From Library Journal
Natali, director of Renaissance and Mannerist paintings at Florence's Uffizi Gallery, presents a summation of decades of work on del Sarto (1486-1530), one of the creators of the Mannerist style in Florence and France. Natali sets his vision of the artist against the traditional view, begun by Vasari, that del Sarto was a timid soul who wasted his talent. Instead, he shows del Sarto to have chosen a path that he rigorously followed in light of his humility and in a circle of like-minded friends and fellow artists. Not a catalogue raisonn?e (Natali defers to Sydney J. Freedberg's Andrea del Sarto, 1963, and John Shearman's Andrea del Sarto, 1965, as essentially complete catalogs), this book is rather a meditation based on a close reading of the artist's environment and a close look at the pictures. The text is readily accessible to the general reader, with a clear translation from the Italian original, excellent illustrations of del Sarto's Mannerist colors and forms, and a generous layout; beyond that, Natali's revisionist argument will attract an academic audience.AJack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

ARTnews, 1/00
Readable and stimulating... richly illustrated, beautifully produced...Natali's book opens up an entirely different side of del Sarto....

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

Card catalog description
"The most important painter working in Florence when Raphael and Michelangelo were active in Rome, Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) was a master of tone and color, the teacher of Pontormo, Rosso, Vasari, and other Mannerists. In this monograph illustrated with almost 200 reproductions, Antonio Natali reviews Andrea's art and life, proposing a new understanding of the man and the poetics of his paintings."--BOOK JACKET.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Illustrated with 200 splendid reproductions, this monograph challenges the conventional wisdom about Andrea del Sarto, the most important painter working in Florence when Raphael and Michelangelo were active in Rome.

By returning to original sources, Natali succeeds in introducing a new Andre del Sarto (1486-1530), one whose brilliant and moving pictures leap off the pages with startling freshness. Since the 16th century, Andrea has been pictured as a "timid soul," a view first proposed in Vasari's Lives and perpetuated without revision by later writers. According to this view, the artist was so shy and irresolute that he squandered his gift, living in near obscurity and refusing prosperity and worldly honors.

Not so, says Natali, who aruges instead that Andrea chose a simple but culturally vibrant life in a circle of like-minded friends--intellectuals and common folk who practiced material austerity and humility. How can we label as timid an artist who painted a fresco cycle in Florence's most pretigious sacred institution when he was barely twenty years old? asks Natali. How irresolute was the man who accepted an open-ended invitation from French king Francis I to join his court in an era when few artists left Florence; who--amid rigid orthodoxy and accusations of heresy--filled his sacred paintings with bold theological content; who headed teams of renowned artists in learned artistic debates and in the execution of major commissions? With such provocative insights, this volume is certain to stimulate and delight art historians and non-scholars alike.

Other Details: 200 illustrations, 122 in full color 220 pages 11 x 11" Published 1999

Author Biography:Antonio Natali is director of the department of Renaissance and Mannerist paintings at the Uffizi. Curator of numerous show at the Uffizi and elsewhere in Florence, he is the author of several books on Italian art of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal