The Story of Florence Part 13

Angelico's St. Dominic appropriately watches over the Chapter House, which contains the largest of Fra Giovanni's frescoes and one of the greatest masterpieces of religious art: the Crucifixion with the patron saints of Florence, of the convent, and of the Medici, the founders of the religious orders, the representatives of the zeal and learning of the Dominicans, all gathered and united in contemplation around the Cross of Christ. It was ordered by Cosimo dei Medici, and painted about 1441. On our left are the Madonna, supported by the Magdalene, the other Mary, and the beloved Disciple; the Baptist and St. Mark, representing the city and the convent; St. Lawrence and St.

Cosmas (said by Vasari to be a portrait of Nanni di Banco, who died twenty years before), and St. Damian. On our right, kneeling at the foot of the Cross, is St. Dominic, a masterpiece of expression and sentiment; behind him St. Augustine and St. Albert of Jerusalem represent Augustinians and Carmelites; St. Jerome, St. Francis, St.

Bernard, St. John Gualbert kneel; St. Benedict and St. Romuald stand behind them, while at the end are St. Peter Martyr and St. Thomas Aquinas. All the male heads are admirably characterised and discriminated, unlike Angelico's women, who are usually either merely conventionally done or idealised into Angels. Round the picture is a frieze of prophets, culminating in the mystical Pelican; below is the great tree of the Dominican order, spreading out from St. Dominic himself in the centre, with Popes Innocent V. and Benedict XI. on either hand. The St. Antoninus was added later. Vasari tells us that, in this tree, the brothers of the order a.s.sisted Angelico by obtaining portraits of the various personages represented from different places; and they may therefore be regarded as the real, or traditional, likenesses of the great Dominicans. The same probably applies to the wonderful figure of Aquinas in the picture itself.

Beyond is a second and larger cloister, surrounded by very inferior frescoes of the life of St. Dominic, full of old armorial bearings and architectural fragments arranged rather incongruously. Some of the lunettes over the cells contain frescoes of the school of Fra Bartolommeo. The Academy of the Crusca is established here, in what was once the dormitory of the Novices. Connected with this cloister was the convent garden. "In the summer time," writes Simone Filipepi, "in the evening after supper, the Father Fra Girolamo used to walk with his friars in the garden, and he would make them all sit round him with the Bible in his hand, and here he expounded to them some fair pa.s.sage of the Scriptures, sometimes questioning some novice or other, as occasion arose. At these meetings there gathered also some fifty or sixty learned laymen, for their edification. When, by reason of rain or other cause, it was not possible in the garden, they went into the _hospitium_ to do the same; and for an hour or two one seemed verily to be in Paradise, such charity and devotion and simplicity appeared in all. Blessed was he who could be there." Shortly before the Ordeal of Fire, Fra Girolamo was walking in the garden with Fra Placido Cinozzi, when an exceedingly beautiful boy of n.o.ble family came to him with a ticket upon which was written his name, offering himself to pa.s.s through the flames. And thinking that this might not be sufficient, he fell upon his knees, begging the Friar that he might be allowed to undergo the ordeal for him. "Rise up, my son," said Savonarola, "for this thy good will is wondrously pleasing unto G.o.d"; and, when the boy had gone, he turned to Fra Placido and said: "From many persons have I had these applications, but from none have I received so much joy as from this child, for which may G.o.d be praised."

To the left of the staircase to the upper floor, is the smaller refectory with a fresco of the Last Supper by Domenico Ghirlandaio, not by any means one of the painter's best works.

On the top of the stairs we are initiated into the spirit of the place by Angelico's most beautiful Annunciation, with its inscription, _Virginis intacte c.u.m veneris ante figuram, pretereundo cave ne sileatur Ave_, "When thou shalt have come before the image of the spotless Virgin, beware lest by negligence the Ave be silent."

