itual
significance. He opposed the sensuous and the nude, and yet about the
only nude he ever painted--a St. Sebastian for San Marco--had so much
of the earthly about it that people forgot the suffering saint in
admiring the fine body, and the picture had to be removed from the
convent. In such ways religion in art was gradually undermined, not
alone by naturalism and classicism but by art itself. Painting brought
into life by religion no sooner reached maturity than it led people
away from religion by pointing out sensuous beauties in the type
rather than religious beauties in the symbol.

Fra Bartolommeo was among the last of the pietists in art. He had no
great imagination, but some feeling and a fine color-sense for
Florence. Naturally he was influenced somewhat by the great ones about
him, learning perspective from Raphael, grandeur from Michael Angelo,
and contours from Leonardo da Vinci. He worked in collaboration with
Albertinelli (1474-1515), a skilled artist and a fellow-pupil with
Bartolommeo in the workshop of Cosimo Rosselli. Their work is so much
alike that it is often difficult to distinguish the painters apart.
Albertinelli was not so devout as his companion, but he painted the
religious subject with feeling, as his Visitation in the Uffizi
indicates. Among the followers of Bartolommeo and Albertinelli were
Fra Paolino (14901547), Bugiardini (1475-1554), Granacci (1477-1543),
who showed many influences, and Ridolfo Ghirlandajo (1483-1561).

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--MICHAEL ANGELO. ATHLETE. SISTINE, ROME.]

Andrea del Sarto (1486-1531) was a Florentine pure and simple--a
painter for the Church producing many madonnas and altar-pieces, and
yet possessed of little religious feeling or depth. He was a painter
more than a pietist, and was called by his townsmen "the faultless
painter." So he was as regards the technical features of his art. He
was the best brushman and colorist of the Florentine school. Dealing
largely with the material side his craftsmanship was excellent and his
pictures exuberant with life and color, but his madonnas and saints
were decidedly of the earth--handsome Florentine models garbed as
sacred characters--well-drawn and easily painted, with little
devotional feeling about them. He was influenced by other painters to
some extent. Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and Michael Angelo were his models
in drawing; Leonardo and Bartolommeo in contours; while in warmth of
color, brush-work, atmosphe