of the marvels wrought by
those two divine craftsmen, with leave from his Prior he betook
himself to Rome. There he was entertained by Fra Mariano Fetti,
Friar of the Piombo, for whom he painted two pictures of S. Peter
and S. Paul at his Convent of S. Silvestro a Monte Cavallo. But
since he did not succeed in working as well in the air of Rome as he
had done in that of Florence, while the vast number of works that he
saw, what with the ancient and the modern, bewildered him so that
much of the ability and excellence that he believed himself to
possess, fell away from him, he determined to depart, leaving to
Raffaello the charge of finishing one of those pictures, that of S.
Peter, which he had not completed; which picture was retouched all
over by the hand of the marvellous Raffaello, and given to Fra
Mariano.

Thus, then, Fra Bartolommeo returned to Florence. There he had been
accused many times of not knowing how to paint nudes; for which
reason he resolved to put himself to the test, and to show by means
of his labour that he was as well fitted as any other master for the
highest achievements of his art. Whereupon, to prove this, he
painted a picture of S. Sebastian, naked, very lifelike in the
colouring of the flesh, sweet in countenance, and likewise executed
with corresponding beauty of person, whereby he won infinite praise
from the craftsmen. It is said that, while this figure was exposed
to view in the church, the friars found, through the confessional,
women who had sinned at the sight of it, on account of the charm and
melting beauty of the lifelike reality imparted to it by the genius
of Fra Bartolommeo; for which reason they removed it from the church
and placed it in the chapter-house, where it did not remain long
before it was bought by Giovan Battista della Palla and sent to the
King of France.

[Illustration: S. MARK

(_After the painting by =Fra Bartolommeo di San Marco=. Florence:
Pitti, 125_)

_Anderson_]

Fra Bartolommeo had fallen into a rage against the joiners who made
the ornamental frames for his panels and pictures, for it was their
custom, as it still is at the present day, always to cover an eighth
part of the figures with the projecting inner edges of the frames.
He determined, therefore, to invent some means of doing without
frames for panels; and for this S. Sebastian he caused the panel to
be made in the form of a half-circle, wherein he drew a niche in
perspective, which has