On the left of the stairway a double series of cells on either side of the corridor leads us to Savonarola's room. At the head of the corridor is one of those representations that Angelico repeated so often, usually with modifications, of St. Dominic at the foot of the Cross. Each of the cells has a painted lyric of the life of Christ and His mother, from Angelico's hand; almost each scene with Dominican witnesses and auditors introduced,--Dominic, Aquinas, Peter Martyr, as the case may be. In these frescoes Angelico was undoubtedly a.s.sisted by pupils, from whom a few of the less excellent scenes may come; there is an interesting, but altogether untrustworthy tradition that some were executed by his brother, Fra Benedetto da Mugello, who took the Dominican habit simultaneously with him and was Prior of the convent at Fiesole. Taking the cells on the left first, we see the _Noli me tangere_ (1), the Entombment (2), the Annunciation (3), the Crucifixion (4), the Nativity (5), the Transfiguration (6), a most wonderful picture. Opposite the Transfiguration, on the right wall of the corridor, is a Madonna and Saints, painted by the Friar somewhat later than the frescoes in the cells (which, it should be observed, appear to have been painted on the walls before the cells were actually part.i.tioned off)--St. John Evangelist and St. Mark, the three great Dominicans and the patrons of the Medici. Then, on the left, the following cells contain the Mocking of Christ (7), the Resurrection with the Maries at the tomb (8), the Coronation of the Madonna (9), one of the grandest of the whole series, with St. Dominic and St.

Francis kneeling below, and behind them St. Benedict and St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Peter Martyr and St. Paul the Hermit. The Presentation in the Temple (10), and the Madonna and Child with Aquinas and Augustine (11), are inferior to the rest.

The shorter pa.s.sage now turns to the cells occupied by Fra Girolamo Savonarola; one large cell leading into two smaller ones (12-14). In the larger are placed three frescoes by Fra Bartolommeo; Christ and the two disciples at Emmaus, formerly over the doorway of the refectory, and two Madonnas--one from the Dominican convent in the Mugnone being especially beautiful. Here are also modern busts of Savonarola by Dupre and Benivieni by Bastianini. In the first inner cell are Savonarola's portrait, apparently copied from a medal and wrongly ascribed to Bartolommeo, his Crucifix and his relics, his ma.n.u.scripts and books of devotion, and, in another case, his hair s.h.i.+rt and rosary, his beloved Dominican garb which he gave up on the day of his martyrdom. In the inmost cell are the Cross which he is said to have carried, and a copy of the old (but not contemporary) picture of his death, of which the original is in the Corsini Palace.

The seven small cells on the right (15-21) were a.s.signed to the Juniors, the younger friars who had just pa.s.sed through the Noviciate.

Each contains a fres...o...b.. Angelico of St. Dominic at the foot of the Cross, now scourging himself, now absorbed in contemplation, now covering his face with his hands, but in no two cases identical. Into one of these cells a divine apparition was said to have come to one of these youths, after hearing Savonarola's "most fervent and most wondrous discourse" upon the mystery of the Incarnation. The story is told by Simone Filipepi:--

"On the night of the most Holy Nativity, to a young friar in the convent, who had not yet sung Ma.s.s, had appeared visibly in his cell on the little altar, whilst he was engaged in prayer, Our Lord in the form of a little infant even as when He was born in the stable. And when the hour came to go into the choir for matins, the said friar commenced to debate in his mind whether he ought to go and leave here the Holy Child, and deprive himself of such sweetness, or not. At last he resolved to go and to bear It with him; so, having wrapped It up in his arms and under his cowl as best he could, all trembling with joy and with fear, he went down into the choir without telling anyone.

But, when it came to his turn to sing a lesson, whilst he approached the reading-desk, the Infant vanished from his arms; and when the friar was aware of this, he remained so overwhelmed and almost beside himself that he commenced to wander through the choir, like one who seeks a thing lost, so that it was necessary that another should read that lesson."

Pa.s.sing back again down the corridor, we see in the cells two more Crucifixions (22 and 23); the Baptism of Christ with Madonna as witness (24), the Crucifixion (25); then, pa.s.sing the great Madonna fresco, the Mystery of the Pa.s.sion (26), in one of those symbolical representations which seem to have originated with the Camaldolese painter, Don Lorenzo; Christ bound to the pillar, with St. Dominic scourging himself and the Madonna appealing to us (27, perhaps by a pupil); Christ bearing the Cross (28); two more Crucifixions (29 and 30), apparently not executed by Angelico himself.

At the side of Angelico's Annunciation opposite the stairs, we enter the cell of St. Antoninus (31). Here is one of Angelico's most beautiful and characteristic frescoes, Christ's descent into Hades: "the intense, fixed, statue-like silence of ineffable adoration upon the spirits in prison at the feet of Christ, side by side, the hands lifted and the knees bowed, and the lips trembling together," as Ruskin describes it. Here, too, is the death mask of Antoninus, his portrait perhaps drawn from the death mask by Bartolommeo, his ma.n.u.scripts and relics; also a tree of saintly Dominicans, Savonarola being on the main trunk, the third from the root.

