Padre Marchese, himself a Dominican, speaks thus of his convent:—"San Marco has within its walls the Renaissance, a compendium in two artists. Fra Angelico, the painter of the ideal, Fra Bartolommeo, of form. The first closes the antique Tuscan school. He who has seen Fra Angelico, has seen also Giotto, Cimabue, &c. The second represents the modern school. In him are almost comprised Masaccio, Lorenzo di Credi, Leonardo, Buonarroti, and Andrea del Sarto."

The first, Fra Angelico, "sets himself to contemplate in God the fount and architype of the beautiful, and, as much as is possible to mortal hands, reproduces and stamps it in those works which a sensual mind cannot understand, but which to the heavenly soul speak an eloquent language. Fra Bartolommeo, with more analysis, works thoughtfully ... he ascends from the effect to the cause, and in created things contemplates a reflection of spiritual beauty."

It is true the Dominican order has been as great a patron of arts as the Franciscan of literature. It united with Niccolo Pisano to give form to national architecture. It had sculptors, miniaturists, and glass painters. As a building San Marco has been a shrine of art; since the time that Michelozzi, with the assistance of the Medici, built the convent for Sant' Antonino, and Fra Angelico left the impress of his soul on the walls, a long line of artist monks has lived within its cloisters. With San Marco our story has now to deal, for it is impossible to write Fra Bartolommeo's life without touching on the well-known history of Savonarola. The great preacher's influence in these years, from 1492 to 1497, entered into almost every individual in Florence, either to draw them to devotion, or to stir them up to the greatest opposition.

The artists, whose minds were probably the most impressional, were his fervent adherents. He has been accused of being the ruin of art, but "this cry has only arisen in our time; the silence of contemporaries, although not friendly to him, proves that he was not in that century so accused." [Footnote: Gino Capponi, Storia delta Republica di Firenze, lib. vi. chap. ii.] The only mention of anything of artistic value is a "tavoliere" [Footnote: A chess or draught board.] of rich work, spoken of by Burlamacchi and Benivieni, in a "Canzone di un Piagnone sul bruciamento delle VanitÀ." Savonarola himself was an artist and musician in early life, the love of the beautiful was strong within him, only he would have it go hand in hand with the good and true. His dominant spirit was that of reform; as he tried to regenerate mind, morals, literature, and state government, so he would reform art, and fling over it the spiritual light which illumed his own soul.

It was natural that such a mind should act on the devotional character of Baccio. What could he do but join when every church was full of worshippers, each shrine at the street corners had a crowd of devout women on their knees before it—when thousands of faces were uplifted in the vast expanse of the Duomo, and every face burned with fervour as the divine flame from the preacher lit the lamp of each soul—when in the streets he met long processions of men, women, and children, the echoes of whose hymns (Laudi) filled the narrow streets, and went up to the clear air above them?

Then came that strange carnival when there were no maskers in the city, but white-robed boys went from house to house to collect the vanities for the burning—when the flames of the fires, hitherto saturnalian, were the flames of a holocaust, wherein each one cast the sins and temptations, even the pretty things which, though dear to himself, withdrew him from God. And when the white-robed boys came to the studio of the friends at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini, with what sighs and self-immolation Baccio looked for the last time at some of his studies which he judged to come under the head of anathemata, and handed them over to the acolytes. How Mariotto's soul, warm to Pagan art, burned within him at this sacrifice! And how he would talk more than ever against the monks, and hang up his own cartoons and studies of the Greek Venus in the studio for Baccio's behoof!

In these years we have no notice of authentic works done by the youthful partners, though biographers talk of their having commissions for madonnas, and other works of art.

