Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/223

Rh this picture in his possession, and it is now in the monastery of the Angeli in Florence. 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.

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, 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.

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. 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