Fra Bartolommeo
By Leader Scott
CHAPTER II.
THE “BOTTEGA” OF COSIMO ROSELLI.
A.D. 1475-1486.
Amongst the thousand arteries in which the life blood of the Renaissance coursed in all its fulness, none were so busy or so important as the “botteghe” of the artists. In these the genius of the great masters, the Pleiades of stars at the culmination of art in Florence, was either tenderly nursed, or sharply pruned into vigour by struggling against discouragement and envy. In these the spirit of awakened devotion found an outlet, in altarpieces and designs for church frescoes which were to influence thousands. Here the spirit of poetry, brooding in the mysterious lines of Dante, or echoing from past ages in the myths of the Greeks, took form and glowed on the walls in mighty cartoons to be made imperishable in fresco. Here the spirit of luxury was satisfied by beautiful designs for ornaments, dress stuffs, tapestries, vases and “cassoni,” &c., which brought beauty into every life, and made each house a poem. The soul, the mind, and the body, could alike be supplied at those fountains of the beautiful, the artshops or schools.
Whilst Michelangelo as a youth was drawing from the cartoons of the Sassetti chapel in the school of Domenico Ghirlandajo, Cosimo Roselli was just receiving as a pupil a boy only a little behind him in genius. A small, delicate-faced, spiritual-eyed boy of nine years, known as Baccio della Porta, who came with a roll of drawings under his arm and high hopes in his soul, no doubt trotting along manfully beside Cosimo’s old friend, Benedetto da Majano, the sculptor, who had recommended his being placed in the studio.
By the table given in the note [Footnote: Pietro, a Genoese, came in 1400 to the parish of S. Michele, at Montecuccioli in Mugello; he was a peasant, and had a son Jacopo, who was father of Paolo, the muleteer; and three other sons, Bartolo, Giusto, and Jacopo, who had a podere at Soffignano, near Prato. Paolo married first Bartolommea, daughter of Zanobi di Gallone, by whom he had a son, Bartolommeo, known as Baccio della Porta, born 1475. The first wife dying, Paolo married Andrea di Michaele di Cenni, who had four sons, Piero, Domenico, Michele, and Francesco; only Piero lived to grow up, and he became a priest. [Favoured by Sig. Milanesi.] it will be seen that Baccio was the son of Paolo, a muleteer, which no doubt was a profitable trade in those days when the country roads were mere mule-tracks, and the traffic between different towns was carried on almost entirely by horses and mulepacks. There is some doubt as to the place of Baccio’s birth, which occurred in 1475. Vasari gives it as Savignano near Prato; Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: Vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 427.] assert it was Suffignano, near Florence, where they say Paolo’s brothers, Jacopo and Giusto, were contadini or peasants.
But on consulting the post-office authorities we find no place called Suffignano near Florence; it must therefore have been a village near Prato called Soffignano, which from similarity of sound Vasari confused with the larger place, Savignano. This is the more probable, for Rosini asserts that “Benedetto da Majano, who had bought a podere near Prato, knew him and took him into his affections, and by his means placed him with Cosimo.” [Footnote: Rosini, Storia della Pittura, chap. xvii. p. 47.]
It is certainly probable that Paolo’s wife lived with his family during his wanderings, because it is the true Italian custom, and Baccio was in that case born in his uncle’s house; for it is not till 1480 that we find Paolo retired from trade and set up in a house of his own in Florence at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini, now the Porta Romana.
The friendship begun at Prato must have been continued in Florence, for in 1480 Paolo not only owned that house at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini, but was the proud possessor of a podere at Brozzi, which yielded six barrels of wine. He is a merciful man too, for among his possessions are two mules disutili e vecchi (old and useless). At this time Baccio was six years old, and his three stepbrothers quite babies. [Footnote: Archives of Florence, Portate al Castato, 1480-1.] Paolo, as well as his mules, had earned his repose, being certainly old, if not useless, and was anxious for his little sons to be placed out in the world as early as possible. Thus it came that in 1484 Baccio was taken away from his brothers, who played under the shadow of the old gateway, and was put to do the drudgery of the apprenticeship to art. He had to grind colours for Cosimo–who, as we know, used a great deal of colour, having dazzled the eyes of the Pope with the brilliancy of his blue and gold in the Sistine Chapel some years before–he had to sweep out the studio, no doubt assisted by Mariotto Albertinelli, a boy of his own age, and to run errands, carrying designs for inspection to expectant brides who wanted the chests painted to hold their wedding clothes, or doing the messenger between his master and the nuns of S. Ambrogio, who paid Cosimo their gold florins by the hand of the boy in 1484 and 1485. [Footnote: Note to Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 429.]
