452 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. XIII. the Marriage of S. Catherine was exhibited for several months in S. Marco, and was afterwards forwarded to the king of France. 1 The real facts are these. In 1512, Jacques Hurault, bishop of Autun, was envoy of Louis the Twelfth at Florence. The Florentine govern ment, desirous of securing his favour, found an ingenious mode of doing so by the gift of Fra Bartolommeo’s pic ture which was bought from S. Marco for 300 ducats. Hurault took the present with him, and left it to the ca thedral of his diocese at Autun, from whence it passed at the revolution to the Louvre. The friar’s signature and the date of 1511 are on the Virgin’s throne. 2 With this masterpiece we enter upon a new phase in Fra Bartolommeo’s career; and we find him partly resign the tender, the kindly, and the meditative for a broader style more natural to his spirit and education. The background itj a semidome with advancing pillars and a bold cornice, in the centre of which the Virgin sits on a pedestal and rests her feet on a stool. Her right hand is on the head of Christ, who stands at her knee with one leg on the stool, and, as he turns, giving the ring to the kneeling S. Catherine of Sienna. This charming idea, rendered with Leonardesque elegance of lines, conveys a sense of great affection and veneration towards Christ on the part of his mother; not so much, however, by chosen type as by movements the softness of which emulates those of Raphael’s Bella Giardiniera at the Louvre. The difference between Fra Bartolommeo and Sanzio now is, that the friar applies the most rigid rules of Da Vinci; whilst his friend has more sentiment pictore. MDXI. Bartholome Flo- ree. or. prre. (wood, oil), No. 65, at the Louvre (see Miindler, Essai d’une analyse &c. 8°. Paris. 1850. p. 87.) A note of the sale of the picture for 300 ducats to the Flo rentine government and of its gift to Monsignor di Othon (Autun) is in the memoranda of the syndic of S. Marco. MS. ap. Marchese, ub. sup. II. 66 and 144. in Marchese, ub. sup. II. pp. 66 and foil*, 144 and 365. 1 Vas. VII. 158. 2 The old frame bore the follow ing lines: “Jacobo Huraldo He- duorum Episcopo Ludovici XII. francorum regis legato fidissimo senatus popnlusque Florentinus dono dedit anno MDXII. On the throne are the words: “Orate pro
