One or two of the female saints
are pleasing, but the nude figure of Christ is hard, exaggerated, and
faulty in drawing.
The artists got thirty-five lire for the work, though the record in the
archives allows that it was worth more. There is an _Assumption_
in the Belle Arti of Florence, of which the design is Fra
Bartolommeo's, but the colouring Fra Paolo's. It was painted for the
Dominican monks at Santa Maria del Sasso, near Bibbiena. The colouring
is hard and weak, the shadows heavy, and not fused well in the half
tints. Two monks on the left are tolerably life-like, probably they
were drawn from living models; the S. Catherine on the right is very
inferior.
The Belle Arti also possesses a _Deposition from the Cross_, which
Fra Bartolommeo had sketched out and left uncoloured at Pian di
Mugnone. In 1519 Fra Paolo finished it, and it presents the usual
disparity between the composition and colouring, the former being good,
the latter weak and crude. His best known works are a Nativity in the
Palazzo Borghese, a _Madonna and Child with S. John Baptist_ in
the Sciarra Colonna, also in Rome; a _Madonna and Child with S.
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