waters received their ashes. [Footnote: Capponi, chap. ii. p. 253.]

[Illustration: SAVONAROLO AS PETER MARTYR. BY FRA BARTOLOMMEO. _In
the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence_.]

After the death of Savonarola the party had many defaulters; but
Baccio, the Delia Robbias, Credi, Cronaca, and many other artists, were
faithful, and even showed their grief by abandoning for a time the arts
they loved. "It almost seemed as if with him they had lost the sacred
flame from which their fervid imagination drew life and aliment."
[Footnote: Marchese, _San Marco_, lib. iii. p. 261.]

While all these events had been taking place, Baccio had worked as
often as his perturbed spirit would allow, at a great fresco of the
_Last Judgment_, in a chapel of the cemetery of S. Maria Nuova. A
certain Gerozzi, di Monna Venna Dini, gave him the commission, and as
far as he had gone, the painter had given entire satisfaction. This
fresco, his first as far as is known, shows Baccio's style as fully as
his later ones. We have here his great harmony of form, and intense
suggestiveness in composition. The infinity of heaven is emblematised
in circles of saints and cherubim around the enthroned Christ. The
cross, a link between heaven and earth, is borne by a trinity of
angels; S. Michael, as the avenging spirit, stands a powerful figure in
the foreground dividing the saved from the lost; the whole composition
forming a heavenward cross on an earthly foundation. There are no caves
and holes of torture with muscular bodies writhing within them; but in
the despairing figures passing away on the right, some with heads bowed
on clasped hands, others lifting up faces and arms in a vain cry for
mercy, what suggestions there are of infinite remorse!--more dignified
far than the distorted sufferers in the torture pits of previous