s a man of good parts and a gentle craftsman,
without also providing him, after some time, with peace and favour,
as she did for Baccio, who, as will be told below, obtained all that
he desired. The report having spread abroad that he was no less good
than able, his fame so increased that he was commissioned by Gerozzo
di Monna Venna Dini to paint the chapel wherein the bones of the
dead are kept, in the cemetery of the Hospital of S. Maria Nuova.
There he began a Judgment in fresco, which he executed with such
diligence and beauty of manner in the part which he finished, that
he acquired extraordinary fame thereby, in addition to what he had
already, and became greatly celebrated, on account of his having
represented with excellent conceptions the Glory of Paradise, and
Christ with the twelve Apostles judging the twelve Tribes, wherein
the figures are soft in colouring and most beautifully draped.
Moreover, in those figures that are being dragged to Hell, in the
part that was designed but left unfinished, one sees the despair,
grief, and shame of everlasting death, even as one perceives
contentment and gladness in those that are being saved; although
this work remained unfinished, since Baccio was inclined to give his
attention more to religion than to painting. For there was living in
S. Marco, at this time, Fra Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara, of the
Order of Preaching Friars, a very famous theologian; and Baccio,
going continually to hear his preaching, on account of the devotion
that he felt for him, contracted a very strait intimacy with him,
and passed almost all his time in the convent, having also become
the friend of the other friars. Now it happened that Fra Girolamo,
continuing his preaching, and crying out every day from the pulpit
that lascivious pictures, music, and amorous books often lead the
mind to evil, became convinced that it was not right to keep in
houses where there were young girls painted figures of naked men and
women. And at the next Carnival--when it was the custom in the city
to make little huts of faggots and other kinds of wood on the public
squares, and on the Tuesday evening, according to ancient use, to
burn these, with amorous dances, in which men and women, joining
hands, danced round these fires, singing certain airs--the people
were so inflamed by Fra Girolamo, and he wrought upon them so
strongly with his words, that on that day they brought to the place
a vast quantity of nude fi