Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/368

318 painted in 1525, over a doorway in the cloisters of the Servi convent. Here the grace of the composition and lovely harmonies of colour are sadly marred by the voluminous folds of draperies which smother the Virgin's form, and which seem to be introduced solely in order to display the painter's skill in the arrangement of the folds. Besides the fine panel of the Head of Christ which still hangs in the Madonna's Chapel of the Annunziata, Andrea painted a Dead Christ, now in the Academy, on a staircase of the convent, in return, it is said, for a bundle of votive candles. This, however, was early in his career, about 1512, when he also executed two chiaroscuro frescoes on the Parable of the Husbandmen in the Vineyard, in the friar's kitchen garden. But the wall on which these subjects were painted, fell in, early in the last century, so that we can only form some idea of these vigorous and animated compositions from old engravings and a series of studies by Lucas van Leyden, which are preserved in the Corsini Gallery.

Several of Andrea's best easel pictures also belong to this period of his life. The earliest, and one of the finest, is the Annunciation, which he painted in 1512, for his old patrons the Augustinians of the convent outside the Porta San Gallo. In the timid action of the shrinking Virgin, turning away with hand uplifted in fear and wonder, we have a motive which the artist often repeated, while the splendid Renaissance portico in the background lends the subject a new and modern character. The Dispute on the Trinity, an altar-piece executed six years later for the same friars, and like the former picture now in the Pitti, is another masterpiece of faultless drawing and glowing colour. Here