e man seems to have been a
madcap artist, combining with his love for his profession a taste for
fine clothes, and what was then perhaps rarer in people of his sort, a
great partiality for living creatures of all kinds. The darker shades of
Vasari's picture have been purposely omitted from these pages. We only
know for certain, about Bazzi's private life, that he was married in
1510 to a certain Beatrice, who bore him two children, and who was
still living with him in 1541. The further suggestion that he painted
at Monte Oliveto subjects unworthy of a religious house, is wholly
disproved by the frescoes which still exist in a state of very tolerable
preservation. They represent various episodes in the legend of S.
Benedict; all marked by that spirit of simple, almost childish piety
which is a special characteristic of Italian religious history. The
series forms, in fact, a painted _novella_ of monastic life; its petty
jealousies, its petty trials, its tribulations and temptations, and its
indescribably petty miracles. Bazzi was well fitted for the execution of
this task. He had a swift and facile brush, considerable versatility in
the treatment of monotonous subjects, and a never-failing sense of
humour. His white-cowled monks, some of them with the rosy freshness of
boys, some with the handsome brown faces of middle life, others astute
and crafty, others again wrinkled with old age, have clearly been copied
from real models. He puts them into action without the slightest effort,
and surrounds them with landscapes, architecture, and furniture,
appropriate to each successive situation. The whole is done with so much
grace, such simplicity of composition, and transparency of style,
corresponding to the _naif_ and superficial legend, that we feel a
perfect harmony between the artist's mind and the motives he was made to
handle. In this respect Bazzi's portion of the legend of S. Benedict is
more successful than Signorelli's. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the
conditions of his task confined him to uncomplicated groupings, and a
scale of colour in which white predominates. For Bazzi, as is shown by
subsequent work in the Farnesina Villa at Rome, and in the church of S.
Domenico at Siena, was no master of composition; and the tone, even of
his masterpieces, inclines to heat. Unlike Signorelli, Bazzi felt a deep
artistic sympathy with female beauty; and the most attractive fresco in
the whole series is that in which the evil m