Andrea del Sarto was named for his father’s trade. Now we come to a painter who was named for his home town.You remember Perugino, who was named for the town where he lived? Well, not a great distance from Perugia is the town of Correggio where there lived a painter known everywhere by the name of his town. We don’t know much about Correggio’s life, but we can admire his pictures. Like Andrea del Sarto, Correggio painted both in fresco and in oils. All his frescoes are in the city of Parma, in Italy, where he worked on the cathedral and the churches.
The cathedral in Parma has a round tower on top called a cupola, and Correggio painted a picture for the inside of the cupola. The picture was circular so it would fit into the ceiling of the cupola. As it could be looked at only from the floor below, Correggio decided to make the angels and other figures in the picture look like real figures flying through the air and seen from underneath. If you should look straight up and see an angel flying above your head you would see the soles of the angel’s feet nearer to you than his head. You would see just the opposite view if you looked down on the top of some one’s head.
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To paint a figure seen from below was something that very few artists knew how to do. Correggio first had a sculptor make some models in clay so he would know how people would look in these strange positions. The way he painted them we call foreshortening.
Correggio did other foreshortened cupola pictures. People who saw them didn’t quite know what to make of them. It was such a new way of painting that at first it wasn’t liked very much. One man said such a painting looked like a hash of frogs. But the painter Titian came to Parma and when he saw Correggio’s cupola picture in the cathedral he said, “Turn the cupola upside down and fill it with gold and even that will not be the picture’s money worth.”
Correggio’s oil paintings are noted for their wonderful light and shade. He was what we call a master of light and shade. The people in his paintings are graceful, smiling,pretty, and happy-looking, and so almost everybody likes them. The main fault people find with them is that they do not seem to mean very much. Correggio was not a great thinker like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
Another one of Corregio’s paintings is called “The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine.” Saint Catherine dreamed she was being married to the baby Christ and this picture shows the Baby playing with the wedding-ring that Saint Catherine had seen in her dream.
Just as famous as this painting is one called “Holy Night”or “The Adoration of the Shepherds.” It shows the Baby in His manger with His mother and the shepherds around Him.A wonderful glow of light comes from the manger where the Baby lies, and lights up the faces of those who worship Him.
A strange story is told of Correggio’s death, but whether it is true or not we do not know for sure. According to this story, Correggio was paid for one of his paintings all in bronze coins. You know that if you pay in pennies for something expensive, it takes lots of pennies. And this payment to Correggio took so many bronze coins that it made a very heavy load. Correggio started out to carry this load of coins home. It was a hot day and the heavy load made Correggio so hot and tired that he became ill, had to go to bed and soon died. And that was the end of this master of light and shade, but his paintings have lived on after him to give pleasure to all who see them.