Perhaps
the finest feat of Poliziano's life was his action in slamming the
sacristy doors in the face of Lorenzo's pursuers on that fatal day
in the Duomo when Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed.

Ghirlandaio's fresco in S. Trinita of the granting of the charter
to S. Francis gives portraits both of Poliziano and Lorenzo in the
year 1485. Lorenzo stands in a little group of four in the right-hand
corner, holding out his hand towards Poliziano, who, with Lorenzo's
son Giuliano on his right and followed by two other boys, is advancing
up the steps. Poliziano is seen again in a Ghirlandaio fresco at
S. Maria Novella.

From S. Marco we are going to SS. Annunziata, but first let us just
take a few steps down the Via Cavour, in order to pass the Casino
Medici, since it is built on the site of the old Medici garden where
Lorenzo de' Medici established Bertoldo, the sculptor, as head of a
school of instruction, amid those beautiful antiques which we have
seen in the Uffizi, and where the boy Michelangelo was a student.

A few steps farther on the left, towards the Fiesole heights, which
we can see rising at the end of the street, we come, at No. 69, to a
little doorway which leads to a little courtyard--the Chiostro dello
Scalzo--decorated with frescoes by Andrea del Sarto and Franciabigio
and containing the earliest work of both artists. The frescoes are in
monochrome, which is very unusual, but their interest is not impaired
thereby: one does not miss other colours. No. 7, the Baptism of Christ,
is the first fresco these two associates ever did; and several years
elapsed between that and the best that are here, such as the group
representing Charity and the figure of Faith, for the work was long
interrupted. The boys on the staircase in the fresco which shows
S. John leaving his father's house are very much alive. This is by
Franciabigio, as is also S. John meeting with Christ, a very charming
scene. Andrea's best and latest is the Birth of the Baptist, which
has the fine figure of Zacharias writing in it. But what he should
be writing at that time and place one cannot imagine: more reasonably
might he be called a physician preparing a prescription. On the wall
is a terra-cotta bust of S. Antonio, making him much younger than
is usual.

Andrea's suave brush we find all over Florence, both in fresco and
picture, and this is an excellent place to say something of the man
of whom English people have perhaps a more intimate im