painting shows what was to be derived from this master by intelligent and conscientious workmen. Hitherto, I have had principally to record the errors of artists copying the external qualities of their great predecessors. It is refreshing to turn from the _epigoni_ of the so-called Roman school to masters in whom the flame of the Renaissance still burned brightly. Andrea del Sarto, the pupil of Piero di Cosimo, but more nearly related in style to Fra Bartolommeo than to any other of the elder masters, was himself a contemporary of Raphael and Correggio. Yet he must be noticed here; because he gave new qualities to the art of Tuscany, and formed a tradition decisive for the subsequent history of Florentine painting. To make a just estimate of his achievement is a task of no small difficulty. The Italians called him "il pittore senza errori," or the faultless painter. What they meant by this must have been that in all the technical requirements of art, in drawing, composition, handling of fresco and oils, disposition of draperies, and feeling for light and shadow, he was above criticism. As a colourist he went further and produced more beautiful effects than any Florentine before him. His silver-grey harmonies and liquid blendings of hues cool, yet lustrous, have a charm peculiar to himself alone. We find the like nowhere else in Italy. And yet Andrea del Sarto cannot take rank among the greatest Renaissance painters. What he lacked was precisely the most precious gift--inspiration, depth of emotion, energy of thought. We are apt to feel that even his best pictures were designed with a view to solving an aesthetic problem. Very few have the poetic charm belonging to the "S. John" of the Pitti or the "Madonna" of the Tribune. Beautiful as are many of his types, like the Magdalen in the large picture of the "Pietà"[400] we can never be sure that he will not break the spell by forms of almost vulgar mediocrity. The story that his wife, a worthless woman, sat for his Madonnas, and the legends of his working for money to meet pressing needs, seem justified by numbers of his paintings, faulty in their faultlessness and want of spirit. Still, after making these deductions, we must allow that Andrea del Sarto not unworthily represents the golden age at Florence. There is no affectation, no false taste, no trickery in his style. His workmanship is always solid; his hand unerring. If Nature denied him the soul of a poet, and the stern will needed for escaping from the sordid circumstances of his life, she gave him some of the highest qualities a painter can desire--qualities of strength, tranquillity, and thoroughness, that in the decline of the century ceased to exist outside Venice.