Fra Bartolommeo
By Leader Scott
CHAPTER VIII.
CLOSE OF LIFE.
A.D. 1514–1517.
It is probable that the dissolution of partnership marked the time of Fra Bartolommeo’s visit to Rome. Fra Mariano Fetti, once a lay brother of S. Marco, who had gone over to the Medici after Savonarola’s death, and had kept so much in favour with Pope Leo X. as to obtain the office of the Seals (del Piombo), [Footnote: An office for appending seals to papal documents. Fra Mariano Fetti was elected to it in 1514, after Bramante, the architect; Sebastiano del Piombo succeeded him.] was pleased to be considered a patron of art; and welcoming Fra Bartolommeo to Rome, he gave him a commission for two large figures of S. Peter and S. Paul for his church of S. Silvestro. The cartoons of these pictures are now in the Belle Arti of Florence; they are grand and majestic figures, admirably draped. S. Peter holds his keys and a book; S. Paul rests on his sword. In executing them in colour, he made some improvements, especially in the head and hand of S. Peter, but he did not remain long enough in Rome to finish them. “The colour of the first (S. Peter) is reddish and rather opaque, the shadows of the head being taken up afresh, and the extremities being by another painter. The head of the second (S. Paul) is corrected ... but the tone is transparent, and the execution exclusively that of Fra Bartolommeo. Whoever may have been employed on the S. Peter, we do not fancy Raphael to have been that person.” This is the opinion of Crowe and Cavalcaselle, [Footnote: History of Painting, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 460.] who, however, seem to have little faith in any works of the Frate at Rome. Against this we have the chronicles of quaint old Vasari and Rosini; besides Baldinucci (ch. iv. p. 83), who says, “Raphael gave great testimony of his esteem when, in after years, he employed his own brush in Rome to finish a work begun by Fra Bartolommeo in that city and left imperfect.”
His reason for leaving it imperfect was that of ill-health, the air of Rome not agreeing with him. It seems he brought home malaria, which never entirely left his system, the low fever returning every year, and being only mitigated by a change to mountain air. He was well enough at times to resume painting, but never in full health again. That very summer he was sent to the Hospice of Sta. Maria Maddalena in Pian di Mugnone, “dove pure non stette in ozio,” [Footnote: Rosini, Storia della Pittura, chap, xxvii. p. 245.] where he did not remain idle. The Hospice stands on a high hill, just the place for Roman fever to disappear as if by magic for a time, and the patient, relieved of his lassitude, set to work with energy, aided by Fra Paolino and Fra Agostino. Many of his frescoes still remain, one of which is a beautiful Madonna, on the wall of the infirmary, which has since been sawn away from the wall and placed in the students’ chapel in San Marco, Florence. [Footnote: A document of the Hospice records these paintings, and dates them 10th of July, 1514. Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., vol. ii. p. 610.]
He returned to Florence for the winter, and with renewed vigour produced his San Sebastian, a splendid study from the nude, which shows the influence upon him of Michelangelo’s paintings in Rome. The picture was hung in San Marco, but its influence not proving elevating to the sensuous minds of the Florentines, it was removed to the chapter-house, and Gio Battista della Palla, the dealer who bought so many of the best pictures of the time, purchased it to send to the King of France. Its subsequent fate is not known, although Monsieur Alaffre, of Toulouse, boasts of its possession. He says his father bought three paintings which, in the time of the Revolution, had been taken from the chapel of a royal villa near Paris [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., vol. ii. note p. 119.], one of which is the S. Sebastian. In design and attitude it corresponds to the one described by Vasari, the saint being in a niche, surrounded by a double cornice. The left arm is bound; the right, with its cord hanging, is upraised in attitude of the faith, so fully expressed in the beautiful face. Three arrows are fixed in the body, which is nude except a slight veil across the loins; an angel, also nude, holds the palm to him. Connoisseurs do not think this painting equal in merit to the other works of Fra Bartolommeo. It is true it may have been overrated at the time, for the Frate’s chief excellence lay in the grandeur of his drapery; the test of authenticity for a nude study from him would lie more in the colouring and handling than in form.
In the early part of 1515 Fra Bartolommeo went to pay his old friend Santi Pagnini, the Oriental scholar, a visit at the convent of San Romano, in Lucca, of which he was now prior, passing by Pistoja on February 17th to sign a contract for an altar-piece to be placed in the church of San Domenico–a commission from Messer Jacopo Panciatichi. The price was fixed at 100 gold ducats, and the subject to be the Madonna and Child, with SS. Paul, John Baptist, and Sebastian. On his arrival at Lucca he was soon busy with his great work, the Madonna della Misericordia, for the church of San Romano. The composition of this is full and harmonious. A populace of all ages and conditions, grouped around the throne of the Madonna, beg her prayers; she, standing up, seems to gather all their supplications in her hands and offer them up to heaven, from which, as a vision, Christ appears from a mass of clouds in act of benediction. Amongst the crowd of supplicants are some exquisite groups. Sublime inspiration and powerful expression are shown in the whole work. On his return he stayed again at Pistoja, where he painted a fresco of a Madonna on a wall of the convent of San Domenico; this, which has since been sawn from the wall, is at present in the church of the same convent, and though much injured, is a very light and tender bit of colouring and expression. It would seem that the altar-piece for the same church, spoken of above, was never finished, as no traces of it are to be found.
