olommeo (1475-1517) and Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515) is very
fine. It is now a ruin, but enough remains to show that it must have
been impressive. These collaborators, although intimate friends,
ultimately went different ways, for Fra Bartolommeo came under
the influence of Savonarola, burned his nude drawings, and entered
the Convent of S. Marco; whereas Albertinelli, who was a convivial
follower of Venus, tiring of art and even more of art jargon, took
an inn outside the S. Gallo gate and a tavern on the Ponte Vecchio,
remarking that he had found a way of life that needed no knowledge
of muscles, foreshortening, or perspective, and better still, was
without critics. Among his pupils was Franciabigio, whose lovely
Madonna of the Well we are coming to in the Tribuna.

Chief among the other pictures are two by the delightful Alessio
Baldovinetti, the master of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Nos. 60 and 56;
and a large early altar-piece by the brothers Orcagna, painted in
1367 for S. Maria Nuova, now the principal hospital of Florence
and once the home of many beautiful pictures. This work is rather
dingy now, but it is interesting as coming in part from the hand
that designed the tabernacle in Or San Michele and the Loggia de'
Lanzi. Another less-known painter represented here is Francesco
Granacci (1469-1543), the author of Nos. 1541 and 1280, both rich
and warm and pleasing. Granacci was a fellow-pupil of Michelangelo
both in Lorenzo de' Medici's garden and in Ghirlandaio's workshop,
and the bosom friend of that great man all his life. Like Piero
di Cosimo, Granacci was a great hand at pageantry, and Lorenzo de'
Medici kept him busy. He was not dependent upon art for his living,
but painted for love of it, and Vasari makes him a very agreeable man.

Here too is Gio. Antonio Sogliani (1492-1544), also a rare painter,
with a finely coloured and finely drawn "Disputa," No. 63. This painter
seems to have had the same devotion to his master, Lorenzo di Credi,
that di Credi had for his master, Verrocchio. Vasari calls Sogliani a
worthy religious man who minded his own affairs--a good epitaph. His
work is rarely met with in Florence, but he has a large fresco at
S. Marco. Lorenzo di Credi (1459-1537) himself has two pretty circular
paintings here, of which No. 1528 is particularly sweet: "The Virgin
and Child with St. John and Angels," all comfortable and happy in
a Tuscan meadow; while on an easel is another circular picture, b