artist and musician in early life, the love of the beautiful was strong
within him, only he would have it go hand in hand with the good and
true. His dominant spirit was that of reform; as he tried to regenerate
mind, morals, literature, and state government, so he would reform art,
and fling over it the spiritual light which illumed his own soul.

It was natural that such a mind should act on the devotional character
of Baccio. What could he do but join when every church was full of
worshippers, each shrine at the street corners had a crowd of devout
women on their knees before it--when thousands of faces were uplifted
in the vast expanse of the Duomo, and every face burned with fervour as
the divine flame from the preacher lit the lamp of each soul--when in
the streets he met long processions of men, women, and children, the
echoes of whose hymns (Laudi) filled the narrow streets, and went up to
the clear air above them?

Then came that strange carnival when there were no maskers in the city,
but white-robed boys went from house to house to collect the vanities
for the burning--when the flames of the fires, hitherto saturnalian,
were the flames of a holocaust, wherein each one cast the sins and
temptations, even the pretty things which, though dear to himself,
withdrew him from God. And when the white-robed boys came to the studio
of the friends at the gate of S. Pier Gattolini, with what sighs and
self-immolation Baccio looked for the last time at some of his studies
which he judged to come under the head of _anathemata_, and handed
them over to the acolytes. How Mariotto's soul, warm to Pagan art,
burned within him at this sacrifice! And how he would talk more than
ever against the monks, and hang up his own cartoons and studies of the
Greek Venus in the studio for Baccio's behoof!