To sum up all, he knew how to excel at pleasure, in every department of painting. His design is most chaste, and his youthful faces are more full and fleshy than was usual with Raffaello; and according to Algarotti, they are but little elevated above the standard of ordinary men, and approach to vulgarity. His tints at one period abounded with shadows produced by lamp black or ivory black, which impairs the value of some of his pictures; but he gradually acquired a better manner, and, as we have related, was able to instruct Raffaello. In firmness and clearness he yields not to the best of the school of Lombardy. He was the inventor of a new method of casting draperies; having taught the use of the wooden figure, with moveable joints, that serves admirably for the study of the folds of drapery. None of his school painted them more varied and natural, with more breadth, or better adapted to the limbs. His works are to be seen in several private collections in Florence; but they are rare beyond the precincts of that city: they are there eagerly sought after by foreigners, but are very rarely to be sold. One of his Madonnas was procured within these few years by his Excellency the Major-Domo of the ducal household, whose collection may be reckoned another Florentine Gallery in miniature, consisting of about thirty pictures of the best masters of different schools. The Fathers of S. Mark have a considerable number of his paintings in their private chapel, and among these is a S. Vincenzo, said by Bottari to resemble a work of Tiziano or Giorgione. His best and rarest performances are in the possession of the Prince, in whose collection the last work of Fra Bartolommeo remains, a large picture in chiaroscuro, representing the patron saints of the city surrounding the Virgin Mary. The Gonfalonier Soderini intended this piece for the Hall of the Council of State; but it was left only as a design at the death of its author, in 1517, like the projected works of Vinci and Bonarruoti. It would seem as if some fatality attended the decoration of this building, which ought to have employed the pencil of the greatest native artists. Among this number Frate must undoubtedly be included; and Richardson remarks, that had he possessed the happy combinations of Raffaello, he, perhaps, would not have been second to that master.[168] The last mentioned production, though imperfect, is looked upon as a model in the art. The method of this artist was first to draw the figure naked, then to drape it, and to form a chiaroscuro, sometimes in oils, that marked the distribution of the light and shadow, which constituted his great study, and the soul of his pictures. This large picture demonstrates such preparatives; and it has as high a value in painting, as the antique plaster models have in sculpture, in which Winckelmann discovers the stamp of genius and compass of design better than in sculptured marbles.