Prophet Isaiah

In 1514 Fra Bartolomeo spent some time in Rome, where a pillar in the church of Sant'Agostino carried the Isaiah that Raphael had frescoed a couple of years before. Two years later, back in Florence, he gave his own Isaiah a similar twisting pose. The panel was one wing of an altarpiece for the chapel of the banker Salvatore Billi in Santissima Annunziata. Its centre, a risen Christ blessing from a pedestal, is now in the Pitti Palace, and the prophet's raised finger points toward where that Christ once stood. His name is lettered on the step under his bare foot. The tablet he holds carries a line from his own book, Behold, God is my saviour, and Salvatore, the name of the man who paid for the chapel, is Italian for saviour.