The next cell on the right (32) has the Sermon on the Mount and the Temptation in the Wilderness. In the following (33), also double, besides the frescoed Kiss of Judas, are two minute pictures by Fra Angelico, belonging to an earlier stage of his art than the frescoes, intended for reliquaries and formerly in Santa Maria Novella. One of them, the _Madonna della Stella_, is a very perfect and typical example of the Friar's smaller works, in their "purity of colour almost shadowless." The other, the Coronation of the Madonna, is less excellent and has suffered from retouching. The Agony in the Garden (in cell 34) contains a curious piece of mediaeval symbolism in the presence of Mary and Martha, contemplation and action, the Mary being here the Blessed Virgin. In the same cell is another of the reliquaries from Santa Maria Novella, the Annunciation over the Adoration of the Magi, with Madonna and Child, the Virgin Martyrs, the Magdalene and St. Catherine of Siena below; the drawing is rather faulty. In the following cells are the Last Supper (35), conceived mystically as the inst.i.tution of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, with the Madonna alone as witness; the Deposition from the Cross (36); and the Crucifixion (37), in which Dominic stands with out-stretched arms.

Opposite on the right (38-39) is the great cell where Pope Eugenius stayed on the occasion of the consecration of San Marco in 1442; here Cosimo the Elder, Pater Patriae, spent long hours of his closing days, in spiritual intercourse with St. Antoninus and after the latter's death. In the outer compartment the Medicean saint, Cosmas, joins Madonna and Peter Martyr at the foot of the Cross. Within are the Adoration of the Magi and a Pieta, both from Angelico's hand, and the former, one of his latest masterpieces, probably painted with reference to the fact that the convent had been consecrated on the Feast of the Epiphany. Here, too, is an old terracotta bust of Antoninus, and a splendid but damaged picture of Cosimo himself by Jacopo da Pontormo, incomparably finer than that artist's similarly constructed work in the Uffizi. Between two smaller cells containing Crucifixions, both apparently by Angelico himself (42-43--the former with the Mary and Martha motive at the foot of the Cross), is the great Greek Library, built by Michelozzo for Cosimo. Here Cosimo deposited a portion of the ma.n.u.scripts which had been collected by Niccol Niccoli, with additions of his own, and it became the first public library in Italy. Its shelves are now empty and bare, but it contains a fine collection of illuminated ritual books from suppressed convents, several of which are, rather doubtfully, ascribed to Angelico's brother, Fra Benedetto da Mugello.

It was in this library that Savonarola exercised for the last time his functions of Prior of San Marco, and surrendered to the commissioners of the Signoria, on the night of Palm Sunday, 1498. What happened had best be told in the words of the Padre Pacifico Burlamacchi of the same convent, Savonarola's contemporary and follower. After several fict.i.tious summonses had come:--

"They returned at last with the decree of the Signoria in writing, but with the open promise that Fra Girolamo should be restored safe and sound, together with his companions. When he heard this, he told them that he would obey. But first he retired with his friars into the Greek Library, where he made them in Latin a most beautiful sermon, exhorting them to follow onwards in the way of G.o.d with faith, prayer, and patience; telling them that it was necessary to go to heaven by the way of tribulations, and that therefore they ought not in any way to be terrified; alleging many old examples of the ingrat.i.tude of the city of Florence in return for the benefits received from their Order.

As that of St. Peter Martyr who, after doing so many marvellous things in Florence, was slain, the Florentines paying the price of his blood.

And of St. Catherine of Siena, whom many had sought to kill, after she had borne so many labours for them, going personally to Avignon to plead their cause before the Pope. Nor had less happened to St.

Antoninus, their Archbishop and excellent Pastor, whom they had once wished to throw from the windows. And that it was no marvel, if he also, after such sorrows and labourings, was paid at the end in the same coin. But that he was ready to receive everything with desire and happiness for the love of his Lord, knowing that in nought else consisted the Christian life, save in doing good and suffering evil.

And thus, while all the bye-standers wept, he finished his sermon.

