Albertinelli, Mariotto, 1474-1515; Bartolomeo, fra, 1472-1517; Sarto, Andrea del, 1486-1530
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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