About this time Fra Bartolommeo recommenced work, and while he was painting the triptych for Donatello's Madonna (the miniature Nativity and Circumcision in the Uffizi), Albertinelli was at work in the convent of the Certosa, at a Crucifixion in fresco. The painting is extant in the chapterhouse, and is a very fair and unrestored specimen of his best style. The Virgin and Magdalen are very purely conceived figures; the idea of the angels gathering the blood falling from the wounded hands of the crucified Saviour is very tender; there is a great brightness of colouring, and a greenish landscape almost Peruginesque in feeling. Some of his pupils worked with him at the Certosa, and nearly brought their master into trouble.
They were not more content with convent fare than was Davide Ghirlandajo, when the only delicacy supplied him at Vallombrosa was cheese; and to revenge themselves, they stole round the cloister after the circular sliding panels by which the rations were sent into the monks' cells were filled, and feasted on the meals made ready for the good brothers. Great confusion ensued in the convent, the monks accusing each other of the theft; but when they found out the real culprits, they made a compromise, promising double rations if the artists would hasten their work and leave them their daily dole in peace.
The fresco is dated 1506. The same year produced the fine picture now in the Louvre, which was painted for the church of S. Trinità on the commission of Zanobio del Maestro.
The Madonna, stands on a pedestal, with S. Jerome and S. Zenobio in front, while episodes from their lives are brought in like distant echoes in the background. [Footnote: S. Zenobio was the first bishop of Florence, and is the patron saint of that city.]
The nuns of S. Giuliano employed him to paint two pictures, both of which are now in the Belle Arti. One is an altarpiece; the Madonna enthroned, with the Divine Child in her arms. Era Bartolommeo's idea of an angel-sustained canopy is here, but the angels hold it up from the outside instead of the inside. Before her are S. John the Baptist, S. Julian, S. Nicholas, and S. Dominic. The S. Julian has a great similarity to the S. Michael of Perugino, and the S. John, by its good modelling, shows the result of his studies from the antique in the Medici garden.
For the same church he did the curious conventional painting of the Trinity on a gold ground. The subject is inartistic, because unapproachable; the attempt to paint that which is a deep spiritual mystery degrades both the art and the subject; the latter because it lowers it to human grasp, the former because it shows its powerlessness to shadow forth the infinite. There is beautiful painting in the heads of the angels, at the foot of the Cross, but the brilliancy of the gold ground is overpowering to the colours, albeit he has balanced it by reproducing Cosimo Roselli's red-winged cherubs. Nothing but Fra Angelico's delicate tints can bear such a background. No doubt Piero, Baccio's brother, helped to lay on this gold, for one of the stipulations in the contract with Mariotto was that he was to "metter d' oro ed altre cose di mazoneria" (to put on gold and other articles of emblazonment).
It has been a great subject of conjecture at what part of his life Albertinelli took the rash step of throwing up his art and opening a tavern at Porta S. Gallo. Some say it was in his despair at Fra Bartolommeo having taken the vows, but this is disproved by his having at that time finished the Last Judgment, and taken pupils in Val Fonda. Others assert that it was at the breaking up of the last partnership in 1513, but there is no hiatus in his work at that time, existing paintings being dated in 1513 and the following years till his death, three years after.
Vasari, though not to be depended on in regard to dates—chronology not being his forte—is generally right in the gossip and stories of the lives near his own time, and it is by collateral evidence from his pages that we are able to fix with more certainty 1508 or 1509 as the time of this episode in Albertinelli's life. In 1507 we find him as an artist helping to value his friend's picture, and mediating between the convent and Bernardo del Bianco. [Footnote: Crowe and Cavalcaselle, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. 544.] Now, in the 'Life of Andrea del Sarto,' we read that Francia Bigio, Albertinelli's pupil, made the acquaintance of Andrea while studying the Cartoons in the Hall of the Council (this was from 1506 to 1508), and as their friendship increased, Andrea confided to Francia Bigio that he could no longer endure the eccentricities of Piero di Cosimo, and determined to seek a home for himself, and that Francia Bigio being also alone—his master Mariotto Albertinelli having abandoned the art of painting—they determined to share a studio and rooms. [Footnote: Vasari, vol. iii. p. 182.] The first works the partners undertook were the frescoes of the Scalzo and the Servi, which were begun in 1509. Thus the date is tolerably certain, especially as a gap occurs in Albertinelli's works at this time.
Sig. Gaetano Milanesi's researches in the Archives have thrown a new light on Mariotto's motives, which were not entirely connected with art; it was not that he was discouraged by adverse criticism, nor wholly that, as time divided him from his friend, he felt he could produce no great work away from his influence, but it was partly that he had married a wife named Antonia, whose father kept an inn at S. Gallo. It is possible the tavern came to him by way of dot, and the above reasons making him discontented with art for a time, might have induced him to carry on the business himself. Sig. Milanesi says a document exists of a contract in which Mariotto's name is connected with a tavern, but that he has never been able to retrace it since the first time he found it. It is his opinion that the whole story arose from the fact of the wife's family possessing this wine shop, and his connection with it in that way.
But though Albertinelli passed off his pseudo-hostdom with bravado, talking very wittily about it, the artistic vein was too strong within him to be subdued; he soon gave up the flask and returned to the brush, for in 1509, when his quondam pupil, Francia Bigio, was busy at the Servi, we again find Mariotto's hand in a painting of the Madonna. The Virgin, holding a pomegranate in her hand, supports with the other the Child, who stands on a parapet, and clings to the bosom of his mother's dress for support, in a truly natural way; the infant Baptist stands by. The painting, signed, and dated 1509, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, but has been injured by repainting. In spite of this, Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle believe they perceive Bugiardini's hand in it.