breaks a stick across his knees. The commentators of Vasari have taken
this to emblematize the Roman Catholic legend of the Virgin having
given rods to each of her suitors, and chosen him whose rod blossomed.
Graceful women surround the Virgin, but there is perhaps a too marked
sentimentality about these which suggests a striving after Raphael's
style. There is, however, a great touch of nature in a mother with a
naughty child, who sits crying on the ground, much to the mother's
distress. Francia Bigio commenced this in Andrea's absence in France,
which so excited his former comrade's emulation that he did his
_Visitation_ in great haste, to get it uncovered as soon as
Francia Bigio's. In fact, Andrea's works were ready by the date of the
annual festa of the Servites, and the monks, being anxious to uncover
all the new frescoes for that day, took upon them to remove the
mattings from that of Francia Bigio as well, without his permission,
for he wished to give a few more finishing touches. So angry was he, on
arriving in the cloister, to see a crowd of people admiring his work in
what he felt to be an imperfect condition, that in an excess of rage he
mounted on the scaffolding which still remained, and, seizing a hammer,
beat the head of the Madonna to pieces, and ruined the nude figure
breaking the rod. The monks hastened to the scene in an uproar of
remonstrance, the frantic artist's destructive hand was stayed by the
bystanders, but so deep was his displeasure that he refused to restore
the picture, and no other hand having touched it, the fresco remains to
this day a fine work mutilated. It shows him artistically in his very
best, and morally, at his worst, phase. In 1518, while Andrea was in
France, the monks of the Scalzo employed Francia Bigio to fill two
compartments in their pretty little cloister, where Andrea had
commenced his _Life of S. John Baptist_. These are spoken of more
at length in the life of that master, who on his return took the work
again in his own hands. In 1521 Bigio competed with Andrea and