CHAPTER III. THE GARDEN AND THE CLOISTER. A.D. 1487-1495.
The two boys left the studio of Cosimo Roselli at an early age. There had been trouble in the house of Paolo the ex-muleteer, and Baccio's already serious mind had been awed by the sight of death. His little brother, Domenico, died in 1486 at seven years of age. His father, Paolo, died in 1487; thus Baccio, at the age of twelve or thirteen, was left the head of the family, and the supporter of his stepmother and her babes. This may account for his leaving Cosimo so young, and setting up his studio with Mariotto as his companion, in his own house at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini; this partnership began presumably about the year 1490.
Conscious that they were not perfected by Cosimo's teaching, they both set themselves to undergo a strict discipline in art, and, friends as they were, their paths began to diverge from this point. Their natural tastes led them to opposite schools—Baccio to the sacred shrine of art in the shadowed church, Mariotto to the greenery and sunshine of the Medici garden, where beauty of nature and classic treasures were heaped in profusion; whose loggie [Footnote: Arched colonnades.] glowed with the finest forms of Greek sculpture, resuscitated from the tombs of ages to inspire newer artists to perfection, but alas! also to debase the aim of purely Christian art.
Baccio's calm devotional mind no doubt disliked the turmoil of this garden, crowded with spirited youths; the tone of pagan art was not in accordance with his ideal, and so he learned from Masaccio and Lippi that love of true form and harmonious composition, which he perfected afterwards by a close study of Leonardo da Vinci, whose principles of chiaroscuro he seems to have completely carried out. With this training he rose to such great celebrity even in his early manhood, that Rosini [Footnote: Rosini, Storia della Pittura, chap. xvii. p. 48.] calls him "the star of the Florentine school in Leonardo and Michelangelo's absence," and he attained a grandeur almost equal to the latter, in the S. Mark and SS. Peter and Paul of his later years.
Meanwhile Mariotto was revelling in the Eden of art, drawing daily beneath the Loggie—where the orange-trees grew close to the pillars—from the exquisite statues and "torsi," peopling the shades with white forms, or copying cartoons by the older masters, which hung against the walls.
The custode of all these treasures was Bertoldo, an old sculptor, who boasted of having been the scholar of Donatello, and also heir to his art possessions. He could also point to the bronze pulpits of San Lorenzo, which he finished, as proof of his having inherited a portion of his master's spirit. Bertoldo, having doubtless rendered to Duke Cosimo's keeping his designs by Donatello, which were preserved in the garden, obtained the post of instructor there; but his age may have prevented his keeping perfect order, and the younger spirits overpowered him. There were Michelangelo, with all the youthful power of passion and force which he afterwards imparted to his works, and the audacious Torrigiano, with his fierce voice, huge bulk, and knitted brows, who was himself a discord like the serpent in Eden. Easily offended, he was prompt in offering outrage. Did any other young man show talent or surpass him, revenge deep and mean as that of Bandinelli to Michelangelo was sure to follow, the envied work being spoiled in his rage. Then there were the fun-loving Francesco Granacci, and the witty Rustici, as full of boyish pranks as they were of genius—what could one old man do among so many?—and now comes the impetuous Mariotto to add one more unruly member to his class.
How well one can imagine the young men—in loose blouses confined at the waist, or in buff jerkins and close-fitting hose, with jaunty cloaks or doublets, and little red or black caps, set on flowing locks cut square in front—passing beneath the shadows of the arches among the dim statues, or crossing the garden in the sunshine amid the orange-trees, under the splendid blue Italian skies.
We can see them painting, modelling, or drawing large cartoons in charcoal, while old Bertoldo passes from easel to easel, criticising and fault-finding, detailing for the hundredth time Donatello's maxims, and moving on, heedless or deaf to the irreverent jokes of his ungrateful pupils.
Then, like a vision of power and grandeur, Lorenzo il Magnifico enters with a group of his classic friends. Politian and the brothers Pulci admire again the ancient sculptures which are to them as illustrations of their readings, and Lorenzo notes the works of all the students who were destined to contribute to the glory of the many Medicean palaces. How the burly Torrigiano's heart burns within him when the Duke praises his compeer's works!
Sometimes Madonna Alfonsina, the mother of Lorenzo, and widow of Piero, walked here, and she also took an interest in the studies of the youths. Mariotto especially attracted her by his talent and zeal. She commissioned him to paint some pictures for her to send as a present to her own family, the Orsini of Rome. These works, of which the subjects are not known, passed afterwards into the possession of Cæsar Borgia. She also sat to Mariotto for her own portrait. It is easily imagined how elated the excitable youth became at this notice from the mother of the magnificent Lorenzo. He had dreams of making a greater name than even his master, Cosimo, whose handiwork was in the Sistine; of excelling Michelangelo, of whose genius the world was beginning to talk; and, as adhering to a party was the only way to success in those days, he became a strong Pallesco, [Footnote: The Palleschi were the partizans of the Medici, so called because they took as their standard the Palle, or Balls, the arms of that family.] trusting wholly in the favour of Madonna Alfonsina.