ch
entertaining interest, but the debt which this owes to Castagno is very
obvious: it is indeed Castagno sweetened. Although psychologically this
picture is weak, or at any rate not strong, it is full of pleasant
touches: the supper really is a supper, as it too often is not,
with fruit and dishes and a generous number of flasks; the tablecloth
would delight a good housekeeper; a cat sits close to Judas, his only
companion; a peacock perches in a niche; there are flowers on the wall,
and at the back of the charming loggia where the feast is held are
luxuriant trees, and fruits, and flying birds. The monks at food in
this small refectory had compensation for their silence in so engaging
a scene. This room also contains a beautiful della Robbia "Deposition".

The little refectory, which is at the foot of the stairs leading to
the cells, opens on the second cloisters, and these few visitors ever
enter. But they are of deep interest to any one with a passion for
the Florence of the great days, for it is here that the municipality
preserves the most remarkable relics of buildings that have had to
be destroyed. It is in fact the museum of the ancient city. Here,
for example, is that famous figure of Abundance, in grey stone,
which Donatello made for the old market, where the Piazza Vittorio
Emmanuele now is, in the midst of which she poured forth her fruits
from a cornucopia high on a column for all to see. Opposite is a
magnificent doorway designed by Donatello for the Pazzi garden. Old
windows, chimney-pieces, fragments of cornice, carved pillars,
painted beams, coats of arms, are everywhere.

In cell No. 3 is a pretty little coloured relief of the Virgin
adoring, which I covet, from a tabernacle in the old Piazza di
Brunelleschi. Here too are relics of the guild houses of some of
the smaller Arti, while perhaps the most humanly interesting thing
of all is the great mournful bell of S. Marco in Savonarola's time,
known as La Piagnone.

In the church of S. Marco lie two of the learned men, friends of
Lorenzo de' Medici, whose talk at the Medici table was one of the
youthful Michelangelo's educative influences, what time he was studying
in the Medici garden, close by: Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), the
poet and the tutor of the three Medici boys, and the marvellous Pico
della Mirandola (1463-1494), the enchanted scholar. Pico was one of the
most fascinating and comely figures of his time. He was born in 1463,
the son of t