HE relation between Fra Bartolommeo and Albertinelli was so intimate during the greater part of their not very eventful lives that they can hardly be considered apart. Fra Bartolommeo was born in a suburb of Florence and received his surname della Porta from the fact that his father lived near the gate of the city. At the age of nine, as he showed a precocious fondness for drawing, he was put in the studio of Cosimo Rosselli, having as one of his companions in work Albertinelli, a year his senior. A warm friendship arose between them, which lasted through life, though at times chilled by the utter difference between their natures,— Bartolommeo or Baccio, as he was called in his secular life, being of a gravity of character which accords with what we generally attribute to the painters of the religious epoch,1 while Albertinelli was of a merry temperament and strained the limitations of religious art in his feeling for something more mundane. When they conceived that the instruction of Rosselli had given them all they could hope for from him they took a studio together and worked independently, Mariotto devoting himself mainly to the study of the antiques in the Medici gardens and Baccio to that of Masaccio, Filippino, and Leonardo. The deeper nature finally prevailed over the more vivacious, and later in life Mariotto took his friend as his model, and, with occasional departures due to his invincible love of pleasures which had nothing to do with art, they worked together at intervals through their lives, which, as they began nearly together, ended only two years apart. Their installation as painters and students on their own account took place when the elder was sixteen to eighteen, Vasari giving the latter date and Cavalcaselle the former.

The serious nature of Baccio was attracted by the preaching of Savonarola, who occupied the attention of all minds in Florence at the time when the painter was just entering into manhood, and he soon became one of his most earnest disciples. Mariotto on the contrary en

1 The existence of certain drawings from antique motives, distinctly irreligious, does not disprove the general tendency. At that time there was a strong feeling in Florence for the worst forms of Hellenistic art, to which Baccio yielded for the moment only.

rolled himself amongst the scoffers, and the friendship of the two had a short interruption, each taking part in the antagonism which distracted Florence. But the pious nature of Baccio could not hold rancor, and the shallower one of Mariotto could not dispense with the influence of his younger Mentor, and though they never agreed as to the reform or the reformer, they became reconciled in art. Baccio became one of the puritans and contributed his profane works to the bonfire which the Dominican kindled in the public place of Florence, abandoning thenceforward the practice of profane art. He went further in his enthusiasm than his gentle nature warranted, and was one of the defenders of the convent of San Marco when it was attacked by the mob to drag out Savonarola, and, terrified by the conflict, he vowed if he came out alive and safe to enter the order of St. Dominick. It was a year after the crisis of his spiritual master's fate that he took the vows. The sobriety of his temperament and his conscientious regard of his duties are shown even in his manner of paying obedience to his vow. He made the same preparations to enter the convent that he would have made for death. He had a younger half-brother who, not being of sound intellect or from some other cause not being responsible for himself, had been put under the tutorship of Baccio, and he had to arrange for the making over to him of the property which his father had left him ; and he had also taken a commission for a fresco in the chapel which Gerozzo Dini had built for the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova, on which he worked till 1499, when, having finished the upper portion and the cartoon for the whole, he left the finishing to his fellow worker Mariotto, who completed it from the designs of Baccio. On the 26th of July, 1500, the painter took the vows at Prato and a year later he returned to the convent of San Marco in Florence, the scene of the labors of his beloved master. Under his religious name, Fra Bartolommeo, he buried himself and his ambitions in the cloister, and it was only at the solicitations of his Prior and friend, Sante Pagnini, that he consented to take up again his pencils in the service of God. The "Last Judgment," which he had designed and in part painted for the hospital, had been recognized as a work which in some respects was an advance on all previous painters, and t

order of St. Dominick had had too much acquaintance with art in its ranks not to know that the new brother could in no other way so advance its interests as by his pencil. Vasari says of the fresco of the "Last Judgment " that it was considered by the artists of the time as the ne plus ultra of the art; it is said to have served as a lesson for contemporary painters, and even Raphael with all his genius for composition seems to have taken something from this artist. The first work which Fra Bartolommeo executed in his new life was the "Appearing of the Virgin to St. Bernard" for the church of the Badia, and now in the Academy of Fine Arts (Accademia) of Florence. As the price was not agreed on before the picture was executed, it became the subject of a dispute between the patron for whose order it was painted and the convent, Fra Bartolommeo's personal interests being merged in the rights of the order and the proceeds of his work going into the treasury of San Marco. The price put on the picture by the painter was 200 ducats; Bernardo del Bianco, the patron, offered 8o, and the affair promised to be the subject of a suit at law when, by the intermediation of Francesco Magalotti, brother-in-law of Bernardo and a friend of the convent, it was compromised at 100 ducats.

The painter was not so easily rid of the world as he had imagined. His half-insane brother Piero came to break his peace again by his extravagances, which led the relatives to whom he had transferred his guardianship to withdraw from the charge, so that Fra Bartolommeo had again to become responsible. This time his friend Mariotto came to his relief and took charge of the brother, undertaking to teach him painting at the same time, administer his estate for five years, and take as payment the income of the property. The Prior of the convent and the father of Mariotto witnessed the contract, which was executed on the 1st of January, 1506. To aid in reawakening his devotion to his art came the arrival of Raphael in Florence, which took place at the time he resumed the pencil, and in 1506 the relations between the two painters took on the character of intimacy, which shows itself in the works of both executed during this period. Raphael caught the mellowness of tint which Fra Bartolommeo had attained in his use of oils, and which he finally carried to excess, thus sadly interfering with the stability of some of his later pictures. The friar learned the charm of Raphael's grace and the value of the Perugian treatment of landscape.

