In the first place Vasari--who was one of the scholars she offended and
put down--gives vent to his private pique in his first edition, and in
the second, which only contains a slight mention of her, omits almost
all he had previously said. Now, if the first assertions were true why
should he retract them? Secondly, the sixteenth century was an age of
license in writing and speaking, and had any immoralities been laid to
her charge, not a biographer would have scrupled to particularize them;
but no! her name is never mentioned, except with her husband's, even
by her greatest enemies, who say she was as haughty as she was
beautiful. Thirdly, a faithless woman could never have kept her
husband's devoted love, and had she been so, would that affectionate
though exaggerated letter of hers, recalling him from France, have been
written? That a man who thinks his wife the most lovely creature living
may be tormented with jealousy without wrong doing on her part is more
than possible.
Let us then place Lucrezia's character where it ought to stand in
Andrea del Sarto's life--as a powerful influence, lowering his moral
nature, weaning him from his duties as a son and brother, by fixing all
his care and affection on herself; she, however, not allowing her own
family to be losers by her marriage, although causing him to slight his
own.
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