with Angels (1002), once ascribed to Titian,
a naive and charming little work; the Repose in Egypt (1118), grave and
beautiful enough, but in some way I cannot explain a little
disappointing; and the Madonna adoring her little Son (1134), which is
rather commonplace in colour, though delightful in conception.

It might seem impossible within the covers of one book to do more than
touch upon the enormous wealth of ancient art in the possession of
almost every city in Italy; and here in Florence, more than anywhere
else, I know my feebleness. If these few notes, for indeed they are
nothing more, serve to group the pictures hung in the Uffizi into
Schools, to win a certain order out of what is already less a chaos than
of old, to give to the reader some idea almost at a glance of what the
Uffizi really possesses of the various schools of Italian painting, they
will have served their purpose.[126]

Of the sculpture, too, I say nothing. Vastly more important and beloved
of old than to-day, when the work of the Greeks themselves has come into
our hands, and above all the Greek work of the fifth century B.C., there
is not to be found in the Uffizi a single marble of Greek workmanship,
and but few Roman works that are still untampered with. For myself, I
cannot look with pleasure on a Roman Venus patched by the Renaissance,
for I have seen the beauty of the Melian Aphrodite; and there are
certain things in Rome, in Athens, in London, which make it for ever
impossible for us to be sincere in our worship at this shrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[121] Alberti, _Opere Volgari_ (Firenze, 1847), vol. iv. p. 75.

[122] Mr. Berenson calls it a Portrait of Perugino, though for long it
passed as a Portrait of Verrocchio by Lorenzo di Credi.

[123] For a full account of the Umbrian school see my _Cities of
Umbria_.

[124] In 1416, Borgo S. Sepolcro was not just within the borders of
Tuscany of course, as it is to-day, but just without: it was part of the
Papal State till Eugenius IV sold it to Florence.

[125] Mr. Berenson calls the picture An Allegory of the Tree of Life,
and adds that it is certainly a late work of Giovanni.

[126] Of the Flemish, Dutch, German, and French pictures here I intend
to say no more than to name a few among them. The most valuable foreign
picture in Florence for the student of Italian art is Van der Goes'
(1425-82) great triptych (1525) of the Adoration of the Shepherds, with
the Family of the donor Messer Por