San Marco was rich in frescoes of the Madonna and Child, two of which are still in the chapel of the convent, and two in the Belle Arti. Some of these are charming in expression, the children clinging round the mother's neck in a true childish abandon of affection. What a tender feeling these monk artists had for the spirit of maternity! Perhaps by being debarred from the contemplation of maternal love in its humanity, they more clearly comprehended its divinity. Look at the little round-backed nestling child in Fra Angelico's Madonna della Stella, imperfect as it is in form, the whole spirit of love is in it. He does not give only the mother-love for the child, but the child-love for the mother, which is more divine, and the same feeling is seen in the Madonna of Fra Bartolommeo.
This year, 1516, also marks a journey to a hermitage of his order at Lecceto, between Florence and Pisa. Here he painted a Deposition from the Cross on the wall of the Hospice, and two heads of Christ on two tiles above the doors.
A great many of his works are in private collections in Florence; one of the most lovely is the Pietà, painted for Agnolo Doni, and now in the Corsini Gallery at Rome.
All this time the great painting of the Enthronement of the Virgin, ordered by Pier Soderini, before his exile, was still unfinished. He seems to have taken it in hand again about this time, but being attacked with another access of fever, again left it, and the painting, shadowed in with black, remains in the Uffizi. Lanzi writes of it that, imperfect as it is, it may be regarded as a true lesson in art, and bears the same relation to painting as the clay model to the finished statue, the genius of the inventor being impressed upon it. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: History of Painting, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 455.] call this a Conception, but Vasari's old name of the Patron Saints of Florence seems to fit it best. S. John the Baptist, S. Reparata, S. Zenobio, &c., stand in an adoring group around the heavenly powers, S. Anna above the Virgin and infant Christ forming a charming pyramidal group in the midst. The whole thing is one of Fra Bartolommeo's richest compositions. The centre of the three monks on the left is said to be a portrait of Fra Bartolommeo himself, and to be the original from which the only known portrait of him is taken (see Frontispiece). Fra Bartolommeo left another work also unfinished, an apotheosis of a saint, which is now at Panshanger. This is supposed to have been a small ideal prepared for a picture to celebrate the canonisation of S. Antonino, which Leo X. had almost promised the brethren of S. Marco on his triumphant entry in 1515. The work, if it had been painted in the larger form, would have been a perfect masterpiece of composition, "a very Beethoven symphony in colour," if we may judge from the sketch at Panshanger, where a living crowd groups round the bier of the archbishop, and life, earnestness, harmony, and richness, are all intense.
So ill was Fra Bartolommeo in 1517 that he was ordered to take the baths at San Filippo, thence he went for the last time to Pian di Mugnone, where he painted a Vision of the Saviour to Mary Magdalen, above the door of the chapel. The two figures, nearly life-size, are at the door of the cave sepulchre. Mary has just recognised her Lord, and in her ecstasy flings herself forward on her knees before him. The Saviour is a dignified figure semi-nude, with a white veil wrapped around him.
In the Pitti Palace, a charming Pietà of Fra Bartolommeo's occupies a place near the Pietà of Andrea del Sarto, the two pictures forming a most interesting contrast of style. The kneeling Virgin and S. John support the head of the prostrate Saviour, S. Catherine and Mary Magdalen weep at his feet, the latter in an agony of grief crouches prone on the ground hiding her face. The colouring is extremely rich, broad masses of full-tone melting softly into deep shadows. The handling in the flesh-tones of the dead Saviour, as well as the modelling of form, are most masterly. It is generally supposed that this was the picture which Bugiardini is said to have coloured after the master's death; but there is much divergence among Italian authors both as to whether this was the painting spoken of, and also as to the meaning of Vasari's words, he using the phrase "finished" in one place, and "coloured" in another. For charm of colouring and depth of expression, the Pietà is the most lovely of all the Frate's works; therefore Bugiardini who was mediocre, could not have outdone his great master. It was not coloured by him. Bocchi [Footnote: Bocchi, Bellezze di Firenze, p. 304.] says there were two other figures, S. Peter and S. Paul, in the picture, where a meaningless black shadow stretches across the background; but they were erased by the antique restorer because they were "troppo deboli." Is it not likely that if Bugiardini had any hand in the work, it was to finish these figures?
Returning in the autumn to Florence, Fra Bartolommeo caught a severe cold, the effects of which were heightened by eating fruit, and after four days' extreme illness he died on October 8th, 1517, aged 42.
The monks felt his death intensely, and buried him with great honour in San Marco.
He left to art the most valuable legacy possible—a long list of masterpieces in which religious feeling is expressed in the very highest language. In all his works there is not a line or tint which transgresses against either the sentiment of devotion, or the rules of art. He stands for ever, almost on a level with the great trio of the culmination, "possessing Leonardo's grace of colour and more than his industry, Michelangelo's force with more softness, and Raphael's sentiment with more devotion;" yet with just the inexpressible want of that supernatural genius which would have placed him above them all. His legacy to the world is a series of lessons from the very first setting of his ideal on paper to its finished development. The germ exists in the charcoal sketches at the Belle Arti and Uffizi; the under-shadowing of the subject is seen in the Patron Saints at the Uffizi.
Many of his drawings are not to be traced. Some were used by Fra Paolino, his pupil, who at his death passed them to Suor Plautilla Nelli, a nun in Sta. Caterina, Florence (born 1523, died 1587). When Baldinucci wrote his work, he said 500 of these were in the possession of Cavaliere Gaburri.