Fra Bartolomeo

“ Fra Bartolomeo, "the last master of this period, first gave gradation to colour, form and masses to drapery, and a grave dignity, till then unknown, to execution." His was the merit of having weaned Raffaelle "from the meanness of Pietro Perugino, and prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo Buonarotti." Mr Fuseli is inspired by his admiration of that wonderful man, as painter, sculptor, and architect. ”

“ I recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike or child-like, and unspiritualized; even Fra Bartolomeo's might with advantage be spared from the pictures at Lucca, and, in the hands of inferior men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants; those of Domenichino in the Madonna del Rosario, and Martyrdom of St. Agnes, are peculiarly offensive, studies of bare-legged children howling and kicking in volumes of smoke. ”

“ The treatment is clearly devotional and ideal where attendant saints and votaries stand or kneel around, contemplating with devout gratitude or ecstatic wonder the divine mystery. Thus, in a remarkable and most beautiful picture by Fra Bartolomeo, the Virgin is seated on her throne; the angel descends from on high bearing his lily: around the throne attend St. John the Baptist and St. Francis, St. Jerome, St. Paul, and St. Margaret. (Bologna Gal.) Again, in a very beautiful picture by Francia, Mary stands in the midst of an open landscape ”

“ Sometimes the imagination is assisted by the choice of the accessories; thus Fra Bartolomeo has given us, in the background of his group, Moses holding the broken table of the old law; and Francia represents in the same manner the sacrifice of Abraham; for thus did Mary bring her Son as an offering. In many pictures Simeon raises his eyes to heaven in gratitude; but those painters who wished to express the presence of the Divinity in the person of Christ, made Simeon looking at the Child, and addressing him as "Lord." ”

“ As a separate manner, it can scarcely be said to exist; for at most it was but a new instrument in the possession of a mind which has made everything its own. All that is apparent amounts merely to a progressive melioration, extending through three or four years, of which space he resided nearly two in Florence, studying the performances of art in that city, but receiving no personal instructions, excepting a reciprocal interchange of knowledge with Fra Bartolomeo. ”

“ Leonardo da Vinci, whom Giovanni Sanzi couples with Perugino, as
"Two youths of equal years and equal love,"
was then at the height of his fame, and in direct competition with Michael Angelo, the eventual rival of Raffaele, whose energetic genius was already striding forward on his ambitious career. Fra Bartolomeo was adapting their new and advanced style to the devotional feeling which hung around his cloister in the frescoes of Beato Angelico. ”

“ Lanzi tells us she was of a noble Florentine family, and born in 1523. She had no assistance in developing her remarkable talent but her study of the designs of Fra Bartolomeo, one of the best masters of the Florentine school. She became a nun of the Dominican convent of St. Catherine of Sienna in Florence, and having acquired considerable reputation by her skill in painting, finished for the church a Descent [Pg 43] from the Cross, said to be from a design by Andrea del Sarto ”

“ In the fourth, also by him, other two famous pictures on wood, the Madonna della Stella and the Coronation of Mary. Turning to the right we find all the cells (as far as that of Savonarola) , with paintings by Fra. Benedetto or some pupil of Angelico. In the middle of this corridor is the beautiful Madonna enthroned, an admirable work of B. Angelico. At the end, in a kind of chapel, are two Madonnas on the wall by Fra. Bartolomeo: a Virgin in terra invetriata, by L. della Robbia; the bust of Savonarola, full of expression, modelled by Bastianini ”

“ In design and attitude it corresponds to the one described by Vasari, the saint being in a niche, surrounded by a double cornice. The left arm is bound; the right, with its cord hanging, is upraised in attitude of the faith, so fully expressed in the beautiful face. Three arrows are fixed in the body, which is nude except a slight veil across the loins; an angel, also nude, holds the palm to him. Connoisseurs do not think this painting equal in merit to the other works of Fra Bartolommeo. ”

“ Bernard's face, his white robe contrasts well with two saints behind him, which carry out Fra Bartolommeo's favourite triangular grouping, and with a rich harmony of colour balance his white robe.
The Virgin is drawn with great nobility and grace, her drapery admirably majestic, yet airy, and a sweet, infantile playfulness renders the Child charming. The angels beneath the Virgin's feet are lovely, but the group of seraphs behind are the least pleasing of all. They are of the earth, earthy, and seem reminiscences of the Florentine maidens the artist met in the streets. ”

“ The Christ is a fine nude figure standing in a niche, and in it Fra Bartolommeo has solved the problem of obtaining complete relief almost in monochrome, so little do the lights of the flesh tints, and the warm yellowish tinge of the background differ from each other. All the positive colour is in the drapery of the saints, one in red and green, and another in red and blue. The two angels are exquisitely drawn, and contrast well in their natural innocence with the sentimental pair in Raphael's Madonna of the Baldacchino on the same wall of the Pitti Palace. ”

“ The work, if it had been painted in the larger form, would have been a perfect masterpiece of composition, "a very Beethoven symphony in colour," if we may judge from the sketch at Panshanger, where a living crowd groups round the bier of the archbishop, and life, earnestness, harmony, and richness, are all intense.
So ill was Fra Bartolommeo in 1517 that he was ordered to take the baths at San Filippo, thence he went for the last time to Pian di Mugnone, where he painted a Vision of the Saviour to Mary Magdalen, above the door of the chapel. ”