Then, issuing forth from the library, he said to those laymen who awaited him: 'I will say to you what Jeremiah said: This thing I expected, but not so soon nor so suddenly.' He exhorted them further to live well and to be fervent in prayer. And having confessed to the Father Fra Domenico da Pescia, he took the Communion in the first library. And the same did Fra Domenico. After eating a little, he was somewhat refreshed; and he spoke the last words to his friars, exhorting them to persevere in religion, and kissing them all, he took his last departure from them. In the parting one of his children said to him: 'Father, why dost thou abandon us and leave us so desolate?'

To which he replied: 'Son, have patience, G.o.d will help you'; and he added that he would either see them again alive, or that after death he would appear to them without fail. Also, as he departed, he gave up the common keys to the brethren, with so great humility and charity, that the friars could not keep themselves from tears; and many of them wished by all means to go with him. At last, recommending himself to their prayers, he made his way towards the door of the library, where the first Commissioners all armed were awaiting him; to whom, giving himself into their hands like a most meek lamb, he said: 'I recommend to you this my flock and all these other citizens.' And when he was in the corridor of the library, he said: 'My friars, doubt not, for G.o.d will not fail to perfect His work; and although I be put to death, I shall help you more than I have done in life, and I will return without fail to console you, either dead or alive.' Arrived at the holy water, which is at the exit of the choir, Fra Domenico said to him: 'Fain would I too come to these nuptials.' Certain of the laymen, his friends, were arrested at the command of the Signoria. When the Father Fra Girolamo was in the first cloister, Fra Benedetto, the miniaturist, strove ardently to go with him; and, when the officers thrust him back, he still insisted that he would go. But the Father Fra Girolamo turned to him, and said: 'Fra Benedetto, on your obedience come not, for I and Fra Domenico have to die for the love of Christ.' And thus he was torn away from the eyes of his children."

CHAPTER X

_The Accademia delle Belle Arti--The Santissima Annunziata--And other Buildings_

"In Firenze, piu che altrove, venivano gli uomini perfetti in tutte l'arti, e specialmente nella pittura."--_Vasari._

Turning southwards from the Piazza di San Marco into the Via Ricasoli, we come to the _Accademia delle Belle Arti_, with its collection of Tuscan and Umbrian pictures, mostly gathered from suppressed churches and convents.

In the central hall, the Tribune of the David, Michelangelo's gigantic marble youth stands under the cupola, surrounded by casts of the master's other works. The young hero has just caught sight of the approaching enemy, and is all braced up for the immortal moment.

Commenced in 1501 and finished at the beginning of 1504, out of a block of marble over which an earlier sculptor had bungled, it was originally set up in front of the Palazzo Vecchio on the Ringhiera, as though to defend the great Palace of the People. It is supposed to have taken five days to move the statue from the Opera del Duomo, where Michelangelo had chiselled it out, to the Palace. When the simple-minded Gonfaloniere, Piero Soderini, saw it, he told the artist that the nose appeared to him to be too large; whereupon Michelangelo mounted a ladder, pretended to work upon it for a few moments, dropping a little marble dust all the time, which he had taken up with him, and then turned round for approval to the Gonfaloniere, who a.s.sured him that he had now given the statue life. This _gigante di Fiorenza_, as it was called, was considerably damaged during the third expulsion of the Medici in 1527, but retained its proud position before the Palace until 1873.

On the right, as we approach the giant, is the _Sala del Beato Angelico_, containing a lovely array of Fra Angelico's smaller paintings. Were we to attempt to sum up Angelico's chief characteristics in one word, that word would be _onesta_, in its early mediaeval sense as Dante uses it in the _Vita Nuova_, signifying not merely purity or chast.i.ty, as it came later to mean, but the outward manifestation of spiritual beauty,--the _honestas_ of which Aquinas speaks. A supreme expression of this may be found in the Paradise of his Last Judgment (266), the mystical dance of saints and Angels in the celestial garden that blossoms under the rays of the Sun of Divine Love, and on all the faces of the blessed beneath the Queen of Mercy on the Judge's right. The h.e.l.l is, naturally, almost a failure. In many of the small scenes from the lives of Christ and His Mother, of which there are several complete series here, some of the heads are absolute miracles of expression; notice, for instance, the Judas receiving the thirty pieces of silver, and all the faces in the Betrayal (237), and, above all perhaps, the Peter in the Entry into Jerusalem (252), on every line of whose face seems written: "Lord, why can I not follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake." The Deposition from the Cross (246), contemplated by St. Dominic, the Beata Villana and St. Catherine of Alexandria, appears to be an earlier work of Angelico's. Here, also, are three great Madonnas painted by the Friar as altar pieces for convent churches; the Madonna and Child surrounded by Angels and saints, while Cosmas and Damian, the patrons of the Medici, kneel at her feet (281), was executed in 1438 for the high altar of San Marco, and, though now terribly injured, was originally one of his best pictures; the Madonna and Child, with two Angels and six saints, Peter Martyr, Cosmas and Damian, Francis, Antony of Padua, and Louis of Toulouse (265), was painted for the convent of the Osservanza near Mugello,--hence the group of Franciscans on the left; the third (227), in which Cosmas and Damian stand with St. Dominic on the right of the Madonna, and St.

