Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/471

Rh rable colouring, and enriched them with beauty of a character so truly original, that for these reasons he well merits to be numbered among the benefactors of our art.

was the most intimate and trusted friend of Fra Bartolommeo, nay, we may almost say his other self, not only because they were continually together, but also for the similarity of their manner, seeing that when Mariotto gave undivided attention to his art, there was a very close resemblance between his works and those of Fra Bartolommeo.

Mariotto was the son of Biagio di Bindo Albertinelli; up to the age of twenty he had practised the trade of a goldbeater, but he then abandoned that calling: he acquired the first principles of painting in the workshops^ of Cosimo Roselli, and while there formed an intimate acquaintanceship with Baccio della Porta. They were indeed so completely of one mind, and such was the brotherly affection existing between them, that when Baccio left the workshop of Cosimo to exercise his art as a master, Mariotto left it also, and again joined himself to his companion. They accordingly both dwelt for a long time at the gate of San Pier Gattolini, where they executed numerous works in company, and as Mariotto was not so thoroughly grounded in the principles of design as Baccio, the former devoted himself to the study of the antiquities which were then in Florence, and of which the larger as well as the best part was in the Medici