Before approaching the one man of genius left in Florence after
Botticelli and Leonardo, before speaking of Michelangelo, the man in
whom all that was most peculiar and much that was greatest in the
striving of Florentine art found its fulfilment, let us turn for a
moment to a few painters who, just because they were men of manifold
talent, might elsewhere almost have become masters. Fra Bartolommeo,
Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, and Bronzino were perhaps no less gifted as
artists than Palma, Bonifazio Veronese, Lotto, and Tintoretto; but their
talents, instead of being permitted to flower naturally, were scorched
by the passion for showing off dexterity, blighted by academic ideals,
and uprooted by the whirlwind force of Michelangelo.

Fra Bartolommeo, who in temperament was delicate, refined, graceful, and
as a painter had a miniaturist's feeling for the dainty, was induced to
desert his lovely women, his exquisite landscape, and his gentleness of
expression for figures constructed mechanically on a colossal scale, or
for effects of the round at any cost. And as evil is more obvious than
good, Bartolommeo, the painter of that masterpiece of colour and light
and shade, of graceful movement and charming feeling, the "Madonna with
the Baptist and St. Stephen" in the Cathedral at Lucca, Bartolommeo, the
dainty deviser of Mr. Mond's tiny "Nativity," Bartolommeo, the artificer
of a hundred masterpieces of pen drawing, is almost unknown; and to most
people Fra Bartolommeo is a sort of synonym for pomposity. He is known
only as the author of physically colossal, spiritually insignificant
prophets and apostles, or, perchance, as the painter of pitch-dark
altar-pieces: this being the reward of devices to obtain mere relief.

[Page heading: ANDREA DEL SARTO]

Andrea del Sarto approached perhaps as closely to a Giorgione or a