BARTOLOMEO della PORTA, Fra’. — Painter, born in Florence in 1475, died at Bagni S. Filippo on 31 Oct. 1517. Little is known of his early period of activity, since he himself, moved by the words of Savonarola, destroyed his paintings on profane subjects; however, he appears to have been tied to fourteenth-century schemes learned ROSSELLI, COSIMO (v.), from which he was already free in the Universal Judgment of 1499 (Florence, Museum of S. Marco), whose composition in broad planes would have wide repercussions. With this work he interrupted his activity, following the political events and the death of Savonarola, to enter as a novice (1500) into the Dominican Order. He resumed painting in 1504 with the Appearance of the Virgin to St. Bernard; at this time he came into contact with the art of Leonardo and Michelangelo, and approached the forms of both, not remaining estranged from the styles of Perugino and Raphael. He nonetheless viewed these various manners (as well as color, for which his trip to Venice in 1508 is said to have been of great importance) in function of that plasticism proper to the Florentine tradition to which his temperament kept him bound. In both the first and second periods of his activity up to 1511, he often worked in collaboration with Mariotto Albertinelli.
His equilibrium as a composer was, for only a brief time, under Roman influence (1512), altered by a search for monumentality (see S. Peter and S. Paul, Vatican Pinacoteca; S. Mark in the Pitti Gallery; Virgin of Mercy in Lucca); in his final years he returned to his old schemes. Still worthy of mention are: The Pietà in the Pitti Gallery; The Presentation in the Temple in the Vienna Gallery; The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine in the Uffizi, as well as the numerous admirable drawings in various public and private collections.