In 1497 Francesco Valori, the grand-featured, earnest admirer of Savonarola, became Gonfaloniere in the time of Piero de' Medici's exile, [Footnote: Gino Capponi, Storia delta Republica di Firenze, lib. vi. chap. xi. p. 233.] and the friar's party was in the ascendent. Rosini [Footnote: Storia delta Pittura, chap. xvii. p. 48.] says that belonging to a faction was a means of fame, and that the Savonarola party was powerful, giving this as a reason for Baccio's partisanship; but this we can hardly believe, his whole life proved his earnestness. He was much beloved in Florence for his calm upright nature and good qualities. He delighted in the society of pious and learned men, spent much time in the convent, where he had many friends among the monks; yet with all he kept still faithful to his early friend Mariotto, whose life was cast so differently. Savonarola's faction was powerful, but the Medici had still adherents who stirred up a strong party against him.

His spirit of reform at length aroused the ire of the Pope, who forbade him to preach. He disobeyed, and the sermons on Ezekiel were scenes of tumult; no longer a group of rapt faces dwelling on his words, but frowns, murmurs, and anathemas from a crowd only kept off him by a circle of armed adherents round his pulpit.

At length, on June 22nd, the excommunication by Pope Alessandro VI. (Borgia) fell like a thunderclap, and the Medicean youths marched in triumphant procession with torches and secular music to burlesque the Laudi; no doubt Albertinelli was one of these, while Baccio grieved among the awestruck friars in the convent.

In 1498 Savonarola again lifted up his voice; the church was not large enough, so he preached beneath the blue sky on the Piazza San Marco; and Fra Domenico Buonvicini da Pescia, in the eagerness of partisanship, said that his master's words would stand the ordeal of fire. Then came that tumultuous day of April 7th, the "Sunday of the Olives," when the Franciscans and Dominicans argued while the fire burnt out before them, when Savonarola's great spirit quailed within him, and the ordeal failed; a merciful rain quenching the flames which none dared to brave save the undaunted Fra Domenico himself.

There was no painting done in the studio on that day we may be sure. Baccio was one of the surging, conflicting crowd gathered beneath the mingling shadows of Orcagna's arches and Arnolfo's great palace, and at eventide he was one of the armed partisans who protected the friar back to his convent, menaced not only by rains from heaven, but by the stormy wrath of an angry populace, defrauded of the sight they came to see.

The next day was the one which determined the painter's future life.

There was in the city a curious process of crystallisation of all the particles held in solution round the fire the previous day. The Palazzo Vecchio attracted about its doors the "Arrabiati." The "Compagnacci" assembled, armed, by the Duomo. The streets were full of detached parties of Piagnoni, treading ways of peril to their centre, San Marco.

Passions raged and seethed all day, till at the hour of vespers a cry arose, "À San Marco," and thither the multitude—500 Compagnacci, and 300 Palleschi—rushed, armed with picks and arquebusses, &c. They killed some stray Piagnoni whom they found praying by a shrine, and placed guards at the streets which led to the convent; then the assault began.

The church was dimly lighted. Savonarola and Fra Domenico kneeled on the steps of the altar, with many worshippers around them, singing tremulous hymns; amongst these were Francesco Valori, Ridolfi, and Baccio della Porta, but all armed, as Cronaca tells us. They still sang hymns when the doors were attacked with stones; then leaving the priests and women to pray for them the men rushed to the defence.

Old Valori, with a few brave friends, guarded the door; others made loop-holes of the windows and fired out; some went up the campanile, and some on the roof. Baccio fought bravely among the rest. The Palleschi were almost repulsed, but at length succeeded in setting fire to the doors. The church was filled with smoke; a turbulent crowd rushed wildly in. Savonarola saw his people fall dead beside him on the altar steps, and, taking up the Sacrament, he fled to the Greek library, where the messengers of the Signoria came and arrested both himself and Fra Domenico. It was in the fierce fight that ensued when the enemies poured in, laying hands sacrilegiously on every thing sacred, that Baccio made the vow that if he were saved this peril, he would take the habit—a vow which certainly was not made in a cowardly spirit, he fighting to the death, and then espousing the losing cause. [Footnote: Gino Capponi, lib. vi. chaps. i. and ii., and Padre Marchese, San Marco, p. 147 et seq.]

