Fra Bartolomeo

Fra Bartolomeo or Bartolommeo OP (March 28, 1472 – October 6, 1517), also known as Bartolommeo di Pagholo,Bartolommeo di S. Marco, and his original name Baccio della Porta, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He spent all his career in Florence until his mid-forties, when he travelled to work in various cities, as far south as Rome. He trained with Cosimo Roselli and in the 1490s fell under the influence of Savonarola, which led him to become a Dominican friar in 1500, renouncing painting for several years.

He was instructed to resume painting for the benefit of his order in 1504, and now developed an idealized High Renaissance style, seen in his Vision of St Bernard of that year, now in poor condition but whose "figures and drapery move with a seraphic grace that must have struck the young Raphael with the force of revelation". He remained friends with Raphael, and they both influenced the other.

His portrait of Savonarola remains the most famous image of the reformer. Fra Bartolomeo painted both in oils and fresco, and some of his drawings are pure landscape sketches that are the earliest of this type from Italy.

He was born in Savignano di Prato, Tuscany. He received the nickname of Baccio della Porta for his house was near the Gate of San Pier Gattolini.

Starting from 1483 or 1484, by recommendation of Benedetto da Maiano, he apprenticed in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli. He was one of the greatest painters of his time. In 1490 or 1491 he began a collaboration with Mariotto Albertinelli. 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 his famous portrait of Savonarola, now in the Museo Nazionale di San Marco in Florence. The following year he was commissioned a fresco of the Universal Judgement for the Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova, completed by Albertinelli and Giuliano Bugiardini when Baccio became a Dominican friar on July 26, 1500. The following year he entered the convent of San Marco.

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