Engraving Smiling child's head, turned right - Andrea del Sarto

This engraving is a copy of a preparatory drawing for Charity, commissioned by Francis I in 1518 from Andrea del Sarto. It represents the detail of the child's face in the upper right corner.
Andrea del Sarto is the most striking representative of Florentine classicism, combining Leonardo da Vinci's subtlety with Raphael's formal ambitions. From an early age, he showed extraordinary talent for drawing, which he perfected by ardently copying the masters of the Renaissance: Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Leonard and Michelangelo. His frescoes, which are part of the Quattrocento narrative tradition, were enriched by Michelangelo's experiences in monumentality and tranquil strength. These easel paintings, mostly religious scenes, show a very natural ease to arrange the characters on landscape backgrounds. Andrea del Sarto's fame preceded him in France: Francis I commissioned Charity from him in 1518: a painting now in the Louvre Museum. While Italian painting is increasingly escaping towards an exacerbated mannerism, Andrea del Sarto offers his colleagues a simple and balanced vision with light colours.

First a steel engraver, Ferdinand Lefman invented, in 1870, a process of engraving in the size of zinc savings, known as "photo-typography".
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