SAN MARCO. A.D. 1496-1500.
Padre Marchese, himself a Dominican, speaks thus of his convent:--"San
Marco has within its walls the Renaissance, a compendium in two artists.
Fra Angelico, the painter of the ideal, Fra Bartolommeo, of form. The
first closes the antique Tuscan school. He who has seen Fra Angelico,
has seen also Giotto, Cimabue, &c. The second represents the modern
school. In him are almost comprised Masaccio, Lorenzo di Credi,
Leonardo, Buonarroti, and Andrea del Sarto."
The first, Fra Angelico, "sets himself to contemplate in God the fount
and architype of the beautiful, and, as much as is possible to mortal
hands, reproduces and stamps it in those works which a sensual mind
cannot understand, but which to the heavenly soul speak an eloquent
language. Fra Bartolommeo, with more analysis, works thoughtfully ... he
ascends from the effect to the cause, and in created things contemplates
a reflection of spiritual beauty."
It is true the Dominican order has been as great a patron of arts as the
Franciscan of literature. It united with Niccolo Pisano to give form
to national architecture. It had sculptors, miniaturists, and glass
painters. As a building San Marco has been a shrine of art; since the
time that Michelozzi, with the assistance of the Medici, built the
convent for Sant' Antonino, and Fra Angelico left the impress of his
soul on the walls, a long line of artist monks has lived within
its cloisters. With San Marco our story has now to deal, for it is
impossible to write Fra Bartolommeo's life without touching on the
well-known history of Savonarola. The great preacher's influence in
these years, from 1492 to 1497, entered into almost every individual
in Florence, either to draw them to devotion, or to stir them up to the
greatest opposition.
The artists, whose minds were probably the most impressional, were his
fervent adherents. He has been accused of being the ruin of art, but
"this cry has only arisen in our time; the silence of contemporaries,
although not friendly to him, proves that he was not in that century so
accused." [Footnote: Gino Capponi, _Storia delta Republica di Firenze_,
lib. vi. chap. ii.] The only mention of anything of artistic value is a
"tavoliere" [Footnote: A chess or draught board.] of rich work, spoken
of by Burlamacchi and Benivieni, in a "Canzone di un Piagnone sul
bruciamento delle Vanità." Savonarola himself was an artist and musician
in early life, the love of the beautiful was strong within him, only
he would have it go hand in hand with the good and true. His dominant
spirit was that of reform; as he tried to regenerate mind, morals,
literature, and state government, so he would reform art, and fling over
it the spiritual light which illumed his own soul.
It was natural that such a mind should act on the devotional character
of Baccio. What could he do but join when every church was full of
worshippers, each shrine at the street corners had a crowd of devout
women on their knees before it--when thousands of faces were uplifted in
the vast expanse of the Duomo, and every face burned with fervour as the
divine flame from the preacher lit the lamp of each soul--when in the
streets he met long processions of men, women, and children, the echoes
of whose hymns (Laudi) filled the narrow streets, and went up to the
clear air above them?
Then came that strange carnival when there were no maskers in the city,
but white-robed boys went from house to house to collect the vanities
for the burning--when the flames of the fires, hitherto saturnalian,
were the flames of a holocaust, wherein each one cast the sins and
temptations, even the pretty things which, though dear to himself,
withdrew him from God. And when the white-robed boys came to the studio
of the friends at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini, with what sighs and
self-immolation Baccio looked for the last time at some of his studies
which he judged to come under the head of _anathemata_, and handed them
over to the acolytes. How Mariotto's soul, warm to Pagan art, burned
within him at this sacrifice! And how he would talk more than ever
against the monks, and hang up his own cartoons and studies of the Greek
Venus in the studio for Baccio's behoof!
In these years we have no notice of authentic works done by the youthful
partners, though biographers talk of their having commissions for
madonnas, and other works of art.
In 1497 Francesco Valori, the grand-featured, earnest admirer of
Savonarola, became Gonfaloniere in the time of Piero de' Medici's exile,
[Footnote: Gino Capponi, _Storia delta Republica di Firenze_, lib. vi.
chap. xi. p. 233.] and the friar's party was in the ascendent. Rosini
[Footnote: _Storia delta Pittura_, chap. xvii. p. 48.] says that
belonging to a faction was a means of fame, and that the Savonarola
party was powerful, giving this as a reason for Baccio's partisanship;
but this we can hardly believe, his whole life proved his earnestness.
