cks. The Louvre and the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin--but
particularly the Kaiser Friedrich since Herr Bode, who has such
a passion for this period, became its director--have priceless
treasures, and in Paris I have had the privilege of seeing the little
but exquisite collection formed by M. Gustave Dreyfus, dominated by
that mirthful Italian child which the Bargello authorities consider to
be by Donatello, but Herr Bode gives to Desiderio. At the Louvre, in
galleries on the ground floor gained through the Egyptian sculpture
section and opened very capriciously, may be seen the finest of
the prisoners from Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius; Donatello's
youthful Baptist; a Madonna and Children by Agostino di Duccio, whom
we saw at the Museum of the Cathedral; an early coloured terra-cotta
by Luca della Robbia, and No. 316, a terra-cotta Madonna and Child
without ascription, which looks very like Rossellino.

In addition to originals there are at South Kensington casts of many
of the Bargello's most valuable possessions, such as Donatello's
and Verrocchio's Davids, Donatello's Baptist and many heads, Mino
da Fiesole's best Madonna, Pollaiuolo's Young Warrior, and so forth;
so that to loiter there is most attractively to recapture something
of the Florentine feeling.

CHAPTER XV

S. Croce

An historic piazza--Marble facades--Florence's Westminster
Abbey--Galileo's ancestor and Ruskin--Benedetto's
pulpit--Michelangelo's tomb--A fond lady--Donatello's
Annunciation--Giotto's frescoes--S. Francis--Donatello magnanimous--The
gifted Alberti--Desiderio's great tomb--The sacristy--The Medici
chapel--The Pazzi chapel--Old Jacopo desecrated--A Restoration.

The piazza S. Croce now belongs to children. The church is at one
end, bizarre buildings are on either side, the Dante statue is in the
middle, and harsh gravel covers the ground. Everywhere are children,
all dirty, and all rather squalid and mostly bow-legged, showing that
they were of the wrong age to take their first steps on Holy Saturday
at noon. The long brown building on the right, as we face S. Croce,
is a seventeenth-century palazzo. For the rest, the architecture is
chiefly notable for green shutters.

The frigid and florid Dante memorial, which was unveiled in 1865 on
the six hundredth anniversary of the poet's birthday, looks gloomily
upon what once was a scene of splendour and animation, for in 1469
Piero de' Medici devised here a tournament in hon