For their subsequent history,
see `Le Istorie Fiorentine di Niccolo Machiavelli'.

122. How say I?:--nay, worse than that, which dog bites, etc.

127. remarks: observations.

139. Camaldolese: monks of the celebrated convent of Camaldoli.

143. Thank you!: there's a remark interposed here by one of the men,
perhaps "YOU'RE no dauber", to which he replies, "Thank you".

145 et seq. The realistic painter, who disdains nothing, is shown here.

189. Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337): a pupil of Cimabue, and regarded
as the principal reviver of art in Italy. He was a personal friend
of Dante. See note under `Old Pictures in Florence', St. 2.

223. I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds: all the editions
are so punctuated; but it seems the comma should be after "man",
connecting "no doubt" with "I've broken bounds".

235. "Giovanni da Fiesole, better known as Fra Angelico (1387-1455).
Angelico was incomparably the greatest of the distinctively
mediaeval school, whose `dicta' the Prior in the poem has all at
his tongue's end. To `paint the souls of men', to `make them forget
there's such a thing as flesh', was the end of his art. And,
side by side with Angelico, Masaccio painted. His short life
taught him a different lesson--`the value and significance of flesh'.
He would paint by preference the BODIES of men, and would give us
NO MORE OF SOUL than the body can reveal. So he `laboured',
saith the chronicler, `in nakeds', and his frescoes mark
an epoch in art."--Ernest Bradford (B. S. Illustrations).

"One artist in the seclusion of his cloister, remained true
to the traditions and mode of expression of the middle ages, into which,
nevertheless, the incomparable beauty and feeling of his nature
breathed fresh life. Fra Giovanni Angelico, called da Fiesole
from the place of his birth, occupies an entirely exceptional position.
He is the late-blooming flower of an almost by-gone time
amid the pulsations of a new life. Never, in the whole range
of pictorial art, have the inspired fervor of Christian feeling,
the angelic beauty and purity of which the soul is capable, been so
gloriously interpreted as in his works. The exquisite atmosphere
of an almost supernaturally ideal life surrounds his pictures,
irradiates the rosy features of his youthful faces, or greets us,
like the peace of God, in the dignified figures of his devout old men.
His prevailing themes are the humility of soul of those who