Albertinelli, Mariotto, 1474-1515; Bartolomeo, fra, 1472-1517; Sarto, Andrea del, 1486-1530
His namesake, Baccio di Monte Lupo, a sculptor who had fled from
Florence after the death of Savonarola, and who had fought side by side
with Baccio in the siege of S. Mark's church, was in Venice at that
time, working on the tomb of Benedetto da Pesaro in the church of the
Frati, and he was only too delighted to show the beauties of the Queen
of the Adriatic to an artistic mind. Tintoretto was not yet born; Titian
was only just rising into fame, though his style had not yet become what
it was after Giorgione's influence; but Fra Bartolommeo must have found
much that was sympathetic in the exquisite works of Giovanni Bellini and
his school, and much to admire in the glorious colouring of Giorgione.
Father Dalzano, the vicar of the monastery of S. Peter Martyr at Murano,
gave the Florentine monk a commission for a picture of the value of
seventy or 100 ducats. Not having time to paint this during his stay, he
promised to execute it on his return to Florence, and the vicar paid him
in advance twenty-eight ducats in money and colours; the rest was to be
raised by the sale of some MS. letters from S. Catherine of Siena, which
a friend of Father Dalzano near Florence held in possession.
Fra Bartolommeo, having brought home from the Venetian school a new
impulse for painting, and wishing to diffuse the religious influence of
art more widely, desired to enlarge his atelier and school at San Marco.
His only assistants in the convent were Fra Paolino of Pistoja, and one
or two miniaturists, who were only good at missals. Fra Paolino (born
1490) took the vows at a very early age, and was removed to Florence
from Prato with Fra Bartolommeo. He was the son of a painter, Bernardino
di Antonio, but though he learned the first principles from him, his
real art was imbibed from the Frate, under whom, together with Mariotto,
he worked for years.
But this youthful scholar was not enough for Fra Bartolommeo's new
energies. He pined for his old friend, Mariotto, who could follow out
his designs in his own style so closely, that an unpractised eye could
not see the difference of hand; and such was his influence on the rulers
of the order, that they allowed a most unique partnership to be entered
into.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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