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But I admit that the opposite view of forte and piano, contrived by registers of spinet-jacks, is equally tenable. Bartolommeo Cristofori was a Paduan harpsichord maker, who was invited by Prince Ferdinand dei Medici to Florence, to take charge of the large collection of musical instruments the Prince possessed.
He pined for his old friend, Mariotto, who could follow out his designs in his own style so closely, that an unpractised eye could not see the difference of hand; and such was his influence on the rulers of the order, that they allowed a most unique partnership to be entered into. The parties were, Albertinelli on one side, and the convent and Fra Bartolommeo on the other.
He had in his service, either successively or to- gether, George of Trebizond, the younger Chrysoloras, Lorenzo Valla, Bartolommeo Fazio and Antonio Panormita, of whom the two latter were his historians; Panormita daily instructed the King and his court in Livy, even during military expeditions. These men cost him yearly 20,000 gold florins.
Returning in the autumn to Florence, Fra Bartolommeo caught a severe cold, the effects of which were heightened by eating fruit, and after four days' extreme illness he died on October 8th, 1517, aged 42. The monks felt his death intensely, and buried him with great honour in San Marco.
In the monuments of Pope John XXIII., of Cardinal Brancacci, and of Bartolommeo Aragazzi, he subordinated his genius to the treatment of sepulchral and biographical subjects according to time-honoured Tuscan usage. They were severally placed in Florence, Naples, and Montepulciano.
Another play in which a comic element appears is Bartolommeo Rossi's Fiammella , which has the further peculiarity of introducing allegorical characters into the prologue, and mythological into the play. Another piece belonging to this period is the Pentimento amoroso by Luigi Groto, which was printed as early as 1575.
The author of a physiognomical treatise, Bartolommeo Cocle, who styled himself a 'metoposcopist, and whose science, according to Giovio, seemed like one of the most respectable of the free arts, was not content with the prophecies which he made to the many people who daily consulted him, but wrote also a most serious 'catalogue of such whom great dangers to life were awaiting. Giovio, although grown old in the free thought of Rome 'in hac luce romana' is of opinion that the predictions contained therein had only too much truth in them We learn from the same source how the people aimed at in these and similar prophecies took vengeance on a seer.
Opposite to it is the pretty façade of S. Salvatore, built after the earthquake of 1520, and due to Bartolommeo da Mestre, "protomagister" of the cathedral of Sebenico, which it resembles a good deal in the character of its design and mixture of Gothic and Renaissance forms.
Having therefore fallen ill at the age of twenty-five, Bartolommeo returned to Arezzo, in order to regain his health and to seek to build himself up again; but he did not succeed, for he continued his usual studies and the same irregularities, and in four months, a little after the death of Giovanni Antonio, he died and went to join him.
"Bartolommeo has overmuch confidence in the efficacy of gems a confidence wider than what is sanctioned by Pliny, who clearly shows that he regards many beliefs of that sort as idle superstitions; though not to the utter denial of medicinal virtues in gems.
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