Charles of Sicily, brother of St.
Louis, saw the picture, and praising it, "all the men and women of
Florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible
demonstrations of delight. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood,
rejoicing in this occurrence, ever after called that place Borgo
Allegri,"--the name it bears to this day. However reluctant we may be to
find Vasari, that divine gossip, at fault, it might seem that Cimabue's
Triumph is a fable, or if, indeed, it happened, was stolen, for the
Rucellai Madonna is apparently the work of Duccio the Sienese.[103] Of
the works of Cimabue not one remains to us; we do not know, we have
certainly no means of knowing, whether he was, as Ghiberti tells us, a
painter in the old Greek manner, or whether, as Vasari suggests, he was
the true master of Giotto, in that to him was owing the impulse of life
which we find so moving in Giotto's work. And then Vasari, it seems, is
wrong in his account of Borgo Allegri, for that place was named not
after happiness, the happiness of that part of the city in their great
neighbour, but from a family who in those days lived thereabout and bore
that name.

It is, however, of comparatively little importance who painted the
picture. The controversy, which is not yet finished, serves for the most
part merely to obscure the essential fact that here is the picture still
in its own place, and that it is beautiful. Very lovely, indeed, she is,
Madonna of Happiness, and still at her feet the poor may pray, and still
on her dim throne she may see day come and evening fall. Far up in the
obscure height she holds Christ on her knees. Perhaps you may catch the
faint dim loveliness of her face in the early dawn amid the beauty of
the angels kneeling round her throne when the light steals through the
shadowy windows across the hills; or perhaps at evening in the splendour
of some summer sunset you may see just for a moment the whiteness of her
delicate hands; but she is secret and very far away, she has withdrawn
herself to hear the prayers of the poor in spirit who come when the
great church is empty, when the tourists have departed, when the workmen
have returned to their homes. And beside her in that strange, mysterious
place Beata Villana sleeps, where the angels draw back the curtain, in a
tomb by Desiderio da Settignano. She was not of the great company whose
names we falter at our altars and whisper for love over and over again
in the qui