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Chap. XVIt. ANDREA DEL SARTO. 568 Paris and its sale for a large profit raised the reputa tion of Del Sarto still higher, and an agent was in structed by Francis the First, in the spring of 1518, to sound the artist as to his inclination for an engagement in his capital. 1 The prospect was too enticing to be re sisted, and Andrea, leaving wife and kith and kin be hind, started about June for France, furnished with ample means for his journey, and in company of his assistant Sguazzella. 2 His reception, and the rich presents of money and clothes made to him on arrival, were well calculated to inflame his zeal, and he was employed forthwith on a likeness of the babe dauphin, 3 for which the king gave a purse of three hundred gold pieces. 4 Amongst the productions of this time none is more im portant as showing Andrea’s leaning towards Buonarotti, than the “Charity” which now hangs in the collection of the Louvre. 5 Though it has lost much beauty of colour, it was evidently done with Andrea’s most consummate art, the style being more seriously considered than that of the Madonna of 1517. The maxims of Michael Angelo are applied with a determined purpose, so as to be obvious not only in the conception, the arrangement and action, but in the grandeur of the forms, the way in which mo tion is suggested, and the drawing of the parts. We are reminded of nothing so much as of the Madonna, with the child at her breast, left unfinished by Michael An gelo in the Medici chapel at S. Lorenzo of Florence. There is no other creation of this period so like this one, as the Pieta at the Belvedere in Vienna, where the dead Christ lying on the foreground, is bewailed by the Vir- print is dated 1516. See also Reu- mont’s life of Del Sarto, ub. sup. p. 92. The original panel is missing. 1 Yas. VIII. 268. 270. 8 He started after May; for, on the 23 d of that month, he acknow ledges the receipt of 150 florins from Bartolommeo del Fede as payment of the dowry brought him by Lucretia. See annot. Yas. VIII. 303, and Yas. himself, VIII. 270—1. 3 Born Fehr. 28. 1518. 4 Vas. VIII. 271. 5 Louvre, No. 437, wood, trans ferred to canvass, oil, figures large as life, inscribed: “Andreas Sartus Florentinus me pinxit MDXVIII”. There is an old copy j of this Charity in the Museum of Nantes.