the Madonna and Saints (1268), painted in 1485, it is rather the little
picture of Madonna adoring her Son (1549) that I prefer, for a certain
sweetness and beauty of colour, before any of his more ambitious works.
Ghirlandajo too, that sweet and serene master, is not so lovely here as
in the Adoration of the Shepherds at the Accademia. In his so-called
Portrait of Perugino (1163),[122] the Adoration of the Magi (1295), and
the Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels (1297), his work seems to
lack sincerity, in all but the first, at any rate, to be the facile work
of one not sufficiently convinced of the necessity for just that without
which there is no profound beauty.

But the age was full of misfortune; it was necessary, perhaps, to
pretend a happiness one did not feel. Certainly in the strangely
fantastic work of Pier di Cosimo, the Rescue of Andromeda (1312), for
instance, there is nothing of the touching sincerity and beauty of his
Death of Procris, now in the National Gallery, which remains his one
splendid work. His pupil Fra Bartolommeo, who was later so unfortunately
influenced by Michelangelo, may be seen here at his best in a small
diptych (1161); in his early manner, his Isaiah (1126) and Job (1130),
we see mere studies in drapery and anatomy. His most characteristic work
is, however, in the Pitti Gallery, where we shall consider it.

Much the same might be said of his partner Albertinelli, and his friend
Andrea del Sarto, whom again we shall consider later in the Pitti
Palace. It will be sufficient here to point out his beautiful early Noli
me Tangere (93), The Portrait of his Wife (188), the Portrait of Himself
(280), the Portrait of a Lady, with a Petrarch in her hands (1230), and
the Madonna dell' Arpie (1112), that statuesque and too grandiose
failure that is so near to success.

Michelangelo, that Roman painter--for out of Rome there are but two of
his works, and one of these, the Deposition in the National Gallery, is
unfinished--has here in the Uffizi a very splendid Holy Family (1139),
splendid perhaps rather than beautiful, where in the background we may
see the graceful nude figures which Luca Signorelli had taught him to
paint there. Luca Signorelli, born in Cortona, the pupil of Piero della
Francesca, passes as an Umbrian painter, and indeed his best work may
be found there. But he was much influenced by Antonio Pollaiuolo, and is
altogether out of sympathy with the mystical art of Umbria. He