Then came that sad 23rd of May, the eve of the Ascension, when three martyrs went calmly to their death beneath the shadow of the old palace, amidst the insults of an infuriated crowd, and Arno's yellow waters received their ashes. [Footnote: Capponi, chap. ii. p. 253.]

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After the death of Savonarola the party had many defaulters; but Baccio, the Delia Robbias, Credi, Cronaca, and many other artists, were faithful, and even showed their grief by abandoning for a time the arts they loved. "It almost seemed as if with him they had lost the sacred flame from which their fervid imagination drew life and aliment." [Footnote: Marchese, San Marco, lib. iii. p. 261.]

While all these events had been taking place, Baccio had worked as often as his perturbed spirit would allow, at a great fresco of the Last Judgment, in a chapel of the cemetery of S. Maria Nuova. A certain Gerozzi, di Monna Venna Dini, gave him the commission, and as far as he had gone, the painter had given entire satisfaction. This fresco, his first as far as is known, shows Baccio's style as fully as his later ones. We have here his great harmony of form, and intense suggestiveness in composition. The infinity of heaven is emblematised in circles of saints and cherubim around the enthroned Christ. The cross, a link between heaven and earth, is borne by a trinity of angels; S. Michael, as the avenging spirit, stands a powerful figure in the foreground dividing the saved from the lost; the whole composition forming a heavenward cross on an earthly foundation. There are no caves and holes of torture with muscular bodies writhing within them; but in the despairing figures passing away on the right, some with heads bowed on clasped hands, others lifting up faces and arms in a vain cry for mercy, what suggestions there are of infinite remorse!—more dignified far than the distorted sufferers in the torture pits of previous masters. These are just indicated by two demons, and a subterranean fire behind the unblest souls. Miss Owen, [Footnote: Art Schools of Christendom, edited by Prof. Ruskin.] speaking Mr. Ruskin's sentiments, calls this a great falling off from Giotto and Orcagna's conceptions; but though theirs may be more powerful and terrible, a greater suggestion of Christian religion is here.

They, and later, Michelangelo, flung Dante's great struggling soul in tangible forms upon the walls, and embodied his poem, awful, grand, and earnest, with all the human passion intensified into human suffering. Fra Bartolommeo shows the Christian spirit; his faces look beyond the present judgment, and, instead of wrath, mercy is the predominating idea. It is like the difference in spirit between the Old Testament and the New.

The painter's reverence of Fra Angelico, and estimation of the divinity of art, is shown by Fra Angelico being placed among the saints of heaven on the right of the Saviour.

Leonardo's instructions for shading off a light sky will occur to any one who studies the finely gradated tints mingling with the clouds around the celestial group. But grand as the fresco is, and interesting as it must have been to the artist at this time, when thoughts of Savonarola mingled with every stroke, he felt he was not fulfilling his true mission in the world. Drawn more and more to the convent, hallowed to him by the memory of the martyr-friar, he was also more attuned to thoughts of retirement by family bereavements—one young brother, Piero, only being left to him out of the whole circle. The reluctance to leave this youth alone may have deferred for a time his taking the monastic vows; but having placed him under the guardianship of Santi Pagnini, a Dominican, he consigned the Last Judgment to Mariotto to finish, and leaving his worldly goods to his brother, took the habit in the convent of S. Domenico, at Prato, on July 26th, 1500, two years after first making the resolution. His year of probation over, he took the final vows and became Fra Bartolommeo.

A document in S. Marco proves that he was possessed of worldly goods when he entered, [Footnote: Rosini, Storia della Pittura, chap xxvii.] among which were the house of his father in S. Pier Gattolini, and the podere at Brozzi. Having once given himself up to monasticism, Fra Bartolommeo would offer no half-service, his brushes were left behind with all other worldly things, and here closes Baccio della Porta's first artistic career.

His sun was set only to rise again to greater brilliance in the future as Fra Bartolommeo, a name famous for ever in the annals of art.