Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/346

338 not survive to become a wife, she died like the rest of her family, and this happened in the year 1512.

Returning to the personal affairs of Jacopo himself however, I have to relate, that he had not been many months in Florence when he was placed by Bernardo Vettori with Leonardo da Vinci, and a short time afterwards with Mariotto Albertinelli, next with Piero di Cosimo, and finally with Andrea del Sarto, to whom he went in the year 1512. But neither did he stay very long with Andrea; and it would appear that after Jacopo had prepared the cartoons for the arch of the Servites, of which there will be further mention hereafter, he was never regarded with favourable eyes by Andrea del Sarto, whatever the cause may have been.

The first work undertaken by Jacopo at the time of which we are now speaking was a very small picture of the Annunciation, and this he painted for a tailor who was his friend, but the tailor having died before the completion of the painting it was left in the hands of Jacopo, who was then with Mariotto Albertinelli, by whom the picture, of which Mariotto was very proud, was displayed, as something marvellous, to all who entered his workshops.

Now it chanced that in those days Raffaello da TJrbino came to Florence, when he saw this work and the youth who had accomplished it, with infinite amazement, prophesying that Jacopo would ultimately become what he was in fact seen to be. No long time afterwards, Mariotto having left Florence and gone to Viterbo, there to execute the painting which had been commenced by Fra Bartolommeo, Jacopo, still but a youth, was left without a master. Alone and melancholy, he then went of his own accord to fix himself with Andrea del Sarto; this happened just at the time when the latter had completed those stories from the life of San Filippo which he painted in the court of the Servites, and these works pleased Jacopo, as indeed did all the productions of Andrea, as well as the manner and design of that master.

Devoting himself therefore with the utmost care to the