Fra Bartolommeo
By Leader Scott
CHAPTER IX.
PART I.
SCHOLARS OF FRA BARTOLOMMEO.
Of these, little more than the names have come down to us. Vasari speaks of Benedetto Cianfanini, Gabbriele Rustici, and Fra Paolo Pistojese; Padre Marchese mentions two monks, Fra Andrea and Fra Agostino. Of these, the two first never became proficient, and have left no works behind them. Fra Andrea seems to have been more a journeyman than scholar, being employed to prepare the panels and lay on the gilding. Fra Agostino assisted his master, and Fra Paolo in the subordinate parts of a few frescoes, especially at Luco in the Mugnone. Fra Paolo is the most known, but chiefly as a far-off imitator of Fra Bartolommeo, without his mellowness of execution. His pictures are mostly from his master’s designs, which were left him as a legacy, and this ensures a good composition.
He was born at Pistoja in 1490; his father, Bernardino d’ Antonio del Signoraccio, a second-rate artist, taught him the first principles of art. His knowledge of drawing caused him to be noticed by Fra Bartolommeo, when at a very early age he entered the order. He was removed from Prato to San Marco, Florence, in 1503; and here he found another friend who assisted his artistic tendencies. This was Fra Ambrogio della Robbia, [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., lib. in. chap. ii. p. 246.] who taught him to model in clay; a specimen of his work exists in the Church of Sta. Maddalena in Pian di Mugnone, where are two statues of S. Domenico and Mary Magdalen by his hand.
His best work is a Crucifixion at Siena, dated 1516, which has been thought to be Fra Bartolommeo’s; but though that master was asked to go and paint it as a memorial of a certain Messer Cherubino Ridolfo, his many occupations prevented his accepting the commission, and his disciples, Fra Paolo and Fra Agostino, went in his place. [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., lib. in. chap. ii. p. 251.] Possibly the master supplied the design, which is very harmonious. The Virgin and S. John stand on each side of the cross, and Saint Catherine of Siena and Mary Magdalen are prostrate before it. One or two of the female saints are pleasing, but the nude figure of Christ is hard, exaggerated, and faulty in drawing.
The artists got thirty-five lire for the work, though the record in the archives allows that it was worth more. There is an Assumption in the Belle Arti of Florence, of which the design is Fra Bartolommeo’s, but the colouring Fra Paolo’s. It was painted for the Dominican monks at Santa Maria del Sasso, near Bibbiena. The colouring is hard and weak, the shadows heavy, and not fused well in the half tints. Two monks on the left are tolerably life-like, probably they were drawn from living models; the S. Catherine on the right is very inferior.
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.
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