In its original state the picture was a complete allegory of _Christ as the centre of Religion_, between two prophets in heaven, and four apostles, two at each side--beneath him two angels support the world. The prophets have been removed, and are placed in the Tribune of the Uffizi; thus the picture as it stands loses half its meaning. The Christ is a fine nude figure standing in a niche, and in it Fra Bartolommeo has solved the problem of obtaining complete relief almost in monochrome, so little do the lights of the flesh tints, and the warm yellowish tinge of the background differ from each other. All the positive colour is in the drapery of the saints, one in red and green, and another in red and blue. The two angels are exquisitely drawn, and contrast well in their natural innocence with the sentimental pair in Raphael's _Madonna of the Baldacchino_ on the same wall of the Pitti Palace.
San Marco was rich in frescoes of the _Madonna and Child_, two of which are still in the chapel of the convent, and two in the Belle Arti. Some of these are charming in expression, the children clinging round the mother's neck in a true childish _abandon_ of affection. What a tender feeling these monk artists had for the spirit of maternity! Perhaps by being debarred from the contemplation of maternal love in its humanity, they more clearly comprehended its divinity. Look at the little round-backed nestling child in Fra Angelico's _Madonna della Stella_, imperfect as it is in form, the whole spirit of love is in it. He does not give only the mother-love for the child, but the child-love for the mother, which is more divine, and the same feeling is seen in the _Madonna_ of Fra Bartolommeo.
This year, 1516, also marks a journey to a hermitage of his order at Lecceto, between Florence and Pisa. Here he painted a _Deposition from the Cross_ on the wall of the Hospice, and two heads of Christ on two tiles above the doors.
A great many of his works are in private collections in Florence; one of the most lovely is the _Pietà_, painted for Agnolo Doni, and now in the Corsini Gallery at Rome.
All this time the great painting of the _Enthronement of the Virgin_, ordered by Pier Soderini, before his exile, was still unfinished. He seems to have taken it in hand again about this time, but being attacked with another access of fever, again left it, and the painting, shadowed in with black, remains in the Uffizi. Lanzi writes of it that, imperfect as it is, it may be regarded as a true lesson in art, and bears the same relation to painting as the clay model to the finished statue, the genius of the inventor being impressed upon it. Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: _History of Painting_, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 455.] call this a _Conception_, but Vasari's old name of the _Patron Saints of Florence_ seems to fit it best. S. John the Baptist, S. Reparata, S. Zenobio, &c., stand in an adoring group around the heavenly powers, S. Anna above the Virgin and infant Christ forming a charming pyramidal group in the midst. The whole thing is one of Fra Bartolommeo's richest compositions. The centre of the three monks on the left is said to be a portrait of Fra Bartolommeo himself, and to be the original from which the only known portrait of him is taken (_see Frontispiece_). Fra Bartolommeo left another work also unfinished, an apotheosis of a saint, which is now at Panshanger. This is supposed to have been a small ideal prepared for a picture to celebrate the canonisation of S. Antonino, which Leo X. had almost promised the brethren of S. Marco on his triumphant entry in 1515. The work, if it had been painted in the larger form, would have been a perfect masterpiece of composition, "a very Beethoven symphony in colour," if we may judge from the sketch at Panshanger, where a living crowd groups round the bier of the archbishop, and life, earnestness, harmony, and richness, are all intense.