raised her, nor Adon refused the honey of her
throat; not yet has Psyche stolen away her joy, nor Mars rolled her on a
soldier's couch amid the spears and bucklers; for now she is but a maid,
and she cometh in the dawn to her kingdom dreaming over the sea. If we
compare her for a moment with the Madonna of the Magnificat, with the
Mary of the Pomegranate, she seems to us more virgin than the Virgin
herself; less troubled by a love in which all the sorrow and desire of
the world have found expression, less weary of the prayers that will be
hers no less than Mary's. How wearily and with what sadness Madonna
writes Magnificat, or dreams of the love that even now is come into her
arms! Is it that, as Pater has thought, the honour is too great for her,
that she would have preferred a humbler destiny, the joy of any other
mother of Israel? Who is she, this woman of divine and troubling beauty
that masquerades as Venus, and with Christ in her arms is so sad and
unhappy. Tradition tells us that he was Simonetta, the mistress of
Giuliano de' Medici, who, dying still in her youth, was borne through
Florence with uncovered face to her grave under the cypresses. Whoever
she may be, she haunts all the work of Botticelli, who, it might seem,
loved her as one who had studied Dante, and, one of the company of the
Platonists of Lorenzo's court, might well love a woman altogether remote
from him. As Venus she is a maid about to step for the first time upon
the shores of Cypris, and her eyes are like violets, wet with dew that
have not looked on the sun; her bright locks heavy with gold her maid
has caught about her, and the pale anemones have kissed her breasts, and
the scarlet weeds have kissed her on the mouth. As Mary, her destiny is
too great for her, and her lips tremble under the beauty of the words
she is about to utter; the mystical veils about her head have blinded
her, her eyelids have fallen over her eyes, and in her heart she seems
to be weeping. But it is another woman not less mysterious who, as
Judith, trips homeward so lightly in the morning after the terrible
night, her dreadful burden on her head and in her soul some too brutal
accusation. Again you may see her as Madonna in a picture brought here
from S. Maria Nuova, where she would let Love fall, she is so weary, but
that an angel's arm enfolds Him.

[Illustration: THE BIRTH OF VENUS

_By Sandro Botticelli. Uffizi Gallery_

_Anderson_]

In the Calumny you see a pi