Little of his excellence can be laid to his early training. Before 1500 he was working with Piero di Cosimo, and Andrea’s youthful frescoes of the miracles of S. Filippo Benizzi, in the fore-court of the Annunziata, show the loose and animated arrangements and the exaggeration of picturesque landscape features characteristic of his master. But Andrea learned rather of the time-spirit than of any other master. By 1514 his art is complete and one may see its flowering in the frescoes of the Birth of the Virgin, Figure 161, and the Madonna of the Sack, Figure 162, respectively in the fore-court and in the cloister of the Annunziata. It is a sumptuous and grave kind of design redeemed from heaviness by its exquisite balance of color masses, and from conventionality by the hint of portraiture in the artfully disposed figures. [Illustration: FIG. 162. Andrea del Sarto. Madonna of the Sack.—_Annunziata._ ] Scores of times Andrea repeats these perfections in the great altar-backs required for the new Renaissance chapels. The Four Saints in the Pitti, the Madonna of the Harpies in the Uffizi, Figure 162a, the Enthroned Madonna at Berlin may serve among many to illustrate his accomplishment in this new vein. Somewhat reminiscent of the heavier monumentality of Fra Bartolommeo, these great pictures add a personal and disquieting note from the presence of the moody, handsome wife, Lucrezia whose caprices and infidelities are the tragic element in an otherwise even life. [Illustration: FIG. 162_a._ Andrea del Sarto. Madonna of the Harpies.—_Uffizi._ ] Andrea in his later years won new glories but added no new note to his art. The monochrome frescoes in the Cloister of the Scalzo representing the Life of St. John Baptist merely show the old gravity somewhat exaggerated. The series which extended over many years (1515–1526) is uneven, and many of these perhaps overestimated compositions are plainly of student execution. Without his color, Andrea seems somewhat coldly academic. It was precisely this quality of stylistic grandeur, however, that appealed paradoxically to the romantic monarch, Francis I. He called Andrea to France in 1518 and kept him there in honor for a year. Had Andrea possessed any of the capacities of a teacher and theorist, he might have inaugurated the Renaissance in France. As it was he remained merely a harbinger of such inferior but more influential spirits as Il Rosso and Primaticcio who a few years later were to found the School of Fontainebleau. Often the portfolios of a great technician are more thrilling than his major works. This is the case with Andrea del Sarto. His numerous sketches in red chalk, have an athletic charm which his painting lacks. Others have drawn differently in this medium, but no one has drawn better.