Fra Bartolommeo
By Leader Scott
CHAPTER VI.
ALBERTINELLI IN THE WORLD.
A.D. 1501-1510.
During the interval between the second and third partnership of this incongruous pair of friends, the life of Albertinelli had been very different from that of the Frate. So distressed was he at losing Baccio that he was quite wild for a time. His passions being unruled, that of grief took entire possession of him. In his despair he vowed to give up painting; he declared that he would also become a monk, if it were not that he now hated them more than ever; besides, he was a Pallesco, and could not desert his party.
After a time, however, he calmed down, and, looking on his friend’s unfinished fresco of the Last Judgment as a legacy from him, began to work at it as a kind of obligation till the occupation wove its own charm, and he steadily devoted himself to art again, much to the satisfaction of good Gerozzi Dini, who was in great perturbation, and declared there was not another hand but his in Florence which could finish it; and also to the relief of Fra Bartolommeo himself, who, having received money on account, was troubled in conscience lest it should remain unfinished. There remained only some figures to put in the terrestrial group, all the celestial portions having been finished by the Frate; but they are very well drawn figures, with a good deal of expression in them. Several are likenesses, amongst whom are Dini and his wife, Bugiardini, the painter’s pupil, and himself. Most of these are now destroyed by the effects of damp.
Mariotto left Fra Bartolommeo’s house in S. Pier Gattolini, and took a room in Gualfonda–now Via Val Fonda–a street leading towards the fortress, built by the Grand Duke Cosimo on the north of the city; and here in time quite a school grew up under his tuition. Giuliano Bugiardini was his head assistant rather than pupil; Francia Bigio, then a boy, Visino, who afterwards went to Hungary, and Innocenzio da Nicola, besides Piero, Baccio’s brother, were all scholars. Albertinelli’s Bottega in Val Fonda gave some noble paintings to the world, works independently his own, though Fra Bartolommeo’s influence is traceable in most of them. The finest of these is the Salutation, dated 1503–ordered for the Church of S. Martino, and now the gem of the hall of the Old Masters in the Uffizi Gallery–a work which alone has been able to mark him for all time as a great master.
So simple is the subject, and yet so grand the proportions, and in the figures there is such majesty of maternity and dignity of womanhood! A decorated portico, with the heavens behind it, forms the background to the two noble women, in one of whom is expressed the gracious sympathy of an elder matron with the awful, mysterious joy of the younger.
The colouring, perfectly harmonised, is the most masterly blending of a subdued tone with soft yet brilliant and shows a deep study of the method of Leonardo.
The predella has an Annunciation, Nativity, and Circumcision; all showing the same able style, but more injured by time than the picture.
Another charming painting of this period is the Nativity at the Pitti, a round, on panel. The Madonna is not quite so noble as that of the Salutation, but the limbs of the child are beautifully rounded. There is a pretty group of three angels singing in the sky; the landscape is as minute in detail as those his old fellow-pupil Piero used to paint in Cosimo’s studio.
In 1504-5 Fra Bartolommeo called upon him for a deed of friendship, which proves that, whatever biographers (building up theories on a word or two in Vasari) may say of his want of steadiness, the friend who knew him best had supreme trust in him. Santi Pagnini, having been removed to Siena as prior, Fra Bartolommeo made Mariotto guardian and instructor of his young brother Piero, signing a contract that Mariotto was to have the use and management of all estates and possessions of Piero, which included several poderi in the country, as well as the house at the Porta Romana (S. Pier Gattolini). In return Albertinelli was to keep Piero in his house, teach, clothe, and provide for him, not, however, being obliged to give him more than “sette (seven) soldi” a month. Albertinelli was also to have a mass said yearly in the Church of S. Pier Gattolini for the soul of Paolo the muleteer, and to use two pounds of wax candles thereat. [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, vol. ii. pp. 36, 37.] The contract was signed from 1st January, 1505, and was to last till 1st January, 1511. It appears that this brother Piero was a great trouble to the Frate, being of a bizarre disposition, and addicted to squandering money; he sold some possessions for much less than their worth, [Footnote: Private communication from Sig. G. Milanesi.] which probably accounts for the singular contract of guardianship. He did not show enough talent to become a painter, and took priests’ orders later.
