ALBERTINELLI

By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence had become the æsthetic capital of Italy, and painters innumerable were plying their trade within her walls. As they worked in close contact and unconsciously reflected the influences which beset them on every side, it becomes increasingly difficult to assign to any given artist the execution of certain works. The task becomes even more difficult, and indeed thankless, when one is brought face to face with such a composite picture as the Madonna and Child, St. Jerome and St. Zenobius (No. 1114), which is officially ascribed to Albertinelli (1474–1515). The leading authority on Italian art has given it as his opinion that this large canvas, which is inscribed:

MARIOCTI DEBERTINELLIS OPUS
Ā. D̄. M̊. DVI,

was “begun by Filippino Lippi, who laid in the St. Jerome, while Albertinelli was assisted by Bugiardini in the execution of the rest, especially in the child and landscape.” Albertinelli was the intimate friend of Fra Bartolommeo, whose partner he eventually became. When it is remembered that Albertinelli worked in the studio of Cosimo Rosselli with Piero di Cosimo, who was the master of Fra Bartolommeo and had some influence on Filippino Lippi, it will be recognised that it is only the discerning critic of wide experience and consummate flair that can detect the hand of various painters in a composite picture of this kind, as Mr. Berenson has done.

The Christ appearing to the Magdalene (No. 1115), which passes officially as the work of Albertinelli, was most probably an early picture by Fra Bartolommeo (1472–1517), who, having like Botticelli come under the spell of Savonarola, took the vows of a Dominican in July 1500, and temporarily relinquished the professional activity of a painter. The Frate took up his brush again and, while working between 1509 and 1512 as the partner of Albertinelli, achieved the large and imposing Holy Family, with St. Peter, St. Vincent, St. Stephen, and St. Catherine of Siena on the left, and St. Dominic, St. Francis, and St. Bartholomew on the right (No. 1154). It is signed on the base of the throne, in characteristic manner:

ORATE PRO PICTORE
MDXI
BARTHOLOME FLOREN̄.
OR. PRAE.

Four years later he also completed his Annunciation (No. 1153), which is inscribed:

F. Bart^o Floren^s or^is pre.
1515.

The introduction of St. Paul, St. John the Baptist, and St. Margaret on the left, and St. Mary Magdalene and St. Francis on the right, tends to destroy the full significance of the principal theme. Fra Bartolommeo’s pictures helped to emancipate Raphael from the mannerisms he had acquired from Perugino; they mark a late period in the Renaissance art of Florence. He lived until 1517, when Florentine painting was on the verge of a fast approaching decadence.

Equally influential in the art of this period was Filippino Lippi (1457–1504), whose tendency to over-ornamentation became more advanced in his later years. In his fascinating pictures spiritual significance is at times sacrificed to a love of mere display, the baroque flutterings of his draperies and the air of affectation that he sometimes imparted to his figures. The Louvre exhibits no example of the art of Filippino which in its latest phase shows the early, although unmistakable, signs of decline.