In October, 1515, we again find him at Pian di Mugnone; no doubt the summer heats had induced a return of his fever. Here, again improving in health, he painted a charming Annunciation in fresco, full of life and eagerness on the part of the angel, and joy on the Virgin. He did not remain long, for before the end of the autumn he returned to visit the home of his youth and see his paternal uncle, Giusto, at Lastruccio, near Prato. We can imagine the meeting between him and his relatives, and how the little Paolo, son of Vito, being told to guess who he was, said, “Bis Zio Bartolommeo,” [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., vol. ii. chap. vii. pp. 139, 140.] for which he was much applauded. And when all the country relatives hoped to see him again soon, how the Frate said that would be uncertain, because the King of France had sent for him, and with what awe and family pride they would have looked at him! But instead of going to France for the glory of art, he was returning to Florence to sorrow. His life-long friend, Mariotto Albertinelli, had been brought home on a litter from La Quercia, near Viterbo, and now lay on his death-bed; and what his life had lacked in religion, the prayers of his friend would go far to atone for at his death.
While Fra Bartolommeo had been ailing, Albertinelli had also paid his visit to the great city, and seen the two great rivals there. He went from Viterbo, where he had been to finish colouring a work of the Frate’s left unfinished, and also to paint some frescoes in the convent of La Quercia, near that town. Being so near Borne, he was seized with a great desire to see it, and left his picture for that purpose. Probably Fra Bartolommeo had given him an introduction to his friend and patron, for Fra Mariano Fetti gave Albertinelli a commission to paint a Marriage of S. Catherine for his church, which he completed, and then left Rome at once. Nothing is known of the impressions made on him by the works of the two great masters, and unfortunately his death occurred too soon after for his own style to have given any evidence of their influence.
A Giostra, at Viterbo, proved a very strong attraction to his pleasure- loving mind. This “Giostra,” which the translators of Vasari seem to find so “obscure,” [Footnote: Vasari’s Lives, vol. ii. p. 470.] was no doubt one of those festivals revived by the Medici, in which mounted cavaliers ride with a lance at a suspended Saracen’s head, striking it at full gallop. Desirous of appearing to advantage before the eyes of her whom he had elected his queen, he forgot his mature age, and rushed into the jousts with all the energies of a youth, but alas! fell ill from over-exertion. Fearing the malarious air was not good for him, he had a litter made, and was taken to Florence, where Fra Bartolommeo placed himself at his bedside, soothing his last moments, and leading him as far heavenward as he could. When Albertinelli died, on the 5th of November, 1515, his friend followed him to an honourable interment in S. Piero Maggiore.
After Albertinelli’s death, the Frate soared to greater heights of genius than before.
The year 1516 marks the birth of his grandest masterpieces, first the picture in the Pitti Palace called by Cavalcaselle a Resurrection, but which is more truly an allegorical impersonation of the Saviour. It was ordered by a rich merchant, Salvadore Billi, to place in a chapel which Pietro Roselli had adorned with marbles in the church of the “Annunciata." He paid 100 ducats in gold for it.
In its original state the picture was a complete allegory of Christ as the centre of Religion, between two prophets in heaven, and four apostles, two at each side–beneath him two angels support the world. The prophets have been removed, and are placed in the Tribune of the Uffizi; thus the picture as it stands loses half its meaning. The Christ is a fine nude figure standing in a niche, and in it Fra Bartolommeo has solved the problem of obtaining complete relief almost in monochrome, so little do the lights of the flesh tints, and the warm yellowish tinge of the background differ from each other. All the positive colour is in the drapery of the saints, one in red and green, and another in red and blue. The two angels are exquisitely drawn, and contrast well in their natural innocence with the sentimental pair in Raphael’s Madonna of the Baldacchino on the same wall of the Pitti Palace.
San Marco was rich in frescoes of the Madonna and Child, two of which are still in the chapel of the convent, and two in the Belle Arti. Some of these are charming in expression, the children clinging round the mother’s neck in a true childish abandon of affection. What a tender feeling these monk artists had for the spirit of maternity! Perhaps by being debarred from the contemplation of maternal love in its humanity, they more clearly comprehended its divinity. Look at the little round-backed nestling child in Fra Angelico’s Madonna della Stella, imperfect as it is in form, the whole spirit of love is in it. He does not give only the mother-love for the child, but the child-love for the mother, which is more divine, and the same feeling is seen in the Madonna of Fra Bartolommeo.
