8. The _Disputa, di S. Agostino_ is another masterpiece, showing as much power as the last-named work displays of softness. It was painted at the order of the Eremite monks of San Gallo for their church of San Jacopo tra Fossi, where it was injured by a flood in 1557, and removed later to the Hall of Saturn in the Pitti Palace. The composition is level, the four disputing saints standing in a row, the two listeners, S. Sebastian and Mary Magdalen, kneeling in front. S Agostino, with fierce vehemence, expounds the mystery of the Trinity; S. Stephen turns to S. Francesco interrogatively, S. Domenico (whom Vasari, by the way, calls S. Peter Martyr) has a face full of silent eloquence--he seems only waiting his turn to speak. In S. Sebastian we have a good study from the nude, and in Mary Magdalen's kneeling figure--a charming portrait of Lucrezia--is concentrated the principal focus of colour. 9. _Four Saints_, SS. Gio. Battista, Gio. Gualberto, S. Michele, and Bernardo Cardinale, a beautifully-painted picture, once in the Hermitage of Vallombrosa. There were originally two little angels in the midst dividing the saints, as in our illustration. When the picture was transferred to the Gallery of the Belle Arti, where it now is, the angels were taken out and the divided saints brought into a more compact group. The angels are in a frame between two frescoed Madonnas of Fra Bartolommeo. By this time the fame of Andrea del Sarto, both as a fresco and oil painter, had risen to the highest point. Michelangelo only echoed the opinion of others when he said to Raphael, "There is a little fellow in Florence who will bring the sweat to your brow if ever he is engaged in great works." His style of composition was important, his figures varied and life-like, his draperies dignified. "The main excellence, however, in which Andrea stands unique among his contemporaries rests in the incomparable blending of colour, in the soft flesh tints, in the exquisite chiaroscuro, in the transparent clearness even of his deepest shadows, and in his entirely new manner of perfect modelling." [Footnote: _Lübke History of Art_, vol. ii. p. 241.] His method, as shown in an unfinished picture of the _Adoration of the Magi_ in the Guadagni Palace, was to paint on a light ground; the sketch was a black outline, the features and details not defined, but often roughly indicated. He finished first the sky and background. The flesh tints, draperies, &c., were all true in tone from the first laying in. [Footnote: Eastlake's _Materials for History of Oil Fainting_.] He did not place shades one over the other, and fuse them together glaze by glaze as Leonardo did, but used an opaque dead colouring which allowed of correction; the system was rapid, but deficient in depth and mellowness; "the lights are fused and bright," but "the shadows, owing to their viscous consistency, imperfectly fill the outlines." [Footnote: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. in. chap. xvii. p.