Fra Bartolommeo Baccio della Porta
1472 -1517
Fra Bartolommeo (Fra Bartolo- mmeo di Paghola del Fartorino), also known as Baccio della Porta, was an Italian, Florentine High Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He was a member of the Dominican Order.
Starting from 1483, he apprenticed in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, and his works showed the influence of Rosselli's assistant, Piero di Cosimo, and those of Ghirlandaio and Filippino Lippi.
In the late 1490s Baccio was drawn to the teachings of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who denounced what he viewed as vain and corrupt contemporary art. Savonarola argued for art serving as a direct visual illustration of the Bible to educate those unable to read the book. From 1498 is Baccio's famous portrait of Savonarola. Baccio became a Dominican friar on July 26, 1500. Soon after he renounced painting for several years. He resumed 1504 when he became the head of the monastery workshop.
After his hiatus from 1500 to 1503, he seemed to change vision. When Raphael visited Florence, he befriended the friar. Bartolomeo learned perspective from the younger artist, and the representation of light and its effects over moving shapes, while Raphael added skills in coloring and handling of drapery. Fra Bartolommeo's figures are generally small and draped. These qualities were alleged against him as defects, and to prove that his style was not the result of want of power, he painted the magnificent figure of the St. Mark Evangelist (ranked as his masterpiece), and the undraped figure of St. Sebastian.
Fra Bartolomeo's compositions are remarkable for skill in the massing of light and shade, richness and delicacy of coloring, and for the admirable drapery of the figures, Bartolomeo having been the first to introduce and use the lay-figure with joints.
In Venice, Baccio painted for the Dominicans of San Pietro Martire in Murano, under the influence of Venetian colorizm, the style which he also used when he was back in Lucca.In 1513 he went to Rome.
He died in Florence in 1517.
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