tolommeo's strong order and compostion style, with the holy and important figure centered and floating above the rest of the figures, adding a theatrical appearance to the audience viewing this altar piece. God the Father and two Saints holds numerous contrasts to Raphael's Sistine Madonna, although both contain kneeling and floating figures. The landscapes are also treated differently in that Bartolommeo creates calm depth and atmosphere with his flat distant landscape. 13 This work is probably a fine example of Fra Bartolommeo's mature style of the figure, composition, and his rhythmic, largescale compositions which were and are meant to motivate the audience, normally of a Roman Catholic background, to abandon vanity and meaningless detail and to focus on life as a whole. Maybe Bartolommeo wanted people to live their lives this way, thus providing a simple yet noble moral explaining his view that life should be lived not feared. That trivial incidents and circumstances do not affect the outcome in the end. As Heinrich Wolfflin wrote in similar words, Fra Bartolommeo may not have had much to say as a High Renaissance painter, but what he did say he said with conviction.14 ...
