Fra Bartolommeo
By Leader Scott
CHAPTER V.
FRA BARTOLOMMEO IN THE CONVENT.
A.D. 1504-1509.
Four years had passed, and the monk had never touched a pencil, but his mission in art was not fulfilled, and events were working towards that end, for the spirit of art once awakened could not die either in that convent or in that age.
His friend, Mariotto, kept him au courant in all the gossip of art, and told him of the great cartoons of Leonardo and Michelangelo, which he too went to see. They might have inspired him afresh, or perhaps in advising Albertinelli he himself felt impelled to paint, or possibly the visits of Raphael in 1504 influenced him.
Padre Marchese takes the conventional view, and says that Santi Pagnini, the oriental scholar and lover of art, came back to S. Marco in 1504 as prior, and used not only his entreaties, but his authority, to induce Fra Bartolommeo to recommence painting. However this may be, it is certain that when Bernardo del Bianco, who had built a beautiful chapel in the Badia from Rovezzano’s designs, wished for an altar-piece worthy of its beauty, which he felt no hand could execute so well as that of the Frate–he yielded to persuasion, and the Vision of S. Bernard was begun. The contract is dated 18th November, 1504; a part payment of sixty florins in gold was made 16th of June, 1507. [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, iii. vol. ii. p. 594.]
This picture, now in the Belle Arti of Florence, is so much injured by re-painting that some parts seem even crude. The saint is on his knees writing, while the vision of the Virgin and Child stands poised in air before him; she inspires his pen, and the infant Christ gives His blessing on the work. There is great spirituality and ecstasy in St. Bernard’s face, his white robe contrasts well with two saints behind him, which carry out Fra Bartolommeo’s favourite triangular grouping, and with a rich harmony of colour balance his white robe.
The Virgin is drawn with great nobility and grace, her drapery admirably majestic, yet airy, and a sweet, infantile playfulness renders the Child charming. The angels beneath the Virgin’s feet are lovely, but the group of seraphs behind are the least pleasing of all. They are of the earth, earthy, and seem reminiscences of the Florentine maidens the artist met in the streets. Possibly this is the part most injured by the restorer’s hand. The colouring of the two saints behind S. Bernard-one in a green robe with bronze-gold shades, and the other blue and orange-is very suggestive of Andrea del Sarto, and seems to render probable Rosini’s assertion that the Frate “taught the first steps of this difficult career to that artist who alone was called ’senz’ errori.’”
Having once retaken the brush, Fra Bartolommeo recovered his former skill and fame; a beautiful specimen of this period is the Meeting of Christ with the Disciples of Emmaus (1506), a fresco in a lunette over the door of the refectory at S. Marco; in which he combines a richness of colouring rarely obtained in fresco, with a drawing which is almost perfect. Fra Niccolò della Magna, who was prior in that year, and left in 1507 to become Archbishop of Capua, sat for one of the saints. Contemporory with this may be dated also the figure of the Virgin, painted for Agnolo Doni, now in the Corsini gallery in Rome. Giovanni de’ Medici also gave him a commission.
Meanwhile the S. Bernard was not paid for. Fra Bartolommeo priced it at 200 ducats, and the convent being the gainer by his works, took his own valuation. Bernardo offered only eighty ducats; the Frati were indignant, and called in the Abbot of the Badia as umpire; he being unable to move Bernardo, retired from office; then a council of friends was resolved on, in which Mariotto was for the painter, and Lorenzo de Credi for the purchaser; but this also failed.
It was next proposed to submit the question to the Guild of Druggists (arte degli speziali), which included at that time also doctors and painters; but the convent, refusing lay judgment, took the offer of Francesco Magalotti, a relative of Bernardo, who priced it at 100 ducats, and the monks had to be satisfied. The dispute ended July 17th, 1507. [Footnote: Rosini, Storia della Pittura, chap, xxvii. p. 245, and Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., vol. ii. pp. 42 to 45.]
