ing Cosimo Il Vecchio, the Pater Patriae, as one of the central figures, kneeling before the Divine Infant, and other well-known Medici grouped around him. Simonetta, as the Blessed Mother, is familiar to us, and the artist himself is in the group at the extreme right, looking our way. In the Accademia are the Venus with the Three Graces, and the Coronation of the Virgin, a lovely work. Pope Sixtus called Botticelli to Rome and appointed him master of the decorations of the Sistine Chapel, but he later returned to Florence, where he, as well as Lippo Lippi, was a pensioner of the Medici in his old age. After Savonarola's death, his warm adherent and follower, Fra Bartolommeo, was visited in San Marco by Raphael, who stimulated him anew with love for painting and exchanged with him a knowledge of perspective for suggestions in coloring, which the monk was able to give. The two became fast friends, each helping the other, on one occasion, in finishing his pictures. Bartolommeo owed the higher cultivation of his art to the works of Leonardo da Vinci, and he, as well as Angelo and Leonardo, had prepared a sketch for the decoration of the Council Chamber of the Palazzo Vecchio, but his work, as was theirs, was left undone, though his outlines and sketches for it are preserved in the Uffizi—it was to have been the representation of the Patron Saints of Florence. His first work of any importance was a fresco, The Last Judgment, in Maria Novella, which was completed by Albertinelli. You see, we cannot mention Bartolommeo without at the same time speaking of his boyhood friend and almost inseparable companion, Albertinelli, who studied with him under the same early master, who later worked in the same bottega when they set out for themselves, and who would fain have followed him into the religious life, had he been so called. In the Certosa or Carthusian Monastery of Florence is a Crucifixion by Albertinelli, and his Visitation in the Uffizi is a much copied work, and the circular Holy Family in the Pitti recalls Leonardo in coloring. Albertinelli was not so well grounded in drawing as was Bartolommeo, but he set to work to copy his friend's manner, and succeeded so well that when called upon to finish works left undone by him, his part of the work could not be distinguished from that of the other. Most of Bartolommeo's paintings, besides those decorating the walls of San Marco, are in the Pitti Gallery, where is his Resurrection of our Lord, called Salvator Mundi, and also his greatest work done in conjunction with Albertinelli, "The Marriage of St. Catherine," attributed in the following poem to Albertinelli: |