About this time Fra Bartolommeo recommenced work, and while he was painting the triptych for Donatello’s Madonna (the miniature Nativity and Circumcision in the Uffizi), Albertinelli was at work in the convent of the Certosa, at a Crucifixion in fresco. The painting is extant in the chapterhouse, and is a very fair and unrestored specimen of his best style. The Virgin and Magdalen are very purely conceived figures; the idea of the angels gathering the blood falling from the wounded hands of the crucified Saviour is very tender; there is a great brightness of colouring, and a greenish landscape almost Peruginesque in feeling. Some of his pupils worked with him at the Certosa, and nearly brought their master into trouble.
They were not more content with convent fare than was Davide Ghirlandajo, when the only delicacy supplied him at Vallombrosa was cheese; and to revenge themselves, they stole round the cloister after the circular sliding panels by which the rations were sent into the monks’ cells were filled, and feasted on the meals made ready for the good brothers. Great confusion ensued in the convent, the monks accusing each other of the theft; but when they found out the real culprits, they made a compromise, promising double rations if the artists would hasten their work and leave them their daily dole in peace.
The fresco is dated 1506. The same year produced the fine picture now in the Louvre, which was painted for the church of S. Trinità on the commission of Zanobio del Maestro.
The Madonna, stands on a pedestal, with S. Jerome and S. Zenobio in front, while episodes from their lives are brought in like distant echoes in the background. [Footnote: S. Zenobio was the first bishop of Florence, and is the patron saint of that city.]
The nuns of S. Giuliano employed him to paint two pictures, both of which are now in the Belle Arti. One is an altarpiece; the Madonna enthroned, with the Divine Child in her arms. Era Bartolommeo’s idea of an angel-sustained canopy is here, but the angels hold it up from the outside instead of the inside. Before her are S. John the Baptist, S. Julian, S. Nicholas, and S. Dominic. The S. Julian has a great similarity to the S. Michael of Perugino, and the S. John, by its good modelling, shows the result of his studies from the antique in the Medici garden.
For the same church he did the curious conventional painting of the Trinity on a gold ground. The subject is inartistic, because unapproachable; the attempt to paint that which is a deep spiritual mystery degrades both the art and the subject; the latter because it lowers it to human grasp, the former because it shows its powerlessness to shadow forth the infinite. There is beautiful painting in the heads of the angels, at the foot of the Cross, but the brilliancy of the gold ground is overpowering to the colours, albeit he has balanced it by reproducing Cosimo Roselli’s red-winged cherubs. Nothing but Fra Angelico’s delicate tints can bear such a background. No doubt Piero, Baccio’s brother, helped to lay on this gold, for one of the stipulations in the contract with Mariotto was that he was to “metter d’ oro ed altre cose di mazoneria” (to put on gold and other articles of emblazonment).
It has been a great subject of conjecture at what part of his life Albertinelli took the rash step of throwing up his art and opening a tavern at Porta S. Gallo. Some say it was in his despair at Fra Bartolommeo having taken the vows, but this is disproved by his having at that time finished the Last Judgment, and taken pupils in Val Fonda. Others assert that it was at the breaking up of the last partnership in 1513, but there is no hiatus in his work at that time, existing paintings being dated in 1513 and the following years till his death, three years after.
Vasari, though not to be depended on in regard to dates–chronology not being his forte–is generally right in the gossip and stories of the lives near his own time, and it is by collateral evidence from his pages that we are able to fix with more certainty 1508 or 1509 as the time of this episode in Albertinelli’s life. In 1507 we find him as an artist helping to value his friend’s picture, and mediating between the convent and Bernardo del Bianco. [Footnote: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. 544.] Now, in the ’Life of Andrea del Sarto,’ we read that Francia Bigio, Albertinelli’s pupil, made the acquaintance of Andrea while studying the Cartoons in the Hall of the Council (this was from 1506 to 1508), and as their friendship increased, Andrea confided to Francia Bigio that he could no longer endure the eccentricities of Piero di Cosimo, and determined to seek a home for himself, and that Francia Bigio being also alone–his master Mariotto Albertinelli having abandoned the art of painting–they determined to share a studio and rooms. [Footnote: Vasari, vol. iii. p. 182.] The first works the partners undertook were the frescoes of the Scalzo and the Servi, which were begun in 1509. Thus the date is tolerably certain, especially as a gap occurs in Albertinelli’s works at this time.
