Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/401

In Flokence. 371 Zingaro (the Gipsy), whose principal work is a series of frescoes illustrating the Life of 8. Benedict, in S. Severino at Naples; Silvestro de' Buoni, and his pupil, Amato d' Antonio. (/) The later Florentine School. One other great Italian master of the latter part of the fifteenth century remains to be noticed before we enter the golden age of painting. Bartolommeo di Pagholo, com- monly known as Fra Bartolommeo (1475 — 1517) — also called Baccio della Porta and II Frate — the pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, although the cotemporary of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, belongs in feeling to the Early Florentine school, and deserves special recognition for his earnest opposition to the licentiousness and irreverence which were associated in his day with the revival of classical art and literature. The friend and admirer of Savonarola, the great Florentine Reformer, he shared his enthusiasm for a pure and holy life, — an enthusiasm sincere enough to lead him to sacrifice to the flames many of his early works, and all his books relating to antique art. On the violent death of Savonarola, Baccio took the vows of a monk, and not until four years afterwards did he return to his true vocation, aroused to a sense of his mis- taken self-denial by the exhortations of Raphael, then a young man of one-and-twenty. To the mutual influence of these two master-minds, we owe many of the greatest excellences of both. Raphael taught the friar the value of perspective, and Fra Bartolommeo initiated Raphael into many secrets of colouring. The distinctive character- istics of Fra Bartolommeo' s works are the holiness of the BB 2