le future depended upon the amount of interest he could awaken in
himself. At this time, it seems, Savonarola was asserting his conviction
that "in houses where young maidens dwelt it was dangerous and improper
to retain pictures wherein there were undraped figures." It seems to
have been the custom in Florence at the time of the Carnival to build
cabins of wood and furze, and on the night of Shrove Tuesday to set them
ablaze, while the people danced around them, joining hands, according to
ancient custom, amid laughter and songs. This Savonarola had denounced,
and, winning the ear of the people for the moment, he persuaded those
who were wont to dance to bring "pictures and works of sculpture, many
by the most excellent masters," and to cast them into the fire, with
books, musical instruments, and such. To this pile, Vasari tells us,
Bartolommeo brought all his studies and drawings which he had made from
the nude, and threw them into the flames; so also did Lorenzo di Credi
and many others, who were called Piagnoni, among them, no doubt, Sandro
Botticelli. The people soon tired, however, of their new vanity, as they
had done of the beautiful things they had destroyed at his bidding, and,
the party opposed to Savonarola growing dangerous, Bartolommeo with
others shut themselves up in S. Marco to guard Savonarola. Fra
Girolamo's excommunication, torture, and death, which followed soon
after, seem finally to have decided the gentle Bartolommeo to assume the
religious habit, which he did not long after at S. Domenico in Prato.
Later we find him back in Florence in the Convent of S. Marco, where he
is said to have met Raphael and to have learned much from him of the art
of perspective. However that may be, he continued to paint there in S.
Marco really--saving a journey to Rome where he came under the influence
of Michelangelo, a visit to S. Martino in Lucca, and his journey to
Venice in 1506--for the rest of his life, being buried there at last in
1517.

Six pictures from his hand hang to-day in the Pitti,--a Holy Family
(256), the beautiful Deposition (64), an Ecce Homo in fresco (377), the
Marriage of St. Catherine, painted in 1512 (208), a St. Mark, painted in
1514 (125), and Christ and the Four Evangelists, painted in 1516 (159).
The unpleasing "Madonna appearing to St. Bernard," painted in 1506, now
in the Accademia, was his first work after he became a friar.

Here, in the Pitti, Bartolommeo is not at his best; for h