Sig. Gaetano Milanesi’s researches in the Archives have thrown a new light on Mariotto’s motives, which were not entirely connected with art; it was not that he was discouraged by adverse criticism, nor wholly that, as time divided him from his friend, he felt he could produce no great work away from his influence, but it was partly that he had married a wife named Antonia, whose father kept an inn at S. Gallo. It is possible the tavern came to him by way of dot, and the above reasons making him discontented with art for a time, might have induced him to carry on the business himself. Sig. Milanesi says a document exists of a contract in which Mariotto’s name is connected with a tavern, but that he has never been able to retrace it since the first time he found it. It is his opinion that the whole story arose from the fact of the wife’s family possessing this wine shop, and his connection with it in that way.
But though Albertinelli passed off his pseudo-hostdom with bravado, talking very wittily about it, the artistic vein was too strong within him to be subdued; he soon gave up the flask and returned to the brush, for in 1509, when his quondam pupil, Francia Bigio, was busy at the Servi, we again find Mariotto’s hand in a painting of the Madonna. The Virgin, holding a pomegranate in her hand, supports with the other the Child, who stands on a parapet, and clings to the bosom of his mother’s dress for support, in a truly natural way; the infant Baptist stands by. The painting, signed, and dated 1509, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, but has been injured by repainting. In spite of this, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle believe they perceive Bugiardini’s hand in it.
In 1510 Albertinelli began one of his masterpieces, the Annunciation for the company of S. Zenobio, now in the Belle Arti. All his zeal for art was reawakened, he flung himself con amore into this work, which, though in oil on panel, was painted on the spot where it was intended to be placed, that the lights might be managed with the best effect. He was imbued with Leonardo da Vinci’s principle, that the greatest relief and force are to be combined with softness, and wishing to bring this combination to a perfection which never before had been reached, he depended greatly on the natural light to further his design. [Footnote: Vasari, vol. ii. p. 469.]
The picture, although a great work of art, and the most laboured of all his paintings, failed to satisfy the artist. He tried various experiments, painting in and painting out, but never reaching his own ideal. According to Leonardo, he was proving himself a good artist, one of his principles being, “when his (an artist’s) knowledge and light surpass his work so that he is not satisfied with himself or his endeavours, it is a happy omen.” [Footnote: Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting.]
The work as it stands is a noble one, though darkened by time having brought out the black pigments used in the shades. The background is an intricate piece of architecture with vaulted roof, showing that he too had profited by Raphael’s instructions in perspective to Fra Bartolommeo.
The Virgin is a tender sweet figure; indeed no artist has given more gracious dignity to womanhood than Albertinelli, although his detractors say his life showed no great respect for it. Above, the Almighty is seen in a yellow light with a circle of angels and seraphs around. It is strange how the realistic painters stopped at nothing, not even the representation of the eternal in a human form. Is not this the reason why art ceased about this time to be the interpreter of religion, and found its true mission in being the interpreter of nature? Who can draw one soul? How much more impossible then to depict the incomprehensible soul in which all others have their being? The utmost we can do is to give the indication of the spirit in the expression of a face, and that so imperfectly that not two beholders read it alike. Study Perugino and Raphael, see how they raise human nature and etherealize it till we see the divinity of soul in the faces of their saints and martyrs. But the moment they try to depict the Almighty, or even his angels, they fall at once below humanity.
But to return to the Annunciation of Albertinelli. His impetuous temper betrayed him even here; he fell into a dispute with his patrons, who refused to pay the price he asked. The usual “trial by his peers" was resorted to, Perugino, Granacci, and Ridolfo Ghirlandajo were called into council to value it according to its merits.
On completing this picture the events we have related in the last chapter took place, Fra Bartolommeo returned from Venice with his enterprise renewed, and the convent partnership was commenced.
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