This year, 1516, also marks a journey to a hermitage of his order at Lecceto, between Florence and Pisa. Here he painted a Deposition from the Cross on the wall of the Hospice, and two heads of Christ on two tiles above the doors.
A great many of his works are in private collections in Florence; one of the most lovely is the Pietà, painted for Agnolo Doni, and now in the Corsini Gallery at Rome.
All this time the great painting of the Enthronement of the Virgin, ordered by Pier Soderini, before his exile, was still unfinished. He seems to have taken it in hand again about this time, but being attacked with another access of fever, again left it, and the painting, shadowed in with black, remains in the Uffizi. Lanzi writes of it that, imperfect as it is, it may be regarded as a true lesson in art, and bears the same relation to painting as the clay model to the finished statue, the genius of the inventor being impressed upon it. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: History of Painting, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 455.] call this a Conception, but Vasari’s old name of the Patron Saints of Florence seems to fit it best. S. John the Baptist, S. Reparata, S. Zenobio, &c., stand in an adoring group around the heavenly powers, S. Anna above the Virgin and infant Christ forming a charming pyramidal group in the midst. The whole thing is one of Fra Bartolommeo’s richest compositions. The centre of the three monks on the left is said to be a portrait of Fra Bartolommeo himself, and to be the original from which the only known portrait of him is taken (see Frontispiece). Fra Bartolommeo left another work also unfinished, an apotheosis of a saint, which is now at Panshanger. This is supposed to have been a small ideal prepared for a picture to celebrate the canonisation of S. Antonino, which Leo X. had almost promised the brethren of S. Marco on his triumphant entry in 1515. The work, if it had been painted in the larger form, would have been a perfect masterpiece of composition, “a very Beethoven symphony in colour,” if we may judge from the sketch at Panshanger, where a living crowd groups round the bier of the archbishop, and life, earnestness, harmony, and richness, are all intense.
So ill was Fra Bartolommeo in 1517 that he was ordered to take the baths at San Filippo, thence he went for the last time to Pian di Mugnone, where he painted a Vision of the Saviour to Mary Magdalen, above the door of the chapel. The two figures, nearly life-size, are at the door of the cave sepulchre. Mary has just recognised her Lord, and in her ecstasy flings herself forward on her knees before him. The Saviour is a dignified figure semi-nude, with a white veil wrapped around him.
In the Pitti Palace, a charming Pietà of Fra Bartolommeo’s occupies a place near the Pietà of Andrea del Sarto, the two pictures forming a most interesting contrast of style. The kneeling Virgin and S. John support the head of the prostrate Saviour, S. Catherine and Mary Magdalen weep at his feet, the latter in an agony of grief crouches prone on the ground hiding her face. The colouring is extremely rich, broad masses of full-tone melting softly into deep shadows. The handling in the flesh-tones of the dead Saviour, as well as the modelling of form, are most masterly. It is generally supposed that this was the picture which Bugiardini is said to have coloured after the master’s death; but there is much divergence among Italian authors both as to whether this was the painting spoken of, and also as to the meaning of Vasari’s words, he using the phrase “finished” in one place, and “coloured” in another. For charm of colouring and depth of expression, the Pietà is the most lovely of all the Frate’s works; therefore Bugiardini who was mediocre, could not have outdone his great master. It was not coloured by him. Bocchi [Footnote: Bocchi, Bellezze di Firenze, p. 304.] says there were two other figures, S. Peter and S. Paul, in the picture, where a meaningless black shadow stretches across the background; but they were erased by the antique restorer because they were “troppo deboli.” Is it not likely that if Bugiardini had any hand in the work, it was to finish these figures?
Returning in the autumn to Florence, Fra Bartolommeo caught a severe cold, the effects of which were heightened by eating fruit, and after four days’ extreme illness he died on October 8th, 1517, aged 42.
The monks felt his death intensely, and buried him with great honour in San Marco.
He left to art the most valuable legacy possible–a long list of masterpieces in which religious feeling is expressed in the very highest language. In all his works there is not a line or tint which transgresses against either the sentiment of devotion, or the rules of art. He stands for ever, almost on a level with the great trio of the culmination, “possessing Leonardo’s grace of colour and more than his industry, Michelangelo’s force with more softness, and Raphael’s sentiment with more devotion;” yet with just the inexpressible want of that supernatural genius which would have placed him above them all. His legacy to the world is a series of lessons from the very first setting of his ideal on paper to its finished development. The germ exists in the charcoal sketches at the Belle Arti and Uffizi; the under-shadowing of the subject is seen in the Patron Saints at the Uffizi.
Many of his drawings are not to be traced. Some were used by Fra Paolino, his pupil, who at his death passed them to Suor Plautilla Nelli, a nun in Sta. Caterina, Florence (born 1523, died 1587). When Baldinucci wrote his work, he said 500 of these were in the possession of Cavaliere Gaburri.
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