Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/342

294 worked together in perfect harmony, and many were the fine paintings that issued from the convent-workshop. One of the most delightful of Fra Bartolommeo's smaller pictures, the Holy Family, at Panshanger, belongs to this period, and was probably painted in 1509, soon after the Madonna at Lucca. The tender charm of Raphael's art and the delicate tints of Leonardo's colouring are blended together in this happy group of Mother and Children resting under palm and pomegranate trees in the sunny landscape, while St. Joseph, a venerable form with a grandly modelled head, leans on his staff behind them. After the dissolution of the partnership between Fra Bartolommeo and Albertinelli, this picture was bought by Filippi Salviati, a devoted follower of Savonarola and intimate friend of the painter, who already owned the artist's portrait of the martyred Friar. The same delicate feeling and gentle grace appear in the altar-piece of the Virgin and Saints, in the Church of San Marco, a picture which was painted in 1509, and which, Bottari tells us, was actually taken for a work of Raphael by the artist Pietro da Cortona. The large altar-piece of the Marriage of St. Katherine in the Louvre, was also painted for San Marco, but was bought by the Signory in 1511, and presented to the French ambassador, Jacques Hurault, Bishop of Autun. A second version of the subject, on a still grander scale, bearing the date 1512 and the words "Orate pro Pictore," was executed in the following year, to replace the former work, and is now in the Pitti. Another fine composition of the Virgin in Glory, adored by angels and saints, is still to be seen