Plautilla taught herself to paint. Legend says, that in order to study
the nude for a Christ, she drew from the corpse of a nun--which might
account for the weak stiffness of her design. Fra Paolo, though there
is no record of his having taught her, left her as a legacy the designs
and cartoons of Fra Bartolommeo, one of which, the _Pieta_, she
has evidently made use of in the painting in the Belle Arti. The
grouping is that of the _Pieta_ of Fra Bartolommeo, now in the
Pitti, of which she must have had the original sketch, for she has put
in the two saints in the background, which have been painted out in
that of the Frate, but we will give her the entire credit of the
colouring, which is extremely crude; the contrasting blues and yellows
are in inharmonious tones, the shading harsh, and the whole picture
wanting in chiaroscuro. The Corsini Gallery, Florence, has a _Virgin
and Child_ by her.




PART II.


The scholars of Mariotto Albertinelli were much more important in the
annals of art, the principal ones being Bugiardini, Francia Bigio,
Visino, and Innocenza d' Imola.

Giuliano Bugiardini should be called the assistant rather than the
scholar of Albertinelli, being older than his master. He was born in
1471 in a suburb outside the Via Faenza, Florence, and was placed in
the shop of Domenico Ghirlandajo, where his acquaintance with
Michelangelo--begun in the Medici Gardens--ripened into intimacy, and