When in 1508 Raphael left Florence for Rome, Fra Bartolommeo went to Venice to study the school of color. He was welcomed by his brothers in St. Dominick with open arms,

and a commission was at once given him to paint a picture for their vicar. This he was wise enough to paint only after he had finished his studies at Venice and had returned to Florence, when he produced the picture from which Mr. Cole has engraved a portion-St. Mary Magdalen and St. Catherine of Siena in ecstasy at the sight of God. His stay in Venice must have been short, for this picture was painted in the same year. The monks of the convent at Venice made difficulties about the price of the picture, for which the painter asked seventyeight ducats, having already received twentyeight, and it was finally sent by the prior to Lucca where it still remains. In 1509, with the consent of the prior, Albertinelli was installed in the studio belonging to the convent as the official assistant of Fra Bartolommeo, and this time the partnership lasted till January 5, 1512, when it was dissolved for reasons unknown,1 by mutual consent. In the division of the proceeds which was provided for by the act of association the money which came to each was 212 ducats, and the pictures were divided between them, the studio effects being the property of the friar for his life, to revert on his death to Albertinelli.

At this juncture Mariotto decided to give up. painting and became an innkeeper, establishing himself outside the Porta San Gallo of Florence; but this new vocation was found to be a delusion, and he returned to his colors a year after. We have, however, no intimation of any later association with Fra Bartolommeo. The latter in 1514 made a visit of two months to Rome, and not long after Albertinelli also visited the then center of all art interest; and both seem to have found there the seeds of the disease which ended both lives prematurely. At any rate Mariotto came back in a litter and died in Florence November 5, 1515. Fra Bartolommeo was then in the hospital of Pian di Mugnone, and though he continued to paint during the next two years his health was never well established after his return from Rome, and he died of a new access of fever on the 6th of October, 1517.2

It is unlikely that we can justly estimate the relative position which was assigned to Fra Bartolommeo in his lifetime or immediately after his death. Something of his fame was due to the technical quality of oils in which there was then but little experimenting. The unwonted brilliancy of this quality in the Florentine school gave a fascination to the general effect which has now become lost through the loss of intensity of color which his pictures have sustained

1 Possibly the change may have been due to the change of prior, coinciding as it did with the retirement of the friend of Fra Bartolommeo from the pri

orate.

2 Dohme says August 3d. Gruyer October 6th.

in comparison with the tempera pictures and those in which oil was used only for glazings and to heighten the brilliancy of the tempera. The vehicle is so strong an element in the friar's work that the darker passages in some instances have quite lost all their value as color. The execution is thin and at times disagreeable in comparison with the contemporary work of the Venetians, and the types of his saints and sacred personages are wanting in robustness and vitality. His religious conceptions are, however, amongst the most dignified of his school, and the true rank of the artist is rather in his powers of design than in his color or his ideals of character. The strongly individual

types which we had in Botticelli and in Filippino are as far from the ideal of beauty and conventional grace as those of Fra Bartolommeo, but they impress us by their veracity and variety, while those of the Friar do not. He borrowed well and from many sources, but what he added is not always the best of his work. His personality strikes me as weak, and his work owes no doubt much of its dignity to the effect of his devotional feeling and to his sympathetic appropriation of the knowledge of his predecessors. Except for his carrying the quality of oil painting further than his contemporaries had done, I do not see any innovation or supremacy in his pictures which remain. W. J. Stillman.

FRO

ROM country fields I came, that hid
The harvest mice at play,

And followed care, whose summons bid
To London's troubled way.

And there, in wandering far and wide,
I chanced ere day was done
Where Holborn poured its civic tide
Beneath the autumn sun.

So hot the sun, so great the throng,
I gladly stayed my feet
To hear a linnet's captive song
Accuse the noisy street.

There heavily an old house bowed
Its gabled head, and made
Obeisance to the modern crowd
That swept athwart its shade.
Below, an open window kept.

Old books in rare display,
Where critics drowsed and poets slept
Till Grub Street's judgment-day.
One book brought care again to me,-
The book of Rowley's rhyme,
That Chatterton, in seigneury
Of song, bore out of time.

The merchant of such ware, unseen,
Watched spider-like the street;
He came forth, gray, and spider-thin,
And talked with grave conceit.

Old books, old times,- he drew them nigh
At Chatterton's pale spell:

"'T was Brook Street," said he, "saw him die,
Old Holborn knew him well."
The words brought back in sudden sway
That new-old tale of doom;
It seemed the boy but yesterday
Died in his lonely room.

Without, the press of men was heard;
I heard, as one who dreamed,
The hurrying throng, the singing bird,
And yesterday it seemed.

And as I turned to go, the tale
This pensive requiem made,

As though within the churchyard's pale
The boy was newly laid:

"Perhaps (who knows?) the hurrying throng Gave hopeless thoughts to him;

I fancy how he wandered, long,
Until the light grew dim.

"The windows saw him come and pass
And come and go again,

And still the throng swept by-alas!
The barren face of men.

"And when the day was done, the way
Was lost in lethal deeps:
Sweet Life!-what requiem to say?
'T is well, 't is well, he sleeps!'

Ernest Rhys.