REHABILITATED: A PSYCHOANALYTIC EMENDATION

(1913) is an early example of psychoanalysis applied to the study of a prominent painter. Greatly influenced by Freud’s Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, Jones gave excessive credence to Vasari’s highly prejudicial account of the life of del Sarto, on which the study relied heavily. Jones attempted to account psychologically for the circumstance that del Sarto, though highly skilled and “faultless, ” was not the equal of the three preeminent masters of the Italian High Renaissance: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Jones’s uncritical acceptance of the Vasari biography encouraged him to view del Sarto’s assumed deficiency as the result of excessive attachment to his wife, a pathological uxoriousness. A contemporary psychoanalytic perspec-tive, with its emphasis on the emotive response of the analyst, requires us to pay attention to the evocative nature of the work of the artist, an approach Jones neglected. In an examination of several paintings, the artist’s sensitivity to the position of the spectator is explored, as is the interest in involving the viewer spatially and emotionally. An appre-ciation for the viewer’s position is consistent with a capacity for using projected internal objects for creative purposes. The presence of this capacity suggests a revised view of del Sarto’s contribution to art and of his relationship with his wife. I t is now generally acknowledged that Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530)was one of the major f igures of Italian High Renaissance art. He perfected the style we have come to recognize as marking one of the supreme epochs in the history of painting. Following Raphael’s departure from Florence to Rome in 1508 and the death of Fra Bartolomeo in 1517, del Sarto established himself as the leading master of the Florentin