Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/352

302 prodigal who railed at priests and friars, took delight in wild pranks and noisy company, and is justly described by Vasari as a "persona inquietissima." From the first he proclaimed himself a partisan of the Medici, and received his earliest commissions from Madonna Alfonsina Orsini, the wife of Piero de' Medici. He painted this lady's portrait and executed several pictures for her, which were sent to Rome and afterwards became the property of Cæsar Borgia. An altar-piece of the Annunciation, in the Duomo of Volterra, and a lovely little triptych of the Virgin between St. Katharine and St. Barbara, in the Poldi-Pezzoli Museum at Milan, are the earliest of his works now in existence. This last bears the date of 1500, and was, until lately, ascribed to Fra Bartolommeo, whose early panels in the Uffizi it resembles closely.

When Baccio took the vows of the Dominican Order, he begged Albertinelli to finish the fresco of the Last Judgment, which he had begun in the Campo Santo of S. Maria Nuova, since it distressed him to break his contract with his employer, Gerozzo Dini. Mariotto consented, and introduced the portraits of Gerozzo and of the master of the hospital among the blessed, and of himself and his scholar Giuliano Bugiardini among the dead who rise from their tombs at the trumpet-sound. The skill with which he performed his task added greatly to his reputation, and he opened a shop on his own account in the Via Gualfonda. Here, in 1503, he painted his finest work, the Visitation. This famous picture was ordered by a congregation of priests for a church dedicated to St. Martin and St. Elizabeth, where it remained until it was removed to the