He was much beloved in Florence for his calm upright nature and good
qualities. He delighted in the society of pious and learned men, spent
much time in the convent, where he had many friends among the monks; yet
with all he kept still faithful to his early friend Mariotto, whose
life was cast so differently. Savonarola's faction was powerful, but the
Medici had still adherents who stirred up a strong party against him.
His spirit of reform at length aroused the ire of the Pope, who forbade
him to preach. He disobeyed, and the sermons on Ezekiel were scenes
of tumult; no longer a group of rapt faces dwelling on his words, but
frowns, murmurs, and anathemas from a crowd only kept off him by a
circle of armed adherents round his pulpit.
At length, on June 22nd, the excommunication by Pope Alessandro VI.
(Borgia) fell like a thunderclap, and the Medicean youths marched in
triumphant procession with torches and secular music to burlesque the
Laudi; no doubt Albertinelli was one of these, while Baccio grieved
among the awestruck friars in the convent.
In 1498 Savonarola again lifted up his voice; the church was not large
enough, so he preached beneath the blue sky on the Piazza San Marco;
and Fra Domenico Buonvicini da Pescia, in the eagerness of partisanship,
said that his master's words would stand the ordeal of fire. Then came
that tumultuous day of April 7th, the "Sunday of the Olives," when the
Franciscans and Dominicans argued while the fire burnt out before
them, when Savonarola's great spirit quailed within him, and the ordeal
failed; a merciful rain quenching the flames which none dared to brave
save the undaunted Fra Domenico himself.
There was no painting done in the studio on that day we may be sure.
Baccio was one of the surging, conflicting crowd gathered beneath the
mingling shadows of Orcagna's arches and Arnolfo's great palace, and at
eventide he was one of the armed partisans who protected the friar back
to his convent, menaced not only by rains from heaven, but by the stormy
wrath of an angry populace, defrauded of the sight they came to see.
The next day was the one which determined the painter's future life.
There was in the city a curious process of crystallisation of all the
particles held in solution round the fire the previous day. The Palazzo
Vecchio attracted about its doors the "Arrabiati." The "Compagnacci"
assembled, armed, by the Duomo. The streets were full of detached
parties of Piagnoni, treading ways of peril to their centre, San Marco.
Passions raged and seethed all day, till at the hour of vespers a cry
arose, "_à San Marco_," and thither the multitude--500 Compagnacci, and
300 Palleschi--rushed, armed with picks and arquebusses, &c. They killed
some stray Piagnoni whom they found praying by a shrine, and placed
guards at the streets which led to the convent; then the assault began.
The church was dimly lighted. Savonarola and Fra Domenico kneeled on the
steps of the altar, with many worshippers around them, singing tremulous
hymns; amongst these were Francesco Valori, Ridolfi, and Baccio della
Porta, but all armed, as Cronaca tells us. They still sang hymns when
the doors were attacked with stones; then leaving the priests and women
to pray for them the men rushed to the defence.
Old Valori, with a few brave friends, guarded the door; others made
loop-holes of the windows and fired out; some went up the campanile, and
some on the roof. Baccio fought bravely among the rest. The Palleschi
were almost repulsed, but at length succeeded in setting fire to the
doors. The church was filled with smoke; a turbulent crowd rushed wildly
in. Savonarola saw his people fall dead beside him on the altar steps,
and, taking up the Sacrament, he fled to the Greek library, where
the messengers of the Signoria came and arrested both himself and Fra
Domenico. It was in the fierce fight that ensued when the enemies poured
in, laying hands sacrilegiously on every thing sacred, that Baccio made
the vow that if he were saved this peril, he would take the habit--a vow
which certainly was not made in a cowardly spirit, he fighting to the
death, and then espousing the losing cause. [Footnote: Gino Capponi,
lib. vi. chaps. i. and ii., and Padre Marchese, _San Marco_, p. 147 _et
seq._]
Then came that sad 23rd of May, the eve of the Ascension, when three
martyrs went calmly to their death beneath the shadow of the old palace,
amidst the insults of an infuriated crowd, and Arno's yellow waters
received their ashes. [Footnote: Capponi, chap. ii. p. 253.]
