Lippi. Realism, it is the very thought of all Florentine work of
the fifteenth century. Seven pictures by the Frate have been gathered in
this gallery,--the Madonna and Child Enthroned, the St. Jerome in the
Desert, a Nativity, a Madonna adoring Her Son, and the great Coronation
of the Virgin, the Archangel Gabriel and the Baptist, and a Madonna and
St. Anthony.

Here in the Accademia you may see Lucrezia Buti, that pale beauty whom
he loved, very fair and full of languor and sweetness. She looks at you
out of the crowd of saints and angels gathered round the feet of
Madonna, whom God crowns from His throne of jasper. Behind her, looking
at her always, Lippo himself comes--_iste perfecit opus_,--up the steps
into that choir where the angels crowned with roses lift the lilies, as
they wait in some divine interval to sing again Alleluia. And for this
too he should be remembered, for his son was Filippino Lippo and his
pupil Sandro Botticelli.

The Accademia possesses some five pictures by Botticelli,--the
Coronation of the Virgin and its predella (Nos. 73, 74), the Madonna
with saints and angels (No. 85), the Dead Christ (No. 157), the Salome
(No. 161), and the Primavera (No. 80). The Coronation is from the
Convent of S. Marco, and seems to have been painted after Botticelli had
fallen under the strange, unhappy influence of Savonarola; much the same
might be said of the Madonna with saints and angels, where his
expressiveness, that quality which in him was genius, seems to have
fallen almost into a mannerism, a sort of preconceived attitude; and
certainly here, where such a perfect thing awaits us, it is rather to
the Spring we shall turn at once than to anything less splendid.

The so-called Primavera was painted for Lorenzo de' Medici, and in some
vague way seems to have been inspired by Poliziano's verses in praise of
Giuliano de' Medici and Bella Simonetta--

"Candida e ella, e Candida la vesta,
Ma pur di rose e fior dipinta e d'erba:
Lo innanellato crin dell' aurea testa
Scende in la fronte umilmente superba.
Ridele attorno tutta la foresta,
E quanto puo sue cure disacerba.
Nell' atto regalmente e mansueta;
E pur col ciglio le tempeste acqueta."[119]

Here at last we see the greatest, the most personal artist of the
fifteenth century really at his best, in that fortunate moment of
half-pensive joy which was so soon to pass away. How far has he
wandered, and through what secre