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| Fra Bartolomeo Preparatory drawing for St Mark in niche ca. 1514 drawing British Museum |
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| Fra Bartolomeo St Mark in niche 1515 Palazzo Pitti, Florence |
"One of Florence's major collaborative enterprises was based in the monastery of San Marco, where Fra Bartolomeo oversaw a team of assistants and also worked in partnership with the master painter Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515). ... Few contemporaries so unreservedly embraced Leonardo's sfumato and his pursuit of tonal unity. ... The devices Bartolomeo adopted from Leonardo and Michelangelo give his figures a surprisingly sculptural presence, as though the goal of devotional painting were to create a literal 'object' of devotion."
– Stephen J. Campbell and Michael W. Cole, A New History of Italian Renaissance Art (London : Thames & Hudson, 2012)
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| Fra Bartolomeo Minerva in niche ca. 1510-20 Louvre |
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| Fra Bartolomeo & workshop Design for a monument to a Cardinal 16th century drawing British Museum |
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| Fra Bartolomeo & Mariotto Albertinelli Annunciation 1511 Musée d'art et d'histoire, Geneva |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Drapery study (draped mannequin) 16th century drawing Rijksmuseum |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Madonna with Six Saints 1511-12 Besançon Cathedral |
"The rise and proliferation of independent panel painting was a relatively late development in Western Christian art, following the postcrusade importation of Byzantine icons in significant numbers from the thirteenth century on. Until the later Middle Ages, painting in the West was most often used to adorn the outer surfaces of other, more scared things, like reliquaries, altar frontals, church walls, and sculpture itself. But from the thirteenth century, and especially in Italy, painting began to assert its autonomy – peeling itself away from those surfaces, as it were – and to displace sculpture and other sacred objects at the center of Christian worship. In this light, it is possible to see the intensive exploration of illusionistic devices in the painting of this period – through the history of early Renaissance art – as part of a compensatory drive to take over the claims of sculpture and architecture. The rise of painting in this period was a highly improbable, surprise victory. This affected the forms painting took, and eventually the debates surrounding its role in religious life."
– Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
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| workshop of Fra Bartolomeo Drapery study (draped mannequin) ca. 1512-17 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Incarnation with Six Saints 1515 Louvre |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Study for The Presentation 1490s drawing British Museum |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1500 Palazzo Vescovile, Pienza |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Preparatory drawing for Christ as Salvator Mundi 1516-17 drawing Rijksmuseum |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Nativity ca. 1504-07 Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Job ca. 1516 Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice |
Text displayed on scroll is from the Book of Job, verse 13:16 – IPSE ERIT SALVATOR MEUS ("He shall be my Savior")