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This painter's marvellous rapidity of execution enabled him to produce an almost countless series of decorative works. The best of these are the frescoes of the Pisan Campo Santo, of the Riccardi Palace of Florence, of San Gemignano, and of Montefalco.
An artist who claims a third place beside Mino and his friend, "il bravo Desider si dolce e bello," is Benedetto da Majano. In Benedetto's bas-reliefs at San Gemignano, carved for the altars of those unlovely Tuscan worthies, S. Fina and S. Bartolo, we find a pictorial treatment of legendary subjects, proving that he had studied Ghirlandajo's frescoes.
The Attitude of Savonarola toward the Renaissance His Parentage, Birth, and Childhood at Ferrara His Poem on the Ruin of the World Joins the Dominicans at Bologna Letter to his Father Poem on the Ruin of the Church Begins to preach in 1482 First Visit to Florence San Gemignano His Prophecy Brescia in 1486 Personal Appearance and Style of Oratory Effect on his audience The three Conclusions His Visions Savonarola's Shortcomings as a patriotic Statesman His sincere Belief in his prophetic Calling Friendship with Pico della Mirandola Settles in Florence, 1490 Convent of San Marco Savonarola's Relation to Lorenzo de' Medici The death of Lorenzo Sermons of 1493 and 1494 the Constitution of 1495 Theocracy in Florence Piagnoni, Bigi, and Arrabbiati War between Savonarola and Alexander VI. The Signory suspends him from preaching in the Duomo in 1498 Attempts to call a Council The Ordeal by Fire San Marco stormed by the Mob Trial and Execution of Savonarola.
I may refer to the picture of the hunters in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford, the "Vintage of Noah" at Pisa, the attendants of the Magi in the Riccardi Palace, and the Carola in the "Marriage of Jacob and Rachel" at Pisa. "Stories of Isaac and Ishmael and of Jacob and Esau" at Pisa, and "Story of S. Augustine" at San Gemignano. Nothing can be prettier than the school children in the latter series.
From contemporary chronicles and from the sonnets written by Folgore da San Gemignano for a similar occasion, we gather that the whole resources of a wealthy family and all their friends were strained to the utmost to do honour to the order of chivalry. Open house was held for several days. Rich presents of jewels, armour, dresses, chargers were freely distributed.
It is almost with reluctance that a critic feels obliged to name this powerful but prosaic painter as the Giotto of the fifteenth century in Florence, the tutelary angel of an age inaugurated by Masaccio. He was a consummate master of the science collected by his predecessors. No one surpassed him in the use of fresco. His orderly composition, in the distribution of figures and the use of architectural accessories, is worthy of all praise; his portraiture is dignified and powerful; his choice of form and treatment of drapery, noble. Yet we cannot help noting his deficiency in the finer sense of beauty, the absence of poetic inspiration or feeling in his work, the commonplaceness of his colour, and his wearisome reiteration of calculated effects. He never arrests attention by sallies of originality, or charms us by the delicacies of suggestive fancy. He is always at the level of his own achievement, so that in the end we are as tired with able Ghirlandajo as the men of Athens with just Aristides. Who, however, but Ghirlandajo could have composed the frescoes of "S. Fina" at S. Gemignano, the fresco of the "Death of S. Francis" in S. Trinit
Those palaces of brick, with finely-moulded lancet windows, and the lovely use of sculptured marbles in pilastered colonnades, are fit abodes for the nobles who reared them five centuries ago, of whose refined and costly living we read in the pages of Dante or of Folgore da San Gemignano.
The good-natured young man hurried away, and Philip, taking his place, flooded her with a final stream of advice and injunctions where to stop, how to learn Italian, when to use mosquito-nets, what pictures to look at. "Remember," he concluded, "that it is only by going off the track that you get to know the country. See the little towns Gubbio, Pienza, Cortona, San Gemignano, Monteriano.
It was in San Gemignano, even to-day the most medieval of Tuscan cities, a place of towers and winding narrow ways, that Savonarola first won a hearing; and so it was not till nine years after his first coming to her that Florence seems to have listened to his prophecy, when, in August 1490, in S. Marco he began to preach on the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
The flame which began to smoulder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. He pictured to them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror.
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