Francis with Lawrence and John the Divine on her left, is an inferior work from his hand.

Also in this room are four delicious little panels by Lippo Lippi (264 and 263), representing the Annunciation divided into two compartments, St. Antony Abbot and the Baptist; two Monks of the Vallombrosa, by Perugino (241, 242), almost worthy of Raphael; and two charming scenes of mediaeval university life, the School of Albertus Magnus (231) and the School of St. Thomas Aquinas (247). These two latter appear to be by some pupil of Fra Angelico, and may possibly be very early works of Benozzo Gozzoli. In the first, Albert is lecturing to an audience, partly lay and partly clerical, amongst whom is St. Thomas, then a youthful novice but already distinguished by the halo and the sun upon his breast; in the second, Thomas himself is now holding the professorial chair, surrounded by pupils listening or taking notes, while Dominicans throng the cloisters behind. On his right sits the King of France; below his seat the discomforted Averrhoes humbly places himself on the lowest step, between the heretics--William of St. Amour and Sabellius.

From the left of the David's tribune, we turn into three rooms containing masterpieces of the Quattrocento (with a few later works), and appropriately named after Botticelli and Perugino.

In the _Sala prima del Botticelli_ is Sandro's famous _Primavera_, the Allegory of Spring or the Kingdom of Venus (80). Inspired in part by Poliziano's _stanze_ in honour of Giuliano dei Medici and his Bella Simonetta, Botticelli nevertheless has given to his strange--not altogether decipherable--allegory, a vague mysterious poetry far beyond anything that Messer Angelo could have suggested to him.

Through this weirdly coloured garden of the Queen of Love, in "the light that never was on sea or land," blind Cupid darts upon his little wings, shooting, apparently at random, a flame-tipped arrow which will surely pierce the heart of the central maiden of those three, who, in their thin clinging white raiment, personify the Graces. The eyes of Simonetta--for it is clearly she--rest for a moment in the dance upon the stalwart Hermes, an idealised Giuliano, who has turned away carelessly from the scene. Flora, "pranked and pied for birth," advances from our right, scattering flowers rapidly as she approaches; while behind her a wanton Zephyr, borne on his strong wings, breaks through the wood to clasp Fertility, from whose mouth the flowers are starting. Venus herself, the mistress of nature, for whom and by whom all these things are done, stands somewhat sadly apart in the centre of the picture; this is only one more of the numberless springs that have pa.s.sed over her since she first rose from the sea, and she is somewhat weary of it all:--

"Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus Summitt.i.t flores, tibi rident aequora ponti Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum."[47]

[47] "Before thee, G.o.ddess, flee the winds, the clouds of heaven; before thee and thy advent; for thee earth manifold in works puts forth sweet-smelling flowers; for thee the levels of the sea do laugh and heaven propitiated s.h.i.+nes with outspread light" (Munro's _Lucretius_).

This was one of the pictures painted for Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Botticelli's other picture in this room, the large Coronation of the Madonna (73) with its predella (74), was commissioned by the Arte di Por Sta. Maria, the Guild of Silk-merchants, for an altar in San Marco; the ring of festive Angels, encircling their King and Queen, is in one of the master's most characteristic moods. On either side of the Primavera are two early works by Lippo Lippi; Madonna adoring the Divine Child in a rocky landscape, with the little St. John and an old hermit (79), and the Nativity (82), with Angels and shepherds, Jerome, Magdalene and Hilarion. Other important pictures in this room are Andrea del Sarto's Four Saints (76), one of his latest works painted for the monks of Vallombrosa in 1528; Andrea Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ (71), in which the two Angels were possibly painted by Verrocchio's great pupil, Leonardo, in his youth; Masaccio's Madonna and Child watched over by St. Anne (70), an early and damaged work, the only authentic easel picture of his in Florence. The three small predella pictures (72), the Nativity, the martyrdom of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, St. Anthony of Padua finding a stone in the place of the dead miser's heart, by Francesco Pesellino, 1422-1457, the pupil of Lippo Lippi, are fine examples of a painter who normally only worked on this small scale and whose works are very rare indeed. Francesco Granacci, who painted the a.s.sumption (68), is chiefly interesting as having been Michelangelo's friend and fellow pupil under Ghirlandaio.

