Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/470

462 and lie could not move himself. He was therefore advised Oy his physician to proceed to the baths at San Filippo, but although he remained there a considerable time, he became but very little better. Fra Bartolommeo was a great lover of fruit, finding the flavour particularly grateful to him, although it was exceedingly injurious to his health; wherefore one morning, having eaten very plentifully of figs, he was attacked, in addition to his previous malady, with a violent access of fever, which finished the course of his life in four days, and when he had attained the age of forty-eight years; he retained his consciousness to the last, and with humble trust resigned his soul to Heaven.

The death of Fra Bartolommeo caused infinite grief to his friends, but more particularly to the monks of his order, who gave him honourable sepulture in San Marco on the 8th October, 1517. He had received dispensation from attending to the duties of the choir, and was not required to take part in other offices, so that all the profit resulting from his works, was the property of the convent, he retaining in his own hands only so much money as was necessary for the purchase of colours and other materials requisite for his paintings.

The disciples of Fra Bartolommeo were Cecchino del Frate, Benedetto Cianfanini, Gabbriel Rustici, and Fra Paolo Pistolese, who became the possessor of all that he left behind him. Fra Paolo executed numerous pictures of various kinds, after the death of Fra Bartolommeo, from the drawings which thus fell into his hands; three of the works thus executed are now in the church of San Domenico at Pistoja, and one is at Santa Maria del Sasso, in Casentino. Fra Bartolommeo gave to his pictures such admi-