onal art, expresses the
very thought of his time, of his own heart, which half in love with Pico
of Mirandola would reconcile Plato with Moses, and since man's
allegiance is divided reconcile the gods. You may discern something,
perhaps, of the same thought, but already a little cold, a little
indifferent in its appeal, in the Adoration of the Shepherds which Luca
Signorelli painted, now in the Uffizi, where the shepherds are fair and
naked youths, the very gods of Greece come to worship the Desire of all
Nations. But with Botticelli that divine thought is altogether fresh and
sincere. It is strange that one so full of the Hellenic spirit should
later have fallen under the influence of a man so singularly wanting in
temperance or sweetness as Savonarola. One pictures him in his sorrowful
old age bending over the _Divina Commedia_ of Dante, continually
questioning himself as to that doctrine of the Epicureans, to wit, that
the soul dies with the body; at least, one reads that he abandoned all
labour at his art, and was like to have died of hunger but for the
Medici, who supported him.[120]

[Illustration: "THE THREE GRACES FROM THE PRIMAVERA"

_By Sandro Botticelli. Accademia_

_Anderson_]

FOOTNOTES:

[117] Cf. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _History of Painting in Italy_, 1903,
vol. ii. p. 290.

[118] For a full consideration of these and other works of Perugino,
Gentile da Fabriano, and the Umbrian masters, see my _Cities of Umbria_.

[119] Poliziano, Stanza I, str. 43, 44, 46, 47 68, 72, 85, 94; and
Alberti, Opere Volgari, _Della Pittura_, Lib. III (Firenze, 1847).

[120] Of the work of Verrocchio in this gallery, the Baptism of Christ,
in which Leonardo is said, I think mistakenly, to have painted an angel
in the left hand kneeling at the feet of Jesus, I speak in the chapter
on the Uffizi.

XXIII. FLORENCE

THE UFFIZI

If it is difficult to speak with justice and a sense of proportion of
the Accademia delle Belle Arti, how may I hope to succeed with the
Uffizi Gallery, where the pictures are infinitely more varied and
numerous. It might seem impossible to do more than to give a catalogue
of the various works here gathered from royal and ducal collections,
from many churches, convents, and monasteries, forming, certainly, with
the gallery of the Pitti Palace, the finest collection of the Italian
schools of painting in the world. And then in this palace, built for
Cosimo I, by Giorgio Vasari, the deli