_Fra Bartolommeo_ (Florentine: 1475-1517).
Bartolommeo di Pagholo del Fattorino, one of the greatest of
the Florentine masters, is commonly known as Baccio della
Porta, or Fra Bartolommeo. He was born at the village of
Savignano, near Prato, and was sent while still a lad to the
studio of Cosimo Rosselli at Florence, where he lived with
some kinsfolk in a house near the gate of San Piero Gattolini
(now the Porta Romana). The neighbours, seeing him come and
go to his work, and ignoring surnames with the custom of the
time, distinguished him from all the other Bartholemews as
Baccio della Porta. "He was loved in Florence," says Vasari,
"for his virtue, for he was very diligent at his work, quiet
and good-natured, fearing God, living a tranquil life, flying
all vicious practices, and taking great pleasure in preaching,
and the society of worthy and sober persons." In the studio of
Rosselli he made the acquaintance of Mariotto Albertinelli, as
erratic, gay, and idle as his companion was pure, gentle, and
austere. Between the two young men a warm friendship sprang
up, which continued unbroken till the death of Albertinelli
in 1515. When Fra Bartolommeo temporarily relinquished the
practice of art in 1500, Albertinelli took up his abandoned
canvases, and from 1509 onwards the two men worked in formal
partnership. The religious spirit of Bartolommeo had been
profoundly impressed by Savonarola's preaching. To the famous
bonfire, into which the people cast their pomps and vanities,
our painter brought all the studies and drawings which he had
made from the nude. He was among the band of faithful followers
who shut themselves up with Savonarola in San Marco. "Having
very little courage," says Vasari, "being indeed of a timid
and even cowardly disposition, he lost heart on hearing the
clamours of an attack, which was made upon the convent shortly
after, and seeing some wounded and others killed, he began to
have grievous doubts respecting his position. Thereupon he
made a vow, that if he might be permitted to escape from the
rage of that strife, he would instantly assume the religious
habit of the Dominicans." This he did in the year 1500, and
for some time afterwards his brush was idle. When he resumed
work, it was on condition that the convent received all the
produce of his labours. In 1506, when Raphael visited Florence,
he formed a friendship with Fra Bartolommeo, in whose work he
doubtless found something to assimilate. Some years afterwards,
Fra Bartolommeo went to Rome, where he painted a figure of
St. Paul, and part of one of St. Peter (now in the Quirinal),
leaving Raphael to finish the work. Fra Bartolommeo suffered
from ill-health, and died at the early age of 42.
The contributions made by Fra Bartolommeo to Italian art were
fourfold. He exhibited a scientific scheme of composition
based on principles of strict symmetry, and in this respect
he was the precursor of Raphael. In colouring he was equal
to the best of his contemporaries; in his better works
brilliance is combined with harmony of tone in a very charming
manner. In some of his works, however, the attempt to adopt
the chiaroscuro of Leonardo led to an over-darkening of
the shadows. Vasari noticed even in his day that the use
of printer's-black and ivory-black had caused some of Fra
Bartolommeo's shadows to become unduly heavy. In his landscape
backgrounds, Fra Bartolommeo showed a considerable advance on
his predecessors. "Everything is true and harmonious, up to
its intention, which is to be simple, calm, consistent, and
real,--real, and yet breathing an idyllic beauty." Lastly, he
was the inventor of the "lay figure." "He always considered
it advisable," says Vasari, "to have the living object before
him when he worked; and the better to execute his draperies,
arms, and things of similar kind, he caused a figure, the site
of life, to be made in wood, with the limbs moveable at the
joints, and on this he then arranged the real draperies."
Fra Bartolommeo's range was limited. He is seen at his best
not in works (such as the fresco of the "Last Judgment," now
in the picture gallery of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova)
which call for the exercise of powerful imagination, but in
Madonna pieces. "Nature made Fra Bartolommeo," says Symonds,
"the painter of adoration." He excels in the poetry of simple
religious feeling. His works are rare outside Italy. Copies
from some of his frescoes at Florence are in the Arundel
Society's Collection; but the treasure city of Fra Bartolommeo
at his best is Lucca. Few figures in Italian art have been more
often copied and photographed than his charming little angel
who sings at the foot of the Madonna's throne in the Cathedral
of Lucca.
Fra Bartolommeo's pictures "sum up," says Ruskin, "the principles of
great Italian religious art in its finest period,--serenely luminous
sky,--full light on the faces; local colour the dominant power over
a chiaroscuro more perfect because subordinate; absolute serenity of
emotion and gesture; and rigid symmetry in composition." And elsewhere
he speaks of "the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and
heavenly light, holy and undefined, and glorious with the changeless
passion of eternity, which sanctify with their shadeless peace the deep
and noble conceptions of the early school of Italy--of Fra Bartolommeo,
Perugino, and the early mind of Raffaelle" (_Modern Painters_, vol. i.
pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. i. § 22, and epilogue of 1883 to vol. ii.). Some
trace of these characteristics may be found in the present picture. It
is bright in colour, balanced in composition, simple in feeling, and
shows a charming Tuscan landscape. Thoroughly Tuscan also is the type
of peasant Madonna, with her brown hair tied up in a blue handkerchief.
The infant Christ is almost grotesque, but the little St. John may
take his place among Fra Bartolommeo's collection of sweet child-faces.
Our picture[253] is ascribed to the years 1507-9. In the Corsini
Gallery at Rome is a repetition of it done at a later period, with the
figures, life-sized, reversed, and with St. Joseph added to complete
the pyramidal composition.