and draperies were Andrea's devices for keeping
his head above water in the rising tide of the Michelangelesque. As you
glance in sequence at the Annunziata frescoes, on the whole so full of
vivacity, gaiety, and genuine delight in life, you see from one fresco
to another the increased attention given to draperies. In the Scalzo
series, otherwise masterpieces of tactile values, the draperies do their
utmost to smother the figures. Most of these paintings are closed in
with ponderous forms which have no other purpose than to serve as a
frame, and as clothes-horses for draperies: witness the scene of
Zacharias in the temple, wherein none of the bystanders dare move for
fear of disturbing their too obviously arranged folds.

Thus by constantly sacrificing first spiritual, and then material
significance to pose and draperies, Andrea loses all feeling for the
essential in art. What a sad spectacle is his "Assumption," wherein the
Apostles, the Virgin herself, have nothing better to do than to show off
draperies! Instead of feeling, as in the presence of Titian's "Assunta,"
wrapt to heaven, you gaze at a number of tailor's men, each showing how
a stuff you are thinking of trying looks on the back, or in a certain
effect of light. But let us not end on this note; let us bear in mind
that, despite all his faults, Andrea painted the one "Last Supper" which
can be looked at with pleasure after Leonardo's.

[Page heading: PONTORMO]

Pontormo, who had it in him to be a decorator and portrait-painter of
the highest rank, was led astray by his awe-struck admiration for
Michelangelo, and ended as an academic constructor of monstrous nudes.
What he could do when expressing _himself_, we see in the lunette at
Poggio a Caiano, as design, as colour, as fancy, the freshest, gayest,
most appropriate mural decoration now remaining in Italy; what he could
do as a portrait-painter, we see in his wonderfully decorative panel of
Cosimo dei Medici at San Marco, or in his portrait of a "Lady with a
Dog" (at Frankfort), perhaps the first portrait ever painted in which
the sitter's social position was insisted upon as much as the personal
character. What Pontormo sank to, we see in such a riot of meaningless
nudes, all caricatures of Michelangelo, as his "Martyrdom of Forty
Saints."

[Page heading: BRONZINO]

Bronzino, Pontormo's close follower, had none of his master's talent as
a decorator, but happily much of his power as a portrait-painter