startled animals--gipsy
children, such as those who, in Apennine villages, still hold out
their long brown arms to beg of you, with their thick black hair
nicely combed, and fair white linen on their sunburnt throats."

The picture's frame is that which was made for it four hundred and
fifty years ago: by whom, I cannot say, but it was the custom at that
time for the painter himself to be responsible also for the frame.

The glory of the end wall is the "Annunciation," reproduced in this
book. The picture is a work that may perhaps not wholly please at
first, the cause largely of the vermilion on the floor, but in the
end conquers. The hands are among the most beautiful in existence,
and the landscape, with its one tree and its fairy architecture, is a
continual delight. Among "Annunciations," as among pictures, it stands
very high. It has more of sophistication than most: the Virgin not
only recognizes the honour, but the doom, which the painter himself
foreshadows in the predella, where Christ is seen rising from the
grave. None of Fra Angelico's simple radiance here, and none of Fra
Lippo Lippi's glorified matter-of-fact. Here is tragedy. The painting
of the Virgin's head-dress is again marvellous.

Next the "Annunciation" on the left is, to my eyes, one of Botticelli's
most attractive works: No. 1303, just the Madonna and Child again,
in a niche, with roses climbing behind them: the Madonna one of his
youngest, and more placid and simple than most, with more than a hint
of the Verrocchio type in her face. To the "School of Botticelli" this
is sometimes attributed: it may be rightly. Its pendant is another
"Madonna and Child," No. 76, more like Lippo Lippi and very beautiful
in its darker graver way.

The other wall has the "Fortitude," the "Calumny," and the two little
"Judith and Holofernes" pictures. Upon the "Fortitude," to which I
have already alluded, it is well to look at Ruskin, who, however,
was not aware that the artist intended any symbolic reference to
the character and career of Piero de' Medici. The criticism is in
"Mornings in Florence" and it is followed by some fine pages on the
"Judith". The "Justice," "Prudence," and "Charity" of the Pollaiuolo
brothers, belonging to the same series as the "Fortitude," are also
here; but after the "Fortitude" one does not look at them.

CHAPTER XI

the Uffizi IV: Remaining Rooms

S. Zenobius--Piero della Francesca--Federigo da Montefeltro--Melozzo
d