manner afterwards became we have a proof in the _Salutation_
(1503), in which there is grand simplicity of motive combined with the
most extreme richness of execution and fullest harmony of colour.

This second union between the friends could not have been so
satisfactory to either as the first pure boyish love, when they had
been full of youthful hopes, and felt their hearts expand with the
dreams and visions of genius. Now instead of the mere differences
between two styles of art, there were differences which much more
seriously affected their characters; they were daily sundering, one
going slowly towards the cloister, the other to the world. Albertinelli
had gained a greater love of worldly success and luxury.

Baccio's mind, always attuned to devotion, was now intensified by
family sorrows, which no doubt brought him nearer to heaven. Thus
softened, he had the more readily received the seeds of faith which
Savonarola scattered broadcast.

Yet though every word of the one was a wound to the other, this
strangely assorted pair of friends did not part. Rosini well defined
their union as "a knot which binds more strongly by pulling contrary
ways." [Footnote: _Storia della Pittura,_ chap. xvii. p. 48]

So when Albertinelli, while colouring with zeal a design of Baccio's,
would inveigh against all monks, the Dominicans in particular, and
Savonarola especially, his friend would argue that the inspired prophet
was not an enemy, but a purifier and reformer of art. Probably Baccio
was at the Duomo on that Sunday in Lent, 1495, and reported to Mariotto
those wondrous words of Savonarola, that "Beauty ought never to be
taken apart from the true and good," and how, after quoting the same