Chap. XVII. ANDREA DEL SARTO. 545 a cento of Francia Bigio and Del Sarto in which the impress of Andrea is preponderant, we may look npon it as a valuable and perhaps unique product of an asso ciation which was soon dissolved. The two men had both been nurtured at one source. Andrea at the school of Piero di Cosimo, the imitator of Leonardo, and the companion of Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto; Francia Bigio under the tuition of Mariotto. Francia Bigio had less genius than Del Sarto, but he was the eldest of the two. So the partners probably agreed to live together, but to paint apart. They often spent their days in the same places, but never, as far as we know, divided the labours of one and the same picture. 1 They competed at the Servi, at the Scalzo, at Poggio a Caiano; but cotem porary history contains no reference to anything tbat they did in companionship. That the Baptism of Christ was the first of a long series at the Scalzo, and that it was followed by the scenes from the fife of the beato Filippo Benizzi, at the Servi, is as clear from Vasari as from the evidence of style, the latter being entirely An drea's without assistance from Francia Bigio. But the mere fact of two such competitors living in constant intercourse, led to the inevitable results that Francia Bigio assumed and kept a reminiscence of Del Sarto, and An drea for his part took something from his friend. There is a panel, in the Duke of Northumberland’s castle of Alnwick, in which a man of twenty, in a black cap covering long hair, sits resting his elbow on a table. The hand thus reposing holds a scroll with an illegible direction. On the table itself is an ink bottle, a pen, and a sheet of paper, on the corner of which one reads: “A1 di Andrea del Sarto pictore .... entia”. 2 This is supposed to be Andrea’s own portrait, though it might 1 The curtains of the altarpiece at the Servi, by Filippino and Pe- rugino are now proved to have been, not by Francia Bigio and Andrea delSartoasVas.says(VIII. 253) but by Andrea di Cosimo, who did them inl610—11. See the record in Vas. IX. Ill annot. 2 The words immediatelly follow ing “A1 di” are not particularly clear and may be omitted. 35 VOL. III.
