Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/347

1517] colossal St. Mark, of the Pitti, a figure evidently inspired by the sight of Michelangelo's prophets in the Sistina, was painted in 1514, as well as a nude St. Sebastian, which hung for some time in San Marco. This figure, however, offended some of the more scrupulous friars, and was eventually sold to the French king's agent, Giovanni Battista della Palla. In 1515, the artist completed the Annunciation, in the Louvre, and the Apostles Peter and Paul, in the Quirinal, which he presented to his host, Fra Mariano, and which, according to Vasari, were retouched by Raphael at the painter's request. And in the same year, at the wish of the Dominican friars of the convent of San Romano at Lucca, he painted the great canvas of the Madonna della Misericordia, with the lovely groups of women and children among the crowd of worshippers taking shelter under the blue mantle of the Virgin-Mother. Unfortunately, the works of this last period, in spite of many beauties, all reveal the same fatal tendency to emulate the statuesque grandeur of Michelangelo's style which Fra Bartolommeo shared with all his Florentine contemporaries. To this vain and futile endeavour the painter sacrificed his own exquisite sense of beauty and symmetry, and that instinctive grace and tender feeling which are the charm of his earlier works.

The prolonged strain of continual effort and uninterrupted labours had seriously affected the Friar's health, and, in October, 1515, he once more sought rest and change of air at Pian di Mugnone, where he painted a fresco of the Annunciation in the convent church of S. Maddalena. On his way back to Florence, he stopped at his father's native village of Suffignano,