“ We come to a second gentle monk, not unlike Fra Angelico in his nature, but far less happy than Fra Angelico, in having been born in stormy times. Fra Bartolommeo, called also Baccio della Porta, or Bartholomew of the gate, from the situation of his lodgings when a young man, but scarcely known in Italy by any other name than that of Il Frate, or the Friar, was born near Florence, and trained from his boyhood to be a painter. ”

“ The preparing of the panels fell to the work of one of the monk scholars, Fra Andrea. [Footnote: The books of the convent have a note of payment to Fra Bartolommeo for 20th March, 1512, "per parte di lavoro di Fra Andrea converse per mettere d'oro, et ingessare alle tavole nella bottega in diversi lavori" (Padre Marchese, Memorie, lib. ii. chap. in. p. 70) .] Then the master made his sketch in white, or "sgraffito" (i.e. graven on the plaster) , as in the architectural lines of the pictures of patron saints in the Uffizi, and the Marriage of S. Catherine in the Pitti Palace ”

“ The nuns of S. Giuliano employed him to paint two pictures, both of which are now in the Belle Arti. One is an altarpiece; the Madonna enthroned, with the Divine Child in her arms. Era Bartolommeo's idea of an angel-sustained canopy is here, but the angels hold it up from the outside instead of the inside. Before her are S. John the Baptist, S. Julian, S. Nicholas, and S. Dominic. The S. Julian has a great similarity to the S. Michael of Perugino, and the S. John, by its good modelling, shows the result of his studies from the antique in the Medici garden. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Matteo and I looked at one another; we had the same thought. Bartolomeo spoke.
'Anticipate him!'
We both started, for they were my very words. Checco gave a cry.
'You too! That thought has been with me night and day! Anticipate him! Kill him! But I dare not think of it. I cannot kill him.'
'You must,' said Bartolomeo.
'Take care we are not heard,' said Oliva.
'The doors are well fastened.'
'You must,' repeated Bartolomeo. 'It is the only course left you. And what is more, you must make haste—for he will not delay. The lives of all of us are at stake. He will not be satisfied with you ”

“ The background is an intricate piece of architecture with vaulted roof, showing that he too had profited by Raphael's instructions in perspective to Fra Bartolommeo.
The Virgin is a tender sweet figure; indeed no artist has given more gracious dignity to womanhood than Albertinelli, although his detractors say his life showed no great respect for it. Above, the Almighty is seen in a yellow light with a circle of angels and seraphs around. It is strange how the realistic painters stopped at nothing, not even the representation of the eternal in a human form. ”

“ In the church of San Romano also there is a picture by Fra Bartolommeo, the Madonna della Misericordia namely, the painting is on canvas, and is placed on a projection of stone, angels support her mantle, and around her is a concourse of people scattered over a flight of steps, some seated, others standing, but all with their looks turned earnestly towards a figure of Christ appearing in the heavens, and showering down lightnings and thunder-bolts upon the people. ”

“ Davide was not a perfect artist, although a good mosaicist, as his works in the cathedrals of Orvieto, Siena, and Florence show, but he was for many years Ridolfo's only instructor. As the boy grew up Ridolfo frequented those public schools of art before spoken of, the Brancacci Chapel, and the study of the cartoons in the Papal Hall. Here he secured the friendship not only of Granacci and Pier di Cosimo, but of Raphael himself, with whom he visited Fra Bartolommeo in his convent. ”

“ They had been much interested in the many examples of Fra Bartolommeo's painting that are in San Marco—where he, as well as Fra Angelico, had been a monk;—in the Academy, and in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries; and had learned to recognize the peculiarities of his grouping of figures, and their abstract, devotional faces, his treatment of draperies, and the dear little angels, with their musical instruments, that are so often sitting at the feet of his madonnas. ”

“ On Fra Bartolommeo the spirituality of Fra Angelico still lingered, while the perfection of Raphael illumined him. Andrea del Sarto, on the other side, had gathered into his hands the gleams of genius from all the great artists who were his elder contemporaries, and so blending them as to form seemingly a style of his own, distinct from any, has left on our walls and in our galleries hundreds of masterpieces of colour, as gay and varied as the tints the orientals weave into their wondrous fabrics. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Had that but found expression in their cloistral pictures, one of the most peculiar and characteristic flowers of art the world has ever known, would then have bloomed in Florence. The mantle of Savonarola, however, if it fell upon any painter, fell on Michael Angelo, and we must seek an echo of the friar's thunders in the Sistine Chapel. Fra Bartolommeo was too tender and too timid. The sublimities of tragic passion lay beyond his scope. Though I have ventured to call him the painter of adoration, he did not feel even this movement of the soul with the intensity of Fra Angelico. ”

“ Let him think the safety of us all depends on him. He is a man you can only move by his feeling for others.'
'I believe you,' he answered. 'But I will go to him, and I will leave no argument unused.'
'I am sure that your efforts will be rewarded.'
Here I showed myself a perfectly wise man, for I only prophesied because I knew.
XXI IN the evening Bartolomeo returned to the Palace and asked for Checco. At his request Matteo and I joined him in Checco's study, and besides there were his two sons, Scipione and Alessandro. Bartolomeo was graver than ever. ”

“ To what extent it influenced the style of Raphael, will be afterwards discussed. As a colourist, Fra Bartolommeo was equal to the best of his contemporaries, and superior to any of his rivals in the school of Florence. Few painters of any age have combined harmony of tone so perfectly with brilliance and richness. It is a real joy to contemplate the pure and splendid folds of the white drapery he loved to place in the foreground of his altar-pieces. Solidity and sincerity distinguish his work in every detail, while his feeling is remarkable for elevation and sobriety. ”