Free hand

摘要

When Giorgio Vasari described Andrea del Sarto as a painter "free from errors" he was not so much honouring his teacher as damning him with faint praise. In art, unlike accounting, achievement is not measured by the number of mistakes avoided but by the imaginative vistas opened up. By this standard, del Sarto fell short of the mark, suffering, as Vasari claimed, from "a timidity of spirit". While his older, bolder colleagues-giants like Michelangelo and Raphael-set out for lands uncharted, del Sarto stuck to familiar terrain. Even worse (again according to Vasari) del Sarto's lack of ambition was largely formed by his smothering wife, Lucrezia. This unflattering portrait has survived to this day, not least thanks to a poem by Robert Browning, who depicts the henpecked artist sadly diminished by a faithless wife.