tine
citizens, was valued at a thousand gold florins by a committee consisting
of Cosimo Rosselli, Benozzo Gozzoli, Perugino and Filippino Lippi; only
some defaced fragments of it now remain. Meanwhile Alessio had been much
occupied with other technical pursuits and researches apart from painting.
He was regarded by his contemporaries as the one craftsman who had
rediscovered and fully understood the long disused art of mosaic, and was
employed accordingly between 1481 and 1483 to repair the mosaics over the
door of the church of S. Miniato, as well as several of those both within
and without the baptistery of the cathedral.

These are the recorded and datable works of the master; others attributed
to him on good and sufficient internal evidences are as follows:--A small
panel in the Florence Academy, with the three subjects of the Baptism, the
Marriage of Cana and the Transfiguration; this was long attributed to Fra
Angelico, but is to all appearance early work of Baldovinetti: an
Annunciation in the Uffizi, formerly in the church of S. Giorgio;
unmistakably by the master's hand though given by Vasari to Peselino:
several Madonnas of peculiarly fine and characteristic quality; one in the
collection of Madame Andre at Paris acquired direct from the descendants of
the painter, a second, formerly in the Duchatel collection and now in the
Louvre, a third in the possession of Mr Berenson at Florence. All these are
executed with the determined patience and precision characteristic of
Baldovinetti; two, those at the Louvre and in the Andre collection, are
distinguished by beautiful landscape backgrounds; and all, but especially
the example in the Louvre, add a peculiar and delicate charm to the quality
of grave majesty which Alessio's works share with those of Piero della
Francesca and others of Domenico Veneziano's following. They probably
belong to the years 1460-1465. In the later of his preserved works, while
there is no abatement of precise and laborious finish, we find beginning to
prevail a certain harshness and commonness of type, and a lack of care for
beauty in composition, the technical and scientific searcher seeming more
and more to predominate over the artist.

See also Vasari, ed. Milanesi, vol. ii.; Crowe-Cavalcaselle, _Hist. of
Painting in Italy_, vol. ii.; Bernhard Berenson, _Study and Criticism of
Italian Art_, 2nd series.

(S. C.)

BALDRIC (from O. Fr. _baudrei_, O. Ger. _balderich_, of doubtful origin;