THE CERTOSA OF FLORENCE 



earn for him the name of the " Angelic painter." 

 These have disappeared, and a few pictures by Giot- 

 teschi artists are all that remain of fourteenth 

 century art, but the Chapter-house contains a beauti- 

 ful fresco of the Crucifixion by Mariotto Albertinelli. 

 Here, then, he came, the gay pleasure-loving artist, 

 whose restless nature was always craving after new 

 excitement and who soon afterwards gave up painting 

 to keep a tavern, because he preferred receiving 

 praises for his good wine to hearing harsh censures 

 on his pictures. At the time when he painted this 

 work he was in a graver mood than usual, for he had 

 come fresh from parting with Baccio della Porta, the 

 friend who in spite of his different tastes was more 

 than a brother to him, and who had renounced the 

 world in despair at the death of Savonarola. This 

 may account for the inscription which Albertinelli 

 left on his fresco at the Certosa, and which has more 

 of seriousness than we might have expected from him. 

 It is as follows : " Mariotti Florentini opus, pro quo, 

 patres, deus orandus est, A.D. MCCCCCVI. Mens. Sept." 

 It was his best time, for he had just painted his well- 

 known " Visitation " and completed the " Last Judg- 

 ment " in the cloisters of S. Maria Nuova, which Baccio 

 had left undone, and in this fresco of the Certosa the 

 kneeling Magdalen at the foot of the Cross, and Angels 



receiving the blood which drops from the wounds of 



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