DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0411
THE MAKERS OF FLO HENCE.
391
Baccio whom he loved so dearly before his cloister days ;
but we trust the reader will like, as we do, to linger upon
all that is known of this faulty, tender-hearted, foolish
fellow. He seems to have risked his life, according to
Vasari, in some foolish feats of arms, to gain credit with
some ecpially foolish “light o’ love”—alcuni amori, the
old biographer says, as if there were more than one of
them. “And as he was neither very young nor very
skillful in such undertakings,” the rash gallant had the
worst of it, and took to his bed in consequence. He was
carried to Florence afterward from La Quercia, where the
air was too sharp for him ; but though he was only forty-
five he had no strength to rally, and died there in Novem-
ber, 1515, after a few days’ suffering, in the arms of his
truest lover of all, comforted in his last moments by that
beloved Baccio from whom he could not live or thrive
apart. Such a union between two painters is not un-
paralleled in the history of art, and whenever it occurs it
carries with it the heart of the spectator, especially in such
a case as this, where the two men, so persistently faithful
to each other from boyhood to the grave, were so curiously
unlike in nature. The wayward Mariotto throws a gleam
of affectionate interest all through upon the much more
orderly path of the frate, whose higher powers and purer
character kept him always on a loftier level, but who yet
owes something to his troublesome partner. Probably in
his lifetime he was little more than an anxiety and a charge
to the pious monk ; but the figure of Fra Bartolommeo, so
timid in life, so bold in art, would be much more abstract
and less lovable without Mariotto the perverse companion,
to whom existence was impossible without him, whom he
inspired and reclaimed and never gave up till death sepa-
rated the pair. And even death did not separate them
long. Two years more the frate lived and painted, with
skill and cunning undiminshed, for he was still in the full
391
Baccio whom he loved so dearly before his cloister days ;
but we trust the reader will like, as we do, to linger upon
all that is known of this faulty, tender-hearted, foolish
fellow. He seems to have risked his life, according to
Vasari, in some foolish feats of arms, to gain credit with
some ecpially foolish “light o’ love”—alcuni amori, the
old biographer says, as if there were more than one of
them. “And as he was neither very young nor very
skillful in such undertakings,” the rash gallant had the
worst of it, and took to his bed in consequence. He was
carried to Florence afterward from La Quercia, where the
air was too sharp for him ; but though he was only forty-
five he had no strength to rally, and died there in Novem-
ber, 1515, after a few days’ suffering, in the arms of his
truest lover of all, comforted in his last moments by that
beloved Baccio from whom he could not live or thrive
apart. Such a union between two painters is not un-
paralleled in the history of art, and whenever it occurs it
carries with it the heart of the spectator, especially in such
a case as this, where the two men, so persistently faithful
to each other from boyhood to the grave, were so curiously
unlike in nature. The wayward Mariotto throws a gleam
of affectionate interest all through upon the much more
orderly path of the frate, whose higher powers and purer
character kept him always on a loftier level, but who yet
owes something to his troublesome partner. Probably in
his lifetime he was little more than an anxiety and a charge
to the pious monk ; but the figure of Fra Bartolommeo, so
timid in life, so bold in art, would be much more abstract
and less lovable without Mariotto the perverse companion,
to whom existence was impossible without him, whom he
inspired and reclaimed and never gave up till death sepa-
rated the pair. And even death did not separate them
long. Two years more the frate lived and painted, with
skill and cunning undiminshed, for he was still in the full