Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/338

290 Florence. For a time he struggled bravely to work at his art, and, at Gerozzo Dini's request, began to paint the fresco of the Last Judgment on the walls of the Campo Santo attached to the hospital of S. Maria Nuova. To-day only faded and blackened fragments of this once noble work remain, but there is still a monumental grandeur about the composition, a dignity and elevation of type which are profoundly impressive. In this grand conception of the avenging Judge appearing with uplifted arm on the clouds of heaven, attended by all his Saints, we see how in those dark hours Savonarola's follower clung to the eternal truths for which his master had lived and died. But the task was beyond his strength, and, when the upper part of the fresco was finished, Baccio left the rest to be finished by his friend Albertinelli, on the 26th of July, 1500, and took the vows of a novice in the Dominican convent at Prato.

During the next four years he gave up painting entirely, and only resumed his brush at the urgent entreaty of the Prior of San Marco, the wise and learned Santi-Pagnini. Henceforth Fra Bartolommeo, as he was now known, resolved to devote his art to the glory of God and the benefit of his community, remembering how Savonarola had encouraged all friars who had no vocation for preaching or theology to study painting and architecture. His first altarpiece was the Vision of St. Bernard, which he agreed to paint, on the 13th of November, 1504, for a chapel in the Badia, and which now hangs, much injured and re-painted, in the Accademia. A prolonged dispute arose over the price of this picture between the Prior and Bernardo del Bianco, by whose order it was