The _Sala del Perugino_ takes its name from three works of that master which it contains; the great Vallombrosa a.s.sumption (57), signed and dated 1500, one of the painter's finest altar pieces, with a very characteristic St. Michael--the Archangel who was by tradition the genius of the a.s.sumption, as Gabriel had been of the Annunciation; the Deposition from the Cross (56); and the Agony in the Garden (53). But the gem of the whole room is Lippo Lippi's Coronation of the Madonna (62), one of the masterpieces of the early Florentine school, which he commenced for the nuns of Sant' Ambrogio in 1441. The throngs of boys and girls, bearing lilies and playing at being Angels, are altogether delightful, and the two little orphans, that are being petted by the pretty Florentine lady on our right, are characteristic of Fra Filippo's never failing sympathy with child life. On the left two admirably characterised monks are patronised by St. Ambrose, and in the right corner the jolly Carmelite himself, under the wing of the Baptist, is welcomed by a little Angel with the scroll, _Is perfecit opus_. It will be observed that "poor brother Lippo" has dressed himself with greater care for his celestial visit, than he announced his intention of doing in Robert Browning's poem:--

"Well, all these Secured at their devotion, up shall come Out of a corner when you least expect, As one by a dark stair into a great light, Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!-- Mazed, motionless and moon-struck--I'm the man!

Back I shrink--what is this I see and hear?

I, caught up with my monk's things by mistake, My old serge gown and rope that goes all round, I, in this presence, this pure company!

Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?

Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing Forward, puts out a soft palm--'Not so fast!'

Addresses the celestial presence, 'Nay-- 'He made you and devised you, after all, 'Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw-- 'His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?

'We come to brother Lippo for all that, '_Iste perfecit opus!_'"

Fra Filippo's Madonna and Child, with Sts. Cosmas and Damian, Francis and Antony, painted for the Medicean chapel in Santa Croce (55), is an earlier and less characteristic work. Over the door is St. Vincent preaching, by Fra Bartolommeo (58), originally painted to go over the entrance to the sacristy in San Marco--a striking representation of a Dominican preacher of repentance and renovation, conceived in the spirit of Savonarola, but terribly "restored." The Trinita (63) is one of Mariotto Albertinelli's best works, but sadly damaged. The two child Angels (61) by Andrea del Sarto, originally belonged to his picture of the Four Saints, in the last room; the Crucifixion, with the wonderful figure of the Magdalene at the foot of the Cross (65), ascribed to Luca Signorelli, does not appear to be from the master's own hand; Ghirlandaio's predella (67), with scenes from the lives of Sts. Dionysius, Clement, Dominic, and Thomas Aquinas, belongs to a great picture which we shall see presently.

The _Sala seconda del Botticelli_ contains three pictures ascribed to the master, but only one is authentic--the Madonna and Child enthroned with six Saints, while Angels raise the curtain over her throne or hold up emblems of the Pa.s.sion (85); it is inscribed with Dante's line--

"Vergine Madre, Figlia del tuo Figlio."

The familiar Three Archangels (84), though attributed to Sandro, is not even a work of his school. There is a charming little predella picture by Fra Filippo (86), representing a miracle of San Frediano, St. Michael announcing her death to the Blessed Virgin, and a friar contemplating the mystery of the Blessed Trinity--pierced by the "three arrows of the three stringed bow," to adopt Dante's phrase. The Deposition from the Cross (98), was commenced by Filippino Lippi for the Annunziata, and finished after his death in 1504 by Perugino, who added the group of Maries with the Magdalene and the figure on our right. The Vision of St. Bernard (97), by Fra Bartolommeo, is the first picture that the Friar undertook on resuming his brush, after Raphael's visit to Florence had stirred him up to new efforts; commenced in 1506, it was left unfinished, and has been injured by renovations. Here are two excellent paintings by Lorenzo di Credi (92 and 94), the former, the Adoration of the Shepherds, being his very best and most perfectly finished work. High up are two figures in niches by Filippino Lippi, the Baptist and the Magdalene (93 and 89), hardly pleasing. The Resurrection (90), by Raffaellino del Garbo, is the only authentic work in Florence of a pupil of Filippino's, who gave great promise which was never fulfilled.

