Andrea del Sarto

Andrea del Sarto worked in Florence during the High Renaissance, a contemporary of Michelangelo and the slightly younger Raphael, and contemporaries nicknamed him "the faultless painter" for his flawless draftsmanship and color. In 1518, King Francis I of France invited him to the French court at Fontainebleau and gave him money to buy Italian artworks for the royal collection.

According to the 16th-century biographer Giorgio Vasari's account, written decades later, Andrea took the funds and, instead of returning to France, spent them building a house in Florence, reportedly at the urging of his wife, Lucrezia del Fede, who did not want to leave the city. He never went back to Francis I's court. The story became famous three centuries after Andrea's death when the poet Robert Browning turned it into "Andrea del Sarto (Called 'The Faultless Painter')," a dramatic monologue in which Andrea explains his own failure of nerve to Lucrezia in his studio at dusk.

Vasari's version is now treated with real skepticism by historians, some call it invented outright, but Browning's poem is still taught in English literature courses today, built on a debt Andrea may never have actually failed to repay.