All writers agree as to the fact of Fra Bartolommeo’s friendship with Raphael, but very few are decided as to its date. Raphael was in Florence in 1504, but then Fra Bartolommeo had not re-commenced painting, and would have no works in the convent to excite his admiration of the colouring. Padre Marchese, following Rosini and Padre Luigi Pungeleoni, asserts that this intimacy was during Raphael’s second visit in 1506, when he might have seen the newly-finished fresco of The Disciples at Emmaus. It is undoubted that their intercourse was beneficial to both. Raphael studied anew Leonardo’s principles of colour under Fra Bartolommeo’s interpretation of them, and the Frate improved his knowledge of perspective and harmony of composition. It is said they worked together at some pictures, of which one is in France, and another at Milan; but there is not sufficient evidence to prove this.
It is also thought that Fra Bartolommeo helped in the composition of Raphael’s famous Madonna del Baldacchino, which is truly very much in his style.
The year 1508 marks the Frate’s first acquaintance with the Venetian school, which was not without its influence upon him. Frequent interchange of visits took place between the Dominicans in the different parts of Italy; and Fra Bartolommeo took the opportunity then offered him of going to visit his brethren at Venice.
His namesake, Baccio di Monte Lupo, a sculptor who had fled from Florence after the death of Savonarola, and who had fought side by side with Baccio in the siege of S. Mark’s church, was in Venice at that time, working on the tomb of Benedetto da Pesaro in the church of the Frati, and he was only too delighted to show the beauties of the Queen of the Adriatic to an artistic mind. Tintoretto was not yet born; Titian was only just rising into fame, though his style had not yet become what it was after Giorgione’s influence; but Fra Bartolommeo must have found much that was sympathetic in the exquisite works of Giovanni Bellini and his school, and much to admire in the glorious colouring of Giorgione.
Father Dalzano, the vicar of the monastery of S. Peter Martyr at Murano, gave the Florentine monk a commission for a picture of the value of seventy or 100 ducats. Not having time to paint this during his stay, he promised to execute it on his return to Florence, and the vicar paid him in advance twenty-eight ducats in money and colours; the rest was to be raised by the sale of some MS. letters from S. Catherine of Siena, which a friend of Father Dalzano near Florence held in possession.
Fra Bartolommeo, having brought home from the Venetian school a new impulse for painting, and wishing to diffuse the religious influence of art more widely, desired to enlarge his atelier and school at San Marco. His only assistants in the convent were Fra Paolino of Pistoja, and one or two miniaturists, who were only good at missals. Fra Paolino (born 1490) took the vows at a very early age, and was removed to Florence from Prato with Fra Bartolommeo. He was the son of a painter, Bernardino di Antonio, but though he learned the first principles from him, his real art was imbibed from the Frate, under whom, together with Mariotto, he worked for years.
But this youthful scholar was not enough for Fra Bartolommeo’s new energies. He pined for his old friend, Mariotto, who could follow out his designs in his own style so closely, that an unpractised eye could not see the difference of hand; and such was his influence on the rulers of the order, that they allowed a most unique partnership to be entered into.
The parties were, Albertinelli on one side, and the convent and Fra Bartolommeo on the other. The partners to provide the expenses, and the profits to be divided between the convent and Mariotto; the vow of poverty not allowing Fra Bartolommeo as an individual any personal share. This began in 1509 and lasted till 1512. The inventory of the profits and the division made when the partnership was dissolved, given entire by Padre Marchese, [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., vol. ii.] are very interesting. The two artists had separate monograms to distinguish the pictures which were specially their own, besides which the monk signed his with the touching petition, “orate pro pictore,” his friend merely Latinising his name; the works painted together were signed by the combined monograms. Before setting a hand to anything else, the Frate fulfilled his engagement to the Venetian prior, for whom he painted the Eternal in Heaven, surrounded by saints and angels; but of this we will speak later.
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