Whether his age made him a more acceptable means of communication with the nuns, or whether Pier di Cosimo, the elder pupil, already displayed his hatred of womankind, I know not; perhaps the boy already showed that innate devotion and especial fitness for sanctity which marks his entire art career. Truly everything in his youthful life combined to lead his thoughts to higher things. The first fresco at which he assisted was in this solemn cloister of St. Ambrogio, and the subject the Miracle of the Sacrament; the saintly air of the place, the calm faces of the white-hooded nuns, must all have had an influence in inspiring his youthful mind with the spirit of devotion.
Baccio’s fellow-students were not many, but they formed an interesting group. Pier di Cosimo was the head man, and eldest of all; with such ties was he bound to his master and godfather, that he was known better as Cosimo’s Peter than by his own patronymic of Chimenti. He was at this time twenty-two years of age, his registry in the Florentine Guild proves his birth in 1462, as the son of Lorenzo, son of Piero, son of Antonio, Chimenti.
Being the eldest of five brothers, it is difficult to conceive how a member of a large family grew up developing such eccentricities as are usually the fruit of isolation.
In the studio Piero was industrious and steady, working earnestly, whether he was assisting his master’s designs or carrying out his own fancies of monsters, old myths, and classic fairy stories. No doubt the two boys, Mariotto and Baccio, found little companionship in this abstracted young man always dreaming over his own ideas. If they told him an anecdote, he would look up vacantly at the end not having heard a word; at other times every little noise or burst of laughter would annoy him, and he would be immoderately angry with the flies and mosquitos.
Piero had already been to Rome, and had assisted Cosimo in his fresco of Christ preaching on Lake Tiberias; indeed most judges thought his landscape the best part of that work, and the talent he showed obtained him several commissions. He took the portraits of Virginio Orsini, Ruberto Sanseverino and Duke Valentino, son of Pope Alessandro VI. He was much esteemed as a portrait painter also in Florence, and from his love of classical subjects, and extreme finish of execution, he ranked as one of the best painters of “cassoni,” or bridal-linen chests.
This fashion excited the indignation of Savonarola, who in one of his sermons exclaimed, “Do not let your daughters prepare their ’corredo’ (trousseau) in a chest with pagan paintings; is it right for a Christian spouse to be familiar with Venus before the Virgin, or Mars before the saints?”
Thus Piero being a finished painter, was often Cosimo Roselli’s substitute in the instruction of the two boys, for Cosimo having come home from Rome with some money, lived at his ease; but still continued to paint frescoes in company with Piero.
Another pupil was Andrea di Cosimo, whose peculiar branch of art was that of the grotesque. He no doubt drew designs for friezes and fountains, for architraves and door mouldings, in which distorted faces look out from all kinds of writhing scrolls; and lizards, dragons, snakes, and creeping plants, mingle according to the artist’s fancy. Andrea was however often employed in more serious work, as the records of the Servite Convent prove, for they contain the note of payment to him, in 1510, for the curtains of the altarpiece which Filippino Lippi had painted. These curtains were till lately attributed to Andrea del Sarto, or Francia Bigio.
This is the Andrea Feltrini mentioned by Crowe and Cavalcaselle as working in the cloister of the Servi with Andrea del Sarto and Francia Bigio between 1509 and 1514.[Footnote: History of Painting, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. 546.]
But Baccio’s dearest friend in the studio was a boy nearly his own age, Mariotto Albertinelli, son of Biagio di Bindo, born October 13, 1474. He had experienced the common lot of young artists in those days, and had been apprenticed to a gold-beater, but preferred the profession of painter. From the first these two lads, being thrown almost entirely together in the work of the studio, formed one of those pure, lasting friendships, of which so many exist in the annals of art, and so few in the material world. They helped each other in the drudgery, and enjoyed their higher studies together; but they did not draw all their inspirations from the over-coloured works of Cosimo–although Mariotto once reproduced his red-winged cherubim in after life [Footnote: In the ’Trinity’ in the Belle Arti, Florence.]–nor from the hard and laboured myths of Piero.
They went to higher founts, for scarcely a trace of these early influences are to be found in their paintings. Vasari says they studied the Cose di Leonardo. The great artist had at this time left the studio of Verocchio, and was fast rising into fame in Florence, so it is most probable that two youths with strong artistic tendencies would study, not only the sketches, but also the precepts, of the great man. Besides this there were two national art-schools open to students in Florence: these were the frescoes of Masaccio and Lippi in the Carmine, and the Medicean garden in the Via Cavour, then called Via Larga.
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