At the end of the hall are three Sale _dei Maestri Toscani_, from the earliest Primitives down to the eighteenth century. Only a few need concern us much.

The first room contains the works of the earlier masters, from a pseudo-Cimabue (102), to Luca Signorelli, whose Madonna and Child with Archangels and Doctors (164), painted for a church in Cortona, has suffered from restoration. There are four genuine, very tiny pictures by Botticelli (157, 158, 161, 162). The Adoration of the Kings (165), by Gentile da Fabriano, is one of the most delightful old pictures in Florence; Gentile da Fabriano, an Umbrian master who, through Jacopo Bellini, had a considerable influence upon the early Venetian school, settled in Florence in 1422, and finished this picture in the following year for Santa Trinita, near which he kept a much frequented bottega. Michelangelo said that Gentile had a hand similar to his name; and this picture, with its rich and varied poetry, is his masterpiece. The man wearing a turban, seen full face behind the third king, is the painter himself. Kugler remarks: "Fra Angelico and Gentile are like two brothers, both highly gifted by nature, both full of the most refined and amiable feelings; but the one became a monk, the other a knight." The smaller pictures surrounding it are almost equally charming in their way--especially, perhaps, the Flight into Egypt in the predella. The Deposition from the Cross (166), by Fra Angelico, also comes from Santa Trinita, for which it was finished in 1445; originally one of Angelico's masterpieces, it has been badly repainted; the saints in the frame are extremely beautiful, especially a most wonderful St. Michael at the top, on our left; the man standing on the ladder, wearing a black hood, is the architect, Michelozzo, who was the Friar's friend, and may be recognised in several of his paintings. The lunettes in the three Gothic arches above Angelico's picture, and which, perhaps, did not originally belong to it, are by the Camaldolese Don Lorenzo, by whom are also the Annunciation with four Saints (143), and the three predella scenes (144, 145, 146).

Of the earlier pictures, the Madonna and Child adored by Angels (103) is now believed to be the only authentic easel picture of Giotto's that remains to us--though this is, possibly, an excess of scepticism.

Besides several works ascribed to Taddeo Gaddi and his son Agnolo, by the former of whom are probably the small panels from Santa Croce, formerly attributed to Giotto, we should notice the Pieta by Giovanni da Milano (131); the Presentation in the Temple by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (134), signed and dated 1342; and a large altarpiece ascribed to Pietro Cavallini (157). The so-called Marriage of Boccaccio Adimari with Lisa Ricasoli (147) is an odd picture of the social customs of old Florence.

In the second room are chiefly works by Fra Bartolommeo and Mariotto Albertinelli. By the Frate, are the series of heads of Christ and Saints (168), excepting the Baptist on the right; they are frescoes taken from San Marco, excepting the Christ on the left, inscribed "Orate pro pictore 1514," which is in oil on canvas. Also by him are the two frescoes of Madonna and Child (171, 173), and the splendid portrait of Savonarola in the character of St. Peter Martyr (172), the great religious persecutor of the Middle Ages, to whom Fra Girolamo had a special devotion. By Albertinelli, are the Madonna and Saints (167), and the Annunciation (169), signed and dated 1510. This room also contains several pictures by Fra Paolino da Pistoia and the Dominican nun, Plautilla Nelli, two pious but insipid artists, who inherited Fra Bartolommeo's drawings and tried to carry on his traditions. On a stand in the middle of the room, is Domenico Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Shepherds (195), from Santa Trinita, a splendid work with--as Vasari puts it--"certain heads of shepherds which are held a divine thing."

On the walls of the third room are later pictures of no importance or significance. But in the middle of the room is another masterpiece by Ghirlandaio (66); the Madonna and Child with two Angels, Thomas Aquinas and Dionysius standing on either side of the throne, Dominic and Clement kneeling. It is seldom, indeed, that this prosaic painter succeeded in creating such a thinker as this Thomas, such a mystic as this Dionysius; in the head of the latter we see indeed the image of the man who, according to the pleasant mediaeval fable eternalised by Dante, "in the flesh below, saw deepest into the Angelic nature and its ministry."