while his feeling is remarkable for elevation and
sobriety. All that he lacks, is the boldness of imagination, the depth of
passion, and the power of thought, that are indispensable to genius of the
highest order. Gifted with a sympathetic and a pliant, rather than a
creative and self-sustained nature, he was sensitive to every influence.
Therefore we find him learning much in his youth from Lionardo, deriving a
fresh impulse from Raphael, and endeavouring in his later life, after a
visit to Rome in 1514, to "heighten his style," as the phrase went, by
emulating Michael Angelo. The attempt to tread the path of Buonarroti was
a failure. What Fra Bartolommeo sought to gain in majesty, he lost in
charm. His was essentially a pure and gracious manner, upon which
sublimity could not be grafted. The gentle soul, who dropped his weapon
when the convent of S. Marco was besieged by the Compagnacci[229], and who
vowed, if heaven preserved him in the tumult, to become a monk, had none
of Michael Angelo's _terribilita_. Without possessing some share of that
spirit, it was vain to aggrandise the forms and mass the raiment of his
prophets in imitation of the Sistine.

Nature made Fra Bartolommeo the painter of adoration[230]. His masterpiece
at Lucca--the "Madonna della Misericordia"--is a poem of glad worship, a
hymn of prayerful praise. Our Lady stands elate, between earth and heaven,
appealing to her Son for mercy. At her footstool are her suppliants, the
men and women and little children of the city she has saved. The peril is
past. Salvation has been won; and the song of thanksgiving ascends from
all those massed and mingled forms in unison. Not less truly is the great
unfinished picture of "Madonna surrounded by the Patron Saints of
Florence" a poem of adoration[231]. This painting was ordered by the
Gonfalonier Piero Soderini, the man who dedicated Florence to Christ as
King. He intended it to take its place in the hall of the Consiglio
Grande, where Michael Angelo and Lionardo gained their earliest laurels.
Before it could be finished, the Republic perished.[232] "That," says Rio,
"is the reason why he left but an imperfect work--for those at least who
are only struck by what is wanting in it. Others will at first regard it
with the interest attaching to unfinished poems, interrupted by the
jailer's call or by the stern voice of the executioner. Then they will
study it in all its details, in order to appreciate its beauties; a