]
[Illustration: SAVONAROLO AS PETER MARTYR. BY FRA BARTOLOMMEO. _In
the Accademia delle Belle Arti, Florence_.]
After the death of Savonarola the party had many defaulters; but
Baccio, the Delia Robbias, Credi, Cronaca, and many other artists, were
faithful, and even showed their grief by abandoning for a time the arts
they loved. "It almost seemed as if with him they had lost the sacred
flame from which their fervid imagination drew life and aliment."
[Footnote: Marchese, _San Marco_, lib. iii. p. 261.]
While all these events had been taking place, Baccio had worked as
often as his perturbed spirit would allow, at a great fresco of the
_Last Judgment_, in a chapel of the cemetery of S. Maria Nuova. A
certain Gerozzi, di Monna Venna Dini, gave him the commission, and as
far as he had gone, the painter had given entire satisfaction. This
fresco, his first as far as is known, shows Baccio's style as fully as
his later ones. We have here his great harmony of form, and intense
suggestiveness in composition. The infinity of heaven is emblematised
in circles of saints and cherubim around the enthroned Christ.
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