[Illustration: SAVONAROLO AS PETER MARTYR. BY FRA BARTOLOMMEO. _In the
Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence_.]
After the death of Savonarola the party had many defaulters; but
Baccio, the Delia Robbias, Credi, Cronaca, and many other artists, were
faithful, and even showed their grief by abandoning for a time the arts
they loved. "It almost seemed as if with him they had lost the sacred
flame from which their fervid imagination drew life and aliment."
[Footnote: Marchese, _San Marco_, lib. iii. p. 261.]
While all these events had been taking place, Baccio had worked as often
as his perturbed spirit would allow, at a great fresco of the _Last
Judgment_, in a chapel of the cemetery of S. Maria Nuova. A certain
Gerozzi, di Monna Venna Dini, gave him the commission, and as far as he
had gone, the painter had given entire satisfaction. This fresco, his
first as far as is known, shows Baccio's style as fully as his later
ones. We have here his great harmony of form, and intense suggestiveness
in composition. The infinity of heaven is emblematised in circles of
saints and cherubim around the enthroned Christ. The cross, a link
between heaven and earth, is borne by a trinity of angels; S. Michael,
as the avenging spirit, stands a powerful figure in the foreground
dividing the saved from the lost; the whole composition forming a
heavenward cross on an earthly foundation. There are no caves and
holes of torture with muscular bodies writhing within them; but in the
despairing figures passing away on the right, some with heads bowed on
clasped hands, others lifting up faces and arms in a vain cry for mercy,
what suggestions there are of infinite remorse!--more dignified far than
the distorted sufferers in the torture pits of previous masters. These
are just indicated by two demons, and a subterranean fire behind the
unblest souls. Miss Owen, [Footnote: _Art Schools of Christendom_,
edited by Prof. Ruskin.] speaking Mr. Ruskin's sentiments, calls this
a great falling off from Giotto and Orcagna's conceptions; but though
theirs may be more powerful and terrible, a greater suggestion of
Christian religion is here.
They, and later, Michelangelo, flung Dante's great struggling soul in
tangible forms upon the walls, and embodied his poem, awful, grand, and
earnest, with all the human passion intensified into human suffering.
Fra Bartolommeo shows the Christian spirit; his faces look beyond the
present judgment, and, instead of wrath, mercy is the predominating
idea. It is like the difference in spirit between the Old Testament and
the New.
The painter's reverence of Fra Angelico, and estimation of the divinity
of art, is shown by Fra Angelico being placed among the saints of heaven
on the right of the Saviour.
Leonardo's instructions for shading off a light sky will occur to any
one who studies the finely gradated tints mingling with the clouds
around the celestial group. But grand as the fresco is, and interesting
as it must have been to the artist at this time, when thoughts of
Savonarola mingled with every stroke, he felt he was not fulfilling his
true mission in the world. Drawn more and more to the convent, hallowed
to him by the memory of the martyr-friar, he was also more attuned to
thoughts of retirement by family bereavements--one young brother, Piero,
only being left to him out of the whole circle. The reluctance to leave
this youth alone may have deferred for a time his taking the monastic
vows; but having placed him under the guardianship of Santi Pagnini, a
Dominican, he consigned the _Last Judgment_ to Mariotto to finish, and
leaving his worldly goods to his brother, took the habit in the convent
of S. Domenico, at Prato, on July 26th, 1500, two years after first
making the resolution. His year of probation over, he took the final
vows and became Fra Bartolommeo.
A document in S. Marco proves that he was possessed of worldly goods
when he entered, [Footnote: Rosini, _Storia della Pittura_, chap xxvii.]
among which were the house of his father in S. Pier Gattolini, and
the podere at Brozzi. Having once given himself up to monasticism, Fra
Bartolommeo would offer no half-service, his brushes were left behind
with all other worldly things, and here closes Baccio della Porta's
first artistic career.
His sun was set only to rise again to greater brilliance in the future
as Fra Bartolommeo, a name famous for ever in the annals of art.