a Forli--The Tribuna--Raphael--Re-arrangement--The gems--The
self-painted portraits--A northern room--Hugo van der Goes--
Tommaso Portinari--The sympathetic Memling--Rubens riotous--Vittoria
della Rovere--Baroccio--Honthorst--Giovanni the indiscreet--The
Medusa--Medici miniatures--Hercules Seghers--The Sala di Niobe--
Beautiful antiques.

Passing from the Sala di Botticelli through the Sala di Lorenzo
Monaco and the first Tuscan rooms to the corridor, we come to
the second Tuscan room, which is dominated by Andrea del Sarto
(1486-1531), whose "Madonna and Child," with "S. Francis and S. John
the Evangelist"--No. 112--is certainly the favourite picture here,
as it is, in reproduction, in so many homes; but, apart from the
Child, I like far better the "S. Giacomo"--No. 1254--so sympathetic
and rich in colour, which is reproduced in this volume. Another
good Andrea is No. 93--a soft and misty apparition of Christ to
the Magdalen. The Sodoma (1477-1549) on the easel--"S. Sebastian,"
No. 1279--is very beautiful in its Leonardesque hues and romantic
landscape, and the two Ridolfo Ghirlandaios (1483-1561) near it are
interesting as representing, with much hard force, scenes in the story
of S. Zenobius, of Florence, of whom we read in chapter II. In one he
restores life to the dead child in the midst of a Florentine crowd;
in the other his bier, passing the Baptistery, reanimates the dead
tree. Giotto's tower and the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio are to be
seen on the left. A very different picture is the Cosimo Rosselli,
No. 1280 his, a comely "Madonna and Saints," with a motherly thought
in the treatment of the bodice.

Among the other pictures is a naked sprawling scene of bodies and
limbs by Cosimo I's favourite painter, Bronzino (1502-1572), called
"The Saviour in Hell," and two nice Medici children from the same
brush, which was kept busy both on the living and ancestral lineaments
of that family; two Filippino Lippis, both fine if with a little
too much colour for this painter: one--No. 1257--approaching the
hotness of a Ghirlandaio carpet piece, but a great feat of crowded
activity; the other, No. 1268, having a beautiful blue Madonna and
a pretty little cherub with a red book. Piero di Cosimo is here,
religious and not mythological; and here are a very straightforward
and satisfying Mariotto Albertinelli--the "Virgin and S. Elizabeth,"
very like a Fra Bartolommeo; a very rich and beautiful "Deposition"
by Botticini,