Fra Bartolomeo

Fra Bartolomeo (1472–1517), known before he took vows as Baccio della Porta, was born at Savignano di Prato and from 1483 or 1484 was apprenticed in the Florentine workshop of Cosimo Rosselli, whose assistant Piero di Cosimo was an early influence. From around 1490 he worked in partnership with Mariotto Albertinelli. Drawn to Savonarola's teaching in the late 1490s, he painted the portrait that remains the best-known image of the reformer, then in 1500 became a Dominican friar, entering San Marco the following year, and gave up painting for several years. Ordered to resume in 1504 as head of the convent workshop, he developed an idealised High Renaissance manner, and when Raphael came to Florence the two became friends and influenced each other. Later work took him to Venice, Lucca and Rome. He is credited with introducing the jointed lay figure, and some of his landscape drawings are the earliest pure landscape studies by an Italian artist. Here: The Vision of St Bernard, begun in 1504 for a family chapel in the Badia Fiorentina.