Albertinelli, Mariotto, 1474-1515; Bartolomeo, fra, 1472-1517; Sarto, Andrea del, 1486-1530
The Belle Arti also possesses a _Deposition from the Cross_, which Fra
Bartolommeo had sketched out and left uncoloured at Pian di Mugnone. In
1519 Fra Paolo finished it, and it presents the usual disparity between
the composition and colouring, the former being good, the latter weak
and crude. His best known works are a Nativity in the Palazzo Borghese,
a _Madonna and Child with S. John Baptist_ in the Sciarra Colonna, also
in Rome; a _Madonna and Child with S. John_ in the Corsini Gallery,
Florence, and another of the same subject in the Antinori Palace. He
painted also at San Gimignano, Pian di Mugnone, and Pistoja, and died of
sunstroke in 1547.
He had as a follower a Suor Plautilla Nelli, born 1523, daughter of a
noble Florentine, Piero di Luca Nelli. She took the vows at the age
of fourteen, in the convent of S. Caterina di Siena, in Via Larga (now
Cavour), Florence. Her sister, Suor Petronilla, in the same convent,
was a writer, and her life of Savonarola is still extant. Suor Plautilla
taught herself to paint. Legend says, that in order to study the nude
for a Christ, she drew from the corpse of a nun--which might account for
the weak stiffness of her design. Fra Paolo, though there is no record
of his having taught her, left her as a legacy the designs and cartoons
of Fra Bartolommeo, one of which, the _Pietà_, she has evidently made
use of in the painting in the Belle Arti. The grouping is that of the
_Pietà_ of Fra Bartolommeo, now in the Pitti, of which she must have
had the original sketch, for she has put in the two saints in the
background, which have been painted out in that of the Frate, but we
will give her the entire credit of the colouring, which is extremely
crude; the contrasting blues and yellows are in inharmonious tones, the
shading harsh, and the whole picture wanting in chiaroscuro. The Corsini
Gallery, Florence, has a _Virgin and Child_ by her.
PART II.
The scholars of Mariotto Albertinelli were much more important in the
annals of art, the principal ones being Bugiardini, Francia Bigio,
Visino, and Innocenza d' Imola.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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