fine house which could just about be built for the sum of money which
the King of France had entrusted to Andrea.

Andrea is a pitiable figure, but he was also a vagabond, if we are to
believe Vasari. He took the King's money, built his wretched wife a
mansion, and never again dared return to France, where his dishonesty
made him forever despised.

Afterward he was overwhelmed with despair for what he had done, and he
tried to make his peace with Francis; but while that monarch did not
punish him directly for his knavery; he would have no more to do with
him, and this was the worst punishment the artist could have
had. However, his genius was so great that other than French people
forgot his dishonesty and he began life anew in his native place.

Almost all his pictures were on sacred subjects; and finally, when
driven from Florence to Luco by the plague, taking with him his wife
and stepdaughter, he began a picture called the "Madonna del Sacco"
(the Madonna of the Sack).

This fresco was to adorn the convent of the Servi, and the sketches
for it were probably made in Luco. When the plague passed and the
artist was able to return to Florence, he began to paint it upon the
cloister walls.

Andrea, like Leonardo, painted a famous "Last Supper," although the
two pictures cannot be compared. In Andrea's picture it is said that
all the faces are portraits.

Just before the plague sent him and his family from Florence a most