Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea D'Agnolo

LARS OF FRA

ave left no works behind them. Fra Andrea seems to have been more a journeyman than scholar, being employed to prepare the panels and lay on the gilding. Fra Agostino assisted his master, and Fra Paolo in the subordinate parts of a few frescoes, especially at

ery early age he entered the order. He was removed from Prato to San Marco, Florence, in 1503; and here he found another friend who assisted his artistic tendencies. This was Fra Ambrogio della Robbia, [Footnote: Padre Marches

s accepting the commission, and his disciples, Fra Paolo and Fra Agostino, went in his place. [Footnote: Padre Marchese, Memorie, &c., lib. in. chap. ii. p. 251.] Possibly the master supplied the design, which is very harmonious. The Virgi

ign is Fra Bartolommeo's, but the colouring Fra Paolo's. It was painted for the Dominican monks at Santa Maria del Sasso, near Bibbiena. The colouring is hard and weak, the shadows h

composition and colouring, the former being good, the latter weak and crude. His best known works are a Nativity in the Palazzo Borghese, a Madonna and Child with S. John Baptist in the Sciarra Colonna, also in Rome;

he nude for a Christ, she drew from the corpse of a nun-which might account for the weak stiffness of her design. Fra Paolo, though there is no record of his having taught her, left her as a legacy the designs and cartoons of Fra Bartolommeo, one of which, the Pietà, she has evidently made use of in the painting in the Belle Arti. The grouping is that of the Pietà of Fra Bartolommeo, now in the Pitti, of which

ARS OF MARIOTT

ortant in the annals of art, the principal ones being Bu

and having a great aptitude for copying the works of others, he felt himself as great as the original artists. Michelangelo was always amused with his na?ve self-conceit, and kept up a friendship with him for many years. He even went so far as to sit to Bugiardini for his likeness, at the request of Ottaviano de' Medici. Giuliano, having painted and talked nonsense for two hours, at last exclaimed, to his sitter's great relief, "Now, Michelangelo, come and look at yourself; I have caught your very expression." But what was Michelangelo's horror to see himself depicted with eyes which were neither straight nor a pair! The worthy artist looked from his work to the original, and declared he

now in the Bologna Pinacoteca. The composition of this is not without merit; the child Jesus seated on his mother's knees, gives the ring to S.

ty florins in gold for his share of the work. He obtained some rank as a portrait painter, in spite of his failure in that of Michelangelo; and had commissions from many of the celebrities of Florence. It was in original composition that his powers failed him. Messer Palla Rucellai ordered a picture from him of the Martyrdom of S. Catherine, which he began with the intention of making it a very fine work indeed. He spent several years in representing the wheels, the lightnings and fires in a sufficiently terrible aspect, but had to beg Michela

s born in 1482. His early studies were made in the Brancacci Chapel, and the Papal Hall-where he drew from the cartoons in 1505-6, and the studio of Mariotto Albertinelli, from which he passed to his p

ter testimony to Francia Bigio's excellence can be given than the frequency of his works being mistaken for those of Raphael, but the influence of his contemporaries was always strong upon him. The Annunciation, painted for the same church, is also described by Vasari as a carefully designed work, though somewhat feeble in manner. The angel is lightly poised in air, the Virgin kneeling before a foreshortened building. The picture was lost sight of in the demolition of the church, but Crowe and Cavalcas

h, and subjects from Job's life on a pilaster within it: these have long ago disappeared. The altar-piece of the Madonna and Job, which he painted in oil for the same church, has been more fortunate, as it still exists in the Tuscan School in the Uffizi. Though much injured, it shows his earlier

t touch of nature in a mother with a naughty child, who sits crying on the ground, much to the mother's distress. Francia Bigio commenced this in Andrea's absence in France, which so excited his former comrade's emulation that he did his Visitation in great haste, to get it uncovered as soon as Francia Bigio's. In fact, Andrea's works were ready by the date of the annual festa of the Servites, and the monks, being anxious to uncover all the new frescoes for that day, took upon them to remove the mattings from that of Francia Bigio as well, without his permission, for he wished to give a few more finishing touches. So angry was he, on arriving in the cloister, to see a crowd of people admiring his work in what he felt to be an imperfect condition, that in an excess of rage he mounted on the scaffolding which still remained, and, seizing a hammer, beat the head of the Madonna to pieces, and ruined the nude figure breaking the rod. The monks hastened to the scene in an uproar of remonstrance, the frantic artist's destructive hand was stayed by the bystanders, but so deep was his displeasure that he refused to restore the p

etters mean only Anno salutis, and are used in very many of Francia Bigio's signed paintings. He had the commission from Gio Maria Benintendi in 1523. It is one of those curious pictures which have many scenes in one-a style which militates greatly against artistic unity. On the right is David's palace, on the left Uriah's; David is at his door watching Bathsheba

ly because his ambition failed him, and also because he began to look on

long hair flowing over his shoulders; one in the National Gallery, formerly in Mr. Fuller Maitland's collection; the portrait of a jeweller, dated A. S., MDXVI. in Lord Yarborough's gallery; that in the Berlin Museum, of a m