Fra Bartolomeo

Born Baccio della Porta in 1472, he trained with Cosimo Rosselli and spent his early career in Florence. In the 1490s Savonarola's preaching gripped him so completely that he became a Dominican friar in 1500 and renounced his brushes. Four years later his order told him to paint again, and he emerged with an idealized style of static, graceful figures - Virgin and Child with Saints, drapery moving with what one account calls "seraphic grace." He and Raphael became friends and traded influence. His portrait of Savonarola remains the reformer's defining image. He worked in oils and fresco, and his pure landscape sketches are the earliest known from any Italian artist. He stayed in Florence until his mid-forties, then traveled as far as Rome. He died in 1517.